The Divine Hunter

s team, while Susie, Moore, and the other villagers were in the other team.

“Don’t worry about me, Dad, Susie.
Mr.
Seeger’s here, so I’m perfectly safe.
You guys, be careful.” 

The couple nodded.
They could see their son was in a team that was better equipped.

The team walked in a straight line into the darkness with nothing but torches to light their surroundings.
Seeger led the group, while Fletcher followed him.
Roy trailed behind the butcher, and Jack stood behind Roy.
Thompson took the rear.

Untold dangers lurked in the night.
The wilds in Lower Posada were infested with rabid dogs, wolf packs, and gruesome creatures who would kill them if given half the chance.

***

Aedirn’s autumn night had always been chilly.
The temperature was nearly zero degree Celsius, and Roy was shivering in the cold, his breath turning into mist.

The moon was full that night, its silvery light bathing the wilds, but it provided no security.
Strange sounds crept out from the depths of the wilds.
They sounded like bugs, but also something else.
Something horrifying.

The golden ear of the wheat swayed along as the night breeze whispered its secrets among them, and they danced under the moonlight.
The flowers of common hops filled the air with a faint bitter scent, but none came to taste it.

The party started their search in the fields around Kaer, and they kept calling out for Brandon.
Even with the help of torches and the moonlight, their vision was severely restricted.
Most of them could only see ten feet away.

Roy wasn’t most people.
Much to his surprise, he realized that his vision wasn’t restricted at all.
He could see things clearly even if they were thirty feet away, just like how he would in daytime.

He knew he could do this because of the sight improvement from his Perception.
Yep.
I made the right investment.

After one hour into the search, Brandon was still nowhere to be seen.
Roy’s search party had searched through every field in Kaer, to no avail.
Worry and tension started to brew among them.
They knew the chances of Brandon’s survival would get slimmer the longer they tarried.

Jack was observing his members along the way, and then he suddenly stopped.
“We can’t find him like this.
Fletcher, think carefully.
Where else could that kid go?”

Fletcher hunkered down and held his head in agony.
“The damn brat keeps saying he wants to go to a big city and be a bard, but he never even left Kaer a day in his life.
The most he did was fish in the river near the village, but he never went farther than that.
I haven’t fulfilled my promise to him and my wife.
I have to send him to Vengerberg and Oxenfurt.” 

Roy sighed silently after hearing that.
A short while later, something struck him.
Roy recalled he said something he shouldn’t to Brandon.
Show it to your mother… “Uncle Fletcher, I’ve never heard anything about Brandon’s late mother.”

Fletcher still looked despondent.
“Anna’s been dead for three years because of her whooping cough.
She’s buried in…” Fletcher paused.
“The cemetery!” He shot up, looking galvanized.
“Anna’s buried in the cemetery! It’s in the east of the village.
Could the brat be there? It’s possible!”

“What are we waiting for then? To the cemetery!”

The cemetery where the dead villagers rested was about three miles east of the village.
There was a dirt path covered by sticks and grass between the village and the cemetery.
It was the dead of night, but the search party dashed across the path, torches held up high above their heads.

Roy was trailing behind the men, huffing and puffing.
Sweat started glistening on his forehead not long after.
He was slightly weaker than an average adult, but he couldn’t ask a father who was worried about his son to slow down.
All he could do was grit his teeth and follow the team.

Jack was equally out of breath.
He was getting on in age, and he had copious amounts of alcohol every day.
Because of that, he was physically weaker than most people.

After running a mile, Roy sensed something coming their way, and alarm bells rang in his head inexplicably.
“Everybody look out!” he roared.

The moment he said that, everyone noticed dots of eerie green light flashing in the darkness in the overgrown shrubs around them, moving quickly as they did so.
They looked like eyes, but they gleamed differently.
To be more exact, they crackled like pairs of ghost fire that threatened to burn them whole.
Something shuffled within the bushes, and a deep growl followed shortly, revealing a menacing wolf pack before them.
It was blocking their way to the cemetery.