"it's safe to assume that ghosts and wraiths, kill people to survive," Ishar thought.
"But each time they kill someone, they absorb the grudge and unwillingness to die as they continued this, the ghosts would only gradually become mad. And killing would be it's only desire."
"But it's more likely that ghosts are summoned and whoever summons them must have already fufilled the conditions for their survival. Because normal ghost would find it difficult to kill a human. "
Ishar levitated around the corpse to absorb its white mist. Even Ishar as himself right now found it extremely tough to kill a living person without the help of the crows.
His only alternative was too try cursing them. And that would take hours before they finally died.
"That's why it's hard for a ghost to grow"
Ishar was currently thinking of how to deal with the remaining 5 people, as killing them all would be too wasteful.
He wouldn't be able to absorb any of their white mist because way trying to prevent himself from being over-contaminated by negative emotions.
"The reason why I'm being contaminated is that when I absorb them, they are feeling pain fear, and are unwilling to die."
"But what if they were calm, or even joyful as they die? What if I could make them want to be killed by me?"
"There's room for manipulation here"
Ishar recalled a bit of information he just obtained from the person's absorbed memories: "Pilgrim, the God of Curses huh?"
"According to this person's memories, the System did not lie, this world truly is a magical world"
Ishar believed that Gods existed because something unbelievable like inter-world travel had already happened.
There was no reason for Gods to not exist, but from what he'd seen. He didn't believe that Gods existed in this world.
"After all, it's impossible to be the same as well ancient pantheons back on earth with thousands of Gods existing at once. They would destroy the world sooner or later."
According to this person's memories, this world was divided into two Continents. They were sperated by a large snake like river called Euphrates.
He was currently on the second continent called the lower realm. It was weaker than the first. And was divided into several regions
For example, this hunting party was made up of men from the Weyian tribe, which was one of the 5 tribes.
These 5 tribes shared the same religion and they believed in the concept that God existed in all things, like Pilgrim the god of curses.
Ayala, the goddess of Fortune, Shinei, the goddess of love. There were many more, all of which represented a concept that the 5 tribes had come into contact with.
The majority of these people were in a state of shallow belief.
For example, rabbits were considered the messengers of the goddess of luck, Selar; the myth was that anybody who killed Rabbits would be abandoned by Selar and left to her twin brother, Rales, God of misfortune.
But if a deer appeared in front of this hunting party right now, you could take an easy guess whether or not they would kill it.
It is likely the other villagers would kill them. For not killing it.
The reason was actually simple. The religion was forced upon the people of the 5 tribes by the two kingdoms that govern this region.
The Sword kingdom and The Rose kingdom.
So when they weren't personally affected, they would pay attention to the taboos and laws of the 'Gods', but when push came to shove,or it was detrimental to obey they wouldn't be thinking too much.
"Because of this, the older members of the hunting party would be experienced fighters, they have to die first" Ishar thought to himself.
For a lot of people, faith was periodic. At a young age, people tend to hold immense respect towards these faiths.
But after experiencing more, growing older, and seeing how difficult life really is, they would find it clear that they were nothing but fake tradition.
That there is no omnipotent God in the sky that you could pray to and have all your problems solved.
Interestingly enough, once that same person reached old age, they would once again pay close attention to these beliefs and devote themselves to it.
"There is only one thing I need to do, break them, then give them hope and I control them. " Ishar was a quick learner, as this was exactly what the System did to him before.
It first broke him, told him that there was no hope for him in this world. Then it gave him hope, by telling him that it could give him a new start in a new world.
And then controlled his life and death, took his Protagonist Aura, and now, in order to survive, in order to live better, he would need to do the same.
Hearing the voices slowly coming from afar, Ishar had the crows pecking at the corpse fly away and silently waited here.
With how much Ishar's soul had healed, he could clearly see the situation of the black blotches inside the crows.
He could sense that the curse was still constantly mutating, constantly consuming the crows' stamina and forcing them to always feel hungry.
"Sure enough, if this goes on for too long, the crows won't make it" Ishar silently waited: "Stronger, I need to become even stronger!"
A few moments later, the hunting party arrived here with their weapons to find the mangled corpse.
The bearded man, Gran's expression reflected under the light of the torch seemed to be a bit confused.
This wasn't the first time a hunting party member died while hunting during the past year, but this was different.
For some unknown reason, someone suddenly died in the dead of the night without a sound, giving Gran a bad gut feeling.
However, as the leader of the party, Gran didn't display any of his unease or confusion.
Otherwise, the rest of the party would feel panicked and become unable to perform their mission.
"Bury Bor's body on the spot we can't take it back to the tribe with us." Gran said, his eyes squinted as he picked up a black feather from the ground, then glanced back at the wounds on the corpse and said very seriously:
"Keep your weapons close away, there might be another attack."
"A Herald of Pilgrim. Is Pilgrim watching us? Strigoi spoke fearfully as he looked at the black feather.
"Bullshit!" Gran immediately countered. "Why would Negary watch us, this is only an accident. Stop spreading stories and go to sleep, just be a bit more careful during your watch"
The others all had scowls on their faces Strigoi's words had gotten to them more than the admitted.
Two of the members who were closer to Bor than the others came forward, carried his mangled corpse to one side before starting to dig a hole to bury his body.
Although the two hunters who buried the body were sad, they didn't think too much of it.
This was just how it was living in this world, dying from starvation, dying in conflict with rival tribes, dying from a disease, dying by being attacked by wild beasts, they'd already seen deaths like these too many times to count.
Tossing the body down the shallow hole, they breathed in the smell of freshly dug dirt mixed with blood and began to cover up the body with dirt bit by bit.
The hole wasn't too deep so after a while, some wild beast might smell the blood, dig the body back up and enjoy an easy meal, but they didn't care.
They'd done what they could do. Only thing they wanted to do for now was to arbitrarily cover his body up to make themselves feel a bit better.
After finishing the simple burial, the two of them were breathing heavily, feeling unprecedentedly tired.
This really surprised the two, as members of the hunting party, the sick or wounded were not allowed to join any mission.
All they did was dig a stupid hole in the dirt, how could they feel this tired?
"Hack, hack! something isn't right" one of them coughed and said: "I'm not that tired, why do I feel dizzy?"
"I'm the same, let's go back and sit next to the fire" the other man also had a terrible expression on his face.
"We've been really unlucky lately, not enough prey, one person died, and now even I have symptoms of being sick."
When the two of them returned to the campfire, the newly appointed night guard even asked them what took so long.
The two of them just glossed it over, drank some water and fell asleep by the fire.
Before sleeping both prayed to the god of healing, Opal hoping that they would be rid of sickness by morning.
Ishar stood next to them and observed the weakening white mist around their bodies silently.