The smell of burned gunpowder mixed with the stench of decay. The place, which seconds ago had been the scene of chaos, sank into a deafening silence.
Julie was the first to snap out of it. Seeing that Rick was no longer moving, shock gave way to a protective instinct. She ran toward Daniel, ignoring the blood on the ground.
"Julie, no! Get back here!" Jim shouted, his hand reaching out into the air, terrified at the thought that the fallen man might suddenly get back up.
She didn't even look back. When she reached the blond, her trembling hands went directly to the tear in his jacket. The dark stain of blood stood out against the fabric.
"You're hurt," she said, her voice tight, her eyes scanning his body for any other injuries that might be fatal.
"It's just a graze, nothing serious," Daniel replied, not paying much attention to the wound.
He let out a slow, almost imperceptible sigh of relief. In the final seconds of the fight, Rick's last burst of speed had genuinely worried him about Julie's safety if he hadn't managed to stop him in time.
While she continued inspecting him, the rest of the group approached with slow, cautious steps.
"That... thing is really dead?" Jade asked, keeping a safe distance.
Kenny, holding his pistol with both hands, circled the body and nudged Rick's shriveled leg with the tip of his boot. "Yeah. It's over. But how did he turn into that?"
"Out of nowhere," Daniel answered, straightening up. "He just dropped to his knees, let out a roar, and his skin stretched while the claws came out."
Jim, now standing beside Julie, stared at the shotgun still in the young man's hand and frowned. The fear for his family now shared space with suspicion.
"Where did you get that weapon? When we arrived, I saw you only had a pistol."
Kenny lifted his head as well, having noticed the same detail, and the rumors spreading among the Colony House residents about weapons appearing magically in the newcomer's hands started to make uncomfortable sense.
Daniel held Jim's assessing gaze without blinking. A faint smirk curled at the corner of his lips. "You can ask Julie later. If she feels like telling you."
Jim turned to his daughter, searching for answers, but she avoided his eyes, focusing instead on Daniel's wound.
"Speaking of that," Daniel changed the subject casually. "Did you run into Tabitha and Ethan on the way?"
"We did," Julie replied quickly. "Donna took them directly to the clinic because Mom and Ethan had a few scratches."
Daniel nodded. Taking a few steps forward, he crouched beside the body, pinched his nose with his fingers, and extended his other hand to touch Rick's withered shoulder.
"What are you doing?" Kenny asked, intrigued.
"Examining," the blond lied smoothly. "Checking if he has any strange marks or some item that might be a clue about what happened to him."
Internally, Daniel's real intention was far less investigative and far more predatory. He triggered the mental command. System, Devour.
He waited for the options to appear, but the air remained still. Nothing happened. He furrowed his brow slightly.
"Why can't you devour this piece of trash?"
[Because there's nothing left, genius.] The System's voice echoed, laced with dry irony. [That frenzied state consumed every drop of vitality his body had. Even his soul was burned as fuel at the end. There isn't even a spiritual peanut left for you to snack on.]
"A shame," Daniel replied mentally, not feeling a shred of remorse. He had no intention of actively hunting humans to grow stronger, but he certainly wouldn't waste the spoils if he was forced to kill an enemy.
[If you hadn't wasted time playing boxing instructor and had put a bullet in his head the moment you had the chance, none of this would've happened and we'd have a bonus. But your ego spoke louder, didn't it?]
"I wanted to test my skills. And honestly? It was a fun fight while it lasted."
The indifference with which Daniel handled Rick's wrinkled remains, along with the lack of hesitation in his movements, did not go unnoticed by the others.
Julie turned her face away, pale, not because of her boyfriend's actions, but because she didn't want to look at the corpse, the smell alone forcing her to cover her nose.
"Man, you're not right in the head," Jade muttered, rubbing his face. "You're rummaging through a dead monster as calmly as someone picking tomatoes at the market. It almost looks like you've killed someone before."
The businessman's words lingered in the air. Jim swallowed hard, staring at the blond's broad back. A feeling of regret for agreeing to let his daughter move in with him filled his chest.
"Don't be ridiculous, Jade," Julie snapped, irritated by the comment.
Jade raised his hands with an awkward smile. "Just trying to lighten the mood."
As he stood up after checking the corpse's pockets, Daniel reflected on Jade's accusation. He had never actually killed anyone before. But the truth was, he hadn't felt anything when he killed Rick.
No sick euphoria, no sadistic pleasure. And more importantly, no sadness, guilt, or moral conflict.
To his mind, killing him had been like pruning a rotten branch from a tree. A necessary action. If a threat couldn't be resolved through dialogue or a simple beating, he would pull the trigger again without losing a single night of sleep.
"Find anything important?" Jade asked Daniel and Kenny, who had stepped closer to help examine the body.
"Just a mark that looks like a trident on his wrist. I have a good memory, I don't recall him having a tattoo like that," Daniel pointed out.
"Kristi said he had burned his wrist and didn't want her to examine it. She thought it was strange. And he definitely didn't have a tattoo, I would've noticed something that obvious," Kenny said, recalling the detail.
"Then it's probably related."
"Great, another symbol to add to the list." Jade shook his head.
"You need to go to the clinic and get that wound checked," Julie insisted, worry evident in her voice.
Jim cleared his throat, forcing his shoulders to relax. Despite all the absurd and dangerous mysteries surrounding that young man, the facts were undeniable. "Thank you," the engineer said, his voice rough. "...you saved my son. Thank you, Daniel."
"It's nothing," Daniel replied. "Now that we're family, we take care of each other, right?"
Jade let out a laugh completely inappropriate for the moment. "Wow. Touching."
Jim didn't find it funny at all, but chose to swallow the remark.
"I'm heading out. I've got to obey my girlfriend," Daniel said, turning his back on the dead man.
Julie gave a forced smile.
Kenny straightened into a more formal stance. "I'll stay and take care of the body. Jade, go to the station or the church and bring a wheelbarrow. I'm not carrying him on my back. I need to stay here and make sure no animal shows up to eat him."
"Of course, the tech millionaire is now the official errand boy," Jade grumbled, but started walking toward town.
Jim, Julie, and Daniel followed him. The walk began in silence, broken only by the sound of damp leaves under their boots, until Jim's mind could no longer hold back the questions.
"Did Rick say anything else to you? About why he took Ethan? Tabitha said he mentioned someone being interested in my son. Did you see anyone else in the woods with you?"
Daniel's expression hardened into unusual seriousness. "There was no one else. But he told me something before Tabitha showed up. He said, 'They want the boy.'"
"They who?!" Jim stopped walking, panic rising again.
"I don't know," Daniel replied, stopping as well. "My guess is it's not anyone from town. Probably the smiling monsters or some other entity controlling them."
"But honestly, it's better to keep an eye on the residents too. After what happened with Rick, turning into that thing."
The atmosphere, already tense, dropped into something suffocating.
Internally, Daniel lamented the missed opportunity. That's why I didn't unload the gun on him right away.
His original plan, beyond testing his abilities, had been to humiliate Rick, immobilize him, and drag him to a place protected by a talisman, out of the crows' sight, to extract information from him.
Now, he was in the dark.
At least now I know that Appraisal Gaze also provides information about anyone being manipulated, he thought.
Too bad I can't use it on everyone at once. If I get obsessed with that, I'll run out of energy to train the runes and set up traps.
Jim started asking Julie again, somewhat awkwardly, about the weapon appearing out of nowhere.
She glanced at Jade, who was walking ahead but clearly listening to the conversation.
"I'll tell you later."
As they crossed the tree line and approached the sheriff's station, the scene was anything but calm. The place was in complete uproar.
The three men Donna had sent earlier hadn't kept their mouths shut. Residents were gathered in clusters, talking hysterically.
When they spotted the group, several people hurried toward them.
"What happened in the forest?!" a woman demanded, her eyes wide with fear. "They said Rick turned into a monster! Is that true?!"
Daniel didn't even slow down. He walked right past them, heading for the motorhome, with Jim and Julie following close behind. "Ask the deputy. He's the one handling the stiff."
The trip to the clinic was quick. As soon as they stepped inside, Tabitha, who had been sitting on a bed with Ethan in her arms, immediately jumped to her feet.
The moment she saw the blood on Daniel's jacket and arm, her eyes filled with tears again. She rushed to him, ignoring her husband for a second.
"Oh my God, are you okay?" she asked, her voice trembling with guilt. "I'm so sorry, Daniel... I'm really sorry. In my panic, I didn't tell you he had a gun. You got hurt because of me."
Already aware of what had happened, Kristi approached with surgical gloves and a metal tray.
Daniel raised his uninjured hand in a casual gesture. "Relax. It's nothing."
Running up to him, Ethan wrapped his arms around Daniel's waist. "Thank you."
Daniel ruffled the boy's hair. "You're welcome, kid."
Noticing the onlookers growing curious about what had happened, Kristi motioned to a door at the back. "Come to the empty exam room."
Donna, who had been leaning against a wall with her arms crossed, followed them inside, shutting the door firmly behind her. Jim stayed outside with Tabitha and Ethan.
The leader of Colony House wasted no time, impatience clear in her voice . "What the hell happened out there?"
While Kristi cleaned the wound on Daniel's left arm, carefully working around his tattoo, he summarized the events: Rick's absurd resistance to bullets, the monstrous transformation, and the rapid aging after death.
"How is that possible?" Donna was stunned by the revelation. Since arriving in that town, something like this had never happened.
"It's true. There are multiple witnesses. I saw it myself," Julie confirmed.
Daniel shot Donna a sharp look. "And by the way, you might want to head back. The three gossipers you sent after us saw Rick transforming and ran straight back. By the time we passed the station, the commotion had already started."
"Shit!" Donna cursed loudly, slapping her own thigh. "I don't get a single minute of peace." Without waiting, she opened the door and stormed out like a hurricane.
As she wrapped the bandage around Daniel's forearm, Kristi kept a grim expression, her eyes fixed on the gauze. "I should've realized something like this could happen. There was something very wrong with him."
"Like what?"
"His arm," Kristi sighed, tossing the scissors onto the tray. "You broke it. But a day later, the fractures were completely healed."
"Why didn't you say something that important?" Julie questioned.
"I told the sheriff, and I also asked Rick about it. He said he didn't know how it healed. There was nothing we could've done anyway."
Daniel began connecting the dots, and the picture forming wasn't encouraging. If the voices in Sara's head were already an unknown variable, an entity capable of granting regeneration and power to a human during daylight was an even greater threat.
And the worst part is, they might start focusing on me once they notice my speed is far beyond human.
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