"Ah, geez, I apologize for him, damn it all."
Darren's voice drifted back from ahead, laced with that fawning desperation to patch things up. As he walked, he kept looking back to bow and scrape at Cole. His steps were short and hurried—like a dog desperate to prove its usefulness.
Erika stared at his back.
Just moments ago, this guy was puking his guts out in a corner, smiling uglier than a crying man while being pinned by the throat. In the blink of an eye, he was trailing behind Cole, strutting with a "we're in this together" posture down this road leading to the "decent" district.
Human resilience is so fucking weird.
"Which one were you on the stage just now?" Cole asked. His tone was as casual as asking what was for dinner.
Darren's footsteps faltered. The pause was obvious; even Erika caught it.
"Don't bring it up, ah, damn it all." He waved it off and kept walking, his pace a little faster than before. Like he was trying to outrun something.
Erika watched him, and the masked figure on the stage flashed in his mind. The one waving its arms, screaming "Long live the Blood Palm!" The one who drove thousands in the crowd into an absolute frenzy.
That was him? The guy puking his guts out in the corner, smiling a hideous smile while being choked out—that was him?
____
Erika felt a wave of bewildered absurdity.
He followed them, a few paces behind. The two up ahead—a filthy white robe and a hunched back—were chatting and laughing. Cole would say something, and Darren would laugh, his shoulders shaking, as if none of the recent bloodshed had ever happened.
Staring at their backs, Erika felt nothing but a suffocating frustration.
What kind of bullshit vacation was this?
For the past few days, he had just been blindly following Cole around. From that broken-down warehouse to this alley, from that alley to this street. How many scenes had he witnessed? How many lunatics had he met? He almost got his face smashed in by flying teeth.
He hadn't even eaten a proper meal.
He touched his stomach. Empty. He hadn't eaten a thing since that "catch" the other day. That piece of skin with hair on it still left a phantom sensation in his throat, making him gag just thinking about it.
But the hunger right now was real.
He looked up at the early morning sky. Dawn was approaching. A hint of blue-gray light seeped from the east, tracing faint outlines around the towering buildings. The light was thin, cold, as if it had just been dragged out of an ice cellar.
The mornings in Darenz, much like its nights, made one's skin crawl.
The two ahead were still walking, still talking, still laughing. Erika followed behind, tightly gripping his empty right sleeve.
____
The sensation beneath Erika's boots shifted.
It was no longer that muck you could sink into at any moment, saturated with foul blood and excrement—the kind that let out a sickening squelch when stepped on, making the soles of your feet feel the soft, rotting things squirming underneath.
Now, it was a hard, level path of blue-gray flagstones.
Every stone was laid with seamless precision, the gaps filled with fine gravel. No weeds, no garbage, not even those sticky, unidentifiable stains. Boots stepping on it produced a crisp clack, clack sound, like walking in an entirely different world.
The streets here had clearly been washed down.
He could even smell the pungent, cheap scent of lye and rosin used to mask odors. The scent bored straight into his nasal cavity, somehow worse than the fecal stench of the slums. It wasn't stinky, but rather a scent desperately trying to "cover something up"—like slathering on cheap cosmetics that just made you want to stay away.
In the dim morning light, he could barely make out the sides of the street: Two or three-story brick-and-stone houses. Pointed roofs. Tightly shut, heavy wooden doors.
Every door was sealed tight, painted with dark lacquer that was still pristine—no peeling, no rot. The door knockers were brass, polished to a shine, reflecting a faint yellow gleam in the dawn light.
Occasionally, a second-story casement window would be cautiously pushed open a crack. The crack was narrow. Narrow enough to reveal only a single eye.
The sky brightened. That layer of blue-gray light in the east began to turn pale white, illuminating everything on the street more clearly.
The early-rising "decent" folks started appearing.
A man emerged from a door, wearing a clean linen shirt with a perfectly fastened collar, draped in a mostly wrinkle-free woolen robe. He carried a woven rattan basket, likely heading out to buy breakfast.
A woman stepped out from another door, her hair combed immaculately, the hem of her skirt brushing over the flagstones without picking up a speck of dust.
Another man. Another woman. More people.
And then— They noticed Erika's trio.
Three people in filthy, tattered robes. One tall, one short, one missing an arm. Walking straight from the direction of the stench-ridden slums. Reeking of the place. Boots stained with god-knows-what.
No one screamed.
No one demanded answers.
They simply—
Retreated swiftly and uniformly to both sides of the street.
Like they had rehearsed it countless times. Like some instinct carved into their bones. Like they had seen an infectious plague.
The men in their respectable robes tightly covered their mouths and noses with their sleeves. Their movements were so fast, so forceful, as if a second's delay would see them gassed to death. Their eyes peered over their cuffs, staring at these three intruders.
The women furrowed their brows in disgust. Some even turned their faces away, unwilling to look any longer. A few older women traced holy symbols over their chests, lips trembling, muttering unknown prayers.
There was no pity in their eyes. Only deep, undisguised revulsion and fear.
Not fear that you would hurt them. Fear that you would dirty them.
Dirty the fragile, easily shattered "order" they had fought so hard to maintain.
____
Erika stood there. He watched the people retreating to the sides, watched the hands covering mouths and noses, the fingers tracing symbols, the furrowed brows, the disgusted stares.
He suddenly thought back to the slums just moments ago. Those people screaming fanatically, kowtowing, yanking gold teeth from their own mouths to offer them up, tearing themselves apart for a phantom "Blood Palm."
Those people might have been lunatics. Might have been animals. Might have been damned, lowly wretches.
But what about these people right in front of him? Erika didn't know.
He only knew that from those disgusted stares, he wasn't seeing the arrogance of the "superior class," but something else. A fear identical to the lunatics behind him, just wearing a different mask.
It's just that the lunatics feared death, feared hunger, feared not surviving. These "decent folks" feared people like him. Feared contamination. Feared being dragged down. Feared becoming those lunatics.
Erika suddenly felt a slight urge to laugh. But he didn't.
He merely pulled his empty right sleeve tight and stood his ground, looking at the clean, disgusted "decent folks" retreating to the sides, waiting for Cole to say where to go next.
The morning light washed over him, turning his filthy white robe a dull gray.
Between him and this clean, orderly street lay something invisible, yet thicker than any wall.
He didn't belong here. None of the three of them belonged here.
They were just three masses that had crawled out of the muck, carrying the stench and the lingering warmth of madness.
The silent, almost tangible sense of repulsion around them tightened like a net.
Erika could feel that net. The "decent" folks retreating to the sides of the street, the hands covering mouths and noses, the fingers tracing holy symbols, the furrowed brows—they weren't separate actions; they were a single entity. Like countless invisible threads winding around from all directions, cutting into his skin, his bones, his very breath.
Erika could withstand this kind of stare.
Cole cared even less.
The filthy white robe walked ahead, its hem dragging across the pristine flagstones like a tail that couldn't care less what it sullied. He didn't even glance back at the retreating crowd, didn't slow his pace, made no wasted movements.
But Darren, it seemed, couldn't handle it.
Erika noticed. The same Darren who had just been laughing and chatting with Cole—his steps were slowing down. His already hunched back was now practically curled into a ball. His shoulders drawn in, his neck tucked down, looking as if he were trying to stuff himself into an invisible hole.
He was trembling all over.
Not from the cold. From fear. A terror far deeper than when Old Scar had him by the throat was utterly crushing him.
Erika stared at Darren's back, suddenly recalling the alleyway—how this man had managed to squeeze out a miserable smile, uglier than crying, while being choked. Back then, Erika thought Darren had reached his limit.
He hadn't.
The true limit was right here. On this clean, water-washed street inhabited by the respectable citizens.
____
Finally—
The endless rows of residences on either side vanished entirely. Another scene unfolded before them.
Compared to the living spaces of the "decent" folks behind them—this was sheer extravagance.
A sprawling estate. Manicured hedges. Paths paved with crushed white gravel. In the distance, white buildings with colonnades could be faintly seen, glowing softly in the morning light. These weren't the two- or three-story brick-and-stone houses they had just passed; these were true mansions—tall, vast, with large windows, terraces, and ornate trims Erika couldn't even name.
Even the scent of the air changed. Gone was the pungent stench of lye and rosin from the streets prior; it was replaced by something fainter, cleaner—like grass, like dew, like something he had only smelled a handful of times in his entire life.
"Where... where exactly are we going?"
Darren's voice trembled like a leaky bellows in the wind.
He stopped dead in his tracks. Rooted to the spot, he didn't dare take another step forward. Those eyes that had been fixated on Cole moments ago were now filled with thick, weeping despair and lost confusion.
"This... this really isn't a place for the likes of us..."
His voice dropped even lower, sounding like a beggar's plea.
"I'm begging you—" He reached a hand out toward Cole's back, then quickly retracted it. "If we go any further, we're going to lose our heads..."
Erika stood behind Darren, looking at the shivering, huddled figure, then at the filthy white robe still walking ahead.
Cole didn't stop.
He didn't even turn his head. He just kept walking, step by step, crunching over the white gravel path, heading straight toward those white, sunlit mansions.
Erika didn't know if he should follow.
He only knew that ever since that "Southern friend" shoved the metal scrap into his hand, since Cole mentioned a "vacation," since the crawling humanoids, the boiling cauldron, and that night of a thousand screaming zealots—he was already on this path.
Turn back?
Back to where?
The foul-smelling shantytown? That lavish, ruined manor housing the crawling freaks? Or that training camp that treated him like a maggot?
Erika pulled his empty right sleeve tight.
Keep moving. He stepped forward, walking right past Darren.