Chapter 21: Chapter 21: Aftermath

“How many injuries or deaths have the hunters sustained?” Asked the village chief, turning to the hunters of the village.

“Not too many injured here, chief. A couple hunters got hit by the creature’s limbs during its sprint towards the ocean, but most of the injuries aren’t fatal,” said one of the hunters. “I don’t think anyone lost any limbs or got permanently injured. Within a week or two, we should be back to full manpower.”

The village chief nodded. “At least we won’t suddenly lose the ability to protect ourselves, then.” He turned towards the other villagers, and then sighed again. “Those with abilities that can be used for healing, come with me. Help me find out if anyone else is injured or dead, and help me rescue those who can be saved.” 

A few villagers with various runes grouped up with the village chief, and as a group, they began quickly sorting through the rubble of various houses to search for the injured and deceased. In the distance, I could also hear people starting to moan and scream in pain, letting me know that the people I had witnessed the death of weren’t the only injuries in the village. 

My attention, however, turned to the two year old who had seen the ocean. Even now, she was trying to wriggle out of her mother’s arms and head towards the ocean. And, strangely, she remained utterly insistent on reaching the ocean - even though her mother had covered her eyes and dragged her back into the building, blocking her from being able to see the water. Even though she couldn’t see the ocean, and should have been able to shrug off the effects of the Call of the Ocean with some time, the effects didn’t seem to be getting any weaker.

“Mommy, lemme go! Don’t you love me? Let me go! I just wanna take a look!” Shrieked the little girl, desperately writhing as she tried to break free of her mother’s grasp. I heard an awful desperation in her voice that chilled my blood.

“Sweetie, don’t look. You don’t have to look at it anymore, so just stop, just hold on a little. Maybe there’s a way to help you, you just need to wait. One of the other villagers can fix it, just wait, just wait…” The mother was crying, hugging her daughter as she mumbled comforting words over and over again like a broken record. I didn’t know whether the comforting words were for her daughter, or for herself.

The village chief, who was near her house, gave the two a pitying look, mixed with a hint of sorrow and self reproach. Then, he walked past them. I felt confused as I saw the village chief ignore the two - wasn’t he looking for injured people? Why had he just ignored the frantically squirming and screaming two year old? I had a bad feeling in my stomach. Because the village chief hadn’t looked at the girl as with the same expression he had used with most injured people. Instead, he looked at her with the same hollow, sad expression he had when he looked at the corpses of other villagers.

“Village chief! Isn’t there anything you can do? Maybe she can still be saved, with the right rune abilities… or maybe fish cores! I can… I’ll find a way to get as many as needed. Please, just-”

“Dear, it’s too late,” said the father, who had originally been cowering in the back and covering his ears with his hands. His expression was downcast as he looked at his daughter, and his shoulders looked hunched. It was as if the man had aged a hundred years in the course of a few minutes.

“How can you say that?” Screamed the woman, looking at the man with a mixture of anger and despair. “There might still be a way to heal her, or there might be…” Her voice trailed off, as she glared at her husband. Mixed into the fury in her voice was raw desperation, enough to rival the longing in her daughter’s voice as she begged to be allowed near the ocean.

The village chief shook his head, before finally speaking up.

“She saw the ocean when she was too young. And her mind wasn’t stable enough, so she failed to resist the Call. Listen to her - she doesn’t sound like someone who will get better. You can try, and you can keep hoping, and I also wish she could get better, but…” The village chief sighed. “prepare yourself for the worst. She will likely never be able to shrug off the effects of the Ocean on her mind. One day, when your attention lapses for a moment, or when you’re asleep, she will slip away and never return. I’m sorry. I should done a better job protecting the village.” The village chief lowered his head to the mother, who trembled, staring at her two year old child who was howling and trying to crawl towards the ocean. Then, apparently done with the conversation, the village chief turned away and continued walking, sifting through piles of rubble to find any other villagers who could still be saved.

I turned to my father, who had caught up with Sallia and I after the ruckus from the land beast died down. Just behind him was my mother, who had a somewhat sleepy and confused expression, but was otherwise unharmed “Father, why is the village chief saying it’s too late for the little girl? Is it really true?”

My father gave the mother and daughter duo a pitying look, before he turned to me and Sallia. “Miria, people who see the ocean when they’re too young don’t usually recover. Seeing the ocean can… change people. Especially if they aren’t grown up and mature yet. The reason your mother and I never let you out of the house until you formed your first rune is because that’s the easiest way to see who is mature enough to survive seeing the ocean. In order to form a rune, you need to have a big-girl mind that can resist a lot of information, and you also need to have at least a rudimentary grasp of your absorption essence. Once you have those two things, you will recover from seeing the ocean as long as you’re pulled away for long enough. But that girl doesn’t have either, because she’s too young.” my father’s voice trailed off, and I felt some pity as well, as I looked at the girl who would likely never recover. 

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Was seeing the ocean really that dangerous? I vaguely remembered my parents treating the ocean with a great deal of caution when I was younger. The entryway to our house even had five separate doors one needed to open if they wished to leave, just to make sure nobody inside could get a glimpse outside of the house by accident. But once I had formed my first rune, my parents had relaxed a lot. Afterwards, I had been taken out of the house for the first time, where I had met up with Felix and Sallia. 

I turned back to the forest. Unlike the previous times I had eyed the trees, I no longer felt a sense of wonder and curiosity when I looked at them. Now, I felt fear. The creature who had sprinted out of the forest had bulldozed its way through the village, even while the entire hunter team tried to stop it, and had crushed houses underfoot as if it were a giant rolling through a castle of toys. It had been seriously injured by the village chief after his first attack, but it hadn’t been enough to kill the beast, and afterwards it had simply got back up and kept running towards the ocean. I suddenly wondered how common this was. I didn’t remember anything like this happening in the time I had been conscious in this world, but in the future, should I expect things like this often?

“Father, what was that creature that escaped from the forest? Does the village get attacked by land beasts often?”

“Land Beasts manage to escape the hunters and attack the village every decade or so,” my father said. “Land Beasts aren’t as smart as people, so they have a harder time resisting the Call of the Ocean. Usually, after leaving the trees, they last an hour at most before they dive into the ocean, meaning the hunters usually handle an escaped creature by directing it away from the more vulnerable townsfolk  until it commits suicide, if it’s a particularly strong beast. Or, if it’s a weaker landbeast, they just kill it on the spot. Unfortunately, this one had the ability to stop other people from making sound near it, so the hunters couldn’t evacuate people out of the creature’s way.” My father gave the ruined houses of the village a solemn look, before shaking his head. “The frequency of land beast attacks is also why the village requires children at the age of sixteen to hunt one with a group of hunters. Since they’re very likely to encounter another few landbeasts during their lifetime, it works as a way to train people on how to react to the creatures of the forest. Sadly, some creatures, like this one, have abilities that are overly strange and hard to prepare for, making them much more dangerous.

My father sighed. “Either way, something like this will eventually happen again. Make sure that you make the most of each moment you can, all right? You need to condense as many runes as you can, and prepare as much as possible. You never know when something bad might happen, so you need to be ready to defend yourself.” My reached out and patted my head. “Your mother and I love you and don’t want anything to happen to you, so you need to stay safe.”

“Yes, father,” I said, hardening my resolve. I had already realized how dangerous this world could be, and I had no intentions of taking it lightly anymore.

After that, Sallia’s parents and my mother caught up to us, and Sallia’s parents spent a few moments fussing over her. They seemed more relieved that she was safe than angry at me for dragging Sallia around, thankfully. We met up with Felix afterwards, and after we confirmed his safety, our group began to disperse as we helped the other villagers move away rubble, look for survivors, and prepare to rebuild the ruined houses and fence.

At the end of the day, seven people died, and eleven more were seriously injured and would probably suffer permanent disabilities or death. Apart from that, there were numerous lighter injuries, mostly caused by people getting hit by flying pieces of rubble or kicked by the creature as it plowed through the town. Fortunately, as long as people didn’t suffer a direct hit from the creature, most of them were only lightly injured, since anyone with three runes would have a fairly sturdy physique. However, the eighteen permanent injuries or deaths represented a more serious problem. Although eighteen people didn’t sound like a huge number, in a village of less than seven hundred, losing eighteen people was catastrophic. The work force would be seriously hampered until the more lightly injured people recovered, and some of the village’s workshops and fishing boats would face manpower shortages for a very long time. However, the village chief and the hunters seemed to take the deaths and losses as a personal failure, and for the rest of the day they walked around the village in a state of perpetual gloom.

Then, oddly enough, their grief seemed to slowly fade away. Their gloominess started to disappear, and they began to return to business as usual.

At first, I wondered if they were more cold hearted than I had expected. The village chief, in particular, seemed to feel a great deal of guilt over allowing the creature to break into the village, so seeing him return to normal after only a few hours caught me off guard. Eventually, I realized that it wasn’t a case of the hunters and village chief being cold hearted.

It was simply because they were used to this kind of thing. In this world, death and catastrophe were business as usual. Although humans inhabited these islands, we weren’t the masters of the islands. The true rulers of these islands were the land beasts and the ever-present Ocean.