Fifteen minutes passed before we stood and left the supermarket. Sombrely walking away, we stepped over the shattered glass left behind by the old roller door. I still clutched the bloodied bat in my hand, my hand desperately clasping itself around the handle - fear more in control of my body than I was. My right arm throbbed with pain after colliding with the ground, and my torn leg was still covered in blood. Both our eyes were stained red from the tears. Perhaps the only reason we weren't crying now was simply because we had no tears left to cry.
"You did the best you could, you know?" Wayne said. "Do you know how many lives you saved in there?"
"I brought the damn thing inside," I replied. "I'm the only reason they were even in danger in the first place..."
Wandering outside to the crowd of survivors who'd made it out of the store alive, I saw about twenty to thirty people - all gathered in a group. The store clerk who overcharged me on the way out looked over at me for a moment, before abashedly turning her gaze away. The elderly man simply gave us a smiling nod as he tipped his cabbie hat to us. As Wayne helped me across the parking lot, I fumbled for my car keys in my inventory.
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Items Retrieved
1 Set of Keys
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"Here," I said, passing them to Wayne.
Wayne opened the door to my car, and sat me down on the passenger seat. I tossed the bloodied baseball bat onto the back-seat. The blood would probably stain the seats, but they were stained enough already that I didn't really worry about it. As Wayne went to stand back up, he looked around the car, before covering his mouth in disgust.
"Are you sure you should sit with an open wound in here?" Wayne asked. "Surely you'd be running the risk of an infection, with all this mess..."
"I'll be fine, it hasn't killed me so far," I replied. "When's the daemon dispatch getting here?"
"Who knows," Wayne replied, as he looked toward the parking lot entrance. It'd been at least 20 minutes since the daemon dispatch had been called, and yet, there didn't seem to be any sign of them.
"Are you doing better?" Wayne asked.
"A little bit," I replied. "My health's regenning slowly, but I'm still pretty fucking sore."
"Here, drink this," Wayne said, proffering a can of drink to me. The can was black, with a grafitti-style red cross on it, and the words "Tyger Health Drink" printed on top of the cross.
"Where'd you get that?" I asked.
"Where do you think?" Wayne replied, smiling. "I took a few from the supermarket, of course."
"Atta-boy," I said, cracking open the can and skolling down the contents.
The cherry liquid fizzled against my tongue, and as I gulped it down, I could feel it seep into the walls of my stomach - the odd sensation invigourating my body. I could feel it expidite my natural healing process, as my wounds slowly began to close up a little and the pain in my shoulder began to abate. I looked up at my health gauge: 101/107.
"How do you feel?" Wayne asked.
"A little better, I guess," I replied, shivering.
Sitting in the car, I wistfully watched the crowd of people standing outside in the cold, staring in silence. As we sat there for a few moments, Wayne followed my eyeline - glancing over at the crowd, huddling together in the cold night.
"You know, you saved their lives today," Wayne said.
Looking over at the crowd, I sighed, the mist floating from my lips as I exhaled.
"I only saved lives that I put in danger in the first place," I replied sombrely, turning my gaze back to Wayne. "I led that fucking thing inside. I might've defeated the monster, but you, me, and each and every one of those people: we'll relive that experience in our darkest nightmares, for the rest of our lives..."
As I gazed up at the permanight, the mercurial clouds of crimson floating overhead through the blacked night sky, I paused for a moment - staring up at the swirls of the shadows.
"I wouldn't call that saving lives, Wayne," I concluded. "Would you?"
Wayne pondered it for a moment. Staring over at the group of people, congregating across the parking lot, he pointed in their direction as he stared down at me.
"I don't know, but there's people over there that'd be dead if you weren't there," Wayne replied. "I'm sure they're thankful for that; I know I am."
***
As Wayne and I sat in the parking lot talking, we were interrupted by a sleek black sedan, swerving around the corner, before speeding into the parking lot and drifting to a dead-halt before us. The driver side door opened, and a young woman stepped out.
She was about twenty-five from the looks of it, with a well-built appearance, long silvered hair, and umber brown skin that seemed to glow slightly beneath the moonlight. Wearing a white tank top with a short-sleeved denim jacket, she brandished a sawn-off shotgun in one hand and wore a massive plated gauntlet on the other. It would've been very cold wearing nothing but a short sleeved jean jacket at night, but I didn't exactly question it. I was too busy grappling with other things.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
"Daemon Dispatch, Kara Falthorne reporting!" She yelled. "We heard reports of a daemon sighting here?"
She gripped the shotgun tightly, pumping it with her gauntlet hand. With that, a notification flashed in front of my face, and I lifted the palm of my hand to my face in disbelief.
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Main Objectives for Quest "Terribly Afraid of Dying" Complete
Survive until the Daemon Dispatch Arrives (1/1)
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Bit fucking late for that, I thought to myself.
"There is no daemon," Wayne said. "It's dead. He got rid of it."
As Wayne stared down at me, Kara looked over at me with a puzzled expression on her face. I was a wiry kid, sitting in a rancid car, with the vacant look of someone who'd been to hell and back. It wasn't exactly the look of "valiant hero" that anyone anticipates. As far as I was concerned, I wasn't really a hero anyway: I was just the son of a bitch who had let that atrocity in.
"You got rid of it?" Kara said. "You sure don't look like a daemon-hunter."
"I don't exactly feel like one either," I replied.
While Kara looked me over, a figure stepped out of the passenger side of Kara's car, and approached me. He was a stocky figure, about 5'10, with chiseled muscles and a chiseled jaw. His side-swept blonde hair looked as if it had just been taken out of a catalogue, and he wore a neat grey cardigan over a white shirt. Around his neck, a jagged lapis pendant glowed with a soft light, cyan sparks flitting about within. I knew that face immediately.
"Leo?" I said.
"Oscar?" He responded. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"I could ask you the same bloody question," I said. "Hunting daemons? Is this that new job you wouldn't tell us about?"
"Yeah," Leo said. "And for good reason. Jenny would kill me if she knew what I was doing."
"I have a feeling what you're doing could probably get you killed a lot quicker," I retorted.
"Whatever, we'll have that conversation when I get home," Leo replied. "I'll take it from here, Kara. You go check on the others."
"Be my guest," she replied glumly, sauntering away.
Leo wandered over to me, looking at me as I sat in the front seat of my car trembling, partly from the cold, partly from what had just happened.
"Are you okay, Oscar?" Leo said. "You look a little shaken."
I sighed. "I'm fine," I replied, lying transparently. "I've been through worse."
I hadn't been through worse, of course. Probably the closest thing I could even compare it to was the time I fell off a two-storey balcony into a dumpster, and that doesn't leave you with emotional trauma - it just leaves you with a funny story to tell at parties. Leo seemed to see through me pretty easily; I was pretty predictable at the best of times anyway.
"What happened in there?" Leo asked.
"Daemon charged inside, I got awakening powers, and by some miracle - I ended up killing it," I said. "Beyond that, I'd prefer not to go into detail for my own sake..."
"You ended up awakening?" Leo exclaimed. "Congrats, dude!"
"Thanks," I replied solemnly. Leo knew the fact that I'd never awakened still weighed on my mind to this day, and he knew it was one of the things I'd resented for a long time, but I guess the traumatic conditions of my awakening kind of spoiled the excitement of it. As Leo read the emotions on my face, he reigned in the excitement. He went to reach into his pocket for something, but as he looked down at me, he shifted his empty hand away from his pocket - changing his mind about it.
"Look, Oscar," Leo said. "I wanted to say... I'm sorry about today, about being so slow to get here. It's a rough job - daemon hunting - and we don't exactly have the nicest schedules to work around. It's..."
It seemed like Leo was about to continue, but as Kara returned, she called out to him - interrupting his train of thought.
"Leo, we've got another one, 283 Walcyt Road," she said. "We've got to get a move on!"
"Right!" Leo called out to her. As he turned back to me, he sighed. "I'm glad you're safe though, Oscar. You did good."
He extended his fist out, and I gave him a bit of a fistbump with my still-bloodied hands. Leo got a little bit of the blood on his knuckles, but didn't seem to notice or care.
"I'll see you when I get back," Leo said.
"Stay safe," I replied.
Leo mulled over his response for a moment. As he moved toward the passenger side door of the black sedan, he turned toward me, and smiled.
"I'll try," he answered wryly.
***
As Leo stepped into the car, Kara put her shotgun by her feet as she turned the key. The engine whirred to life, and as it did, the radio quietly hummed with sombre music. "The curse stops here," it sung to them. As they pulled from the parking lot, passing the beige sedan on the way out, Kara spoke.
"He awakened, didn't he?" Kara said.
"Yeah, what about it?" Leo replied.
"Why didn't you hand him the card?" Kara asked.
Leo took the Adventurer's Guild Card from his pocket. It was a simple card, written with sans script - with an address and phone number on it. Leo put it back in his pocket as he scowed slightly.
"I'm not giving him that card," Leo replied.
"We need more adventurers," Kara replied. "This is the first callout we've been to this week with no casualties, Leo. We're always late, and that's because we don't have the manpower. We need more hands on deck."
"I'll work hard enough for the both of us," Leo said. "I took this job so I could help my friends and neighbours to live normal lives, not so I could be the one to encourage them to throw their lives away."
"That wasn't your decision to make, it was his." Kara said.
"Well, I made that decision for him," Leo answered.
"He could help people," Kara said.
"Yeah, and I can help him lead a good life," Leo said. "I'm not going to end up like your sister, luring every magic-sensitive kid she ever met to their deaths - all for some vague fucking notion of justice. I could help him more by keeping him the fuck out of this."
As Kara stared out the windscreen, she sighed.
"Sometimes, we're forced to make tough choices, Leo," she said. "We have to do what's right."
Leo turned his eye away from Kara, as he stared down at the road - the headlights lit the highway before them. He sat back in his seat and closed his eyes.
"I know that, Kara," Leo said. "I just did what was right for him."