Lily and Alexia went ahead first. They decided to split up and investigate the scenes where the Spirit Beasts were rumored to have been sighted.
Kang, Michael, and I took on the task of questioning the people who had supposedly seen them or the families of those killed in the attacks.
We didn’t have much luck.
Most of the people who claimed to have seen or survived encounters with the Spirit Beasts were either drunk, high, or both when it happened.
And even those who weren’t had no real evidence to back up their claims.
Some were just straight-up lying.
In any case, none of them were credible enough to give us anything useful.
So we moved on to investigate the victims who had been killed in the Beast attacks. We tracked down their families one by one and started questioning them.
Again, we had little to no luck.
Most people refused to talk to us.
Some even started running the moment we began mentioning the attacks.
But we continued searching.
We found out one guy actually faked his own death in a supposed Spirit Beast attack and got his family to lie about it so he could avoid paying back some loan sharks.
After accidentally exposing his little stunt, the three of us moved on, but suffice it to say, we were having a hard time.
That was, until we stumbled upon a rural settlement a few kilometers outside the main residential area, right near the outskirts.
It was a village. Sort of.
The problem was, it was barricaded behind high walls made of tin sheets and topped with spiked wires.
And sitting at the entrance was a man, probably in his late fifties, with a rugged, weathered look.
There was something about him that simply radiated danger, even though I was sure he wasn’t an Awakened.
He had a bald head and a slightly sunken face lined with wrinkles. His piercing blue eyes were sharp, almost predatory.
But what really stood out about him was his no-nonsense attitude.
The problem? That attitude was directed at us.
He was guarding the entrance to the settlement and flat-out refusing to let us in.
“For the millionth time, we just want to go inside!” Kang barked, his canines gleaming in frustration.
Michael stepped forward, trying his best to sound reasonable. “Sir, please. We just need to take a look around, ask a few questions, and then we’ll be on our way. That’s it. Please.”
The man didn’t even glance up. He just kept sitting there, legs crossed, calmly servicing the sniper rifle in his hands like he’d been doing for the past twenty minutes.
My two idiot teammates were throwing everything they had at him, but he just shot them down with a single word every time.
“No.”
He looked completely calm.
Completely unbothered.
Michael was starting to lose hope, but Kang? Kang was starting to lose his goddamn mind.
“You fucking old bastard! Look at me when I’m talking to you! I’ll eviscerate your gut, pull out your intestines, and wear them around my neck like a goddamn garland! You hear me, you old fool?!”
The man gave Kang a long, silent glance. Then, for the first time, he sighed and spoke more than a single word.
“Yell all you want, you won’t go inside.”
Kang, needless to say, fully lost it.
He started shouting curses I hadn’t even heard before, spewing obscenities that would’ve made my worst nightmares blush, and talking about doing unspeakable things to the man’s entire family line.
Michael tried to stop him, but Kang was like a dog that had tasted blood. Except this dog had a filthy mouth and a dirty mind that would make even the worst sailors uncomfortable.
Despite all that, the man guarding the entrance didn’t even budge a little.
He calmly started loading bullets into his rifle, paying us no mind at all.
Eventually, after all the shouting, crying, and barking had surely disturbed the residents inside the settlement, someone finally came outside.
It was a woman, around the same age as the man, though she looked much softer.
Her face had the kind of gentleness you’d expect from someone who spent their life caring for others.
But right now, that face was twisted in worry as her eyes darted around, scanning us, before settling on the man guarding the gate.
“What’s going on, Rob?” she asked him, her motherly voice tinged with concern.
Rob, done with loading his rifle, shot us a sharp look. “These kids wanted to go inside but didn’t want to say who they were or where they came from.”
Kang was about to go off again, but Michael grabbed him by the arm, squeezing just hard enough to make him wince.
Without missing a beat, Michael spoke to the woman, his voice smooth. “We just want to take a look around, ask a few questions about the recent Beast attacks.”
The older woman frowned, deepening the lines on her face. “Are you with the law authorities?”
Michael hesitated. “We… aren’t exactly with the police, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Her frown deepened as she looked us over, her uneasy gaze flickering between Michael, Kang, and me.
Rob let out a low chuckle, but it wasn’t one of amusement. It was cold. “Not with the police. Won’t tell us who you are. And you expect us to trust you?”
“Look,” the woman added, her voice still edged with caution. “If you’re not with the police, then you shouldn’t be asking about what you just mentioned. Now, if you need a place to stay the night, I suggest you head into the inner city.”
She turned around and started walking through the gates.
Michael opened his mouth, probably to spin a half-truth to try and convince her, but I stepped forward and cut him off before he could even begin.
“We’re from the Hunter Academy,” I said, and the words came out clearer than I expected.
The woman froze in her tracks and glanced back at us.
Even Rob looked a bit surprised.
Hell, even my own teammates were caught off guard. Michael looked like he wanted to say something, but he kept his mouth shut.
“…Which academy?” she asked.
“The Hunter Academy,” I repeated, pulling out my ID badge and handing it to Rob. “We’re from Apex, and we’ve been sent here to find out what’s going on in this city, on the request of people from here. So please, cooperate with the questioning.”
Rob took the badge and started inspecting it sharply. After what felt like an eternity, he handed it back to me with a measured nod.
“Academy Cadets, huh?” he muttered. “Haven’t seen your kind out here in a long time.”
The woman, who still hadn’t given us her name, returned to Rob’s side.
Her earlier unease had softened slightly, replaced by reluctant curiosity, though she still looked troubled, like she was weighing some tough decision.
Finally, she sighed and let out a breath.
“Okay,” she said, her tone resigned. “Come on in.”
As the gates creaked open, I noticed the scene before us wasn’t at all what I expected.
This settlement wasn’t just weathered like the rest of the city — it was nearly in ruins.
Half the houses were leaning, their tin roofs either warped or completely gone. Walls were pockmarked with claw marks, some completely torn apart like they were made of paper.
People were everywhere, but they weren’t thriving. They weren’t even surviving.
Piles of rubble were scattered around — the remains of homes that hadn’t withstood whatever had hit them.
Some villagers were digging through the debris, looking for anything they could salvage. Others carried what little they had left in battered crates or slings made of old fabric.
Further up ahead, a man was hammering a piece of wood into a makeshift barricade, his movements frantic, almost desperate.
Behind him stood a woman — his wife, maybe his sister — holding a crying baby, her eyes constantly darting around in paranoia.
This place…
It reeked of loss.
The air wasn’t just thick with smoke and dust; it was heavy with something else — fear.
Not the quick, fleeting kind. The kind that settles deep into your bones, lingers, and refuses to leave.
Every single person in this settlement was terrified.
It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out that something had happened here recently — something that had shaken this place to its core.
“What happened here?” Michael asked the obvious.
“Yeah,” Kang followed up, “Why’s this place… well, worse than the rest?”
I nearly facepalmed.
Okay, maybe they weren’t exactly geniuses.