No sooner had the thought formed than a string of muffled thuds rang out inside the wooden houses.
One after another, the people peeking from behind their doors lost all strength in their legs and dropped straight onto the cold floor.
Their faces were white as paper, their lips trembling violently, yet they could not utter a single complete sentence.
Utter, deathly silence shrouded every wooden house.
Only their pounding heartbeats, thump, thump, thump, battered wildly against their chests, so forcefully that their hearts almost seemed ready to burst through their throats.
"No way..."
"That can't be..."
Some shook their heads frantically inwardly, desperately deceiving themselves as they tried to deny the most horrifying truth.
Could all those people who had inexplicably disappeared one after another... have turned into these man-eating monsters?
Humans were such pitiful, fragile creatures.
The harder they tried not to imagine the worst, the more their subconscious burrowed toward the darkest, most hopeless, most terrifying possibility.
One thought spawned ten, ten spawned a hundred. The further their thoughts strayed, the more frightened they became, and the deeper the chill grew in their hearts.
The silence was torn apart in an instant.
Madness replaced all reason.
"I'm going to get answers!"
"The Transcendents must know the truth! They must be hiding it from us!"
The people inside the wooden houses could no longer suppress the churning panic in their hearts. Like madmen, they burst through their doors and raced recklessly toward the tallest two-story wooden house in the center of the village.
They no longer cared that it was the dead of night, no longer cared what man-eating things lurked in the darkness, no longer cared about any rules or reservations.
They knew only one thing...
If they did not get answers now, they might be the