Her husband Linde was respected by the villagers of Worm as the new village guard, and Mogali also replaced her predecessor and became the new captain of the Worm Village Sky Hunter Team.
Sitting on the edge of the clearing, listening to Lind tell the villagers in a dry tone that he would work hard to lead everyone to a better life in the future, Britney only felt fear... She completely didn't understand what was going on.
"Linde..."
After the meeting, she tried to get close to her husband and took him home to ask him detailed questions.
But soon, a figure stood in front of her and shouted at her in a stiff, dry, and very ferocious tone: "It's Worm! Lindworm!!!"
Britney stared blankly at the bounty hunter, and felt that this lady hunter... although she was trying her best to express her anger, her eyes were unfocused and she wasn't even looking at this place.
Moreover, she didn't know if it was her illusion, but she always felt that Mogali seemed taller and stronger than when she first came.
Lind...now he should be called Lindworm.
Lindworm ignored the argument and no matter how Britney called him, he turned a deaf ear.
On that day, the couple officially separated. Lindworm took nothing with him and moved directly into the stone house where the previous village chief lived.
As for the previous village chief and hunting captain whom they replaced... they all wore feather costumes and jumped off the cliff with other old hunters during the hot wind ceremony in the afternoon.
Britney lived in great confusion and daze for a while.
She began to feel deeply uneasy, and some doubts grew in her heart, but she always found it difficult to make up her mind.
Until that day.
She saw a bloated fat man greeting her.
"Hello...Britney..."
"You..." Britney stared at the fat man blankly, "Who are you?"
"You don't... remember...?" The fat man smiled dryly and approached her with the help of the villagers, "We are... teammates..."
"I even sang a song for you..."
"You-Felix!?"
Seeing the fat man nod slowly, Britney screamed, turned around and ran out of the dry algae field.
She was completely and utterly overwhelmed.
She did not go home because she felt that the stone house, the whole village, and the people in the village were all weird and ominous.
For several days, she did not go back. She lived in the woods outside the mountain. She hid in the bushes during the day to avoid the heat, and curled up at night to grit her teeth and persevere.
When thirsty, I drank spring water; when hungry, I ate fern roots or breadfruit. I could barely survive.
That night, Britney couldn't stand the cold anymore.
She felt that even if she didn't consider herself, she had to take care of herself for the sake of the baby in her belly, so she hesitated whether to move back to the village.
Although the village of Worm was full of weirdness from the inside out, with things like her husband and friend changing genders, Felix who was supposed to be missing and died in the sea being resurrected, and a handsome boy turning into such a fat man...but to be fair, the villagers did not treat her badly.
You can eat without working and don’t have to worry about anything.
It seems better than freezing to death outside.
Just as she was struggling mentally, she saw a glimmer of fire ahead.
A narrow open space against a rock wall with a dug-out hole on the inside of the rock wall.
She approached the cave entrance and vaguely saw a shriveled old man inside. His hair and beard were covered in dirt, and his body was as thin as a skeleton.
"The guidance of destiny..."
The old man noticed her and laughed, revealing a mouthful of black, yellow and rotten teeth.
"Come in... please."
"If you want to know...what is going on here..."
Britney hesitated for a moment, and suddenly remembered that there was already a stranded person here when they first came to Brays Island.
It seems to be this old man, his name should be... Ashrar?
He did not choose to live in the village with them, but moved out at the beginning. At that time, Britney thought he was mentally ill, but now she just thinks he has foresight.
Did he know what happened to them?
Linde's former appearance appeared before her eyes. Britney gritted her teeth, went into the cave, and sat down by the fire facing Ashlar.
Ashraal seemed to have not spoken for a long time. He spoke incoherently and some words were unclear, so one had to guess.
In fact, it was already pretty good. Looking at him like this, Britney doubted that he would not be able to survive the night.
"You... I once advised you... if you want to be... pure... just jump."
Ashlar was still laughing.
"You didn't listen...it's too late now...there's no hope..."
"Sir." Britney listened to him patiently and asked questions immediately, "Can you...can you tell me what happened in the village? Why did Mogali and Lind become like that, and why did Felix...come back from the dead?"
"Because... they are all dead..."
"What did you say?"
"Brace Island... its full name is 'Braceworm'. In Latadian, an extremely ancient language, this word means 'rotten meat'."
As he spoke, Ashlar's narration became more fluent.
"So what should this place be called? 'Rotting Flesh Island'."
"Can……"
"The entire island is formed by a mass of rotten flesh. These rocks and soil are just the mud on the monster's body, formed under the sun... Yes, you heard it right. There is a big monster hiding under us. It eats people. Your husband and companions were eaten by it."
"You... lied!"
"Whatever you think... I'm almost dead anyway, and I'm probably telling you this out of my ridiculous desire to atone for my sins..."
"..."
Britney's face turned pale. Recalling the weirdness of Lind and Mogali at that time, she vaguely believed it.
"How... does it manage to... eat people?"
She asked stiffly.
She still didn't quite understand.
Eating people and stuff... shouldn't Linde and Mogali disappear?
Why are you still alive?
Can you still walk and talk?
"That's a puppet."
Ashlar nodded.
"It eats their brains and replaces them with parts of their bodies. This way, it creates a human body - except for the brain, which is controlled by it, the functions of other organs in the body are basically intact, and they can even be used to reproduce and mate with each other."
"..."
"..."
Britney.
And Hitzfeld, who did not exist in this time and space, was terrified.
"This is the 'Nursing God', the place where the evil gods are bred..."
Ashlar sighed.
"My organization...they were the first to discover this place."
"They were lucky enough to escape the storm, and they investigated the island - it was still very short and small at the time - and concluded that it was a prototype of an evil god in the making."
"So rumors started to spread that there were relics of the Sun King deep in the Crystal Sea, and adventurers began to come here in droves."
"Falling on this island, being eaten by it, becoming its nourishment."
"But...Bressworm—that's the name I gave it. This thing is much more terrible and greedy than they could imagine."
“This is not evil at all.”
"Or rather, it shouldn't be a creature like an evil spirit."
"It is a miracle of nature, a new life created by nature by chance."
"It has a mind of its own, desires of its own. They can't control it at all—control Braceworm!"
“So this place was abandoned…”
Ashlar sighed and shook his head.
"The only way to get out of here is to jump off one night before your body dissolves."
"This way, at least the soul... and spirit can be kept pure."
The wood crackled in the fire.
Britney was silent for a long moment before speaking again.
"Purity of spirit, what does that mean?"
"Tell me—what does it mean to be eaten by it?"
crackle...
crackle...
"Means you get to be a part of it."
After a long while, Ashlar finally answered.
"It will be just like this."
"I am madly in love with the sun."
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Thanks to: Keruberos, Let's Make Soup Together with God, Do You Have a Fishing Rod?, Xiao Xiyou is an Angel, Soul Ranqi, Brilliant Phoenix Finale, Forbidden Quadruple Existence, Mengmeng Yinhong... the above readers' blades and rewards~!
Thanks for your support~!
ps: The third update is here~ Hurry up and ask for votes and spiritual rewards!
ps2: I dreamed about this broken island last night, damn, it almost scared me to death...
Chapter 41: Gambling
Fall in love with the sun.
Hearing these words, Hitzfeld felt as if he had broken free from some shackles, and all the thoughts and wisdom in his brain became one at this moment.
She felt like she...completely understood.
She had guesses not only about what Ashraal had said, but also about what he hadn't said.
So that's what happened...
The weirdness of the village, the abnormality of the villagers, the strange island, the fog falcon and the white fog, even the huge temperature changes and the two suns mentioned by Ashley.
Now I really understand...
Ashrar was right, this is indeed a "miracle of nature."
"Pfft!"
In the illusion, Britney had already knelt down in front of the old man.
"What do you mean, dear Miss Skye?"
"Please..."
"I can not do it."
"Please..." Britney wanted to get closer to him regardless of the consequences. "As long as I can save this child... I will do anything, even..."
"I'm not interested in your body." The old man pushed her away with a bit of disgust. "I'm old... I'm old... If you had come a few years earlier, I might have lied to you and enjoyed you first, but now there's no way... I can't even lie to you."
"But you've been living here for a long time!" Brittany screamed, "You've always been alive... right? It didn't choose to eat you! It must have!"
