Chapter 47 – People? (5)

Chapter 47 – People? (5)

“For most of the Tutorial, we—” He gestured at the other members of his group and took a breath before continuing. “—have been living in Outpost. It’s one of the larger settlements around here. It was one of the safest places around, and it stood out from the other settlements because there was a police force.” He shook his head. “Crazy, ain’t it? An actual police force in the Tutorial.

“Recently, though, there were some monster attacks on the town, and the walls got breached. Things have been in chaos since then, because even as people were trying to rebuild the damaged walls, more creatures keep coming and destroying their progress before they could complete it.”

Rowan frowned. He’d never really considered what was going on above him, but it seemed that they’d formed a civilization of sorts. Once Henry was done with the story, he would have to ask more about the different settlements and how society worked now.

“At that point, most of the order had crumbled, and the people who usually enforced laws were too busy fighting off beasts to deal with anything within Outpost. Things were getting bad, so we tried to find a way out. We weren’t just going to sit around and wait for the town to fall; that’d be stupid.

“Not including Isabella, our group used to have two more people. They both died defending the settlement from the beasts when they breached the walls. They were heroes, no?”

He paused for a moment, his expression darkening before he continued.

“During a lull between the attacks, we took a job from the leader of Outpost himself. It was to come out here and investigate and find the source of some strange creatures that had been appearing. Turns out, he was talking about the bloodspawn.”

He took a breath and let out an unenthusiastic chuckle. “Well, we found them.

We’re still not sure why he needed to send a party over there, but he did. It was risky trying to leave the city during such a dangerous time, but once we’d gotten about a mile away from the town, there were barely any dangers left; all of them had realized that the walls of Outpost had been breached. They’re surprisingly smart, those bloodspawn.”

Henry stopped talking for a moment and gingerly rubbed his shoulder before continuing. “Our destination was a smaller settlement around where the reports of the bloodspawn were coming in. It wasn’t as well defended as Outpost was, but the area was also supposed to be less dangerous. We arrived just in time to see a level 15 boar wipe out everyone there.

“We’d taken a few wrong turns on the way to the town, so we were running low on food and water. We’d been intending to restock and leave Cynthia behind there while we checked out what was going on in the area. But with everything destroyed…” He sighed. “We stayed there for a few days, living off whatever we could find.

“Then we kept going for another day or so, still looking for the bloodspawn, but there weren’t any signs of them.

That night, we decided to head back without the information and see if Outpost was still standing. The town we were supposed to stay at had been destroyed, after all, and we were running out of resources.” He shook his head. “Then the bloodspawn found us.

“I’m not sure what exactly happened next, but once we’d dealt with the creatures, Isabella was gone. We heard her screaming and fighting in the distance, so we chased after her. And eventually, we ended up at the entrance to these caves. We tried to get Cynthia to stay back, and she said that she would. And, well, you know what she actually did, don’t you?” He shot a glare at his adopted daughter before pulling her into a hug with his good arm. “Just don’t do that again, right? It’s too dangerous.”

Cynthia nodded. “Okay…”

Turning his attention back to Rowan, Henry finished. “And now we’re here. After the town we were going to stay in got destroyed, we were intending to just head back to Outpost empty-handed, but now that we’re already this deep in, “He took a breath. “Do you know what the source of all the bloodspawn is?”

“Yes.” Rowan nodded, but he wasn’t telling the full truth. The broodmother here only produced the houndish bloodspawn, nothing else. His current theory was that there were several broodmothers, each of them producing a single kind of creature and then sending them to each other.

That was why, despite the broodmother producing only the small, doglike beasts, the bloodspawn in the area were quite balanced.

“Do you think you can take us to it?” Henry asked.

For a few seconds, Rowan contemplated the question. On one hand, he wanted to get to the surface. On the other hand, the broodmother’s chamber wasn’t too far from here, and if he showed it to them, it wouldn’t be too long a detour. Even more, the party before him knew the path to the surface, while he didn’t.

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So, with a shrug, he said, “Sure, I can take you there. It’s actually not too far from here.”

“Thank you,” Henry replied. “We’ll have to pay you back for everything you’ve done for us, huh?”

Eren laughed, speaking for the first time in a while. “What would we give him? Before all of this, we might’ve had something of value, but we don’t have much—” She stopped, a pensive expression coming onto her face. “Actually, we collected quite a few weapons at the destroyed town. Once we’re out of here, feel free to take whatever you want from those.”

“Showing me the path out of here will be payment enough.” Rowan smiled. “But I wouldn’t mind taking a look at those weapons. Actually, do you think there’s any chance you could get me a change of clothes?” He gestured at his mostly naked body. “I’d rather not go about like this.”

Henry chuckled. “I don’t see why not. We wouldn’t want someone at one of the settlements mistaking you for a monster, aye? You’ll need to wash all that blood and dirt off, too.”

Rowan nodded. “Let’s get going, then?”