They Called Me Trash? Now I'll Hack Their World-Chapter 134: Oakmere [2]

The guard pushed open a heavy wooden door set into what looked like the foundation of the village hall, revealing a dark entrance that led underground.

"Inside. Now."

He practically shoved us through the entrance, then pulled the door shut behind us.

I heard the lock click from the outside.

My eyes narrowed.

This looks bad. Worse than I thought.

We stood at the top of a stone staircase that descended into darkness.

Lamplight flickered from somewhere below, casting dancing shadows on the rough-hewn walls that had been carved directly from the earth and stone.

The shelter opened up at the bottom of the stairs into a large underground chamber.

Stone walls stretched in all directions, the low ceiling supported by thick wooden beams that groaned occasionally under the weight of earth and village hall above.

The air was thick and stale from.

And there were bodies. Lots of them.

People huddled together in clusters throughout the room.

Families pressed close, parents holding children who looked too scared to cry.

Elderly villagers sitting with blankets wrapped around their shoulders despite the stuffiness of the air.

Young men and women who looked like they should be out working the fields or celebrating at taverns but instead sat with haunted, hollow expressions that spoke of nights spent listening to horrors outside.

Maybe sixty or seventy people total, all crammed into this underground space like livestock waiting for slaughter.

I stood there, taking it all in.

Scarlet moved to stand beside me, her hood still up.

Agnes’s face had gone even paler in the dim light, her mouth falling open slightly as she looked around at the people, searching.

Then, as if responding to some invisible cue, her head turned sharply to the left.

Her breath caught audibly.

"Mother," she whispered.

And then she bolted, crossing the shelter floor in quick, urgent steps.

I turned to look where she was going.

A woman sat against the far wall, separated from the main groups by several feet of conspicuously empty space.

She wasn’t alone, there were four or five others sitting with her in that isolated section, all keeping that same careful distance from the rest of the shelter’s occupants.

Like a quarantine zone carved out of fear and desperation.

The woman was maybe in her late fifties, with brown hair tied back in a loose braid that had started to come undone.

Her face was thin, gaunt even, with deep lines carved around her eyes and mouth.

She wore simple clothing, a worn dress and shawl, and her hands were folded in her lap, trembling slightly.

But her eyes were sharp. They tracked Agnes’s approach with immediate recognition and something that might have been relief mixed with fear.

Agnes had almost reached her when a hand shot out and grabbed her arm roughly, stopping her mid-stride.

"Careful!" A middle-aged man sitting nearby hissed, his grip tight on Agnes’s sleeve. "You can’t touch them. They’re—"

"I know," Agnes said quickly, pulling her arm free but not advancing any further.

She stopped about an arm’s length away from the woman and slowly, carefully, lowered herself to sit on the cold stone floor.

The distance she maintained was deliberate, painful.

"Are you okay?" Agnes asked, her voice thick with worry and barely suppressed emotion.

The woman smiled weakly.

"I’m managing, dear. Better now that you’re here." Her voice was hoarse.

"I didn’t expect... I thought you were still working at the estate. You shouldn’t have come here. Not now." The woman’s expression shifted to worry.

"It’s too dangerous—"

"I had to," Agnes interrupted softly.

They continued talking in low voices, Agnes leaning forward but careful not to cross that invisible boundary between them, maintaining the distance that everyone else in the shelter clearly expected.

I walked toward them, Scarlet following a step behind, her footsteps nearly silent on the stone floor.

The woman’s eyes lifted as we approached, her gaze sharpening with suspicion and curiosity.

"Who are they?" she asked, looking at Agnes but clearly addressing the question to all of us.

Before I could introduce myself, Agnes spoke up.

"He’s Jin Raith, Lady Catherine’s son." She gestured to me, then to Scarlet.

"And this is Sara, his... maid."

The slight hesitation before ’maid’ didn’t escape my notice, but I let it pass.

The woman blinked, genuine surprise flickering across her gaunt face. "Ah."

Then she attempted to bow from her seated position, the movement weak and trembling but determined.

"It’s good to see you, Young Master," she said formally, though her voice carried warmth beneath the exhaustion and illness. "Agnes spoke of you often in her letters. I’m Sira. SiraThorne."

She paused, her trembling hands tightening in her lap.

"Though I apologize for not greeting you properly. As you can see..." She gestured vaguely to the space around her, to the careful distance others maintained like an invisible barrier. "Circumstances aren’t ideal."

"It’s good to see you too," I said, keeping my voice gentle. "And you don’t need to bow. Not in your condition."

I studied her for a moment, then looked around at the isolated group, at the empty space that surrounded them like a moat.

"Why are you here?" I asked carefully. "Away from the others? And why did that man warn Agnes about touching you?"

Agnes’s face fell, her expression crumbling into something between grief and helpless frustration.

Sira looked at me directly, meeting my eyes with a steady gaze that spoke of someone who’d already accepted their fate.

"Because of the illness I’ve caught," she said quietly. Her hand moved to gesture at the others sitting nearby in the quarantine zone, a young woman cradling a feverish child, an old man with skin that looked wrong somehow, others in various states of deterioration.

"We’re all infected. The sickness spreads through physical contact."

She managed a weak, bitter smile.

"The village won’t risk letting us near the healthy ones. Can’t blame them, really. We’re already dying. No point in taking everyone else with us."

I raised an eyebrow, my mind immediately going to possibilities and I activated my debug vision.

Then suddenly red text appeared across my vision...

[ERROR: ANALYSIS FAILED]

[SUBJECT CONDITION: UNKNOWN]

[INSUFFICIENT LEVEL]

I narrowed my eyes, frustration building in my chest.

Damn it.

I sighed internally, dismissing the error message.

I think I couldn’t help even if I—

ROAR!

The thought was interrupted.

With a roar erupted from somewhere above us, muffled by stone and earth but still horrifyingly loud and close.

Then another. And another. A chorus of inhuman howls and shrieks that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

The entire shelter went deathly silent.

Children stopped crying. Conversations died mid-word. Everyone froze, their faces turned upward toward the ceiling, listening with expressions of pure terror.

The monsters had come.

I could hear them now, the sound of claws scraping against wood, bodies slamming against the palisade walls, guttural snarls and growls that didn’t come from any natural throat.

Something was testing the defenses.

No, not something.

Many somethings.

And then, without warning, a notification appeared directly in front of my face.

[EMERGENCY QUEST ACTIVATED]

[QUEST: Clear the Beast Wave]

[Objective: Survive and eliminate the monster assault on Oakmere]

[Rewards: ???] 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

[Penalty on Failure: All stats and level reset to 1]

[Difficulty: EXTREME]

[Time Limit: Until Dawn]