"It was a night about fifty years ago. The Nelson family hosted a grand banquet. Aside from relatives returning from out of town, they also invited the prominent figures of Kafuno, like the priest, the mayor, the town council members..."
The innkeeper reminisced, "Halfway through the feast, the Nelsons suddenly turned violent. They barred the manor gates and attacked every guest in attendance. They slaughtered, set fires, drank their fill of blood, and hung the victims' corpses from the flagpoles.
"The priest and several council members managed to flee the grounds, but the mad Nelsons had no intention of stopping. They pursued them on horseback all the way into town, continuing the slaughter. That night, Kafuno was filled with flames and the screams of people crying for help...
"I was just a kid back then, terrified out of my wits. In the middle of the night, my parents rushed me to the church, where all the children in town were huddled together.
"To fight back against the inhuman Nelsons and to protect our homes and children, the townsfolk rallied and mounted a counterattack. Just as dawn broke, they successfully drove the madmen back into the manor.
"By then, the manor was already engulfed in a roaring inferno, and the flames consumed those wicked lunatics. People said that even as they bathed in the fire, they sang and laughed, dancing hand in hand, as if death were the destination they had always longed for...
"Afterward, investigators came from Londan and stayed for a long time. Shaken by the tragedy, the priest and councilmen all grew eccentric and strange. So did the townsfolk. Many packed up and moved away, never returning to their hometown."
Fifty years had passed since that night of madness, yet it remained a horrific taboo that Kafuno dared not speak of. The catastrophe had directly caused the town's decline, one it had never recovered from.
Because so much time had elapsed and the innkeeper had been only a child back then, the information he could provide was quite limited. When Veronica asked if any member of the Nelson family had survived that night, a look of confusion crossed his face.
There had to have been survivors; otherwise, Mike's surname would be hard to explain.
...
Outside the window, the torrential rain continued, showing every sign of worsening.
Wayne felt thoroughly annoyed. It had been clear and sunny that morning, only to take a sharp turn for the worse. If the heavens kept messing around like this, things would devolve straight into a blizzard-trapped manor trope.
The innkeeper and the two young women had already departed. After ingesting the mushrooms, they would sleep soundly through the night without the slightest memory of the interrogation. Just in case, Wayne played the scene to the end, slipping the going rate down the ladies' collars as toll money.
He footed the bill, but Veronica treated.
Cradling the black cat, Veronica stood by the window in thought. Based on the sparse clues, one could deduce that the Nelson family had originally been devout worshipers of the Goddess of Death. They created slaughter to win the goddess's favor, and passed down to Mike, they had once again received Death's grace.
This also explained why Mike had suddenly become a Death Walker and mastered such formidable magic.
The question was, had Mike really returned to the Town of Kafuno just to get married?
"Rather than a wedding, the most likely scenario is that he's continuing the unfinished work of his ancestors—sacrificing the entire town to Death in exchange for immense power," Wayne said with a frown.
*I will finish what my forebears left undone; I will slaughter the sacrifices my family failed to purge.* That was the classic formula, without a doubt.
William nodded and put down the chocolate in his hand, indicating that Wayne's thoughts aligned perfectly with his own. This was what they called tacit understanding.
Wayne had no interest in sharing mutual understanding with him; he glanced at Veronica, wishing he could share that connection with the pretty girl instead.
After a moment of contemplation, Veronica decided they should head to Nelson Manor at once. Time waited for no one, and heaven only knew what stage Mike's sacrificial ritual had reached. To prevent innocent townsfolk and themselves from ending up as victims, the Death Walker had to be dealt with tonight.
For now, Veronica set aside the thought of lifting her curse. In terms of priority, stopping the sacrifice was far more urgent.
Rain poured in torrents as the blue sedan cut through the rain-curtained oak woods. To avoid alerting their target, Wayne drove in the dark without turning on the headlights.
The Oak Forest Road was the sole route connecting the town to Nelson Manor. Ever since the estate had been burned to the ground and turned into a horrifying taboo, the townsfolk never set foot here. Decades of disrepair had left the road overgrown with weeds, and the thick carpet of rotting leaves made the broken track slick and muddy.
Those two li took Wayne a full ten minutes to traverse.
Spotting the ruins of the manor from afar, Wayne pulled the car over at the exit of the Oak Forest Road. The three of them, along with the cat, pressed forward beneath umbrellas.
*Rumble—*
A flash of pale lightning slashed across the night sky, abruptly illuminating the manor shrouded in darkness.
Rather than a manor, it was more like a castle, surrounded on all sides by towering walls with several watchtowers gazing into the distance. The castle gate was nowhere to be seen, resembling a gaping maw in the black of night.
Passing through the entrance, the former courtyard square lay desolate and disheveled. Withered weeds and decaying shrubs were everywhere, interspersed with cross-shaped gravestones.
The townsfolk certainly wouldn't have been buried here—they avoided the place like the plague. If they weren't mistaken, the remains of the Nelson family members from that year rested beneath these stones.
Sharp-eyed, Monica spotted a bouquet before one of the gravestones. The flowers were very fresh, indicating that someone had visited the grave recently.
Immediately after, Monica noticed another oddity: there was an abundance of candle wax before the markers. Some candles had burned to ash, while others had small stubs remaining. The sheer quantity suggested that someone visited these graves regularly.
If that person was Mike, then he returned to the Town of Kafuno every year. If not...
Then other members of the Nelson family were still alive.
Veronica took a deep breath, her expression turning significantly graver. She instructed William to protect Wayne, then gripped the glass jar and took the lead.
William followed close behind, while Wayne walked abreast with him, tasked with holding Monica.
The cat was slightly disdainful of Wayne's embrace, but the muddy puddles everywhere were even more intolerable. After weighing her options, she accepted that this was the only way.
*We're both believers of the Goddess of Moonlight; what's wrong with being a little close?*
The manor's wooden structures had burned to ashes, leaving behind only ruins buried under overgrown weeds. The lofts built against the stone castle, however, had survived. Worried about hidden mechanisms or traps, Wayne gradually edged closer until he was glued right behind Veronica.
For no other reason than that their magic was sealed, yet Veronica possessed dragon blood and was the strongest fighter in the group. As for William...
He was a good guy!
This marching order made Veronica deeply uncomfortable. She turned around to glare fiercely at Wayne, but it was too dark for him to see. Because she had stopped so suddenly, he bumped right into her.
The group felt their way forward through the castle corridors in the pitch dark. There were a few fist-sized vantage slits along the outer walls, through which flashes of lightning occasionally peeked. It was only thanks to Monica's guidance that they didn't end up walking in circles.
After an unknown amount of time, just as Monica began to suspect she had lost her way, Wayne stopped.
Calling out to Veronica ahead, he pointed at the brick wall beside him. "The scent of a stranger. I can smell it. It's not any of ours. We haven't walked this path before. Look closely—there's bound to be a mechanism around here to open a hidden passage."
Saying so, he stroked Monica's feline head. "A cat's sense of smell is sharper than a dog's. You must've caught it too, right?"
Monica tilted her head away without a word. Veronica couldn't take it anymore, rolling her eyes and snapping bluntly, "What's that supposed to mean? Do you have the nose of a dog?"
"..."
Oddly enough, he actually did!
Veronica didn't believe Wayne's claim of having a dog's nose, but she agreed with his deduction: there was definitely a hidden passage in the castle, and the Death Walker had to be lurking in some corner.
The group searched around, feeling along the surfaces for the switch to open the door. William accidentally triggered a mechanism; the floor beneath his feet gave way, and he instinctively grabbed the arm of Wayne beside him. Both of them plunged straight down a chute.
Wayne looked utterly miserable. He reached out, hoping to drag someone down with him as a cushion, but Veronica was too far away for him to snatch.
Monica dodged in time.
As everyone knows, a cat's speed is seven times that of a cat. The instant they fell, she kicked off Wayne's shoulder to propel herself upward, landing securely on the ground.
Veronica hurried forward and peered down into the pitch-black chute. Light shone from below, accompanied by Wayne's vigorous cursing, and she slowly breathed a sigh of relief.
A fall didn't matter so long as they were all right.
The heavy rain stopped abruptly. As if a switch had been flipped on the dark, gloomy canopy of the sky, an absurdly massive moon showered the earth in silvery radiance.
Monica leapt onto Veronica's shoulder and poked her head toward a vantage slit. Sensing the bizarre atmosphere in the moonlight, her pupils dilated to their limit.
"The town..."
"It's on fire!"
Chapter 12