The two continued navigating the bog, encountering more and more creatures, which Ludwig happily fought. He earned himself more and more souls by doing so but had yet to use any of them. He decided to stock them for now and improve his senses and abilities while next to Van Dijk. Learning the most he can from his guidance first.
The seemingly endless night stretched onward as they slogged through the oppressive quagmire. Most of the creatures they encountered were significantly weaker than the crocodile or even the wolves from earlier. Corrupted snakes, hares with empty sockets for eyes, and skeletal owls with patches of featherless skin dotted along their fragile wings all skulked through the murky terrain. They were barely worth the effort it took to kill them. Nevertheless, Ludwig took every opportunity to fight, dispatching the creatures and honing his abilities.
“Master,” Ludwig said as he flicked his broken sword shard to get rid of the grime and slime from it.
“What is it?” Van Dijk replied, his crimson eyes scanning the surroundings with dispassionate ease.
“Did you notice that whenever these things die… they leave a nasty trail on the ground, and when it hardens… it looks like this?” he said pointing at the black dirt all around them. Ludwig thought it was mud at first, but he soon realized it was something else.
“That is the corruption of this land. This isn’t all dirt and dust, but corroded organic matter. The trees here are using it as nutrition and the whole bog is composed of it. You can’t burn it, and you can’t get rid of it, and it will only continue to grow as long as the entity behind it still draws breath.
“So, if we kill whatever is the reason behind this, can this land be cleansed?” Ludwig asked.
“That is not certain, but at least it would stop the spread of this corruption. We’ve been having a difficult time keeping it away, actually the corruption was not even a tenth of this size the last time I was here, granted that was about two hundred years from today.” Van Dijk said.
Ludwig nodded. The Glutenous Death seems willing to not stop until it consumed everything in this world. No wonder Deus Necros wants it gone. If it keeps up, there would be nothing left…
Just as they were talking, Ludwig noticed something in the distance.
“Oh, there’s a person there,” Ludwig said.
Van Dijk frowned. His eyes focused, and the red sheen from them seemed to brighten up for a second.
“That’s rather peculiar,” He said. “Let’s go and check it out shall we…”
The moment the words left Van Dijk’s mouth, the person dropped what he had in his hands and bolted away.
When the two arrived to his former location they saw a bunch of wet firewood.
“His trail is still fresh, let’s keep following it,” Van Dijk said as he followed the trail of the man’s footprints.
A bit more than half an hour, they found themselves at the entrance of a village.
“Well, this is rather interesting,” Van Dijk said.
The village lied in the shadow of the bog, barely distinguishable from the cursed land itself. Its atmosphere is suffocating and unnaturally still, with only the faint, nauseating hum of insects breaking the silence. The air is heavy with an acrid, metallic scent, mingling with the ever-present stench of decay and rotting vegetation. A faint greenish mist clings to the ground, swirling unnaturally as if alive.
The village itself is a ramshackle collection of decrepit wooden houses and huts, their walls slathered with layers of mud and moss to keep out the damp and the cold. Most of the structures lean at odd angles, supported by crude beams and twisted vines, as if defying gravity itself. Roofs, fashioned from sagging thatch and patches of bogweed, barely keep out the perpetual drizzle that seeps through the cursed skies above.
The paths between the houses are narrow and winding, little more than tracks of hardened mud that have been trampled into submission by bare, calloused feet. Pools of stagnant water collect in the deeper grooves, reflecting the sickly greenish hue of the sky like mirrors of despair.
There is no sign of livestock—no pens, no troughs, and no fields of grain. The soil surrounding the village is barren, cracked, and discolored, incapable of supporting life. A few skeletal trees remain, their trunks twisted and their branches bare, resembling malformed sentinels that watch over the doomed settlement.
In the center of the village lies a crude communal square, its edges marked by piles of discarded bones and broken pottery. There was a well there that seemed to have dried up a long time ago.
But unnervingly, there was no one to greet them. The two of them walked inside, each step spreading the fumes and green hue of what looked to be fog from around their feet. The houses would creak from the low blows of the wind giving Ludwig the feeling of it being some sort of ghost village.
But, at the edge of his vision he spotted someone rapidly closing a window.
“Seems like they don’t want to meet us,” Ludwig said.
“Seems so,” Van Dijk replied.
“It is not out of our own will, travelers,” they heard.
From the side, a group of people walked forward. They looked as broken as their homes, emaciated with skin stretched tightly over bone. They didn’t walk, but more like shuffled forward, with lethargic movements like puppets. Their clothes little more than rags patched together with plant fibers and scraps of cloth. Stained with mud and the telltale gray-green hue of the slime that was marring the whole place.
The man who spoke seemed to be the sanest of the bunch, an old man that seemed to have lived for eons. Old and decrypt like the clothes and wooden stick he used with both hands to move forward.
A younger looking man, but no better fed was behind him, Ludwig recognized the man it was the same person who was carrying the firewood earlier, if you can even light that thing on fire anyway.
“What brings you guys to live in such a… dilapidated village.”
“It is not by choice, traveler,” the old man said, “We cannot leave this place. No one can, not even you,” he said.
Ludwig frowned.
And so did Van Dijk, were they threatening them?
Just then a gurgling sound echoed nearby, the source was the well from earlier.
For a second, all the eyes of the villagers seemed to light up, “Feeding time!” the oldest man said and began pushing his old body forward.
The villagers rushed to the well, grabbing the broken bowls and pots from the ground, and surrounded the village. Waiting in anticipation as a green sludge began bursting out of the well. The villager hastily scooped the slime and began gurgling it down.
Consuming it with abandon and a frenzy like no other. The very slime that would melt steel and bone, these people…no, these things would consume as if it was the nectar of life itself.
“What the fuck is going on in here?”