Ray's foot crunched beneath the fallen leaves, crossing golden rivers and decaying corpses, both knowingly and unknowingly.
"At night, I watched old footage of this country — Canada, from 2025. It was nothing like it is now. People used to camp here."
"Most of the population fled to safer areas, but some, particularly those close to the anomalic districts still remained — choosing to rebuild their towns instead of leaving them behind. Their devotion to this land is remarkable."
"To my eyes — they're dangerously naive."
After walking for one and a half kilometers, around 17 to 18 minutes — the hunter finally exited the forest and reached a road pointing toward Redpines town.
"Another one and a half kilometers… I really made it hard on myself by not bringing water." He took out his wallet and opened it, staring at the golden coins.
"Should I… call it here?" After a moment's hesitation, he shut it and pocketed it again.
"I'll manage. It can wait," he muttered, moving on — Five minutes later, the stench of decay crept into his nostrils.
Then — he saw it.
A dead body lay in the middle of the road under the autumn sun. Ray approached to inspect it: a red beanie, a sunken face, hollow eyes, maggots on the flesh — and most gruesome of all…
"Stab wounds all over the abdomen and neck." Judging by the rot, the body had been there for about three days. Probably a refugee who never made it to the campsite.
"I know you've got one," Ray said as he rummaged through the corpse's pockets. He came up with a working red lighter and a wallet. There were cigarettes as well, but he didn't smoke.
Ray slipped the lighter into his pocket and opened the wallet. Inside was a driver's license for a Liam O'Connor — skinny and clearly into illicit substances.
"Interesting," He muttered as he pocketed the twenty. Then something else in the wallet drew his attention.
"A condom?" The thought of intimacy left him momentarily blank — something far outside his expertise.
He returned it to its place and set the wallet next to the lifeless body.
"I'll take your money and your lighter. You can keep the condom, Sir Liam O'Connor. Have a great day," he said before continuing on his way.
The deeper he walked, the more uncanny everything felt. More and more dead bodies littered the road — each one afflicted with the familiar stab wounds, and some with chunks of flesh missing.
He could hear the buzzing of countless flies in the air, swirling everywhere.
The hunter checked their pockets one by one. Most had negligible items: a pocketknife, family photos, broken bottles, children's drawings, anime-style keychains, letters.
Ray wasn't interested in any of those.
What mattered was the money. Some carried between one to five dollars, and by the end of it, he had pocketed about forty dollars from this mischief.
Yet… something was wrong…
"All I see are adults… where are the children and teenagers?" he murmured. He hadn't seen a single young body in the entire pile of corpses.
Another thing bothered him — there were no cars anywhere. No abandoned vehicles, no wrecks, not even tire tracks. For a road supposedly filled with fleeing refugees, the silence of an empty highway felt unnaturally deliberate.
"What could they be doing with all of this… and why are most of the corpses dominantly male?" He stopped looting, keeping his senses sharp.
"Something's waiting for me up ahead. It's not approaching."
"I don't have to hide — I don't mind a direct confrontation here in the open, reckless as that sounds."
Ray's footsteps slowed as he stepped into a clearing along the road. The rustle of leaves and the distant river fell away, replaced by a disturbing, eerie silence.
"I see it," he murmured. In front, something swayed unnaturally.
A figure that resembled a woman stood ahead. She was dancing in place, and her stage was the road behind her, scattered with bodies.
The path leading toward her was a trail of blood — she must've been the one who dragged all the victims into a single, horrifying pile.
Her choreography was jerky and disjointed, yet there was a strange joy in every movement of her limbs.
From her clothing, she appeared to be a nun from Redpines Town's orphanage. Her robe was stained red, wrinkled, and putrid — noticeably lacking any emblem or holy insignia.
Her long, dark hair whipped around her face, obscuring it — until she suddenly stopped.
She caught sight of Ray. She froze. Then, without warning, her head tilted unnaturally at an impossible angle, giving the hunter a completely normal, blank, serene smile.
In her right hand, she held a rusty knife, the blade bathed with dried blood and bits of organ matter still clinging to it.
"An Caro-class anomaly I've never seen before," Ray said, though his voice remained calm.
His dark-red eyes locked onto the nun. Her grin widened, revealing bloodied, crooked teeth.
Without warning, the nun began to cry. "It's your fault!"
"It's all your fault! I didn't want to hurt the kids! But they were so loud! I had to… I had to silence them, their necks were so soft…" her voice cracked, rising into a raw, hysterical scream.
"…Pardon?" Ray replied.
"Why did you let them die? Why didn't you stop me?!" The nun pointed the rusty knife toward Ray, her movements growing more erratic by the second.
Ray was fascinated — He had never faced a delusional anomaly before.
"I'm not in any danger," he muttered.
The nun's eyes began to bleed, and her mouth stretched unnaturally wide, the skin along her cheeks tearing as if it could not contain her.
"I was a good mother, am I not? Look at them! They're so quiet now — all because I'm so good at making them sleep. I danced for them, I sang for them… and yet, look how they disrespect me! No 'thank you, Mother,' no 'I love you, Mother!'"
Ray stood still, thinking through the most efficient way to dispatch the anomaly.
"Erratic and delusional… but I don't think she has any special abilities," he muttered.
"What caused something like this to exist? Under any other circumstances she would've been an mindless undead, yet she still has some level of sentience."
"Physical force should suffice—"
The crying intensified. Ray observed carefully — learning new behavior from an anomaly was always important for a hunter.
He'd record this once he returned to HQ.
"YOU!" the nun shouted. "You want my body like the rest, don't you?! Even as I begged them to stop, those animals kept going! You're just like them!"
Ray's left eye twitched — Internally, he questioned, "Who's the rest? Those animals? And who's 'them' she's speaking of? Is this a traumatic memory she's carrying as a host, and the anomaly inherited it?"
"Huh?!" The nun grew more frantic, dancing in circles, her limbs contorting impossibly.
"You're gonna do things to me if I don't defend myself," she said, her fingers clawing through her hair, growing crazier by the second.
"You looked at me…" she murmured.
"What the fuck?" Ray said calmly.
Then, in the blink of an eye, she dashed maniacally toward Ray.
She came closer and closer, her movements jagged and unnatural, her smile wide, joy present in her harrowing eyes.
Her intentions were clear — to stab him repeatedly, until he could no longer breathe.
"Why is my victim getting closer," the anomaly hunter muttered, his dark-red eyes burning with the same murderous intent.
Before long, she reached Ray. He didn't flinch or step back, merely waited as she came near, the knife poised at his neck.
Ray felt the sinful steel approach as the nun lunged at him.
In a swift motion, before the knife could connect, Ray caught its handle and dislocated the nun's elbow, breaking the arm holding the blade. The act was without hesitation, and the rusty knife clattered to the ground.
At the same time, the hunter drove his right elbow into her face with such force that blood spurted from her broken jaw, sending her sprawling to the ground.
The nun lay disoriented, crying in pain.
"So violent… sit down and relax," Ray muttered.
But he had other plans. He had no desire to use his own knife, so he stooped and picked up the rusty blade from the ground.
The nun tried to recover and flee, but before she could, the hunter grabbed her hair and yanked her back to the ground with brutal force.
Immediately, he got on top of her, holding the rusty knife in a reverse grip, his dark-red eyes devoid of any pleasure in the act.
The nun squirmed violently and even tried to bite him with her fractured jaw.
Physically, she was stronger than a normal human, but Ray outclassed her in every aspect.
The corpses left behind by the nun's stabbing made for useful examples, yet an unexplainable anger burned within him as he looked around — reminding him of a bittersweet memory.
Within a flash, he saw a white clinic with red-stained tile floors.
He didn't let it slow him.
Whispering under his breath, he said, "I'm not that creative, you see. You anomalies are excellent at providing references… of how to end a life."
The anomaly panicked. She felt the knife sink into her neck — and her entire form dissolved into black mist, fading out as she died. The sudden disappearance caught the Hunter off guard.
"It's not a real person? A projected anomaly?!" he muttered.
Ray stood up, dropping the rusty knife as a grim realization settled in.
"Black mist and darkened body… these characteristics…"
He narrowed his eyes.
"An Umbra-Class anomaly is behind this."
Chapter End.