Specter

Roko followed the shadow into the forest. From what he could estimate, he has gone almost as deep as he had gone when he found the tomb. There were no voices or steps following him so Roko guessed that his allies had lost track of him. Roko himself could barely keep track of the small shadow he was following. From how it looked and how it moved, it was definitely human. And Roko was determined to find out who they were. But eventually, the mysterious person dodged behind a collection of trees and foliage and Roko lost track of where they went. Taking a moment to catch his breath, he slowly studied where the culprit might have gone, trying to find some clue within the leaves when the leaves above him rustled. Roko spun around immediately and caught a knife that was headed towards his head as his target lunged down from the trees. There was a slight struggle before Roko easily overpowered the person and slammed them down against the ground.

"I knew I recognized you." Roko said as he finally looked into the face of his attacker, "You were there when I visited the crater where the tomb was."

A young child glared up at Roko disdainfully, struggling to remove Roko's arms that pinned her to the ground.

"Can you talk? Do you understand me?" Roko asked.

"Let go of me!" The girl snarled, "I'll kill you!"

"That's unnecessary." Roko said as he forced the dagger out of the girl's hand before he picked her up and sat her down on a rock, "Now, let's talk."

"Talk?" The girl's eyes darted about, obviously measuring her success at fleeing, "What do you want to talk about?"

"For one, who are you?" Roko said as he studied the dagger he had taken, "I was under the impression that only monsters lived in these woods."

"I'm not a monster." The girl scowled.

"I didn't say you were." Roko nodded, "You're a native aren't you? Your clothes are pretty simple and this knife is made out of a sharpened tooth. The tomb I went to had similar tribal flags so that means the tomb was made by your tribe and that you've lived here much longer than anyone from our school."

"So that WAS you at the tomb." The girl continued to glare aggressively at Roko, "First you destroyed our tomb and now you destroyed the forest. What are you planning on doing?"

"Oh, no that wasn't me." Roko blinked, "I don't know who cratered your old tomb but it wasn't me. It wasn't me that fired that giant bolt of lightning either. I'm not capable of magic of that level."

"You expect me to believe that?"

"I can prove it to you right now." Roko pointed a finger up at the sky, "Lightning."

Nothing happened.

"There." Roko shrugged, "I'm actually pretty harmless. Pretty weak."

"You lifted me up and slammed me into the ground."

"That's just cause you're a kid."

"I am not a kid!"

"How old are you then?"

"...12."

"Do you have a name?"

"...Aida."

"I'm Roko." Roko knelt down and offered her knife back towards her, "I'm here investigating those creatures that were chasing us."

"The squid monsters." Aida nodded as she took back her knife.

"They're more octopus than anything."

"Oh. I suppose so."

"Where's the rest of your tribe?" Roko asked, "Are they safe?"

Aida's face darkened as she looked down, "...They're all dead."

"What?!" Roko cried, "Then...you're out here by yourself?"

Aida nodded.

"How did you survive?!"

"I hunted." Aida growled, "My father taught me how to hunt."

"The squid monsters?"

"No, they don't taste very good." Aida gagged, "I've been stealing the corpses of any animals those monsters kill."

"The monsters are killing the local wildlife?" Roko mused, "Aida, what happened to the bodies of your parents?"

Aida grimaced, "...I'll show you. The village is not far from here."

Roko followed the young girl deeper into the Paramnesia Wildwoods, deeper than he ever went before. Along the way, the two of them came across even more of the tentacle monsters but with Aida's guidance, they managed to sneak past all of them until the ruins of a tribal village broke out from among the trees. A short wooden wall surrounded the village though it was rather broken down in places and quite ineffective at this point. Tents or rather, the remnants of them littered the village. There was no place left that could serve as home or even shelter, not between the lack of any standing structures and the monsters swarming all over the place. Whatever happened to the village had left it in utter devastation. As far as Roko could see, there wasn't any humans or even any corpses left. Aida lead them close to the village before sneaking through one of the openings in the wall and into a building, the only actual building among tents though even it had some holes all over it.

"I don't have any food to offer you." Aida scoffed as she put her knife down on a table, "Unless you want to go hunting with me."

"From the looks of things, there isn't much food to be found that isn't these tentacle monsters at this point." Roko smirked, "More importantly, you're acting like this is your house."

"This is my house." Aida looked at Roko weirdly, "I live here."

"You still live here now?"

"Well, more or less."

"With all those monsters crawling around outside?!" Roko cried, "You live among them?!"

"Where else can I live?" Aida looked down, "I don't know how to make a home."

"...You know about students like us coming into your woods for practice right?"

"Yeah."

"Then why didn't you approach us for help?"

"Hah?! You want me to ask you people for help?!" Aida cried, "The Valrin Tribe doesn't need the help of any outsiders to prosper!"

"I thought that might be the case." Roko raised an eyebrow, "But your tribe is dead now aren't they?"

Aida scowled and looked away, unable to refute him.

"But the fact that you survived here among these monsters is impressive." Roko admitted, "How long have you been living in these conditions?"

"...About three months now?" Aida bit her lip.

"That's...a long time." Roko gulped, "How have you not been caught?"

"I tried running away from them for the first week or so." Aida explained, "But with the way they keep multiplying, I couldn't run away forever. So I did something my father taught me about blending in while hunting. That is, to bathe in the blood of my target to mask my smell."

A chill ran down Roko's spine as he imagine this small girl killing and opening up the body of one of those creatures and covering her body in some sort of inhuman blood. In fact, now that Roko looked closer, he could see the tips of her hair were white.

"So you've been surviving here alone for three months." Roko sighed, "Then the only question is, what happened to this village?"

"..."

"As much that you can understand. Anything would help."

"I don't know." Aida closed her eyes, "There was this book and my father tried reading it but it wasn't in any languages that we recognized. They said it gave off bad foreboding feelings so they decided to burn it and when they did, these monsters burst out and attacked everybody. These monsters...they wouldn't stop coming. There seemed to be no end to them. I...I was told to leave while everyone was fighting and when I came back, the village was destroyed and everybody was dead."

"I see." Roko sighed, "Good thing we didn't choose to destroy the grimoire then."

"What?"

"Well, this isn't the first time I've come across these creatures."

"I saw you escaping the tomb." Aida nodded, "You didn't seem to have the power to fight these creatures back then but now with that lightning bolt, you might."

"Like I said, that wasn't my power and alone I'm pretty much powerless."

"That's disappointing."

"Not that I think you want us to use that power." Roko scoffed, "Wildly throwing out bolts like that, even if it was sustainable, would not leave much of a forest for you or any animals to live in. Is that what you want?"

"Well, what else can we do to get rid of these monsters?" Aida frowned, "At this point, these things will end up taking over the entire forest. There would be no room for anyone, including the both of us."

"We stop them." Roko replied.

"How?! You've got no powers and I'm just a kid!"

"We might not need any special abilities if we understand how they work and can find the right tools."

"You think you know how they work?" Aida scoffed, "Then why don't you tell me then?"

"Well for one. They propagate through dead bodies."

"Say what?" Aida blinked.

"The ones I witnessed at the tomb burst out of a corpse. If I had to guess they use the dead bodies as material to create more of themselves."

"I always thought they were eating them." Aida tilted her head, confused, "Maybe they laid eggs like birds."

"If they do, they're inside of the dead bodies." Roko nodded, "I can't say I know everything about how they grow but they definitely have something to do with the dead, given how there was a corpse filled with these tentacle creatures inside of a flesh pillar at the tomb."

"A flesh pillar?" Aida looked up surprised.

"Yeah."

Aida got up and opened the door out of the room, heading out into the broken remnants of the home. Roko followed her down the hallway and into a sizable living room. Or perhaps a hall room? There was a large totem, surprisingly undamaged, set at the center of the room at the very back. And right in front of it was a large pillar made of tentacles, exactly like the one he saw at the tomb.

"I don't know what this is." Aida grimaced, "It was kind of disgusting and gave off a bad feeling so I tried not to be around it for too long."

"Hm." Roko placed a hand on the unnerving fleshy creation, "If this is like back in the tomb, there should be a body inside this."

"And inside the body is more baby monsters?" Aida frowned, "What a strange way to be born."

"If I had to guess, these creatures...or rather, creatures made from this unknown power capture dead bodies, wrap them in pillars like this and the material from the corpse is used to create more monsters. This looks exactly like the pillar in Cordis. The royal tomb there was also overrun with tentacles like this. Normally, these tentacles take over the entire environment but this one doesn't seem to be spreading that far out."

"The only one who would know if that means anything is you so I hope you know something about this." Aida shrugged.

"...Scan."

Like before, the Scan picked up the pillar as a target but failed to divulge any information.

"Analyze."

This was the first time Roko had the chance analyze one of these. Technically he had a chance all the way back in Cordis after learning the analyze spell but since he had a demon to worry about, he didn't have time to waste on the background. Hopefully, he can find something out.

Proliferation Pillar

HP: 100%

MP: N/A

Attack: 0

Defense: 100

A pillar composed of inhuman flesh. There is a decaying corpse set in the middle of it, its flesh and bones being absorbed and converted into that of a monster. Sealed at the very back is a book.

"A book?" Roko blinked, "Aida, was this where they burned the book you were talking about?"

"Yes." Aida looked confused, "How'd you know?"

"Because the book is still here." Roko glared at the pillar of tentacles.

"It's stuck inside this thing?" Aida said, "But we burned it! How do you even know that?"

"Magic."

"I thought you said you didn't know any magic."

"I said I had no powerful magic."

"So what, do you have x-ray vision?"

"No, I can just...investigate stuff."

"You need magic to do that?"

"Can you find out what's inside the pillar without touching it?"

"Are we even sure there's a book in there?" Aida shot back, getting a bit more snippy.

"We can always find out." Roko said as he held out his hand for Aida's knife, "There's also a body in there."

"Are you sure we want to mess with this?" Aida asked as she handed Roko her tooth dagger again.

"You have a better idea on how we can get rid of these things?"

"No but if you get eaten by those things, I'm running." Aida said as she stepped back.

Roko dug the knife into the pillar, prying apart the tentacles as best he could. Last time, Roland and Mikado had worked together to cut the eldritch structure open. Alone and with a knife, Roko struggled to do the same but after splattering some disgusting blood-like fluid over his face, Roko managed to force the flesh apart to find a corpse. It's melting flesh was disturbing but not as disturbing as how used to it Roko felt upon seeing it. Grabbing the corpse by the shoulder, Roko managed to remove the torso, all that remained of this particular native, dropping him to the floor behind him.

"Dad?!" Aida scrambled forward to the dead body in shock, unable to believe her eyes.

"Dad?" Roko raised an eyebrow, "So this is your father?"

"Yeah." Aida responded, her shock forcing still her swirling emotions, "He was our chef. He...he was burning the book when these monsters suddenly started appearing."

"He was burning the book?" Roko mused. The fact that the chef was killed and absorbed was not surprising. What was is the fact that his body still remained inside the pillar. Despite being at the center of this invasion and probably among the first killed, his body was in this pillar for what has been three months. It was inconceivable that his body has failed to be fully absorbed in such a long amount of time.

As Roko thought about this, a squelching sound alerted him to the tentacle pillar as it began to try and close back up. Roko quickly grabbed onto the sides of the hole and forced it back open. Roko pushed his head inside the pillar and looked around its disgusting interior, finding little on the sides until he looked up at the top of the inside of the pillar where he found the burnt remains of a book. Grabbing onto this book, he wrenched it out of the pillar, stumbling back from how tight it was held inside. The pillar began to groan and squeak as it collapsed like it lost any sort of support and crumpled into a mess of inhuman remains. Perturbed, Roko turned to the book, almost half of it having been burned away in various places. Opening to the pages, it was undoubtedly similar to the grimoires he saw before. The text, or what resembled text, was similar to what he saw from both the grimoire from Aporia and the one from Fuyuki. But there was something different about it. The text didn't seem to shift and morph, as if it was alive. There was no sense of an unknowable force trying to communicate with him in his mind, no strange whispers echoing in this head, no unseeable force trying to exert itself over him. It was as if it was just a normal book.

"What's going on?" Roko muttered as he flipped through the burnt pages, "It's not...something off. What does this mean? ..."

"What's wrong?" Aida asked as she noticed Roko's confusion.

"...This is a fake."

"A what?!" Aida stood up, confused and shocked, "What do you mean it's fake?!"

"This is definitely like a grimoire but it's not...alive like the ones I've seen. It really is just a book. Like...someone copied the pages of a real grimoire."

"What's a grimoire?"

"There is a...godlike power that's responsible for creatures like the ones outside. There are books that contain their power that lets normal humans use their power though it seems like it corrupts them. This...looks like one but there's no...power behind it. It's like...like someone photocopied the original."

"What does that mean?!" Aida cried, "If that thing's a fake, then where did all these creatures come from?!"

Before Roko could answer, the cracking of wood alerted the sounds of monsters slamming and biting at the walls of the destroyed home began to break out all around them. The slithering and cries of even more monsters could be heard from the broken half of the house, trampling down the hall towards them.

"We need to run!" Roko cried.

Aida nodded as Roko returned her dagger. Taking one last sad glance at the corpse of her father she looked up to Roko, "How do we escape?"

"No time for much options." Roko replied, "The door's right there!"

Aida nodded and together they ran towards the front door, bursting down the door and scattering the monsters behind it before breaking through the crowd that was forming. But even as they escaped, more stray tentacle monsters jumped at them, snapping their sizable maws at them. Roko ducked and dodged as well he could. He followed the much smaller and more agile Aida towards the edges of the village. They were on the cusp of breaking into the forest when one of the monsters latched onto Roko's foot, causing him to trip and fall flat on the ground. More monsters began to swarm around him as Roko tried to bring his arms up to try and defend himself.

"Roko!" Aida cried as she ran over with her knife and began to try and dislodge the monsters from him.

Roko struggled to hold back one monster from getting on his face, until its tentacles wrapped around the burnt book and wrenched it out of his hands, scrambling away from him with the tome.

"The book!" Roko cried.

Forcing his body on its feet and flinging any remaining monsters off of him, Roko chased down the escaping book into the forest.