Chapitre 4: Escape

(Shit, the sun is coming up…)

Having been on the run for most of the night, Alex still hadn't found any shelter from the soon emerging sunlight. Even as he had covered a vast amount of land with his powerful and never resting new body, all Alex ever saw was vast open fields or sparse forest which couldn't shield him from the sun. Jumping over a small lake and landing in a large tree, Alex climbed to the top of it to look around him for any signs of shelter.

"Fuck!"

But alas, there was nothing. Or so he believed at least.

(Is that?... It is.)

Spotting a scarce dirt road in the distance Alex quickly went over his options. On one hand, a road would mean intelligent life and intelligent life meant structures in which he could hide, but on the other hand, Alex's experience with that very same intelligent life was that they wanted to kill him.

(Nothing ventured, nothing gained. After all, I was supposed to be dead already.)

Viewing his current situation like he had nothing left to lose, Alex quickly closed in on the dirt road and started following it in a random direction. With the sun creeping closer and closer to the horizon, Alex increased his speed while unconsciously altering his body to run even faster as the train zoomed by.

(Come on, there must be someplace where I can hide from the sun!)

With time quickly running out as the clouds above already turning bright red, Alex realized that his time was about run out.

(There! This is going to be close!)

Spotting some sort of overturned stagecoach with thick covers over it in the distance, Alex realized that this was his only and last chance at survival, moving as fast as he could towards it.

"ARRGG! MAKE IT!"

Finding his point of entry as the sunlight slowly started to burn him, Alex crashed into the overturned stagecoach and broke through some sort of metal door into the safety of the darkness inside and collapsed out of exhaustion as his wounds slowly started healing.

Once more walking up after an unknown amount of time had passed, Alex's grogginess immediately disappeared when he noticed what was right in front of his face.

"Holy shit!"

Although he had spent a long time surrounded by corpses in his previous life, waking up staring right into the face of one still freaked Alex out quite a bit, making him examine his safe haven in greater detail. A quick glance revealed that the overturned carriage had been some sort of prisoner transport, with the internal structure being a box of solid metal, safe for the door he broke through. The numerous prisoners inside had been secured in place by collars which were attached to the walls by sturdy chains, when the carriage had overturned those collars turned to nooses for half the occupants were some of them had died faster than the less fortunate ones. On the other side which Alex now stood on things had not been better for the occupants, with no way to escape their cage most of the prisoners had died of starvation with their collars having clear scratch marks and blood smears from failed attempts of them trying to free themselves.

"Hopefully you poor souls have found peaceful rest somewhere by now…"

Being born into his old world at the bottom of society, Alex pitied the poor souls who had died without hope inside this dark carriage.

"---"

Except there was still a single survivor. Alerted by the faint and rough sounding voice Alex shifted his attention to the deepest part of the carriage to find a single surviving prisoner on the verge of death. Immediately overpowering the faint feeling of hate and aggression towards the prisoner as he himself had been in a similar situation, Alex chose to help.

"Hold on, I got you!"

Not considering his choice of words and his current form in the slightest, Alex rushed over and freed the prisoner from her chain before carefully inspecting her state. Having been chained to the side that the carriage had fallen over, the prisoner had been spared most of the harm that was associated with such a crash, but still, it wasn't looking good. Wearing no more than a dirty rag, the teenage girl with dull black eyes and dirty black hair was covered in bruises.

(Severe malnourishment and various infected wounds due to poor hygiene with a large contact wound on her neck too… This is bad.)

Taking care not to hurt the prisoner with his sharp claws, Alex carefully lifted her up before tearing off the rags she was wearing and wrapping her in some of the thick cloth from the stagecoach. Moving quickly in the scarce moonlight Alex carried the prisoner to a nearby lake where he sat her down as he went over to a nearby tree and cut it down with his claws. Carving out a rudimentary bowl using his claws, Alex started the slow and careful procedure of rehydrating the prisoner while he thought about how to get the collar which was around her next off.

"W-why?"

"Because I can. Now lay still."

Ignoring the fuss his patient was giving him Alex continued taking care of the of her while he started wondering why indeed he was helping her.

(Well… No use in thinking about it now that I have committed to this. Besides, it is nice to at least talk with someone that's not trying to kill me.)

Moving back to the overturned carriage Alex cleared out the copses and buried them by the side of the road he made a rudimentary bed for the prisoner out of some of the cloth covering the carriage and laid her down on it.

"I'll be right back."

Taking a few minutes to carefully examine the overturned carriage Alex found the remains of whoever had been driving it together with the corpse of the animal which had been pulling it, opting not to bury the driver he went through his pockets and founds some different things along with some keys.

(Now what are these for?... Found it.)

Opening up a storeroom beneath the driver seat Alex found what he had been looking for all along, the driver's supplies. Returning with some sort of rudimentary first aid kit as well as some dried meat and a fire starter Alex started a small fire right outside the carriage which he used to heat up a small pot of water and dipped some cloth into before using it to clean the prisoner's wounds, noticing that she had some sort of tail growing out of her lower back. Deciding not to think about that for the moment, as well as the animal like ears on top of her head, Alex started taking a closer look at the collar around her neck.

(Not even a keyhole… It looks like it's been sealed tightly.)

"Hold still."

Gripping the collar carefully Alex started scraping away at the metal while making sure that he didn't hit any skin.

"This is the first time I'm glad that my hands have become like this…"

Having dealt with the collar after a bit of work, Alex managed to free the prisoner from her collar, which had the effect of her becoming incredibly sleepy as a bunch of pressure had suddenly been lifted from her.

(What the hell is this world?)

While looking at the sleeping girl in front of him Alex started thinking about the things he had experienced so far, his body and its reaction to living things, the strange creature he met in the forest near the cave and those knights that had come to hunt him down.

(I really don't have enough information… Hopefully, this girl can answer some of my questions in return for saving her life.)

Walking outside the carriage Alex started examining the surrounding area, finding a crossroad about an hours sprint away with signs of significantly more traffic than the seemingly discontinued road where the carriage had overturned.

(This will be a good place to leave her once she's healed up a bit more… Or not, there's no way people will just help a random girl on the side of the road.)

Finding his current situation to be more of a problem than he realized, Alex suddenly got a headache. But that didn't stop him, after all, he had nowhere he needed to be and after having successfully escaped from the knights there was no issue with spending a long time nursing the prisoner back to health in exchange for knowledge of the world.

---

"This is not good… Check out that cave."

Standing over a corpse together with some of his subordinates, a grey haired old man in plate armour had quite a grim face. After a group of his subordinates went missing doing an assignment, the grey haired man had feared the worst, something which had now been confirmed.

"Captain, there's more copses inside the cave. It seems like it's them."

"Any signs of whatever did this?"

"There are some strange looking claw marks in the wall deeper inside, otherwise nothing."

"Hmm…"

Looking at the cave while going over his vast experience, the old knight captain figured only one kind of creature could have done something like this.

"It's a Spectre, and most likely an intelligent one as well."

Hearing the captains assessment of the situation, all the other knights around him stopped what they were doing. With such a threat to all life around it suddenly got harder for them to focus on their current jobs.

"This is not the first one of those I've dealt with and it will not be the last either! We're making camp here tonight. See to it that the corpses are brought back home and buried, I'll continue on with the elite knights and hunt this thing down!"

Boosting the morale of his subordinates while getting them to continue what they were doing, the knight captain looked calm on the outside, but inside he contained a burning rage.

(Wherever you are, I'll find you and make you pay for what you did to my subordinates!)