Chapter 20

Stacey returned to the atrium within a few minutes and led them outside to the parking building. They decided to take Nate's car because it was the largest and being diesel it had better range than Jack’s electric suv, he still hadn’t figured out how to charge his car using his lightning core, if it was at all possible.

After a few minutes of navigating traffic they were off and driving beyond the city limits, heading south towards the county of Cambridgeshire. They would apparently have to check in at the guild branch headquarters at the city of Cambridge before going to Ely.

Jack and Stacey relaxed while Nate drove, Jack looked out his window and as usual couldn’t help but notice the stark differences between the urban areas of the city and the countryside.

Back in York there were still many people going about their daily lives just like before the advent of monsters and magic, there were even people doing their Christmas shopping at the moment. In fact there were probably far more people around than ever before as people sought the relative safety of the cities and larger towns throughout the UK. There were soldiers visible in certain areas and the police wore riot armour and now carried firearms all the time.

In contrast the countryside seemed unrecognisable, much of the land that they drove through had once been farm fields, now they were reclaimed by the wilderness. Thick growths of shrubbery and trees pressed in near the edge of the motorway. Some lengths of road were lined with new, strong metal fences topped with razor wire. Just a couple of years ago a lot of Britain's forests had been rather small and sparse, whittled away after centuries of agriculture and industry. Now heavy woodland seemed to grow in many areas.

Most of the UK’s farmland was directly located just outside the cities and larger towns, where they could be protected more easily. Much of Britain's food was now imported from Europe and there was currently a technology race between agricultural companies to see who could develop the best compact hydroponics systems. Thus the current value of anything a hunter could harvest that had anything to do with magical plant life.

After half an hour of driving along the well maintained roads and seeing very few other cars they eventually reached a small village. After slowing down to pass through the gates and walls they drove through the streets. Just like on Jack’s previous visits to other villages, people were around, but not too many of them and of those he could see, all of them were armed. They carried themselves with a tenseness that wasn’t visible in city dwellers. Many of the buildings and houses in the village showed some signs of reinforcements and security measures, bars on windows, barbed wire along roofs, walls, makeshift barricades and more.

However there was still plenty of damage to property on display, smashed and boarded up windows, many damaged doors that looked like something had tried to smash through, a couple of houses and other buildings that had been completely smashed to rubble. They passed by a car that had wrapped itself around a lamppost where there was currently a team of villagers working to remove it.

They drove by an infant’s school and Jack noticed several armed individuals standing guard outside the main entrance and several inside the playground. The old iron fence surrounding the playground was now topped with razor wire but was damaged in places, looking like something had tried to bend the bars apart to get through.

The three hunters drove by and out of the village, the resentful stares of the villagers they left behind followed them.

“Oh man, they do not like us out here,” Nate commented, after stopping at a crossing and allowing an old man carrying a cricket bat wrapped in barbed wire across the road. The old man glared at them as he walked and spat on the ground. Once they were clear Nate carried on driving.

“Well what do you expect?” Stacey asked. “They barely ever see a hunter out here, even when they post hunts a hunter probably won’t come, and if they do it's usually way too late.”

“Why isn’t there more of a hunter presence out here?” Jack asked. “I never notice many hunts posted for places this far outside the city.”

“Priority, a couple hundred hunters may seem like a lot but it's for the entire county of North Yorkshire, some places have even less. We don’t have enough of us for full coverage, the police are also overstretched and the army is still rebuilding. So the guild has to decide which hunts have the most priority and which get put to the bottom of the pile, and overall, protecting the densest population centres is seen as the most critical,” Stacey explained grimly.

“What? So we just ignore these people when they ask for help?” Jack asked, surprised and a little appalled.

“What can we do? We’re still only human, we can’t hunt twenty four seven. In order to take every hunt request we receive the guild would have to up our quotas ten times. We’d be hunting all the time, non-stop, we’d get burnt out and tired, and do you know what happens to burnt out and tired hunters?” Stacey asked.

“They die?” he replied.

“They die,” she confirmed.

“So priorities then.”

“Priorities, but anyway….I heard what happened with Barry and the dungeon, Cheryl told me. Are you ok?” she asked with concern.

“Ah, yeah. I’m fine I suppose, wasn’t really expecting to have to…..you know….” he trailed off.

“Yeah I know, but seriously, you go from having issues with Barry the local bully to having some sort of blood feud with one of the most powerful fire cultivators in the world. I can’t turn my back for a minute now can I?” she laughed lightly with amusement.

“Ha! Yeah, I think Barry’s dad might actually be crazier than Barry ever was, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree I suppose,” Jack rubbed his head in vague frustration.

“Well you probably don’t need to worry about Eric Flamewrought for a while Jack,” Nate spoke up while he was driving.

“Oh really? Why not?” Stacey asked.

“Flamewrought got sent to France with a few other hunters, speaking of hunting all the time, they’re probably gonna be busy for a long while,” Nate said.

“France? Was this because of the giant spider titan thingy appearing in Paris, I saw a load of their hunters get injured in last night's attack, Flamewroughts covering for them?” Jack asked, feeling hopeful he would be left alone

“Apparently that was fully half of France’s elite A and B ranked chasseurs, now they’re missing, dead or in permanent comas,” Nate said grimly.

“Oh my god!” Stacey covered her mouth with her hands in horror.

“Yeah, the red gas that spider spewed out made them lose their minds so now some of our A ranked hunters and others from Spain and Italy are having to help hunt them down through the streets of Paris and capture them. Whenever police, soldiers or weaker cultivators get close they get torn apart or incinerated by an insane elite cultivator.” Nate sighed.

“Shit, that's really bad,” Jack felt bad for them but still inwardly relieved that he wouldn’t have to look over his shoulder for a while.

“Yeah it's not great, but at least France’s military is in better shape than ours, I think they learnt their lesson from watching us and the Americans. They didn’t make thousands upon thousands of their soldiers charge straight at the colossal monster busy wrecking a city. So they can use their soldiers to pick up some of the slack along with the hunters we’re loaning them,” Nate said.

“Hey, the spider titan hasn’t been killed yet has it?” Stacey asked.

“Don’t think so,” Jack replied. “Last I heard it was heading north east from Paris, could be in Germany or Belgium by now. God, I hope Eric Flamewrought doesn’t manage to kill it, he’ll be impossible to deal with then.” Jack shook his head.

They continued to talk and chat as the journey went on, they drove along the well maintained highway through thick forests and fortified villages. Eventually Nate slowed down and told them something interesting.

“So, in a few minutes we’ll be coming up to a turning that goes to an abandoned village called Fairton," he informed them.

“An abandoned village? Okay? And?” Jack replied in confusion.

“It's a monster nest, got abandoned over a year ago. It contains all sorts of goodies in there, monsters to fight and stuff to harvest,” Nate told them, some eagerness infecting his voice. It was pretty clear what he wanted to do.

“And you want to go in,” Stacey confirmed.

“Yup, it’ll just be a quick stop, we get in, we kill some stuff, harvest some other stuff, we get out. Job done, easy. C’mooooon, please?” he turned to look at them both almost pleadingly.

Stacey looked at Jack who shrugged, after a moment she spoke.

“Fine, as long as it doesn’t take all day, a quick stop should be fine,” she said with a little exasperation.

“Yes!” Nate cheered, after several more minutes of driving they came to a rough looking side road on their left, Nate turning to go down it.

Almost immediately their smooth ride along the well maintained roads of the motorway came to an end as their car hit the rocky and patchy old road. It was pretty clear this road had been forgotten about or likewise abandoned just like the village it led to, in fact just a few dozen metres ahead the road came to a sudden end. A thick mass of trees and other vegetation had sprouted in the middle of the former road, blocking any further progress.

They got out and took a closer look at the obstruction, just beyond the thick growth of trees and other flora lay a dense murky forest.

“It's just through these trees,” Nate declared before walking into the forest, hefting his massive sword, pushing his way through low tree branches.

Twenty minutes of slogging it through a cold, damp, foggy forest, they still hadn’t reached their goal. Nate kept saying it was just around the next bend, or behind the next tree. Stacey was getting increasingly irritable.

“I swear, it's just over this hill,” Nate claimed as they hiked up a steep slope. Jack was glad he was wearing tough boots and not trainers.

When they got to the top of the hill they couldn’t see anything except more fog down another slope on the other side. While they strained their eyes in order to see where they needed to go next they heard a gurgling grumble to their right and turned to see a large man sized mutated frog crawling towards them.

Just as they brought their weapons to bear, the thing shot out a long tongue that wrapped itself around Jack’s lower leg. Immediately, almost by instinct now he channelled a hefty amount of lightning into his leg, this caused the tongue to grip tighter around him but the electrical discharge ripped its way into the creature.

It burped and spasmed, flopping onto its belly while Jack sent more lighting into it. After a few seconds it finally died, though not before it reared up and sent a stream of greenish vomit onto Stacey’s legs, soaking into the blue jeans she was wearing under her light grey plate armour.

“URGH! THE FUCK IS THIS STUFF?!” she cried out in disgust. “GODDAMMIT!! Nate! You said the village was here! If I don’t see it right now we’re leaving!”

She frantically tore off the sections of plate armour covering her legs and conjured balls of hot steaming water to wipe off the gunk, grimacing in disgust.

Nate however was still peering into the fog, Jack followed his gaze and eventually saw what had Nate's attention. After a while of looking, he could just make out the outline of buildings through the fog at the bottom of the slope.

“Stacey look, I think we’re there. There’s buildings down there,” Jack pointed down.

She looked up from cleaning herself and then down the slope, squinting for a few moments.

“Huh, so there is. Almost didn’t believe you for a ‘sec Nate. Hopefully whatever's down will be worth getting puked on by a giant mutated frog,” she told him, Nate grinned at her before she flicked a piece of gunk at him and it went in his mouth.

While Nate was coughing and spluttering, desperately rinsing his mouth out with his water bottle, Jack and Stacey slid down the wet grassy slope. They came down about thirty metres onto hard cobblestone.

Before them, through the fog they could see numerous brick buildings of a typical British town before them, though the further they looked the more the fog obscured everything. Everything was eerily quiet until Nate came rolling down the hill and hit the cobblestones in a noisy clatter of plate armour.

“Argh! Jesus fuck!” He lurched to his feet and looked around.

“You sure this is a monster nest?” Jack asked.

“Yep, it's on the map, it's supposed to be home to a few different things. But it's also got this stuff called Red Vine growing somewhere, it's pretty valuable. So we should try and find that I suppose,” Nate said, while looking around.

Somehow Jack thought Nate’s top priority would be finding a good fight first and foremost, then once he was satisfied he’d help find the Red Vine. Jack began to suspect that if there was no guild reining him in, Nate would probably be perfectly content with life as a murder hobo.

With that they set off, they slowly walked through the abandoned village. The signs of desperate fighting and damage were all around them. Doors to houses and windows were smashed in, cars and other vehicles were wrecked and burnt out, piles of rubble were scattered all around and many houses looked like they’d been outright demolished.

However, all the damage looked old, like it had occurred decades ago rather than just over a year ago. Everything was overgrown with vegetation, moss, vines, ivy and other more exotic plant life, the devastation seemed like it had happened in a previous generation.

After a minute of walking they came to their first encounter, at a turning in the street they were walking along, they cautiously checked around the corner.

At first all they could see were indistinct humanoid shapes in the middle of the road, but then a slight breeze blew some of the fog away for a moment. That revealed a group of very large human shaped creatures standing still or crouched down in the road, they had greyish skin and let out quiet shivering moans that carried on the breeze.

The three hunters looked at each other, Jack and Stacey were nervous but determined, Nate just looked excited and ready to go.

“Let me start it off,” Jack told the other two. They looked intrigued for a moment but nodded. Jack figured this was as good a time as any to test out a few skills he’d been working on.

He stepped into the middle of the road with Stacey and Nate standing behind him. Jack reached into a small pouch at his side and grabbed a handful of steel marbles, he took a deep breath to steady himself and got ready to set up a strong repelling magnetic field.

A second later he threw, the marbles rocketed away with a loud crack, trailing a few blue arcs of electricity along their path of flight. They ripped into the unprepared group of monsters and downed several of them, but the rest turned towards the three hunters.

With a low moan they began loping towards them, as they got closer Jack saw more detail of the creatures they faced. They were large, around two and a half metres and thick with muscle bulging beneath greyish skin, they were humanoid in shape but appeared to have no heads, or rather in place of a head they seemed to have just a vague bump settled atop their muscular necks.

“They’re Dullahans!” Stacey cried. “Don’t let yourselves get grabbed!”

After that there was no time to talk. The first monster reached Jack with a shivering moan and lunged for him, trying to grab him with its large, meaty three fingered hands, Jack danced out of the way before drawing his spear and thrusting it into the monster’s chest while extending it at the same time. He blasted some lighting into the creature and ripped the spear head up and out of its shoulder, it stumbled backwards as a fountain of black ichor spewed out, it toppled onto its back, dead.

Jack looked around for his next opponent. Meanwhile Nate and Stacey were doing similarly well, the Dulluhans were strong but slow. Nate stabbed one monster in the stomach with his massive sword then channelled fire through the hollow blade and out through the small holes in the end. The Dulluhan looked like it was lit up from the inside for a moment before its midsection began to smoulder and then disintegrated into ash and molten flesh.

Stacey appeared to be doing even better, she was gracefully dancing in between the monsters as they clumsily lunged and leapt for her. She wielded her massively oversized sabre like it weighed nothing at all and chopped off limbs or cut through entire torsos with ease. She even let go of her sword for a second and left it floating in the air while she repositioned herself before grabbing it again and finishing off her opponent with a smooth overhead slice.

Nate took out the last monster by liberally pouring fire onto it while continuously stepping out of its reach. It fell to its hands and knees while fully on fire, still trying to crawl towards him before it finally died.

Once the last one succumbed to the flames, the three hunters lowered their weapons and caught their breath.

“Dulluhans huh?” Jack looked down at their opponents.

“Yep, vicious things. Strong but slow, they’re D rank monsters normally,” Stacey said as she cleaned her blade of the blackish blood.

“Where are their heads?” Jack asked, he prodded the bump between its shoulders with the butt of his spear, a small arc of leftover electricity trailed lazily down the spear shaft and into the monster. Suddenly the bump between the monster's shoulders peeled back to reveal a large set of shark-like teeth which snapped out.

“Whoa!” Jack jumped back in shock.

“Hahahaha!” Nate leaned over laughing, slapping his thighs. Even Stacey giggled lightly.

“Found it, fuck.” He took a few deep breaths and tried to calm his heartbeat.

Stacey took out her pager and swiped through it, looking at the bestiary. “Dullahans, the ‘headless monster’. Humanoid, high strength but low speed and intelligence. It says here that the blood is valuable, huh, have you noticed how a lot of pharmaceutical places seem to be after monster blood these days? What do they even use it for?”

Jack shrugged, having not really noticed anything at all. But Nate nodded. “Yep, I spoke to Michelle up in admin who spoke to Henry in the surveyor corps, she says that he says the pharmaceutical companies are onto something big. They want all the blood they can get apparently.”

“Michelle? What does she know? All she does is gossip,” Stacey scoffed.

“Hey, she’s got a network, she knows stuff,” Nate defended.

While Nate and Stacey bickered, Jack busied himself with cultivating from several of the Dullahan corpses. There was plenty of material for him to work with but he made sure not to overdo it, he didn’t want to get greedy and incapacitate himself in the middle of hostile territory.

Once he’d cultivated from several of the creatures, he got out some tough sealable plastic bags to store the monster blood in.

Turns out it was pretty tricky to get blood from something which no longer had a heartbeat. Two of them wound up having to lift the monster up by the feet and tilt it so that blood ran from a neck wound while another held the containers, not easy when the monsters were well over two metres tall and absolutely ripped. They managed it in the end and came away with a couple of litres in total.

With that done they carried on through the village. After the noise and chaos of the brief fight, the atmosphere settled back into the quiet desolation of an abandoned haunted village. Jack wondered why the noise hadn’t drawn more attention from whatever else was lurking in the area.

But then he began to hear a faint scrabbling and clicking of something above them on the roofs of the houses around them. They continued walking but the three hunters tensed up and got their weapons ready.

The attack didn’t come from above however, as all of a sudden a Dullahan charged out from a nearby alleyway and flung a large fisted punch at Nate. He caught the punch on the flat of his blade but the weight of it sent him stumbling back. Several more Dulluhans came from the same alley, Jack and Stacey moved forward to engage.

However behind them a new threat appeared as half a dozen creatures climbed down from atop the houses they’d been lurking on. They appeared to be humanoid in shape but crouched on all fours with their limbs splayed, they were covered in grey shaggy fur, had long hooked claws and large wide mouths full of sharp fangs.

The three hunters were surrounded, it seemed like the two groups of monsters had coordinated this. But then one of the new grey furred monsters leapt on top of a Dullahan with a feral roar and proceeded to attack it in a frenzy with its claws.

They didn’t have time to ponder this, Stacey was stuck fighting with one of the new monsters which were far faster than the Dullahans and Nate was still on the backfoot from the surprise attack.

Jack faced off against the group of Dullahans emerging from the alley. He unhooked his axe from his back harness, liberally poured some lighting energy into it and swung it in the direction of the monster group. Numerous arcs of lighting and white mist rippled outward and tore into the group of monsters, they stumbled but didn’t stop. He swung again and again, covering the monsters in lightning, the monster group slowed to a crawl and dropped to their hands and knees, twitching and spasming, unable to move much.

Jack finished them off by chopping his axe directly and deeply into each of the helpless Dullahans before turning around to see what awaited behind him.

He found Nate and Stacey twirling around each other as they fended off the attacking creatures, swinging their massive swords around as the shaggy grey furred monsters circled around them, taking turns to leap in and attack the duo.

One monster pounced and tried to take a swipe at Stacey, she countered by throwing a gout of scaling steam in its face before finishing it off while it was reeling.

Nate found his element particularly useful as the grey shaggy fur which covered the monsters was rather flammable. He ended the fight by unleashing a stream of continuous fire, spewing it all over each of the monsters. He finished off the last as it tried to escape, he pinned it under his boot and bent down to pour fire directly on its head. It let out a howling scream as it died.

Once they were done, the trio of hunters took stock, checking for injuries and any damage to their gear. Having found no damage or injuries Jack turned to Stacey.

“So, what are these things then?” he asked.

She took out her pager and scrolled through it.

“Umm, they’re called Grey Ghouls I think, grey for their fur obviously, and apparently they'll eat anything with meat on it, even if it's rotten. Ghoul monsters are normally scavengers but some variants are more aggressive, like these ones,” she explained as she tapped through her pager.

“Anything valuable on ‘em?” he asked.

“Hmm, nope. Well, the blood can be sold but everything else is a no. Anyone got any more containers for blood?” she asked.

Nate and Jack shook their heads. Jack looked down at a Grey Ghoul corpse, at first he wondered if the pelt might be valuable. But then felt slightly uncomfortable at the thought of skinning something that so closely resembled the shape of a human being, plus on further inspection the pelt looked very patchy and he could see grey unhealthy, scabby looking skin beneath it.

They decided to move on after Jack had cultivated from a few more Dullahans. After a couple more encounters with the local denizens of the abandoned village they finally came to the village square. It was a wide open space surrounded by shops and houses, with a church on the far end of where they stood.

It seemed a battle had taken place here, Jack recalled over a year ago that many military operations had taken place all over the UK. The operations had been to evacuate various isolated villages and small towns that were under continuous attack by monsters or at risk from other magical phenomena.

The village square was strewn with rubble and wrecked vehicles, rusted with age. A military helicopter had crashed into the front of a house and an armoured personnel carrier with an abandoned machine gun on top was tipped onto its side. Guns and other forgotten weapons were laying scattered all around, found mostly around sandbags and makeshift barricades.

Various personal possessions were also lying scattered around, a handbag here, a phone there, a doll. But no bodies.

“I…I had no idea…” Jack looked at the battleground, signs of desperate fighting were all around.

“Yes….I think this must’ve been in the early days when the army was still playing a more active role, before hunters became a thing. They must have been trying to evacuate the villagers from here, or this is where they were making a last stand,” Stacey spoke quietly, not wanting to disturb the desolate atmosphere.

“This…...this looks more like a last stand than a successful evacuation….it looks like a….like a disaster. I don’t remember hearing about anything like this in the news,” Jack said.

“I heard the government was actually suppressing the news like this with emergency powers. They didn’t want to spread panic I guess.” Stacey shrugged but looked sadly at the surroundings.

While Jack and Stacey were observing the devastation with melancholy, Nate was picking his way across the village square to the steepled church at the far end.

They followed him, careful not to step on anything left behind by the people that had passed through, feeling like it would be a desecration. The large double doors to the church were partially open, Nate walked up to them and began to push them open.

The doors resisted for a moment before creaking inwards, they stepped inside and after a moment their eyes adjusted to the gloom.

“Oh my,” Stacey breathed out.

All around them, covering the floors, walls and ceiling of the large church interior were vibrant crimson vines, growing and spreading throughout the church in thick masses. However, on the floor, intermingled with the vines, were skeletons, human skeletons.

“The vines are supposed to grow where lots of blood has been spilt, so……” Nate gingerly stepped over thick red vines covering the floor, making sure not to step on any bones.

“This must have been where people hid to escape whatever was out there, but they died in here anyway,” Stacey whispered softly

Nate made his way over to a wall and seemed to be searching for something amongst the vines. Jack joined him. Stacey went to the other side of the church.

“What are you looking for?” he asked Nate.

“Most of this stuff is useless. The older vines are worthless, we need fresh growth. Look here, see.” Nate held up a section of vine, it looked a brighter shade of red, almost pink and also seemed to have long, thin, wet worm like filaments growing from the vine. Jack nodded.

“This is the stuff they want, agricultural and pharmaceutical companies, looks disgusting but apparently the older the vines get the more inert they become, whatever that means. Let's get to it, oh and look, you can see other hunters have been here recently.” Nate pointed to another section of new growth a few feet away.

Jack looked and saw some more light red vines to his left. “Other hunters?”

“Yep, for this stuff it's common courtesy to hack away at a few extra pieces of vine so that more new vine will grow, that lets other parties of hunters who come by later harvest it,” Nate explained as he sawed away at some vine with a combat knife.

“Huh, so hunters just come back to this place continuously then?” Jack also got to work sawing at another patch of vine.

“Yep, this place produces valuable material. It’d be a waste to just leave it here. I bet the local hunters guild branch gets jobs to come out here all the time. Probably D rank stuff cause of all the monsters.” Nate pried off a tricky piece of vine from the wall.

“So is that why they don’t wipe this place off the map? Because of the Red Vine?” Jack asked. “Aren’t the monsters here a danger to the surrounding area?”

“Heh, careful where you say that stuff Jacky boy, you’ll upset some people, hehehe,” Nate chuckled and Jack looked at him askance.

“Is it true though?” he asked.

“Well…..probably but what ya gonna do?” Nate shrugged.

“What am I gonna do? But……isn’t killing all the monsters in the UK our job? Isn’t our whole deal to exterminate these things where we find them so they’re not a danger to anyone? You know, like the overall goal?” Jack asked in confusion.

“Is it though?” Nate asked with raised eyebrows before turning back to the wall.

“Is what?”

“Is it our job to kill all the monsters? I don’t think the guild ever agreed to something like that. We said we’d hunt them. We never said we’d hunt them all, not sure we even could, but we never agreed to the total extermination of every monster in the UK,” Nate explained.

“In order to get rid of places like this we’d have to bomb half of Britain to oblivion. Anyway what's gotten into you? You’re normally happy to just kill stuff and grab whatever's laying around, remember the Skipwith Nature Reserve? Now that was fun!” Nate grinned.

“It's nothing, I was just remembering my promotion hunt in the York city cemetery. No one gets buried there anymore because it's full of monsters, but the city council never gets rid of it even though it's in the middle of the city. The only people that go in there anymore are hunters. Why doesn’t the city council get rid of it?” Jack asked in slight frustration, he cut into a vine too hard and sliced into his finger. While Jack was sucking his finger Nate crouched down to stuff his haul into a bag.

“To be honest, it's probably because it's a source of revenue for both the city and the guild. All sorts of interesting things pop up in there and we go in and get them for whoever is willing to pay.”

“Yeah but the monsters that spawn there are a danger to the rest of the city surely. People have died. I saw protesters outside the cemetery gates, I wouldn’t have thought director Welts would be okay with something like that,” Jack said as he also began to stuff handfuls of Red Vine in a bag.

“Welts wouldn’t have much of a choice,” Stacey spoke up as she walked over to them, gingerly picking her way over the skeletons. “Getting rid of monster nests is like….high level politics at this point, the guild executives and parliament generally decide things like that, not branch directors.”

“Politics, I thought politics is all about serving the people and…I dunno…..pleasing your constituency. Getting rid of a den of blood thirsty predators that occasionally go out for a human sized snack seems like it should win a lot of people over,” Jack pointed out.

“No money in it though,” replied Stacey. “I mean, would you nuke a gold mine and bury it under millions of tonnes of radioactive rubble?”

“That's cold, but I suppose I see what you mean. Still seems wrong though.” Jack shook his head.

Stacey shrugged. “I suppose as long as the government and the guild don’t let too many people get killed, they can do what they like. And they like to make money.”

After another half an hour of sawing through vines and bagging them up they were ready to call it a day and find their way back to the car. They carefully walked over the skeletons and out of the church.

What greeted them outside however was not the desolate silence, a low moaning and keening echoed all around them and through the mist emerged large humanoid figures.

The mist cleared to reveal dozens of Dullahans gathering in the village square in front of the church, and surrounding them were dozens more Grey Ghouls perched atop nearby roofs and wrecked vehicles. All the monsters looked towards the church, facing them.

Before the trio of hunters could get their weapons ready, something happened which neither monster nor hunter could have predicted.

Just as the monsters began to mass and looked prepared to attack, something huge barreled into the square and began lashing out at any monster it could reach, ripping everything apart. Jack couldn’t make out any detail of what the monster was, just that it almost filled half the square and seemed to be a mass of black rapidly whipping tentacles. It let out a sort of dull rippling roar that sounded like it came from underwater.

He didn’t have time to ponder any of this however as he felt Stacey grab the front of his armour and yelled in his face.

“FUCKING RUN!!” she screamed before taking off to the side, following an already fleeing Nate.

They ran down a side alley, they could hear the screams and moans of the monster battle behind them. Half a Dullahan corpse flew into a roof above them, they kept running. The strange low pitched roaring reverberated through the buildings, making the stones and glass shake.

Through a series of alleys they managed to quickly make it back to their starting point at the bottom of the short steep hill. They scrambled up the wet grass, fearfully keeping an eye behind them, for whatever the large creature was. They could still hear the roaring but it sounded more distant.

Finally, they made it up the hill and stood there panting. After a moment they turned their backs on the dead village turned monster nest and walked back into the misty forest.

“What the hell was that?!” Nate asked.

“No idea, just hope it stays in the village,” Jack muttered as they trudged through the woods.

With some relief the trio of hunters reached Nate’s car and piled inside after putting their loot in the car boot.

“So guys how was that? Huh?” Nate turned around to look at Jack and Stacey sprawled out on the back seat with an expectant look. They were both covered in dirt, sweat and monster blood and Stacey just knew she’d have to get rid of her blue jeans when this was over. She wrinkled her nose at the faint scent of mutant frog vomit.

“Well, on one hand we definitely got what we came for,” Stacey began and Nate nodded happily. “But on the other hand we’re now gonna need to drive the rest of the way with the windows open.” Nate’s smile dipped a little. “So overall, I’d give it a C minus,” Stacey told him.

Far from being disappointed Nate smiled happily again. “Hey, that's better than anything I got in school. I’ll take it! Now let's go!” He started the car engine and they were off once again, detour completed.