Chapter 81: Blame
Priam forced air into his lungs. Ten, twenty times. Only when the oxygen burned in his chest did his vision recover some clarity.
He advanced.
The world in front of him still seemed like a blur, but those red stains on the ground were engraved into his soul. Each fallen body was a cold blade piercing through his spirit.
His legs weakened. He stopped. The smell of iron seemed to turn the air into a corrosive poison.
Priam closed his eyes, steadied his steps, and continued forward. The hiding place, once a refuge of peace, was now a ruined cemetery.
He kept advancing, hovering silently above the ground. Farther ahead, in the heart of that ruined tribe, he saw the scene that would haunt him forever.
It was a small hiding place inside a tree, which was now open and exposed. Inside it were half a dozen figures...
They were the young ones of the tribe.
They were hugging each other. There were no cuts, no blood, no signs of struggle.
It seemed that, after realizing there was no way out, the young ones had done something to destroy their cores and extinguish their lives simultaneously. They had chosen the void over the hands of the hunters.
Unlike the adults, whose destroyed cores still held good value, the sacrifice of the undeveloped young ones made their remains useless. So, the killers simply left their bodies there, focusing on what was valuable.
The suffocating feeling returned, crushing Priam’s chest with the force of a mountain.
Seeing those young ones... he fell to his knees. One hand grabbed his own hair, the other pressed against his chest over his heart. He felt thousands of poisonous needles piercing his nerves.
His body trembled uncontrollably. His teeth chattered. He dug his fingers into his scalp until the skin broke, but the physical pain was nothing compared to what was tearing him apart inside.
Hours before, those same little beings had looked at him with an admiration that bordered on devotion. Their eyes were mirrors of purity and anxiety. They absorbed every word of the exaggerated stories Priam told, leaning their bodies forward, as if afraid the wind would steal even a single fragment of his adventures.
Everyone in that tribe lived in the shadows, crushed by fear of everything and everyone. They had no hope of a different life, only the silent desire for the world to forget them.
Priam slowly stood up after long minutes of paralysis. However, the man who rose seemed like an empty shell, lifeless, carrying a twisted expression.
He tried to look away, then his vision was drawn to the great garden, the place where he had spent most of his time during his stay.
The flowers, once vibrant and well cared for, had been trampled and scattered messily across the ground. There were no more "butterflies" that used to dance there... everything reeked of death.
He saw several fallen trees in a corner and approached.
There, he saw a female Pristine Wild-Spirit. Thin, old, with her wrinkled face fixed in an expression of eternal calm.
"Murima..." Priam whispered.
He raised his face and closed his eyes. Murima was the leader, the elder Luvinah respected so much.
"I’m sorry," he said, his voice failing. "I brought this disaster to you. Please... rest."
Logic said it was not his fault. Their fate had been sealed the moment Luvinah was captured and taken to the auction.
If she had been taken by someone else, this entire tribe would cease to exist within a thousand years.
And even though Priam had saved her and brought her back... that clan of demons who held the auction would sell the location to anyone willing to buy it.
Justice? That did not exist.
The only way they would not have sold it was if the buyer had been someone very powerful. But Priam? They did not care about him at all.
Even knowing all this... Priam’s mind could not stop blaming itself.
If he had not brought Luvinah back, everyone there would die slowly over a thousand years. Maybe... some miracle could happen and save them. There was a chance.
’Could I have done more? Could I have been faster?’
An apology was all that remained.
He searched the surroundings, his senses sharpened by adrenaline and pain. He looked for a sign, a movement, any survivor. Just one would be enough.
In front of the Goddess’s temple, he found the first warrior.
The man was holding a broken rusty sword; the metal was bathed in dried blood. On his back, a cavernous hole revealed the brutality of the attack. His Pristine Core had obviously been taken, just like all the adults.
The killers had no mercy. They came to harvest as much as they could.
Priam looked around. His fists trembled violently.
Around the temple lay many of the tribe’s adults. The bodies were mangled, covered in marks of desperate resistance. All of them had their eyes open. Fear and hatred were frozen in their pupils.
At the center of everything, he found bodies in a deplorable state. The earth was overturned. They had fought until their last breath to protect the heart of the village. It was there that they had possibly captured Luvinah.
’This goddess... if she really exists, why did she let this happen?’
’Why... did such good people have to suffer so much?’
The questions hammered his mind. A mixture of rage, pain, and self-blame consumed him.
The reality was one of blood. Because of his intervention, they had all suffered a terrible death.
"..."
Priam closed his eyes. He remained motionless, letting the silence and the weight of everything crush him for several minutes.
When he finally opened his eyelids, the light in his pupils had changed.
’Wait a minute... Luvinah should be alive!’
As if a bucket of ice water had been thrown over his senses, Priam raised his head.
He reviewed every corpse, every pale face. Luvinah was not among them. If the killers wanted profit, she was the main prize.
Taking her alive would be more profitable than taking her dead. She could not resist or do anything, so there was no danger to them at all.
Priam moved instantly, leaving the ruined hiding place behind like a black blur.
His eyes shone with a dangerous intensity. He activated all the control over the wind element and concentration he had.
His mind cleared, his perception was pushed to the extreme limit, expanding like a shockwave through the Infernal Forest. He examined every inch of soil around the hiding place, every blade of grass, searching for even the smallest trace.
Those people knew the value of a Primordial Pristine Wild-Spirit. They had certainly prepared chains and seals to capture her alive. They would never allow her to die before being sold or used. And Luvinah... she was strong. She would stay alive, endure any pain, waiting for a chance.
"!"
Suddenly, something different was found.
When he reached the spot, he saw fresh blood. The crimson liquid on the ground had not yet been absorbed by the earth; the shine of moisture showed that it was recent. A little farther ahead, another stain, and the trail of branches broken carelessly.
’They can’t have gone too far!’
*Woooooosh!*
Priam cut through the air with so much speed that the pressure forced him to close his eyes for a moment.
’I need to find her. I need to find her!!’
At the height of his agony and determination, without him realizing it, the Nexus Seed inside his soul reacted to his unstable emotional state.
A green screen appeared in front of him. But Priam completely ignored it.
He did not notice something strange happening.
The nature around him seemed to open a path for him, and the wind he used became much easier to use. The speed he reached was much greater than what he should have been able to achieve with the same amount of Ether.
It did not take long.
Amid the colossal trees, he felt the vibrations.
It was a group ahead, moving with the confidence of those who had already secured the cargo.
