Chapter 41: Under the Hornbeam

The salt fell along the cracks between their fingers, sliding down the hornbeam's bark. The crescent moon's silvery light illuminated the House of Cardell that night. Three people were standing around the gigantic hornbeam in the yard, covered in tight clothes. They huddled around the tree, torches in hand.

A short while later, a weird crack split the bark, and it expanded quickly, slowly starting to look like an open eye. Eventually, the crack stretched itself along the edge, forming an elliptical hole near the ground. When Roy shone his torch inside, he saw an incline extending downward. It was filled with vines, leaves, branches, and dirt. There was also the stench of soil coming out of the hole.

"So what next?"

Roy turned to the ladies in pink coats. He was wearing a pink coat too, which was funny, but he had no choice. There were only two women in the school. It was already gracious of them to share a coat with him.

There were also Letho's reminders that he had to follow.

"Since nobody has any idea, I'll do it," Roy said solemnly. "We can't all go down. One of us must stay outside to sprinkle the salt around the tree in case that thing in there comes out. And I must go down there." Roy took a deep breath. He had a great weapon in his inventory space, and if he followed Letho's notes, he had a chance of killing the ghost in the tree.

Miss Cardell left a solemn message before sliding down the incline. "This is my turf. That bastard's been staying here rent-free for years, and it took my children away. I have a score to settle."

"Right, then you stay here, Vivien." Roy slipped inside before Vivien could. "Don't worry, Vivien. I'll take 'him' back for you."

***

Roy held the torch in one hand and slid down the dark tunnel with the help of the other pushing him down. Around ten feet* later, he landed safely, and then his boots became wet. There were puddles under the tree, though they only covered his ankles. It was freezing, however, and Roy gasped as he shivered. No wonder Letho asked me to wear thicker clothes. This place is seven or eight degrees colder.

PR/N: Ten feet is around 3.05 meters.

When he swung his torch around, Roy noticed Cardell crouching not far ahead from him. She looked alert, and when she saw him, Cardell beckoned him in silence.

They were in a deep, musty underground space. The walls were filled with mud, algae, and vines, while the pond was littered with misshapen rocks.

Aside from the clearing in the middle, there were narrow holes around the place. A normal human would have to crawl on their hands and knees to get through the holes. Croaks and hisses rang out from the holes, echoing in the chamber. Roy wondered if the space had existed under the hornbeam all this time, or if it was created by the childhunter.

He stepped across the cold, putrid, underground puddles and regrouped with Cardell. When he scanned the holes, a frightening idea popped up. Do all the holes contain a childhunter? No, Letho wouldn't spring this kind of joke on me. He would have mentioned it in the notebook. So the monster must be in one of the holes, killing its latest prey with its puke.

Roy and Cardell looked at each other. Cardell pointed her chin at the nearest hole before pulling out a dagger that was smeared with salt from her belt. She held her torch with the other hand and dived into the hole.

Roy followed her soon after. The hole was a tunnel no deeper than two feet, and it was only narrow enough to fit one person. The moment he started crawling, his pants got wet, and the mud on the walls stuck to his shoulders, hindering his movement. They even quieted their breathing as they crept on, careful not to awaken anything unnecessary. From time to time, hisses and howls of the wind would assault them, annoying Roy. He was tense and nervous, worried that the slightest sound would invite trouble. What if it attacks from behind like this? How should we fight?

He kept looking over his shoulder in case some monster showed up behind them. It didn't take long for them to finish their crawl. At the end of the tunnel, they arrived at a dry, spherical nest, filled with branches, leaves, and bones of small animals.

The inhabitant was nowhere to be seen, but it was obvious it fed there. The nest was littered with small skulls, spines, and femurs. The bones were smaller than a full grown adult's, and they were a strange, yellow hue. The bones obviously belonged to children. Cardell picked one up, and murder shone in her eyes as she gritted her teeth. She'd had her agenda when she'd formed the school, but she treated her students the best she could.

They went through a couple more tunnels and marked them with the victims' bones at the entrances. Halfway through the fourth tunnel, they heard someone — or something — gurgle, as if vomiting. They held their breaths and shone their torches ahead, revealing a ghastly figure in the darkness.

A humanoid creature with limbs as slender as branches was lying in the corner, its body covered in mud and algae. It was spitting yellow fluid at something. The moment the torches illuminated it, the creature turned around. Its face was gaunt with nostrils that caved in, and a pair of dark holes was revealed. Its pale eyes were bloodshot, filled with rage and madness. The monster had no lips, and its gums were laid bare. Translucent fluids dripped from its teeth, as it had just vomited.

Shocked by the light from the torch, it scurried into the shadow of its nest. The pair quickly chased after it with their torches in hand, but to no avail. Roy stayed alert while Cardell pried through the vomit, eventually revealing a head with golden hair.

"Child, can you hear me?" Cardell wiped the filth off his head, revealing a gaunt, clean face, and the boy stirred.

As Roy looked at the boy, the memories in his mind unveiled themselves, and the mist cleared. He realized who he had forgotten. "Oh, I remember now! So you were the one who'd gone missing, Tom!"

It was the boy who'd said hi to him on his first day. The orphan who had a toothy, sunny grin. He'd taken extra classes with Roy after school every day, and they eventually became friends . "I had almost forgotten about you." He patted the boy's head and smiled, Roy's fear and trepidation replaced with a buoyant mood. "Good thing we came in time. How do you feel, Tom?"

Tom opened his eyes groggily, his voice weak. "Roy? Miss Cardell? W-what happened to me? L…"

"What did you say?"

"Look out!"

A ghastly figure pounced on Roy from the ceiling, and they rolled to the side, entangled with each other. They engaged in a scuffle, but the monster had the upper hand. The childhunter sat on Roy, slashing at him. Its long, slender claw gleamed menacingly under the light, targeting Roy's neck, but its advance stopped.

Roy grabbed the claw with his left hand, his veins bulging. He took a bolt smeared with salt out of thin air with his right hand, clenching and burying it deep within the monster's eye.

The childhunter let out a cry that sounded eerily like an infant's as white smoke billowed from its injured eye, and green blood trickled down its face. It escaped Roy's grip, leaping into the tunnel with tremendous strength, screaming as it did so. The childhunter squirmed in the tunnel like a catfish, disappearing from their sights in a moment.

"Get Tom out of here, Roy. I'll deal with it."

Cardell gave chase, the trail of blood her clue, her torch and dagger in hand.

"That was close. I almost died." Roy heaved a sigh.

The claw had been millimeters away from slitting his throat open. He would've died then.

"A-are you hurt?" Tom asked weakly.

"Don't worry, Tom. I'm fine." Roy wiped the sweat off his face and pulled the boy out of the sticky puke. Roy didn't understand the science behind it, but the puke looked and smelled like melted cheese. He rolled a bit of it into the size of his fist and stuffed it in his inventory space before getting out of the tunnel with Tom on his back. He didn't run into any trouble along the way, and Cardell must've led the childhunter somewhere else.

When he came back to the hole, Roy tugged at the vines as he went up and handed Tom to Vivien. She was pleasantly surprised, and Vivien covered the trembling boy in a coat. "Roy, did you — "

Roy interrupted her before she could finish. "No time to explain. The monster's not killed yet. I have to go back and help Cardell. Keep an eye on him." Roy went back before she could question him further.

He followed the trail of the blood and found them at the depths of the fifth tunnel. Cardell and the childhunter were injured. Cardell was holding her bleeding stomach with one hand while swinging the torch with the other, keeping the childhunter at bay. She was deathly pale, obviously at her limits.

The monster wasn't faring any better. It was blinded in one eye and had sustained dozens of minor injuries from Cardell's dagger, though they weren't bleeding. Apparently, the salt on the weapon wasn't enough to kill him. Roy thought about it for a moment and took out his hand crossbow.

A bolt soared through the air, hitting the monster in its knee. It trembled and almost knelt, but not before it bared its fangs at Roy, letting out a guttural growl. It was poised to strike. Roy ignored it and shot its other knee. In the span of a few moments, Roy made the childhunter lame. Even if it could regenerate, it would take time, meaning it couldn't move fast for the time being. "Quick, Miss Cardell! Stay behind me!" Roy kept shooting the monster in the legs as he retreated.

Cardell was confused about the request, but she obliged. She stayed in her defensive stance as she slowly retreated with him. The pair slowly moved toward the tunnel while the childhunter stayed in its nest, baring its fangs at the pair from twenty feet away. It swung its claws at them, threatening to rip them apart. It was like an infuriated, rabid dog, but because of the torches and weapons the pair had, it didn't advance.

When the pair had gotten thirty feet away from the monster, Roy took out a green, glass container and hurled it through the air, and it smashed into the childhunter.

Once the container was smashed into pieces, the whole tunnel rumbled, and the nest exploded into a great flower of flames, dancing along the sphere. It was as if the air itself had lit up, and the temperature rose by a few centigrades.

The monster in the middle became a human-sized torch. Bright, hot flames licked it, and it screamed in pain. The beast tried to inch closer to the pair, but its legs were injured, failing it. Dancing Star was a powerful bomb. Even its sparks could quickly light up the branches around it.

The flames spread quickly, lighting up the whole nest a short while later. The childhunter wandered its nest for two minutes before collapsing to the ground, its strength disappearing. In the end, it became nothing more than a handful of ash.

'Childhunter killed. One hundred EXP gained.'

Roy heaved a sigh of relief after getting back to the tree hole.

"We have to take the poor children's remains with us, and fast!"