A strange world

Chapter 305 Section 158. Tracking

The temperature in the north in September is not as hot as in the south, and the nights will become cooler. Therefore, the body maintains a good outline and has not been contaminated by flies.

The knight captain asked the scouts to disperse around the area and into the town, and he and Annan stopped in front of the body. It was a young man about the same age as Annan. The arrow pierced his bloated and rotten chest. He held the arrow in his left hand and tried to pull it out but failed.

The scout who explored the town returned and confirmed that this was a ghost town and that there were no living people.

The knights temporarily bypassed the corpse and entered the town. Wooden walls blocked the bloody aftermath of the massacre. Groups of rotting corpses fell around the wooden wall, covered with black rags. Due to the arrival of the cavalry, the rags flew and turned into swarms of crows.

A strong putrid stench permeated the surroundings. There will be a plague here soon.

"Why do the Skaven leave these corpses?"

Annan glanced at the corpses in a depressed mood, ranging from children to old people, with farm forks and wooden sticks scattered around them. The Ratmen don't even spare the corpses and feces of their companions, so there is no reason to ignore these... flesh and blood.

"It was not the rat tide that attacked Ghost Town, but the elite ratmen."

So there aren't even Skaven corpses.

Annan, who was going deep into the town with his team, suddenly tightened his grip on the reins because a young body was nailed to a wooden door by arrows.

The knights searched the mayor's house first, but found nothing. I don’t know if the mayor has escaped or if he has become one of those corpses.

Wizard Aemon recalled the situation when the attack occurred: an elite team of ratmen raided Ghost Town from the direction they came from. They did not react, so that the ratmen directly broke through the trenches and wooden walls. These old, weak and sick guards Under the leadership of the mage, they only resisted for a moment and then collapsed. The collapsed crowd began to flee, and was chased by the rat men...

The corpses gathered in front of the wooden wall allowed the knight team not to waste too much time. They piled the corpses in the town on a hill and prepared to clean up the plague.

Annan was also helping. The girl's body had her head raised, and the empty eye sockets where the eyes had been taken out by the crow were facing the roof. Annan raised his head following her "gazing" and saw the sacks on the rafters.

A knight was called to help remove it, but the bag only contained semolina.

Annan stuffed the grain bag into the little girl's arms, removed the arrows with his own hands, picked up her swollen and decaying body, and gently placed it on the edge of the pile. It was in vain that the bodies of the dead could not be described as "sleeping peacefully". But at least her soul is at rest...

When the knights brought the kerosene, Annan suddenly said: "Wait a moment and check the cellar."

They spent dozens of minutes searching the cellar, but found nothing, and their last hope was extinguished.

Several knights poured oil on the fire and burned the plague. Annan and others retreated outside the town to avoid the smell of blasphemy.

Watching the black smoke rising and the flocks of crows hovering over the town, the knights and their horses fell silent.

And this scene happened hundreds of times in the south.

Annan realized that this was the best time to ask the knight: "The traces of rat men appear outside the royal capital, why are you still indifferent?"

"...We just have to obey orders."

The question returns to the upper level, which is littered with riddles.

"Then why do you think the head of the regiment is indifferent?"

The knight captain was still deep in thought, and a horrified shout broke the silence of the team.

"They are all dead...all dead, not one left!"

A crazy middle-aged man was escorted by the knight. He said he found him in a pile of bushes a few miles away. Master Aemon threw him a wake-up spell, and then asked: "We are from the Royal Capital. Do you know what happened in Ghost Town?"

"Ghost Town...attack! The armor...is not rat people!" The middle-aged man's recovery was limited, but when the clouds dispersed and their armor reflected light, the middle-aged man shouted in horror: "It's you! You massacred the town!”

"us?"

The knight captain was puzzled. Seeing the middle-aged man fall into madness again, Annan asked Master Aemon to release the awakening spell again.

"That would make him a fool."

Annan had no choice but to try to calm down the middle-aged man. Let the knight control him, Annan stood in front of him: "I am Annan, the king of the north, the rat man... nemesis, we come from the royal capital, tell me everything you encounter."

The man gradually became quiet and narrated his experience like a dream:

After the news of the Rat Man's approach spread in Ghost Town, almost everyone who could leave left. The man was no exception, but he had nowhere to go, and the Rat Man hadn't appeared for several days. He returned to Ghost Town with luck, only to meet the murderer who attacked Ghost Town.

"They...that's them! They surrendered to the Ratmen!"

The knights around him reminded the man of his terrible nightmare.

"It wasn't them. I was with them all the time. We were on the way here when Ghost Town was attacked." Annan said.

"But they have the same armor!"

The murderers rode the same horses as the Knights, wore the same armor as the Knights, and held the same weapons as the Knights.

Annan didn't answer and looked at the knight captain quietly.

"That doesn't prove that they are the Knights." Master Aemon replied, "The Knights are equipped with standard armor, which is expensive, but can be bought easily."

But the man who regained consciousness vowed: "I can tell the difference between a knight and a mouse! They are just like you!"

"Where did they go after they attacked Ghost Town?"

The man points east.

Asking the knight to take the man for examination and rest, Annan, the knight captain and the wizard Aemon said: "We need to know the answer. Are the rat men disguising themselves as us, or are the rat men contaminating us, or..."

"We" are engaged in an unspeakable conspiracy.

"You are the commander of this team." The knight captain raised his sword firmly.

"I wonder who's behind this..." said Master Aemon.

Wow——

The surrounding knights raised their weapons. Their mentality changed after experiencing the massacre in Ghost Town. But can they bear the weight of the truth?

"Then let's go and track down their whereabouts."

The burning of Ghost Town is coming to an end, and the crows in the sky have dispersed. Ghost Town's future may be prosperous again, but it won't belong to the same people it once was.

Over the next few days, Annan and the Knight Squad followed the traces of the Ghost Town murderer in Illida County. During this period, they encountered several waves of ratmen. Annan did not need to take action. The knight team launched a charge and they were completely defeated. Also encountered a new killing committed by the Ghost Town murderer. These villages are like the revenge of the dead, guiding them in the direction of the murderer.

After leaving the survivors of Ghost Town in a passing city-state, they set out at full speed.

In the evening, in the east of Elida County, there is a dark forest.

The knight squad is stationed outside the forest. Further east is Rongguang County... If there is nothing there, they can only give up the investigation.

While thinking this, a line of smoke rose from the depths of the forest. Then, they found a temporary station of a group of cavalry in the woods.