Chapter 42 - Ghost town

"You're telling me you've had an element this entire time and you didn't tell me? The amount of questions I could have asked. The number of experiments I could have conducted. So many possibilities." 

"Hahaha! You sound like Derry when she finds new spell books but doesn't understand what's in them." Clutching his stomach, Lenny laughed so hard he started to cry. 

"I have something!" Pantera interrupted 

"What is it? Do you know what's going on?" Glenn asked as he looked around trying to spot something out of place 

"The plant life here is dying. Something is sucking away at its life force. Every time I try to pinpoint the location of the 'poison' my connection to nature gets cut off." 

"That's totally not suspicious at all. How about we turn around and leave this place? I have no interest in getting caught up in whatever's happening here."

"I agree with Lenny, something dark is happening here and I want no part in it." Pantera could feel nature dying all around her and as a wood Elementalist, that feeling didn't sit right with her. 

"Shouldn't you, as a wood Elementalist, want to fix what's happening here? I'm shocked that you'd disregard nature." Derry questioned

"We're going in. We still need to restock from traveling for a week. And even if we can't, it's not right to let these people suffer when we have the chance to help them out. But if you are adamant about not entering, then we'll leave." Glenn looked like a knight in shining armor when he spoke those words. Arnold agreed with him, Derry was indifferent, while Lenny and Pantera were against his decision but would go along if need be. 

"What about you Joren? Do you want to stay or leave?" 

'I want to leave of course!! This smells like a plot where you enter the village, meet the person in charge, and bam, that guy happened to be the villain all along. But the golden lady told me to solve this problem so I have to go through with it, that bitch.' Joren paused, waiting for his soul to start exploding from his rude remark, but when nothing happened, he sighed in relief. 

"I'll enter as well. While I have no interest in helping these people, I want to know what's causing this." 

"Wow, upfront and honest, I like that." Lenny smacked Joren's back causing him to stumble 

"Okay, let's go." 

...

"Damn, everyone is really indoors. Not even the children are playing. Something serious must be going on here." Lenny looked at Joren who was staring off into the distance as if something caught his attention. 

"Something wrong Joren?" 

"I can feel that energy getting stronger. It feels like I'm walking in water that's up to me ankles." 

"Let's find a place to settle down. We still need to deliver the cargo to Viscount Harold so we can't stay here for too long. We should solve this problem as quickly as possible. Joren, alert us if that feeling gets worse." 

"Yes, Uncle." 

Riding around the village for five minutes, they finally found an inn. Glenn led the horses to an area for them to eat some hay and drink some water that was lying around. Fortunately, the hay and water were perfectly fine. 

"Derry, since we don't know what's going on here, put a barrier over the cargo to ensure its safety. Arnold and Lenny, you two stay with her as well. Pantera, Joren, you're with me. Let's head inside." Glenn jumped off the coachman spot and walked over to the inn's entrance. 

"Who are you?!" A woman spoke, her voice trembling with fear as she held up a pitchfork. She appeared to be in her mid-forties and was wearing a brown skirt with her top the same color. 

"Hey, hey, hey, calm down. We mean you no harm. We're mercenaries and on our way to our destination, we stopped by this village to stock up on supplies and sell some items. We noticed that the atmosphere around here is off so we were wondering what was going on." Glenn spoke gently trying to calm the lady. She gradually put down the pitchfork and spoke up. 

"It's a curse." She spoke adamantly.

"A curse?" Pantera questioned back

"Yeah, about a month ago, the crops started dying. We thought it was a bad harvest so we took the procedures to make sure it wouldn't happen again, but it didn't work. Not only that, but all the plants started dying as well." Tears formed in the woman's eyes but she wiped them away and continued 

"We hired someone from the church but they simply said that the soil has gone bad. Because we thought it was bad soil, we tried to figure out ways to make it fertile again, but that's when people noticed that it wasn't simply infertile land but a curse." 

"What made you think that it was a curse? There are many factors that can make land infertile." Having knowledge from the modern day, Joren read about farmers taking extra care of their crops to ward off anything that could harm them. 

"The animals started dying and people started getting sick and some passed away. E-Even my own son is dying. As his mother, I should be able to help him, but I'm powerless to do anything." At this point, she fully broke down in tears clutching her face. "T-The water became contaminated and food wasn't safe to eat, so we stayed inside, hoping the curse would go away, but it didn't." 

"What are the symptoms?" Joren asked going all detective mode 

"First, it starts off as a normal cold, then their body gets cold and weak and after a while, they start vomiting. They then go back to normal so we thought it was just a phase, but then, purple spots start to form around their body until it fully engulfs the body, killing them in the process." 

"How's your son? What stage is he at?" 

"T-The purple spots started to form on his body and he's bedridden. I don't know what to do. I can't watch my child die, he's all I have left." Pantera went over to comfort the woman as she wept in her arms. 

'I sense a presence upstairs, probably the son. I wanna see what this curse is. Hopefully, it's not contagious.' 

"Uncle Glenn, let's head upstairs. Pantera, inform the others about what's happening." 

"What's going on upstairs Joren?" Glenn looked up, also sensing a presence upstairs, but it wasn't moving. 

"Her son is probably the one up there. I want to see his condition. Oh, and wear a mask and gloves, we don't know if this is contagious or not." 

Glenn nodded and went to the caravan to get some masks and gloves before heading back inside. Putting them on, they headed upstairs to the room where the woman's son was. Opening the door forced the pair to come in contact with a disgusting energy that ate away at the mana around them. 

Joren willed his own mana and the mana around them to act as a barrier but even that was slowly being eaten away so he pumped more mana into it hoping the barrier would last longer. Glenn reciprocated this action, aiding Joren. 

"What the hell is this energy?" 

"I know what this is!" Glenn's face contorted with displeasure. "It's infernal energy!" 

"You mean one of the energies that make the mana in our body impure? How do you know? And how did a shit ton of infernal energy make its way into this village?" Joren turned the man who was in bed unconscious. 

"A few years back, I came across something that gave off this exact energy, only figuring out later what it was called when someone asked me what happened. I didn't expect to run into it again. Joren this is dangerous, even the healers from the church can't purify infernal energy. You need someone with holy power to do so and that's the saintess." 

Although he listened to what Glenn was saying, he still walked over to the man assessing the situation. He touched the man's chest and invaded his body with his mana. He closed his eyes and focused on what was happening inside him. 

'What the hell?! It's literally eating away at his mana. And not the mana that the body naturally absorbs, but literally the mana that makes up the human body. His life force is being eaten away.' Joren opened his eyes and saw that the man did look malnourished. 

'Hey! Are you here? I found something that needs your attention.' He tried contacting the golden lady but she didn't respond. 'She said she'll speak to me when I come in contact with the source. Is this man not the source? Or at least one of them?' 

He pondered what to do but couldn't come up with a solution, but then something miraculous happened. The infernal energy started eating away at the mana he injected into the man's body and it moved along the path until it made its way onto Joren's hand. At first, he was scared, but then he noticed that the energy started dying when it came into contact with his left hand. The hand that had the golden lady's crest on it. 

"Uncle Glenn, you said that the only way to cure this is with holy power right?" 

"Yes. Why?" 

"Well, I have an idea, and you're not going to like it." Joren smiled and then started absorbing the infernal energy at a rapid pace.