Chapter 130: Chapter 130 Ghost Maid
The story of this ghost maid called Anwina is fairly simple, apart from the last part about her becoming undead, which is worth documenting as academic material. The rest can basically be summarized with “A long time ago” and “Several years later.”
But I’m afraid I’ll get smacked by the readers if I write it like that, so I’ve decided to do a bit of recapping.
The story goes : A long time ago, there was a farm girl born in a small village near Dalaran County; her name was Anwina. She lived a simple and happy life with her parents and a twin brother. Unfortunately, due to poor years, a famine struck their village when Anwina was twelve, forcing many, including Anwina’s family, to leave their homes due to necessity. Introduced by a relative, they moved to Dalaran County to make a living. Because of their dire circumstances, not only the parents but also Anwina and her brother had to mingle in the markets, resorting to little “tricks” to secure food for the next day. This way of life continued for months until they met the kind Mr. Fowler.
Mr. Fowler was a well-known businessman and philanthropist, famous for his good-natured laziness. He greatly sympathized with Anwina’s family’s plight and agreed to employ her and her brother as servants in his home—even though they were too young to work any real jobs—essentially provinding for the starving children while also aiding their impoverished family. Then…
Ahem, although I don’t like to use these words, the uneventful life that followed Anwina really forces me to write it …
The Undead Catastrophe arrived.
Just as the storyline we already knew, the tidal wave of the Undead Army finally swept through Dalaran County, and by then, the Human Kingdom was already in a state of near paralysis, with Dalaran County fighting a lonely battle without any military support.
When Dalaran County’s guardians also fell under the erosion of Undead Magic*, the entire town eventually succumbed completely.
At the time, Anwina was hiding in this mansion. Due to her frail body, she couldn’t possibly fight on the battlefield. Thus, she and other women and children stayed back to prepare food and treat the wounded for the soldiers on the frontlines. When the myriad skeleton army was about to break through the defenses, Mr. Fowler immediately led his family to seal all doors and windows of the house and barricaded the main door with the heaviest furniture to buy time, hoping that the knights of the Silver Hand would arrive soon to rescue them.
However, these civilians didn’t know that the Silver Hand had already disbanded.
Mr. Fowler’s mansion was too vast; even though everyone did their best to seal all doors, windows, and entries, one or two small sewage outlets were overlooked. While a typical human army might not be able to use such passageways to infiltrate the mansion, the undead were different; they decided their direction of attack based on the scent of the living and could launch assaults from any conceivable direction—even cutting off their own arms to fit through narrow passageways.
More than ten ghouls rushed into the house through the sewerage and started savagely attacking the untrained civilians inside. Mr. Fowler, being the only one who had a month of militia training and knew some basic magic, managed to take down two ghouls but was then fatally stabbed in the chest by a rotting claw. Watching his friends fall one by one before him, Anwina started running frantically. She aimed for a small hut on the ground floor where temporary servants rested, but just as she turned around, a ghoul scratched her back. At that moment, her brother Tony rushed up and forcefully embraced the small but incredibly strong and agile ghoul…
Overwhelming terror prevented Anwina from looking back as she stumbled into the servants’ room, locking the door tightly and then shaking uncontrollably as she hid under the bed—it provided her a tiny bit of security.
She felt her body growing cold, and the surroundings became increasingly blurry, as if boundless black fog was converging from all directions to swallow her. Outside, lingering ghouls smelled the scent of the living and began to scratch anxiously at the unsteady wooden door. But, for some reason, they suddenly left.
Confused, Anwina stood up and then realized she was actually standing straight through the bed above her…
The story ends here—afterward, Anwina kept lingering in this room. Since she was just a fragile little ghost, she couldn’t move far from her own body, so she chose to stay here, her only company being her decaying corpse…
The ghost before me spoke of her experiences with a calmness as if they had nothing to do with her anymore. Perhaps this was due to prolonged loneliness and a fragmented soul, which had rendered her incapable of understanding overly complex emotions; or maybe it was because the thinking patterns of the Dead Souls can no longer be explained by common sense. However, I could still faintly see a hint of hesitation and sadness in her eyes.
Just as Sandora said, this ghost’s soul was too pure, devoid of impurities which meant it could not be easily tainted by her own stray thoughts. Thus, even though she had been dead for such a long time, Anwina still retained most of her consciousness and some emotions. If we could lend her a hand, perhaps she might recover even better.
We all wanted to help her, but before that, we needed to make this ghost lower her guard towards us.
This was going to be difficult because the only one here most capable of handling such mystic events was Alaya, whom Anwina feared the most right now. It was an innate fear stemming from racial instincts, and persuading Anwina to get closer to Alaya was as challenging as when the Red Army tried to convince the Pseudo Army to surrender.
Sure enough, when Alaya, shrouded in Holy Light, moved slightly closer upon my cue, Anwina immediately let out a terrified scream. Her ghostly white luminance flickered erratically under the assault of the Holy Light, like a faulty light bulb—clearly, these two light sources could not coexist, at least not for the time being.
“Relax, relax…” I immediately consoled the Ghost Maid who was about to flee, while pulling Alaya behind me to prevent her Holy Light from harming the fragile light before us, “We don’t have any ill intentions. We just want to help you.”
“Help… me…” Anwina’s consciousness seemed a bit unclear as she murmured hesitantly, then became puzzled, “But… who exactly are you…”
I felt that if we asked Anwina to keep a secret, she would definitely tell the enemy everything immediately—since she had just recounted her entire experience to us, yet only now did she think to ask about our identities.
Of course, this could also be because Alaya had already unnerved her somewhat.
I patted Little Bubbles on the head as he suddenly tried to step forward—the little fellow was immensely curious about the flickering lights on Anwina’s body, probably planning to touch this sister who glowed like Alaya—and then said to Anwina, “We are some travelers, originally out on an adventure and incidentally letting our own angel soak up some sun, and just happened to pass by here…”
“Letting your own angel… soak up some sun…?” Anwina, whose mind was already a bit foggy, immediately got confused and muttered to herself.
“Ah, yes, her name is Alaya, she’s the angel we have at home…” I explained, as Qianqian rolled her eyes helplessly and Alaya looked on perplexedly, then I pointed to the others one by one, introducing them: “This is Sandora, this is Xu Qianqian, they are my lovers, these two little ones, Pandora and… ahem, Little Baobao, are my sisters, and the guy at the back, Passerby A, is an extra for the crowd scenes…”
Lin Xue, maintaining her punching posture, politely introduced herself to Anwina: “Hello, I’m Lin Xue, the master of this humble servant here…”
Everyone except her and Anwina, including Little Bubbles, began gearing up…
Hahaha! See, you arrogant little miss, I have an absolute numerical advantage here!