Chapter 186: A Flipped Perception

Ron and the others looked up at the house and noticed the flickering shadows within the gloom. As the two Cultists scrambled out, a massive, pitch-black hand seemed to reach out from inside, only to immediately retract the moment it touched the sunlight.

"This is the residence of the Holy Guard! You demons are not welcome here!"

The villagers Ron and his group had captured earlier struggled to speak. "Get out of here! If you don’t, when night falls and the Holy Guard goes on patrol, you’ll all be sent crawling back to the abyss!"

"What are they talking about?" Victoria was bewildered. "They’re calling those zombies... Holy Guards?"

"Everyone here is insane!" one of the Cultists gasped, catching his breath. He struggled to crawl to Ron’s feet and tugged at his pant leg. "You’re Adventurers, right? Who sent you?"

"Forget it, that doesn’t matter! We’ll give you all our savings, just get us out of here!"

"Those zombies can’t resist the temptation of flesh and blood! They’ll brave the sunlight and charge out soon!"

Ron turned to look. Sure enough, the Undead Creatures inside the house were growing more agitated, repeatedly testing the boundary between the darkness and the sunlight. It looked like they were about to charge out at any moment.

For the zombies of this world, sunlight was like cold water to a swimmer. While entering it rashly would be uncomfortable, it wasn’t dangerous—they would adapt quickly.

"What the hell is going on? Why are you here?" Ron frowned, kicking away the Cultist at his feet with some effort. "You’re followers of the Dark Monarch Glazter? What are you doing in this godforsaken village?"

"We... we received a divine revelation from the great one!" the other Cultist said, mustering his courage. "Coming here would grant us his boon and allow us to transcend our mortal shells!"

"There were more than ten of us who came here," his companion added. "Besides our fellow believers, we also had some servants and slaves with us. When we first arrived, we did indeed receive the special treatment of the ’chosen.’"

"The residents here treated us like we were normal people, but they thought our servants were demons hunting us! They were strong and killed all our servants, hanging their bodies from a tree at the village entrance as a sacrifice to their Deities. At the time, we didn’t realize how serious things were..."

Ron: ...

’As expected of Cultists, I guess? Wouldn’t any normal person have sensed something was wrong by that point?!’

Just then, zombies began charging out of the house one by one. Ivysela and the others immediately rushed forward to force them back inside, giving Ron more time to question the men.

"What happened then? How did you figure out something was wrong?" Ron noticed the two men kept glancing over at the captured villagers.

"Did they try to make a move on you ’normal people’ too?"

"Yes... and no," the Cultist hesitated. "Sir, I don’t know if you’ll believe me, but let’s just say—these four ’villagers’ are actually our companions who came here with us."

"They were more fanatical than us and more dedicated to the cause of the Dark Monarch. The villagers here took them to see a village elder, a Wise Man, and when they came back, they had become complete ’natives.’"

"The lucky part is that they still remember us. The unlucky part is that their memory is limited to what happened after they arrived here. They see us as believers who wish to convert but aren’t pious enough, so they’re constantly trying to persuade us. I mean, after seeing all that with our own eyes, how could we possibly trust them anymore?!"

"What you saw today was the two of us trying to escape, only to be caught by them and dragged back to the village. We were planning to slip away while you were fighting them, but in our desperation, we ran right into the zombies’ nest..."

"They aren’t zombies, they’re the Holy Guard! Gelan, snap out of it! *They’re* the demons!" the four villagers who were once Cultists furiously corrected their former companion. "Do you have any idea how much they’ve sacrificed to protect our village? We won’t allow you to slander them like this!"

"There are no signs of control or Charm," Polly said, prying open a villager’s eyelid with a frown. "Either that, or it’s something even I can’t detect—the being controlling them must be incredibly skilled."

"Or..."

"Or what?"

"Or their perception has been skewed since birth," the Ghost Witch said. She tried to force-feed the villager a few fat maggots, but all she got in return was more cursing. "This is strange. Hey, can’t you tell I’m different from these ’demons’?"

"You!" The villager who’d been fed the maggots was practically dying of rage. "How dare you treat me like this! You may look human, but on the inside, you’re no different from a demon!"

"We thought you were just a coerced slave, but it turns out you’re an accomplice! It’s a good thing we didn’t bring you into the village. Now, let the Holy Guard properly punish you scum of the abyss!"

"It seems I really am different," Polly, still maintaining the appearance of an old woman, said with a satisfied nod. "Something has inverted their perception. Whatever the reason, it’s highly effective. It can even see through my Illusion Magic and perceive my true self."

"Otherwise, I should have appeared as a demon in their eyes, too."

"No time for musing!" Constance’s voice came from over yonder. "What the hell are these things? Why won’t they die!"

"The heroic souls of the Holy Guard will never perish!" The villagers glanced at each other and burst into triumphant laughter. "Crawl back to your stinking abyss! The last bastion of the Farama Kingdom will never fall into the hands of demons!"

"They’re just like the Undead Creatures we encountered near the Green Dragon’s Nest. If you don’t inflict enough damage, they’ll just regenerate over and over!" Victoria’s expression was grim. A flame-like radiance shot from her hands, pouring down on the zombies. "Constance, you need to fall back! If you keep fighting like that, we’ll have a cluster of severed limbs to deal with soon!"

"This is so frustrating!" Sera swung her greatsword, beating back the zombies’ charge again and again, only to watch them piece themselves back together and get up to charge once more. "No wonder that Mage wanted that damn Magic. I’m starting to want it myself!"

"If this doesn’t work, we’ll just have to hold out until nightfall!" Silvia extinguished the Strike Undead in her hand. "This isn’t working. I can summon my hounds at night to devour them!"