Valerie stared down at the crumpled man before her, his blank stare was unfocused, yet she felt it pierce into her very core. How did this happen? He charged her, she thought she had been stealthy, but he saw her and charged. Why would he charge? More importantly why did he announce his charge with a yell? She had her weapon drawn and reacted like she had done a thousand times before; you hear a monsters roar you react. It was basic, the most basic of basics! She moved on instinct and- Bile caught in her throat and she was forced to stop herself from vomiting. She couldn’t take her eyes off the dead man laying at her feet, Tiger’s Will still lodged in his throat. Why didn’t she feel any power come into the blade? It must only work on monsters, and she couldn’t absorb power from… from…

“Oh bollo-“

Her voice was cut off as she was unable to stop her breakfast coming up. Valerie fell to her knees retching next to the man she killed. Why had it been so easy? Her uncle taught her from a young age the weak points to a beast’s flesh and where to strike for maximum effectiveness, her aspect only reinforced these lessons giving her tips on how best to end monsters. The joints, the eyes, and most importantly the throat were all vital areas, and she aimed for these every time, but a monsters flesh was inherently resistant and tough to pierce. This… bandit however, his flesh was so weak it was like paper, she even felt where her blade had cut into the bone with only token resistance. The thought unfortunately brought about further waves of nausea dragging up more of her stomachs contents.

As the last of her meal was forced back up, Valerie looked over the mess she made, her bile and the man’s blood mixing into a disgusting soup. It almost sent her into another fit of retching which she only prevented through sheer force of will. She scuttled away from the dead man, backing herself into a corner while never taking her eyes of him, afraid he would get back up. He was a lone straggler, the only one she’d come across, all the rest must be busy packing for the move while he was patrolling. Would his friends be along shortly? Did someone hear him yell? What if she had to kill more of them? Valerie began to hyperventilate, and she gripped onto the sides of her head, her fingers digging into the flesh underneath. What was she doing here? She was a monster hunter not a… not a murderer. She shouldn’t be here, neither of them should be, everything had gone terribly wrong from the moment they arrived. The second Samantha said this used to her home they should have run. No, they shouldn’t have ever taken this contract in the first place. Shouldn’t have gotten a rank up, become adventurers or run away.

“I want to go home…”

She meekly whispered clutching at herself and wishing she had never gotten out of bed that morning. She wanted to go back to the cabin, she wanted to find her uncle, to just pretend the last year never happened. If she had known this was what waited for her, she never would have dreamed of running away. She could have lived a simple life with her uncle and Samantha, she could have been happy. As if summoned by the huntress’s erratic thoughts, a content and goofily smiling Samantha walked right up to her and sat next to Valerie as she rocked back and forth. Her friend’s altered appearance would have frightened the huntress, but her mind was too far gone down the rabbit hole to consider anything else. After a few silent minutes however the pervasive fear effect that was oozing out of Samantha became too much and overtook any trauma Valerie was experiencing.

“S-Samantha could you- do you mind turning that off?”

She asked sheepishly.

“Hmm? Oh whoops my bad.”

Samantha only now realized her eery aura was on full blast without any conscious effort again. Like a switch had been flipped, she stopped exuding the terrifying feeling which also caused her hair, eyes and nails to return to their original form much to her surprise and displeasure. She caught sight of herself in a puddle on the way here and thought she looked pretty cool. A part of her wanted to try turning her aura back on to see if she changed again but didn’t for Valerie’s sake. The two of them sat by the cooling corpse of the bandit, Valerie clutching her knees unable to take her eyes off the man while Samantha was distracted by a fly that buzzed around the dead guy.

“I-is he dead? The boss, I mean?”

Valerie suddenly asked after noticing her friend wasn’t upset in any way.

“Totally.”

She answered matter of factly and with some pride in her voice. Valerie blinked at the answer, her friend was weird without a doubt but not even caring about casual murder?

“How can you be so calm about it?!”

She accused, unable to comprehend how anyone could be so flippant about killing another person. Samantha put a finger to her chin and thought about it for a second before answering confidently.

“Because he tried to kill me. We kill monsters all the time, no reason to stop now.”

Valerie’s jitters stopped and she looked deep into her friend’s eyes trying to find some hint of regret, or shame or remorse but there was nothing. It couldn’t just be her lack of fear, Samantha truly felt nothing from killing another living, thinking person. Valerie wanted to argue with her, to try and make her see reason but she knew it was pointless. The two fell back into silence, Samantha as unbothered as ever while Valerie was wracked with guilt. She kept thinking on her friend’s words, there was something so alien and disgusting about the sentiment but also freeing like an escape into madness. These bandits didn’t share their morals, they would have killed them without a second thought and then been on their merry way. Their boss tried to kill Samantha over a light tap that didn’t even hurt. The three who took her out to the forest were no exception either they planned to… do things to her.

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“Those three… they wanted to rape me.”

Valerie whispered, she couldn’t hide behind childish terms or convenient lies, they were going to violate and probably kill her afterwards if Samantha hadn’t come along.

“…yeah.”

Her saviour agreed sombrely then immediately perked up.

“But they didn’t!”

And they would never get another chance, she didn’t add. Those cocoons she left the three wrapped up in were awfully tight in some areas, enough to cut off blood flow or restrict breathing a smidge. They put their hands on her friend and she wouldn’t stand for it, Harry might have been self-defence or revenge but those three were unquestionably worthy of death in her mind. She’d tell Valerie all about it later once she was done with her thing.

“Do you need anything Val?”

“I don’t know… just please don’t leave.”

There no was chance of that, the shadow user thought, even if there wasn’t a dead body laying right in front of them attracting flies, she was by her side to the end. While Samantha was secure in her guilt free conscience, Valerie continued to fight with herself as part of her wanted to grasp for an easy out. If she just saw them as monsters then killing them was no different than fulfilling her job, the problem was they weren’t monsters. They were living, breathing and above all thinking beings who knew right from wrong. She blinked and looked over the man before her again, a creeping idea filling her mind.

“They knew right from wrong… and they still picked this? Why?”

Samantha scratched at her head not realizing the question was probably for her to answer.

“Wait are you asking me?”

What did she know about these people? They were just a bunch of weirdos.

“I don’t know Val, maybe they just wanted to.”

Valerie squinted her eyes at the flippant response from her friend but even if it was uninformed there was some merit to it. The man she killed had chosen this life, had drawn his weapon on her, had fully intended to kill her without a second thought. None of that was a mistake or accident, it was a conscious choice to attack her. So why was she upset about it? No one put him or any of the rest of them up to this, their boss specifically said he wanted to avoid killing adventurers, yet his men willingly disobeyed him multiple times. This was a dangerous line of thinking; she knew she couldn’t just lump them all in together and treat each of them like they were no better than the last. If anyone else had been around they might have tried to comfort or dissuade Valerie and convince her they weren’t all bad. Unfortunately, the only person she would listen to was unintentionally speaking poison into her ears.

“Quite frankly, he probably deserved it. No, he definitely did.”

Samantha’s completely biased opinion was based solely on the fact the dead man tried to hurt Valerie and while she could forgive a lot, that was an inexcusable line. Her sentiments worked as anger began to colour the huntress’s thoughts and her face scrunched into a frown while her teeth ground against one another. Why was she being a cry-baby for protecting herself? Why was she always so weak? Mental issues? Poor impulse control? Those were just excuses; her real issue was she was just too pathetic and had to be propped up by others. She needed people to tell her it wasn’t her fault, that it was something else, someone else, anyone but her. Valerie’s one true problem, in her mind, was she was needed people to lie to her face and tell her she wasn’t the problem. There was only one person who didn’t and she was doing a terrible job at helping.

“I think you were right to kill him Valerie. He was just scum who wanted to hurt you and didn’t deserve another breath.”

Samantha might have been laying it on a little thick, but she rarely got a chance to speak her true feelings on such matters and took the opportunity to let loose. The shadow user continued to degrade the body before them and add to her friend’s growing hatred. Thankfully Valerie eventually tuned it out but not before her mind had been made up. She dug her nails into her arms with enough force to draw blood, yet she couldn’t feel it over the white-hot anger at herself. She thought her first hunt made her better then it was when she ran away then it was getting a job. Over and over again she found something else to lie to herself that she was finally an adult, that she had it all under control, but she never did. All she ever did was react, a monster appeared, and she reacted by killing it. Her uncle kept her hidden away and she reacted by running off. Nothing, nothing, nothing was ever her choice it was just a reaction to something else. She was pathetic, all her bids for independence were just a childish tantrum to appear more mature, more put together than she truly was. She was just a petulant little girl who cried and wailed when things didn’t go her way, but enough was enough.

“No more.”

Her voice was icy cold and resolute for the first time in ages which caught Samantha off guard and caused her to immediately shut up.

“I’m done with it all.”

She would accept help and support from those she trusted, but she was done being the weak link, the one that had to be saved, the poor defenceless princess who couldn’t hack it on her own. She was a huntress and would earn the title of apex no matter what, even if it meant hunting her own kind. No, especially if it meant hunting her own kind.

“So what do you want to do now?”

The shadow user asked, a hint of merriment in her voice from seeing her friend looking better than she had in a long time. Deep down, Valerie knew she and Samantha still had the option to leave and never come back. Their job was done, the bandits would likely disband without their leader, but this scum would still live and go on to form another gang. They would undoubtedly go on to kill, pillage, violate anything and everything just because they could.

“We should do something; they might hurt more people.”

A small fervent part of the huntress screamed to think not just for herself and step away from that precipice. They could give them a little scare, put the fear of god into them or whatever Samantha had up her sleeve. She thought the creepy laugh her friend let out was a good sign but her next words completely foiled her plan.

“I don’t care about other people, what have they ever done for us? I wanna know what YOU wanna do.”

Valerie blanched from Samantha seeing right through her. She couldn’t even argue as she completely agreed. The truth was the huntress didn’t care if these bandits killed every man, woman and child they came across. They weren’t her and they weren’t the people she cared about so why should it be her problem. What she really wanted was to do something far more permanent, she wanted them to pay.

Valerie turned her angry gaze back to the lump of meat that she had killed. Why did she ever worry herself over his ilk? He was nothing but a murderer and given the chance he would have killed her, killed Samantha, killed Joanne, Albert, Granny, kill anyone because he could, he was no better than a beast. All of these bandits were nothing more than a bunch of animals that needed to be put down. Valerie shakily rose to her feet and walked up to the dead bandit; she couldn’t see the man he had been anymore. Maybe he had a family, maybe a wife, children, elderly parents whom he cared for. Maybe his bandit life had been the result of a series of bad decisions and failed prospects. Maybe, maybe, maybe, it didn’t really matter anymore, the second he picked up his weapon he made his decision, and the huntress could only act in kind. She knelt down and tore her knife from the corpses throat, a splatter of blood trailing after the blade. She was disgusted at the specks that hit her face and spat on the dead bandit. Wiping the stains off herself, she looked out over the quiet town searching for any signs of life. She knew they were still out there, the vermin, scurrying along getting ready to head out and start the whole game all over again. Sheathing her weapon, Valerie stepped over her first kill while calling for her teammate.

“Come on Samantha, let’s go kill these fucking monsters.”

Her friend leapt up and ran after the huntress, her chipper expression the complete opposite of Valerie’s determined and unrelenting fury.