Lurking in the Shadows

Luke's legs were currently completely surrounded in wind, as he ran in the direction of the small village.

'I can't believe I'm doing this just for a pair of clothes…'

Objectively, it was a good deal.

Check what's the hold up, come back, and then acquire a pair of high quality clothes.

Luke knew this as well, but he was starting to get exhausted of running around from one place to another.

'I wouldn't say it's close, but it's not that far away either.'

Luke could see the outline of the small village in the distance after running for close to three hours.

The round-trip would take six hours, but Luke could still make it to his evening reading classes with Lala, as he left Millef just before noon.

Luke was now only a few hundred meters away from the village.

'14:38 o'clock… Close to what I expected.'

He slowed down and was calmly jogging towards the small village.

But Luke soon came to a halt.

'I got a bad feeling about this.'

The village was quiet. Too quiet.

Luke walked through the village, but there was no one in sight.

'I guess I'll check the alleyways.'

Indeed, some people were lying down in the alleyways, still sleeping, even though it was almost 15:00 o'clock.

But as Luke approached them…

They weren't sleeping.

Luke's eyes narrowed as he examined the unmoving villagers.

'…Someone had murdered them.'

All of the villagers in the alleyway were dead.

He was sure it was a "someone" because all of the villagers' throats were slit.

'They were probably killed in their sleep. Which reminds me…'

Luke died in a very similar manner in his last loop.

'Don't tell me it was the same person?! …No. It doesn't add up.'

Luke took a deep breath.

'It would be safe to assume that it's a group of people. I don't see how a single person can slaughter a whole village without anyone waking up, let alone noticing.'

Luke decided to check some houses as well.

Out of the three houses that he had checked, everyone inside of them were still lying in their beds, lifeless, with slit throats.

Men, women, even children. No one was spared.

'I was correct in my judgement. The people in this world are the biggest monsters…'

Of course, not everyone was like that. Exceptions always existed.

'I need to go back to Millef and report this to the town's guard, and also get the clothes from the tailor. It's too late to do anything about this now.'

As Luke was contemplating, something was approaching him. More precisely, a weirdly shaped creature was slithering towards his shadow.

The creature was a shadow itself, so there was no way for Luke to detect its presence.

The shadow creature was now next to Luke's shadow and it started wiggling around.

The weirdly shaped creature was morphing into a bipedal form, and soon looked like an adult's shadow.

The problem was, no object nor person was casting this shadow, which was a big contradiction.

How could a shadow exist without something to cast it?

Luke started gathering wind around his legs, and in the meanwhile, one of the shadow person's arms started elongating into a long blade.

The shadow person slashed across Luke's shadow just as he started running, forcing him to stop after only a few short steps.

'What the hell?!'

Luke's eyes bulged out as he fell to his knees.

His hands were on his stomach, both of which were painted scarlet red.

Luke mustered enough strength to look down at his stomach.

His guts were spilling out into his hands uncontrollably, as blood was spilling out, slowly forming a small puddle below Luke.

Saying that he was merely shocked would be an understatement.

'How did this happen? Who did this? When did they attack me?'

He was letting his thoughts wander in this unexpected situation.

Just as life was draining from Luke's eyes, the shadow person started rising from the ground, taking the form of an adult man.

"Kekeke… You shouldn't have come here!"

The man was now standing in front of Luke.

Luke was barely able to rise his head to look at the man.

"You… Who ar- cough! Cough!"

Luke somehow managed to utter a few words before coughing out a couple mouthfuls of blood.

He was barely holding onto his life.

'Shit, I need to at least find out who he is!'

In the ideal situation, Luke would want to find out who the mysterious man was, who he was working with, if he was the one who had slaughtered all of the villagers, and so on.

The mysterious man was smirking at the dying Luke.

"Why should I tell you anything?"

'Having my belly opened up is a first, but this pain is nothing compared to the time when I was eaten alive!'

Luke resolved to hold on to his life as long as he could.

The man in front of Luke was wearing a pitch black robe, and had his hood on, so Luke was unable to see the man's face, save for his mouth.

The robe had no embroideries or anything unique about it. It was just a regular black robe.

'He won't tell me anything about him, and I can't even see his face. Also, a robe like this is very common. Time for Plan B.'

"Wh-when did you… kill… Cough!"

The cough didn't stop Luke from finishing what he wanted to say this time.

"…The villagers?"

Luke could see the man's lips rise up curtly.

He was smiling.

"You want to know when I killed these maggots?"

Luke frowned as he nodded.

Less than a minute had passed since he fell down on his knees.

Luke's vision was darkening and slowly narrowing.

He wouldn't die from the pain, but he'd definitely die of blood loss very soon.

"I'll only tell you because you lasted longer than any of the villagers… Kekeke!!"

Luke was glaring at the man.

'What a disgusting piece of shit.'

The man hugged himself and started speaking through a grin.

"I killed them all last night! They fell asleep never to wake up again! The perfect death! The perfect ecstasy! Ahhh!!"

'Are all of the people with rare elementals batshit insane?'

He thought of Joseph, the calm and scheming man, willing to go to great lengths to fulfill some unknown plan of his. And then, there was this man in front of Luke that was just plainly insane.

Luke figured out that this man had a rare elemental the moment he rose up from an out-of-place shadow.

His vision rapidly darkened as he bled out.

'This is it, huh?'

Luke was already preparing a plan as his life was scattering.

His head drooped limply, as he kept kneeling in a puddle of scarlet blood.

A bright blue light shined out as the silver hourglass on Luke's chest rotated upside down, causing the blue sand inside of it to flow in reverse.