“So, the zone around L’Aquila is still surrounded by Oriole Realm monsters, right?” Helena asked.

“Yep,” Jacob said with a frown. “If we meet one of those monsters, you two will need to care care of it. Right now, unless I use a Forbidden Technique, I won’t be able to fight one off.”

“And what if we meet a Hound Realm monster?”

“I’ll take care of it,” Juliet said with a deadpan tone. “I can probably kill one.”

Helena snorted.

“Yeah, sure,” she said toward the driver. “You just crossed the Oriole Realm, how do you expect to fight a Hound Realm monster?”

Oh, man, please Juliet, don’t tell her.

Jacob knew why Juliet had said something like that and he was now wishing she would just shut up.

Juliet briefly turned her gaze toward Jacob and smiled at him, before focusing again on the road and slightly raising her voice to speak louder.

“Jacob taught me a powerful Forbidden Technique that I can use and not die to thanks to my Hidden Constitution,” the Phoenix girl declared.

A weird silence spread throughout the car.

Well, this is almost as bad as the questions about my sexual life with Epagogia, I guess.

Jacob wasn’t sure why they couldn’t just talk about the weather or if they could catch some fish in St. Liam.

“You jealous?” Juliet asked with a grin in her tone.

“I’m not a child,” Helena immediately offered, “I’m happy that you can use a Forbidden Technique that would put you to bed for a month and probably stall your cultivation for even longer. I encourage you to use it, in fact. I can’t wait.”

Jacob sighed.

Catfighting.

“Can we play nice, even just for a second?” Jacob said, trying to smoothen things over. Not that he was under any impression that just saying something like that would be enough. So, he added: “The Plague Doctor will poison us too. Juliet is immune and so am I. Helena, your own body is strong enough that it should be basically impossible for you to die to it. In case the sickness was stronger than I previously imagined, we will fashion a specific cure for you based on Juliet’s blood.”

“Or… we could leave her to die,” Juliet proffered.

“As I was saying,” Jacob ignored the freckled girl. “The Plague Doctor will never admit he’s the Plague Doctor. Flushing him out will require a great degree of care. We cannot alarm him of our presence. Our best bet is just going there and trying to understand where the curse came from. Do not start questioning people or act unnaturally. Just do whatever you would do in that situation. The Plague Doctor is still weak at this stage and we might catch him by simply waiting long enough among those people.”

“So, we have no plan?” Helena asked, surprised.

“The plan is wait for someone to approach. The Plague Doctor might hide in plain sight.”

“Have you considered killing the entire city?” Juliet asked with a frown.

“They have tried that multiple times and it didn’t work,” Jacob sighed. “Even if I knew it would work, I would not sacrifice thousands of innocents like that.”

“Neither would I,” Juliet murmured.

“If it meant saving millions,” Helena added, “it could be worth to entertain such a thought.”

Jacob turned from his seat toward the blonde girl with wide eyes.

“What? I’m not saying I would kill all these people. I’m saying that maybe some solutions will be bloody, no? You are the one who executed the rapists in Blacksoil by telling teenagers to do it.”

“We’ll see,” Jacob shook his head.

…

Their travel went surprisingly smoothly. Hektor had posted patrols all over the roads to make sure they wouldn’t degrade too fast because of monsters and they even waved to some of those people.

Their arrival in St. Liam was thoroughly anticlimactic, to be honest.

But, once they entered the city center, they saw that the streets were almost empty, and that a huge column of smoke came from the direction of the sea.

“Funerary pyres,” Jacob said somberly.

“How many people died so far?” Juliet looked uneasy.

“Hektor said several hundreds. The city right now is housing almost its full capacity, even though many are refugees from other cities. Hektor said that the initial attack halved the population. Considering the kind of monsters that should have spawned here, I’m surprised. He truly is a monster.”

“Were there Oriole Realms monsters when the apocalypse started?” Helena asked. She already knew the answers since the Vermillion Tyrant loved to tell stories, but she needed confirmation.

“Yes. Hektor had to power-level to the Mantis Realm in a day and then started killing the Oriole Realm Demonic Beasts while risking his own life.”

The two girls looked at each other. They had had a week to prepare for the Charybdes-infested Fort Mountain, and it had almost killed them when they had met a Mantis realm Charybdis.

“How long will it take for us to become that strong?” Juliet muttered.

“It’s not a matter of how long, but how many times you will survive death. Hektor has danced with death more times than you can imagine. I think that even the close meetings he had in this new life of ours made him marginally stronger. But, when every edge can help you surpass your enemy, that becomes really dangerous really fast.”

“A friendship with the Grim Reaper,” Helena said.

“The Grim Reaper, incidentally, is the name of another Tyrant.”

“Yet another freak,” Helena sighed.

The trio looked around and unfastened their seat belt.

“Let’s get to work, then,” Juliet parked the car on the first free space and got out.