Chapter 7 - First kills

The man in the middle chuckled and said to his henchmen while pointing at the naked man, "Hey, what's wrong with this picture?"

As the henchmen laughed at their boss's joke, Alita didn't try to warn the naked man and instead quickly went back to trying to fix her gun. After all, that man clearly had a few screws loose, and her own life was much more important.

As the naked man, who was obviously Ivar, came closer, one of the three stooges said, between laughs, "Nice night for a walk, eh?"

But Ivar had no idea what these people were saying. Máni had its own language, which sounded nothing like what came out of these people.

So he asked Selene in his head, "Any idea what these people are saying?"

And she answered, "None whatsoever, but we'll find an opportunity to learn the local language. Just deal with these pests and take their clothes, then maybe we can find a use for that woman behind them."

Ivar nodded in agreement and now stood before the three miscreants as another one of them said while grinning, "Must be wash day tomorrow! Nothing clean, right? I get it; I've been there before. Not sure if I would have gone out like this, but you clearly have nothing to be ashamed of."

Ivar tilted his head, trying to figure out what these people were saying and what exactly they were. They looked like humans, but then so did he when not transformed. Yet, they also seemed to have some metal parts to them, while their clothes and especially their hair were in styles he had never seen before. Nor did he particularly like them.

Seeing the man remain silent and stare at them a little intensely, the leader laughed, "I think this guy is a couple of cans short of a six-pack."

Finally deciding there was nothing else to learn about these thugs, Ivar quickly shifted both his hands to their wolf variant and shoved them into the chests of sperm bank rejects number one and two.

The third one, being the boss, immediately screamed and dropped his knife, "AH! What the fuck!"

In place of the knife, some sort of rifled gun came out of his metallic arm. Recognising this thing as likely to be a weapon, although unsure of what kind, Ivar kicked the arm to the side with a high knee before freeing one of his hands and breaking the leader's neck.

He liked the leader's clothes the most, and they were also more or less in his size, although probably still too tight, so he didn't want to get any blood on them.

Meanwhile, Alita was barely conscious as she had lost too much blood, and the gun had rolled to her side. When she saw what Ivar did, she decided it was probably just a fever dream as she closed her eyes, hoping she would either not wake up or wake up unraped, and then fainted.

Ivar looked at the woman and found her to be good-looking, even if her current state somewhat obscured it.

Her hair was short and black, and her face was both cute and pretty, a combination greatly admired by Ivar. The rest was hard to say for now, as her eyes were closed, and her body was obscured by blood and clothes.

He came closer to the woman and crouched down next to her when Selene appeared next to him while floating.

She said, "She's not going to last much longer; I suggest you convert her; it will heal her while giving me more power than killing her would. Not to mention, it will be useful to have a local on our side."

Ivar looked a little strangely at the woman, "Convert her? But what about the ritual? Besides, she looks human, but is she? Can she be converted?"

Selene scoffed at his words, "That damn ritual is just a bit of pomp and circumstance your leaders came up with to make the human slaves work even harder to gain the right to conversion. 

The only actual requirement is giving them some of your blood with the intention of converting them.

As for her race… there is something strange going on there, as she does not appear to be entirely human. Still, she seems human enough, according to my senses anyway. Conversion should work fine."

Ivar nodded and decided to follow her suggestion. Not just for the reasons she mentioned but also because he enjoyed binding people's loyalty to him by whatever means he could, and saving her life while also granting her power would surely go a long way.

Plus, converts would always feel some instinctual reverence for the therian that turned them.

It also didn't hurt that the girl looked cute.

Perhaps there were plenty of therians who would hesitate more, as they truly considered humans to be far beneath them and not worth the conversion. They were those who only respected pureblood therians who were born from two therian parents.

Ivar had a relatively measured stance towards humans, however. He did think they were worth less than therians, but he also considered converted humans to be worth no less than pureblood therians.

Not that he really cared that much about other therians either; he was more like an equal-opportunity asshole.

Regardless, he transformed some of his teeth into those of a wolf and bit down on his finger, causing blood to flow, before he unceremoniously stuck the finger into the woman's mouth.

After a few drops went in, she instinctively started sucking on Ivar's finger while still being unconscious. 

Whether she did this because she could feel it helping, because his blood was delicious or because of some leftover instinct from when she was a baby was unsure; the important thing was that the blood entered her system and would soon start the conversion.

Eventually, he noticed the wound in the woman's side had closed up, and she had stopped sucking his finger, as she seemed to be truly unconscious now.

He knew that the conversion would happen while she was unconscious, and he didn't want to wait for that while in this filthy, stinking, bloodstained alleyway, so he quickly but carefully stripped the man with the broken neck and put on the clothes.

He left the man his underwear, though; no way was he putting that on.

The clothes were very tight, uncomfortable, and disgusting, especially for someone who preferred going bare-chested, but for now, it would have to do.

He picked up the unconscious woman into a princess carry and looked around, marvelling once again at the architecture, which was very different from what he was used to. 

Therians weren't numerous enough to have problems with space, so they didn't really build very high. Yet some of the buildings on this planet seemed to reach as high as the clouds.

Those buildings were a little further away, however, as the buildings currently surrounding him were much shorter and seemed somewhat dilapidated.

Still, he quickly found a door and easily kicked through the lock. He found himself inside some sort of basement and quickly found some nearby stairs, which he started climbing until he found some hallways that seemed to have various doors leading out into it.

He asked Selene, "Can you see what is in these places and if they are empty? I would rather not draw more attention by killing again for now."

While seemingly a little disappointed there would be no more killing tonight, Selene did as he asked and used her senses to check the nearby rooms.

After finishing, she said, "Go up one more floor and take the third door on the right. I don't recognise most of the stuff in there, but there is something resembling a bed and no people. None alive anyway."

Deciding to ignore her last statement for now, Ivar started moving again.

They were lucky they did not come across more people. Or perhaps it was less luck and more that the people were hiding after hearing so much commotion from the nearby alley.

Whichever the case, Ivar arrived in front of the door Selene mentioned without incident. He didn't really want to break it down again, as that would also leave him without the ability to lock the door, so he asked Selene, "Any way you can open this door without breaking the lock?"

Selene shrugged, "Nope, I am little more than a spiritual being without a body right now. Affecting the physical world requires more power than I currently have.

Plus, doing so might alert any possible gods in this world about my presence, and we are not ready to deal with those just yet."

While reminding himself to ask Selene about those other gods later, he decided to at least be a little more subtle about breaking the lock.

So he put the woman down and carefully broke the lock, leaving the door entirely intact, before picking her up again and walking inside.

The room stank terribly. A smell that Ivar recognised as being the rotting of a corpse. He looked around and quickly noticed a half-rotten corpse sitting in a chair with some needles sticking out of his arm.

Since Máni and its inhabitants were no strangers to drugs, he realised what happened here and snorted in disdain before going to find a bed and putting the woman down on it.