The Hunter's Odyssey-Chapter 73: The City After the Battle.

Jagger clenched and unclenched his fists as he walked. His fingers tightened until the knuckles turned pale, then relaxed again. He slowly rolled both shoulders, feeling the stiffness in the joints where his body had not fully healed. The muscles protested with dull aches as he pulled his shoulder blades back and forth. After that, he stretched his neck, tilting it from side to side until the vertebrae cracked faintly. He kept moving, forcing one foot in front of the other.

The alley smelled of damp rot and stagnant decay. Water pooled between cracked tiles and broken concrete, and every puddle he stepped through rippled with reflections of distant lights bleeding weakly into the darkness. His boots scraped across scattered debris and shattered glass. The crunch of it echoed far louder than it should have inside the narrow corridor of brick and metal.

Not yet.

He did not slow down.

Behind him, the battlefield of Orchard Road was already fading into the background noise of a ruined city that had forgotten what peace looked like. Ahead of him, Singapore stretched into darkness.

For a while, neither he nor Ophilia spoke. Only the faint mist falling from the sky, the steady rhythm of his footsteps, and somewhere farther down the street, the tired buzz of broken neon signs flickering against the rain.

Then her voice returned, soft and measured.

’You handled that better than expected.’

Jagger kept walking.

"I killed six people."

’Could have been more, if you didn’t hesitate all the time.’

He stopped.

The alley opened into a wider service road behind a row of abandoned shops. Metal shutters hung crookedly over smashed storefronts, some half-torn from their hinges. Faded signage swayed gently in the misty wind. Jagger scanned the buildings slowly, looking for any shop he could break into and rest.

None.

Most of the storefronts had already been looted or destroyed.

"Don’t you ever feel anything?" he asked quietly.

Ophilia’s response came instantly.

’Emotion is a liability. You will learn that in due time.’

Jagger leaned against a graffiti-scarred wall and slowly slid down until he was sitting on the wet concrete. The chill of the ground seeped through his clothes as he tilted his head back and closed his eyes, letting the mist settle on his face. Immediately, he saw Hikaru again. The fear in the boy’s eyes. The betrayal.

He opened his eyes instantly.

’Feeling sorry for yourself won’t change anything.’

"I’m not feeling sorry for myself," he muttered. "I’m trying to hold on to what little humanity I have left."

Ophilia laughed inside his head, a cold musical sound that made him flinch.

’Humanity? This is what humanity is. This is the world you were born into. The monsters are not just the ones with claws and fangs. Sometimes they look like you. Sometimes they look like that boy you killed.’ She paused briefly. ’You did what you had to do. Accept it. Master it. Or it will destroy you.’

Jagger pushed himself back to his feet. His body protested immediately. His ribs ached. His shoulder throbbed. The muscles along his spine tightened in dull waves of pain.

He needed rest.

He needed somewhere safe.

He needed-

’Food.’

"No."

’Your body needs fuel. I need fuel. Find somewhere with food and water.’

Jagger couldn’t argue with that and began walking again. This time, he did not bother to hide his presence. He moved with purpose, the dagger tight in his hands as he followed the service road until it intersected with a wider street.

Cars were abandoned at odd angles along the road. Some had their doors thrown open as if their drivers had fled in the middle of the street. Others had burned down to hollow black shells. A few had clearly been crashed during the initial chaos, their front ends crumpled against lamp posts or medians.

Then he saw it.

A 7-Eleven.

The familiar green-and-orange sign flickered weakly above the storefront. The glass front was shattered, and he stepped through the broken entrance without hesitation.

Inside, the store looked like a hurricane had torn through it. Shelves were overturned, and products lay scattered across the floor among broken glass and dried blood. Behind the counter lay a body.

A salesman wearing the iconic green 7-Eleven uniform, with a name tag reading "Raj," lay motionless on the floor. His eyes stared blankly upward. Two more people lay dead a few feet from the entrance.

Jagger stepped deeper inside the store.

That was when he heard it.

A noise.

Something scuffling toward the back.

A soft shuffling sound mixed with a faint squeaking.

He raised the dagger immediately.

Jagger moved silently through the store, passing the drinks cooler as he went. The refrigeration unit was still humming softly. The glass doors were shattered, but most of the bottles and cans were still stacked neatly inside.

Every careful step he took across the floor produced a faint crunch as shards of glass shifted beneath his boots.

As he turned the corner, he saw a pair of feet first.

Black office heels.

A woman lay on the ground behind a toppled shelf, her body partially hidden from view. Jagger took another step forward, and the rest of her body came into sight.

Rats nearly three feet tall crawled across the corpse, their bodies swollen to grotesque proportions. Dark, matted fur clung to their elongated frames in damp clumps, slick with blood and filth. Their eyes were pools of deep obsidian black, yet within that darkness flickered a faint, unsettling glint of red that caught the dim light of the store.

Along their hunched backs, jagged spikes of bone pushed through the skin in uneven rows. The protrusions ran from the base of their skulls all the way down their tails, forming a crooked ridge of malformed spears that twitched whenever the creatures moved.

Several of them crawled across her limbs and torso, their small bodies shifting as they chewed at exposed flesh. One had burrowed deep into her face, gnawing where her cheek had once been. Another tugged at torn fabric near her stomach.

The sound of their teeth scraping against bone filled the quiet store.

One of the rats lifted its head.

Its eyes glinted in the dim light as it stared directly at him.

Then it squeaked.