Cold-blooded

The man's limbs started wobbling uncontrollably, his heartbeat hastening up and his blood ran cold.

'What is this feeling!?'

As a Divine who usually ventured out with his cohort, he had seen many abominations and terrors that could only be described as creatures coming from the darkest depths of nightmare itself.

...But this was the first time that he felt pure fear and horror like this, it was as if every fiber of his beings were telling him to kneel down and beg for forgiveness from the person in front of him.

While the bulky man was still paralyzed by his ability, Achilles quickly grabbed the broom and channeled his essences into it, strengthening the tool.

He swiftly rushed toward the man and was about to swing the broom directly in the latter's head.

Of course, the bulky man was two ranks above Achilles so the former was only affected by the ability for a split second before he snapped himself out of his trance.

The man saw that Achilles was about to smash the broom in his head so he raised his arms to block the thing.

...Naturally Achilles was not going to let him block his skill that easily.

Just before the man completely covered his head with his arms, Achilles' eyes flashed bright red, and mumbled something inaudible.

The bulky man thought he had managed to block the incoming attack, but he suddenly felt a pain in his butt and his neck as he involuntarily turned around.

He saw a zombie crow stabbing his neck with its beak and a zombie rat biting his butt with its teeth.

Bang!

Before he managed to process what was happening, a blunt object came into contact with the back of his head and he was faceplanted directly on the ground.

He felt disoriented as blood slowly dripped a little bit from the back of his head. Even if he was a rank above Achilles, his body was still not powerful enough to handle a direct strike from the weapon that was enhanced by essences.

Before he was able to regain clarity, multiple strikes came raining down like hellfire against his head.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

This went on for a whole minute with the only sound that could be heard in the hallway was the sound of the broom colliding against the man's head, only until his head was practically oozed with blood and Achilles stopped for a second.

The bulky man turned around and looked at Achilles with painful eyes, he didn't know why he was betrayed like this!

"...W..why?"He cried in an exhausted voice.

His vision was getting blurred and he couldn't hear anything clearly, he was about to pass out from the pain. But one thing he managed to hear like thunder beside his ears was Achilles' cold and emotionless voice:

[You get in my way, so I have to get rid of you, simple as that.]

The last thing the bulky man saw was Achilles' red and indifferent eyes, the eyes of a cold-blooded predator, before something headed in his direction.

The man's vision went black completely and he stopped breathing.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[Nothing personal, it's just business.]

Achilles calmly looked at the bloody pulp that was the unfortunate man's head who got in his way as his eyes turned back to normal.

Despite just taking away the life of an innocent man, he felt absolutely nothing.

In normal circumstances, he wouldn't randomly kill a person only because they get in his way, at most he would just give them a really good beating. But considering his freedom was on the line, he acted out without a shred of hesitation.

He looked at the hand holding the broom while thinking to himself:

'I really am not Mark anymore...'

Indeed, if it was before he died, Achilles wouldn't just mercilessly send a person to hell like this. He once again reconfirmed how much he had changed and how he was no longer the man named Mark.

...For the most part.

Achilles sighed softly and shook the thought out of his head. He glanced around and saw that there were not many surveillance cameras around. Most of them were installed around the entrance area and he had already let the crow destroy them all before he got to the first floor.

This was a good thing because he didn't want to get hunted down for killing a government official.

With that settled, he shifted his gaze again to the man's corpse and looked at it for a while. Then he placed his right hand on the chest and closed his eyes.

Green light burst out from the corpse's chest and enter his body. Achilles opened his eyes and retracted his hands from the corpse's chest.

He had just absorbed fifty percent of the remnants inside the body to strengthen himself. He didn't devour the whole soul since it would take too much time to get it done and the morgue's personnel could come here any second now.

He searched through the corpse's pockets and found a wallet with some cash in it, then shoved the wallet into his own pockets and grabbed the broom.

He was being a little bit of a jackass for ransacking a body, but he had no choice right now, without Nero he couldn't do anything in this city.

After that, he stood up and started running out of the morgue, not before he commanded the two creatures to follow him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Meanwhile on the second floor of the morgue, the room where patients suddenly went crazy.

A woman in her mid-twenties with a bob hairstyle was wiping some sweat on her forehead as she looked at the group of doctors who were trying to calm the patients down.

'Why did these guys suddenly go crazy, to begin with anyway?' The woman pondered with a raised eyebrow.

She was the one that the bulky man called Yuna, a while ago she was checking on their teammates who were resting in the other room when suddenly her teammates on this floor went crazy.

She simply had no idea what was the cause of this.

Just as she was looking for the bulky man to ask if he knew anything about this, she realized that he was not there:

'Strange, I saw him came here first, where did he go?'

'Did he go somewhere?' Yuna thought while scratching her ear.

After making sure that the doctors here could handle the situation, she decided to go look for the bulky man who went missing.

'Let's check the first floor.'