Jake's Story, ch 16

This chapter is 3-4 times longer than most other chapters in this book so far.  You'll understand why when you read it.

I'm going to finish up another Delvers LLC chapter and maybe an Engineering Ludus chapter before returning to Jake's Story.  This is only one chapter but it was a lot of work.  It's pretty dense in a way that I would not have been able to manage a few years ago.

Enjoy!

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Jake tried to look at the bright side while hiding in a big culvert under a road, waiting for night to fall.  The first positive thing was that he could get to macon a few hours after the sun went down, most likely.  The second was that now he finally had some time to look at the Dark Wanderer’s Trinity skill scroll in his storage ring.  Lastly, now that he was a more powerful monster, he was confident that he would be able to cultivate using the Four Winds of Heaven Spirit Purification technique.

Of course, there were a few problems to think about before looking at the skill scroll.  Jake frowned.  The first was how he was able to still cultivate to begin with.  He’d only realized within the last hour that what he’d been doing shouldn’t have worked, at least not well.  Cycling energy was still a form of cultivation, after all--just a really inefficient one.  The practitioner drew natural energy into their body and purified it or transformed it while building their own meridians, body, or energy conduits.  At least that was the theory and how it normally worked.

Even though the Winds of Heaven Purification was primarily designed to improve his body with the energy he already had, the process should still be absorbing bits of ambient energy.

And all of this should be impossible for Jake now.  As a monster, he could likely only truly cultivate in a hellish world like he’d survived in before he’d died.  He couldn’t sense any useable energy outside his body now, nothing like when he’d been alive.

The only theory he had was that his body actually retained energy in unused form, maybe it leaked out when he used monster cores.  That felt like it might be right.  It also stood to reason that as he improved his ability to absorb energy from monster cores, it would improve the efficiency as well, not produce waste.  But then how could he practice Four Winds of Heaven Purification?

Another theory was that he actually produced his own energy now.  There was some evidence of this in how monsters could drop cores.

The answer might actually be solved by his other problem.  He’d used a lot of energy traveling so far already.  High level cultivators didn’t need food, at least this was something he understood to be true, but Jake was still only in the equivalent of the Body Refinement phase.

He needed to eat.  The hunger wasn’t coming from his stomach, though--or at least not only his stomach.  He also had a feeling that depending on what he ate, he might be able to acquire spiritual energy in addition to mundane.

There was no way to test his theories now, but he planned to eat something once night fell.  Then he’d know or sure.

Jake began cycling, practicing the Four Winds Heaven Purification technique.  It wasn’t difficult to do at all anymore.  What used to be so agonizing he could only tolerate a few seconds was almost like absently humming now.  Jake removed the Dark Wanderer’s Trinity scroll from his ring and studied it.  His eyes wouldn’t have had a problem seeing it in the dark anymore.  His night vision wasn’t necessary, though.  The writing glowed with spiritual essence.

Weird, he thought.  The writing wasn’t in English, but he had no problem reading it.  This was a mystery until he remembered he was still a cultivator or sorts now.  Anyone who had stepped into the realm of cultivation would probably be able to read this scroll.

There were three techniques explained in the scroll, with three levels of mastery.  The first was the Demonic Contradiction Wave.  Jake was surprised that he could understand the concept behind the technique so easily.  It seemed like at its core, it was a ranged attack that worked by layering two opposed powers over each other in an overlapping cross shape, so when it struck a target, the two energies would crash into each other, creating a violent reaction.

For an orthodox cultivator, this technique might be difficult, but for Jake it would be easy.  Not only did he understand the fine points of how to create an attack like this, his own energy was basically poison, at least relative to the earth’s natural energy.  Jake couldn’t cultivate natural energy anymore but he knew it was there around him, and it wouldn’t be too hard to isolate and use some of it...just awkward.  It would take practice.

Jake experimentally tried forging some of the natural energy around him and grimaced.  It felt like trying to eat with a mouth numbed at the dentist, or trying to do detailed work with a hand that had fallen asleep.

Practice could wait.  He didn’t want to blow himself up while stuffed into a little corrugated steel pipe, so Jake looked at the next skill on the scroll.

Mercurial Lunar Dao Polishing, hmm, he thought.  This one took longer to figure out, and the strange name didn’t really offer much of a  clue.

Jake actually settled down to meditate more deeply, even closing his eyes while he thought about what he’d seen from the scroll.  He had never learned from a scroll before.  Luckily, during one of his old master’s many rants about how backwards and weak the earth was, he’d mentioned the lack of any technique scrolls.  That rant had gone on so long, the old man had actually even explained how to use them.

With the clarity of hindsight, Jake was very grateful he’d paid attention to his old teacher... even during the rants, up to and including insulting Jake’s entire world.

Enlightenment came when Jake remembered his time in the hell dimension and how he’d used demonic energy, keeping himself alive with it.  He hadn’t been an ideal conduit of that type of energy, and it had taken a lot of patience, practice, and desperation to process it, to keep it from escaping.

Jake opened his eyes and slowly nodded.  The Mercurial Lunar Dao Polishing was a way to bring something out of any object, the essence.  In fact, maybe it would even work on himself if he deepened his understanding of the technique.  Maybe he could test this technique in his little hidey hole.

He drew a butter knife from his ring storage and concentrated, focusing his energies in a way that the scroll had taught him.  When the knife began to glow a pale blue, Jake knew he’d succeeded.  Now the butter knife was much, much stronger than it had been before.  Jake had focused on the concept of durability, brought it to the forefront, and given it more...power.  The technique hadn’t drained him much but he’d also intentionally put minimal power into it.

Interesting, he thought.  There were several applications of Dao Polishing that he could think of off the top of his head.  But he would definitely need to practice it later.

The last technique on the skill scroll was incredibly complex.  Jake studied it, trying to make heads or tails of it.  He was able to figure out the name, Nine Points Celestial Destruction Path, but not much else. Strangely, he was able to actually memorize the entire thing, but if he thought about it much, all the information scattered in his mind.

Jake idly tapped one of his claws on the metal of his pipe shelter and thought about the problem.  He went over the entire scroll again, memorizing it, burning it into his mind the way his master had described, and blinked as it began to glow.  Then it burned with green fire.  It didn’t produce any heat as the eldritch flames ate the entire thing until the last of the ashes fell to the bottom of the culvert.

A single use scroll?  Jake shook his head.  Not for the first time, he was reminded that while he’d studied cultivation in his past life, he’d never actually been a real cultivator.  If he’d come from a world where there were massive cultivation sects and ancient martial academies, maybe what had just happened would not have surprised him.

Luckily, the entire scroll was definitely implanted in his memory now, basically a part of him.  Jake cycled his chi and mulled over the portions of the scroll frozen in his mind until he got a new idea.  Maybe he could view the last part through what he’d been able to understand of the first and second techniques. This gave him his answer.

I need to be stronger, and I need to master at least the first two stages of the first two techniques first.  It was like a revelation, and rang completely true through Jake’s meridians.  What a mysterious scroll.  Even if he hadn’t received the scroll the way he had, Jake would have figured out that it was special, at least he believed so.

It would take a long time to understand the Nine Points Celestial Destruction Path, but at least he knew it was possible now.

Jake didn’t really need to sleep as a ghoul, at least not the same way as he had as a human, although he was able to go dormant after a fashion.  Being dormant felt a lot like meditation, and Jake spent his time pondering the Demonic Contradiction Wave.  Before twilight came, he’d actually achieved a number of insights, like imagining different energies that he could wrap up in chi before projecting outwards like an attack.

The entire time he was in the culvert he kept a small part of his awareness monitoring the outside world.  Over the course of the day, a few vehicles had rumbled by, and he’d heard violence somewhere.  Before night fell, there hadn’t been any noise at all, though.

Good, thought Jake.  He roused himself from his trance-like state and smiled.  Back when he’d been an adventurer, it’d been second nature to torch the inside of any culverts or small tunnels his team had come across.  He was glad that people were still in the process of adapting to the new post-Purple Rain world.  The instructions he’d put on the internet had included tips on checking hiding places for monsters, though.  He wouldn’t be safe in culverts forever.

When Jake left the safety of his little hidey hole, he felt great.  The sensation of being reborn returned, and he marveled at his new body.  When he’d transformed, the way impurities and toxins had built him up, made him stronger...he’d never heard of anything like it before.

Jake ducked into the trees as a military-looking procession of jeeps passed by on the nearby road and watched them go with glowing blue eyes.  He frowned, thinking about what a liability it was that his eyes were so visible, and just like that, the faint blue light in front of his face winked out.  Well, that’s convenient, he thought.

Then Jake turned towards Macon, loping at an easy pace, darting in and out of the trees. At one point he verified that he was still going the right direction using signs, and felt a strange feeling when he realized that he actually recognized the road now.  He could find his way around now from memory.

Finally.  

Night had truly fallen and Jake felt much more comfortable, like an instinct.  He wanted to run directly to Macon, but he hadn’t forgotten that he needed to find some food.  After only traveling for about another twenty minutes, his supernaturally excellent hearing picked up screaming in the distance.  He grinned sardonically.  If someone was looking for violence, they wouldn’t need to search far after Purple Rain.  The new world could be a really shitty place.

Jake turned off the highway he’d been following, moving directly through the trees toward the sounds of distress.  He wasn’t sure what he’d find, but for the first time since he’d come back to the past, he truly felt ready for anything.

***

The commotion was at a nearby house, a two story with a metal roof.  A paved road meandered through the trees, but the house’s driveway was red, sandy Georgia dirt.  Jake immediately noticed a number of vehicles in the front yard.  He heard another scream

A ghoul ran around a corner, and another charged out of the forest.  Gun shots sounded from the other side of the house before a man appeared in the second story window to take aim at a ghoul that Jake could see.  The man took another shot before throwing a torch out the window.  That was when Jake remembered that it wasn’t normal to see better at night than he used to in the daytime.

A number of impromptu torches looked like they had been thrown around the surrounding yard.  As a ghoul ran through a little puddle of light, one of the defenders in the house launched a magical fireball that caught the creature in the back.   It screamed and ran off into the night.  Jake gave it even odds whether it'd be back or not. Ghouls had a regeneration ability as long as they could feed so it might be able to.

You had to kill a ghoul in one shot, or at least before they could escape.  Unlike zombies they could feel pain and had survival instincts.  Of course, if enough blood had been spilled they could frenzy, like sharks, but it didn't seem like that was the case here. Yet.

A new fireball of a slightly different color flew out of another window, missing a ghoul.  Jake tried to lift eyebrows that he didn’t have anymore.  It still hadn’t been too long since Purple Rain.  How was there already a group of adventurers throwing magic around?  A mage here and there wouldn’t be uncommon by this point, but at least two in one building, and both using attack magic?

Whoever was screaming in the house hadn’t stopped.  Jake crept closer and hid behind a truck before scooting underneath it.  He assumed that this way, none of the other ghouls running around would come close enough to sense his soul and go ape-shit.  Hopefully.

Now that he was closer to the house, he could more easily see what was going on and even hear voices.  Jake focused his hearing, which was easy to do using his natural abilities.  Circulating his chi and delivering energy to his eardrums made his hearing even more acute.  Now he could hear voices from the inside of the house as if he were standing right next to them.

“Shut that bitch up!” snarled a voice.  “I can’t hear these fucking things over her wailing!”

“You gagged the other one.  Why don’t you gag her?” asked a second voice.

“You know why,” said a third voice with a dark chuckle.  “Paul fucked it up and the bitch died.  Now he’s afraid of killing this one too.  If we’re gonna keep her alive, maybe we shouldn’t stuff her mouth too full of socks like we did to her mom, eh?”

“Wait, the mom’s dead?” asked the second voice.

“Yeah,” said the third.  “Too bad.  I know you thought she had a great rack.  If you think it’s a waste, I definitely agree.  Holing up here wasn’t a bad idea, and the added entertainment would have been nice.  I guess Paul doesn’t understand that women need to breathe.”

“Shut the fuck up!” snarled the first voice, presumably Paul.  “Maybe you should spend more time shooting the fucking monsters outside instead of running your mouth, Al.”

“I just lit one up a few seconds ago,” complained the third voice.

“Yeah, nice shot, Al,” said the second voice.  “Glad at least one of us can hit anything with magic.  Saves bullets.  Now that we’re shooting we’re also making enough noise to raise the dead.”

The third voice muttered, “Maybe literally.  Haven’t seen zombies for a while.  Can’t believe I actually like them the best now.  Slow and stupid.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t be saving bullets right now, Tom,” said Paul, voice tight.  “Those fucking things are all over the place outside.  If enough of them push against the barrier on the first floor, they might be able to get in.  Since you can’t hit the broadside of a fucking barn with magic, maybe you should switch to your rifle, eh?”

“No, it’ll be fine,” said  Tom, the second voice.  A bit of heat crept into his voice.  “Look Paul, I’m getting pretty fed up with your fuckin’ attitude.  I don’t know how much of this ‘tude is you or the pipe, but you need to chill the fuck out.  You shouldn’t have been using before nightfall anyway.  And the only reason this plan is even gonna work is because I put up the barrier downstairs, right?  Everyone else in the world is out there being monster food, and we were gonna be sitting pretty in these rich asshole’s house.  We have food, weapons, and we even had some girls to play with.  And now, like usual, you’re bitching.  Is anything ever good enough, Paul?”

“In case you hadn’t noticed, there are monsters running around outside like rats,” snarled Paul.  “And yeah, you set up that barrier, but these fucking things were probably attracted to all the blood downstairs.

“Whatever.  Bodies are heavy,” said Tom.  “Putting them outside would have just made it more likely that monsters would show up.  Besides, we can just wait until morning and get rid of the bodies then.  Until then we just have to last the night, and these fucking things can’t climb up the house. The barrier goes past the walls.  This is just target practice right now.”

“Have you see how far these fucking things can jump?” asked Paul.

“Yes,” answered Tom, drawing the word out.  “But we chose this place because there aren’t any trees close enough to be a threat, we pushed the trucks away that weren’t ours, and parked ours far away too.  Fuckers can’t jump up.  You know this.  These things are just ghouls, right?  That’s what all the info about the monsters said.  It’s not like they can fly.  We’re fine.”

“Yeah, that’s true.  If not for all that shit from Lord Grim or whatever, I wouldn’t have magic right now,” chuckled Al.  “Since he was right about magic and everything else, he was probably right about the ghouls.”

Jake’s heart sank.  In an instant, he processed all the implications from what he’d just heard.  He’d thought he was saving people before, that by posting his advice online right after Purple Rain, he’d be helping people.  But he’d never considered that he’d be effectively arming scum like this.  It’d been so long since most murderous assholes had been killed off or laid low in his first life, their existence just hadn’t been forefront in his mind.

He felt a massive wave of guilt.  It was very possible he’d switched the greatest threat to normal people from being monsters to other people.  He couldn’t believe his oversight, not least of which because what had happened to his family hadn’t been done by monsters, at least not the inhuman kind.

Jake watched as one of the ghouls tried to climb up the house, claws extended for the edge of the roof.  The creature was blown back in a shower of sparks and it hissed at the building.  Around that same time, Jake smelled what had attracted the ghouls--an odor of blood and death from inside the building.

Paul cursed.  “One just tried to get on the roof!  Your side, Al.”

“On it.”  Jake spotted a seedy-looking man appear in the window above and launch a fireball at the frustrated ghoul.  He missed, but the monster hightailed it for the relative safety of the tree line at the edge of the property.

Meanwhile, the screaming hadn’t really stopped from inside.  Paul snarled, “That fucking bitch is attracting them!  Fine, I’ll do it myself.”

There was stomping in the house, and Al muttered, “That guy’s a real asshole.”  After a brief pause he said, “You think I should go instead?”

“You didn’t want to do it before.  What, have you suddenly grown a conscience?”  Tom’s voice sounded tired, with an edge of something dark.  “You didn’t have a problem a few hours ago when we killed her dad and her brother.  Paul’s a shitstain but he has a point.  The barrier seems to work but I can’t even hear myself think, and there are plenty more girls out there.  This one isn’t special.”  He hollered, “Hey Paul, just knock her out, alright?”

“That’s what I’m gonna do!” shouted Paul from the lower level.  Then there was a dull thud and the screaming stopped.

“Stupid little whiner,” muttered Paul. Jake could hear him clearly.   “Look what you made me do.  Fuck.”  The man’s footsteps moved back up the stairs.

Jake’s eyes narrowed.  The fact scum like this had used the information he’s shared with the world...offended him.  Something like rage, but cold as ice grew in his stomach.  Thoughts of rushing the house grew.  His arms quivered.  Wait, there’s a barrier, he thought.  He dimly realized that the smell of blood was making it hard to think.  He cycled his energy, clearing his head.

The rage began to fade, but resolution replaced it.

He was going to kill these guys, that was for sure now.  But if he brainlessly attacked and bounced off the barriers like the common ghouls, he might get hit by a fireball.  His phasing ability might work, but he wasn’t sure if it would bypass the protection.

If he was right about how the barrier had been formed, the raiders had used a fetish and magical circle inside the house. This would produce a powerful, if short-lived magical energy field.  Such a thing could only be constructed from a solid threshold, and only if someone who lived there, an owner of the home’s threshold, was there for its construction.

Jake had included instructions on how to construct magic protection to help people survive.  His logic had been that people could get a barrier ready to go, and spring it if it was an emergency.  A family living in a home would be able to reestablish their threshold every day.  Of course, that wouldn’t be enough to keep ghouls out indefinitely, they could come through the roof if they were able to get on top of it.

But it sounded like these assholes had been going house to house, helping themselves to whatever they wanted, and setting up a barrier at night before moving on.

Even if a family set up a barrier to protect themselves, guys like this could still prey on their fellow man.  A magic barrier wouldn’t stop a bullet, for instance.  In fact, in Jake’s first life, smarter monsters had eventually figured out they could throw weapons or even burn out families that were only protected by simple, ritual magic.

Part of Jake’s new body kept trying to distract him with the scent of blood and dead meat from inside the house, but he ignored it.  Instead, he crept around the outside of the building, examining his target from several angles.

He snuck toward one of the other vehicles in the driveway and caught sight of a common ghoul crouched down behind a wheel, peeking out from behind the truck to watch the house.

Jake took  out a saber from his ring’s storage.  His lips didn’t really work right for it, but he scrunched up his face in thought.  Although a fine sword, his weapon was an antique.  It was still in good shape.  If Jake were an officer in the early 1900’s, this sword still would have been great.  It might not fare so well being used against monsters, though.  Jake remembered the modern saber he had in his storage, but decided to try something out instead.

He’d used Mercurial Lunar Dao Polishing on a butter knife before, but what about this sword?  After a quick circulation of his chi, Jake infused the sword with vital energies, making it supernaturally tough.

The creature didn’t sense anything amiss until Jake was already mid-swing.  With only a faint shimmer through the darkness, the blow was quick, clean, and more humane than the ghoul probably deserved.  Jake immediately dropped the Mercurial Lunar Dao Polishing from the blade.  Even a faint glow might give his position away.

Jake was about to turn back and study the house himself when he felt his hunger intensify.  The ghoul’s body was looking...delicious,  but not in a way that Jake was used to.  He didn’t want to eat the thing, not exactly.  Instead he moved towards it in a half-trance.

Letting instinct guide him, he held out a hand.  The smoke-like substance that always rose from his body moved forward to the monster’s corpe and drew back, pulling something with it, another shade made of smoke, its darkness a different shade.  It seemed to struggle.  Jake could sense energy coming from the cloud.  When the strange, floating mass got close enough, his body suddenly sucked it in through his mouth and his forehead.  Jake felt a really strange sensation of power hitting his dantian at the same time as his stomach felt like he’d eaten a meal.

What the hell? He thought.  Jake quickly crouched down as close to the truck as he could get in case his little experiment had made a light show.  Then he examined how he felt.  Whatever he’d just done wouldn’t be a substitute for finding monster cores, but it had felt similar.  He got the feeling that he could still eat conventionally.  He wasn’t hungry anymore, though.

Weird.

Jake didn’t have a lot of time to think about this new development.  A nearby ghoul in the forest was staring at him and he got the impression that it was curious.  Even if Jake felt like another monster to them, what he’d just done had definitely not been normal ghoul stuff.

The thugs in the house were still stomping around, taking potshots at the monsters outside.  Jake felt like he should still be enraged and wondered why he wasn’t feeling that way.  He was still definitely going to kill them, but the flash of passionate anger he’d experienced before was just an ember now.   Deep down he knew he was just probably irreversibly damaged from two completely fucked up lifetimes.  But whether he killed these assholes calmly or through righteous vengeance, dead would be dead.

“Thinking about shit like that is just more evidence that you’re messed up now, Jake,” he tried to say.  His hisses carried through the night.

“What was that!”  One of the assholes upstairs went to a nearby window, and Jake stayed very, very still until the man passed.  Jake thought it’d been Al.  The guy had been lanky with face tattoos.

The moment the coast was clear, Jake moved toward the house, keeping as quiet as possible and moving slowly, smoothly.  He glanced back to make sure none of the other ghouls were angling towards him to check him out.  The coast was still clear.  Jake felt some of his sharp teeth with his pointed tongue.

Maybe he wouldn’t have to get too close to the house  to test his power.  The barrier itself was made of magic and was designed to stop monsters, but would also stop most weaker magical attacks.  Attacks with enough juice might get through.  Barriers could differ, though.  The really powerful ones could even stop mundane attacks, just like the protection of high ranking monsters.

But this barrier was basic.  It was still enough to repel monsters, though.  If Jake tried to flash step into it, the effect on his body could be bad, like hitting concrete.  But his natural ability was to become completely incorporeal…

Actually, how could he test it?  It wasn’t like there was a way to project energy through the barrier…

A man moved upstairs and Jake froze again.  The three in the house were bickering again, and a fireball shot out from the other side of the house before the crack of a firearm split the night again.  There was a whoop after that as a monster fell, head pulped.  Another torch flew down from the second floor.

Most of the common ghouls were keeping their distance now.

Then Jake got a great idea.  He crept as close to the barrier as he could and held out a hand, waiting for the shadowy substance that flowed from his body to move forward.  If he was right, the “shadow” effect over his body wasn’t physical at all.  He was about to find out.

He grinned without humor as he saw the smoke from his arm move all the way to the wall, completely unimpeded.  Jake had his answer.  And just like that, he triggered his phase ability.  This wasn’t the first time he’d tried using his power--he’d tested it out a few times since he’d become a shadow ghoul.  When the entire world changed to black and white, he wasn’t surprised.

Jake simply walked a few steps forward until he was inside the house.  When the ability wore off, he was past the barrier and inside the invaded home.

The first thing Jake did was creep forward silently to check the bottom floor.  When he’d become a ghoul, his growth had split his shoes open, and his new, clawed feet made it much easier to be stealthy.

Two bodies in the middle of the family room floor made Jake shake his head.  This family had never had a chance.  The father had been covering his son with his body.  They’d both been wearing sweats, comfortable clothes.  Evidence of another fetish on the floor was evidence that they’d had their own barrier in place, or had it ready.  They might have even let the raiders into their home, trying to help their fellow man.

Some of the first flash of rage Jake had felt before began to return.  Monster or not, he was still human inside.  The fact he was upset again actually gave him some solace.

On a single candle on the first floor provided any light but Jake didn’t need it.  He could just follow his nose.  If he hadn’t just fed, or somehow satisfied himself with the ghoul he’d killed outside, he wasn’t sure he would have been able to resist at least a little nibble on these bodies.  They smelled delicious.  If he had to explain it, it was like smelling a delicious four course meal, or a bag full of fast food when he’d been human...but five times stronger.

Jake found the doomed family’s mother in a bathroom.  He turned away.  The daughter must be the person who’d been screaming before.  Jake found her in a pantry.  The crowbar that’d been used to silence her was on the flour outside the door.  The blow had split the girl’s head open.  She was still alive, barely, but not for much longer.

She made tiny, pitiful noises on the floor and Jake hoped she was completely unconscious.  There was no hope for her.  He knelt down next to her and sighed.  Then he put a hand on her forehead and tried to send a pulse of comforting energy through his palm.  Peace felt like a foreign concept to him at this point, but he tried his best.  He’d heard of healers doing things like this in the world of murim.  Whether he’d succeeded, he didn’t know, but this was all he could do for the girl.

He broke her neck before moving to the foot of the stairs.

More gunfire sounded from the second floor, and the men were arguing again.  Jake eyed the stairs and remembered the one man going up and down the house.  It’d been noisy.  Jake was fast, but he didn’t have a lot of experience fighting as a monster yet and wanted to play it smart.  Luckily, an opportunity presented itself a moment later as one of the raiders shot again.

Jake flash-stepped directly up the stairs, landing with only a tiny thump, which was covered by the concussion of the gun blast.  He quickly scanned the area.  The room he stood in was basically a landing area on top of the stairs, and a single hallway ran down the second floor of the house.  One of the raiders was standing in a doorway, looking down the hallway, facing away from Jake.

He pounced on one man and his hand briefly went around the man’s through before he drew his remaining pinky claw across his neck.  Jake slammed the man’s head into the ground hard enough to make the entire floor quake.

One of the remaining two men who was standing down the hallway, Jake thought it was Paul, began to turn with a gun in his hand.  He was way too slow.  Jake’s lunge carried him all the way to the dirty looking raider.  He used all of his supernatural strength to hit him with an open palm to the sternum.

Bones broke and the man practically rocketed away, bursting through a window to fall backwards into the night.  Snarls and hisses sounded from outside almost immediately.  If maybe-Paul wasn’t dead already, the ghouls out there would make sure he got taht way soon.

The last would-be professional raider came out of a room with a hand leveled.  Jake flash-stepped forward in a dive, like he’d learned to do to pass Gtata’s Challenges.  A fireball flashed over his head as he ducked into a roll, then collided with the man’s shins.  The attack hadn’t been very elegant, but it worked.

When the two of them went rolling onto the floor, Jake was on the filthy man in a flash.  Before he could form conscious thought, his teeth had already found the man’s neck and torn it out.

Jake spit the flesh out of his mouth and coughed.  Disgusting.  It was unfortunate to admit that this was not the weirdest thing that he had ever experienced.  Human blood covered the front of his chest.

The fireball had hit a wall behind him and set it on fire.  It was relatively small now but spreading fast.  If Jake had really wanted to, he might have figured out a way to put the fire out, but this location was a stop, not a destination.  He rifled through the pockets of the two corpses on the upper floor.  Both had cell phones.  Some backpacks in one of the rooms must have been their stuff.  They must have had power banks because the phones were working.  Whether they were actually connecting to anything was another question entirely.

Both phones were locked, but one of them had a face recognition key.  Jake had found this phone on the first corpse, and discovered the thin man really had been Al.  The corpse was heavy in a way only corpses were, but Jake managed easily with his enhanced strength.  After he propped very-dead-Al up against the wall.  Jake grabbed the dead man’s hair and held his face up.  Then he keyed the phone for face recognition.

The phone came unlocked.

Jake removed a stylus from his storage ring and sent a message to everyone on Al’s contact list:

This man Al is dead.  I killed him.

He was a murderer, a thief, and a rapist.

If you follow this path, if I find you, I will kill you too.

Any tools I have given you, I will know how to defeat.  Do not misuse my advice.  Tell everyone.

Be wary.  Help your fellow man.  Remember that monsters are the enemy.  If you become one, you will be dealt with.

-Heavenly Grim

The name “Heavenly Grim,” had just sort of happened.  He didn’t like the name “Old Grim,” and his teacher used to talk about the Heavens a lot, including Heavenly Tribulation.  This name sounded cooler to Jake and still had “Grim,” in it.

After a pause, Jake took a picture of the corpses, the burning house, and willed his eyes to start glowing blue again for a selfie.  He showed his teeth during the picture, and after that was done, felt a flash of grim amusement.  If text messages still worked, his selfie was going to get someone’s attention for sure.

He uploaded the message and pictures to a few social media sites that the man had been perma-logged into as well.  The internet was slow, but seemed to be working.  Whether it’d stay up for a few more minutes or a few more days was anyone’s guess.

Then Jake signed into his own accounts he’d made before and posted a few more places online.

The very last thing he did, saved for the end because he’d been dreading it, was to glance in the upper corner of the screen to note the date and time.  As soon as he saw it, he released a breath he hadn’t been holding.

In his first life, his family would not be murdered for two more days.  Then again, raider asshole humans had taken a long time to figure out magic before.   Jake stared at the burning wall aas he thought  Now that he thought about it, he could probably put the fire out whenever he wanted, but he would leave part of it.  This house should follow its family.  In fact, maybe he could help it along.

He cycled his energy and pulled some of the fire away from the wall, putting its essence into a tube of force crafted by his will.  Then he did the same with the oxygen around him.

Jake made an “X” in the air and pointed, launching his first Demonic Contradiction Wave at the window he’d kicked a man through a few minutes before.

With a roar and a flash, that portion of the wall disappeared.  The house bucked and Jake almost fell on his undead ass.  Wow, he thought.  He was going to need to practice a lot.  It was hard to form the attack in the first place right now, and he was going to need a lot of experience to get the mixtures of opposing elements right.

Part of Jake was desperately relieved that he was still going to be in time to save his family, but there was a growing disquiet growing in the back of his mind.  If a trio of violent fuckfaces like this were rampaging in the middle of nowhere, what were the cities like?  His mind kept returning to that question.

It was time to go.  Jake only paused to grab some fallen weapons and a handful of other things, threw them in his storage ring, and ran to the other side of the house.  He opened the window, made sure he didn’t see any ghouls that were too close, and jumped to the ground.

Then he took off running.  He’d already planned to get to Macon tonight, but a sense of urgency had gripped him.  Please be okay, please be okay, he thought to himself, a silent mantra.  Mom, Dad, Mandy...

Behind him, the sad, broken home began to burn in earnest.  It would be a funeral pyre for the unfortunate family that had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.