Chapter 52: Testing Death's Limits
Chris arrived in a small town and checked into a roadside motel.
He was completely naked except for the mysterious wristband—a situation he'd unfortunately grown accustomed to since arriving in this godforsaken world.
As soon as he reached town, he found a laundromat and grabbed a suitable set of clothes from an unattended dryer. Then he tracked down a few punks who were taking advantage of the chaos and "borrowed" some cash.
This town sat at least sixty miles from the meteor crater, but even here, the massive dust cloud still hung overhead like a shroud.
The local troublemakers, seeing an opportunity in the confusion, had naturally started looting whatever valuables they could find.
Unfortunately for them, they ran into—or rather, Chris found them.
The thugs ended up taking an impromptu nap in a dumpster, and Chris walked away with a few dozen bucks in small bills.
After checking in, Chris took a long shower and began reviewing everything he'd done since arriving in this world.
Saving people from Death's list, spreading the gospel about the "Reaper," committing insurance fraud, or searching for other Death List survivors like Iris?
Among these activities, Chris first ruled out the most obvious suspect: searching for other people on Death's list.
Although Death had targeted him while he was en route to find Iris, Chris immediately dismissed this possibility.
Because if Iris truly knew Death's weakness, then given that woman's paranoid determination, she would've absolutely used it to save her descendants.
Even if she couldn't do it herself, as long as she'd contacted the federal government, Chris didn't believe that America at the turn of the millennium couldn't mobilize every resource to find Death's weakness.
The year 2000 was America's peak—the Soviet Union had collapsed, the Cold War was won, and the country stood as the world's sole superpower with unmatched military and economic dominance.
If someone in control of such a nation knew that something like Death actually existed in this world, Chris was certain a specialized department—maybe even something like S.H.I.E.L.D.—would emerge overnight.
And then? Even if Death was more than just some unknown entity with sloppy execution and exploitable patterns—even if it truly was the personification of death itself, the manifestation of cosmic law—it might still get caught by humanity's most powerful governmental machine.
But since that paranoid woman hadn't gone that route, it meant she really had no actionable intelligence about Death.
At best, she'd accumulated decades of survival experience through sheer paranoia.
That's why Chris had given up on finding her—because finding her probably wouldn't help.
Just like how she'd used her life to leave warnings for her descendants, yet those family members had still died out completely.
So if the thing most likely to make Death afraid wasn't the prospect of Chris finding Iris, then the other possibilities were easier to narrow down.
Saving people might have disrupted Death's list, causing its workload to skyrocket and making it furious enough to target him directly.
Spreading the gospel might have altered its name or nature, disturbing whatever faith or power it collected.
As for using it for insurance fraud—that might've simply pissed it off and embarrassed it.
After all, throughout the entire Final Destination franchise, there were plenty of people who verbally mocked Death, constantly provoking it with their bravado and arrogance.
And those people all met exceptionally gruesome ends.
This indicated that Death definitely had its own petty emotions and was particularly vindictive.
However, examining these three possibilities, Chris realized that saving people and insurance fraud wouldn't make Death afraid—saving people would at most make it annoyed or anxious.
Only his improvised evangelism truly had the potential to undermine the foundation of a deity dependent on faith and worship, which would genuinely frighten such entities.
After sorting through the possible impacts of his various actions on Death, Chris decided to run an experiment to determine which activity had made it desperate enough to drop a meteor on his head.
Since this town had a sparse population and limited financial infrastructure, insurance fraud was off the table.
As for proselytizing, that required the right timing, location, and audience—the bar incident had been a perfect storm of circumstances.
Chris wasn't confident he could manipulate another crowd so effectively right now, so he temporarily shelved that idea, planning to check on his "congregation" directly when he returned to the city.
Therefore, after careful consideration, the only option he could immediately test was saving people.
Having decided on his approach, Chris walked out of the motel.
The current chaotic environment actually made it convenient for Chris to verify his theory.
He went directly to the roadside and watched the passing vehicles.
In the current harsh conditions where dust storms obscured visibility, even the most cautious drivers were prone to accidents, let alone these often reckless Americans with their oversized trucks and lead-footed driving habits.
Especially since these people lived in a horror movie universe, influenced by certain unknown rules that made fatal accidents disturbingly common.
Chris had barely arrived at the roadside when he heard the roar of a motorcycle engine—judging by the sound, the rider was doing at least sixty miles per hour.
He'd recently ridden a motorcycle himself and had become particularly familiar with engine sounds at different speeds.
Chris scanned the surrounding environment. Even with his enhanced eyesight, he could only see about two hundred yards through the dust, and ordinary people—even with goggles blocking the grit—could see maybe fifty feet at best.
And with normal human reaction times, with only that much warning distance, if something went wrong, there'd be absolutely no time to react.
As the sound grew closer, Chris prepared to sprint.
Unexpectedly, with a loud crash, before the rider even came into view, Chris heard the sickening crunch of the motorcycle wiping out.
Realizing what had happened, Chris ran at full speed toward the sound. After a few seconds of supersonic travel, he arrived just in time to see the motorcyclist's body tumbling across the asphalt.
Seeing that the person was still wearing a helmet, Chris quickly decelerated to prevent the air displacement from his speed causing secondary injuries.
Reaching the victim, Chris gently tore at the cracked helmet, and the scratched protective gear came apart in his hands like tissue paper.
Then Chris saw the person bleeding from their nose, ears, and mouth—clearly breathing more out than in, on the verge of death.
Seeing this dire situation, Chris twisted open a bottle of dragon blood beverage he'd been carrying and poured it into the person's mouth.
With half a bottle of the high-energy drink in their system, the person's breathing immediately stabilized.
Then Chris carefully focused on the sense of premonition in his mind, and sure enough, after the person's life was saved, a faint thread of malice began to grow.
However, the increase was minimal—only about one percent compared to the original intensity.
"Saving one life only increases its hatred toward me by this much?"
Chris stood up, pondering the cause and effect.
What exactly was Death's targeting mechanism? What made it shift from irritation to homicidal rage?
More importantly—what had he done that made it afraid enough to escalate from elaborate accidents to dropping a goddamn meteor?
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