Andrew used up a lot of Magic Power to suppress the anxiousness inside him. Death wasn’t new to their group, but Dennis was loved by all of them. He was always able to put a smile on everyone's face and didn’t hold back when he thought that Andrew had made a bad decision.

Only now had Andrew noticed how much he had relied on his assistance.

So it was all the more shocking when he saw a bloodied Sarah come up the slope to the caves.

In one hand, she held an unfamiliar man. In the other, the mangled remains of a human. With Vanessa’s red hair visible from behind her back, this left only one conclusion.

The shock left Andrew breathless for a second, and he felt like his heart had fallen out of his chest. But in a timely manner, his skills suppressed the heavy feelings to a somewhat bearable degree.

Everyone who stayed back at the caves looked at Sarah without moving. The scene in front of them was just too shocking.

"What have you done to him?!" screamed a woman called Sofia from behind him.

The whole crowd became restless, and murmurs started to emerge. This wasn’t good. Andrew already wanted to interfere when Sarah spoke up.

"What I have done to him? Don’t you see what I am doing you stupid piece of shit? I have saved Vanessa, picked up the remains of Dennis, and let one of the perpetrators live to question him." With her bloodied face and a cracked horn, she looked pretty insane when she looked at the crowd with wide, open eyes. "You are welcome."

After these words, the murmurs died down, and some people even apologized in quiet voices. Sofia started sobbing and fell to her knees, her face clutched in her hands.

Andrew nodded to her friends, and they took her away from the scene.

Sarah came closer and threw the stranger unceremoniously to the side, where he lay motionless.

The mangled remains of Dennis, on the other hand, were let down cautiously. When she was done, she gently took Vanessa from her back and gave her unconscious body to her friends, who came rushing over.

Everyone already knew what to do. This wasn’t their first death since they arrived at the caves. But it was by far the most horrible one.

"Sarah," Andrew said, turning toward her. "Can you try to find out more about this guy?" he said, while looking at the motionless stranger with anger in his eyes.

"Sure. He might scream though. Anywhere it won’t disturb the others?" she asked him in a neutral voice. Andrew got the chills when he heard the insane woman talk about something like this so casually.

"There is a cave some distance away to our left. This distance will be enough. I will come later." Andrew instructed her and already wanted to leave when a stone-hard grip on his arm held him back.

"Don’t do the emotion thing to me anymore. Or I will rip you a new one." Sarah whispered in his ear before letting him go and dragging the stranger away.

Andrew broke out in a cold sweat. The people more or less knew what he was doing. But until now, nobody had complained about it because it was always helping them. He had never thought about a situation like this. Maybe he needed to be more careful.

With a heavy heart, Andrew turned around to see Dennis’ remains. Some of the people had already lifted him up and were only waiting for Andrew.

He nodded to them, and they started their silent march to their graveyard. It was a small clearing some distance away, where five mounds could already be seen.

Still completely silent, they started their arduous work of digging a hole big enough for Dennis.

It was extremely hard to dig into the hard ground with nothing but sharpened stones. But the pain helped Andrew forget who he had lost.

When the hole was big enough, they let down the remains and quickly closed the grave again. Nobody wanted to look at Dennis in this state any longer.

When they were finished, they all stood silently in front of the grave while tears fell down their dirty faces. They had cried so much already over their lost companions, but it didn't get any easier.

Andrew wanted to say something, but he had no idea what. He had a lump in his throat that made it impossible to say anything. He had lost his best friend. His reliable supporter. From the beginning, Dennis had been by his side. And now he was dead.

He started realizing what had happened only now. Dennis was no more. Murdered in cold blood by some strangers. And one of them was here.

Cold rage was bubbling up in his chest when Andrew turned around and ran towards the cave where Sarah would be.

He heard some shouting behind him, but he ignored it. He needed to do something. Anything, to somehow make the situation bearable. To avenge his friend.

Through a veil of tears, he nearly fell down a couple of times, but he somehow managed to get to the cave.

While coming closer to the cave, he overheard Sarah and the stranger talking.

"How about we make a deal, scum?"

A male voice laughed without joy and asked back, "What are you going to offer, bitch? Your body looks nice."

"My offer is this. You tell me everything."

"That’s not a deal!"

"Beating again, it is then."

"You lunatic!"

Right when the man started screaming in anger and pain, Andrew reached them and saw Sarah kicking into… places.

"What are you doing?" asked Andrew, a clear look of disgust on his face.

"What does it look like?" Sarah said with a raised eyebrow. "After what he did to Dennis and Vanessa, I thought I wouldn’t have to be gentle. And we have to know if there are more of these bastards."

Andrew had to remind himself that he had asked her to do this just some time before. But it was extremely hard to witness what it really meant.

"The problem is just that he has some kind of skill to numb his body or something similar. It doesn’t matter what I do; the bastard won’t tell me much." She said while lightly kicking the man on the ground.

"Hell no, I won't!" the man screamed with rage and a little hint of fear in his eyes. "I can withstand everything! And at some point, Kevin will find you. And he will kill you all!"

Sarah just looked at the man with an irritated face and kicked him again. "Do you think you can do something about his emotions?"

Andrew nodded and swallowed down the sick feeling. He braced himself to use his skills to damage someone for the first time.

Emotion overdrive: You are able to overdrive certain emotions in another being. This might permanently cripple their minds.>

Andrew stared at the message for a while and then immediately went into action. He didn’t want to chicken out at this point.

He grabbed the protesting man by the head and activated the skill.

The man immediately started laughing wildly and trembling throughout his body. His body was jerking up and down as if he had a seizure.

"What the hell are you doing? Are you seriously giving him a good time right now?" Sarah asked him in an unbelieving tone.

Andrew looked back for a moment to look her in the eyes with a steely gaze. "I have seen people live and smile with horrible emotions deep inside them." Andrew started explaining while draining his Magic Power to keep his skill activated. "But what really breaks people is if you take away from them what makes them happy."

Sarah nodded in approval and rubbed her chin. "I didn’t think you’d have it in you, Andrew. So evil." She said while looking him up and down.

"I am not evil." Andrew answered while turning back to the laughing man again. "I am necessary."

It didn’t take long anymore until Andrew’s Magic Power ran dry. He stopped before it emptied out completely and looked down at the stranger.

He was just lying there with empty eyes and an open mouth. Just breathing shallowly. "Are there more of you?" Andrew asked with an emotionless voice.

The man focused his empty eyes on him, and a small hint of hope could be seen in them. "If I tell you." He started speaking in a hoarse voice. "Will you give me this feeling again?"

Sarah whistled and patted Andrew's shoulder. It felt really disgusting to be complimented for something like this.

Andrew focused on the matter at hand again. "That depends on your answer." He told the stranger in a cold voice, taking a step back in demonstration.

This seemed to give the man his energy back.

"There are more." He said hastily, nearly biting his tongue in his eagerness to tell them what they wanted to know. "We have a campsite, about two days up the river. We were sent out to find more… women."

Andrew looked at the man in disgust, who had started to drool a little by now. "Please give me the feeling again!" he screamed in a hoarse voice.

"Details." Andrew just said and their interrogation began in earnest.

It appeared that there was another settlement close to them. It was led by a small faction of brutal men with an even more brutal leader called Kevin. They killed most of the other men and took the women hostage. And when they started to get bored of the women they already had, they started looking for new ones.

"That is so messed up." Sarah said while shaking her head. "And this Kevin guy. You say he is the strongest and your leader. How strong is he?"

"He can punch through a tree trunk like it is nothing." The apathetic man said.

"I can deal with that." Sarah said while scratching her chin in thought. "It doesn’t matter how strong someone is when I pump them full of poison."

She looked over to Andrew, who was silently contemplating what he just heard.

"So now what do we do with him?" she asked him.

Andrew looked away from the man and took a deep breath. "A quick death," he said, steeling his resolve.

"Better than he deserved, but I guess it’s your call." Answered Sarah, shot forward faster than the eye could see, and punched the neck of the shocked man.

With a sickening crunch, his neck was bent out of shape, and he fell to the ground lifelessly.

Andrew stood there, shocked to his bones. And then he had to throw up.

"So gross." He heard Sarah say from the side. Andrew snorted and looked up at her.

"You are stone cold." He told her with contempt in his voice.

"I am not." She retorted, just lifting her eyebrow. "I am necessary. Could you have given him a quick death?"

Andrew had nothing to say to that, so he just turned around to leave. He wanted to leave this cave as fast as possible.

Without saying anything else, Sarah followed him outside.