Chapter 57 Chapter 56 Escape
The child Dagji gradually calmed down. He planned to wait for nightfall and, relying on his familiarity with the town, sneak out and run away.
As for the two children, what could they do fleeing into the icy wilderness? How would they survive?
Dagji couldn’t think of it, nor did he dare to think, but at least it was better than becoming fish bones, devoured by a troll.
He waited patiently.
As the sun set, the temperature dropped, and his bulky, roughly patched cotton jacket had become completely cold with the passing time. His limbs felt stiff, and the cold crept up them, gradually penetrating the warm chest.
There was no way out; they could only hide here. Hiding inside a house would eventually lead the trolls to find them.
But the night didn’t come.
“Brother, are you cold too?”
“Cold.”
“Let’s hug each other.”
They were like two cornered cubs, cuddling together for warmth, finally waiting for night to fall in the biting cold.
When the outside became pitch dark.
Dagji moved his frozen limbs, took his sister’s hand, and crawled out from under the house—they had propped it up with pillars.
Once outside, Dagji felt as if he were blind. It was pitch black all around, and he could see nothing, only vaguely making out the outlines of the houses and a few twinkling stars overhead.
In the unseen darkness, he could hear the trolls’ burps and snoring as they slept. Upon closer listening, the sounds were both near and far.
He could also hear, from behind him in their home, the trolls’ snores and occasional burps; his mother’s bones were in the belly of a troll.
Dagji seemed to vaguely hear the cry of his mother, so close that it felt like it came from the back of his head.
It seemed his mother was crying for the future in which he would be eaten.
He couldn’t help but shiver all over.
Everything around was pitch dark; if he went the wrong way and stepped on a troll’s hand, he would certainly become fish bones.
He was still a child, forgetting to account for one thing. At night, everyone turned blind and saw nothing. The trolls also severely disliked flames and would never allow firelight to exist at night.
He had heard that people with long ears could see in the dark, but his ears were not long; he thought this was just someone’s exaggeration, like their boasting about heroes or Sigma.
If humans were that strong, then why couldn’t he see anyone when the trolls attacked his hometown?
Dagji felt nervous, but his sister tightly held onto the corner of his clothes. He took a bite of his lip, overcame his fear, and stopped trembling, cautiously moving forward based on his memory of the town’s layout, keeping close to the side of the house.
He remembered that from his home by the lake, reaching the town entrance meant traversing a gentle slope, taking a turn, and walking straight on the main road to reach the town gate.
He did not have to worry about the gate being closed since the wooden door had been smashed by the trolls.
Following his memory, he took a few steps, and the terrain began to rise. Dagji stepped on stones while pulling his sister’s hand, moving forward in tiny steps.
Suddenly, Dagji accidentally kicked a stone, which rolled down the slope, creating a series of terrifying sounds that echoed in the quiet yet danger-laden night, and finally splashed into the lake.
Startled, Dagji immediately squatted down, pulling his sister close. He remembered that there was nowhere to hide on this slope. They both held their breaths, quietly awaiting fate’s judgment.
After a few minutes of silence, with nothing amiss, Dagji sighed with relief and helped his sister get back on her feet.
The ground gradually leveled beneath their feet.
He began to get used to the sounds of breathing, burps, and snoring from the darkness around them.
He reached out to the right and touched a cold wall; it was at the corner!
He whispered to his sister, “We’re almost there.”
His sister tightened her grip on his hand in response.
Following the wall, they walked step by step. The cold wind blew against his cracked face, filling his nostrils with the trolls’ foul smell and the scent of blood.
Dagji was very cautious; he guided his sister as they navigated the wall, inching toward the gate he remembered.
The outline of the gate gradually became visible in the darkness.
At the same time, Dagji heard several footsteps approaching from ahead. These footsteps were not the heavy thuds of trolls; he could tell they were the sounds of boots stepping on gravel.
His sister murmured, “Brother, there are still people alive.”
Her voice betrayed undisguised joy.
If they were relatives, then the chances of survival would be much higher.
But alongside his joy, Dagji began to feel suspicious.
If everything was so smooth, then why could he hear his mother’s cries?
He whispered, “Let’s observe first.”
Then he slowly moved forward.
The footsteps ahead quickened, sounding like at least a dozen people, though Dagji could not see them. But he could imagine the joy on their faces as they hurried toward the door in darkness, all smiling in delight.
Didn’t the trolls also see nothing in the dark, just like humans?
Suddenly, loud shouts and battle cries echoed through the night.
Dagji’s heart sank; these were the war cries of trolls, sounds he was all too familiar with. Each battle cry meant someone would die, becoming food for trolls. His legs trembled as he saw blurry shapes in front of him; he could not discern what was happening but heard human cries.
“There’s an ambush.”
“Run!”
“Ahhh!”
“It’s a trap! A trap! They dug a trap.”
“A fishing net! Help!”
“Ahhh!”
Dagji snapped back to reality, grabbing his petrified sister as he searched his surroundings. He remembered there was a small depression nearby. Luckily, he felt it. He quickly lay down with his sister inside.
Heavy footsteps of trolls approached from behind, but thankfully, none noticed the two siblings hiding in the pit.
He raised his head, straining to discern the outside scene.
At that moment, a green moon shone through the gaps in the dark clouds, casting a faint green light—weak, yet enough to illuminate the darkness.
Twenty trolls, nearly three meters tall and hunchbacked, surrounded the fleeing humans. One troll held a harpoon, vigorously jabbing at a fleeing human, while another troll dragged a net ensnaring a screaming person.
The battle was nearing its end; no humans were left standing.
Dagji was filled with despair; it was clear that trolls had some vision in the dark. They lay in ambush at the town’s entrance, like fishermen waiting for their prey, ready to snare the stragglers.
Once they finished catching humans, they would undoubtedly find him and his sister hidden in the depression. Moreover, this was the only exit from the town; unless he could somehow use the water route, but there were no boats by the lake, as they had all been seized by the fleeing adults.
Most trolls had their backs to Dagji, focused on catching and fighting over the humans. He witnessed a human being pulled apart by two trolls, limbs severed.
Gnashing his teeth, Dagji tightened his grip on his sister’s hand and shouted, “Let’s run together, follow me, run fast!”
With that, he bravely leaped out of the depression, pulling his sister on his back, sprinting toward the gate with all the speed he could muster.
The massive back of a troll loomed near him; he ran past it unnoticed, passing by three trolls in succession. The two of them climbed over a heavy wooden door that had fallen to the ground and jumped down, continuing to run, ultimately surpassing the gate.
Surprisingly, none of the trolls noticed them; perhaps they never expected that children would dart out at this moment.
Dagji’s shoes crunched on snow outside, his heart raced, and just as joy was about to burst forth—
“Crack.”
“Ah!”
It was his sister who cried out, falling to the ground.
Dagji turned around and, illuminated by the moonlight, saw a trapper, filled with malice, biting down hard on her small foot with cold iron teeth.
This sound alerted the trolls over ten meters away. One troll stood up, yelling at Dagji and charged towards him.
His sister cried, “Brother, it hurts!…”
She was in so much pain that she could not finish a single sentence.
Dagji didn’t know where his courage came from, but he quickly picked up his sister and carried her on his back. With his injured sister, he began to run.
Only a few steps in, a wave of foul odor surged up from behind him, the footsteps like the drumroll of death, growing closer and more frantic.
Suddenly, he was knocked down by a violent shove; it felt like being struck by a warhorse. Dagji fell to the ground and, before he could get up, a stinking, enormous hand grasped his neck, lifting him up.
A brown-skinned troll’s face loomed in front of him, saliva dripping from both sides of its mouth, saying, “Child, tasty.”
Dagji saw his sister beside him, unable to stand, gasping for breath, his face flushed, his mouth agape.
At that moment, he inexplicably thought of the fish in the lake, those fish that, once on land, would open their gills and gasp desperately. He remembered his mother’s cries.
Indeed, no matter how much he struggled, he was ultimately like a fish, destined to be eaten by trolls.
Was this the illusion of dying?
Dagji saw the most beautiful black-haired woman of his life approaching from a distance. Although the darkness veiled her face like a shroud, just by seeing her hazy figure in the weak moonlight, he thought she looked remarkably beautiful.
He even wanted to shout for her to run, afraid that such a beautiful person would be eaten by trolls.
“You, smelly troll, let him go and behave.”
The giant hand gripping his neck suddenly loosened, and Dagji fell to the ground, gasping for air. He shouted at the black-haired woman, “Run! The trolls want to eat people.”
After shouting, he finally remembered to care for his sister, who could barely stand.
The woman, wielding an axe-gun, stepped forward with an oil lamp hanging from her chest that lit up her extraordinarily beautiful profile as she approached, asking, “Are you survivors from the Ten Towns?”
Dagji felt anxious; why wasn’t this woman running? Didn’t she see the trolls? Oh my, she actually lit a lamp; the surrounding trolls would see her. Did she have confidence in her ability as a human with a weapon shorter than the trolls to kill them?
The troll scratched its head and approached the woman with a club.
He shouted, “Run!”
“Don’t answer the question incorrectly,” the woman said to the troll. “You’re tall; you can lie down and stretch your neck a bit so I can cleave it off?”
Dagji thought the black-haired woman must have lost her mind. One troll could easily smash the stout warriors in town. How could she say such things while getting closer?
The troll was drawn into her dream. To Dagji’s astonished gaze, the troll actually lay down and stretched out its neck.
The woman raised her “branch axe-gun,” bringing it down directly onto its neck, getting stuck in the middle.
The troll suddenly awoke from its dream and realized. However, the axe’s blade emerged with a spiny tongue, burrowing into its body and greedily drinking its blood; the runes on the axe’s blade glowed faintly with blood light.
The troll twitched all over, blood draining rapidly, collapsing to the ground, dead.
The woman poured some oil, snapped her fingers, and a spark leaped from her thumb, landing on the troll’s body, igniting a roaring fire that drove away the surrounding darkness and lit up the trolls.
But they seemed to notice nothing, walking past the black-haired woman just two meters away, clearly close to the burning corpse of the troll.
“Alright, let me emphasize my question once more.” The woman walked up to Dagji, who held on to his sister, her long legs standing before him.
Dagji looked up and saw a drop of blood dripping from the blade resting on her shoulder, the bright red tongue emerging and licking up the drop.
The woman looked down at him, asking, “Are you survivors from the Ten Towns?”
