Surgit was standing at the foot of the clock tower. The beast patients hadn’t come looking for him but he was faced to another type of danger. He was faced to a hunter who stood a few paces away from him. He seemed to screen him and assess the best way to attack him. Surgit felt uneasy and analyzed the hunter too.

The weapon he was holding was slightly different from his saw cleaver. It looked like a giant barber’s knife too, with a wooden handle and a blade attached to it on one extremity. The blade was folded and it looked pointy, unlike his saw which was flat. The hunter stood still though, unwilling to make his first move. “I get it now” he said to the hunter, “You’re waiting for me to get there and get filled with bullets from the Gatling gun guy up there. Nice plan, but it won’t work.” The hunter didn’t reply or move, which confirmed Surgit’s suspicion. He took his gun out and shot at the hunter. The latter dodged the attack and looked at Surgit, as if telling him: Is this all you can do?

Surgit was irritated since he couldn’t get the silent hunter to move and he was afraid of turning his back to him. He decided to use the same strategy that was used against him. He turned his back and headed towards the cathedral. He heard footsteps approaching him from behind but decided to keep moving as if he had lowered his guard.

As soon as the hunter came close enough to attack, Surgit ceremoniously performed a somersault and landed behind his assailant. With a swift swing of his weapon, Surgit elongated it as it emitted a metallic clicking sound. “Let’s dance!” He shouted at the silent hunter.

The battle promised to be difficult and heavily reliant on skill. The hunter was agile and extremely fast. Surgit had barely enough time to finish his sentence when a vertical swing brushed his right shoulder. He had dodged the attack by a hair’s width.

Surgit retaliated with a horizontal swing from his elongated cleaver. Using the long version of the weapon was useful in close quarter combat. The opponent didn’t always have enough time or space to dodge its reach. But Surgit was facing an adept hunter who jumper above the attack and shot at him.

Surgit quick stepped to the left and shot the airborne hunter. The shot connected and threw the mute hunter to the ground. Surgit quickly jumped at his foe and slammed his saw towards him. Sparkles flew off the ground as the saw made contact with the cobble stones. The hunter had quickly rolled backwards and avoided Surgit’s attack.

“Well, that’s promising. He’s pretty good. But not as good as Gascoigne.” Surgit dashed towards the hunter and swung his cleaver in a Z motion. He knew that the hunter would dive under the first attack so the lateral swing would be enough to immobilize him. And immobilize it did. The lateral swing cut the hunter’s chest open while the last horizontal attack grazed his knees and brought him to the ground. Surgit smiled as he stood on top of the hunter. He held his saw with both hands and prepared to execute the poor soul.

Intense pain stopped him on his tracks. It felt like when you miscalculate a jump, land and break your leg. You do not realize that you have broken it at the moment, but only when the adrenaline rush subsides. Then panic and pain bring you back to reality. You check your leg and find it folded in a weird angle. Then you realize: Oh shit I broke my leg.

Surgit had at least three bullets inserted between his legs. He didn’t hear the shots as he was concentrated on finishing his opponent. The latter had kept his cool despite his fatal injuries and shot Surgit to the balls. Surgit howled and wimped like a dog that had just been thrashed would. “You shot me in the balls!!” he shouted at the silent hunter. Surgit swore the hunter was smiling underneath that scarf he wore, which masked half of his face.

Surgit immediately injected two blood vials in his bloodstream. His wounds closed but his organs didn’t grow back. “I hope for your sake that these grow back once I’m back at the dream!” He shouted at the hunter as he slashed at him relentlessly. “Otherwise, I will look for you in the underworld, I will find you, and I will kill you!! Again!!”

Surgit was drenched in blood. He had gone berserk and didn’t even notice it. The hunter lay at his feet, motionless. He didn’t even know how he had managed to dispose of him or how much time it took him to do so. All he knew was that he was kicking a head that had been decapitated while shouting all manners of insults at it. He took out his gun and emptied it on the mangled corpse.

‘No amount of bullets would replace what you have just lost’ said a lone voice in his head. “I’m really not in the mood to listen to your taunts right now!” His voice came back to him in echoes. He was standing at the foot of the clock tower; the cathedral’s entrance just a few steps away from him. He stood next to a railing that gave a vista over the valley below. The hollowness of the valley echoed his voice.

After silence had settled over the place, he felt lonely again. He was surrounded only by beasts or humanoid beings that wanted him dead. He missed human contact and intellectual exchange. At least when he was sick and looking for a cure, people had reacted to his appearance. They either shunned him or pitied him. He hated that but at this moment he started missing people’s reactions.

His sickness was a curse, but how is getting healed and receiving blood ministration any better? He switched from being spurned by people to being attacked by beast. Their ship had sunk and he had no other way of leaving the city. The only clue he had was to find something called Pale Blood. He didn’t know what that meant and the rare sane people he’d met in the city didn’t know anything about it.

Unlike Francis, he wanted to get better and leave the city. He wanted to resume his life in his hometown. Now he had to fight beasts and find more information about a mysterious blood no one had ever heard of. On top of it all, in the process of seeking this Pale Blood, he managed to orphan a little girl, get her killed. As if that wasn’t enough to make him feel bad about how he managed the situation, he had to lead Karla to an uncharted area and get separated with her. “And now I have lost my balls… can this day get any worse?”