Richard moved away from Professor Brown’s home and walked in the middle of the road at sunset, without a clear destination. He wanted answers and he got them. That he had been involved in a mass murder and he didn’t do anything to stop it.

  There was no doubt now that the world had ended for real, something that deep down he had known all along, but wasn’t able to admit, fooling himself with strange theories. In his old life, things that were considered life goals such as having a high paying job, or an own home without roommates were now something out of a history book.

  Now that his family and friends were gone forever, there was nothing worth to live for anymore, and he wasn’t sure he even deserved to if it was true that he had been an accomplice in that thing.

  In the following days, he wandered around the city at night, usually taking shelter inside one of the still standing buildings during the day. When he heard a faint movement, he hunted for whatever that thing was. Normally, it’d be a rat or a rabbit, but sometimes there were stray dogs roaming around and even an adult deer, of which he ate even the antlers.

  He stopped from managing the item section and ingested all the wood he could find, making his vision to shift from yellow to orange. Every night he lashed his frustrations at the Husks. Countless times he had tried to reason with them, but they always screeched and flailed their weak arms at him as if they would do some kind of damage.

  After some days he went hunting for them, blinded by hatred because they could have been smart and talk with him, but they didn’t want to, so he had to punish them by burning them alive. One day he had even tried to take hostage one of their babies, but they preferred to kill it themselves than trying to reason with him.

  His eyes opened. The sunlight was shining on his body through the revolving door of the hotel he had been sleeping inside for the last three days.

  He sighed, dismissing the window. Every time that stupid prompt appeared when he was sleeping. There was nothing he could gain by training, as the world had ended and being stronger in a such a lifeless world like this was useless, and he was already able to survive as it is.

  There were steps outside of a kind he had never heard before. Husks were always very silent, and they didn’t roam in the middle of the streets by daylight.

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  Richard lowered his head to pass through the door and peered outside. A group of five men were gathered near the wall of the building opposite to the hotel. Their limbs were proportionated to the rest of their bodies, and their faces weren’t pale. There was no doubt that those were real humans.

  Their hoodies and jeans were tattered, fixed with lots of patches. They wore masks with a protruding tube that ended inside a bag sitting at their belts, while the eyes were covered by dirty orange ski glasses. Long knives were sitting inside leather pouches against their thighs.

  They were surrounding a young man who was kneeling on the ground, keeping his head low, the only one to not wear a mask. He was panting and his hands behind his back were shaking, the fingers covered by blood-stained bandages. His face was full of bruises and his left eye was closed and swollen.

  In front of him, a bald man grabbed his shoulder-length hair, raising his chin.

  “You have failed us for the last time”, the bald man said, his voice was distorted by the mask, “And you know what happens to the ones who disappoint us”.

  He turned towards the others, “What should be his punishment?”. The teenager burst in tears and he raised his head to look at the others, but the bald man hit him in the back of the head.

  “P-please”, he said, “I was just-”;

  The slap made his face turn into the opposite direction, leaving a red mark on his cheek. The others jeered.

  “I say that we should cut his throat and be done with him”, said a man with short black hair;

  “He’s right”, another one nodded, “We can’t afford to have someone leeching from our supplies”.

  “You two may be right, but I think that he can still be helpful to us”, the crow’s feet wrinkles of the bald man’s eyes became more evident, keeping a hand over his belt, “No, we shouldn’t kill him now. Maybe we have given him the wrong role”;

  “Do you remember the last time we had some good fun tog-?”, said a man with a red mohawk.

  Richard sprinted towards them and knocked over the one with a mohawk, his elbow crushing his teeth. The scavenger’s lifeless body dropped on the ground with a wide-open broken jaw. He roared, and swung his claws at the one with the short hair, reciding his jugular vein.

  “Run!”, one of them said and they all bolted away from him.

  The bald man stumbled on a rock and fell face first on the ground.

  “Help me!”, he said at the other four, “You idiots!”.

  Richard was clicking his claws to shoot a fireball at him, but the man turned and raised a gun with a large barrel. The flare exploded on his forehead and ricocheted on the ground, covering him in a red cloud. Richard fell on one knee and groaned.

  The bald man had the time to rise from the ground and run away from him. Richard tried to pursue and throw fireballs at them, but, as his vision was too blurry, he missed all of his shots and only wasted his mana. After they had turned the corner, it was impossible to keep up with them, as smoke was starting to rise from his nostrils.

  His feet became entangled with each other, making him fall and roll on the ground. When he raised his gaze, the men were only four distant shapes. His low endurance had betrayed him. Everything happened too quickly, and something broke when he had heard those words that made his blood boil, but now he had to check if the boy was well, which was the most important thing.

  When he turned back, the young man was still sitting on the ground. A white glowing line now connected the two of them.