Tale of Death

Chapter 6 - New Beginnings

The conversation unexpectedly came to an end when everything once again started to fade into darkness. Suddenly Shi shot awake, this time not in the empty white room she woke in previously, but on the familiar wooden floor of her poor home, only this time, it was stained with what she assumed to be her dried blood.

She laid there, on the cold wooden ground looking up at the roof in a dazzle for a few minutes, allowing her body to adjust to dying, and coming back to life, not to mention all the blood she had lost.

Her body was still in pain from the wound, everything ached but she didn't see any wounds, she even had the blood and tears in her clothing that showed she was, in fact, stabbed through the stomach, but there was no wound on her body at all. Even some older wounds had fully healed.

Triggered by the thought of the blood and wound, she remembered that her mother was also stabbed when she came out of the room. She stood up in a rush and turned to look for her mother's body. It was gone, her mother's body was no longer there, they took it with them it seemed, or moved it somewhere, but why?

Why did they take her body but not hers? Did they need something with it or was it just a random choice? It couldn't be because they didn't want to leave any proof behind, they left a big human-size proof, and the blood-stained the place too. So they had to have wanted the body for something. She didn't like the thought of the men that killed her, having her mother's body, who knows what they were doing with it.

Shi couldn't do much though, she was confused and had a lot of questions, yet as is, she had no answers. She didn't get to ask the other version of "herself" anything about her new capabilities or how her body works now, nor did she understand why the men attacked them and took her mother's body in the first place. That didn't stop her from wanting to know though, on the contrary, it made her more motivated to find the men and to get answers.

After a long time of thinking, planning, blaming, and self-hatred, Shi finally came to the decision that it was a good idea to leave her home and this trip altogether. It would be the best way to find out more about the men that did this, and her mother's body, while also allowing her to grow in strength so something such as this would never happen again.

Once her mind was made, she didn't hesitate any further and decided to get a move on quickly. She first had to pack everything she needed for the trip, she grabbed a big sack and started to place her best clothing into it, including the hunting gain which she took off before dinner. She went through the entire house and was able to scrape up all the little money they had, storing it in her bag, altogether it wouldn't even come up to a silver coin.

She decided to pack light, a heavy back would slow her down on the trip, and she didn't know what could happen in this dangerous world. She also decided to grab a picture of herself and her mother that was drawn using magic when she was younger, a keepsake she decided to have for the trip, so she can keep going forward, something she can look at to remember her mother and why she's doing this in the first place.

After packing everything Shi walked out of the house and closed the door, she took a few steps back her watery gaze lingering on the old home she spent her entire life in. Shi had so many thoughts in this place, some good and some bad. She remembered all the work her mother had put into protecting her and raising her all alone.

These memories made her want to cry now that his mother was missing, and most likely dead, but she had to be stronger, she couldn't cry from now on. So, wiping the tears that were forming from her eyes, she turned. Shi turned away from the house and made her way down the path towards the village.

It seemed she was unconscious for a rather long time, because the sun was already set as she did so, the dim glow from the moonlight stretched across the sky like a blanket, decorated with small sparkles.

Shi was hoping to get a carriage in the village so it can take her to the nearest Kingdom, which was the Kingdom of Subete, the main Kingdom in the Human Clan.

Shi had heard lots of tales about Subete, mainly because it was the closest, and lots of adventurers came from there to hunt in the forest nearby. She heard that it was the most populated out of the main four kingdoms, she also heard that the kingdom allowed any race to live in it, which Shi found amazing.

Shi kept walking towards the village eventually reaching it, the village was as lively as ever, even at such a time people walked around, vendors selling their goods, and so forth, it seemed like the nightlife here was much better than the daylife. They didn't even know her mother was gone, they wouldn't care anyway, they always looked down on the family for being poor, the ones that didn't outright ignore them.

Shi tried to ignore that the best she could to avoid the crowded area, she was in no mood to be in a crowd right now and just made her way towards the carriage waiting area, where carriages would come in or out to drop goods or people off. She was lucky enough to find herself an empty carriage that was very cheap due to the kindness of the driver.

The driver mentioned going to the Demon Clan located in the desert, but he didn't mind dropping Shi off by the portal to Subete. So with that, they started on their way off to whatever awaited Shi next.