As he crossed the entrance of the village, he noticed something that couldn"t be ignored.While all the attackers were humans, the defenders, the villagers, were anything but humans. The first villager corpses he saw were beastmen. Neo couldn"t miss their animal ears and tails, and even though he didn"t want to, he couldn"t help but stop and stare at them. They were the frontline fighters during the fight. Behind them were elves, both light and dark kind, clearly long range fighters, and a few mages, judging by the clothes and broken staves.
"A village of non-humans attacked by purely humans bandits? It looks like I ended in a world with a lot of racial discrimination and troubles... To think that the first beautifull elves and beastgirls I would encounter in a fantasy world would be corpses... That"s just not funny..."
Despite himself, his eyes lingered a little on the attractive females corpses around. He thought it was an incredible waste of beautifull women. As he walked deeper into the village, he noticed that the non-combattants people really didn"t have a pleasant death. It was clear from the wounds, that some of the attackers wanted to make their victims suffer before killing them. The women had very obviously been raped before being killed. Having explored most of the village, Neo suddenly stopped.
"Where are the children? Now that I think about it, aside from the defenders, all the women who got raped were well into adulthood. I saw teenager guys bodies, but no teenager girls... They were taken, mostly to be used as slaves. I don"t know if I should be happy for them or not..."
Neo shivered as he recalled the absolute void that was death, the end of everything that made you, you. It was only thanks to the mysterious properties of the meteorite that he survived it. He wondered if it was better than ending as the slave of people that looked down on his race. He quickly put the subject to rest, both possibilities were just too unpleasants to think about.
He continued to look around, staying clear of the burning buildings. The attackers had looted the village of anything of value that could be carried. After a little over an hour, he stopped at a relatively clean place. A small distance away from him, the fires were slowly starting to die. Now that he had an idea of the kind of world he was in, he could make some preparations before moving further.
He could very well stay in one of the abandonned buildings for a few days. The blacksmith home was mostly undamaged, so he could use it as a workshop to test his alchemy skill. He could train his hammer skill. Seeing what they did to the village, he seriously doubted the attackers would come back, else they wouldn"t have put so many buildings on fire, and the dead would have been gathered and either buried or burned.
"They didn"t bother with clean-up. Just took what they wanted and left. But if I want to stay here, I"ll have to take care of the bodies..."
At first, he though he would have to drag them one by one, then he remembered he had his Kamidori inventory, which could even hold a hot spring bath. So he stood up and moved around, taking all the corpses into his inventory: bandit corpse, elf corpse, dark elf corpse, wolf beastmen corpse, cat beastmen corpse and so on. As he collected them, he noticed something about himself.
"... I can use them as crafting ingredient... This is crazy..."
His mastery of alchemy was translated into instinctual knowledge of what he could or couldn"t do with the materials at hand. Just like he could use beasts body parts in the game, he could do so in reality as well. It also made sense that it shouldn"t be limited to beasts. Games and novels rarely mention that possibility, unless it involved the evil guys performing some dark arts. His mastered alchemy skill didn"t discriminate between good and evil. Anything that could be done, regardless of morals and ethics, he would know.
"I can make my own Frankenstein Monster... Or a homunculus. Heck, I can probably make my own beasts and monsters!! I"m not limited to items! I"m alone right now, so what if I used some of them to make myself some loyal and devoted bodyguards?"
Suddenly, making the place more inhabitable for him seemed much more important. He just couldn"t ignore the benefits of using their bodies as it would greatly increase his survival odds. Yes, he would pay his respect to their spirits, but he won"t let the ressources be wasted.
"I should only clean the blacksmith home for the time being. With magic, I don"t know how fast informations travel in this world. The other settlements this village used to be in contact with may want to send people to investigate. A regular traveler may come and leave with the news of the destruction. Until the place is left alone, they better not see anything but me crafting some tools and equipment in an abandonned workshop, and not me messing up with some more advanced and questionable things. I can use that time for practice, and make myself some proper travelling gear."
Having decided what he was going to do for the following few days, he resumed his task.
If a few hours ago he was told he would use corpses of slain villagers in alchemy and experiment with making himself some minions, he would have laughed thinking it was a joke, or been disgusted and gone away. Or both. However, ever since his shamefull episode when he reached the village, he forced himself to not be queasy about what he was going to find. He told himself he had to adapt to this new worldHe forced himself to be bolder, to be ready to do what was necessary for his survival without balking. He was pushing himself quite a bit.