Chapter 7: The Bloody Rain Begins
The first pioneer nicknamed the God of Thunder, the first to become a God of War, had once confessed that he had been lucky enough to obtain one of those crystallizations.The original holder had been a small cat that had died at a gas station on the outskirts of City Z.
"If only I hadn't known we were from the same city, I wouldn't have risked so much," muttered Richard as he approached the counter.
He knew that cat.It was identical to the one in his memories.All because of the eccentricities the God of Thunder had in his past life. No one else would have wasted resources to build a statue of a cat as if it were the lucky charm of his entire family.
"Although, seeing how it saved his life… maybe it wasn't so crazy after all."
The cat stared at him, meowing, like an ordinary domestic animal begging for food. There was none of that unsettling sensation that other Awakened had described when encountering a bearer of a crystallized core.
The God of Thunder had said he felt an uncontrollable hunger the first time he came across one.The Snow Fairy had commented that she felt a strong pain in her chest, as if something was tempting her to eat the core—could it be a primal instinct?Other great lords of war had also reported similar things.
But that wasn't the case with the cat in front of him. To Richard, it just seemed like a normal cat asking for food.
Richard called out to it."Come, little one, we'll get out of here."
The cat looked at him when it heard its name. But apparently, something else caught its attention, and it ran off.
Richard tried to follow it everywhere, but it was as if the cat was searching for something inside the restaurant. Something far more important than the plate of food he held in his hands.
BANG!
The initial commotion had already caused the rest of the people to flee, leaving the restaurant empty. But a loud bang caught his attention.
There was no one inside anymore. It was possibly the police, called by the civilians who had witnessed the shooting. But suddenly Richard began to hear screams of terror from outside the restaurant.
"What is that?" He finally saw it.
The light inside the restaurant had kept him from seeing what was happening in the sky.The entire place was drowned in an unsettling silence. The sky seemed to weep blood, turning the dim sun into a gigantic eye crying tears over the earth.
Another loud crash startled Richard again.
THUD!
When he turned toward the entrance—that's when he saw it.
Richard snapped his head around just in time to see the staggering silhouette of a man… and, cursing under his breath, he shot the man in the forehead without hesitation.Blood splattered across the floor as the body collapsed with no chance of rising again.
"It's begun…" Richard growled through his teeth, remembering that damned cat that had escaped moments ago.
He had to get out of that damned place before things escalated further. The fourth plague had already started.
The dead were not only coming back to life, but now it was happening much faster than before. Just being touched by the rain, without incubation time, was enough to turn you into a ravenous corpse full of hate.
Richard roared in frustration."This wasn't how it happened… damn it!" he slammed the table hard in frustration.
Through the window, he had glimpsed a couple convulsing on the ground after only a few drops of rain touched them.
CRACK… CRACK… CRACK!Their flesh seemed to bubble, skin swelling with protrusions as if boiling under the bloody rain.
"Damn cat, where are you?!"
Richard rushed into the kitchen and found the cat. There it was, about to eat a fish that swam peacefully in the aquarium. But there was something strange about the fish.
It glowed like a beacon in the middle of the darkness.
Richard blinked in disbelief, wondering if his mind was playing tricks on him. But the fish continued to shine, and at last he understood everything.
"So that's how it was… not the cat, but the fish."
What had happened was that damn cat had eaten the fish's core, and that's why it had mutated in his past life.Even though it had died shortly afterward, it didn't change the fact that the cat had been one of the most famous in human history, almost a cruel joke that it had been worshipped as a deity by the family of the God of Thunder.
"Drop it, damn cat!"
He snatched the fish away. The cat glared furiously, showing its claws in intimidation, but Richard ignored it, focused on the small fish.
The fish seemed able to breathe in the air, adapting to conditions that should have killed it before the bloody rain.
That was the danger of these so-called Monarchs of Calamity Class—they possessed the greatest evolutionary talents even before the Fifth Plague.
Without hesitating further, Richard ended the fish's life with a knife from the table. He couldn't let it live any longer, or who knew if it would continue evolving until it became too strong for him, a mere unawakened, to kill.
With just a slight cut, there it was.The crystallized core.
The stone pulsed with the vitality of a heart, attached to the fish's entire system like a parasite.
"So this is the core of a possible monarch…"
Richard could already hear his stomach rumbling, urging him to eat the core. But even if he wanted to, he couldn't—not here. He needed a quiet place.
Without another thought, Richard pocketed the core and left the restaurant.
The outside was already hell. The entire place had turned into a slaughterhouse.
People were convulsing on the ground, and others were crying for help. But that was nothing more than a trap that might have worked if not for their pale, pupil-less eyes.
"Help me, please!""Help me!"
If someone had asked which stage was the hardest to face, Richard would probably answer: the beginning of the infection. Not because they were strong, like a fully transformed infected who had no limiter, who could run faster than Usain Bolt and had the strength of the strongest man in the world.
But because in the first minutes of transformation, the infected still retained their intelligence—replaced only by an endless rage against the uninfected, as if they were to blame.
And Richard, in a way, was to blame for everything.
The people who had escaped the shooting looked like normal humans, except for their white eyes. Though that was normal, because once transformed, they gained immunity to the acidic rain.
Richard raised his weapon."Goodbye, my source of gasoline."
First, he fired one shot.Then another.Until finally, the explosion ignited, lighting everything in a rain of fire.
The explosion would probably attract more infected, but he planned to escape quickly with his new car.
He only hoped that among the charred bodies, the God of Thunder was not one of them. After all, he had been a good man in his past life, and Richard wanted to meet him again someday to repay some of the favors he had once given him.
They could not be considered best friends, nor comrades-in-arms, but he had been one of the few men who managed to preserve his humanity in that new world.
Richard didn't stop to look back and sped away.
* * *
Inside the van.
"Are we going to keep waiting here?" asked Emma, breaking the silence.
They had already been sitting inside the vehicle for a couple of hours, waiting for Richard to return so they could go inside.
The rain had just started, so they couldn't even use the umbrellas they had at hand to check if Richard had left a key under the doormat.
Ethan kept staring at the red rain falling onto the van."No, let's wait a little longer…" he replied, hoping Richard was safe.
He had improvised a piece of plastic to cover the windows, but with the rain intensifying, it was beginning to seep through.
Rebecca, with trembling hands, adjusted the rubber gloves Richard had given them."As Richard told us, don't touch the rain… so don't take off your gloves and keep making sure it doesn't leak inside."
And everything went silent again.
Until suddenly…
THUMP.
Something suddenly fell onto the roof of the vehicle.
THUMP… THUMP…
Something seemed to crawl over their heads. But it calmed after a few seconds, with the appearance of a shadow approaching, walking through the rain as if it didn't matter.
It seemed that help had arrived…