The first thing John did was loot the katana. It had made a resounding thud rather than a metallic clatter when it had fallen from the cloaked man's senseless fingers, and it had scored a fairly deep rent in the ground, so he knew it was going to be heavier than it looked before he even picked it up. Still, the fact it put such a strain on his Level 7 Strength that he winced a little said a lot. Stowing it in his Inventory, John wasn't at all surprised to find it weighed sixty kilos. He was no expert on swords, but he felt safe in assuming that was way too heavy for a human to effectively wield.
John grimaced once that was done. Looting the sword had been meant to buy him a little time to think about his next steps, but ultimately it had killed only a few seconds. Now, he had no choice but to confront his dilemma. He had to figure out what to do with the cloaked man.
Switching out his Adamant Defence for Mana Sense, he found the four waves of monsters still coming from every cardinal direction. He couldn't help noticing that they were taking their time about it. If they'd been moving at the typical speed he knew they were capable of, they would've been here already. As it was, they'd still take a couple more minutes to arrive.
That almost made things worse. It probably would've been better to give him more time constraints, properly force him into a decision.
He was keenly aware of the child leaning against one of the upper windows, gripping the sill, stare rapt on the scene. With the enhancements given to him by his level ups, he could even hear the kid's heavy, raspy breathing, though he couldn't make out what they were half-whispering-half-whimpering under their breath.
There was no stopping his brain from working, here. Nothing to distract him. So he couldn't help but put the pieces together into a coherent theory. It wasn't like it was a hard ask.
A sick child. A desperate father. The apocalypse.
Yeah. Doesn't take a genius to figure out what's happened here, John thought, staring down at the unconscious man, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest. You chose to do whatever it took to see your kid through this, didn't you? You bastard. Why couldn't you have just been some ruthless prick who's only out for himself?
It wasn't enough to absolve the man for his crimes by any stretch of the imagination—not when there were so many other options available. But it made him more… understandable, in a sense. John didn't think he'd ever resort to the kind of measures that stained the reception area of the hospital no matter what the stakes were, but then again he hadn't been placed in that position. If it was the life of one loved one versus a hundred strangers, he liked to think he would do the honourable thing and spare the hundred, but that was easy to say when it was only a hypothetical, wasn't it?
Heaving a great sigh, John glanced between the cloaked man and his kid. The thing was, he wasn't even sure he could afford to let the man live. If the guy was ruthless enough to cut down that many people for the sake or in defence of his child, then there was no low he wouldn't sink to. No one was safe from him.
Then again, he hadn't confirmed what, exactly, the man had done yet. Maybe it had been an accident that started him down a dark path. Maybe it had been self-defence against an invading force. Maybe he'd tried every other avenue available to him before resorting to murder. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
Maybe I'm just too fucking squeamish to actually kill someone, John thought. It would've been one thing if it had occurred in the heat of battle. But now that he was standing over an unconscious, defeated opponent… He liked to think he would've been able to summon the courage to do what was necessary if the kid wasn't watching. All it would've taken was telling himself enough times that the bloodstains at the hospital's entrance area were innocents. But executing a man in front of his own child was far beyond anything John was willing to do.
But then, what to do with him?
That was, yet again, the crux of the matter. Letting him go unconditionally seemed like it should be out of the question. That would be tantamount to killing people by proxy; he had no doubt the man would continue to kill, and knowingly releasing him in those circumstances would place part of the blame squarely on his shoulders.
John's shoulders slumped a fraction as he confronted the reality that he was going to have to talk to this guy. And the kid, too, probably.
The fight had raised his Aura to 29,500, and he put 16,000 of that into Geomancy. Knowledge imprinted itself on his mind, and he took a moment to familiarise him with his new Spell's instruction manual. Slotting Geomancy gave him an awareness of the various types of stone in something like a ten metre sphere around himself, and he could shape it with hand movements like some magical rock conductor. It was a little fiddly at first, but he soon got the hang of it with some practice.
Not a moment too soon. The cloaked man was just starting to stir, groggily groaning, when John finally felt confident enough to shape a sarcophagus of stone around him, leaving only his face visible. It formed in a swirl of colour that flowed over the black cloak; muddy brown, sandy yellow, slate grey, all in a gradient of shades. He hadn't bothered to be too discerning with what kinds of rock he called up, figuring that if he made it tight enough in there and kept it pressurised with his Spell then the man wouldn't be able to move enough to get any leverage. The strength to lift a 60 kilo katana didn't translate to being able to Hulk smash your way out of a solid foot of geomantically-enhanced rock. Or so he hoped.
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With a gesture, he had the sarcophagus stand up. Faintly, he could hear the kid breathing hard, whimpering. Part of him wanted to call out words of comfort, but he felt too awkward for that. And besides, the kind of man who'd murder dozens of people for the sake of his child seemed like the overprotective sort. Probably not a good idea to engage the kid without parental supervision.
It took a while for the man to come to his senses enough to recognise his surroundings. John waited until the guy's eyes landed on him with clarity before he spoke.
"If you try to attack me, escape your confinement, or use any kind of ability, the stone you're trapped in will compact until there's no space inside it," he said. He held up a hand and clenched it into a fist to illustrate the point. At the same time, he leaned on his Geomancy to marginally tighten the cloaked man's confinement. "Do you understand?"
+600 Aura
The man gave him a dark look, but he managed to give a slight twitch of his head that approximated a nod, in his constricted position.
John resisted the urge to breathe a sigh of relief. "Good. Now, I have some questions for you." He nodded towards the child still watching from one of the hospital's upper windows. "Your kid, I take it?"
"Daddy," the kid's voice was even weaker than before, barely audible, but it might as well have been a bomb going off, given the way the man reacted.
"Claire!" He tensed in his sarcophagus, but didn't strain against his bindings. The glare he levelled on John could have melted Antarctica. It was a miracle John didn't take a step back out of reflex; he didn't so much catch himself as freeze up.
But then the cloaked man snarled, "If you hurt her, I'll make you—"
And he snapped out of it, fury burning through his fugue.
"I'm not going to hurt a kid, you cunt," he growled, then caught himself taking a step forward. John stopped, took a deep breath through his nostrils. "What's your name?"
There was a moment of silence before the man said, "Curtis Chapman."
"Well, Curtis, tell me your story." He made a gesture, and the sarcophagus slowly rotated, forcing Curtis to face the hospital's entrance, and the absurd amount of blood spilled there. "Explain this to me."
Claire watched from above, trembling against the window sill, and it was obvious Curtis had eyes only for her. "Claire, get away from the window!"
"But—"
"It's going to be okay, sweetie. Daddy will be up in a minute."
Her bottom lip shook, but she shrank back a step or two. There, though, she stopped. From what he could tell, she'd put herself at an angle where her father couldn't see her, but she could still watch what was happening.
"Curtis," John prompted with his best attempt at menace. "It's very important that you explain what's happened here."
"What's there to explain? Just look at it for yourself. It's not a mystery." Curtis grunted. His voice was tight, strained. "Had to kill 'em to survive, just like everyone else."
"Yeah? Who were they?"
Curtis didn't reply immediately, so John put some pressure on the sarcophagus as incentive. The man hissed out a string of words in a language John couldn't identify, but could still tell were curses and insults. Eventually, he ground out with the strain of a man speaking through a clenched jaw, "Patients at the hospital, obviously! Is that what you wanted to fucking hear?!"
John briefly closed his eyes. He'd been afraid of that.
"The sky caught fire," Curtis continued, "and everyone started going insane, tearing into each other, killing each other. So I put them down. It was a mercy."
John opened his eyes and stared at the man incredulously. "They all ran out into the reception area to kill each other? Why didn't they fight inside, if there was some kind of insanity-inducing effect that didn't affect you alone?"
"I never said it didn't affect me," Curtis snapped. "The hospital was being evacuated because of a fire alarm going off, so everyone was out here. And then… It was like something was burrowing into my brain. Biggest migraine I've ever had. Made me more angry than I've ever felt in my life, but…" He trailed off, fell silent for a moment. His voice was softer when he continued. "I'm not trying to make excuses here. I was in control. My power's all about Rage, so it fed off whatever that effect was. Didn't drive me insane, like the others. Not completely." He paused again. "I never even figured out which one of them was causing it. Just killed until it was gone. And then, when those monsters came through, they took all the bodies with them. Could've been anyone."
John took a second to digest that. "And, how, exactly," he asked quietly, "did your daughter survive such carnage? She looks like she can barely stand up."
Curtis' eyes turned haunted. He took a shuddering breath and whispered, "She didn't."
No matter what he tried, no matter what he asked, no matter what threats he made, there was no getting anything out of the man after that. He'd shut down, withdrawing deep inside himself. And given what he'd heard, John didn't feel like putting pressure on him with the sarcophagus, either. Even if there was still a shit ton of stuff he needed to know.
With a sigh of frustration, John turned his attention to more pressing matters. The monster waves were only a few hundred metres away, and it was only with that mention that Curtis finally regained life, suddenly struggling in his stone prison for the first time since John had outlined the consequences for doing so.
"Let me out," he begged. His eyes were wild and wet, and fixed upon the window where Claire had just reemerged. "I don't care what you do, just let me go to her. I can fly up and over the monsters."
"I don't know if I can trust you with that," John said solemnly, and at that the man suddenly looked murderous, eyes bulging. John hastened to elaborate, "But don't worry, I can get you both past the monsters myself. After that… We'll see."
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