82: Surprise Attack

Surprise Attack

In the middle of the night, my red-slit eyes snapped open at the sound of an ear-piercing shriek that resounded outside of the inn.2

Immediately grabbing my sword from the side of the bed, I tensed for just a moment. During the brief silence, my ears metaphorically perked up at the fact that even more indistinguishable voices were beginning to accompany the first one. They were all yelling in panic, but I wasn't able to clear tell what they were actually speaking about.

Just in case, I grabbed my leather backpack and then ran out of the room, coming face to face with Sara. The sleepy girl appeared to be a little frightened, not exactly sure what was going on that made her wake up in the first place, but aware enough to know that it probably wasn't good at all.

Fortunately, it seemed like she had dressed herself before coming out of the room, so the two of us were pretty much ready to leave. I had a certain feeling that we wouldn't be sticking around for much longer.

"Stay close to me." I said, getting an obedient nod out of the girl.

Before either of us had gone to sleep, we had a serious talk about what she was going to do in the future, and the girl revealed that she didn't have any desire to stay in Murenfall Village since there was simply too much trauma for her that she had dealt with here. That inevitably resulted in giving her an invitation to come along with me, which she was all too eager to accept with an adorable child-like excitement.

Resting a hand on the pommel of my sword, I grabbed one of Sara's hands with my remaining free appendage before descending the stairs down onto the ground floor. Glancing around with caution, I noticed that the man who had been standing behind the front desk was now gone.

The indistinguishable voices had grown into a frenzied amalgamation of terrified screaming, momentary glances of people running throughout the streets passing by in the windows near the entrance door to the outside. "W-What's happening out there?" Sara asked, completely at a loss for what could've had them reacting like that.

Slowly cracking open the door in order to have a glance outside, my eyes widened once I spotted a grotesque looking beast chasing after a man that appeared to be at an age around his early forties. Wearing an outfit that reminded me of a farmer, the man held a pitchfork with a tight grip in both hands while hopelessly attempting to fight it off. There was a massive horde of them running through the village, ripping apart anyone who reached within their vicinity.

The beast had to have been nearly twice my size, around what the man was as well, and it only got worse once another one joined in an attempt bite off his arm. I immediately tensed, an urge to help the man coursing through my body, but my mind was running rampant with a different idea.

I could keep Sara in here while I went to go help the man and then come back for her, possibly saving a life in the process, but that decision could also put her at risk since she would be all alone and nothing was preventing one of those monsters from just barging in and brutally killing the girl. Not only that, but in a heartless way, my mind was thinking about the benefit of those two beasts currently being distracted with the poor man trying to fend for his life in vain.

His death would allow us a chance to escape, which would most likely save our lives in the process. While I honestly didn't like to think about it that way, it was an incredibly blunt yet valid method of self-preservation.

Sara was nervously standing behind me, waiting for a clear signal to move, but she was also unaware of my current dilemma. I didn't consider myself to be some kind of edgy or heartless person that only cared about themselves at all times. If that was truly the case, Sara would be a homeless orphan, or just another dead kid in an alleyway right now. However, not that I really wanted to, I had to look at it from a different perspective.

The man looked pretty thin from where I was standing, and appeared to be around the same age as Drist, or possibly even older with the amount of wrinkles covering his body. It was obvious that he was getting pretty old. Now, Sara was a very young girl, which also meant that there was a lot of potential for her future. There was a lot of things that she could accomplish. Hell, not even that, but I figured that the majority of people would automatically put her at a higher value than the man currently reaching the end of his life.

If I was to be brutally honest, so would I.

I've never met the man either, so I don't even have a speck of a relationship with him, which further accentuated my point. I've quickly grown a liking towards Sara, and definitely don't want the little girl to die, so that just basically hammered the nail in the coffin for me to reach my final decision.

All of that happened within a couple seconds, my sympathy going out to the man fighting for his life all alone. Tightening my grip on Sara's hand to the point that it nearly became painful for her, I glanced back at the girl. Immediately noticing the troubled expression on my face, she quickly became worried. "W-What's wrong, Dante?"

Forcing a smile that barely even seemed credible, I somberly shook my head in the negative. "Don't worry about it. Look, I'm going to need you to keep your eyes closed until I say that you can open them again. Understood?"

That definitely caught her off guard, but the severity of the current situation made her roll with it, causing her to reluctantly nod her head in confirmation as the girl did what she was told.

"Alright..." I took a deep breath, opening the door just enough to where the two of us could slip through. The older man, quickly losing his strength as he defended himself again the two beasts, keenly noticed our presence from the corner of his eye.

"URGK!- HELP ME, PLEASE!" Yelling in desperation, he practically begged for my intervention when he spotted the blade hanging at my side. However, with a pained grimace on my face, I didn't even glance at the man as I redirected my focus onto trying to save the life of a friend.

It just became all the more difficult to keep moving forward when I could distinctly hear the assault dogs knock his flimsy pitchfork to the side before they ravenously consumed his entire body until there was nothing left of him.

Trudging through the chaotic streets of Murenfall Village, I noticed a few people seemingly defending their homes with whatever makeshift weapon that they could possibly get ahold of, bravely standing tall to protect what they truly believed in.

The sight of that only served to spark the beginning of a self-loathing mentality inside of my mind, which would come to haunt me in the foreseeable future.

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Making our escape into the nearby forest, it was incredibly dense with foliage and the like, which served to better conceal our presence from any stragglers that were attempting to get an easy kill. Taking a glance behind me, I watched as Murenfall Village quickly went up in flames, lighting up the night sky like a huge firework. Even from this distance, I could still pick up on the faint sounds of death with my enhanced senses, which also included the foul scent that came along with it as well.

I continued to pull Sara along with me until we had gotten quite a bit deeper into the forest, more so in the hopes of preventing her from witnessing such a horrible sight. After a brief period of silence, I finally spoke up. "...You can open your eyes now."

Doing just that, a pair of blue eyes slowly opened up again, cautiously taking in the view of thick trees surrounding us on all sides. From the very bad sounds that she had heard earlier, the girl was still clearly afraid and shaken up about what she could only imagine might have occurred back in the village.

Still attempting to catch her breath from running so much, I lead her to the base of a random tree before crouching down and patting the girl's head in the hopes of providing some type of relief.

Fortunately, it seemed to have an effect as she gave me a faint smile. "I'm going to get some wood for a fire. Just stay here and I promise I'll be right back, okay?" I said, getting a tired nod out of the small blonde.

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After setting up a nice campfire, Sara had fallen asleep an hour or two later from exhaustion. Since there wasn't anything to use as a comfortable bed, I simply took off the shirt that I had been wearing and gave it to her as sort of a cushion on the rough ground, which she reluctantly accepted before laying down.

Eventually, I attempted to do the same thing, but the events from earlier made it really difficult. Running away as that older man got brutally ripped apart, all the while begging for my help specifically, I couldn't stop a few tears from sliding down my face. A more seasoned fighter would have probably been unfazed by such a thing, but I just wasn't at that level of strength yet, or whatever you wanted to call it. With all the training that I have gone through, including the other worlds previous to this one, that still wasn't nearly enough to amount to anything. Not in a world like this, at least.

The only reason that my previous training had even been considered decent back then was because of just how weak the people in those worlds were, which included me as well. Due to the fact that none of them had been very strong in the first place, my quick progression in overall power made it seem like I was stronger than I actually was. For example, the first fight that Roronoa Zoro and Dracule Mihawk had at Baratie comes to mind.

Roronoa Zoro, to the common thug, was a terrifying individual because a mixture of his reputation and proficient swordsmanship. Dracule Mihawk, on the other hand, had been a world-renowned top dog as he was considered to be the greatest swordsman in the entire world. In the beginning, the sheer magnitude of the gap between their respective skills might as well have been considered... Honestly, I doubt there's a word that exists capable of truly expressing just how far apart they were.

To put it simply, excluding Highschool of the Dead since it was the weakest by far, this world is leagues above the first one.

With the level I'm currently at now, saying that I had a long way to go would be an understatement.

Sitting in front of the campfire while my mind continued to replay today's events over and over again, I was never able to fall asleep in the end, instead dutifully keeping an eye on Sara as I tended to the fire throughout the night.

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