He stood in front of the great gate the same gate that had allowed him to enter into the castle, and now he was going to step through the same gate again.
He never thought that he would be joining the hunters, especially since he didn't know how to fight much less hunt, but had to do something, at least that's what he told everyone around him.
After so long he had finally been given a small bottle of fire.
The knight that had given it to him, had explained that he should use the fire to burn away any blood he came in contact with, it wasn't a perfect method, because for one he would be on fire for a brief moment, and if the tainted blood entered his body threw an opened wound.
The chances that the fire could stop the infection, depended on how fast he could set himself ablaze.
Next to him were men and women who had family members within the town and as such, they were choosing to leave and risk not being able to come back to the castle.
he had to admit that he never thought that he would be accompanied by so many peculiar being, gargantuan creatures whose bodies seemed to be made of pure muscle and wielded massive meat cleavers and wore the hoods of executioners, passed each other a bag filled with food.
The same bag was being passed around and received by all sorts of beasts and men.
The massive stone doors opened and the sight before him was akin to comparing night and day.
For as the doors leading to the outside opened, the inner doors leading to the inside of the castle closed.
Long gone were the bright light of the yellow sun, clean untainted air, bright green grass of the fields, and clean white stone streets that he had become so quickly accustomed to.
The land before him seemed to lose its will to live, the once white stone that both the buildings and streets were made of seemed to have a hint of gray in them, whether this was from the lack of maintenance or the from the environment itself was a mystery he didn't care to investigate.
The bag was passed on to him, and he was going to reject it and pass it on to the next person, but doing so would cause a misunderstanding so he chose to look inside it first.
To his surprise, the bag was filled with crystals and potions.
He reached in to take a few when the knights began to walk out of the castle and into the town he watched as the beasts, then the beast's men followed and he quickly passed the bag onto the next person,
He waited to walk forward but he watched as the people before him went their separate ways.
It was his group's turn to walk forward and for the first time in weeks, he found himself truly looking at the world he had but momentarily left behind.
No orders had been given, no instruction had been said, nothing except for go and kill those things.
He could hear the muttering coming from the men and women behind him those that weren't leaving the castle t kill the beast but to search for their loved one, and he couldn't help but stop himself from smiling.
Even now the knights and creatures were protecting the people.
The knights had stepped out first to calm the citizens of the town and the creatures stepped out to deal with the creatures that were so far removed from humans that their forms no longer resembled those of men.
Then it was his turn to walk into the town, his job will be to clean whatever is left of the tainted ones.
As he walked out of the castle he noticed that the town was a day away from the castle, this was od because the castle was right next to the town when he had been first brought to it.
He could hear the roars of beats and the sounds of gunfire in the distance as the knights and beats encountered the infected creatures.
He heard women scream and as he turned to look at the group behind him he couldn't help but shake his head, the women of the group were huddled together holding hand s with one another.
They walked slowly and seemed to jump at an unfamiliar sound as well as some that not even a child would have been afraid of.
As he walked, he suddenly stopped, something wasn't right, how did he know of the state of the streets and buildings of the town if they were a day away from the entrance to the castle.
He turned and stepped forward only to stop himself from walking as he was about to run into the stone wall that surrounded the town.
He briefly stopped and looked around confused as to what was going on, and he touched the wall to make sure it was indeed real.
However, his attention was quickly caught by a pure white sheet of paper that had been left behind by one of the two groups that had gone into the town before him.
"Be careful, either space or our perception is being twisted here. So things that are farther than they really are, seem like if they are either closer or farther than they should be"
He took the advice of the note left behind and so he carefully stepped into the town and was immediately assaulted by the smell in the air, it was the stench of death and stale atter.
As e looked around he noticed that several of the houses have sandbags stacked in front of them, and had their windows barred with steel bars, as a protective measure against the infected.
He suddenly remembered those that were behind him and the other hunters that had walked out of the castle alongside him, but he noticed that none of them were present.
He waited for a long moment to see if any of them needed his assistance, no perhaps it was his curiosity and wishful thinking as he hoped to see them enter the town safely.
He suddenly felt the hot breath of something standing next to him and he suddenly found himself surrounded by fire.
He wanted to scream but for whatever reason, the fire only felt warm, so he stopped himself from doing so.
"You okay?" Kirito asked him
He turned to look at the knight who was holding a small bottle with one hand, the fire the bottle had seemed to look as if it had lost some of its heat.
"The air in this town is laced with some kind of illness or infection, it's hat's making people see things that aren't there"
'I saw you standing there like an idiot, so I decided to help you, look if things seem like they're off, use the fire because that means you're infected and need to burn the infection away" Kirito said to him before walking away.
For a moment he reached into his pocket and tightly held onto the bottle of fire he had been given and he walked deeper into the town, he passed the group of women that were once behind him, as they reunited with their loved ones.
He stopped and looked at the victorian structure of the town, no of the city, and watched as the people walked back and forth, but none of them were natives of the town, but newcomers that didn't know what the city's citizens did or why they did them.
No the newly arrived people, simply knew that they had to survive and so they cautiously went about their days.