The Culling of Man: A litrpg adventure (Peril's Prodigy Book 1) by Craig Kobayashi (ereader android TXT) 📕

his boys (and the crow, Dave) were seated nearby, chatting amongst themselves, when Gary noticed Garath and Warrion enter the building. He nodded at them and got up to meet them.

"Glad you're back. Good trip?" asked Gary.

"Plus or minus," said Garath, shrugging.

"You get the water for your egg?"

Garath had almost forgotten about the egg in all of the day’s excitement and he patted his pocket to check on it. It felt intact and he breathed a sigh of relief. He found it kind of sweet that Gary wanted to make small talk and see how they fared even at a time like this, but Garath wasn't the type to mince words when work needed to be done. "Yeah," was all he said.

"There's something you should see," Gary told them, his tone growing more serious. He motioned for them to follow and walked toward the far side of the HQ building where the bodies of the dead awaited their burial. They walked past the silent, slowly dying people in the main hall and Gary opened the door to a washroom near the back exit.

Garath was speechless when Gary swung the door open. He didn't know what to expect the Armoron to show him, but he never would have guessed what he saw then. Six bodies covered in white sheets were laid peacefully in a row - that much was expected. Instead of a clean white sheet covering the bodies, the two newest additions to the room of death were covered by sheets that were soaked with dark red blood.

When he looked closer, Garath noticed that the blood on each of them seemed to seep out from a single location. He approached one of the crimson sheets and pulled it back over the victim's head. The copper smell of blood filled his nostrils and he looked on, eyes wide as he learned who it was lying dead on the floor.

It was Sarah. She had lived on the same floor of the apartment complex that he, Sharon, Warrion, and Mark had before they formed a group and joined with others as they formed The Band of the Hawk. It seemed like so long ago. Garath had always had a crush on Sarah but had never made any attempt to speak with her, now he never would. He pulled the sheet farther down to inspect the wound allowing so much blood to leak out of her body. It was an unmistakable mark on her chest, just below her clavicle. A bullet wound.

"Fuck," said Garath, eloquently as ever. "When?"

"About a half-hour ago," Gary explained. "Brandon was training Dave, at least that's what he called it, it looked more like they were playing fetch to me. Anyhow, they were out 'training' and Brandon screamed. I ran over as fast as I could and these two were just stuffed under an incinerated Acura down the street."

Garath crouch-walked to the second body and pulled back the sheet. It was Mark. They must have been together when Leviathan found them.

"Mark too?" he asked, already knowing the answer. "Shit."

"Yeah. They were your friends, right?"

"I wouldn't go that far," said Warrion, looking somber. "We all lived on the same floor of the big apartment complex on Rucker. I never even talked to Mark before the apocalypse..."

"And only gawked at Sarah," Garath finished for him.

"Guilty," Warrion agreed, nodding seriously.

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but these look like bullet wounds," said Gary.

"You're not wrong," said Garath. "Did you hear gunshots?"

"I didn't even think about that at the time, actually. I panicked and just tried herding everyone inside," Gary admitted. "But even thinking back, I don't remember hearing a gunshot at all."

Garath pulled the sheets back over the vacant, dead faces of Mark and Sarah and stood up straight with a grim expression crossing his demonic features. "I'll be back later."

He walked out of the room and kicked open the swinging back door, shimmering into crow form before he had even left the building and took to the sky. The evening air was warm and the sun hung suspended between two planes, its lower half covered by the dark blue waters of the Pacific.

Garath beat his wings hard to gain altitude, his black-feathered body disappearing from view into the night sky. Basic reasoning suggested that he would be able to triangulate Leviathan's location by noting the locations where the black skull icon denoting Plague fell off, so that's what he did. Or that's what he would have done if a far more convenient method hadn't presented itself at that very moment. He grinned wickedly as he read the prompt.

You have received a friend request from: Leviathan. Will you accept? Yes or No.

The reason for his grin was simple, accepting the friend request would provide him with this dick bag's location. The rest of the reasoning that plagued his mind was far from simple. For one, his location would also be given to his enemy. And why would Leviathan send the request in the first place? Garath had to assume the worst, that accepting the request would lead him into a trap. If that was the case, then he would have to assume, because of the timing of the request, that Leviathan had eyes on the building and therefore knew he had left and was now in crow form. So great was his hatred for this man that, even knowing the risk, he accepted the friend request.

You have accepted Leviathan's friend request.

Garath didn't waste a second, still beating his wings furiously as he gained altitude, he willed his MENU panels into existence and opened his map. He scanned over the mass of green dots (denoting the location of those on his Friend List) littering the map, frantically searching the names for Leviathan. When he located the green dot with the name he had come to hate next to it, Garath smiled. Leviathan was nearly the full 100 meters from the HQ building, between the stronghold and the ocean.

From his position, Leviathan probably wouldn't have had