Versatile: Alternate World

Those skulls are all over the place like it was just a common ornament display for their houses that is now trending and liked the design. It would have been fine if it was other races liking it since that might happen but for Angel? Fat chance that's happening. I would expect the opposite instead.

Angels absolutely detests these kinds of ornaments and not only them but also the Fallens as well. Even if they have no longer have the same physique as a normal angel has, they still retain their behaviors of hating anything that would do something like this. They would get rid of something like this the moment something occurred as they will immediately call someone a heretic  the moment they discover something like that.

So, if that was the case, why does these angels in this particular village is keeping these ornaments that uses bones for ornaments?

Although I wanted to think that this behavior was an influence that they got from the demons, I remembered that demons don't like using bones as a decorative ornament for their houses. If possible, they would use it to flaunt their kills but they would immediately destroy them after they have no use of it or perhaps summon them as their servants so in the very end, they don't use these bones to decorate a house. And from the looks of it, they don't have any demonic influence present from them. Also, if they really are trying their destroy the angels, why would they recruit angels in the very first place?

"Something is definitely fishy going on around here. I can't just pinpoint it but I am sure of it."

As much as I wanted to suspect them about what is remotely wrong with this village, there are no conclusive evidence I have found just yet and I can't judge them on it based on the skulls I found in their homes. It's not a solid proof and if I needed a very concrete proof, I needed to check more all around town. The houses are all done and they didn't give me any definitive proof that I needed. Even if I looked around them one more time, it would just end up being quite redundant I guess.

So the next thing I did, is to check around the establishments of the village. They are big, and houses the businesses that a village needed to function properly. But since they are separated from the houses, perhaps I might find something if I check in those buildings.

Little did I know that the plan I am thinking to find evidence would immediately shift because of something.

Checking out every single buildings would have been troublesome so I decided to go and check the businesses first. The first one is the meat shop. The shop that sells meat from monsters that they eat for food. There are nothing wrong with the meat shop at first until I noticed that the meat they are selling are a bit smaller than most chunk of meat monsters should have. It was like they made it bite sized or something. I didn't think too much of it until I heard they are doing some slaughtering process happening in the slaughterhouse area.

Seeing that I have nothing to check in the meat shop, I decided to head to the slaughterhouse. Compared to the slaughterhouses I have seen where it is open to see for the public, the slaughterhouse here is closed off to the public and only the butchers are allowed inside. Thankfully, I am a shikigami right now and with the size of my shikigami, it's easy to fit in holes and gaps of doors.

But the moment I slip inside the slaughterhouse. I immediately understood why the slaughterhouse is closed. Because this slaughterhouse is indeed something causing some kind of slaughter. But not to animals, not to the monsters and not to the wildlife. Sure, I have seen a few of them around here and there but they are not that significant. What I am seeing here absolutely terrifies me. They are slaughtering their kind. In short, they convert other angels as meat. Yep, cannibalism.

I know that cannibalism is normal but for angels in Luminous? Very unlikely and this game have not given any of the humanoid races the trait to be cannibals. After all, they would risk offending people and that would definitely earn the wrath of them if they have it so seeing it happening before my eyes is horrific. The dead bodies also range from adult to children and I am wondering why they are able to do that.

Then, I remembered something before. It was an incident where some Angels in some cities and towns have gone completely missing and are never found. It stopped for a while but the missing people are never found. Is this perhaps the main reason those guys are missing? However, that is a vital clue already.

I searched around the slaughterhouse but I saw nothing but the dead bodies of the angels that are about to be slaughtered and nothing else. I left before they will do the slaughtering process. Even though it was just a game, slaughtering them is terrible day to have eyes for me so I immediately left.

As I was looking around, the village's bell started ringing. It's loud that enough that even back in the camp, I can hear the loud bell ringing above the local church. At first, I thought nothing of it as that is a typical and normal bell ringing. However, that changed when the behavior of the villager NPCs changed after hearing the bell.

All of the angels, staying inside their houses, working outside and anyone who heard them stopped whatever they are doing, whether it was cooking, working on some house, farming and other stuff, they completely abandoned them and started heading to the church. I might have understood it if they are reminded that a mass is going to happen and that it will begin a few more minutes later but to see everyone stopped doing what they are doing freaked me out. It was like they are just robots that are obeying a single line of command the moment the bell rang. They became mindless beings.

One more thing too. Even though the Angels are also known to be pretty religious, they don't perform a mass in the middle of the day and random days of the week. They always have specific schedule. Normal mass happens every end of the week in the game and they perform it on the morning before the morning sun comes out. Then, they will perform another mass when dusk falls. They follow these strict schedule and they don't haphazardly make a random schedule just because they wanted to.

Seeing the weird behavior of everyone, I decided to follow everyone on where they are going to check out why would they immediately stopped what they are doing just to go to wherever they are going. After following them, I found myself in front of the local church of the village. I have yet to check this place as I am busy with the other buildings but I am indeed going to check it. But seeing them come inside so enthusiastically, it made me wonder what is happening inside.

The church looked like a typical and normal local church most players would see in Luminous Continent's villages. Some might look a bit grandiose because the leaders of those villages tends to take care the buildings and improve them while some looks the same. As for this one though, although they looked the same, it wasn't maintained like most churches do. It is already about to collapse already and the wood looks so old that I never expected that this will be like this.

"This village really don't maintain their church huh? The walls even have some sort of blood mark on them and its very dirty. It was like it hasn't been properly maintained by other people at all and even the poorest villages has better looking villages than this one."

I was just muttering to me mindlessly when I noticed I spotted blood unconsciously. Why would the church have blood all of a sudden? While I was still inspecting the outside, I suddenly heard screams inside the church. A scream of terror and absolute blood curdling scream can be heard inside. Forget checking the things I noticed outside, I needed to see what is going on inside. But I was in for a big surprise.

Churches are meant to be a holy ground where the people can worship whoever gods they are believing in. It is considered as their holy sanctuary that are related to gods. However, this church is the opposite. It might be a church from the outside, but this place is actually the breeding ground of evil. And the villagers of this village is actually nurturing the evil within.