[The Divine Puddle has been summoned.]
A voice delivering a 'message' could be heard inside Allen's head as the ground Infront of him suddenly turned to mush and clean water began to spring up from the ground and creating a puddle that was 4ft by 4ft.
As the horde or zombie rats began charging forward in an instinctive need to bite Allen, he simply stepped forward into the puddle as a cooling and relaxing sensation washed over him.
Without any though for safety or precaution, the rats all ran head first into the Divine puddle as their bodies were melting apart as their bodies maintained by the thick demonic energy simply stopped existing, leaving behind only their skeletons which took a little longer to dissolve.
With Allen acting as bait, it took just over thirty seconds for all of the rats to enter the Divine puddle. Despite the fact that this puddle had over a hundred dissolving rat skeletons sunk at the bottom, it was still perfectly clear and radiated Divinity.
"Oh, my goodness...I heard that some Priests can soar through the air and can even heal a recently dead person back to life, but this…"
"Exactly! You should feel more grateful that an imperial Prince is your grave keeper and bow be-" staggering slightly, Allen caught himself with his shovel
"A-are you alright Prince!" Gril said as he rushed over.
"I'm fine, just over did it on my Divinity expenditure."
Not wanting the rats Demonic energy to potentially dilute his divine puddle and possibly reach him, Allen poured a lot more Divinity than necessary into it.
Looking at the Divine puddle, even the farmers could feel the Overwhelming holy Mana that existed in the water. As he looked at the clear water with rat skeletons at the bottom, he remembered something from one of the books he read in the monastery.
Dipping his hands into the puddle and scooping some water up with his hand, he took a sip as a slight sweet and refreshing taste entered his mouth! His slightly fatigued muscles from hiking to the village slightly receeded as he felt his Divinity recovered slightly!
Dumping out his leather waterskin, Allen began filling it up with the powerful Holy water.
Unlike normal Holy water that was created by multiple priests chanting prayers over regular water and injecting some divinity into it, Allen's Holy Water was basically liquefied Divinity!
"You two, gather up as many containers you can and begin distributing this water to remaining villagers. A finger sized portion should be enough to cure them of the plague, but give it to everyone at once and clean the entire village before hand or else the plague will simply come back."
"You… want them to drink this?" The farmers stared at the holy water puddle, half dissolved bones now floating around after Allen drank from it
"The holy water purified everything, and I don't think anyones in the position to mind stuff like that right now," the farmers seemed to give up as they nodded their heads.
"…We'll distribute them right away." Gril said as he picked up the overturned well bucket and cut the rope, using it to scoop up the Holy Water.
Walking over to the collapsed house that the rats were swarming, Allen noticed that the rats had been gnawing on the floorboard.
Heftying his shovel in the air, he slammed it down on the weakened floor and began prying it open. He used the tool's handle like a lever and pushed it down, causing the wooden floorboards to shatter open.
It was then–something reddish-black suddenly pounced on him, pushing him to the floor as a powerful vice grip began squeezing his shoulder blade.
Sitting on top of him and Brandishing a sharp kitchen knife, was a girl covered in scarlet blood.
A pair of icy-cold eyes were now looking down on Allen, and without a shred of hesitation she quickly stabbed down with her knife.
'[Hell Fire]!'
Divinity quickly began to coalesce Infront of Allen, but Instead of a Demonic fire like the abilities name would allude to, a thin sheet of Divine Ice manifested on his neck and blocked the stab!
Despite being ice, Allen could control the temperature and the density of it with his Divinity!
The girl barely let go of the blade in time before the growing ice could latch on to her, causing her to jump look at the boy in shock and anger.
"I thought this village was abandoned!" Allen said rolling up, cold sweat trickled down his face as the ice immediately melt at his command.
Allen looked up at the bloodied girl who seemed to be around his age.
"How the hell did she survive this disaster... Wait! Did she survive?" Now that the adrenaline wears off slightly, Allen could focus enough to sense Demonic energy circulating through her!
It took him a second to realize she was still alive and looking at her extremely thin body that had rat fur and bites all over it, Allens mind whirled as he quickly deduced what happened.
'This plague killed most of the crop animals and with this cold weather making crops extremely hard to grow here, most villagers were starving. This girl must've went underground to escape the horde or rats, but was eventually forced to eat them to survive!'
The girls didn't blink as there was a dark murkiness in her eyes, if not for the fact she attacked using a knife instead of biting him, he'd have assumed she already was a zombie!
"Are you still alive in there? Why did you attack me?" Cold sweat drenched Allen's back as he barely had any Divinity left after his Divine puddle.
"Die..." A cold-blooded murmur came Allen's way. The girl, who's expression was completely enotionless, glared at Allen with eyes full of murderous intent as she charged forward with her claw like nails.
The girl moved at superhuman speeds and Allen could barely track her, but thankfully he didnt need to see her exact movements to stop her!
Seeing the girl charging straight at him like those mindless rats, he immediately activated his [Hellfire] ability with most of his remaining Divinity!
The Divine ice sprouted from his foot in front of him, causing the charging girl to lose balance momentarily and allowing Allen to capitalize! With the shovel positioned in a batters stance, Allen slammed it into the head of the girl as a resounding thud rang out!
The girl crashed behind him as Allen shakily touched his neck in fear. The girls killing intent was so thick and heavy that he thought she actually did stab him!.
After confirming that there was no wound, he quickly turned his head to look at the girl. She was now lying on the floor of her broken house, her body shaking but her eyes staring daggers at him in defiance
Her crash had kicked over large amounts of debris, allowing Allen to see two corpses currently covered by large sheets.
It was a pair, an adult man and woman. They had bite marks that evidently came from the rats, but more importantly, smallish knife stab wounds could be seen everywhere on them.
'Holy shit, this girl… she must've killed her parents that turned into zombies. Then, she must've hid herself below the floor and endured until now while fighting for her life.'
"What happened? Imperial Prince?!" The two farmers hurriedly rushed inside. They saw the girl covered in blood and shouted out in sheer astonishment.
"Charlotte?! Oh thank you Goddess Gaia! Oh, goodness me!" Allen looked at the two and grumbled in pure dissatisfaction.
"Your Prince was fighting for his life while you were dawdling about! I thought you said this village was empty!" Before Allen had been only been acting like scumbag imperial Prince, but now he was starting to dislike these incompetent farmers.
They had been constantly making problems for him by not cremating the dead and allowing the plague to spread, now he'd almost died and they were no were to be seen!
"T-there was no one here when we were here last time we checked here three days ago." Gril said as he carefully approached her.
"More like you didn't find her three days ago" Allen said harshly as the two farmers felt immense guilt.
'She must not have gotten any sleep, water and was forced to eat zombie rats for at least three days. To survive all of that she must have a strong will to live!'
The two farmers got closer and cried out after spotting blood trickling out of her scalp, the girl tried to move forward to attack but immediately winced in pain. Her entire body was in pain and she'd definitely been given a concussion from the pain, she didn't even know what was happening.
"Dont get too worked up, she'll alive." Allen said as he used his shovel to slam the knife away from her.
With careful control, he grabbed the girl by the foot and dragged her face first into the ground to making sure she couldn't bite or scratch him.
"I-Imperial Prince?! What are you…?!"
Before they could finish, Allen had already tossed the girl into the puddle filled with holy water.
Her eyes widened in pain as the demonic energy in her body began to sizzle under the Holy water. She tried to crawl away but was quickly stopped as Allen grabbed her blood soaked hair.
"Drink..."
Gril quicky approached "She's still a young child! Her wounds are serious, if you handle her so roughly…"
"Young child my ass, shes probably older than me and just tried to kill me! I don't need to treat my attempted murderer so kindly, now do I?"
"B-but…"
"Enough! Like I said, drink it" Allen unconsciously filled what remaining mana he had left into his voice, causing a small pressure to weigh down on them.
"Your body is being corrupted by demonic energy, your going to die soon and immediately become a zombie, probably a powerful one at that. So you either drink this, or I'm making sure you can't become a zombie."
The Holy water on her skin seemed to rouse her conscious as tear began pouring out of her eyes.
"My Mom… Mom is…"
"She's dead"
"Dad… My… dad…"
"He's dead too."
As if a puppet had its strings cut, the girl fell face first into the puddle with her mouth still closed. With the Holy water burning her face and body, she still refused to open her mouth to drink and instead accepting this painful death.
"You struggled so hard to survive up till now, and yet your choosing to die?"
".…"
"If you drink this water, there's a chance you'll survive."
"..."
"To think you'd rather give up on life rather than get revenge against what killed your parents." Allen said the one thing he knew that would gather her attention.
"!!!" A flicker of light appeared in the girls dead eyes and Allen knew he got her.
"This plague is not normal, these rats are not normal either... Something or someone has to be doing this, they are responsible for the death of your parents and all the other villagers"
This seemed to be the keywords that made her move as she gave Allen one last look before opening her mouth, and swallowing a large gulp of Holy water
The moment the liquid entered her throat, her entire body began convulsing and spasming as her screams filled the air. Allen was forced to push her head down into the water as her natural reaction to this overwhelming pain was to leave.
Allen could sense the Demonic and Divine energy were having a war within her body, clear sound of bones breaking could be heard coming from her body.
Her sickening shrieks of agony filled air and made all of Allen's hairs standing on end, the only upside to her screams was that when she finally exhausted all of her air, she unconsciously breathed in more Holy water that went straight into her lungs.
"W-what the hell is happening to Charlotte? What the hell are you doing!" The younger farmer screamed out, he took a step forward to stop Allen only for Divine ice to spring forth and freeze him in his tracks.
"Demonic energy is coursing throughout her entire being, everything from her toenails to hair have it and my Divinity in the water is fighting it iff. Wherever the two energy's clash within her body, it destroys and breaks that part of her body... But my Holy water seems to be healing every broken body part..."
Both farmers got the chills at Allen's explanation as they felt immense sadness for her. Allen released the ice as both the young and old farmer quickly got down on their knees and began praying to Goddes Gaia.
The girls skin could be seen melting off as a new layer quickly appeared and the constant sound of her bones repeatedly being shattered and healed up filled Allen with dread.
'I'd rather die than experience the agony that she is going through! If she doesn't survive this, her suffering will have been for nothing....' Allen hoped she survived this, not because he particular cared about her life but the idea of accidently torturing someone to death was too much for him.
Five minutes passed as she still shrieked out, then Ten minutes, then thirty, it was only after an hour and a half did her horrifying screams gradually die down.
With her convulsions stopping, she had completely passed and Allen quickly pulled her out of the water and was pleasantly surprised to find her still breathing!
"She survived it!" Allen said as he pushed the girl's previously black but now white hair away from her nose to breath better.
"Thank you Goddess Gaia for saving this child!"
"Thank you Gaia, thank you!" The two farmers had tears in their eyes.
'I'm the one that did all the work'
"Since you guys are so happy, take her with you."
"Pardon us??"
The duo tilted their heads.
"She's your fellow villager, isn't she?"
"Y-yes, that's true. However we were forced to move to another village, we barely have any food and are living in a kind mans storage shed."
Allens straightforward glare caused them to shed buckets of cold sweat, their gazes lowered while they spoke their peace.
"We'll try our best to talk to the folks from the neighbouring village, I'm sure some old lady would love to adopt her"
"Good! And remember, distribute the holy water to both of the surviving villages."
"You mean this water?" Gril said in suspicion
As the farmers looked at the puddle of holy water responsible for causing the girls hour long suffering, their complexions paled.
"That only happened because she had demonic energy, unless... you villages havent resorted to eat Zombies to survive have you?!"
"N-no, your highness! That's not it at all!" The farmers quickly shook their heads side to side.
"In that case, you don't have to worry about any side effects. So, let's prioritise trying to stop this plague first," Allen said before dusting himself off
" Oh, right! I imagine whatever's causing all of our troubles will once again use the rats, tell both villages to set out as many rat traps as possible. We just need to survive long enough so that the outside world notices our silence from being cut off!"
"We understand, your highness."
"Good! I'll be on my way then." Allen said in a hurry.
After quickly walking back to his monastery, Allen immediately began boarding up the cracks in the walls and roof, making sure theres no gap for rats to crawl in.
'If I was the intelligent being that is causing this unusual plague, the first thing I would do after findings out there was a Priest that used Divinity nearby, would be to kill him!'
Allen knew he was probably the biggest target and immediately began to prepare his defenses!
Allen began walking to the creek where he bathed himself and began using his Inventory to carry large rocks back and built a circular barricade around the monastery, leaving an opening at the front that he could close at a moments notice with the boulder in his inventory.
Allen wanted to do more but it was pitch black outside and decided to finish the defenses tomorrow. So he laid his head down on his pillow quickly falling asleep.
***
"Prince!"
"Imperial Prince!"
"Please help!"
The sound of fists pounding on his Monastery door awoke the still tired Allen as he cautiously opened the door and was surprised at what he saw.
Nearly a hundred villagers stood before him, their eyes pleading and their voices desperate.
"Please help us Lord Allen! The Zombies have demolished our villages and are after us!"
"You've got to be shitting me...."