Memory Reaper's Ascension

Ishiki searched desperately inside every house in the settlement. Indeed there were people living here ones.

He found, old cloths in some houses, some of them have already withered and rotted to extreme level. Male cloths, female cloths and small pieces of clothing's that must have belonged to children.

The discovery made something twist in Ishiki's chest.

'Families lived here.'

If nothing else, Ishiki found himself proper clothing to wear. The garments were larger than his stature required—designed for adults rather than a sixteen-year-old with a scrawny frame, but that wasn't a problem he couldn't solve.

After so long wearing nothing but a makeshift robe, it was nice being warm.

But happiness remained conspicuously absent from his face. He was disturbed by what he had discovered.

Inside each house, tucked into corners or carved into walls, he found small personal shrines. Miniature temples. Everything lay buried beneath dust and rot—offerings were long since decomposed, and incense holders had been empty for what must have been decades or maybe centuries.

And where an idol was supposed to stand, there was nothing.

Except feet.

Just the feet of statues. Everything above the ankles had been... removed or destroyed?

The consistency was what made it horrifying. Not one or two houses showed this pattern, but every single one.

Except for one dwelling, of course.

The lonely house that stood at the settlement's edge—the one he and Alex had occupied, it didn't have these personal shrines. It lacked other basic commodities as well, bathroom, kitchen.

Like it had been built for purposes other than habitation. Or for inhabitants who weren't meant to be treated as human.

Even that was not enough... and after some more investigation, Ishiki found something that made him shiver.

He currently stood inside one of the houses near the settlement's center, trembling and gasping. His blue eyes fixed on a scene that made him... uncomfortable.

Inside this particular dwelling, somehow preserved despite the rot claiming everything else, lay skeletal remains... little skeletal remains, as large as his forearm maybe.

And just near it, there was a long knife. It had rusted over the centuries, blade pitted and corroded. It was utterly hidden under the dust carpet.

The skeleton was placed in a position that told stories of its own. It was laid out deliberately. Arms spread and bound with something that didn't exist anymore, the little neck exposed.

'Holy hell... what? What exactly were the people here doing?'

The small child was about to be Sacrificed.

But the ritual had never completed. Maybe something had intervened—some catastrophe or crisis that saved the child from that cruel fate by condemning them to something arguably worse.

They had probably died of starvation instead. Slow death while being locked in a house that had become their own tomb.

Compared to this, being sacrificed sounded much... much better.

The thought made Ishiki's stomach behave weirdly, and he had to throw up almost immediately.

After that ghastly discovery, Ishiki gave up finding anything further.

He couldn't. His mind had reached capacity for absorbing such details. Any more and something would break beyond repair.

He went back to Alex and recounted his findings—the clothing, the houses' arrangement, the destroyed idols.

But he kept the last discovery to himself. The child's skeleton.

'It wouldn't be appropriate to tell him something like that.'

Alex was barely holding himself together as it was.

And at the end of it, Alex was more disturbed than being happy after hearing Ishiki. Of course, everything that he found made this place more and more unsettling.

The Crimson Night passed by with agonizing slowness. The burning eclipsed moon hung in the sky like an eye, watching them with malevolent patience.

Then it transformed.

The crimson light faded. The black disc with its burning edges softened back into familiar silver circle.

The moon became beautiful again—cold and distant, looking at it made Ishiki want to weep with relief.

The Silver Night had arrived.

With the arrival of the pale moon, reality shifted once more. Darkness returned and swallowed the crimson glow. The trees went back to their slumber and their golden leaves faded to green.

And different voices proceeded to surface inside the Crimson Canopy.

Growls. Snarls. Clicking sounds that suggested chitinous bodies moving.

And eyes.

Just like Ishiki had expected, there were dozens of eyes watching them from the forest. Glowing in the darkness with their own internal luminescence.

The withered beasts and demons were now roaming around the forest looking for their next prey. It was really... really frightening, Ishiki couldn't sleep.

He felt as if the moment he closes his eyes, the beasts and demons would attack him. It was unsettling in the worst way. So, with nothing to do he summoned the Scenario details and gave them a read.

Total Participants - 1,943

From 1,971 to 1,943 in a single day. Twenty-eight Players eliminated in the span of one Crimson Night.

Understanding what that meant was another kind of horror entirely.

'I guess I know why there are no beasts and demons around during Crimson Night.'

The thought arrived with grim certainty.

'It's simply because they too are afraid of the trees.'

The thought didn't help him at all, just made him more uneasy. He wanted to go out of the house, but he was too afraid to do so.

What sane man would wanna go and present himself to gazes of unnatural creatures?

The next few days went in without much t do... or rather, nothing much could have happened.

During the Crimson Night, they woke up and meditated. Alex healed Ishiki's leg completely, so he was back to new. He couldn't be more thankful to the guy.

Being crippled in this place felt like wearing target on his back painted in blood.

After he was healed, Ishiki finally summoned the new weapon he had gotten. The [Curved Bone], he called it forth with a mental command and a beautiful and ghastly sword manifested itself in his hand.

It was a sword without a sheath, and rather than being straight like a normal sword, it was a little curved at the edges. Its blade was as pale as a bone, actually it was made up of a bone, but it was sharp in equal proportions to the steel blade.

The guard was a straight structure, and the grip was made up of actual skin of, maybe the skin of the Boneworm.

Better not dwell on such things.

Most of the time during the days, Ishiki would practice with the sword. Alex had no weapons except for a sling. That... made Ishiki question, how was Alex planning on surviving here with a sling as his weapon.

Nothing extraordinary happened during those days, except the fact that they ran out of what little food Alex had saved just the next day after Ishiki woke up. Water... was a scarce resource, but indeed, Alex had lied to Ishiki about there not being water.

There was enough water in a pit behind a house to last them around a month. Even though, it tasted rotten. Like something had died in it and decomposed. They had no choice but to live on that.

And now... they stood in front of the gates of the temple once again. Ishiki's eyes were distant... he looked, utterly malnourished and sleep deprived. Huge black circles had formed under his eyes, making him look like corpse that hadn't realized it was dead yet.

The pale man on the other hand had lost what little color he had and somehow turned even paler. He looked as if he was about to fall unconscious any moment.

Looking at the gates of the temple, Ishiki grimaced. 'Damn it! This temple again. I don't like this one bit.'

Beside him, Alex's hollow voice called him back from internal contemplation. "Are you sure you want to do this? What if it collapses?"

Ishiki looked at him and shrugged. "It won't." after a short pause he added. "Believe me, it won't."

'Screw it! I don't wanna go anywhere near this temple.'

But he had no choice. Information was the biggest ally in such situations and not knowing their surroundings was making them blind.

Today... Ishiki was going to climb the temple to the top.

He gulped hard. 'Its not necessary that i go inside the temple... right? I can just climb from the outside.'

With that thought, Ishiki pushed the outermost metal gates of the temple's perimeters.