Chapter 73 73: The Up-Side Down Village [Pt2]

"Oh dear, it looks like you are catching a cold. Here, tries my homemade remedy to keep to warm."

The old woman was insisting even as Keith denied her hospitality. She was not ready to take 'no' for an answer from Keith, just as she had taken no for the first two times.

You might be wondering how Keith found himself in this predicament. Well, it was simple - he had asked for a ride to a village where even private services did not go. And Keith had not brought a car with him back here.

As a result, he had to walk to the village on foot. But he did not know the exact location of the village.

His map was a little wacky and the online map…did not have the location of this place mapped out at all.

All in all, Keith was utterly fucked right now and he knew it.

It was his lucky break when he noticed a cart heading in front of him. It stopped as soon as it reached Keith and an extremely old woman opened the back of the wagon.

And when Keith said old, he meant the kind of woman whom you had to question who they were even alive. This old woman was easily over 100 years old and she was all skin and bones without a hint of meat on her body.

Not only that, her fragility made it seem like she would fall any second now.

"Oh dear, you look a little lost out in this wilderness. Where are you going in such a condition? Are you not tired?"

The old woman asked. Despite her fragile looks, her voice was strong and clear. Her voice did not belong to an old lady and it made Keith second guess himself.

"I was trying to find the nearby village here. Someone gave me this old map but I think I am lost now."

Keith handed the map over to the old lady and she looked at it with gentle eyes. She seemed not to have recognized anything but her face had a thinking expression.

"Hmmm. You are looking for a village? Well, there is only one village nearby and that is the one I am heading toward. How about you ride to the village with me, kid? It will save you some time and effort."

Keith found this offer too tempting to take. The old woman had no reason to help Keith, but she had no reason to scam him as well.

In the end, it was not a difficult decision for Keith to make. He was lost on his own and this old lady was offering him help free of cost.

"Thank you for your offer, miss. I will take you up on your offer."

The old lady giggled at Keith's words and hit his arm rather bashfully.

"Aww, I am no miss, my dear child. It is you who is doing me a favor right now. Not many people like to visit our village so we lack social company."

Keith rubbed his arm where the old lady had jokingly smacked him. It throbbed and Keith had flinched when he had been hit.

What kind of strength did this old lady have? A little more force and Keith would have been injured for real.

"Y-Yeah, it's a pleasure for sure."

Keith whispered these words loud enough to be heard as he took a seat inside the wagon. It started moving and the trees in the vicinity started to disappear. The driver seemed to know where he was going at least.

And then Keith sneezed out of nowhere. That was what landed him in his current position.

"Are you sure you don't want this soup, dear? It is good for your health."

The old lady assured Keith but he nodded as furiously as he could. He did not want to eat this soup that had the potential to burn his tongue.

The old lady looked disappointed but she put the soup away. Pretty soon, the foggy surroundings began to show the outline of a small village on the horizon.

"Look dear, we are finally here. You can see the outline of our village from here. It is a lovely place to live in."

The old woman assured Keith as she opened the wagon and got down. Keith followed her into the old and solemn village.

The place was wrecked and not alright for human residency. All the roofs and leaks in them and no signs of repairs seemed to have been made in the past several years.

But the most important sign that said that this village was weird was the lack of human company.

Keith looked around but he could not spot anyone except him and the old lady at his side.

The old lady looked happy to be back. And somehow, Keith did not have a good feeling about this place. He felt like he was being scammed right now.

"Dear, please accompany me. I need to show you something."

The old lady brought Keith to an old shire. It was the only place that looked clean and tended to. Keith knew he should not follow someone just like that but he decided to take a risk.

He opened the door and saw his second human from the village. It was a toddler who looked to be barely old enough.

The toddler reached out toward Keith but Keith took a step back.

Now, the feeling of something being wrong was too strong. There was no way a toddler had survived in this town without any people or basic amenities for so long. The old lady was hiding something.

"Don't mistrust me so much, dear. I just want you to step into the circle and prey on the deity. Since you are in our village, you can do that much, right?"

The old woman questioned and Keith felt his body comply. It was like a fog had descended over his senses and Keith's arm was moving in a praying motion. His hands were clasped together and Keith's head was bowed in front of the half-broken statue.

"What are you doing to me? I do not want to"

"What am I doing? I am not doing anything, dear. It is all you and your devotion that is making you bow in front of the supreme god of this world. Look, your hands even know the correct posture. It seems like you are a devout as well."

Keith knew he was not a devout but his body seemed to know the motion of this prayer well enough to not make any mistakes.

The smell of the incense around him was strong, and it was making Keith dizzy smelling it. He looked at the kid, only to notice red eyes like his. The baby reached out toward Keith with his small hands.

'This is not right. I am not the one praying but my body is. It is as if I cannot control it but someone else is controlling it.'

But the weird thing was, Keith also did not feel any foreign influence inside him. This motion, this prayer, it looked natural for him to do.

Images flashed across his eyes. Creatures clad in red and white are known as angles and a catastrophe that happened a while back.

The images were flashing faster than Keith could keep up but he was submerged in his emotions. Anger, fear, lust, love, distrust. They all were swimming inside his head, threatening to devour him.

"Get out of my head. I said this is not me."

Keith yelled, working hard to break free of the enchantments holding him in place. But everything inside his body held him in place. These emotions felt like his own so maybe they were residue from the original grandmaster?

After all, what happened to the original when Keith came into this body?

The chimes of bells and the echo of prayers were running in the background of Keith's mind. The lullaby of those sounds felt familiar to Keith and they made him relax.

'You can take a man away from a disaster but running away from gods is impossible. We will find you and you shall lead us into this world. Our key to salvation-'

A hand reached out toward Keith and his body flinched for the first time, trying to escape the hand reaching for his face.

'I cannot let that thing touch me. I might die if that hand comes near me. My existence-'

And then Keith fell. He was falling into a void and his consciousness was fading. His eyes closed and he forced them to open again.

Once he did, he was in the middle of that old and abandoned village once again. But the old lady was nowhere to be seen and the baby was also not anywhere nearby.

Keith had no idea what just happened right now but his current surroundings did not feel like a normal world to him.

He dared to step out of this hut and froze.

The world around him had changed significantly.