Plundering Worlds: I Have a Shotgun in a Fantasy World-Chapter 45: The Empty Bowl

Kael woke in the darkness before dawn.

The longhouse was silent. He sat up, checked his sword, and listened. Outside, the courtyard fire had burned down to ash. The woman, the boy, and Liang Hong would be in one of the smaller buildings by now, asleep.

He stood and walked to the storage room.

The bandits had left dried meat, hard flatbread, and two waterskins. Kael ate methodically, chewing the tough meat until it softened, washing it down with water. He filled one waterskin, tied it to his belt, and wrapped the remaining food in cloth.

The sky outside showed the first gray hints of dawn.

Kael stepped into the courtyard. The bodies from yesterday still lay where they had fallen. He walked past them, through the gate, and onto the road heading west.

He looked back once.

The stronghold sat dark and quiet.

Then he turned and kept walking.

---

The road stretched ahead, empty and uneven.

Kael walked at a steady pace, scanning the trees on either side. An hour in, he stopped.

A small bird perched on a low branch, pecking at the bark.

Kael crouched and picked up a smooth stone from the roadside. He weighed it in his palm, then flicked his wrist.

The stone shot forward.

It struck the bird’s wing. The bird tumbled from the branch and hit the ground, flapping weakly.

Kael walked over and picked it up. One wing had a clean hole torn through it. The bird struggled in his hand, its heart racing against his palm.

He placed his other hand over the injury.

Qi flowed from his core, down through his arm, into his fingers. He guided it the way Liang Hong had—slow, deliberate, like pouring warm water into a cup.

The Qi sank into the bird’s body.

Kael focused. The broken bone. The torn muscle. He imagined the Qi moving there, settling around the injury.

Heat.

Not fire. Just warmth. Steady and constant.

The principle was simple. Cells needed Qi to repair themselves. Blood carried nutrients. Qi accelerated both—pushing the blood faster, flooding the damaged tissue with what it needed to rebuild. Not magic. Just the body’s natural healing, pushed beyond its normal speed.

Kael held the focus for thirty seconds.

Then he opened his hand.

The bird’s wing shifted. The angle corrected. It flapped once, twice, then launched itself into the air and disappeared into the trees.

Kael watched it go.

The technique worked.

He stood and continued walking.

---

The days passed.

The landscape changed. Green fields turned brown. Rivers shrank to muddy trickles. Trees stood bare, their leaves scattered and dry. Kael passed abandoned farmsteads—doors left open, tools lying in the dirt, crops rotting in the fields.

He hunted as he walked. Rabbits. Squirrels. Once, a deer. The animals grew scarcer each day. The waterskin he refilled from streams now took longer to fill each time.

After one weeks, the road crested a hill.

Kael stopped.

Below, stretching across the valley, a black mass moved.

People.

Hundreds of them. Maybe a thousand. A river of bodies flowing east, away from the west.

Kael descended the hill.

---

He reached the edge of the crowd and stopped.

They shuffled past him, heads down, feet dragging. Their clothes hung loose, caked with dirt and sweat. Faces were gaunt, cheekbones sharp beneath thin skin. Eyes stared forward, empty and glassy.

A woman pushed a wooden cart, its wheels creaking. An old man lay inside, eyes half-closed. A young girl walked beside the cart, one hand on the edge to steady herself. Her lips were cracked and bleeding.

A family of four moved together—father, mother, two children. The father carried a sack over one shoulder. The mother held the younger child’s hand. The older child, a boy maybe ten years old, walked behind them, staring at the ground.

Someone collapsed. A middle-aged man, halfway through a step. He crumpled forward and lay still. The people behind him stepped around the body and kept walking. One woman glanced down, then away. The crowd flowed on.

The procession maintained a loose order. No one ran. No one shouted. They just moved, slow and mechanical, like a machine winding down.

Kael walked alongside the crowd, eyes scanning.

Near the center, a group of men moved together—broader shoulders, harder eyes. One carried a wooden staff. Another had a rusted sword at his hip.

Kael stepped in front of them.

The group stopped.

The man with the staff—older, maybe fifty, with gray streaks in his beard—looked at Kael. His eyes narrowed.

Kael’s hand went to the man’s collar. He gripped it and pulled him forward, out of the group.

"What happened?"

The man’s hands came up, then dropped. He looked at Kael’s face, at the sword at his waist, and his jaw tightened.

"Yaomo. The border war collapsed. Soldiers turned into bandits." His voice was hoarse, worn thin from hunger and too much dust. "Drought took the crops. We’ve walked a hundred miles already. Ate everything on the way. Bark. Roots. Grass."

"Where are you going?"

"East. Away. Anywhere that still has water."

Kael released him.

The man stumbled back, rubbing his throat. The group stared at Kael, waiting.

Kael stepped aside.

They moved past him, merging back into the crowd.

Kael stood there, watching the river of people flow around him. A child cried somewhere in the mass, a weak, breathless sound that faded quickly.

He turned.

West. Toward the disaster.

The crowd thinned behind him. The road ahead grew quieter.

The landscape turned worse. Fields were cracked and gray. Trees stood blackened and twisted. The air smelled of dust and rot.

Kael walked for another day.

Then he saw the village.

Small. Maybe twenty houses clustered around a dirt square. Half the roofs had collapsed. Walls leaned at crooked angles. Smoke rose from a single chimney.

Kael entered the square.

A group of seven people stood in a loose circle near the well. They faced inward, silent, staring at something on the ground.

Kael walked closer.

A woman sat in the center of the circle.

She cradled something in her arms—a bundle of torn cloth and straw, wrapped tight. She rocked it gently, back and forth, humming a tuneless melody.

Her hair hung in dry, brittle strands around her face. Her clothes were stained, ripped at the sleeves. Her feet were bare and bloody.

She smiled down at the bundle.

"There, there. Sleep now. When you wake, Mama will have food for you. I promise."

She shifted the bundle to one arm and reached for a wooden bowl beside her. Empty. She picked up a spoon and dipped it into the empty bowl, then brought it to the bundle’s edge.

"Open wide. It’s soft. I made it soft for you."

She tilted the spoon toward the cloth.

"Good boy. Such a good boy."

A rat squeaked somewhere to the left.

The woman’s body went rigid.

Her head snapped toward the sound. Eyes wide, pupils shrinking to pinpoints.

She clutched the bundle tighter, pressing it against her chest with both arms. Her body curled forward, hunching over it like a shield.

"NO!"

Her voice tore out of her throat, raw and animal.

"STAY AWAY! DON’T YOU DARE! DON’T TOUCH HIM!"

She grabbed a rock from the ground with one hand—the other still locked around the bundle—and hurled it toward the sound.

The rock bounced off a wooden post.

She grabbed another. Threw it. Then another.

"GET OUT! GET OUT! I’LL KILL YOU! I’LL KILL YOU!"

Her voice cracked. Tears streamed down her face.

The squeaking stopped.

She froze, panting, eyes darting across the shadows.

Silence.

Slowly, her grip on the bundle loosened. She looked down at it, smoothed the cloth with trembling fingers.

"It’s alright," she whispered. "Mama’s here. They’re gone now. You’re safe."

She started rocking again. The humming resumed.

Kael’s chest tightened. A weight pressed down on his ribs, heavy and cold.

He looked at the villagers.

An old man stood closest. His face was lined, weathered, his hands gnarled and rough.

Kael walked over.

"What happened to her?"

The old man flinched. His eyes stayed on the woman, but his face twisted—like Kael had just pressed on a wound.

He opened his mouth. Closed it. Swallowed hard.

"That’s... that’s Widow Chen."

His voice cracked on the name.

"Her man died at the border. We got the news two months back." He rubbed his face with both hands. "She had a baby. Little thing. Maybe eight months."

He stopped. His hands dropped to his sides.

"She came to my door. Three, four days ago. I don’t—" He shook his head. "Asked if I had food."

His voice turned defensive, rushed.

"I didn’t have any. I swear I didn’t. Everyone’s starving. What was I supposed to do?"

He looked at Kael as if needing confirmation, then looked away.

"She just... nodded. Walked away. Didn’t even—" He stopped. "I should’ve... I don’t know. Given her something. Anything."

His fingers curled into fists.

"Next morning, she came back. Had these... these rats. Dried. Strung together." His jaw clenched. "I knew. We all knew. Where else would a woman get food like that?"

He couldn’t meet Kael’s eyes.

"She asked to borrow my pot. The big one. To boil water." He gestured vaguely toward one of the houses. "I gave it to her. Least I could do. Told her to keep it long as she needed."

Another pause. His throat bobbed.

"Then she went for firewood. I saw her. Carrying sticks. The baby was..." He swallowed. "The baby was alone in the house."

His voice dropped to almost a whisper.

"I thought about checking on it. I did. But I... I didn’t want to..." He trailed off, shaking his head.

"Maybe an hour later, I heard her come back. Heard the door close. I thought—I thought it was fine. She’d feed the child. That’d be it."

He rubbed his eyes with the heel of his palm.

"Then the screaming started."

His hand fell.

"I ran. Others too. Door was wide open. She was on her knees, just... screaming. No words. Just screaming."

The old man’s lips pressed into a thin line.

"The pot was spilled. Water everywhere. Baby on the mat. She had the spoon in her hand, shaking." His voice went hollow. "And the rat—it just... it crawled out. Right out of the baby’s mouth."

He stopped. Pressed his fist to his mouth. Shook his head violently.

"It got in while she was gone. Must have. Baby was too weak. Couldn’t fight. Couldn’t even cry."

His fist dropped.

"She tried to grab my knife—I had it on my belt. Tried to cut her throat right there. We wrestled her down. Held her until she stopped."

His eyes were red now.

"But when we let go... she didn’t cry. Didn’t scream. Just picked up that cloth. Started rocking it. Talking to it."

He looked at Kael, expression raw and pleading.

"We buried the child that same day. She didn’t notice. Didn’t even look. Just kept... kept rocking."

His voice broke.

"What else could we do? What else—" He stopped, swallowed. "She’s been like this since."

Kael stood still.The woman rocked the bundle, whispering to straw and cloth.

He turned toward the old man again.

"Are there Yaomo nearby? Bandits?"

The old man blinked, pulled from his thoughts. He pointed toward the edge of the village.

"There. The dead forest beyond the hill. Ghouls come out at night. They eat corpses. Sometimes they take the living."

Kael looked where he pointed. A line of blackened trees stood against the gray sky, twisted and skeletal.

"We stay inside after dark. Lock the doors. Pray they pass us by."

Kael nodded.

He walked to the edge of the square and found a low wall. He sat down, set his sword across his lap, and waited.

The sun crawled across the sky.

The woman kept rocking.

Kept humming.

Kael watched the western horizon.

The light faded.

Shadows stretched across the village.

The villagers retreated to their homes one by one. Doors closed. Shutters latched.

The woman remained in the square, alone, whispering to her phantom child.

Kael stood.

The last light disappeared.

Darkness fell.

And from the dead forest, something stirred.