Greed

In the pitch black night when all the lanterns in the vicinity died down, a brown-haired boy entered a house without carrying any light source or an Essence Lamb, then after a few minutes, he left as if he just paid a visit to a relative.

"Pheew…"

Walker guards only patrolled the main streets and such. Their number was too little to wander around the back streets that were riddled with poverty. Instead of protecting the 'useless' bits of this city, they mainly protected the citizens who at least worked.

So, hunting in the back streets was easier, there was no danger of encountering a trained Walker unless a Creature of Darkness appeared.

As for the people who died in the slums, Eclipsed Walkers simply didn't pay attention. The undead that transformed from normal people could be easily killed, they weren't a threat. Walkers left the job of dealing with them to the gangs who were 'protecting' this part of the city in 'exchange' for not cleaning up the gangs.

The working class of the city mostly consisted of Eclipsed Ones, if they were to die, their corpse could be a problem for many.

The job of Eclipsed Walkers was to handle the average citizen while the gangs' job was to handle the poor and 'useless' ones.

"And I will be the one who will handle the thugs." Ashy in the 'Johny' form whispered with a light smile.

He wasn't simply killing the thugs because of his burning sense of justice, but because it was more beneficial to kill them, both for his mental health and increase of strength.

Killing thugs was easier because he had a 'reason' while he didn't have any for killing innocent people.

'If you kill a murderer, the number of murderers won't decrease, but if you kill more than one, it does decrease.' Ashy thought with a smile.

That was how Ashy passed the time while waiting for his tag to come. It was already the last day of his wait. Every night he killed one or two thugs and visited their location a full day later to kill their undead form too.

The feeling of murder surprisingly vanished pretty quietly. It was as if he wasn't 'the' modern guy Ashland in the modern world before. Just a few days…or weeks ago, he was buying dozens of cup noodles as monthly rations, but now he was killing people here and there as if it was an everyday thing to do.

It was simply strange. Was he unknowingly suppressing his psychopath side or something? Even the thought of it was a little bit funny.

'Humans are really adaptable creatures. Before I knew it, I became the denizen of this world in no time. Is it because of my character? Or me being part Creature of Darkness? Probably the latter.'

Ashy didn't know and didn't want to know either. It was better for his mental health.

"Now… where was the last one?" Ashy wandered out in the silent night. Seeing in the darkness was more of a boon than he first thought so. In this world, darkness was everywhere.

He had one last thing to do this night, it was to 'collect' the last soon-to-be undead. Fortunately, it was close.

'Gains are small but it is better than nothing.'

With every small gain, he felt a little bit stronger. Whenever he got stronger, he felt like he was becoming full, the so-called 'Essence' was filling his whole being whenever a dark heart turned into ash in his hands. Slowly, the empty part of his body was meeting with Essence, his vessel was gradually being filled.

"Was it here?" Ashy murmured as he stopped in front of a house made of a mix of rocks and dirt. This was one of the better kinds of houses in this area, it was certainly better than houses made of wood — undead wood.

Ashy brought his hand close to the door, one of his nails grew into a pure white claw while the others stayed the same. With this, he neatly broke the house's low-quality lock and entered inside.

Last time he entered from the window, this time he decided to enter right through the door. Inside was empty anyway—

'Huh?'

Ashy immediately stepped back and retracted his claw. Quietly but quickly closing the door and hiding at the side of the house, he waited.

'There is someone here, did they finally figure out that I was hunting their gang members?'

It wouldn't be surprising if this was the case, he had been doing this for the past six days. It would have been weirder if they didn't figure it out.

'Well, they probably sent a strong one for this job, right?'

Common thugs weren't giving a substantial increase in power, but all of them together still gave a discernible increase.

'Then, a stronger one would give more than a dozen thugs combined?'

Ashy immediately shook his head to throw away his greed. He wasn't all-powerful and didn't have any training either. Just, his body was a weapon itself, so he caught many thugs unguarded with his claws.

'No reason to risk. When I get my tag, I can hunt undead outside the city.'

Convincing himself with logic, Ashy silently turned his back to leave the area—

*Thud!*

—before he knew it, he collapsed onto the ground face first. A dagger pierced his nape, exiting from his throat. His consciousness got closed in an instant. His expression didn't even change, it was just too fast.

A dark blue light reached him. A man was holding an Essence Lamb from afar. He was donned in a dark trench coat and pants, an ivy cap was resting on his head. His other hand was inside his pocket, fiddling with a knife.

"Huh? It was a child? I thought it was a short thief,"

Shrugging, the man leisurely left without even bothering to take back his knife.

***

"They say every Eclipsed Walker who strives to rank up usually goes crazy. At first, we thought it was because of the influence of darkness they tainted themselves to fight for humanity, however, it was not. Even after they are blessed by the grace of the Tree of Light and purified to the limit, they still don't show any sign of recovery."