Heading straight to the village, Li Ben hoped to rest for a while to relieve the fatigue of the two months of the long journey, and at the same time to find out where he was now and where he could plan for the rest of his journey.

As he approached, the male villagers crouching at the entrance eating barbecue turned their gaze to him.

The man jerked to his feet, looked panicked and frightened, then turned and ran to the village and shouted, "Monster! Monster is coming!"

"Monster, do you mean me?" Li Ben looked around, making sure that he was alone in this direction.

"Is it because of the mask?" he was about to take off his mask when a loud bell rang through the village.

"Boom... Boom..."

Accompanying these bells were several chaotic clumps in the Hunter's perception ability, and the level was generally level three.

No, is it their protector? Leave first to avoid conflict.

Li Ben turned around and left quickly, but did not go far, he took off his mask and sneaked closer to the village.

He saw four big-headed monsters covered in crocodile skins crawl out of the mud and wander around the village for a while, the villagers did not avoid them, and they did not attack the villagers.

"It's funny that humans and monsters live in harmony. ”

The guy who had warned the villagers poked his head out of the house to make sure it was safe before he came out, and after muttering a few words to the other villagers, the four big-headed monsters all hid back in the mud.

Li Ben tried to enter the village again, but it was still the same person eating barbecue at the entrance of the village, and this time he saw that the person who came also stood up, and did not panic as before, but instead had a puzzled face.

The man was squinting, dark-skinned, round-faced and big-nosed, about 30 years old, still bald-headed, and when Li Ben was a dozen paces away from the village, he shouted, "Stop! Who are you?"

Lee Ben took off his top hat and said, "A passing traveler." ”

"Fart! How did you get in?"

"Uh... Just walked in. ”

"Normal people can't get in!"

Considering the presence of those crocodiles, that loop of the river is indeed not a place where normal people can pass.

So Li Ben said, "I am a chaos hunter. ”

"You have a weird accent, what are you doing here?"

"I've come a long way and hope to rest here for a while. ”

The barbecue eater looked around and found that there were no other villagers around, and people farther away didn't notice it, so he walked over to Li Ben and carefully looked at this strange guy with a big bag on his back.

"What ethnicity are you?"

"Wu Ke. "Li Ben casually talked about one.

"I haven't heard of it, but it doesn't matter, the important thing is that if you want to live, get out of here as soon as possible, before they notice you. ”

"Who are they?"

"Our hosts, they live in the shed on the west side. Listen to outsiders, don't provoke the masters, this is not the place for you to come, let's go!"

"But I'm really tired, I promise I won't disturb you, I just need a corner for me to rest, you see, now it's getting dark, where can I go?"

Li Ben felt his kindness, but this was a rare place with popularity, and he didn't want to miss it, and he desperately wanted to talk to someone, not to himself.

The barbecue eater touched his bare head with his oil-stained hands and asked, "How long are you going to rest?"

"Three days. ”

"No, it's too long, you can only stay for one night, or stay forever. ”

"Okay, just one night. My name is Li Ben, what's your name?"

He told Li Ben a strange name, because this lingua franca translates into Chinese: "Barbecue Master." ”

"Is this your nickname?"

"No, that's my name. ”

"Understood. Hello Master Grill. ”

"Come with me, don't make a noise, don't be discovered by others, I'll send you out early tomorrow morning, and never come back. ”

"Okay. Li Ben nodded.

The barbecue master took him around, avoiding everyone in the village, entered the room through the back door of his wooden house, tore open a blanket and opened a secret door, pointed to the basement and said, "You can rest down there for the night." ”

Li Ben did not refuse, because in his perception, this village was full of ordinary people, and no one could threaten him.

After seeing Li Ben enter, the barbecue master said, "Don't come out, I'll come back to you later." ”

The basement was fairly spacious, with a workbench and a chair on the left side, on which were some tools such as hammers, and thick hemp rope hung on the wall, while at the other end there was a lot of hay piled up, and some fruit was placed in a wooden basket on the ground.

The lighting here is incandescent lamps, drawn by a single wire, emitting an orange-yellow hot glow, but this basement is a little cold.

After hearing the movement of the barbecue master leaving, Li Ben put on the crow mask again, he didn't plan to stay down obediently.

And when he thought of being considered a monster when he first wore a crow mask, he wondered if there was something strange about this mask. He was dressed in the same costume on the two appearances before and after, and no matter how stupid the average person was, he would have thought that there should be some connection between the two, but judging from the reaction of the barbecue master, he didn't care about this.

The door to the basement is not locked, and the side reflects the attitude of the barbecue master towards himself.

Judging from what he said earlier, this place is indeed ruled by some kind of monster, and if he shows up in the village, it is likely that the monster's eyes will notice it and tell them that they will not let themselves leave easily.

If that's the case, then the barbecue master is a rare good guy in this world.

Li Ben, who came out of the house, used his battle-tested hunter stealth skills to avoid many villagers, came to the edge of the village, and then turned inward, deliberately appeared in front of the villagers, and judged by their reactions whether there was something wrong with their masks.

As a result, he was greeted with a reasonable scream of fear.

From this, he was convinced that there was indeed something wrong with his crow mask.

Li Ben looked at his own shadow in the sunset and found something he hadn't noticed.

Since he did wear a mask made of a crow's head, he had always thought that the bird's head in the shadow was normal, but a closer look could see that there were many jagged shadows of hair on the crow's head.

Looking further down, it was obvious the silhouette of the crow that was fighting with him. When he waved his hand, the shadow showed the agitation of wings.

He took off his mask again, and in an instant the shadow changed to a normal human form.

"Well... Looks like I stumbled upon a weird magic prop... But since it can change my appearance, does it also inherit some of the crow's abilities?"

Lee Ben puts on a mask and enters the hunter's point of view, trying to communicate with the mask, and thinking about making himself invisible.

A strange feeling enveloped him.

He approached a villager again, and appeared in front of him, and the villager seemed to sense something, and looked down suspiciously, but did not see Li Ben who was close at hand.

Li Ben knew that he had succeeded, and in his excitement, he suddenly disconnected from the mask and suddenly appeared in front of the villager.

"Ahh

Before the others who heard the movement arrived, Li Ben left quickly.

"It's a fantastic ability that helps me avoid a lot of threats. On the way back, he began to figure out how to use the Raven's Mask's abilities.

At night, the barbecue master entered the basement with a plate of barbecue.

Seeing his melancholy face, Li Ben took the initiative to ask, "Is there anything inconvenient?"

The barbecue master said frankly: "There is a monster in this vicinity, I saw it not long before you came, you are lucky not to encounter it, but just now, many people in the village have seen it, and it is elusive, which makes everyone panic. ”

"What does it look like? I told you I'm a hunter and might be able to help you. You should know what a hunter is, right?"

"I know. That monster looks like a big crow, our tribe has suffered from it a long time ago, it's a fifth-level horror guy, it should live far away from here, I don't know why it suddenly appeared. But don't worry, the owners will figure it out. ”

"Well... How long have you been living here?" Li Ben wanted to learn more about the situation in this village.

"Ten years ago, we were a traveling tribe ten years ago. ”

"Tell me your story. ”

"Wait a minute, I'll go get some drinks, I haven't seen outsiders in a long time, and I want to know what's going on outside. ”

The barbecue master took down a jar and two bowls from the house.

"It's yuzu wine," he said. As he spoke, he poured two bowls.

"You're a Pathfinder for the Navigator Organization, aren't you?"

Li Ben nodded and did not deny it, out of vigilance, he did not intend to tell the truth.

"I hope you don't report anything here when you go out, just when we're all dead, and after so long, the Navigator Organization must have put us on the death list. ”

The barbecue master briefly recounts the story of how their tribe came to be what it is now.

Ten years ago, it was a small tribe called "Wildfire", with only about 100 people. Since the formation of the tribe, they have continued to receive homeless people, refugees, and a series of problems such as monster attacks, food shortages, and natural disasters.

The Wildfire Tribe has been adrift on the continent for decades, but it has never had much chance to grow stronger, but in the process of constantly dying and collecting people, it has unknowingly replaced all the original people.

The tribe's female prophets and chaos hunters are under tremendous pressure.

One day, just ten years ago, the barbecue master remembers that it was a bright morning, on the way to a new settlement, and the pathfinders of Chaos Hunters discovered the ruins of ancient wizards, from which they obtained some legacy and wizard research notes.

That is a valuable source of knowledge that has a good chance of helping the tribe out of its current predicament.

The Prophet and the Chaos Hunters studied day and night, and even fell into a kind of pathological madness.

"We were living in a forest to the northeast, where the crow monster was and we had to come to the swamp because of the loss of many people. Said the barbecue master.

Later, the Prophet predicted that the place would also be corrupted by Chaos, but he also claimed that he had researched a way to protect this pure land from the Chaos from the notes of ancient wizards.

The people of the tribe have no reason not to believe in their prophets.

Under the command of the Prophet, a circular river channel was dug around the perimeter and each person's settlement was rearranged according to certain rules. The village where he now lives is not the only human habitat in the area, as there are other villages scattered throughout the swamp.

After these things were accomplished, the Chaos Erosion not only did not increase, but decreased, and the people revered the Prophet even more.

But that's when something strange happened.

The prophets and hunters became eccentric, often asking the villagers to do something inexplicable, and when asked why, they did not explain, but only forced the villagers to do things for them.

At first, nothing went wrong, so everyone endured. After all, if they ordinary people don't rely on prophets and chaos hunters, who can they rely on?

However, during an experiment requested by the Prophet, a villager turned into a monster, and the Prophet and the Hunters offered no explanation.

People sense that something is wrong, but nothing can be done, and panic is in everyone's mind.

And so it went on for a while.

One of the villagers, while delivering food to the Prophet's hut, accidentally bumped into the Chaos Hunters who were performing some mysterious ritual, and all the hunters except the Prophet and the Hunter Leader drank an unknown potion.

They began to decay rapidly, the flesh of the living flesh losing its color in an instant, replaced by a stinking, sticky black slurry, and in the wail of pain, even the bones began to melt.

The hunters turned into a black, gelatinous substance that wriggled on the ground and finally fused together to form a giant ball of black flesh from which grew many mouths and eyes, as well as tentacles. It is capable of making the sounds of the dead hunters.

The terrified villagers informed everyone of this, but that same night, the Prophet gathered the group, announced with the leader of the hunters that they would settle in the area, and introduced the monster in front of everyone.

"He is our companion, our relative, our protector, and the combination of the hunters' will!"

"Dear fellow citizens, do not be afraid, he is a higher life form, and everyone has the opportunity to be a part of him in the future!"

"We will become more powerful, we will no longer have to fear those monsters, and we will be able to live in this world in peace. ”

After that, it didn't take long for the Prophet and the Hunter Leader to change, and they both became inhuman beings.

The Prophet likes to take villagers away for various experiments to transform humans into low-intelligence monsters who listen to her.

The leader of the hunters has an unquenchable desire to eat people, and every year at least one person becomes his meal.

At first, there are people who want to escape, but where can ordinary people run?

After paying many terrible prices, people finally chose to give up, worship them as their masters, and live dependent on their strength.

Fortunately, they also know how to restrain themselves, and instead of crueltying the villagers, they slowly raise human beings.

This lasted for ten years, during which time a lot of new blood was added, and the population of the area rose to 400, and the people lived in peace and prosperity.

"We're used to that, and we're using a lottery system, and we send one person to our owners every two months. ”

"Aren't you worried that they'll go completely crazy one day?" asked Lee.

"Who knows... It's been ten years, and if you're swimming in the wild, no one can guarantee that you'll live that long. Okay, let's talk about the outside. The barbecue master changed the subject.

Since Li Ben was not really a member of the Navigator Organization, he added fuel to some of the stories he had heard to the barbecue master, and reluctantly passed it perfunctorily.

"When I was younger, I also wanted to be a Chaos Hunter, but once when a monster attacked a moving team, I saw the hunters transform into a team, and I didn't have that idea anymore, and the guys who can be hunters are amazing. The barbecue master said remembrance.

Li Ben replied to him: "Only by becoming a monster can you fight monsters." ”

"By the way, do you know exactly where this place is on the mainland?" he suddenly remembered what was going on.

The barbecue master said drunkly: "I don't know, I only know that this is the northern part of the continent, and the detailed map is in the mind of the prophet." ”

Suddenly, there was a knock on the door, and someone shouted, "Master barbecue!"

The drunken barbecue master didn't seem to hear what was coming, and staggered up the stairs out of the cellar, muttering, "What bastard is knocking on the door so late!"

But a moment later, the heart-rending cry of the barbecue master was heard above.

"No! You can't do that to me! Winnie, she's young, she's my only daughter!"

"Calm down, barbecue master, calm down, don't be impulsive, what are you going to do, don't come here!ah!"

Crying and roaring were accompanied by the crackling sound of crockpots breaking and various hits.

"Get out of here! I'm going to find Winnie! You don't want to take her!"

"Hold him down! he's drunk!"

"Get out of here, get out of here, let me go, I'm not drunk, I want my daughter, Winnie, you can't take her, change me, let me go for Winnie, let me go, ha, ah..."

The cry of the barbecue master made Li Ben feel sad.

The last moment he was still talking to himself about the past, nostalgic for the past, and this moment of change really brought a lot of impact.

"He didn't say he had a daughter," Li Ben muttered to himself.

"He fainted!"

"Carry him to the bed. ”

The footsteps of many people could be heard above.