The Return of the Iron-blood Sword Hound

[Proofreader -Lucky]

Chapter 70: Flesh and Blood (Part 3)

All the Rokoko hunters were dead. Vikir and Aiyen approached the corpses, overcoming the putrid smell and heat emanating from them.

“…This is!?” Aiyen’s eyes narrowed.

Despite being dead, the Rokoko hunters were still vocal. They were shouting out the reasons for their deaths. Signs of vomiting and diarrhea were evident, as were traces of attempting to warm their bodies by the fire and leaves. And most importantly, red spots on their skin.

Aiyen swallowed hard. “Warriors who went out to hunt looked like this.”

Only the relatively healthy ones would have ventured out for the hunt. That left them wondering about the condition of the people left in the village.

“Let’s go see,” Vikir led the way.

Vikir and Aiyen continued straight into Rokoko’s territory through the floodplain. Normally, they marked the boundaries with symbols, like skulls or corpses, to warn intruders. Strangely, these marks had not been renewed.

The corpses left untouched for a while were now covered in moss and fungus, making them difficult to identify.

“Definitely something has happened in the village,” Aiyen said, her forehead creased.

Aiyen broke through Rokoko’s borders and headed towards their main settlement. Inside, not a single light was visible. Despite the time for meals passing, no smoke rose.

And soon, as they entered the village entrance, both Vikir and Aiyen halted. The problem wasn’t the absence of sentries. There was no one inside the village.

The rundown huts were empty, and overgrown with weeds. Scavengers roamed aimlessly.

“Where has everyone gone?” Aiyen’s brow furrowed as she entered a hut and pulled aside a curtain.

Then it happened. A swarm of enormous flies burst out of the hut, carrying with them a nauseating stench of decay and the smell of putrid flesh. Inside the tent were three children and a woman lying down. They looked as if they had died not too long ago.

Vikir examined the flags of the nearby huts. “It’s the same as the others.”

Rokoko’s indigenous people had been massacred in their huts without even being able to come out. Most of the corpses were decomposed beyond recognition. However, on the relatively well-preserved bodies, there were unmistakable red spots on their skin.

“What kind of situation is this? An epidemic?” Aiyen shivered, her voice tinged with horror.

Jungle warriors were particularly sensitive to epidemics. Given that, Aiyen’s extreme reaction was understandable.

“….” Vikir remained silent, lost in thought.

Suddenly, a memory resurfaced, something he had heard about before this incident.

“…’Red Death,’ was it?” The more he probed his memory, the clearer it became. “That’s right, the ‘Red Death.'”

An eerie epidemic that had indeed occurred around this time. The “Red Death” was a devastating grade 1 infection that had wiped out almost all savages and similar races in the jungle. It left an individual bedridden, unable to do anything, slowly succumbing. The slow metabolism meant the process of dying was drawn out. Red spots would appear all over the body, accompanied by vomiting and diarrhea, followed by weakness and pain, until the victim died.

The infection spread unusually quickly, even a mere glance could transmit it. People had shivered at the thought.

“How was this disease cured?” Vikir tried to recall more. The memory was a bit fuzzy, given how long ago this was.

At that moment, a voice broke through, “N-No, slave!” It was a hand tugging at Vikir’s clothes. Turning, he saw Aiyen urgently crying out, “Quickly! We need to get out of here!”

“Why?”

“Why! It’s a curse! This is a divine curse!” She was unusually frightened.

Vikir smirked and grabbed her wrist. “Don’t worry. It’s an epidemic.”

“What!? That’s even worse! We need to get out of here immediately! This place is cursed! Those Rokoko people, always practicing vile sorcery, this is what they get…”

“Calm down. It’s not so easily contagious.”

Vikir looked around the Rokoko village. Aiyen was startled, but she didn’t run off alone. She just held onto Vikir’s clothes and followed behind, trembling slightly.

“Ugh… Ugh, ugh. Is this really a curse?”

“If you’re that scared, go back.”

“What if you get cursed and die?”

“If I die, I die.”

Vikir’s casual response prompted Aiyen, who had been following closely, to exclaim, “Who said you could decide that!”

“…?” Though Vikir thought “Of course, it’s my decision,” he didn’t say it out loud.

Well, anyway…

After circling around the Rokoko tribe’s village, Vikir realized that the Rokoko tribe hadn’t been wiped out entirely. They seemed to have left the dead and the sick behind and moved somewhere else.

“Hmm, well, who knows? If carriers were among the survivors, wherever they fled to, the outcome would be similar.” Vikir understood the refugees had little choice.

However, there was no guarantee that they would be safe from the Red Death.

Still, this presented an opportunity to learn about the hidden aspects of the Rokoko tribe’s lifestyle. Vikir searched through the huts, collecting a few books and items that seemed important, and packing them into a bag. He thought it might contribute to future research on the primitive tribes and the tribes of the Black Mountain.

Just then, from outside the hut, Aiyen’s scream pierced the air.

“Kyaaaah!”

Vikir swiftly dashed out of the hut, as Aiyen’s desperate scream became more distinct.

“It’s a curse! The child is cursed!”

A profound fear of the terrible disease was characteristic of all natives of the floodplain. Vikir silently shifted his gaze to where Aiyen was looking.

Outside a small, shabby hut at the outskirts of the village, stood a child. The child didn’t seem to be from the Rokoko tribe.

Perhaps around five years old, with black hair, red eyes, and pale skin like snow, she didn’t appear to be a native of Rokoko. She stood barefoot next to the crumbling hut, seemingly reluctant to leave.

Behind the hut was a simple stone grave that seemed newly made, adorned only with a few purple flowers that looked freshly picked.

“Aaah! It’s a ghost, for sure! A cursed child sent by the forest deity! We have to run, Vikir! You go first! I’ll follow up soon! Ugh, my legs are…!”

Aiyen was trembling and on the brink of tears. Seeing this side of her after two years of living together, Vikir couldn’t help but chuckle. However, regardless of that, it seemed important to figure out who this child was.

“I guess I’ll find out about the last remnants of the Rokoko tribe’s atmosphere.”

Vikir walked forward and sat down in front of the child, adjusting his height to match hers. Though the girl looked terrified, she didn’t shy away from Vikir’s hand on her head.

“Who are you?”

“……”

When Vikir asked, the child only lowered their head instead of answering.

Vikir asked a few more times, but the child didn’t respond.

They just listed a few words in a hesitant tone.

“Rokoko. Slave. Kitchen worker.”

A mix of Rokoko and Empire language.

Because of this, Vikiir could only deduce context from the sequence of words.

“So, you were a child living as a slave in Rococo. What’s your name?”

“……Pomeranian.”

Upon the girl’s response, Vikir nodded.

“It seems her mother gave her an Empire-style name.”

Pomeranian wasn’t a common name, but it wasn’t too unusual either.

Either way, it was the moment when it became clear that the girl was from the Empire.

Without any hesitation, Vikir moved on to the next topic.

Just as he was about to ask about the events with the Rokoko tribe.

The words that followed from the girl’s mouth froze Vikir in place.

“…La Baskerville.”

In that instant, it was as if Vikir’s body had been struck by lightning and stopped.

La Baskerville. And ‘La,’ a middle name reserved only for direct females.

Not many within the family received middle names like ‘Le’ or ‘La.’

As Vikir opened his eyes wide in surprise, the girl, as if frightened, tried to hide behind a pillar.

No sound came out of her mouth for a moment.

When someone is extremely surprised, that can happen.

Vikiir couldn’t hide his bewildered expression and raised his hand to rub his face a few times.

After splashing his face with water, he finally regained his senses.

“Come here, child.”

“……”

The girl hid behind the pillar and only slightly poked her head out, not coming out fully.

Vikir pondered on how to comfort the girl.

Then, a young Aiyen who had entered and left the hut suddenly threw something towards Vikir.

“Hey, there’s something like this inside. Ugh, it shouldn’t be a shifting curse, right?”

Vikiir accepted what Aien had thrown.

It was a small pendant made of gold.

On the broch, there was a pattern in the shape of a fang, the symbol of Baskerville.

Aiyen remembered the pattern of Baskerville due to the potion bottle she had received from Vikir before.

“Isn’t this your family’s symbol?”

“……”

The girl’s words added more credibility.

Vikir traced the Baskerville pattern on the pendant with his finger.

The pendant seemed to have been made in an old-fashioned style, a type of accessory that might have been trendy around 30 years ago.

…Clank!

Vikir opened the pendant to see its contents.

Inside was a meticulously drawn miniature portrait.

“What’s this?”

Vikir squinted his eyes and examined the portrait.

The painting depicted a young woman and man of unknown names, along with a young teenage girl.

The young woman had beautiful blonde hair and blue eyes, the young man had Baskerville’s distinctive black hair and red eyes, and the teenage girl between them also had black hair and red eyes.

At a glance, Vikiir recognized the young man in the portrait.

“Hugo Le Baskerville?! No way!”

This was undoubtedly Hugo from his younger years.