My heart dropped down into my stomach when I realized I was fucked! How the hell didn’t I sense him coming? He was centimeters away from my face, until he stopped short, his body levitating in the air mid-leap. Not only that, he had a film of dark purple around him, a powerful aura permeating his body.

“W-wait?” Sevv croaked, the stark look in his eyes telling me he was just as caught off guard as I was. But then I realized where this power was coming from, and I breathed an inner sigh of relief.

“Naomi….”

She peeled him back from me and slammed his face several times against the bars of the cell Ramus was knocked out in. It was so bad that his stitches started coming out, the meat on his face giving way. All while this abuse was going on, Sevv couldn’t stop fucking laughing….

Naomi finally dropped him, Sevv’s body dropping on the floor sounding like a bag of potatoes. He was visibly weak as his arms struggled to lift himself up, the blood from his torn forehead oozing down his smile. “Of course it’s you! It is always you!”

I winced. It sounded like Sevv knew Naomi.

“I’m familiar with your work, so spare me,” he said, getting on his knees and grabbing his head. “I’ll do it myself!” The monster didn’t transform, he didn’t attack, hell, he didn’t even escape! Instead, he bore his fingers down on his head and decapitated himself, the stitches around his neck popping off one by one.

I wanted to gag, but I kept the nauseating feel down. Blood erupted from his neck like a volcano, before his body dropped lifelessly on the floor.

“Shit…” I muttered under my breath. “What the fuck was that?!”

“I told you I should have handled it,” Naomi said as she walked over to me. She popped the bars open and knelt by Ramus’ body, then said something that shook me, “He’s dead.”

I held my breath.

“Leave it to Ramus to get himself into trouble.”

“That monster was playing with his soul!”

“He was, and now that the monster is gone, he is, too. Without the sliver of Sevv’s soul there’s not enough to keep the body living.”

“That jackass transferred his soul to Max!” I cried. “Maybe if we could—”

“There is nothing more we can do here,” she said. “I know Sevv. I’ve fought him before, when I was running my own hunting business. We crossed paths a couple of times, and every time, he’d do something dumb like this. I didn’t think I’d find him in Utoro, though...”

“Do dumb shit like what?”

“Off himself.”

“Wait, so he’s immortal?”

“He is, in a sense. He plays with souls–he welds them, transforms them, mutates them–whatever mood he’s into that day. He also collects them. And with so many souls at his disposal, he can transfer his spirit upon death, using the stolen souls as an anchor. After tethering a part of his soul with that of his victims, he finds himself another body to snatch.”

“So he is immortal. How do you even categorize a skill like that?”

“Special grade,” Naomi said flatly. “His defense is garbage without his collection of corpses housing imprisoned souls, but he is still a nuisance to deal with.” She got up from Ramus’s body and turned to me. “It’s like he has unlimited lives. The only way to stop him for good is to destroy his soul completely, but that’s no easy to do.”

I stared at Ramus, my mind racing. If Sevv had a habit of jumping out of his body before we could finish him off, then how the hell were we going to stop him for good? “There has to be a way around this,” I said desperately. But I was clutching at straws here. Naomi was an experienced hunter who had found him before, and even she didn’t have an answer for him. So what were the chances that I’d stop him?

Maybe I couldn’t, but my team and I could….

Naomi gave me a sympathetic look. “Don’t tell Hayashi about this.”

I looked at her lost. “Huh? Why?”

“Sevv is a coward. All he does is run away when he has to get his own hands dirty. Even so, one touch from him can potentially kill you, which is where his threat level comes from. I don’t want Hayashi getting ideas of sending hunters after him.”

“So we let him roam free, taking lives by the dozen?”

“There is a big drawback to Sevv’s powers. It’s seasonal. A powerful ability like his is taxing, and judging by his cages, he’s not doing a lot of hunting.”

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

“Then explain the family?”

“An outlier….”

“How are you so sure?”

“I know his pattern, Nero. Trust me.”

“Naomi, there were several people in this church that went missing for months. And his fridge is right here! That’s not some wild coincidence.”

“You said you trust me, right?” she said, turning to me seriously. “Sevv has been a thorn in my side for a very long time. I know how he operates. Another monster was behind those missing people. Or maybe a talent, or worse, a human. But, it wasn’t him. The dominoes are falling in the right places, and we start assuming things without thinking them through.”

I took a deep breath, trying to clear my head. Naomi was right. I needed to think this through logically instead of jumping to conclusions.

“Okay,” I said finally. “Explain it to me then. Help me understand Sevv's pattern and why you’re so sure he wasn’t behind the missing people.”

“Like I said, his power is taxing. He can only harvest a few times before he needs to rest and regenerate— sometimes for months. That limits how often he can hunt. He takes a soul, stores it, welds it to another soul to make it more powerful, and does a variety of things with them. All of that takes a lot out of him. He’s known to experiment, implanting multiple souls into a person. But as you know, souls are energy, and there's only so much of it a vessel could take. Once you go over two souls, you risk boiling that vessel alive, from the inside out…”

“Okay, then how about Max?”

“I told you before, outliers….”

“Was I an outlier too?”

“You were. He placed himself in a situation where he would rather risk draining himself than losing. Typical arrogant flesh eater mindset, remember?”

I considered Naomi’s words carefully. She had far more experience hunting monsters than I did. If she said Sevv wasn't behind the missing people, I had to trust her judgment.

Still, it didn't sit right with me. All signs pointed to Sevv being the culprit. His ability to steal souls, the private dungeon in the basement of the cathedral, the timing of the disappearances. It fit too perfectly.

But Naomi was adamant. She claimed to know Sevv’s patterns intimately. And if there was one thing I had learned about her, it was that she didn’t make reckless accusations.

Then there was someone like Ramus being involved with this case….

“We need to get our story straight for Hayashi,” she said. “We pin all of this on Ramus, understood?”

I felt queasy about the idea….

“He attacked you, right? That’s why he’s caged?”

“He did, but….” I looked up to her. “Sevv told me that Ramus ordered him to kill Max, but not the kids, or the wife.”

Naomi straightened herself out and remained quiet.

“I know Ramus isn’t the best person out there, but–”

“He told you that and you still doubt that he’s behind the murders?”

“Ramus, a killer? He’s a lot of things, but working with a monster is…is….”

“Don’t put so much faith in people you don’t know, Nero. You’ll just end up feeling stupid and played.”

“How could someone like Sevv be ordered around by someone like Ramus?”

“That isn’t our job to find out. Our job is to stop this from happening again, and keep other hunters from getting killed. So don’t mention Sevv in your report.”

“I just don’t feel right about lying to sensei. And finding Sevv later, who is going to take on that responsibility? You?”

“If I say yes, will you omit the encounter on the report?”

She managed to avoid being victimized by this high grade threat… I should trust that she can handle it on her own, right?

“All right, Naomi.”

“Japan is far from Ramus’ grid. He shouldn’t have been here. Even though Sevv used him, I believe that he was the true culprit of the missing parishioners. Especially after what you said. Don’t complicate things by asking irrelevant questions.”

“Yeah…” I said weakly.

“You’re doing the right thing. Even though it doesn’t feel like it right now. We are saving hunter lives by keeping Sevv off of their radar. Imagine if Hayashi sent a year three team after him? He might not be harvesting, but he has souls in storage for his down seasons. There’s no point in going after a dangerous shadow walker like him without experience. It’s the same thing as throwing lives away. I will find him myself. I promise, he won’t slip from me again.”

++++

Despite feeling unsure about blaming the case on Ramus, I focused on the lives we saved. Unfortunately Max wasn’t in the lineup, but with an order to shut down the cathedral, we kept further parishioners from being targeted by people who may be associated with Ramus. Father Fredrei was trying to avoid the cathedral from shutting down, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. The local authorities had made up their minds–the recent string of disappearances and strange occurrences around the cathedral had to be dealt with.

The disappearances now had a proven source, and the cathedral was that source. As I wrote my report in the dojo meeting room, I could still envision the Father’s theatrics upon hearing the fate of his church. Fredrei sank to his knees, with hot tears in his eyes as he pleaded, ‘Why is this happening?’ he cried to the heavens. ‘Have I not been a dutiful servant? Is this how you reward decades of loyalty and devotion?’

It was like he didn’t give a rat’s ass about his congregation.

It was almost as if he were part of the disappearances, but I didn’t feed into that theory. It was too damn scary. Local authorities were interviewing everyone that went there, anyway, so as far as I was concerned, that money-hungry jackass wasn’t my problem.

“Long day?” Hayashi said as I exited the meeting room. He stood along the doorway, eyeing me like I was hiding something.

“It was. Can’t believe it’s still Monday. Normally, they aren’t so action-packed.”

“Get used to it.” He looked down at the manila folder. “Is that your final report?”

“Yeah, here.”

I gave it to him and he began skimming over it. “I thought maybe you might have left something in our debrief.”

“I never do.”

“Perhaps a fine detail worth considering?”

“Like what?” I said, playing clueless.

Hayashi closed the folder and stared at me, his expression unreadable. “I know you’re holding something back. You’ve been acting strange ever since you came back from the cathedral.”

I hesitated. Hayashi was my mentor, and he was also deeply loyal to the Corp. I looked up to him. Whereas Naomi was my ally, and my crush! How could I betray either one of them?

“Ugh, just a bit rattled, honestly,” I said as I scratched the back of my head. “First the murder in school and now this? It’s a lot to take in.”

“That’s nothing. There will be situations far more severe.”

“Well, shoot, then this is a good time to start toughening up, huh?”

He raised an eyebrow at me and then squinted. “Have your ears always been so red?”

I dipped. “Haha, gotta go! It was a long day, and I can’t wait to catch some z’s. Night, sensei!”