Afterlife Dream

In my wildest dream, I had never once thought that I would one day be captured by a bunch of NPCs and dragged across the jungle.

The three girls were separated from me and grouped together. The men dragged them around some distance in front of me. I could only see the tops of their headpieces bobbing up and down from where I stood.

Despite handling us roughly, the men did not care much about what we did. Possibly because they already took our weapons away. We did not have much choice. Either come with them or be trapped inside the loop forever.

An interesting thing to note was that they did not march to the north but the east side instead.

I opened my user interface screen to access the map. This time the four green dots were distinctly moving in the east direction. Or to be more exact we were moving along a certain distance from the center of the map.

Along our trip to wherever they were taking us, we encountered a few more men with spears who were standing guard at various locations. After a short exchange of greetings at various intersections, we were further ushered along the path.

We continued walking in the same direction until we stumbled upon a clearing.

"Hoo!" The leader shouted, holding a hand up to tell everyone to stop marching.

On his right side, there was a huge stone with weird inscriptions on it. The leader crossed both of his arms before his chest and said something which could only be the password. The huge stone then turned to the side and revealed a hole in the loop.

How did I recognize the hole, you ask? It's because the scenery past the loop was completely different from the one within the loop.

There were no trees beyond the loops. No dark green leaves formed a natural ceiling above our heads. The area had instead been turned into a settlement area with a lot of straw huts that stood side-by-side. There were, by estimation, around forty huts at least that were scattered all over the area. On top of that, the sun was not shining. Thick grey clouds dominated the sky and prevented the sun's rays from going through. It was different from the rolling dark clouds that came before a thunderstorm. These grey clouds were just there.

Directly behind the stone was a grassless path that cut through the middle of the settlement area. As we were ushered in a direction, curious onlookers left their huts to take a look at us. They gathered at both sides of the path, looking almost as if they were welcoming us into their community.

The children pointed at us excitedly and shouted something at their parents. The adults were extremely quiet. They gave us strange looks that I could not decipher. Their expression was rather gloomy.

The men took us to what I understood to be their prison. There were two side-by-side cells. I was thrown into one, and the three girls were crammed into the other. The only good thing about it was that we could at least talk after they left us alone.

"Antares, pssst. Are you okay?" Cecilia grabbed the iron bars in front of her. She looked as if she was trying to push her head past the iron bars.

"I am good. How are you all?"

HellWitch also pressed her face at the iron bars. "I think we should break out as soon as possible."

For once, all of us agreed. I did not know about the three girls, but I spent a lot of time watching TV. In the movies where modern explorers were caught by tribal folk, the tribal folk usually had something sinister in mind. Although the modern explorers were always able to escape on TV, I was pretty sure that things did not go that smoothly in real life. Or in this case, in Afterlife Dream.

But the pressing question was, how to break out?

HellWitch summoned an extra sword from her inventory and tried to cut the thick iron bars. The friction between the sword blade and the iron bars not only produced a high-pitched sound but also did barely any damage to the iron bars.

"It doesn't work," HellWitch informed us in desperation.

In the end, we slumped back against our prison wall and rethought our options. And then, the door creaked open and a young woman carrying a tray of food appeared. She had with her four bowls of mysterious broth. Silently, she pushed one bowl through a small opening at my cell door, and three other bowls to the next-door cell.

"What's that?" Cecilia asked while wrinkling her nose. "I don't want to eat it. It looks poisonous."

In my opinion, it did not look poisonous. It just did not taste good.

The young woman gasped upon hearing Cecilia's words. She pinned Cecilia with a glare. "This soup is made by my grandmother! Why would we poison the sacrificial offerings? We don't want to offend the God of Harvest!"

All of us widened our eyes and gaped at the young woman.

So first of all, she understood and spoke English perfectly. Just like the leader did.

Second of all, did she just say sacrificial offerings? What God of Harvest?

"Whoa whoa whoa, Lady! Wait! What do you mean with sacrificial offerings?" Cecilia suddenly did not care about the poisonous or non-poisonous soup anymore. "What God of Harvest? Why do you want to sacrifice us???"

The young woman frowned and pressed her lips into a thin line. She looked slightly conflicted. I guessed that she was only told to deliver the food and not chat with the prisoners. But conflicted was good. That meant that she did want to talk to us, maybe to quell her curiosity. Either way, I was determined to get some answers out of her.

"Please tell us," I begged. "There is no harm telling us. Look, we are behind bars."

The young woman stared at us one by one and then started to inspect our cells. After making sure that we indeed had not dug out a secret tunnel out of the cells, she decided to give us some explanation.

"Our land is cursed.

The Sun God has seen it fit to deny us the sun because our previous Chief offended His wife, the God of Harvest.

The God of Harvest will only grant us a few days of sun after we make a sacrificial offering in a ritual ceremony to honor Her."

"So you have been killing people to get some sunshine?" HellWitch asked in disbelief. "How could you?"

The young woman's face reddened from HellWitch's words. She clearly felt guilty, but she still clenched her fists and retorted, "We have no other choice. Besides, you are all intruders to our territory."

"Look, we just want to leave," Cecilia tried to mediate between HellWitch and the young tribal woman. "Can we not work this out? There gotta be some other way for us to help. We are more useful alive than dead."

The young woman twiddled her thumbs while staring at her own feet. "If you want to go back, then you should cooperate. The Grand Master once said that outsiders can only return to their original world by becoming sacrificial offerings."

All of us wrinkled our faces in disgust. What kind of theory was that?

"How many other outsiders have you guys, uh, sacrificed?" I asked.

"Three," the young woman said, holding three fingers up.

Three people. Three players. The three players who went missing.

"Who exactly is this Grand Master that you just mentioned?" HellWitch asked.

The young woman put on a complicated expression again.

"We don't really know who he is. He came to us after the great calamity happened. He said that he could help mediate between us and the God of Harvest. When he mentioned that we had to make some sacrificial offerings to the God, we asked how and then he set up a trap around the island to lure offerings.

"The loop?" Cecilia softly whispered. The so-called trap was none other than the loop.

Having answered many questions to appease us, the young woman huffed and started to walk away.

"Finish your soup," she poked her head one last time through the door crack, giving us a bunch of judgemental looks. "If you decide to go hungry, it is your problem. Just don't go around and tell that my grandmother's soup is poisonous or anything."

The door shut with a thump.

Whether the soup was poisonous or not was not even the main issue here. We were about to be sacrificed to the God of Harvest!

None of us touched the soup. We just waited in silence. I eventually fell asleep from exhaustion. A series of rattling sounds woke me up a few hours later. A couple of men with spears came into the prison and were opening the cell doors.

The leader was also with them.

"It is time," he announced.

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