Chương 100: So Close And Yet So Far

June sat on a nearby fallen tree and looked at his trembling hands covered in stringy pulp and mixed blood. The aftermath of the fight was taking its toll on his body. Despite his power and trained technique, he lacked experience; he only made it this far with innate talent and guidance from far more talented people.

'Why am I trembling still? It's dead… I-I crushed its heart.' The trembling in his body was unease, but he couldn't figure out why. The creature was dead; he saw it lying still in front of him.

'Eren himself and several members of his unit confirmed the IMP's death.'

'So why was the trembling continuing?'

'Do I not want to accept the possibility of Leonard's death?'

'Maybe it was the aftermath of engaging in violence?'

'Is it exertion? Did I overuse Will?'

'I did carelessly use spirit magic at the end, but I can feel the effects of that clearly…. It's different.' June deeply inhaled, smelling the emotions of those nearby him. Discomfort, fear, triumph, anger… hunger… Strong hunger…' June slowly stood up and forced his fingertips into his hand to stop the trembling.

He walked over to the dead creature, shoving people in his path out of the way, and held the pressure of the fingertips biting into his hand, drawing blood right above the angular holes where its nose should have been. His uncharacteristic behaviour had the entire unit's attention on him; some of them paled at understanding the connotations of his behaviour. June inhaled deeply once again, and after a moment, the sound of his teeth grinding escaped his presence.

"Shit… It's not dead.' He looked down at the unmoving cadaver and listened closely for breath, but no sound was evident.

'It's playing possum… did it heal its destroyed heart immediately?' June's face paled.

"What if… the scent wasn't coming from the cadaver?" The creature reminded June of a popular cryptid called the Wendigo, and from the several versions of the story he heard, one stuck with him in particular, specifically the one about evil spirits that possess people and turn them into Wendigo. June turned around and looked at a member of the cohort who had kept their distance from the others shortly after arriving.

He knew the guy as a chatterbox and simply assumed his silence was from fear or some misplaced form of awe, but oddly enough, to June, this unit member's eyes had stayed affixed on the IMP's corpse despite his odd behaviour; in fact, his eyes hadn't looked at anything else or blinked since. He wiped his bloodied eyes with a thumb and prayed to any god that he hadn't been replaced, but still, without hesitation, June formed his revenant into a blade and severed a chunk of flesh from the wendigo.

The unit's members looked at June with confusion as he approached the lone member with a slab of meat in hand. The unit member, on the other hand, had switched their gaze to the meat in the approaching Dreamer's hand. Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work! June stopped a short distance from the weirdly acting man and tossed the meat at his feet, and similar to the Wendigo, June had noticed that his eyes had gone a milky white.

The man's mouth slowly dropped agape with drool leaking out at the scent of meat. He dropped to his knees and began to ravenously devour the chunk of flesh. June let out a dejected sigh and placed a finger on his brow.

"Leave the area…. He's been possessed by the IMP…. I-I need to kill whatever this is before it becomes that…" He pointed at the large Wendigo corpse. Some unit members paled; others began leaving immediately, with the exception of a few who had to be dragged back to the caravan. June looked at the man, single-mindedly consumed the chunk of once-human flesh, and placed a gentle hand on the back of his neck before imbuing will and crushing his nape.

June lifted the corpse that was once his faction mate over his shoulder, but to his disappointment and hope, it turned into beautiful blue mist and disappeared into the wind. He focused his eyes once again, pushing through the pain and obscuring blood, and saw nothing. The uneasiness didn't stop. June spent the next several hours thoroughly checking the area before dragging the Wendigo's corpse back to the caravan in the unit members' stead. He couldn't find any trace of the spirit.

Lilia had spent the last several hours tidying up her room. Normally, the organizers would send someone down to tidy a royal's room while they were out and fraternizing, but Lilia didn't leave often and refused to let anyone else into her room. She wasn't exactly a messy person, but the way she had her quarters would be considered a mix of organized mess.

Books were neatly stacked on the ground beside June's pod instead of their original locations in the spatial closet, and a thin layer of dust had accumulated in most corners of the room. As ironic as it was, a flesh-shaper who would normally be safe against most poisons would still have allergic reactions, and June had lost a genetic lottery when it came to allergic reactions; he didn't need an EpiPen or first aid, but just being in the presence of dust, mould, or pollen was enough for him to fall ill.

Alternatively, she had the choice to transport June to another room for the finale; her family invited her to watch the final day of the games together, but she denied their invite since she would either have to part ways with June or bring his pod to a shared theatre reserved for her family, which was not something she was particularly keen on doing; separating meant he would most likely wake up alone, and bringing him with her to her family meant she couldn't keep him to herself.

Lilia painstakingly dusted every corner until it shone, reordered every book on the spatial closet's bookshelves, and made the bed that she refused to sleep on during the games. She did a few stretches; her body was one of Dreamers, so it rejuvenated itself quickly, but for the last 12 days, she had slept on the floors next to June's pod instead of on the lonely, yet large and overly comfortable, bed. She readied herself to latch onto June the moment he awoke and hold onto him like a determined parasite.

Mortimer woke up from a short nap. He enjoyed his old-man naps and had unknowingly fallen into one once he got comfortable. His duties today were very lax; he had subordinates to handle most duties, after all. The purple vial had been wrapped up in an ornate box and tossed into a laminated gift bag sourced from the mundane realm, as laminated gift bags produced in Lengue were either too overpriced or overly flashy for their contents.

Mortimer stood up from his bed and walked into his significantly smaller, but large spatial, closet.

His room was nowhere near as large and overly catered to as the rooms of royalty, but it went beyond modest in terms of features; each family only brought a few of their own servants to Lengue, and so even if these servants were low-born, their quarters would be fitted to be just shy and noticeably smaller than the ones of the royals' quarters; even if they were noticeably smaller, their quarters came with personal kitchens, cold storage, and plenty of other things.

Unlike the significantly larger and posh royal rooms, the servants' quarters had everything required to live a life and were even big enough to raise a family in, despite being temporary rooms. Mortimer walked out in a fine silver ducktail coat that complemented his pruned silvery-grey hair well. He grabbed a small rectangular-shaped device with a silver outline highlighting the blue screen hovering in the middle and placed it within his coat's pocket.

It was similar to a phone from the mundane world but had half the functions, as it was designed purely to watch the games from anywhere. The translucent blue screen would turn opaque when being viewed, so users didn't constantly see their fingers hovering behind the screen, and it was quite resilient and fairly cheap to repair. Mortimer opened the large doors of his room and exited. Gushing over the interesting technologies of Lengue wasn't particularly his forte, but he couldn't help but feel a little curious.

'Should I ask the king later?' For now, Mortimer had a few more tasks to complete for the day before joining the family on their invitation to watch the game's finale together. But first, he had to deliver the peace offering to Lilia.