Chapter 372: The Unfortunate One
Raj kept running, doing everything he could to ignore the burning in his lungs, in his muscles, and on his skin. He only managed quick shallow breaths, like he was on the verge of hyperventilating, half because he was exhausted and half because he was terrified. His breath was all he could hear aside from his pounding bare footsteps on the scorched dirt roads.
If not for the adrenaline rushing through his veins, he would have buckled long before. He had watched his companions yield to the pressure, one after the other, until he was the last person left. He had to keep going. If he stopped he would be confronted by the memory of their agonized screams until they were drowned in conflagration. It had been horrific, and he wanted anything but that end for himself.
His tattered shirt was wrapped around his face, covering both his nose and mouth, in a fruitless attempt to ward off the smoke in the air. The red pollution was made worse by the raging fires that burned in every other building, consuming materials that should never have been flammable in unending blazes. He knew the corruption was already affecting him, but he prayed it wouldn’t take him.
His eyes stung, his lungs ached, and something else that he couldn’t diagnose was going wrong deeper within. It forced him to repeatedly recall the people that had been with him throughout the assimilation, and how they had spontaneously combusted after the world was bathed in crimson. He fled from their new forms, fleeing even as others in the barracks underwent the transformations. He had been running from the screams and slaughter ever since.
The handful that had clung to their physical existence along his side had suffered the same fate as the days went on, unable to keep it together as they sought safety and answers. One after the other, they erupted in flames.
Raj alone had kept going for days afterwards. He squeezed the pamphlet held in his right hand, crumpling the paper as he protected it from the fires that licked his skin when he leapt through a pile of burning debris. His sweat had already soaked the sheet, but it didn’t matter.
The damage he endured was nothing, though he wasn’t healing the way he had when injured before. Burns had blistered and burned again, leaving him scarred, especially along his arms and legs, but the internal pain that blossomed was far worse, and even that paled compared to the fear of what would come when the corruption finally caught him.
Raj focused on the flier in his hand, unfolding it for a moment like it was a precious treasure. Originally, he had only kept the contraband as a souvenir, smuggling it on his person when he knew the taskmasters demanded all foreign propaganda be destroyed. He thought it would make an amusing poster when he finally earned his promotion to the faction, but now it was the only purpose he had left.
The first place he and the others had gone was the nearest civilization shard held by the Abundant Grasp, but it was even worse off than the perimeter base he had lived in. The city had been protected by a series of walls, separating groups of people in order of importance, but even the hardy fortifications had been consumed in the flames.
The shard was already gone and all of its structures turned to ash by the time he arrived. In their place were countless demons, straight from hell. A few had even evolved, becoming leaders of the lesser beings as they metamorphosed into an army and more and more manifested, endlessly adding to their numbers. The largest of them all sat in the middle, patiently waiting while the others raged. For what, Raj had no idea. As they let their curiosity take hold, peering at the mass of enemies from a perch beyond the previous limit of the city, the primary beast turned to stare back at them.
None of the others held it together after making eye contact, leaving Raj alone as he ran again, this time from the massive King of Demons. That was when he finally took the flier more seriously, clinging to the last vestige of hope it represented.
He stopped for a moment next to the scorched skeleton of an abandoned building in order to look at the printed pictures, more for comfort than his ability to glean additional information. The pamphlet had a message boldly written across the top half. When he snatched the paper months prior, it had been clearly legible to him, but for some reason, after the supreme voice that shook the world and took the system away, he couldn’t understand it any longer. The little circles and linear lines clued him in that the flier was designed in Korean, but Raj only understood Hindi.