As another day arrives, Mash wanders off on her own, finding something hidden in the forest.

Ritsuka and Castoria went to gather food, leaving Mash on her own in the cave. She was wondering why was Castoria acting in such a weird way, as she was rather cold to her during dinner, had she done something to upset her? She'd have to ask them after they got back.

This would take some time however, as to find the better food, they'd have to go deep into the island and would take a while to return.

As she was sitting alone in the beach, Mash remembered the weird totem they found the previous day and decided to investigate it a bit deeper. If that weird stone they placed managed to do something, then there must surely be something else in the matter.

Summoning her Servant armor and shield, the girl started to make her way towards the totem.

While she walked, she noticed something unusual, the forest felt full of magical energy, and it wasn't like that yesterday.

Getting closer to the area of the totem, her eyes caught something strange on the trees surrounding her... Runes.

Thanks to training by Caster Cu and Skadi, she was able to understand what they ment. The first and most common one was 'Ancestor', the second, less common one was 'Devourer'.

She didn't knew the purpose of the runes, but she was sure that they were what was filling the place with magical energy.

As she tried to continue her path and ignore the runes, a sudden noise stopped her, growling. Looking all around her, she was unable to locate the source of the noise, until she looked... Under her.

From the ground, a hand emerged and grabbed her foot, trying to pull her beneath the earth. Reacting as fast as she could, she cut the hand using her shield, but soon 5 more emerged, then 10, then 20, and all of the sudden she was surrounded.

Little by little they started to emerge from the ground, frozen and decaying bodies that wasted no time in trying to overwhelm the girl, who fought them off the best she could.

The increasing numbers proved to be too much for her, and she was eventually forced to escape. However, due to a mistake, she ran deeper into the forest instead of away from it, ending up in an entrance to another cave. With no option, she ran inside to escape the living corpses.

The inside of the cave was certainty a lot calmer than the outside, and the corpses seemed to have lost her and started to wander off into another location. Mash planned to simply wait until she couldn't hear their footsteps anymore and then make a run for it back at the cave at the beach.

But, as she was going to, she was distracted by something, what seemed to be a book? A little deeper into the cave. Filled with curiosity, Mash went and grabbed it, noticing how it was written in English. A lot of the pages were torn off, so it was clearly incomplete, it started with day 345.

"Day 345. I can't take it anymore, the sound in the woods is becoming more and more disturbing, and that... That THING that comes in the night, I'm pretty sure it's trying to drive me crazy, and worse of it all, it's working. I alredy gave up any hope of escaping this place, so I'll at least try to figure out just what the fuck is this island before I die" -

"Day 346. I found something strange on the north of the island, a weird summoning ritual, but supposedly there's no other human here, only me and a bunch of monsters and undead. I tried to examine it, but the temperatures on the north are freezing, I'll have to find something that could help me resist the cold" -

Then, more pages cut, resuming with...

"Day 412. I got attacked today, but I don't know what it was that did so, it's nothing like any other creature I've seen. Worse of all, it looked human, I'll try to investigate more later, maybe this could be an inte" -

And then, the words suddenly stopped. At the bottom of the page, there was a drop of blood. Whoever was writing this died after being stranded on the island for more than a year.

"Senpai and Artoria need to see this, maybe we can find out what that thing in the north that the book mentioned was" - Mash said, as she prepared to leave the cave. Fortunatly, no corpse seemed to be around the area, so she took her opportunity and ran all the way to the beach, surprising herself when she saw Ritsuka and Castoria alredy there.

"Senpai, I'm here!" - Mash yelled before jumping and hugging the boy, making both fall into the sand.

"Were where you Mash?" - the boy asked her.

"I went to do a bit of exploration on my own, and I found something strange inside a cave in the forest" -

"Oh?" - said both Castoria and Ritsuka at the same time.

Once they were inside their refuge, Mash showed them the book, and they wasted no time in reading it.

"He talks about sounds in the woods, did any of you hear anything when we went yesterday? - Ritsuka asked the two girls, with both denying the statement - "Did you hear something when you went on your own today Mash?" -

"I heard growling under the floor before a horde of rotting corpses emerged and attacked me, but I'm not so sure if the growling is what this is referring to" -

"We also haven't seen anything at night, but I'll start blocking the entrance with my magic every night, just to be sure" -

"Sounds good to me. We'll have to keep our guard up from now on, whatever the mystery on this place is, we're going to solve it" -

"Hai!"