I coughed as a cloud of steam threatened to choke me to death. I willed for wind to scatter the steam and give me breathing space, then sighed.
White flames still burned with intense heat, covering the child's corpse completely. They showed no signs of dissipating anytime soon, making me sigh.
It had been two days since I woke up. When I did, the vampire was gone and I was just a body in an empty village. I noticed that only two things were still on fire. The vampire's torn decapitated wrist and the corpse.
I'd already tried to quell the fire when I woke up to the same results I just had now. And when I realised that was pointless, I searched the village, looking for any hints of life. But there was none. The village was completely empty. Which made sense.
Last night was the Harvest festival. They were all at the village centre, praying the First Mother.
I shook my head, giving up on the burning corpse. A sinister joke came to mind as I now recognised the corpse.
Her name was Rosine. She was my… Belfry's best friend. Unlike Belfry, she'd always been strong and smart, but had no magical aptitude. Through some happenstance, she did awaken fire magic, but they were unique. She could never quell the flames.
She must have tried attacking the vampire woman and in the process, killed herself.
"No, that doesn't make any sense. She didn't have white flames.", I shook my head. "Something else must have caused this."
There were a lot of weird things that happened that night. Whilst everybody prayed, there were strange massive beams of bright white light that engulfed the sky. One of them landed in the village. And from the light two people walked through.
One was the vampire woman and the other was a man. I think? I never got a good glimpse at him. They single handedly and effortlessly wiped the village out. Some people tried fighting back, but clearly resistance was met with swift and brute force.
"This is tough.", I grumbled, rubbing my temple.
There were a lot of things to consider here.
First and foremost, why didn't I die? Did the witch's poison fail to work? Clearly it did, but was it because she lied to me or was there simply external interference. The only external interference I could possibly think of is HIM. But if he did interfere, why not send me right back.
Secondly, why and how did I end up in a completely different body in an entirely new world. Although Belfry's information about this world isn't necessarily the best considering he's essentially a country bumpkin with no real academic history, it was enough to come to the conclusion that this was a completely new world.
The concept of mana didn't exist in my previous world and certain legends and religions were completely new to me.
I'd never heard of the Estelt continent before.
Thirdly, that night. Why was there an attack that night. What was the goal of beam of light and those that came from within it. They looked like they had no real purpose here other than a slaughter, but that woman said two things that were very interesting.
She mentioned a trial. When I first woke up, it took me sometime to remember, but the system said something about a trial being interrupted as well. There was definitely a connection there. The vampire woman was connected to the system, meaning she was connected to him.
In that case was she here because of me? Were all those people murdered because he sent her to find me? No, that doesn't make sense. They already attacked before I arrived and she didn't even acknowledge me. She thought I was a child.
Whatever her goal was, it definitely had something to do with the system, but not me.
The other interesting thing she mentioned was how she loathed the witch. She was connected to the masked woman. If I could find her, I could definitely get some answers for everything that just transpired.
It was definitely a stretch to assume she meant the same witch I knew, but I had nothing else to go off of. If I assumed she wasn't talking about the witch I knew, I had practically no leads here. This was just wishful thinking here.
I shook my head, then stretched my hand. With a simple mental command and controlled flow of a decent amount of mana through my body, the ground around the flaming corpse shifted unnaturally. The blackened soil rose gently, encasing the corpse in its gentle embrace.
Eventually it formed a makeshift coffin.
"And that makes 32.", I said, then turned around to see the graveyard I'd painstakingly crafted.
Two days of dragging and identifying corpses from all corners of the village. It was hard, trying to figure out who some of the corpses belonged to. Maimed faces, crushed heads and flat-out headless corpses, made the job harder, but I accomplished it.
I managed to find all the bodies in the village and there were 32 in total. Normally, there'd be more villagers, but for the harvest festival, a majority of them chose to travel to established cities to actually enjoy themselves. It must have been similar in other villages in the outskirts.
I'd dug the graves with magic and placed all the bodies in, dropping a head stone for each grave.
Belfry wasn't particularly close to any of the villagers. In fact, some bullied him and treated him like he was the scum of the earth. Still, I couldn't watch innocents get treated this badly. None of them deserved this kind of fate.
Anyone who toyed with the lives of innocents in such gruesome ways were unforgivable and deserved fates much worse than this.
"May the Cruel Father find your souls.", I whispered a silent prayer as I walked away from Rosine's grave. I stopped next to mother- Lisa's grave. Hers was the first body I buried. It simply felt right to give her the first burial.
She was a kind and gentle woman. Memories of her spending several nights next to Belfry's bed, squeezing his hands and praying for him when he screamed in pain because of his body. She sang him lullabies every night, carried him around the village so he could see the world. Taught him to read and write and told him wonderful stories of the world.
I could remember her voice clearly. Like a beautiful bell you never wanted to stop hearing.
A chuckle escaped my lips.
She named me Belfry, because she wanted me to signify the wedding bells she never got to hear. She wasn't aware that she was Belfry's bells that he always loved to hear.
A cool breeze blew by, carrying with it vague memories of her voice, her laughter, her smell. I almost choked on a sob that was not mine.
'I guess even if the soul's gone, the body still remembers.'
I sighed then grabbed a bag of items I prepared – some food, a few coins I scavenged, two maps I found in the village head's house and a knife from the blacksmith's forge.
With no leads or clues of my situation and currently being trapped in the body of a 10-year-old boy, I had limited options.
One of the two maps I managed to get from the village head's house showed a view of the entire continent whereas the other showed a more in-depth view of the region this village was in. And unfortunately, all options looked equally terrible.
According to both maps, the village stood at the border that lied between the Gelu Region and Neutral Zone. Gelu Region was one of the larger regions in the Heartwood Kingdom. There were multiple established cities in there where I could start from, but the problem was the village I was in was right next to the Black Forest.
It was swarming with dangerous beasts of all sorts and is said to have trees so thick no sunlight can pierce through. From the stories Belfry was told, you couldn't traverse the forest without a special light source and even with that, most die in there. The kingdom had made several attempts to conquer the forest, but they failed and simply labelled it the World's largest Labyrinth.
To the east, there was the Neutral Zone, or as the village chief had so generously edited, the Lawless Zone. A massive region, bigger than most kingdoms, with no ruling parties due to the absurd groups of monsters there. It was home to several strange races and groups of people outlawed from the world, making it a very dangerous place to outsiders.
Further east though, were the stellar gates. Massive structures said to pierce the heavens themselves. They were the first line of defence for this continent from the one next to it. I wasn't aware of its name since I'd actually never heard anyone talk about what was beyond the gates.
The only thing I knew was that Belfry's father, Roland, worked there.
To the south, there was the Red Sands that eventually led into the Ozman Empire. There was no debating my chances in a desert with this kind of body.
To the north were a series of villages, much like this one, but they all eventually led to the Black Forest. Besides, I had a feeling something similar happened to all the villages.
The only other place to go I could think of was Titan's Crown. It was mentioned by the man who taught Belfry to fight, but I had no idea where the hell that was. So, with all that said, the only option I could think of was the Stellar Gates.
It takes a month of travel on horseback for Roland to get there. If I was fast enough, I could maybe make that time in 2 and a half months or so. He should still be at the gates as long as he has no idea what took place here.
With a familiar face, I could at least start with a search for the vampire.
I stretched as I rolled up the map and placed it into my bag. This was going to be quite the journey.