C114: You smell of rotten meat
“Sir! Let’s dance together!”
Jack looked down at the small girl, her fingers clutching his coat. He hesitated, brows knitting together.
“I don’t think…” he pushed her hand away.
At that exact moment, as his gaze dropped, he noticed something dark on the ground.
‘Is that… blood?’
Beneath the girl’s bare feet, dark liquid smeared across the dirt.
He followed the trail. Why was there a smear of crimson under her bare feet?
Jack’s eyes widened. He lifted his gaze and froze.
Every single one of them, the men, the women, the elderly had feet that were a ruined mess of raw flesh.
Blood seeped between their toes, staining the dirt and cobblestones a dark, wet brown. Some feet were split open from the repetitive pounding; some toenails had peeled off entirely, leaving jagged, bleeding beds.
With every step, fresh blood pressed out and smeared across the ground, mixing with dirt into a sickening paste.
And yet, they kept dancing.
‘They are still dancing in that state?’
“...”
“...?” Jack’s thoughts halted.
‘Why did the music suddenly stop?’
The moment Jack refused the girl’s invitation, the rhythm that had filled the village abruptly ceased. The heavy thud of the drums vanished.
The silence was instantaneous and deafening.
Noticing the shift, Jack checked his surroundings.
“!”.
Everyone was staring at him.
Hundreds of unblinking eyes were locked onto him.
‘What?’
Their smiles remained wide, yet their eyes were utterly vacant. It was a sea of grinning faces.
The little girl hadn't unhanded him. Despite his push, she still tugged at his shirt.
“Hey! What are you—” Jack yanked his arm away and turned around, preparing to bolt.
He didn't care about the villagers anymore. He felt an ominous premonition about this whole place.
Every instinct in his body screamed at him.
‘Run away!’
He did not want to stay in this village for a single second longer!
“Let’s dance!”
Yet, before he could take a single step, a massive, bulky arm wrapped around his head from behind!
“!” Jack’s body jerked violently.
‘They!’
The villagers lunged, one after another. Hands grabbed at him from every direction.
They were attacking him!
Jack struggled, his boots slipping on the blood-slicked stones, but he felt another hand grab his shoulder, then another. One after another, the "joyous" dancers began to swarm him.
“Let’s dance!”
A woman rushed forward and threw her weight against his torso, pinning his arms. Another man shoved him from the side, forcing his balance to collapse.
“!”
Jack fell hard to the ground. The impact knocked the breath from his lungs.
But they didn’t stop. The large man behind him refused to let go. One hand clamped over the top of Jack’s head, one arm on his neck.
“Dance like there’s nothing left!” the villager hissed.
‘Ughh.’
Jack’s pupils dilated. He couldn’t breathe. The muscular arm around his neck tightened with bone-crushing force.
‘They intend to kill me!’
“H-HELP!” Jack shouted at the top of his lungs, his voice cracking.
He thrashed wildly, his gloved hands clawing at the eyes and faces of the villagers holding him down, but they felt like statues of meat, unfazed by pain.
Their hands pressed his limbs, fingers dug into his shoulders. Weight piled onto him relentlessly.
‘Where are they?!’
His mind screamed.
‘The Inspectors! Where are they?!’
The question screamed in Izzy’s mind as she felt her vessel’s life flickering.
There was clearly something wrong with the villagers. The Church should have known this! They should have been here to stop this!
Where were the Inspectors when they were needed the most? Where were the ones who were supposed to stop this!
As the pressure on his neck reached the breaking point, Jack’s vision began to fade, and his heartbeat fell into a sluggish thud.
‘Isa!’ Izzy screamed through Jack’s dying mind.
She forced Jack’s Field Vision to its maximum, 15 meters. At the same time, Isa unleashed a storm of Psychokinesis.
Her psychokinesis surged violently. She seized many objects scattered across the village square: stones, broken wood, fragments of debris, metal cooking pots…and hurled them at the swarming villagers with frantic force.
They shot forward, crashing into the villagers restraining Jack, striking shoulders, heads, arms in chaotic bursts.
Some got staggered, some flinched, yet none of them let go.
They continued to restrain Jack; the others continued their dance.
Even as they were hit, even as their bodies bled, they did not stop.
‘These crazy people!’
At one point, amidst the chaos of flying debris and grinning faces, Jack’s Field Vision finally found them. The Inspectors.
‘There! Why are they—’
Izzy’s mental voice faltered. The Inspectors stood not far away, at the center of the square.
They were just standing there, unmoving.
Why weren't they helping? Had they joined this madness? Had the Church betrayed them? Various questions sparked through Izzy’s mind.
Until—
“Ah.”
Until she saw their faces clearly in Jack’s Field Vision, their calm, unblinking expressions.
“Haha.” her lips formed a broken, wry smile. A resigned, hollow laugh in the face of the ultimate absurdity.
‘So that is why…’
So that was why Izzy hadn’t noticed them before, even with her Field Vision active.
The inspectors, they stood at the very center of the square, beneath the Moon Maiden statue, but they were no longer wearing their easily spotted pristine white attire.
Or, to be exact, they were no longer wearing their bodies.
Only their heads remained, impaled upon four iron spikes driven into the ground.
Blood seeped slowly down the rusted metal, staining the stones beneath. Their eyes remained wide open, staring out at the dancing village with a glassy surprise.
‘…Dammit.’
Around Jack, the village erupted again.
Laughing. Clapping. Spinning.
The music resumed, louder than before. The villagers danced, a joyous, frantic music that flared throughout the village and rang through the cold night air.
They didn't even notice the bodies beneath them; they jumped on Jack and the big man’s form, their bleeding feet rhythmically pounding as they danced across them.
They jumped. They spun. They celebrated.
In the center of the square, positioned directly in front of the Moon Maiden statue and a stone sacrificial table, a man stood.
His long white coat billowed behind him like a flag in the night wind. With his arms stretched wide, he craned his head upward toward the sky.
On the table, Mary sat.
Under the enormous violet moon.
‘The… fake Moon.’
So that was it. So that was what it meant.
Izzy burned the entire scene into her mind, before—
*Snap.*
Jack's vision turned dark.
—
“Ah… ah… ah,”
Jack limped slowly toward the edge of the village.
Each step was uneven, dragging, accompanied by the scraping of his boots against dirt. His body no longer moved as a living person’s should.
His neck hung at an unnatural angle, bent to one side. One arm was twisted inward, the bones clearly broken, bone shards piercing through the sleeve of his coat. The limb dangling uselessly while his remaining hand clutched his own torso, forcing it upright.
‘Dammit.’ Izzy hissed within her mind. The sensation of Jack’s neck snapped still lingered on her neck.
Of course, the villagers had no way to really "kill" Jack. He was merely a Vessel, a living body animated by her will.
Unless his body was utterly destroyed beyond any hope of reanimation, he would keep moving.
When a Vessel died, Izzy could turn them into a Marionette through her Puppet Mark.
Right now, Jack was a shambling corpse, dragging himself toward the east, toward the mansion.
He was already dead, so his heart had already stopped beating.
At this point, Izzy realized that there was nothing she could do to stop the Moon Rite.
The ritual had already begun. The village was a frenzy of madness, the sky was a bruised violet, and her energy was wasted.
Worse, they could not even find Erin, Arriet, and Otto anywhere, even at his store. It was as if that old man had migrated beforehand.
The best option was to retreat to the mansion and preserve as many usable corpses as possible to deal with the Herald.
‘Why is this happening?’ Izzy still had no clear answer.
Everything had spiraled out of control the moment she lost consciousness.
“Sir, I must ask sir to stay your step.”
‘Huh?’
A woman’s soft voice, strange yet familiar, rang out from behind Jack.
Izzy knew that tone. She immediately refocused her consciousness into Jack, manually controlling his broken body. His stiff limbs jerked unnaturally as Jack turned around.
Standing before him in the violet moonlight was the maid with the short black hair. She wore a composed expression and a calm posture.
‘The Baroness’s maid….’
She stood there, bowing toward him with grace, very courteous despite the situation.
“W…h…y?” Jack tried to speak. His voice was a wet croak. With his neck broken, every syllable barely formed a coherent sound.
Florence did not answer immediately. She simply stared at him, her eyes beginning to shimmer with a violet light.
At the same time, Jack extended his Field Vision, scanning his surroundings, while Isa prepared her Psychokinesis for another defense.
However, contrary to their expectations, the maid did not attack. Instead, she merely reached into her apron.
With a practiced motion, she pressed a silken handkerchief to her nose. The handkerchief was delicate, embroidered with intricate violet flowers; the stitching was elegant.
“?”
“As I suspected,” she murmured softly behind the fabric. "You smell terrible, sir. The odour of putrid meat."
‘Huh?’
"You, sir, must be the one spying on Father's secrets the other day." Her eyes flashed a sudden violet; they illuminated the whole of the dim night.
A cold sensation swept over Jack’s mind.
Before Jack could process her words, Florence’s figure began to contort.
Her skin rippled and tore into a living shadow. With a high-pitched screech, a whole colony of leathery-winged creatures erupted from her shifting form, exploding outward in a chaotic cloud of fur and fangs!
“SHAAA!”
“!”
A massive colony of bats burst outward, pouring into the air in a violent surge of black wings and shrill screeches!
Jack tried to lunge to the side.
But it was too late.
From beneath his feet, a thick, viscous blob of dark red liquid surged upward. It latched onto his legs, pinning him to the earth with the strength of iron manacles.
‘This power!’
At the same time, the swarm engulfed him. The colony of bats swirled around Jack, their flapping wings creating a black tornado that disrupted his vision and muffled his senses.
“Bsizz! Bsizz! Bsizz!”
The sound of their chittering was overwhelming. A deafening chorus of shrieks and fluttering wings.
They prevented any hope of escape, swooping down to sink their needle-like fangs into Jack’s exposed skin.
Their bodies collided with him as their fangs sank into his flesh. Neck. Arms. Shoulders. Even his face. Tiny, needle-like teeth pierced through skin again and again.
“!”
As a corpse, Jack no longer felt pain. It was a relief. He flailed his arms and struggled, trying to get rid of them.
[Psychokinesis!]
Simultaneously, Isa unleashed her Psychokinesis.
She seized every sharp object within the 15-meter radius: stones, shards of broken glass, splintered wood, rusted nails from the nearby fence,... and shot them into the vortex of bats.
The shard objects tore through the swarm, smashing into bats mid-flight, ripping their wings, crushing their fragile bodies.
Jack thrashed violently. He struggled from the blood-red trap.
There was no need to play it safe anymore. Just kill as many as possible!
“I see what you are, sir.”
Yet, just as he was about to burst from the clotted blood pinning him down, a chilly, indifferent voice slipped into his ear.
At the same moment, something cold touched his chest.
“...”
“Even your heart does not beat,” she whispered, her breath against his cheek.
Jack’s gaze dropped toward his own chest.
A slender, pale hand protruded through his chest, the skin stained a vivid crimson.
Blood ran down along the wrist, dripping from the fingers, soaking into his clothes.
And in that hand’s grasp was a single blob of raw meat.
It was his heart.
“...”
It rested in her grasp like a plucked fruit. Blood streamed from the cavity in his chest, pouring outward, drop by drop.
*Pop.*
The hand clenched, crushing the piece of meat as easily as one might pop an overripe fruit.
At the same time, Jack's body slid from her arm and collapsed, falling forward into the ground with a heavy sound.
*Thud.*
“...”
As Jack remained on the cold ground, the colony of hundreds of screeching creatures swooped down upon him.
A writhing black mass engulfing his fallen body. Wings brushed against each other as they clung to him, fangs pierced into his skin, feeding the remaining blood greedily.
“Bsizz! Bsizz!”
“My children, that thing is disgusting. Do not overindulge in such tainted blood.” Her calm voice cut through the chaos.
The bats hesitated, and withdrew.
As the colony pulled back, they converged, merging inward. The writhing mass reshaping itself, and Florence slowly materialized.
Her form appeared seamlessly, her maid dress settling back into place.
She looked down at the corpse with detachment, waving her hand dismissively.
At her command, the pool of dark-red blood rose up, engulfing Jack’s body entirely.
‘!’
Jack’s eyes snapped open, his pupils dilated.
Pretending to be dead didn’t work!
He flailed his arms and struggled to rise, but the blood refused to let him go. It wrapped around his limbs, filling his mouth and nostrils, pinning him to the earth with crushing force.
‘No!’
He could feel it; his body was slowly being dissolved!
His form slowly melted into the very blood that engulfed him, as if he were being reduced into the same substance.
“Do remind me, kind sir,” Florence spoke again with a light tone as she watched him struggle, ”why has a spawn of the Vile Beast lost its way here?”
‘What?’ Jack’s mind, or rather, Izzy’s consciousness within him, raced.
What did she just say? Spawn? Vile Beast?
The maid simply stood there, her hands clasped politely over her apron, watching with detached curiosity as the corpse slowly broke apart.
Then, she lowered her gaze and stepped on the corpse's head, a wave of profound disgust washing over her features. Her eyes flared with a violent, luminescent violet light that seemed to pierce through the night.
“It matters little. This village is already done for. Our objective has already been fulfilled.”
“...”
As Izzy’s connection to Jack began to dissolve, a distant voice echoed through the collapsing link.
“Mark my word, Deaf,” Florence said at last, her voice clear. Her features remained luminous under the violet moon, even as everything else dimmed.
“Once our Lord fully reclaims Her power... you will rest here, forever.”