Chapter 2 – Bell Tower

===================

Translated by Heavenly Cat

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

===================

Hee-eek, kreuk, geureureureuk….

The groaning sounds that had been heard from beyond the vinegar-smeared cloth slowly faded away. It had been roughly tens of minutes since the person’s final scream stopped. However, we did not let our guard down.

Because we knew what kind of existence the Corpse Demons were.

Those guys were monsters skilled at exploiting human sympathy and altruism.

Sure enough.

“Huaaaaagh! Heu-agh! Huwaaaaagh!”

The screams a person lets out when they die were different from usual.

They spat out their breath while scraping their throat crisply, squeezing their lungs as if their vocal cords would tear.

For that reason, a more desperate and terrifying quality resided within them.

Corpse Demons used these screams to track the reactions of the living.

They induced terror, plunging people into a state of panic, and making them take unnecessary actions.

The fortunate thing was that despite possessing outstanding physical abilities, their senses themselves were lacking.

Because they were half-dead entities, the setting was that they had a hard time sensing the living world. Therefore, even though they were monsters that chased the scent of flesh, they failed to properly distinguish things the moment they encountered a strong smell.

Vinegar was more than enough to hide the two of us. In the end, when the Corpse Demon failed to lure us out even with the screams, it let out an irritated groan.

Geureureureuk….

It would probably be scraping its throat, ruined by bloody phlegm, for quite a while. The Corpse Demon wandered around for a long time, unable to abandon its lingering attachment, before finally moving to seek out another sacrificial lamb.

It seemed to have decided to risk attacking a shelter rather than continuously searching places where people might be hiding.

Still, we could not simply release our tension right away. We spent a long time staying up with our eyes open, taking turns.

Every time the cloth covering the window shook slightly, the outlines of objects that had been crushed began to sharpen at a certain point.

Something, however minuscule, had become visible in the darkness that had previously swallowed everything.

It was around the time the wax of the candle had melted completely.

Bartol and I were finally able to barely feel relieved.

Whatever it was, it was bound to wane once it reached its peak.

The Black Sun and the Corpse Demons were no exceptions. Just as people fell asleep, the sun set and the Corpse Demons weakened. True to being half-dead monsters, Corpse Demons were ambiguous monsters even as undead.

“It seems to be finally setting.”

Exhausted by fatigue, Bartol looked to have aged significantly compared to usual.

I was equally weary. Because my body was overly fine, my mind suffered instead. Yet, I could not just sprawl out and sleep right away.

We had to check how many beacon fires had gone out. With this thought, we left the house and were patrolling the surroundings together with Bartol, when we discovered what had happened in a close place.

Keo-heuk, keok, kek.

A Corpse Demon endlessly repeated the scream it let out when it died. A Corpse Demon with no front teeth was spitting out blood that had not yet rotted through its vacantly pierced throat.

Wandering around the destroyed barricade was Tehen. He had not been a bad friend.

At least, not to the extent that he had to wander about as a monster.

“That is….”

“Let us go back, Priest.”

It was the moment when the Black Sun’s Dark Light plucked off the final shadow.

There were nine shelters in the ruined city.

This was the story from when I was rescued.

How many survived was unknown. What was certain was the fact that the number drastically dwindled every time the Black Sun rose and set.

Furthermore, the cycle of the Black Sun rising was purely based on luck.

Some days it rose after a long time, and some days it rose again in the blink of an eye.

If only we had the means to track time, and enough time itself. It was a pity. Even if we could not do much, it would at least be easy to figure out its rules.

However, in a world where even a handful of raindrops was regrettable, there was precisely one method to determine the flow of time. It was solely checking how much the torches had burned.

Installing torches in the alleyways was not done without thought. The torches helped the people who went outside to search estimate the time.

A strange omen manifested through these very torches.

“Priest.”

“What is the matter, young man. Did you find something?”

“The torch had been stepped on. And it was left half-burned.”

As we moved to examine the situation, we discovered a half-burned torch.

It was not simply a trace of being stepped on and passed over, but a trace of being stepped on and twisted was visible. This was the act of a person. Or perhaps a monster other than a Corpse Demon had appeared. Given that Corpse Demons only chased people, they did not care about what was in their way.

It was not just one torch that suffered this.

We looked around just in case, only to find that all of them had been crushed.

“It could be the work of cultists.”

Bartol offered the most credible opinion.

I wanted that to be true as well, but I knew how utterly malicious the monsters appearing in this game were.

“Or perhaps a subspecies of the Corpse Demon may have appeared.”

“A subspecies?”

“I mean a Draugr.”

“To think you dreamed of being a priest, it seems that must be true. Seeing as you even know the name of such a monster. I hope it is not true… but if it really is a Draugr, firewood will become even more important.”

As soon as Bartol heard my claim, he nodded, agreeing that it was plausible.

Even if it was just a hypothesis, a Draugr was not an easy monster. Though it was an undead creature appearing in Norse mythology, Last Comet had set the Draugr as a subspecies of the Corpse Demon.

The relationship was roughly that of a zombie and a zombie with special abilities. The problem was that it was a slightly different fellow even among special zombies.

A Draugr fully retained the memories and skills from its life.

If such a guy were to catch one of the survivors rummaging through the ruins and use them to increase its numbers, a terrible event would inevitably strike.

…Or perhaps it had already struck.

My thought leaned toward the latter.

“They were perfectly fine right up until dawn. Seeing them all turn out like this even though this cycle was short implied the survivors had been eaten. It knew the locations of the torches.”

“We must inform the other shelters of this fact. We do not know when the capricious sun will mock us again. It would be best to move quickly.”

The world unblessed by sunlight was shabby and desolate.

Above all, the damp and heavy air was so chilly that it was a climate suitable for a Draugr to operate in. Perhaps because of that, the moment we struggled and climbed up onto the nearby roof, we realized our concerns had become reality.

The smoke clouds that should have normally been illuminated by the lights on the ground.

Their numbers had noticeably decreased. In my memory, there were originally nine shelters in the ruined city. When I took a rough guess with my eyes last night, there were five…

Now, no matter how much I looked around, I could only see a mere three places.

“How is it? Are there any intact places?”

“They have all been destroyed. It seems we will have to head toward the Bell Tower.”

The Bell Tower, which was barely holding on by somehow patching together wooden planks, was my choice.

“That is unexpected. However… I am not sure if the Bell Tower will accept us.”

Bartol raised an objection as soon as we came down from the roof.

I had no intention of scolding him. It was natural for him to feel anxious about the suggestion to go to the Bell Tower.

He was the old man who originally resided in the Bell Tower. The Bell Tower and the temple standing alone in the middle of the city were the safest places amidst this chaos.

Originally, Bartol also had no intention of leaving that place, and if he had remained useful, the Bell Tower would not have permitted him to leave either.

The reason Bartol started wandering the surroundings was simple.

“The situation would only have worsened, it would not have improved compared to before. It was a place where people loudly insisted that even young children should be sent out.”

The Bell Tower received support from the surrounding shelters in exchange for sounding the dented bell to notify them of danger.

I heard it was originally so clear and resonant that it was called the bell sound of heaven, but now it sounded worse than a gong. At any rate, because the world was like this, a food shortage struck even such a Bell Tower.

And the people of the Bell Tower, experiencing starvation, felt no need to support an old priest in a world where divine power had vanished.

“Since it is the most conspicuous place, the attacks must have been fierce. Even a single hand would have become precious. Even if they are unhappy with you, Priest, they will take you in. After all, it is not as if you cannot ring the bell just because you are old.”

Upon hearing my reply, Bartol smirked as the corners of his mouth turned up.

“Thank you. Thanks to you, I thought I would live my whole life only consoling others, but I get to receive consolation like this too.”

Having made our decision, Bartol and I set off for the Bell Tower.

Because it was the only place in the ruined city stretching straight up to the sky, weaving through the dark alleyways posed no problem. Furthermore, the greatest threats, the Corpse Demons, were huddled together on the main roads beneath the night sky without uttering a single groan.

The sight of them rubbing up against each other because they could not properly distinguish their own kind, despite instinctively chasing something similar to a person, was quite ridiculous.

Well, if there had not been a penalty of that degree, people would have cursed, saying the balance was broken from the beginning.

It was evidence that this was a game. Being grateful that the facts I knew were not wrong, I took my eyes off the group of Corpse Demons.

However, in the alleyway I reexamined, a relatively vivid red color was mixed among the browned bloodstains. Bits of torn clothes here and there and ripped off… clumps of flesh were also visible.

“How pitiful.”

It was a sight that I myself might have suffered the moment I briefly blinked.

After uttering only one short word, Bartol began to thoroughly check the surroundings with his pupils dilated beneath his pale eyebrows. Thanks to this cautiousness, we safely overcame crises where we were almost discovered a few times.

Leaving the alleyway we barely escaped behind, the light of a bonfire struggling to push out smoke illuminated the vicinity.

Myself, Bartol, and even the people keeping guard at the Bell Tower included.

“It, it is a survivor!”

“Did you break through that horde of Corpse Demons…?”

Among the fussing people, the sound of footsteps pounding the ground began to quiet down.

Unlike the previous shelter, which only had a hastily woven barricade, the Bell Tower had a wooden palisade erected around it. All while accompanied by guards equipped with bladed spears and crossbows. I presumed it was perhaps the most organized group in the ruined city.

Nevertheless, the reason I chose the Bell Tower was just one.

“Priest. We have come this far, so I will ask. Is it true that there is a fallen angel in the Bell Tower?”

“It is true. …There is an angel who is completely dying, indeed.”

“Priest Bartol, you are safe!”

“Toddle, you must have had a very hard time, but you surprisingly managed to do it.”

“They were days where I suffered after sending you away, Priest. A lot of words were also spoken saying that we should not have done that either. We sent people to look for you a few times, but because we did not know where you were… Still, it is truly a relief that you have returned safely like this.”

Bartol, who was said to be driven out from the Bell Tower, unexpectedly received a vigorous welcome.

A man named Toddle made a particular fuss.

He approached while his arm skin, which had stretched due to sudden weight loss making him gaunt, flapped.

As the leader who led the Bell Tower shelter, he was sincerely welcoming the return of a priest equipped with diverse knowledge.

And the kindness rarely seen in a ruined world soon directed toward me as well.

Toddle and I exchanged smiles as we shook hands.

“You must have taken care of the Priest. I can feel a firm relationship of trust between the Priest and you. Hmm. Your eyes are also properly alive.”

“It is thanks to the Priest finding me when I had snuck into the temple. He is the person who saved my life, so there is no way I could simply abandon him.”

“Amazing, truly…. In this difficult time, a person who does not forget favors is extremely rare. Welcome. A firefly is bound to gather near a lantern. It is a relief that a person like you came to us.”

Of course, the one who had business here was not me, but Bartol.

As soon as the handshake ended, Toddle looked at Bartol while openly expressing his urgency.

“More importantly, Priest, there is something we must discuss regarding the events that occurred while you were gone.”

“Hmm.”

At that moment, the fact that Bartol looked toward this direction was absolutely not a coincidence.

If I wanted to know even a little bit about how this world operated right now, it was necessary to meet that dying angel. Actively utilizing the game knowledge I possessed to dress myself up as a scholar was exactly for this moment.

So that I could wedge myself in when important decisions were being made.

And my appeals up until now were sufficient to solidify Bartol’s mind.

“I will listen together with this friend.”

“Priest… Of course I know he is a trustworthy person. But there is always a one-in-a-million chance, is there not.”

Toddle appealed while frowning, acting as if he was in a difficult position.

However, as if Bartol had expected this rebuttal, he continued his words smoothly.

“He is a friend who had been studying traditions while dreaming of taking holy orders until a revelation or oracle arrived. He knows even quite peripheral details rather well. He even comes up with aspects that this old man failed to think of… It would be better to have even one more person put our heads together.”

These words seemed to have completely washed away Toddle’s concerns.

Toddle tapped his lips a few times with the index finger of his right hand before nodding.

“Hmm. If he is a scholar who has studied traditional knowledge.”

We comfortably overcame what could have been a difficult part.

Following behind Toddle, we strolled through what was once a chapel, cutting across the gap between anxiety and wariness.

The people squatting while relying on the faint light all wore vacant expressions alike.

Enormously dilated pupils, unfocused gazes that failed to look this way as if staring at a far-off mountain. The Corpse Demons rubbing against each other outside almost looked more human instead.

We endured walking like that for quite a while, ignoring them because the sight was too painful to bear.

“Could it be….?”

“Both the Priest and the young friend must not have known.”

At the end of it, golden beams of light were wavering like a haze around a groaning man laying his body on the altar.

“The Angel is currently returning from death. He is not yet at the level where he can fight the evil spirits, but he will be sufficient to share that mysterious wisdom.”