“And that’s what happened,” Jacob finished his speech in front of the people that had remained outside.

They had brought the corpses of their fallen to the entrance with some difficulty. At some point, Jacob had lost his patience and had disabled each mechanism in the 2nd room. It took him the better part of two hours to do so, but in the end, it allowed them to ferret everything they needed without casualties.

“What the hell?! How could you let them die?” a woman who knew some of those who died screamed at Jacob with tears forming in her eyes.

“I have done everything I could to save them. However, the enemies were strong and powerful.”

Jacob had tied up and gagged the prisoner they had taken and was now waiting to interrogate him. However, he had chosen not to do so before going out because he needed something to convince these men and women that Fort Mountain was lost.

“People are dead!” the woman kept screaming.

Marina stepped forward from the back. She had been one of the few survivors from their trip, and she spoke to the screaming woman.

“Lucia, it’s not the right time. Calm down, and let him explain.”

It felt odd for everyone to stare at a short and scrawny teenager like Jacob waiting for words of great wisdom. Nonetheless, Marina managed to calm the other woman with comforting words and a soft touch.

“Well, let’s see what this bastard has to say, then.”

Jacob went over to the downed man and kicked him in the ribs. He could have spared himself the cruelty, but this was less of an interrogation and more of a performance. He needed them to hear from this man what he already knew.

A muffled scream followed, and Jacob removed the gag from his mouth.

“Let me go!” the man screamed, panicking after seeing so many people looking at him with murder in their eyes.

“So, this is the last man standing of the bastards who killed the others. Do you deny this?” Jacob stated each word with a calm yet assertive tone.

“What? Who? What is this crazy kid saying? Let me speak with the adults!”

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Now, what the guy had not realized was that everyone here was following the crazy kid. By insulting him, he had just made a fool of everyone else who had put their trust in their temporary leader. And even if someone had some beef with Jacob, it was hard to take it back now that this idiot had insulted them because it would make twice a fool out of them.

Jacob kicked him again while eyeing the crowd. More than a few nodded in agreement.

Marina had fought valiantly from what Juliet had told him. Yet, on her face, there was a deep despise for the little man who was twisting and turning, trying to escape his bindings.

“Marina, can you confirm what I just said, that this guy is one of those bastards who killed our people?”

Our people, Jacob, chose his words very carefully. He would not say friends or companions, but our people, meaning they shared something much more significant and were in the same boat. He needed a faction for himself, and it turned out that he already had four new warriors bathed in blood on his side.

He grabbed the man by the collar. He had already sealed his Qi by destroying most of his Meridians; the guy was now weaker than a kid.

“So, tell us why you killed all these innocents and where you come from!”

Jacob already knew the answer to both but still asked for the sake of the furious crowd. If he managed to redirect their anger toward this idiot, he would gain their trust instead of their murder attempts.

“I come from Fort Mountain!” the man screamed, answering the easy question first and then making an excuse for the second, “our boss forced us to kill those people! I didn’t want to!”

“Lies!” Marina shouted.

Jacob had not indeed paid any attention to her before, but she was now noticing that she seemed almost as harsh as Geneva. So what was up with women in St. Peter? Were they all this tough?

“He told us that they would be a dead weight and that the monsters would catch us if we did not get rid of them!” the man started crying, and Jacob thought that the guy was also probably close to pissing himself.

“And you did not question this person at all?!” Marina kept shouting.

Jacob was actually relieved that someone else would help in the interrogation. He planned not to attract too much attention to himself, but he was repeatedly failing at it. Frederick and Juliet had been great, but the enormous sword he was now wielding in one hand kind of gave him away.

Marina, however, with her bloodied blond pixie cut, looked like a demon.

Right, they killed her sister. F*ck, I think I need to sleep. My brain is not working as it should be.

“John was a freak! He was super strong! When those goddamn nightmares swarmed Fort Mountain, he managed to save our group. We didn’t know he was out of his goddamn mind! Please, have mercy!”

Bingo.

“Nightmares?” Marina asked while everyone else started chattering about what had just been saying.

“Yes! Some monsters killed everyone else in Fort Mountain! They were things of horrors! They were built like scorpions with deadly tails, and some were the size of dogs! Most, though, were very small and could enter your mouth and burrow through your body! So we had to check each person multiple times before we could be sure that no one had been infected. And let me tell you, once they were in, the best thing was just to kill the poor bastards.”

Everyone instantly paled.

Jacob took a big breath, preparing to explain what was going on.