Once Lilith had laughed her fill, she began rummaging for the map.
“Where is the map?” Lilith searched her person. “Maybe it slipped out of my sleeve when I fell just now.”
She lay flat on the ground, pushing aside the withered leaves to search through them.
“Where did it go... I clearly had it in my hand a moment ago...”
With her rear in the air, her face was almost pressed against the ground.
After searching for a full three minutes, she finally discovered the map, crumpled into a ball at the base of a tree.
“Found it!”
She pulled the map out from under the fallen leaves, smoothed it out, and spread it on the ground before sitting cross-legged in front of it.
Then, she froze.
This map was unlike any she had ever seen in her previous life.
In her previous life, maps had indicators for directions and buildings, and the scale was always clearly marked.
But the map before her eyes...
Lilith rotated the map.
Then rotated it again.
And then rotated it back.
“...What the hell is this?”
She whispered to herself.
The map was covered in dense symbols that were completely incomprehensible. She could read the written labels, though—she guessed it was likely a language skill that came with her reincarnation. However, the place names were scribbled so messily it looked like they had been written with a left hand.
Roads? None. Scale? Also none.
“Are the mapmakers in the Demon Realm all descendants of the abstract school?”
She flipped the map over to check the back. It was blank.
She flipped it back again.
This time she examined it even more closely, spending about ten minutes on it.
Finally...
She hadn't discerned a single thing. Helplessly, she tossed the map aside.
Then, she began to ponder another matter.
“Once I reach the human world, I need to learn a few spells first.”
She began to count on her fingers.
“A flight spell, and a teleportation spell.”
She held up two fingers and waved them in front of her face.
“These two are the most practical. I'll learn them first.”
She tucked one finger away.
“I don't need offensive magic for now; it's not like I'm going there to fight.”
She tucked the other finger away, holding her empty hands out in front of her.
“After all,”
The corners of her mouth curled up.
“who could refuse the feeling of flying through the sky?”
She looked up at the canopy above. A few birds flew overhead, the sound of their flapping wings crisp and free.
Lilith stared at the birds for a few seconds as images began to surface in her mind.
She spread her arms and leaped from a cliff, the wind howling past her ears.
“Hehe.”
She let out a giggle.
Then, immediately realizing she was laughing like an idiot, she quickly covered her mouth with her hand and glanced around.
There was no one. The forest was silent, save for the sound of the wind.
She lowered her hand, but she still couldn't suppress the smile on her face.
“Flying... something I didn't even dare dream of in my previous life.”
She stood up, brushed the dust off her rear, and began to wander aimlessly through the forest.
As she walked,
something caught the corner of her eye.
There seemed to be an area where the color wasn't quite right.
Lilith stopped and looked down for a closer inspection.
It was blood.
A trail of blood stretched out in a certain direction, disappearing intermittently behind some bushes.
The blood wasn't fresh, but it wasn't completely dry either.
The edges were still slightly seeping, as if it had been left not long ago.
Lilith stood where she was, staring at the blood for three seconds.
Her first instinct was to turn around and leave.
She was here on vacation, not to meddle in other people's business.
But her feet didn't move.
Her gaze followed the direction of the blood trail.
She began to wonder whose blood was behind the bushes and if they were still alive.
“...I'll just take one look and then leave,”
she whispered to herself, as if searching for a reasonable excuse.
Then she set off, following the direction of the blood.
Her bare feet made almost no sound as they stepped on the fallen leaves.
Lilith hunched over, trying to make herself as small as possible, keeping an eye on the bloodstains as she walked.
The trail was intermittent; sometimes there was only a drop every few paces, and sometimes a large patch appeared suddenly, as if someone had stopped there.
After about fifty paces, she saw a corpse.
There was a long wound on the back, slashing from the left shoulder all the way to the right waist. The edges were clean, made by a sharp weapon.
Lilith crouched down to take a look.
There wasn't much of a stir in her heart; she had seen death far too many times in the hospital.
In three years, the patient in the next bed had changed five times; four had passed away, and one had been transferred.
To her, death had long ceased to be something that could frighten her.
She stood up and continued forward.
After another twenty paces, she found a second corpse.
His chest seemed to have been pierced by something. His eyes were wide open in death, his expression frozen in the terror of his final moment.
Lilith looked away and kept walking.
A third. A fourth. A fifth.
The further she went, the more corpses there were.
They had died in various ways, but all the bodies faced the same direction, as if they had all been running toward or looking at a certain place before they died.
Lilith's pace slowed.
She didn't really want to go any further.
But the blood trail continued to stretch on.
“...Just one last stretch.”
She gritted her teeth and, crouching low, ducked into a dense thicket of bushes.
On the other side of the bushes was a relatively open clearing.
Lilith crouched behind the bushes, curling her body into a ball and exposing only half her face as she peered out through the gaps in the leaves.
Three people were standing in the clearing.
They wore black robes with their hoods pulled low, obscuring their faces. However, their builds and postures exuded a disciplined, cold aura.
The three of them stood in a triangle, each holding a sword with blood still clinging to the blades.
Opposite them,
Lilith's gaze moved past the men in black and landed on the other end of the clearing.
There were two people there.
A young girl.
And an elderly man.
The girl looked to be fifteen or sixteen, with blonde hair and blue eyes. At this moment, however, her eyes were wide and filled with terror.
The elderly man stood in front of her.
The old man's figure was hunched; he had at least seven or eight wounds on his body, and his arms trembled slightly, clearly no longer able to hold onto anything.
Yet, he still stood before the girl.
Using his swaying body, he acted as a shield between the girl and the three men in black.
Crouching in the bushes, Lilith held her breath as she watched the scene unfold.
No one spoke in the clearing.
Lilith's hands tightened instinctively; she didn't know if she should intervene.
She didn't know if this was a vendetta or a robbery.
“Should I get involved? Never mind, let's observe for a bit first,” Lilith thought, biting her finger.
Rate on N.U.
