TRIGGER WARNING: Gore
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The group arrived in the vicinity of Royal Territory a few hours later.
Their hearts were heavy on the way as they passed through a forest that was basically flattened by the waves of monsters.
As they approached, the scene slowly unfolded in front of them, and immediately they were surrounded by an atmosphere of despair and depression.
Amongst a chilling silence, their senses were engulfed in the smell of rust and their eyes soon meet with the desolate landscape inside what used to be the fence.
What met them was the gruesome scene of dismembered bodies lying around, their corpses laid haphazardly on the ground.
Some bodies were torn apart and dismembered, while some were twisted and contorted as if more than one monster took turns to consume them.
The putrid odor that oozed out of the ground hit their very souls.
Grotesque remnants of life surrounded them. Bodies and limbs were torn apart, and insides haphazardly thrown on the ground.
Inside these torn bodies, one could see the bones and sinew, and the blood-soaked the soil red.
The faces on the corpses were frozen in a terrified expression, telling them of the horror and hopelessness the people felt when all this was happening.
Sheila and Maya sobbed, Fufi howled a painful tune, and even Harold covered his eyes as he cried.
Their hearts were heavy with sorrow, the image of the carnage stamped in their minds.
Althea stood still and did not sob like the others. She could not.
Whether she liked it or not, she was their pillar.
Even if she wanted to break down, for the sake of the group she had to hold herself back.
In the end, Althea sighed and looked around, trying to compartmentalize and study the scene as much as she could.
Half the buildings have been completely demolished, and none were undamaged.
Only the main structures of the larger buildings like the castle were unscathed, but the walls were still taken down by the mob. Hiding inside the buildings would have been useless.
At this time, while the mob had mostly cleared up, there were still dozens of monsters eating up the remaining bodies.
The group quickly pulled out their weapons and killed all the monsters in the vicinity.
"What happened? Wasn't this area a low-level safe area?" Harold looked around in aghast.
Counting the corpses… there should be very few, if any, who managed to escape.
"Don't assume anything, it could kill you." Althea said.
She actually had an idea what happened, it was just that its confirmation required her to build her territory first.
The team walked around to look for survivors, and gathered the corpses together to be buried.
"Someone's here!" Harold yelled near the former Lord castle.
The group ran to them and they saw a familiar man with chocolate-colored skin on the ground.
It was Eugene, covering his blood-covered ex, obviously in an attempt to protect her.
Sheila sighed in melancholy. "This is true love."
Unfortunately, only Eugene had a pulse left and Sheila was quick to perform the necessary first aid.
A veteran was a veteran, even with his legs like this, the vitality was still strong.
The man's huge hand covered Sheila's, grasping a lifeline. "S-Save h-her… my .. child…" he gasped out.
"Don't talk," Sheila assured but she dared not tell him the girl, who was apparently pregnant, was already gone.
He would lose the will to live and then he would be 100% hopeless. "We'll do our best."
Eugene stared at her for a moment before finally losing consciousness.
Althea handed her some medicines which stopped the bleeding and added life and spirit.
On the other hand, they moved the girl's body amongst the corpses.
Sheila couldn't help but shed a few more tears. "So… she was pregnant." The nurse whispered. "It must be why she attached herself to Bobby."
Althea nodded. "She had to choose between her man and her child."
A moment of silence passed by their group, before they started to wordlessly do their own tasks.
They put the issue aside for now, as they continued rummaging the ruins and looking for any signs of life.
Althea somehow ended up in the house they rented. One of the walls had given way, but it was not load-bearing so the rest of the house was fine.
She felt something inside and her senses sharpened. She was level 5 now and her senses have improved several folds since her time in Terran.
Her feet stopped when she thought she heard something, raising her hand to stop Sheila—who was perusing with her—from making any noise. She closed her eyes to concentrate and, indeed, there was a soft sound.
It was the sound of breathing. It was very weak, yes, but it was definitely there.
She turned to the direction she heard it from and opened the bathroom door. Instead of a rescue, however, she was met with a putrid odor and a pool of blood.
Immediately, she saw a half-eaten Priya lying down on the floor of the toilet, her corpse's eyes wide open in terror.
The part that was eaten was her stomach, the one with the child.
It was a horrifying scene, and they could even see a small leg hanging out of Priya's stomach, left out by the monster that killed it.
Perhaps the monster was already full and didn't eat her entirety.
Sheila, who had just entered beside her, let out a cry.
It was so loud that Harold and Maya came running.
Althea on the other hand was also sad, but she was focused more on the sound of breathing. There was no way it came from Priya.
She carefully put Priya's corpse aside and the breathing was heard more clearly. Her eyes widened and she quickly looked inside the gap.
It was Sheila who moved first and looked inside the hole. "Theodore!" She cried and took the child out of the makeshift cloth that carried his whole weight from falling. The child was so weak it couldn't even cry.
Althea took out one of her baby bottles and added diluted solutions of her medicines inside. She also added a sleeping solution, so he didn't have to see his mother's mauled corpse.
Sheila quickly coaxed the child to drink and finally breathed a sigh of relief as he drank.
They watched the child closely, making sure he was healthy, before returning their attention back to Priya's body.
Harold took a deep breath before lifting Priya's corpse. They didn't have any cloth to wrap her with and they could only incinerate her along with the others.
As Harold carried the body outside to join the other corpses, Priya's hands fell and something fell down.
Althea walked to it and bent down, to realize it was the bracelet her husband gave her.
Althea paused, taking it in her hand with a depressed heart.
In the end, she kept it in her space, hoping to give it back to Theo someday, as a keepsake.
…
An hour later, the group finally collected most of the bodies they could get and placed them in one area for incineration.
Eugene had already woken up at this point and saw his lover's body.
His eyes were wide, as if absorbing what he was seeing, but it didn't take long for the scene to dawn on him, and he let out a spine-chilling cry.
He wanted to drag himself to the fire, as if to join his dead family. Harold could only hold him back, his own heavy heart weighing him down.
But Theo—bless his young soul—walked beside him and embraced the man, as if sensing the despair and instinctively went to comfort him.
Eugene froze in shock before breaking down, hugging the child to his bloodied body.
He cried his heart out, but the child didn't make a sound.
The sight heavily affected her psyche, and Althea's hands were gripped tightly, her eyebrows uncharacteristically furrowed for hours that followed.
Her spirit had already been drained because of the fight, and now this sight made her feel so heavy that she was too tired to even bother with the pregnancy symptoms nearly debilitating her.
It could be said that this was the worst mood Althea had been in since the migration.
Turning her head away from the fire and the cries, she went to the so-called fence. She stood still a few meters away from the fence, studying, trying to distract herself.
Her eyes stayed at the completely demolished fence and realized it was more of a demarcation line than a protection.
She thought there'd be more functions or even a repelling function. This meant it only provided minimal defense and was completely useless against a monster mob.
It was only as strong as it looked.
Her whole body felt heavy. It seemed that owning a territory didn't necessarily mean you could be safe…
Will she be able to protect anyone or even herself and her child?
How fragile hundreds of lives were…
Even deep into that night, hours after the ordeal, it was the question that echoed in her head.
She wrapped her arms around herself in the duvet blanket as she laid, her entire body trembling in sorrow.
Her eyes rested on the broken wood window of the lord's castle, emerald eyes fixed on one of the dual moons visible from her side.
It was these moments she especially missed her husband.
She couldn't help but remember his warm touch, protective shoulders, and reassuring voice.
No matter how strong a person was, they needed to have an anchor that allowed them to just let go.
Her husband was that one existence.
"My love…," she mumbled as she hugged herself to sleep, the light of the two moons illuminating her sad figure and tears lining up her eyes.
"Where are you?"