“So, the slums have a cleanup crew…”
Zig glanced outside. Several pairs of eyes were watching the shack from the shadows cast by the surrounding buildings. They weren’t planning on hurting him, but that was only because Zig was too strong for them to eat. They would move in the second he showed any sign of weakness. If he had been incapacitated in that earlier fight, he would have suffered the same fate as that man did.
This was not a place he wanted to remain in for very long. After tending to his wounds, Zig quickly surveyed the area he had been forcefully transported to.
The slum here was worse than the one he remembered in Halian. Dead bodies littered the streets, flies buzzing unsettlingly over them. The air itself smelled like rotting garbage, and putrid things were left out to decay.
“Hmm…”
It felt like he would get sick just by breathing in the air. His eyebrow twitched as he fought the urge to hurl.
Zig slowly began to walk. There were several pairs of eyes on him again. The place treated Zig as an outsider, trying to find any weakness it could exploit. He would be lying if he said he wasn’t bothered by them, but he ignored them nonetheless since they weren’t openly hostile yet.
No, no slum in Halian was this awful. In that case, he must have been transported to another city. This was the first city outside of Halian he had been to on this continent, but he had a guess as to where he was. According to the information he got from Katia and the rumors he heard, he could only be in one place.
“I’m really screwed if it turns out I’m not in Striggo…”
He had no idea how long it would take to return to Halian if he weren’t in Striggo. Zig was an experienced traveler, and he was quite confident in his ability to return to Halian even if it took some time.
He was mainly worried about his client. He couldn’t imagine what Siasha would do if she found out he was missing. She had been adjusting slowly to human society so she shouldn’t go too crazy…
However, at the end of the day, she was still a witch. Even if she looked human and spoke like one, she wasn’t human. Her values and principles were highly dangerous by normal standards.
He could only hope that it would only leave Kirk with a few stomach ulcers.
“If I can just send her a letter… Hm?”
Zig stopped after walking on full alert.
Nothing had changed. It was still a slum densely packed with tents which may or may not be empty.
But one thing had caught his eye.
“Is that…a church?”
A familiar-looking building stood, looking very out of place. The small stone building was weathered and rundown, decorated with several holes. It was its distinctive shape that set it apart as a building many knew as a church. Zig found it ironic that a church would be situated in such a hellhole.
“Doesn’t look like people come here…”
Intrigued, Zig walked toward it. There were no footprints or signs of life, and he couldn’t feel anyone around either.
“Strange,” Zig said to himself as he looked at the church’s surroundings. Although it was dilapidated, it could still be used as a shelter from the elements with a little work. In this hellhole, he assumed that the vagrants would have used it as a roost. However, the omnipresent eyes of the vagrants had all but disappeared.
Zig was disturbed by the silence. It was like a forest without the sounds of any insects or wildlife.
He stayed silent and squinted to see if anyone was inside. Didn’t look like it.
He walked quietly toward the building so as not to be heard and peered inside one of the holes. As he expected, the place didn’t look like it had any inhabitants.
“Maybe the vagrants are highly religious. Really, though?”
Zig thought about what he said for a few moments before entering through the front door. That is, if the church still had a door.
Pews were lined up inside the church, and at the back was a disproportionately large statue. Zig stepped closer to the statue and looked at what once must have been a solemn sight. The statue had not been exempted from the decay and damage of the slums. Its head was missing, and so were its arms that looked like they were positioned in prayer. The damage seemed too deliberate to be caused by the elements. But there were no traces of people around.
Just as he was beginning to think the vagrants were truly religious, a voice came down from the statue.
“You can wish, but I don’t recommend praying.”
His hair stood on end. He felt as if he had been shot with an arrow right after defeating an enemy on the battlefield. It was an instant cold, sweeping away whatever warmth he had felt up to that moment.
An enemy? Where?
He jumped back, those words flashing through his mind. His body moved before his brain did. Without his weapon, he was more on edge than usual.
In contrast, the voice laughed innocently at him.
“Wow, you’re fast! You’re like a cat that got sneaked up on.”
He looked up to find a woman sitting on top of the headless statue’s neck. Voluminous dark purple hair cascaded down her back in a wild fashion.
She looked like she was in her late teens. She was slightly shorter than Siasha, and she wore a ragged robe over her thin body. Her limbs peeking out of the hem were a sickly white. They could be called beautiful, but just barely. Despite wearing what might as well be sackcloth, it did little to conceal her beauty.