Fewer screams echo through the valley...

"Get a hold of yourself, people are still in danger!" Annette said, still doing the best she could to keep her food down.

Running over the top of the fallen bookshelf, causing another sickening wet noise and ensuring the floors of her property will never be free of the smell of the creature, Annette pulled another blouse out of her dresser and swapped out her stained clothes for something cleaner. She then tossed the old tattered blouse rags into her fireplace, ready for burning later. Before leaving through the splintered front door, she grabs her hanging priestess robes, now fully aware of how cold the night air is and hoping to calm her still-pointed chest that her white blouse did nothing to hide.

Maintaining her quick pace, she moved up the hill as fast as her legs could carry her, while still putting on her white robes and flicking off the occasional maggot that she'd missed earlier, shuddering as unwelcome thoughts of how exactly it got there re-entered her mind. Her scowl fell as she crested the hill and looked down at the familiar village of Farfield...

Her heart sank as she saw dozens of ragged bodies shambling through the streets and between the numerous houses of the common folk.

"...No... No... This cannot be... Goddess preserve them..."

Apparently such creatures did not have lust just for her, as she could see numerous women wearing barely a thread as the zombies roughly used them in the streets, up against buildings or for some particularly unlucky people, face down in the mud as their bodies were painted with some of the same foul liquids still responsible for the pungent aftertaste in Annette's mouth and currently polluting her stomach. Occasionally one of the women would scream out in horror, before one of the creatures surrounding them decided it was time put their mouth to a different use.

The priestess did not have long to look though as multiple shambling figures crested up the sides of the hill. Two from the forest beside her and one from behind her house. The one behind her house looked similar to the aged corpse permanently at rest, splatted against her floor, the other two looked a little fresher, likely having been put into the ground more recently. Assessing her options, she ruled out entering the village right now as she'd be swapping three zombies for about twenty... She could run into the forest on the other side where there was no sign of the living dead, but having seen their unexpected speed earlier, she'd get caught for sure, stranded somewhere in the middle of the woods no less.

Annette calculated her best chance out of this and turned her head back to look at her chapel... a leap of faith.

If Erena was still with her, she could potentially fight her way out of it from a position of power as the goddess' influence provided the priestess with a significantly amplified magical prowess and mana capacity... if Erena wasn't... well...

She didn't want to think of what she'd do then, but was that because of fear, over-confidence... or perhaps despite the horrors she just witnessed, traces of impure thoughts still dwelled within her panicked mind?

Closing her eyes and shaking her head clear, it was time for her to make a decision.