Hal POV

  “For a pastor, you aren’t too chatty, are you?” the quartermaster asked as they walked toward the edge of the camp. The runner was walking ahead, turning back every other second to urge them forward.

  The question itself sounded harmless, but something in the quartermaster’s tone set Hal on edge. It was not a curiosity. It was an appraisal.

  Hal turned toward the quartermaster and smiled, careful to keep it mild, hoping the gesture of submission would be enough to let him off the hook.

  After two mute bodies, he was ecstatic to gain one that could communicate with the natives. In his joy, he’d asked about his target, Siddharth Chandran, without having a cover story in place. That had been a mistake.

  The questions began almost immediately: Who was Siddharth? Why search for him? Caught without a cover, Hal panicked and lied: He’s my brother.

  He realized his error the moment the crowd went silent. Questions rose before he could reflect on his words. “A Christian and a Hindu? Brothers?” The skepticism turned into an uproar. Voices spiked into a roar of debate. A few natives jumped to his defense, their aggressive shouting matches creating a wall of static. Under the cover of the argument, Hal recalibrated. He dropped an additional explanation into the fray, a story that felt just familiar enough to stick.

  If word reached Siddharth that someone was searching for him, Hal wanted it framed the right way. Not as a threat. Not as a challenge. So he chose the closest bond two natives could share. He had no intention of a direct confrontation. His plan had always been betrayal or a sneak attack.

  He couldn't underestimate someone that forced High Command to slip three assassins into a closed dungeon. Bypassing Kalki’s restrictions demanded massive resources and perfect timing. Hal knew that once the dungeon was cleared and those barriers fell, High Command would dispatch someone stronger, perhaps even a legend, to finish the job.

  That meant his window was narrow.

  Since that first mistake, Hal had rationed every word, measuring each sentence before letting it leave his mouth. He could not afford further errors before switching to a new body. He realized that only a perfectly synchronized body would help create meaningful progress in his search.

  Hal glanced sideways at the quartermaster as they walked. The strongest native in the camp, old enough for gray streaks to show in his hair. A perfect balance of strength and experience.

  Both tasty and nutritious.

  Hal licked his lips. His mouth filled with saliva as his gaze lingered a fraction too long. It was too early to indulge in that kind of thinking.

  He needed a foolproof plan. Hal wouldn’t repeat his mistake. Pastor Justin was never meant to be consumed. His target was someone else.

  Hal was still wrestling with his first body’s clumsy limbs when Pastor Justin’s team of five found him in the dungeon. Among them was a runt with stunted growth—a figure Hal would only later realize was a child.

  Hal’s target was the Tier 1 warrior, the strongest of the three men. While the group slept, he slipped close and struck with surgical precision. One clean, fatal blow. Then he waited for the exact moment to consume the man and lock in perfect synchronization.

  The warrior’s muffled death rattle betrayed Hal, snapping the woman awake. He didn’t waste time—the natives were full of weak points, and caught off guard, they were simple to eliminate.

  The sound of the struggle still carried. It tore the others from their sleep, and then it was chaos. Hal welcomed the pain. He traded flesh wounds for lethal strikes. It didn’t matter. This body was destined for ash. Once he consumed the soul, his innate skill would mend his new form.

  The child escaped in the confusion. The pastor and the other man used everything they had to buy time, throwing themselves into the fight with the single goal of letting the child run. Even at the cost of their own lives.

  When the chaos settled, Hal had no choice but to consume Pastor Justin, as the others were already dead.

  Next time, he’d isolate his target. No interruptions. He had eight rumbles until the hunger struck again.

  They soon reached the edge of the camp, where rough fences were being built. Hal spotted the rude idiot from earlier standing farther back, behind the camp leader, who was speaking to a group of newcomers.

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  Their arrival didn’t go unnoticed. The women among the newcomers looked toward them. Her gaze met Hal’s for a moment before shifting away.

  Hal counted six newcomers. His attention paused at the man at the front. An orc? No, not large enough for one of those battle maniacs. A half-orc, most likely, given that species’ tendency to mate with anything that moved.

  Another man in a brown shirt handled the conversation with the camp leader. Two men stood farther back, gripping their spears tightly, their posture tense, as if bracing for a fight. There was also another diminutive native, similar to the one from Pastor Justin’s original team. The child who had escaped. This one stayed close to the woman, eyes darting around the camp.

  “…so we thought of circling the lake, looking for other settlements,” the man in the brown shirt finished his words before glancing toward Hal and the quartermaster.

  Their camp leader also turned toward them, beckoning them forward. “These guys are from a camp on the other side of the lake and want to rest here for a day.” His tone was light and neutral, revealing nothing about how he felt.

  The quartermaster kept his gaze fixed on the half-orc, one hand resting on the dagger at his waist.

  “That’s Tony.” A sudden cry silenced the camp leader; the child was already sprinting toward them.

  For a second, Hal thought his cover was blown. Maybe he could take the child hostage and escape.

  The natives prized their young. A foolish instinct. Without struggle, the strong cannot rise. The harsher the conditions, the stronger the evolution. No wonder they stagnated into inefficient waste factories.

  Hal’s hand clenched into a fist, poised to punch the child in the face.

  Then he froze.

  Something brushed against him. It reminded him of the caretakers back at the brood, of the pressure they used to discipline stupid abyssals. Aura. What struck him now was nowhere close to the power those instructors wielded, but the sensation was unmistakable.

  Not that Hal had ever needed to be disciplined because of stupidity. He knew of it only through group punishments.

  In his moment of surprise, Hal forgot about the child rushing toward him. His eyes swept across the newcomers instead, stopping on the half-orc. Understanding reflected in them. The half-orc was Tier 2, an Adept.

  Aura skills were rare rank at a minimum. The half-orc was the strongest native Hal had seen so far.

  Hal did the best thing he could. He met the half-orc’s eyes and offered a smile. A simple gesture of submission.

  The child reached him then, wrapping his arms around Hal in a crushing embrace, trying to hold him like a snake constricting its prey. “Pastor Justin, where’s my mom?” the child repeated in a low voice meant only for Hal, the words cycling again and again like a chant. Tears streamed down his face.

  “Is that your brother? Siddharth?” the camp leader asked. “You didn’t mention he was so young.”

  “No. This is someone from my parish.” Hal combed through Pastor Justin’s memories, searching for a connection between the boy and his parents.

  He withheld the details of the botched second consumption. Instead, he fed the camp a lie: a monster attacked in the night. He assumed the wild had already claimed the child.

  Apparently, the child had survived and returned to camp. And in doing so, had placed Hal’s cover at risk once again.

  Hal needed a new body. As if to agree, a deep rumble echoed from his soul. It was the Abyss’s cry of hunger—a call felt by all his kind, the internal clock that marked the passage of time.

  “You have a brother named Siddharth?” The man in the brown shirt sounded confused, even skeptical, as if trying to wrap his head around a tough concept. His expression reminded Hal of his less intelligent broodmates.

  Hal understood the confusion. It mirrored the quartermaster’s reaction when Hal had first mentioned his brother. Siddharth was a name tied to a different faith than Pastor Justin’s, and the inconsistency unsettled them.

  It still surprised Hal that the natives had gods at all. Yet they didn’t seem impressive. Even the weaker deities of Kaliga had harvested more souls than the so-called gods of Earth. The only act of note, according to Pastor Justin’s memories, was a massive flood from a long time ago.

  Divine matters were irrelevant to him. Hal cut off the wandering thought when he realized he had yet to answer the brown shirt, having lost himself in his own reflections.

  “They’re stepbrothers,” the camp leader said, in Hal’s place. “The pastor saw him inside the dungeon, but they got separated.”

  “What’s his full name?” The brown shirt stepped closer, his eyes settling on Hal.

  “Siddharth Chandran,” said Hal. He thought he had struck gold and found his target. But none of the surrounding natives reacted as if the name meant anything.

  The man in the brown shirt looked at the woman, who shook her head.

  “Sorry. We’re looking for a murderer named Siddharth.” He shifted his gaze between the camp leader, the quartermaster, and Hal. “Thought it might be the same guy.”

  “People started killing each other?” The quartermaster raised his voice in shock. “Why?”

  “You meet some truly sick people in our line of work.” The brown shirt met the camp leader’s gaze and nodded, as if acknowledging a shared understanding. “He also threatened to kill Aditi over there.” He gestured toward the woman in their group.

  The half-orc stepped forward, his attention fixed on Hal rather than the camp leader. “He left our camp after murdering my cousins. That’s another reason we traveled this way. To warn the surrounding camps that there’s a murderer on the loose.”

  The camp leader glanced at the child clinging to Hal, then at the quartermaster, and gave a small nod.

  “You must be exhausted. Let’s head to the campfire. We’d like to hear your story.” The quartermaster gestured for them to follow him into the camp.