My Sword has to Talk!

CH.12- Impending Danger

Lucilia's grandmother asked her to grab some eggs in their barn. We were probably going to a chicken house put somewhere near the barn. However, we passed by a bloody pig pen, with only three pigs left.

Intrigued by this, I asked Lucilia that I was following. “Excuse me, Lucilia, but may I ask some questions?”

“Y-yes…” She replied with a nervous tone in her voice.

“Have you recently butchered your pigs?”

Lucilia stopped on her tracks and swiveled in my direction before giving the reply, “no, we haven't. Why do you ask that, Marcus.”

Lucilia started to play with her hair as she listened to my reply. “Well, I see that your pig pen is bloody. If I'm correct, that seems to be freshly made. I would say it's in the very early morning.”

Lucilia suddenly changes from an embarrassed expression to a different one. This time it was an expression of fear. Then that expression of her has caused me to say, “I knew it!” internally.

It looks like some unnatural things are happening here. Maybe I should ask more questions, but if I do that, this will cause Lucilia to lose trust in me; now I get it, Clint. You want me to do some investigating. I thought this was an ordinary hunting trip. But it was a test disguised as that. Clint wants me to learn something from here.

“Was it some predators that attacked your pigs?”

“Y-yes... It was a mountain lion that attacked.” Lucilia said these with her eyes looking in a different direction with every word spoken.

She's not a great liar, which makes everything cut out for me. Maybe I should continue asking her about this later. “I see, so why don't we grab the eggs. Your grandmother will be distraught if we take too long.”

“Oh! Follow me. I'll lead you up to the place where we gather eggs.”

I followed her to a mini house near a barn. It was nothing fancy. The small house had some age to it, and the sound of hens was coming from it. As we waltz in, Lucilia grabbed a basket near the entrance of the house.

She started to check the chicken by grabbing below the hens. Of course, I tried it too, however, as I placed my hand. I got pecked by the chicken.

“Ouch! Why the hell is this chicken…”

But I looked at Lucilia and noticed how easily she slips her hand. I looked intently at how she does it, especially when she puts her hand under the chicken. However, with my intense observation, I was unable to get her technique at all.

Then Lucilia stopped taking the eggs from the chicken. She then gazed back at me, “How many eggs have you…”

“Please stop staring intently at me like that!” Lucilia yelled as her face turned pink, as she gazes at Marcus, looking intently at her.

“Oh! Sorry about that!”

“Geez! It's my first time being with a boy my age. It is so embarrassing,” Lucilia spoke as she put the eggs she gathered in the basket. Marcus even saw the frustration and embarrassment coming from Lucilia.

“Wait, you don't have any friends?”

“No, I don't even go to school, Marcus. My grandma hired a female tutor to teach me every day, so my education is taken care of, which I kinda find a little bit annoying.”

“Have you talk to them about…”

“Yes, but they would never listen. However, I do understand why my grandparents want me to stay here.”

So it's one of that country girls' stories with overprotective guardians. Well, living far from the community is not surprising for such stories to happen. However, this is not the information I want to have.

The two of us went back to the house. It was already six-thirty in the evening. All of us were now in front of the dinner table. The dinner served across the table was delicious, as expected of a home-cooked dinner.

However, I can not enjoy this dinner when someone is looking at me intensely. Even how much I pretend not to notice it, I can't help but feel weird when I return to look at Lucilia, the one who has been staring at me all this time; her immediate action is to look away.

I don't know why she has been doing this, but it's making me uncomfortable. I hope that she will stop doing this later.

But Lucilia did not stop staring at Marcus, leading Charles to notice his grandaughter's continuous stare towards Marcus. Causing him to have unexpectedly yell.

“Kid! Stay away from my cute granddaughter.”

“Charles! Stop shouting were in front of the dinner table. Where are your manners?”

Charles immediately follows what his wife had told him—causing him to calm himself as instantly as he can. But he continued to reason with his wife.

“But honey! Our granddaughter is looking at him like she wants to run away with him!”

“Honey! You know that Lucilia is at that age. It's normal for her to have a crush on a boy like Marcus.”

“Heh!?” That was my reaction after hearing Charles's wife.

Meanwhile, Lucilia's entire face turned bright pink after hearing her grandmother. Due to embarrassment, she stood up from her chair and ran upstairs to her room without saying anything.

“Oh, my granddaughter has her first crush. She's growing fast.” Tears then started to fall on Charles's cheeks.

“Well, Marcus, I hope you will not treat her differently after knowing that. It's just part of her immature puberty.”

Yeah, you just straight-up revealed a secret of your granddaughter. To the one person she doesn't want to know. I guess you're also immature. However, I'm quite happy that a girl does have a crush on me. From what I've remembered, no girl has taken a liking to me. But I don't know how a girl feels after her crush just knew that she has a crush on him.

Well, Lucilia is beautiful, but she could not compete with miss Rose. I would rank her near Carol's friends, that the students include in the top ten most beautiful girls. But her socializing skills would be near mine, but I'm slightly better.

Meanwhile, upstairs, Lucilia was in her room. She was hiding her face in her pillow from the embarrassment she had experienced at the dinner table. Lucilia shouted her frustrations in her bed, making her pillows a silencer to her scream.

“Why do you have to do that, grandma? Now I don't even know how to talk with Marcus. He probably thinks I'm disgusting and creepy now. The first boy I have a crush on did not end up well.”

But while the people inside the house enjoy their businesses. Something was impending, and it was walking towards the farm. A three to five-foot hunchback creature with two red eyes hovered with quills with spikes in their back and scales covering their entire body. It has a slithery tongue similar to a snake. The creature's mouth has sharp teeth that could tear any flesh it bites.

The animals on the farm started to panic. Moo-moo! Cried the cows, Mee-mee! Baaah! Baaah!, the goats and the sheep called, Ooiiiink! The pigs cried as they felt they're the primary targets of the impending danger.

The couple inside the house were able to notice the cry of their animals. Clint and Marcus, however, felt something else. Marcus immediately went to the couch and grabbed his sword wrapped with a cloth. However, Charles yelled as he holds his shotgun, “the three of you stay here and protect my granddaughter!”

“Charles, be careful out there.”

“Don't worry, honey, today's the day I'm gonna kill that son of a bitch.”

“Mister Charles, what is that thing you're about to kill?” Clint asked as he looks at the shotgun that Charles held.

“To tell you the truth, I don't know. Even though I have encountered it so often, I still don't have a clear image of what it is. However, whatever that is, it's got intelligence and has been damaging my property and income. So I'm going to kill no matter what!”

After that, Charles dashes to the door and exits the house. “Come out, you son of a b***h!” *Bang!* *Bang!*

The lights that lighted the farmhouse's surroundings turned off in sync—turning the outside to complete darkness. However, on the second floor of the house, Lucilia was able to see the entire area where the livestock was.

But thanks to the light turning off, Lucilia was not about to see anything. She peeked closer at his window and saw the flashes of his grandfather's shotgun. However, at a distance, Lucilia saw something hair-raising. Two glowing eyes are standing out in the darkness; it was not in the direction of where his grandfather was firing his shotgun.

The eyes were behind his grandfather. But the eyes suddenly transitions from her grandfather towards her direction. The creature and Lucilia meet the eyes of each other. Felt fear, but Lucilia was feeling something else. It's like the creature wanted to do something to her; it was her instinct telling her that the creature was dangerous.