Chapter 20: Dealing With the Monsters

“We’re here,” the driver declared as the car came to a stop.

Luke stuck his head out of the window and scanned the area.

The place was a mess. There were signs of people leaving in a hurry with things overturned and doors left wide open. The only thing he didn’t see were bodies.

As if reading his mind, the townsperson said, “The monsters didn’t reach the town when we left.”

That explained the lack of bodies, but it was odd that the monsters didn’t reach the town yet. It had been a couple of days since the townspeople had fled the town. Unless they were slow or there was another reason, they should have occupied the place by now.

Rather than voice his concerns and worry the others, he silently got out of the car.

The townsperson followed suit as Luke said to the driver, “Stay here. We’ll be right back.”

“I’ll give you at most an hour before I start gunning it,” the driver warned.

Once they were far away from the car that the driver wouldn’t hear, the townsperson asked, “Is an hour really enough?”

“It will be once we find the monsters,” Luke said, searching the area for any signs of the monsters.

The duo traversed the town without encountering any monsters, reaching the other side of town.

“You said the monsters were beyond here,” Luke said, wanting to confirm the information.

The townsperson nodded and said, “That’s right.”

He pulled out his sword as he said, “Alright, I want to find a safe spot to hide. I’ll go alone from here.”

They hesitated and asked, “Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?”

Luke shook his head and said, “No, you’ll only get in the way.”

He waited for them to retreat inside of the buildings before continuing on his way. Luke traveled quite a bit of distance before he finally spotted a body of what he assumed was a monster hunter. With a grimace, he bent down to observe the body.

The monsters had really damaged the body extensively. It was near impossible to make out the features.

As he silently apologized to the corpse for not coming sooner, he stood up and studied his surroundings. There were still no signs of monsters, but he didn’t let his guard down as he continued down the path, encountering more bodies.

It seemed that the monster hunters hadn’t died in vain, taking a few monsters down with them. It was just unfortunate that they had been overwhelmed.

The evil god chose that moment to say, “Are you feeling guilty? You must feel horrible that these people died because of you.”

“I’m not in the mood to listen to you,” Luke said coldly.

“Too bad,” the evil god said.

“You were never this chatty before you were sealed away,” Luke pointed out.

When he and his ex-comrades fought the evil god, he hadn’t really spoken to them, only saying a few words to them. Now he chatted nonstop.

“That was because I had no reason to speak to people beneath me. This time is different,” the evil god said nonchalantly.

“I’m flattered,” Luke said dryly as he searched for signs of the monsters.

“You should be. It’s not every day one gets the attention of a god,” the evil god said, his hands brushing against Luke’s cheek.

Luke shuddered, feeling gross all over.

His disgust was quickly forgotten when he finally spotted a trail and followed it deeper into the forest. After walking quietly through the forest for some time, he spotted a monster in the distance and stopped. Instead of immediately attacking, he observed his surroundings.

Since there was supposed to be a group, there was no way the monster would be alone. The others had to be close by.

He watched for a while until he saw a couple more monsters joining up with the first.

After silently counting them, he was able to confirm a total of fifteen monsters. That matched what the townspeople said. This was likely all of them.

Luke quickly devised a plan and rushed out to face them.

However, he never got to execute the plan, as the monsters took one look at him and fled in the opposite direction as him.

He faltered for a moment before giving chase.

The only good thing about the sudden change in the plan was that it was easy to deal with them. They were so intent on running from him that he could strike them down from behind with no resistance from them like what happened with the other monster he encountered.

It was really unsettling.

Once all the monsters were dealt with, he counted them just to be sure. After confirming that there were fifteen monster corpses, he hurried to deal with them so he could be on his way and watched as the bodies burned.

While the bodies burned, Luke couldn’t stop thinking about the monsters’ weird behavior.

Why did they keep running from him the moment they saw him?

“Shouldn’t it be obvious?” the evil god asked.

“If it was obvious, I wouldn’t be confused,” Luke shot back.

“Think about it. Not only are you my warrior, I’m currently inhabiting your body. How do you think they would react?” the evil god said.

When the evil god put it like that, Luke could sort of see it, but shouldn’t it be more that the monsters would revere him?

After all, they were created by the evil god. They should be bowing to him.

The evil god scoffed and questioned, “Why wouldn’t they fear me? Have you forgotten who I am?”

Luke didn’t respond.

It seemed that even the evil god’s creations couldn’t stand him even though they grew stronger with his presence.

While he might want to push his luck and mock the god for it, he had other things to worry about, like what this meant for him. Even though this had been beneficial for him so far, Luke knew it actually presented a huge problem for him.

So far no one had noticed anything off about the situation, but the moment they realized what was happening, there were going to be a lot of questions.