The Kind of Evil

"There's no sign of resistance, no trail of blood other than the dried blood underneath the skin..." Erglade used his dagger to lift and move the skin. "It's as if they all died on the spot almost simultaneously..." He muttered and looked dozens of human skins around him.

Everyone looked around to find any hint of what had happened in the village. However, they found nothing, not a single item went missing in the houses. Everything was untouched, even the money and valuable items weren't taken by the culprit.

"Do you feel anything, Sir James?" Erglade turned around to look at James, who was standing still with his eyes closed.

James slowly opened his eyes, finished his prayer to give salvation to the dead. His expression was grim, his jaw clenched and his brows furrowed. He slowly looked up at where the tall and massive trees surrounded the village.

"Something evil happened here. I'm not sure what happened, but I knew the souls of these people, they were consumed by something. I hope, God will take their souls from whoever did this to them and put them in the heavens," James answered as he approached Erglade.

Erglade didn't show any reaction to the gruesome scene around him. His main focus was to find the truth behind this incident, and the cause of death. He went from one human skin to another while James followed him without saying a word, but his heart never stopped praying.

"They were carved open forcefully, not by blades..." Erglade looked at the cut on a few human skin. "Something sharp, but not really a blade..." He muttered to himself as his eyes narrowed a bit, thinking what kind of object that cut the skin open.

"Not blades? Claws?" James tilted his head as he looked at Erglade with his brows furrowed.

"That's possible, perhaps demonic beasts, but again, there was no sign of resistance. Their bodies have no bruises or wounds, other than the cut that open their body in half, so it wasn't demonic beasts," Erglade sighed and slowly shook his head, deep in thought.

"You're not disturbed by this, Count?" James asked as he went down to one knee beside Erglade, trying so see what Erglade was seeing.

"I am, it's just that I have a stronger threshold against something like this after years of witnessing how human beings can be more evil than demons. I'm afraid that one day I might lose that makes me human, Sir James. The heart to believe one's life is worth saving..." Erglade answered as he sighed and slowly stood up and watched the others come back with nothing.

James could see it in Erglade's eyes, something dangerous that was slowly consuming him. James wondered what kind of things that Erglad had witnessed from pursuing the truth, the people who chose to worship evil for almost a decade. He didn't know if he should admire him, pity him, or fear him.

"The paladins and the templars, they're not here, at least they were," he pointed out and saw footprints of knights boots on the snow that did more pressure on the snow.

Everyone looked around at the prints on the snow, and they could see how the paladins and the templars went about investigating just like they did. The numbers of footprints around the skins, traces of snow in each house, they all saw it too.

"I saw their footprints over there, Count," Antonius pointed at the other gate. "It seems they all went deeper into the forest to investigate."

Everyone looked in the direction that Antonius pointed at, and they all looked back at Erglade since he was the one who made the call. Erglade kept his eyes on the footprints and knew something was off about the amount of footprints of the paladins and the templars. He was the only one who saw it, and he didn't want to tell the others about it because he didn't want to make them wonder about something unnecessary.

"Let's head back first and report what we found here," Erglade said as he sheathed his dagger.

Everyone exhaled in relief and nodded with understanding.

They didn't bother to bury the human skins and just followed Erglade toward the gate they came from. However, Erglade stopped moving and his eyes narrowed at something in front of him. Everyone stopped walking and looked at him with a confused look, but before they could open their mouths, he cast a fireball at the gate.

The fireball was released and exploded, revealing a translucent barrier in front of them. They were surprised there was a barrier in front of them, and when Jacques tried to walk past it, the barrier prevented him from leaving.

Erglade looked at his palm and felt the Mana within him was slowly being drained. He immediately turned around and walked past them hurriedly.

"Change of plan, we are going to follow where the paladins and the templars went. We fell into a trap, a powerful magic formation formed around the village and we just entered a gate that could only be opened from the other side..." Erglade said as he looked around and knew that he had to act fast. "These people died not because they were killed when they were awake, they died because their lives were drained and then their insides were harvested..." he explained and walked toward the gate that Antonius had pointed out earlier.

Nobody questioned Erglade's words, not when they knew they were in the safe because at that moment they had to act fast. They trusted Erglade's words like they were their own inner thoughts. They were surprised that the other gate allowed them to leave the village, but that was when they saw Erglade's expression become more disturbed and grim.

"We just fell into another trap, aren't we?" Belvia asked as she looked at Erglade.

"We don't have a choice. We stay in the village, we die like those villagers. I believe the magic formation is circling outside the village, carved in the tree barks, in the roots, or wherever that makes it for anyone to find it," Erglade answered as he used fire flares, spreading into the air above them.

They watched the flares hit the invisible barriers around them, revealing that they had no choice but to keep moving forward. Although they were inside a massive forest, their path was reduced into a tunnel-like path.

"So the Paladins and the Templars went missing because they couldn't go back and forced to go even deeper into the forest..." James muttered as he clenched his fists, not liking the situation they were in. "There's a chance that they're still alive, out there..." He looked at the path in front of them.

"Hope only gets you killed in this kind of job, Sir James," Jacques grinned as he looked at James. "Count Blackheart is the only reason we are still alive here even when we are dealing something like this for almost a decade," he chuckled softly.

James noticed how everyone trusted Erglade, and it was both shocking and admirable for someone to get the trust of other people's lives in their hands. He knew that he shouldn't feel at ease, but knowing that Erglade was leading the team, he couldn't help but to make his mind safe and sharp at the same time.

Erglade pulled out a map of the forest from his spatial ring and let everyone think about what kind of danger they were into. The forest had nothing interesting, not even a single report about demonic beast appearance, just a few normal beasts that oftentimes migrated from the extreme cold into a more bearable cold.

"This is the first case, correct?" Erglade asked James and the others Northern.

"Yes, we have never heard or received any cases like this. We didn't know that this has something to do with demonic cults," James nodded as he crossed his arms. "This forest is actually believed to have some kind of power to grant people's wishes. There's a superstition in this forest, a cave under the lake. It's a dangerous place because it's extremely cold and people died before they could even reach the bottom. We don't know if there's even a cave under the lake," he continued.

"I don't mean to offend you or the Northern people, but a cave under the lake? That's just stupid, to risk yourself for something that you don't know it's even real," Belvia furrowed her brows as she looked at James and the Northern behind him.

"It's called superstition for a reason," Jacques shrugged his shoulders and lips.

"Where's the lake located?" Erglade asked as he tilted the map toward James.

"Around here..." James made a circular motion in the northeast area of the map. "The village is down here..." He dragged his finger down, below the middle of the map.

"You're believing this nonsense, Count?" Belvia sighed as she rested her hands on her hips.

"That's the only hint we've got. We take everything that can lead us to something," Erglade answered as he rolled the map and stored it into the spatial ring. "We have no choice but to keep each other's backs safe. Let's move," he said as he placed his hand on Belvia's shoulder before he led the team deeper into the forest.