Chapter 25: The Otaku Walks Into a Burning Village (And Immediately Regrets It)
They stood at the boundary where the Gargantuan Wilds ended and the rest of the world pretended to be normal.
Behind them: ancient trees twisted like old bones, the air still thick with magic and warnings. Ahead of them: rolling hills, scattered farms, and a village on the horizon that was currently on fire.
Kaelen's breath hitched. "My father's men."
Meliodas narrowed his eyes. His {Observation Haki} tingled—not with the Wilds' oppressive presence, but with people. Organized. Moving in patterns. Too many for "a few patrols."
Smoke rose from multiple points in the village—thick, dark columns that made the sky look bruised.
And underneath the smell of burning wood...
Something wrong.
Not just ash. Not just fear.
Taint.
Meliodas's stomach tightened. "That's not a normal fire."
Kaelen's fists clenched. "They're looking for me."
"They're doing more than that." Meliodas's voice was flat, controlled. {Third Eye} flickered at the edge of his vision, but they were too far. The colors blurred.
Bud, perched on his shoulder at palm-size, let out a low, offended growl. It sounded ridiculous coming from something the size of a pigeon, but the emotion behind it wasn't.
"I can make them run," Bud sent, his voice sharp. "My aura—"
"Not yet." Meliodas's response was immediate.
Bud's tail flicked. "Why not? They're hurting people."
"Because I don't know what they're actually doing." Meliodas's eyes never left the village. "And because your aura isn't a stealth tool. It's a billboard. If there's something worse in there—something that notices dragon presence—we lose the element of surprise before we even know what we're facing."
Bud grumbled but didn't argue.
Kaelen looked between them. "A billboard?"
"A thing that's very hard to miss," Meliodas translated.
Kaelen's jaw tightened. "Master... they will kill them. They will burn the village to flush me out."
Meliodas's {Third Eye} strained against the distance, painting the distant figures in washes of color—some red, some... complicated. Too far to read clearly. Too many moving parts.
And that wrongness in the smoke pressed against his senses like a splinter under the skin.
"We're going closer," Meliodas decided. "But we do it smart."
Kaelen nodded instantly, relief and guilt tangled together. "Yes."
Bud's wings fluttered. "Smart means I still get to bite someone later, right?"
Meliodas didn't look away from the village. "We'll see."
---
They moved down the slope, staying low, keeping to hedgerows and tree lines. The farms nearest the village were abandoned—doors hanging open, tools dropped in fields as if people had run mid-motion.
A cart lay overturned on the road. A broken wheel. A spilled sack of grain.
No bodies.
Which somehow made it worse.
It meant the people were either hiding... or trapped.
Meliodas crouched near the last line of trees before the village outskirts and let his senses expand.
{Observation Haki} spilled outward like invisible fingertips.
He felt fear first. Lots of it. Thick, human fear pooled in tight spaces—cellars, back rooms, huddled clusters.
He felt shouting. Orders. Boots on dirt. Metal clinking.
He felt something else too—something that didn't have the shape of human emotion.
A cold itch in the back of his mind.
A pressure like a door that didn't want to be a door.
Bud stiffened on his shoulder, tiny claws digging into Meliodas's shirt.
"You feel it too?" Meliodas asked silently.
Bud didn't answer in words. He just sent a pulse of feeling: wrong. Really wrong. Like... like the thing in the Wilds, but smaller. Trying to get in.
Kaelen swallowed hard. "Master... what is that?"
Meliodas's eyes tracked the village center. "Trouble."
---
They got their first clear view of the soldiers when a group marched past the edge of a burning house.
Twelve of them.
Not a random patrol. Not peasants with spears. These were trained men in matching gear, moving with practiced discipline. Half carried torches. The others carried nets, coils of rope, and strange metal restraints etched with symbols that made Meliodas's {Knowledge Mage} itch.
One wore a satchel at his hip that clinked like glass.
The leader—a broad man with a scar across his jaw—held a small vial between two fingers and poured a thin line of dark liquid into the dirt.
Kaelen went pale. "That's... beast blood."
Meliodas's eyebrows rose. "You recognize it?"
Kaelen nodded stiffly. "Hunters use it to lure demon beasts. When they want something to come... or when they want something else to run."
Meliodas felt his blood go cold.
"They're baiting something," he whispered.
Bud's eyes narrowed. "They're stupid."
"They're desperate," Meliodas corrected.
And desperate people did rituals.
Desperate people made bargains.
Desperate people opened doors they couldn't close.
---
They slipped closer along the back of the village.
The fire wasn't everywhere. It was... selective.
Burn one house. Skip two. Burn the barn. Leave the well. Burn the chapel's outer shed but not the main building.
It wasn't random destruction.
It was pressure.
A herding pattern.
Meliodas hated how familiar it felt.
Like moving pieces on a board.
Like someone was trying to force the villagers into a specific location.
Kaelen's voice shook through the link. "They're driving them toward the square."
Meliodas exhaled slowly. "Yeah."
Bud's tail flicked again, irritated. "I could stop them."
"You could make the soldiers panic," Meliodas replied. "And then they'd start killing hostages instead of burning houses."
Kaelen flinched.
Bud went quiet.
Meliodas didn't like being right.
---
They reached a narrow alley behind the village's central buildings. From there, they could see into the main square.
The villagers were gathered in clusters—families huddled together, hands tied, faces streaked with soot. Children clung to parents. Old men stared at the ground like staring made them safer. A woman with a baby pressed against her chest rocked back and forth, silent tears cutting tracks through the grime on her face.
The soldiers had formed a ring around them. Maybe thirty in total, plus the patrols still moving through the village.
And in the center of the square...
A circle had been drawn on the cobblestones in something dark.
Not paint. Not charcoal.
Blood.
Meliodas stared at it, and the itch in his mind sharpened into a warning siren.
Kaelen's breath came fast. "No... no, that's—"
"A ritual circle," Meliodas finished. His {Knowledge Mage} fed him fragments—not enough to understand the specific rite, but enough to recognize the shape of something very, very bad.
Bud's scales faintly brightened, like his body wanted to flare in protest. Light affinity. This thing—whatever it was—made his element angry.
The scarred leader stepped forward, voice booming.
"Prince Kaelen!" he shouted. "By order of His Majesty, you are to surrender yourself. If you do not, this village will be cleansed until you do."
Kaelen's fists trembled at his sides.
Meliodas's teeth ground together.
Cleansed.
That word wasn't for princes. It was for heretics. For demon-tainted. For anyone you planned to erase without leaving witnesses.
The leader gestured to the blood circle. "This world is full of monsters. We will not allow another to hide among us."
Meliodas's {Third Eye} flickered fully online.
The leader burned red. So did most of his men—willing participants or just following orders, the color didn't distinguish.
But the man standing near the circle, holding a small book bound in dark leather, chanting under his breath—
He burned something else entirely.
Not red. Not blue. Not anything in Meliodas's normal spectrum.
Black shot through with cracks of sickly orange.
Like a containment vessel that was already failing.
That one wasn't a soldier. That one was something worse.
A mage. Or a priest. Or both. And whichever it was, it had already started the work.
The air around the circle... wasn't just heat from fire.
It was pressure.
Like reality was being pushed from the other side.
Kaelen's face went ashen. "They wouldn't. My father wouldn't—"
Meliodas cut him off, low and hard. "Your father didn't have to order it."
Kaelen stared at him.
Meliodas pointed with his chin at the chanting man. "All it takes is one idiot who thinks power is worth the price. One cultist who got close enough to whisper. One 'advisor' with a book of old rites."
The chanting grew louder.
The blood circle pulsed.
And the smoke in the air shifted—not like wind...
Like something inhaled.
Meliodas's mind raced.
He could rush in. Cut down the soldiers. Grab the villagers. Kill the chanting man.
But if blood and death fed the wrong thing—and something told him it did—then he'd be helping the ritual. Adding fuel to the fire. Making the crack wider.
He didn't know the rules here. Not yet.
But he knew one universal truth:
Bad magic loves panic.
Meliodas's jaw tightened.
"Bud," he sent. "Can you lock it?"
Bud hesitated—tiny, but suddenly very serious. "I can... hold it. Maybe. If it's small. Light can seal things. That's... that's in the memories. The whelp knew about gates."
"How long?"
"Don't know. Not forever."
"Then get ready."
Kaelen swallowed, eyes bright with helpless fury. "Master... what do we do?"
Meliodas looked at the tied villagers. The soldiers' ring. The blood circle. The chanting mage.
And then he looked at the fire.
At the pattern. At the way the soldiers kept glancing toward the forest line like they expected something to come out and finish the job for them.
"They want you to run into their arms," Meliodas said softly.
Kaelen's breath shook. "Yes."
Meliodas's eyes hardened. "Then we don't."
Bud's wings spread slightly, light gathering under his scales—subtle, banked, waiting.
Kaelen's Blink magic flickered instinctively, like it wanted to teleport him straight into disaster.
Meliodas reached up and flicked Bud's tiny horn gently. "No hero entrances. Not yet."
Bud huffed. "You're boring."
"I'm alive," Meliodas corrected.
He drew Moonsing—not fully, just enough for the blade to whisper against the sheath. A promise. Not a declaration.
"We do this in steps," he said quietly. "First, we break the circle. Then we get the villagers out. Then we deal with your father's men."
Kaelen stared at him, trembling with relief and awe.
"Yes, Master."
Bud's voice turned gleeful. "And then I bite someone."
Meliodas sighed. "...And then you bite someone."
---
Behind the chanting, the blood circle flared.
A thin line of darkness split the air above it—like a crack in glass, except the glass was reality.
The villagers screamed.
The soldiers tightened their ring, spears angled inward—not at the crack, but at the prisoners. Insurance. Leverage.
The chanting man smiled like he'd just been promoted.
Kaelen froze, horror on his face.
Meliodas's {Third Eye} lit the man up so violently black-and-orange it almost hurt to look at.
Bud's light surged in response, bright enough that shadows recoiled—but Meliodas clamped a hand over him, muting it.
"Not yet," he sent fiercely. "Wait for my signal."
Bud subsided, but his scales still glowed faintly, angry and ready.
Meliodas felt the crack in the air tug at his senses like a hook.
And somewhere deep in that crack...
Something noticed.
Not fully. Not yet. Just a flicker of attention. A twitch of interest.
Meliodas's blood ran cold.
He'd felt that kind of attention before. In the Birth World. From something ancient.
This was smaller. Weaker. Still forming.
But if it got through—if the crack widened—people would die.
He didn't know what was on the other side. Didn't want to find out.
Not today.
Meliodas's hand tightened on Moonsing.
"Okay," he muttered. "Step one is now."
---
[END OF CHAPTER 25]