Jacob used a Formation to check how virulent the plague was.

Sadly, the information he got was not good.

He was still kneeling on a flesh body he had found on the streets. Helena, crouching on his side, had a slight frown on her cold face.

“That big stain is not good, I gather.”

Jacob shook his head.

She was talking about the Formation. It was a very simple threat evaluation, a drop of blood would fight the disease. The larger the stain, the more the blood was ‘losing ground’ to the disease.

“It will not affect us,” Jacob recognized, “but it will kill all these people if we don’t stop the guy.”

He got up and looked around.

Sadly, there were no easy answers in sight.

He could try his Alchemy, but he already knew he would barely be able to save a few hundreds. And even then, it would take him too long to manufacture a cure. Not only few would survive, but they could get re-infected; in the meanwhile, all the others would die.

His only solution was to find the Plague Doctor.

There was mud on the street. It was such a strange sight in the modern era, albeit one he had been used to in his past life; then, one could judge the living condition of a city simply by how clean their streets were. Cultivators or not, the administration of a large center was never easy.

“I’m surprised people didn’t lose it.”

Jacob turned to look at Helena with a tired face.

Sometimes, it took a lot out of him. What? Explaining things. He saw things that other people did not see. Juliet could at least tell through the Ancestral Bond. But when it came down to the rest of the people, the normal ones, as Jacob thought of them, it was harder.

“These people believe in Hektor. He fought nail and tooth to save them and now they are only left with that image. They believe because it’s the only thing they can do.”

“Should we quarantine?” she asked.

“It would be useless. The Plague Doctor is here. We either kill him or all these people die.”

He grimaced.

What else could they do?

“Come, I want to see the beach,” Jacob told Helena.

…

Tentatively, Jacob got his feet slightly wet in the the familiar sea.

I used to come here for the holidays, didn’t I?

There were no monsters in sight. Some of the safety of this place was attributed to some troops Hektor had sent back as soon as he had heard of the plague. Well, sent back wasn’t the proper definition. They had volunteered even if they knew about the risks.

With a grunt, Jacob tightened his grip on Kevin’s handle.

He was here.

“You know,” Jacob turned toward Helena, who was holding her sneakers up and threading the water with her bare feet, “I hunted the guy already. Barely got any clue about him. Even the expert after him was a complete mystery to me.”

“Always positive.”

Jacob laughed at Helena’s remark.

“Just a little desperate, sorry.”

The sound of the waves was comforting, a light lullaby to Jacob’s senses.

“Are we here – in the water, I mean – for any reason?”

“Meditating on what to do.”

“Shouldn’t we begin from where it spread and—”

“It’s not going to work,” Jacob cut her off. “You could have the guy in front of you and it wouldn’t work. I’m thinking of a solution.”

Helena stared at Jacob. He had taken a few steps and was now giving his back to her. She could tell something was off. It wasn’t even hard to guess. Someone could argue that you didn’t need to guess what was wrong since Jacob had just said it: there is no way they were going to catch the guy.

“There is a very interesting theory regarding the Plague Doctor,” Jacob spoke, “it’s one of the wildest theories on how the mysterious expert got to him.”

Jacob turned, this time with a grin and a rejuvenated expression.

He had almost forgotten about that crazy story.

“One school of thought postulated that great individuals will meet. See,” he continued, excited, “they don’t just believe that somehow strong people will meet. No, it’s more complicated than that. It was a group of researchers on Karma. They described a phenomenon of attraction between great powers, especially if they are opposite to each other. Some say that my great battle with The Necromancer was fated and that it had to be me killing him. It sounds like it came out of a lowbrow fiction loosely based on The Lord of the Rings, I know. But there is something there…”

The waves seemed to get a little taller while Jacob was speaking so profusely.

“If you want to catch a big monster, just throw a big hero in the forest. Hektor slayed some of the craziest motherfuckers on Earth. One could argue that he did that because he’s Hektor. Ha! And what if those Karma nuts were right, huh? What happens if there’s truly this law of attraction? Time Magic and Undead Magic don’t play well together. One could argue they are the almost opposite in nature. Some said that Life Magic is much more—you get it. Anyway, if we want to catch The Plague Doctor, I think we can just sit on our asses and wait for someone to speak to us.”

“That’s not the greatest plan.”

Helena started getting out of the water while gazing at the city’s buildings.

One way or another, they had to find the guy.

And she would slay him herself.