All around, in every direction, she could see rubble and corpses. She could hear the sobs of the fearful and the cries of the wounded carried along the air, cutting through the dust floating in the skies. Within her aura range, she sensed dozens of auras winking out every few seconds, and a few dozen more who weren’t far off.

To her side, she heard Harry shudder out a breath and she glanced over. Almost hesitantly, he took a step forward, and another, until he was at the front of their group, gazing over the ruins with wide eyes. He had been the only one to actually see Adelaide before all… this happened, so Mio didn’t begrudge him a far more drastic reaction.

Still, as she eyed the horrific sight and was reminded of many towns left in the wake of the Skin Walkers, she couldn’t help but wonder what could have possibly done all thi-

Wait… her thoughts froze in her mind for a second, and she brought her reason for coming here to the forefront of her focus. A sick feeling settled uncomfortably in her gut, “Ari Ahnjong. We need to find her. Now.”

Mio’s words seemed to be enough to nudge Fon and Harry into action, although she noticed the latter took far longer to react. They tried their best to ignore the horrors around them as they sped through the town. Harry took the lead, as while none of them knew where their target was, he had an idea of where she could be.

The sights blurred, and soon the coastline entered their vision. It was filthy with displaced corpses and rubble. The water had darkened to a dirty black, and splotches of red littered its once glittering surface. Mio felt a pang of sorrow at the sight.

What the hell happened? Her mind conjured that brief feeling of aura back in the French town, one that was so powerful it left her shuddering. She clenched her jaw. There… isn’t a connection, right…?

She could practically hear the hope in her thoughts.

Her gait faltered.

A cry keened in the air, carried high above the screams of the masses. It was a shriek of pure grief and anger, and a dozen more emotions bundled into one messy ball of sound. While it wasn’t that high pitched, the raw emotion the sound contained left Mio wincing and her eyes watering, as though the feelings within were contagious.

She could feel the woman’s pain, the scream being clearly feminine.

As they closed in, and their pace picked up, an aura washed over them. It wasn’t overly powerful, being maybe five levels above Mio’s own, yet it roiled and seethed so heavily that each and every one of them felt their brains ache at the potency of emotion within.

The beach loomed in their vision, with buildings along the shoreline ruined and toppled, and the beach ravaged into dozens of micro chasms. Sea water had long spilled in and filled the cavities they had left behind.

Shit…

Then finally, they stepped out onto the concrete walk that ran along the shore, although it was now shattered and crumbled, pieces having fallen and joined the sandy expanse below. As one, their eyes darted across to a single building, one isolated from the rest, yet still as affected.

The scream echoed from within.

Mio heard Harry release a soft breath. Then he sped forward. Mio and Fon followed.

From what she could see, the structure seemed to be a storage shed of sorts, probably one used for boats in pre-System Earth judging by the slumping remains of a pier and dock that adorned its front. Those were caved in as well and shredded to splinters. For the most part, its roof was missing, shining thin rays of golden sunlight down through the dust and illuminating someone within.

As they stepped upon the mound of displaced dirt and steel that surrounded it, Mio laid her eyes upon the form of a single, hunched woman, her dark hair clumped with blood and hanging down over her head stiffly. Her clothes were torn, and they too were stained with blood of varying colours.

Mio assumed it was probably a mix of her own and that of the corpse beneath her.

Her face was buried in the chest of another woman’s carcass, her sobs hidden by the body, but her screams still loud enough to echo through the beach. They were screeches of pain, cries of agony. Mio noticed the hoarseness to the sound, leading her to believe that whoever this woman was, she had been screaming for quite a while.

As Harry laid his eyes upon them, his lip quivered, and his eyes widened in shock. Fon stepped up and joined them, and at the sight, she gulped, hiding a grimace. Her chest retched, holding down the urge to vomit.

Mio understood why perfectly.

The corpse… for lack of a better word… was ruined. Broken limbs, displaced organs smeared around, blood splattered across every surface. It was missing an arm, and Mio sighted the limb in question strung over a few meters away, the fingers broken and the elbow poking through the bloodied flesh.

“He… was looking for your friend…” abruptly, the cries stopped and bathed the area in silence, before a voice replaced it and called out to them. It was quiet, and raspy, but carried through the air without issue.

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For a moment, a brief one, the woman glanced up from the corpse and stared meaningfully at Harry. His eyes glazed for a moment as he was hit with realisation. Mio exchanged a glance with Fon. It was clear to them that the woman was speaking about Brock.

Mio’s eyes fell back onto the woman. Her face was similar to that of the corpse’s. She bit her lip. She… was probably her sister. And from the faint remains of aura traces that matched Ari’s description of her own level, the corpses almost certainly belonged to her. Mio hissed a breath through her teeth.

“Ari…” the word slipped past Harry’s lips, almost like an afterthought, “what…”

The sister broke eye contact and fell her forehead back onto Ari’s corpse, “…some… demon wanted to know Brock’s location, and… she refused to tell him.” Mio heard her stifle an angry scream, “it didn’t even matter, because he showed me that he knew the entire time. He… had some way to track him.”

Mio felt her stomach drop as things began to fall into place for her. That aura trace she had detected. Whoever this man was, he certainly had some method to track Brock, or at least his trail, as she was well aware he’d passed through both Adelaide and the town where she’d detected the aura.

And just the fact that she had sensed that in the space used for Jonathan’s Technique…

It meant he was capable of teleportation.

“Harry,” Mio shocked herself at how much her voice wavered, “we need to find Brock. Now.”

The boy didn’t even react to the name of his missing friend, and instead walked down the rubble and joined the girl beside the body of her sister. He looked down at it but said nothing. From what she knew, they had only met briefly, but still, seeing people you knew die around you really put death into perspective.

She knew all too well. Fon looked at her, “Go. Before that monster gets to him.”

Mio nodded, and the shadows rose up around her. She felt her ability connect to Brock’s shadow, and as the darkness sloughed past her eyes, she fell.

**

Brock was beaming as he stumbled through the sands of Egypt. It was a strange sort of coincidence that the village he’d first met Fon in was on the way to the desert region he sought. More out of morbid curiosity than anything else, he stopped and visited the town to see how it was doing.

The word ‘bad’ did not even begin to describe it.

What was a surprise, however, was when he detected the aura of Jonathan, the teleporter that had tried to jump him and Harry when they were fresh out of Adelaide. A quick check on the man showed him to be quite… distant. Perhaps it was the conditions, or the loneliness as he detected none of his other companions around, but he was not in his right mind.

That had all changed when Brock appeared. The man immediately went from distant to downright horrified, spewing out slurs, and screaming, and crying. The moniker ‘the demon’ had also been thrown around by him, and although it didn’t seem like he was the target, Brock still would rather not have such a name.

Fortunately, he managed to calm down the manic scammer, at least somewhat. It came as a bit of hopeful inspiration, but Brock had asked him if he’d ever been to Egypt, as he knew the man was capable of teleportation.

Unfortunately, he hadn’t. But he had been to a small town only a few days off from the border of Egypt, which was more than enough in Brock’s opinion. Months of wasted time would be cut down significantly.

It was strange, but in the split moment that he teleported, his sight was consumed by wafting aura, red and dangerous. Endless. It was foreign, and while he didn’t have enough time to scan it with his aura senses, the power it emitted was enough to make his eyes shake in their sockets. Thankfully, it was faded enough that he was sure it was a few days old.

Whatever had been through the area, it had seemed to have left at a similar time to when he left New Paris. Which was good, cause he was not dealing with it. He doubted he could, even if he tried. Whatever it was, it was far more powerful than Gor’eth.

And so, aside from that last part, that was why he was strolling through Egypt’s deserts with a smile. Not even the occasional scorpion, hyena, or mongoose attack could dissuade him from his sense of joy.

From the border town, it was smooth sailing. A few days trip through the final stretches of the mountain ranges left along the former continent of Africa’s border, and he stumbled past it all and into Egypt, the home of his destination.

Sure, the blazing sun hung high overhead in a cloudless sky, with its heated rays flogging his skin with an almost supernatural heat, but he was here, months early. It was a bit of a surprise that the sun was this hot on his skin, though he chalked it up to some A-grade System fuckery. He knew he was going to have a killer sunburn after all this.

And so, time went on as he walked, before he finally began to sprint once more. The heat was exceedingly terrible against the heat his own body produced through movement, but he stomached it and powered forward. Each second was one less he had to save his life after all.

It took one more day before the sight of an argent tree rose high into the sky, its divinely gargantuan canopy unobscured by the clouds. He was still several dozens of kilometres away, yet it even cast a shadow upon him where he was standing. It was… humbling to see how large this marvel of mystery was without the clouds hiding its true size.

And idly, he was grateful it was actually visible, unlike the last Source he’d found. That one seemed to have been made invisible in the sky, and he had a feeling it was the System’s doing, although he was clueless as to why.

Another hour passed and his feet stepped on black sands, just like he’d seen in Adam’s photo. The leaves of the canopy directly above him had shifted to a silvery-red hue, and the sparse shrubbery or cactuses also adopted a sheen of a similar colour. It reminded him of the west zone back in the jungle city.

As he had no way to tell if red was naturally the highest levelled colour, he knew he would be forced to trek and check every zone for their Alpha, just like the good old days. Through his enhanced sight, he could see the stretches of black sands give way to other colours, a different one on both the left and right, although it was so faint in his vision that it could have been a mirage.

He sighted a few snakes slithering over the land, their scales a vibrant crimson and their eyes glowing the same colour. He picked one up with Oppressive Might and held it far away from him. Its name flickered overhead as he angered the beast, though it could do nothing against his psychic powers.

[F] Dark-Sand Viper (LVL 52)

Idly, as he read the nameplate, he found that his Technique was using far less aura to operate. By his estimates, it was probably between 30% and 40% less, and it was fucking incredible. With only one upgrade, his only Technique became infinitely more useable.

Finally, he used his Technique to throw the snake as far away from him as possible like it was a tennis ball, and he gazed back up to the towering tree. Its trunk seemed to throb to an underheard heartbeat. He placed a hand on his chest, feeling his own and he breathed out.

Let’s do this.

Rolling his shoulders, Brock began to trek through the dark sands.

This region’s Alpha awaited him.