Hearing that Kael understood something and after organizing everything he had seen now he came to a simple conclusion.
This darkness was related to a corrupted beast or creature, whatever it was but corrupted nonetheless. This corrupted monster was hunting the people who fell into darkness.
The way of hunting by this monster was also very straightforward. Somehow it was able to force its victims to walk directly to it once they fell into darkness.
Maybe it was using mind control or illusion. It didn't matter. The end result was still the same.
He didn't know how much of what he deduced was true but nonetheless he at least knew the situation of the trial.
Trials were always about solving a crisis and now he had two options to clear this trial. First was to find enough flaming grass to let this village last long enough for them to pass this month or kill the monster to resolve the crisis altogether.
'The problem is that it won't be as simple. It's an Extreme trial for god's sake.'
"I want to tell something." Kael decided to be a little direct. "I don't know why but going in the forest had affected my memory. I don't remember much."
The two old men got a little shocked.
"Is this a new symptom of approaching too close to the cave?" One of them spoke while eyeing Kael strangely.
"Might be." The other one spoke. "How much do you remember?"
Kael sighed inwardly. This went better than he thought. "Not much other than the fact that my name is Althar. I was able to come back here due to my footprints."
The two old men looked at each other and sighed.
"This is worse than I had imagined it to be."
"Indeed."
"Well, if you want we can tell you more. It's not like we can do anything in this darkness."
Kael was a little delighted to hear that. He didn't know if he would survive this trial or not but he would give his all and knowledge was the only thing which could help him right now.
The old men started telling him multiple things and he kept listening to everything calmly. After listening to everything, he asked some vital questions to verify his assumptions.
....
Time passed and Kael finally was able to figure out the situation of the whole village. It matched very much with his assumptions. The only problem was that the situation was far worse than he had thought.
First about himself, there was nothing much to know. His parents were already dead and he didn't have any flaming grass left so he just stayed with anyone who was willing to take him.
Today he had gone out to find flaming grass to help the village with the crisis since there were already a few families with none of it and they were burning things which burned faster and could snuff out unconditionally. This was the reason the last three people got engulfed by darkness.
The worst part was the monster. It was nothing but a man-eating flower and was situated inside the cave.
In the beginning when villagers found out about it, they tried to kill it but the whole cave was covered in vines and no one could truly enter.
Cutting the vines was not possible as they released a poison in air which didn't need to be inhaled to kill you.
Burning them also wasn't possible as those vines were green and unless someone kept constantly burning them it wouldn't be effective and since burning also released the poison it wasn't possible to do it either. No to mention they grew back quite fast.
After multiple tries villagers found out that it was impossible to kill that monster and they accepted their fates.
There was also another bit of information which had shocked him. This village wasn't the only village in this area. There were more existing in similar craters but the worst part was that they were also affected in the range of this monster.
Villagers of those villages had tried to put distance but even that didn't work. Once night fell, even from the farthest distance they were affected and walked towards the cave.
Now Kael was totally in a dilemma. If what he had heard was true then this monster seemed unkillable. Did he have to really solve this crisis by only finding flaming grass? Would this trial be considered passed if he did it?
There might be a possibility but before he decided anything he wanted to see the cave. Since others were able to reach there he would be able to reach near it without getting affected.
The only problem was that they had mostly visited it during the day as at night it was very hard to see those vines and those vines were also filled with thorns. If you got stabbed by them then it hurt unimaginably painfully.
There was another fact. The vines could move slightly at night so it was even harder to avoid them.
'At least those thorns didn't inject poison which could kill you.'
The last thing that surprised him was that the night had nothing to do with the monster. This was how night had always been here, even before the monster was born there. This part confused him the most.
The whole fiasco was based on the fact that the monster was able to control everyone only when the night fell so it was hard not to associate the night with the ability of the corrupted monster.
Suddenly the night vanished which surprised him. He looked up and saw rays of sun or probably some star streaking through the sky.
"One more night passed... and one more calamity struck the village. Let's go young man. A small mourning for the deceased is all we can do to show some respect." One of the old men stood up and collected the clothes before walking.
Kael stood up immediately and followed along with the other old man.
The village was quite big and he could see a lot of trees and small farms around the houses. He had asked the question why the villages were made inside these craters and the answer he got was that the land here was more fertile and they could easily get access to the ground water.