Chapter 403 Holy Father (Five Thousand)

[Beep, system prompt, congratulations host, infinite death system activated...]

Ron was stunned for a moment. He really didn't expect that he would receive such a system prompt as soon as he landed from the sky. What was this? Was he being targeted as soon as he landed? [Mission Background: You came to a remote town and wanted to rest here, but soon you found that something was wrong with this town...]

[Mission Objective: Survival]

[Task Reward: Random]

[Task time limit: 72 hours]

This time the system prompts were very brief, and the clues provided to Ron were very few. There was no introduction to who the enemy was, how strong they were, or even what the rewards were.

It's more like some kind of decryption game, requiring Ron to search for clues in the town by himself and solve the final mystery.

However, for Ron, who had experienced 99 percent of the plot in the game, this so-called puzzle game really did not arouse much interest.

…

Just on the other side.

The border of the Kingdom of Granville.

Agnes was holding Lucia in her arms, Cecilia was holding Selma in her arms, and there was also the white-haired saint Agnes. They all looked at each other in bewilderment as they looked at Carol in front of them, and their faces looked particularly strange.

Although they had received Ron's message magic and knew of Carol's existence, it was difficult to give a detailed introduction in the message. Now, looking at the elf in front of them wearing an emerald green dress, with a slightly barren chest but fair skin, a thin waist and long legs, they all felt helpless.

Originally, Ron would bring back some women from somewhere after leaving for a while.

It's even more excessive now. There are already three women watching him, but after just a nap, a female elf suddenly appears in the room.

Now that things have come to this, what can I do? Should I scold Ron? But Ron is not around, and I can't find him at all.

Are we going to drive Carol away?

Although these girls have different personalities, they all have one thing in common: they always put Ron at the center of everything. Even if they feel uncomfortable, if driving Carol away will make Ron uncomfortable, they will never do it.

What's more, after such a long time, I have gradually gotten used to this kind of thing. At least I'm not as resistant as I was at the beginning.

After everything was packed up, the group left the hotel and started heading towards the Spang Theocracy. They all knew that Ron had made careful arrangements in the Spang Theocracy as well, and after this trip, it was possible that things would change in the Spang Theocracy as well.

…

The sky is dark and cloudy.

The sun was clearly rising, but the sunlight did not seem to reach this small town. The whole city was submerged in a dirty atmosphere with ashes everywhere. There was clearly nothing in the air, but at a glance, it seemed as if countless ashes were floating in the air. Even breathing became a little oppressive.

The Forest of Elves is clearly not far behind us.

Further away are lush mountains.

But the greenness seems to have no effect on this small town. The color tone of the town is out of tune with its surroundings. There is almost no green color in the whole town, only dirty dark yellow.

Looking around, most of the surrounding buildings are low and dilapidated, and many houses are in ruins. The walls are covered with yellow, black, and brown stains, in clumps and pieces, as if some sticky substance was stuck on them and dried up and left behind. What's worse, the walls simply collapsed, revealing the rotten beds and wardrobes in the room.

If it weren't for the occasional person walking on the streets of the town, Ron would even have thought it was a dead town.

Even the few figures there were, they were dressed in tattered linen clothes, and they were dirty all over. They didn't even have shoes. They were barefoot, and their legs, which could not be covered by the rags, were covered with black mud.

Their faces were dull and their eyes were numb.

Ron could clearly feel the heartbeat and breathing of these people and knew that they were living people, but in Ron's eyes, these people were just a group of zombies.

Only when they occasionally looked at Ron, their eyes would suddenly flash with a frightening light, and that look contained unspeakable emotions, including greed, madness, and gloating.

Their throats were even wriggling, as if Ron was no longer a living person in their eyes, but a piece of delicious flesh and blood.

The weird atmosphere made Ron feel a little depressed.

He couldn't help but sigh at his bad luck. He had boasted before that he had experienced 99% of the plots and maps in the game. Carol, the hidden heroine, was just an exception.

But even if it was Carol, although Ron had not personally experienced this hidden mission, he had at least heard of it.

But Ron had no impression of the town in front of him at all.

Perhaps, this small town, and the secrets within it, are the one percent that Ron has never set foot in.

Although he had not explored the town and had no memory of it in his mind, Ron could feel that it was very dangerous. No one could guarantee what would happen if he continued to stay here. Of course, with the six-winged fallen angel Niafu around, Ron was not worried about his own safety. He just didn't want to waste too much time in this small town.

There are many things that need to be dealt with by Ron in the Theocracy of Spang and the Orc Territory. He doesn't have that much time to waste in this small town.

Ron was not a saint, and he did not have the noble sentiment of saving the world. The residents of this small town seemed to have been tortured beyond recognition, but what did that have to do with him? Although it was a pity to abandon the task assigned by the system, the system only required survival, so leaving here far away should also be considered survival, right?

This is what Ron thought and did.

After making the decision in his heart, Ron flew slowly into the air without any hesitation.

However, just as Ron's body flew into the air, less than twenty meters away, he felt some kind of obstruction appear above his head, like an invisible barrier, blocking Ron.

Ban?

Did he not want to leave? In some special maps, there would be some restrictions on entry and exit, which was a very normal setting in the game. Ron was not surprised at all. He just clenched his fist, and with the blessing of half-dragonization, he punched the restriction in front of him.

puff.

That punch was like hitting a semi-fluid directly, soft and powerless. The feeling was probably more unbearable than punching cotton.

In the dim light, Ron could even feel ripples in the space in front of him, and the force that Ron had thrown out was removed silently.

Ron casually swung his arms, feeling a little amused. He originally didn't want to waste time in this small town, but it seemed that this small town didn't want him to leave. Well, in that case, he might as well play with him for a while.

Ron pursed his lips and descended from the sky.

There were a few ragged men on the ground who saw what Ron had just done. They just looked up with their heads held high, without any other reaction except for their eyes full of mockery.

Ron didn't try to ask anything from these people. He just looked around and found a house with collapsed walls. He crawled into the house through the hole.

The color tone of the small town is already dark, and the interior of this house is even darker and damp. The room is even filled with a strong, decayed smell, as well as an indescribable, disgusting smell.

The room was very small. Judging from the tattered clothes in the closet, a couple should have once lived here, but now they were nowhere to be found.

Ron's eyes were on the bed. The bed was made of irregular wooden boards. No one knew how many years they had been used. The boards looked a little rotten. There was just some straw casually laid on top of them. There were also a few pieces of tattered linen on the straw, which could be considered a mattress... Of course, it could also be a quilt.

What's strange is that there is a hole dug right in the middle of the bed.

There is a wooden basin under the hole, and there are also some dark brown marks inside the basin.

At first, Ron thought that there might be a paralyzed person lying here, and this hole and this wooden basin should be used to hold the patient's filth.

But soon, Ron denied his guess.

There was no filth in the wooden basin, but as for those dark brown marks... Ron's heart skipped a beat, it was blood.

That's right, blood.

It is the traces left by dried blood, which, combined with the depressing tone of the small town, appears even darker.

There was also a rice jar in the room. Ron walked over and opened the tattered lid of the rice jar...

With a buzzing sound.

A black mass instantly flew towards Ron's face, and he subconsciously took a few steps back to avoid it.

They were flies, green-headed flies that were almost wrapped into a ball. After the flies dispersed, Ron looked down and saw that there was not a grain of rice in the rice jar. Instead, there was a starved mouse lying there. The mouse's body had been hollowed out, and it was clearly visible to the naked eye that some white worms were slowly wriggling inside its body.

Judging from the degree of rat decay, this dilapidated house has been uninhabited for some time.

As a professional player, Ron was very experienced in dealing with the situation at hand. There were two things he had to do first. First, he had to explore the surroundings and look for any suspicious clues, especially things like notes. Some intermittent and messy words might very well be the key to solving the puzzle.

But it was obvious that the owner of this room was not the kind of scholar who would leave a diary.

The second rule is to not let go of any NPC and talk to everyone you meet, especially the beggars on the street, the crazy women, the mysterious old man who speaks riddles...

Ron is currently following the first action. After failing to gain any useful results in this room, Ron left the room and went directly to the next door.

There is no mistake in the poem, post, content, and read the book on 6, 9, and bar!

He searched room after room, and found that every room was almost the same. Most of these rooms were uninhabited, and had been so for more than a day or two.

The strangest thing is that 80% of the beds in the rooms have a hole in the middle.

Moreover, while searching these rooms, Ron was also keeping an eye on the movements outside. The streets were as sparsely populated as usual, but he discovered another very special thing: the people who occasionally walked by the street... were all men.

That's right, all men, not a single woman.

It was as if... there were no women living in this small town.

But this was obviously impossible. In the wardrobes of some rooms, Ron clearly saw some clothes worn by women.

This proves that there were indeed women living in this small town in the past, but now, no one knows where those women have gone. Perhaps they have all been killed, or maybe they have all been kidnapped somewhere.

It wasn't until Ron opened the seventh door that he finally made a different discovery.

This room is obviously a little bigger than the previous ones, and it is cleaner. It is obvious that the original owner of this room should have lived a relatively wealthy life. There are more furniture and even a desk.

On the desk, there was a notebook that was also tattered.

There was even an ink bottle in the upper left corner of the desk, with a quill pen stuck in it. However, the bottle was dry and there was not even a drop of ink in it. From this point of view, this family disappeared even longer ago.

There were no holes in the slightly wider bed either.

The windows were covered with spider webs, but unfortunately, the spiders had all starved to death, and the remaining layer of skin was hanging on the tattered spider webs. When a gust of wind blew, the spider webs immediately jumped up and down, and even the rotten wooden windows made a creaking sound.

Damn it!

Ron shuddered slightly and cursed inwardly.

I have to say that this small town has portrayed the depressing atmosphere very well. There aren't too many... no, it can even be said that there are no bloody or horrifying scenes at all. However, the atmosphere of decadence, corruption, darkness and depression is very strong.

Even if nothing has happened, just walking in this area will subconsciously feel as if a heavy stone is pressing on your chest, and your spirit will tense up silently.

This silent, subtle terror may be even more frightening.

When the mind is extremely tense and the attention is highly focused, any slight movement may cause a huge reaction.

Ron glanced outside. The sky was still as bright as the rising sun. Ever since Ron entered the town, he discovered that although he could walk freely in the town, it was not much different from the outside world except for the restrictions that prevented him from leaving and the depressing atmosphere.

But now Ron discovered another anomaly. The time here seemed to be stagnant and not affected by the outside world.

It had been at least an hour since he entered the town, but the sky hadn't changed at all, neither getting brighter nor darker.

Ron kept this in mind. In a puzzle game like this, any clue could be the key to solving the puzzle. He felt a rare sense of excitement about facing a challenge.

After a brief pause, Ron finally walked towards the desk, looked at the only diary that might contain clues, and gently opened the title page of the diary with his right index finger.

The diary is very thin.

The handwriting inside also reveals a bit of childishness, as if the person has just learned to write not long ago.

"Dad and Mom had a fight. Dad was very upset and broke a lot of things. I was very scared and hid in the corner and didn't dare to say anything. But Mom seemed very happy. Being chosen by the Holy Father seemed to be a very glorious thing. That's what I heard them say."

Holy Father!

As soon as he saw the first page of the diary, Ron noticed a key word: Holy Father.

He thought about it in his mind.

It seems that the popes of some churches are also given the title of Holy Father, but it is obvious that the Holy Father in this small town should not be those popes. Those popes would never live in such a ruined city.

"There are more and more black beasts. They are surrounding the village and howling terribly. Everyone in the village is trembling. I am also scared. I can see the eyes of those monsters. They are emitting green light, just like wolves."

The black beast has also spread here.

"But fortunately, we have the Holy Father!"

"The great Holy Father has used his own power to set up a barrier to block the black beast and protect the entire town within the barrier. As long as the Holy Father is here, we are safe."

The barrier should be the restriction outside.

"But we can't leave the town. But it doesn't matter. The Holy Father said that the outside world has been occupied by black beasts. Even if we leave here, we will only become their food."

"The town is safe. As long as we stay in the town, we won't be harmed."

"Today many people came to our house. They are messengers of the Holy Father. They brought rice and wheat to our house and beautiful clothes for Mom. Several old maids dressed Mom up very beautifully and then took her away."

"Dad suddenly took a kitchen knife and killed an old woman, but he was soon caught. They said that Dad had been contaminated by the filth released by the black beast and turned into a madman. Only fire can cleanse the filth in Dad's body."

"I watched as the flames engulfed Daddy. His voice sounded very painful. I wanted to take Daddy out, but they wouldn't let me go..."

"I saw their eyes. There was a light in their eyes. I had seen that kind of eyes before, on the black beast... They were drooling."

"I was so scared... Daddy was screaming. He seemed to have seen me. He was yelling at me desperately, asking me to leave here, the farther the better, and never come back."

"He said...they're all crazy!"

"I don't know who is the madman, Dad, Mom, or those others? I want to leave here, but there are black beasts outside. What should I do?"

"The flames went out... Daddy's body turned into a human-shaped piece of charcoal. They howled and rushed forward, spitting saliva everywhere. They didn't care about the blackened marks on Daddy's body. They desperately tore at Daddy's body. There was bright red flesh and blood under the black marks. They were just like those black beasts outside, desperately stuffing those things into their mouths."

I made 11,000 today.

(End of this chapter)