Nightmares

A huge amount of blood sprayed out of the slit in Lara's throat as her body fell stiffly to the bed. A few moments passed, but she remained unmoving, and wisps of multicolored smoke started to rise from her body, confirming she was now dead.

She died with her eyes wide open in confusion.

She thought Sal had been seduced by her and that they were about to have a pleasurable time, during which she would be pressed under his body and nailed to the peak of satisfaction. 

She held such a belief because she was confident in her charm. Not a single man she had met so far had been able to resist her allure, after all.

She thought Sal would be like that too, eagerly caressing her, whispering sweet nothings in her ears, and losing himself in her embrace.

Honestly, she wouldn't have minded his love, attention, and obsession as he was young and already strong enough to survive an armed level 2 introductory phase combatant without relying on external help and even kill him. The future of such a person was boundless, and someone like Lara would rather feel lucky to be his bed warmer, even if just for a night.

She never thought he was just acting to lower her guard so that he could slash open her throat effortlessly.

Why?

This was the question Lara died with. Why did someone so strong have to deceive her? Why did he make her believe she might survive if she was submissive and obedient, only to end her life so abruptly?

She wanted to ask this question when she was alive. However, at that time, she was unable to let out even a single word from her mouth as she was choking on her blood.

Her question was quiet interesting, and the answer to it was simple, really.

Firstly, Sal had never felt enticed by her beauty.

"Regardless of someone's physical attractiveness, death reduces them to mere bones. So why waste time indulging in fleeting pleasures when death ultimately renders all beauty meaningless? It's better to spend that time cultivating and increasing one's lifespan to widen the distance between oneself and death."

This was the philosophy he believed in. As a result, he had seen Lara as nothing but a obstacle in his path to eternal life from the very start. That's why he was able to resist the temptation of her beauty that could seduce even the coldest of heart into sleeping with her. That's why he was able to kill her without any hesitation.

Secondly, in his current situation, he couldn't afford to take such risks. 

Leaving her alive would have exposed him as the one behind the murders and endangered his life.

He didn't know if anyone had seen her being pimped to Big Joe tonight, but if there was even a single witness to her rendezvous with Big Joe, she would have been brought before the camp leader and interrogated if she was alive.

Under pressure, she would have broke down and confessed to everything she knew, as she was a coward as highlighted by her behavior. 

Her confession would have put his life in danger.

Thus, he never had any intention of sparing her. From the moment she had laid eyes on the shape of his body, he was planning to kill her.

As for why he played along with her, it wasn't because he had some twisted desires to fulfill. No, he didn't take pleasure in torturing the weak. He didn't get high off of giving false hope to people desperate to survive only to kill them when they felt the most hopeful.

The reason he played along with her was because his legs had fallen asleep. This was a side effect of using movement-type spiritual techniques one after another when he was just an introductory phase combatant. Spiritual techniques were meant to be used by spiritualists for a reason. Their bodies were strong enough to endure the burden imposed by using spiritual techniques.

'Since my legs have fallen asleep, I wouldn't have been able to chase after her if she had made a run for it. She could've survived if she hadn't chosen the easy way.'

He thumped his legs with his fists, regaining sensation in them.

With nothing urgent to attend to, Sal decided to inspect the multicolored wisps of smoke coming out of the corpses of his most recent kills.

Just as he was about to begin his inspection, a number of grunts sounded.

He turned to look in the direction of the grunts and saw the reanimated corpses of the guards he had killed break into the tent.

Calling them reanimated corpses was a bit too much of a stretch. After all, one was just a head, two were just upper halves, and only one was whole, but even his neck was twisted in a grotesque manner.

At best, they were defective products.

'W-What the––"

Seeing the dead moving about, Sal didn't feel afraid. He had seen much more horrifying things in his 500 years of life. This much was nothing. However, he indeed felt shocked, as evident by his facial expression. His mouth was agape.

"What the heck is this?" he expressed his shock to the lowest-ranked anomaly residing in his body. Right now, it was the only being that could clarify his confusion. Yes, even he could feel surprised. Despite his long life, he retained the essence of humanity.

"What you are seeing is the result of the third disaster," the anomaly replied.

"The third disaster?" Sal's brows knitted together. This wasn't the first time he was hearing about the matter, and he was eager to know more about it.