Chapter 86: The Rosarium (2)
"Head to The Rosarium."
Kestrel was looking at the map in her hand. Before splitting up, the alpha had told her to go to The Rosarium, specifically at night.
"There’s a guy there, find him, and maybe all of this will make sense," the alpha had said, closing his eyes in sadness. "In my most painful times, I’ve seen a person, a tree, with golden roots controlling everything in this world, like a spider web."
Kestrel scanned the map. There seemed to be only one place linked to roses, so she carefully headed towards it.
For Kestrel, the Erdtree’s Polluted Zone was tougher than any she’d been to before.
Here, strange creatures wandered. These odd creatures were incredibly strong, their main job to capture and torture humans. The biggest issue was they weren’t human nor actual animals, so Kestrel’s tendrils couldn’t pick up any feelings from them.
Walking in a world without emotions was like walking in darkness for Kestrel. She couldn’t "see," "sense," or "touch" anything ahead of time. It was as if she was blindfolded and defenseless, with dangerous creatures ready to attack her from the shadows at any second. Luckily, although she couldn’t see them, most of the time, they also couldn’t see her.
Despite being cautious, Kestrel still got minor injuries. She paused to bandage her face and arm, catching her breath before looking at the Rosarium in front of her.
At first, Kestrel had thought that The Rosarium would be a garden or some sort of farm. It wasn’t until she got closer that she realized she had totally misunderstood—the term "roses" had a pretty negative meaning here.
The run-down steel gate, the tall walls on all sides, the scattered papers along the long street, the messy lanterns hanging outside the houses... this was not a nice place.
Kestrel remembered a time at the Military Administration when Ren was falsely accused and tied to the gallows for trial.
One alpha had tauntingly said with a mean laugh, "I think a bad guy like this should be sent to serve at Rose Camp. Let him pay his dues to the country, working off his guilt until he drops."
The surrounding alphas burst into laughter, their excitement twisted as they spat out offensive words.
The Empire had many camps—the First Camp, Second Camp, the Royal Guard... and there had once been an army based in this town. But no real military camp would be named after a flower.
"The Rose Camp"—before standing in front of this iron gate, Kestrel had no actual idea of such a place. It wasn’t until she arrived and saw the worn-out words on the gate that she suddenly understood the deep and nasty joke behind people’s mockery of Ren.
This was one of the Empire’s military brothels.
Sometimes, the evil from humans could be worse than monsters.
When Kestrel entered the Polluted Zone, it was the "daytime" period inside the Zone. The sky was cloudless and sunless, with a dim grayish light coming from an unknown source, like a fake screen.
She hid and wandered around for quite a while, only seeing empty streets and the deserted "The Rosarium."
When Kestrel stood in front of the gate of The Rosarium, the sky suddenly darkened, as if someone had drawn the curtains. A huge crescent moon rose into the night sky. The shattered silver moon was huge, cold, broken, and only a curved arc was left. But it was so big that it almost split the entire dark sky.
As "night" fell with the rise of the silver moon, the empty streets started to light up with streetlights. One by one, houses along the road lit up. In the white-lit homes, whispers began to murmur.
Countless shadows appeared in the lit windows—some people were reading in attics, a family of three was eating by the window, an old man was watching TV with a cat in his arms, a young man was brushing his teeth by the window... It was as if this place had never been polluted. The town’s busy hum, laughter, and warmth were still just as they had always been, and so were the pain and dirt.
The iron gate of the Rosarium lit up with colorful lights, and rows of red lanterns in front of the houses inside came to life. Laughter, music, and soft songs came from inside. The noise got louder, and the movement of people inside the rusty iron gate became more clear, as they moved among the bustling lights.
Everyone who came here was laughing, it was a place of fun and pleasure.
However, in the world covered in dim lights, apart from the Rosarium which was strangely busy, the road outside the gate was still empty.
Every door on the sides of the streets was tightly closed, every window shut. The lights shone in the windows, the shadows on the windows continued their lives. It seemed as if no one dared to open the door and peek at the outside world.
A long line of bull-headed monsters with long knives appeared at the street corner. Unlike the "daytime", at "night", they wore matching outfits, their eyes glowed like red lights, and they held shiny sharp knives as if they were ceremonial weapons, approaching from the street corner.
At night, they could surprisingly ignore Kestrel’s tendril’s shield. The leading bull-headed monster just paused briefly before it noticed Kestrel, standing alone in the middle of the street. It let out a mad noise, leading the group to charge at Kestrel.
Kestrel made a quick decision and squeezed into the Rosarium, with its colorful lights, pushing her way into the busy crowd. She brushed past many people, catching their smell, feeling their human emotions.
She didn’t know whether these "guests" were human or mutants, but at least for now, their emotions, behaviors, clothes, and appearance were similar to hers.
They seemed like they had always lived here, visiting this place every night, so Kestrel decided to consider them human for now.
Kestrel blended into the "crowd" at the Rosarium, and the bull-headed monsters also squeezed in. They held their long knives, pushing through the busy crowd, their eyes red, looking for the intruder, Kestrel.
As Kestrel ran deeper into the Rosarium, they started to mix up Kestrel with the other people, their actions started to slow, and the distance between them and Kestrel gradually grew.
