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It wasn’t long after the family had returned home, a few days had passed and people were moving but nothing crazy had happened yet.

[Syrus, you mentioned before about how you knew the monster was placed in the river on purpose.] Lilly asked, [Can you… provide some more information about that?]

[How?] (Syrus)

[I guess when you first discovered a similar event in your previous life?] (Eva)

[I would prefer to not talk about my past, it just feels weird to talk about it.] (Syrus)

[For you, it might be weird, but it could be relevant information to our current predicament.] (Luna)

Syrus relented and began to ramble about what she knew, [Sigh, Where do I even begin?]

(Switched Perspective – Syrus)

Where do I even begin?

[At the beginning?] (Lilly)

Then I will be rambling about too much necessary stuff.

[Just keep it to the relevant parts.] (Luna)

Don’t worry I will, I do want to make this quick.

So it was about when I was thirty-three, so I look pretty much like what you saw me initially when we awoke. The same red features I have now, but tall, muscular, mature and handsome.

[....] (Luna)

Now most of the information I got about the situation was obtained through the combination of friends, the crew, spies, researchers and our own gut feelings.

[You ‘got about the situation?’ I thought you experienced it?] (Luna)

Umm, we had to do a lot of examining to prove what we thought was happening was happening. If you catch my drift. It was a delicate subject, I mean, no one believed someone would willingly use monster corpses like that. It was so reckless, stupid, and insane, that people didn’t think about trying it.

I understand why people where we are now from, not knowing certain aspects of hunting monsters, like the aversion to water. Because that was something my old home honestly only proved recently. Mercenaries had the idea they disliked water but that was about it. Only with the added research that was basically forced by my side, thanks to another force using the corpses as poison, did the knowledge become public.

Now, not knowing the basics of how to remove a monster’s corpse is still stupid though.

[Anything else to add?] (Luna)

Yeah, yeah.

Now I’ll get to when I and my team first encounter a similar type of situation.

Me and my party were sent to investigate the nearby forest of a farming village that had gotten sick. Now when I say village, I don’t mean a small one like ours but a much bigger one. The reason we were sent to the forest was because it was the one unsafe place for people to look. It was kind of wartime, and traps had been placed there before, so it was deemed unsafe for ordinary villages.

[The sickness was also caused by a monster corpse?] (Lilly)

Yep, like ours, but much, much worse. People were not looking good… Faces pale green, vomiting, bleeding that wouldn’t stop…

The same logic was applied, people didn’t think a monster corpse caused the problem, cause why would they? If there was a monster corpse in the forest, then simply part of the forest would’ve died and that be it.

I called it a forest, and it was, but it was kind of swampy with a big lake in the middle. This lake was connected to the village's water supply for drinking and watering the crops.

My team of five walked through the whole forest for about five hours. Looking under trees and bushes for something that could’ve caused the problem, and dismantling any traps we found along the way. The current theory at the time was there was a magic item in the forest, poisoning it, or that someone’s gift was doing it.

The hardest part to search was the lake. The water was dark, thick, and honestly just swampy, so it was hard to look inside, but after searching for hours and finding nothing else in the forest I had to at least look deeper into it.

I focus in on the water, quickly using my fire to clear a part of it and my blood gift to focus my eyesight. It took a few attempts but then I saw a vague figure at the bottom of the lake…It was hard to make out even with my eyes…But I was able to recognise the shape…I saw it too often after all.

Anger rapidly filled me, and I screamed and called my party to gather immediately.

This began a long operation to remove the corpse from the bottom of the lake. Afterwards, as I mentioned we got researchers to learn more about why a monster would be down there. But as I mentioned, we all had a gut feeling it was purposely put there.

The water diluted the poison so that it didn’t kill everything, but due to its close proximity to other wildlife, it didn’t matter much. Instead of everything dying, everything just got very sick… which caused many things to eventually die, a slow painful death.

The only good thing about monster poison is that it only affects a relatively small range, but water while simultaneously weakening it also extends its influence to affect so much more.

[You said that the act was so stupid and reckless that people wouldn’t even think about doing it.] Luna asked, [So what happened to the people that did it?]

Depends on who you are talking about.

If it was the people who placed the body at the bottom of the lake? Then they are dead. I made sure of that.

Then if it was the people who ordered them, I’m not as sure. They would be in bloody boiling hot water for many reasons at this point. I would be lying to say I wasn’t curious at all to see how they ended up.

[Do you have any more information?] (Luna)

Nah, that’s all I got.