Wonderful Insane World-Chapter 109: Moonlit Reckoning

The night had passed quickly. Dylan hadn’t slept. It was his turn to keep watch, but more than that, he was reluctant to willingly surrender to sleep—those ever more violent nightmares that haunted him whenever he closed his eyes.

In fact, Dylan had never thought he’d one day fear the embrace of sleep. As a soldier, sleep had always been a sanctuary. Their only restorative moment. A place where, if only for an instant, they could escape. Far from war. Far from a ruined world.

But now... he was in another world. Far from war. Far from air saturated with radiation.

And yet, it was here that he found himself fleeing his dreams.

Ironic, isn’t it?

As an Awakened, Dylan could go several days without sleep. But if he abused this ability too much, his body would eventually draw from his own essence to compensate for the missing energy. He would end up collapsing.

He could afford this sleepless night. Just one. Without even feeling tired.

And that proved one thing.

That he had become more than human.

The day hadn’t even begun, yet the trio was already preparing. Élisa, silent, was putting on her t-shirt. Maggie, kneeling, was tightening her laces with an almost ritualistic precision.

It must have been around four in the morning. The sky showed no sign of day yet. Dawn was absent, replaced by a persistent mist and a cold that clung to the skin.

But that didn’t matter.

They were going hunting.

Today was D-Day.

And up there, in the sky, the moon was shining.

Later, it would be the full moon.

⸻

The fire had been out for a while, leaving only glowing embers, lazy, casting shifting shadows on their faces.

The camp remained silent, but it wasn’t a heavy silence. Rather, it was the silence of three people who didn’t need to speak to know what had to be done. Everything had already been said the night before, around the fire, between bites of meat, between glances exchanged half-word.

They knew.

Today was a pivotal day.

They had until evening, until nightfall—and especially, before the full moon reached its zenith—to kill, harvest, and return. Because after that, the territory would become another world. More unpredictable. More dangerous. The beasts would change.

And they would no longer be the hunters.

But perhaps the prey.

Dylan was crouched near the edge, his gaze lost in the still-dark veil of bamboo. His shoulder was fine. The stigma on his back had remained silent all night. No reaction. Just that unsettling calm, like a sword sheathed—without knowing if it would cut better... or crumble at the first blow.

"We sweep the south up to the ridge," Maggie said without lifting her head. She was finishing tightening the straps of her axe. "The markings left the day before yesterday confirm that a pack has settled in the rocky hollows. Two, maybe three mid-tier third-rank beasts."

Élisa nodded. She adjusted her daggers, the movement precise, fluid.

"We take them down quickly, retrieve only the anima gems, and nothing else." freёnovelkiss.com

Dylan finally stood up, his gaze lingering on the mist that had yet to yield.

"And if we come across something bigger?"

Maggie replied without hesitation:

"We mark. We retreat. And we come back later."

This wasn’t the time to play heroes, and even less the time to overdo it.

Especially today.

Because at sunset... everything would change.

They left the camp without a word.

Each already knew what to do. There were no speeches, no detailed plans spoken aloud. They moved as one body, formed by habit, danger, and hunger—the real kind, not limited to the stomach.

They became shadows among the bamboo.

Dylan brought up the rear, his gaze gliding from root to stone, from shadow to reflection. His body moved without constraint, light and fluid. The stigma was still there, etched raw into his flesh, but he didn’t feel its weight.

Or at least, not yet.

Élisa had moved ahead, silent, supple, feline. Her oversized military pants were rolled up to allow mobility, her daggers already drawn, held in reverse grip, ready to strike or slash at the slightest pulse of foreign essence.

Maggie, in the center, advanced without hiding. She didn’t walk: she advanced. Her pace was neither hurried nor slow. Just... heavy. Solid. As if each movement was calculated to break whatever stood in her way.

They weren’t tracking yet.

But they were no longer mere travelers.

Their presence sliced through the mist.

The territory was slowly changing around them. Less light. Fewer sounds. The bamboo seemed denser. The humidity, thicker. And in the air... something vibrated, very low, like a forgotten hum.

Being all three sensitive enough to feel any violent disturbance in the ambient spiritual essence, they sensed nearby the presence of the closest beasts.

Élisa raised a fist as a signal to stop, and they obeyed without question, just three heartbeats aligned with one another.

She knelt, sniffed the air, her fingers brushing a leaf bent by a recent passage.

"Three pairs of paws. Clawed. No hooves," she whispered. "Smell of copper."

"Those demonic wolves again?" Dylan asked in a low voice.

Maggie slowly nodded.

"Likely."

She drew her axe with a slow, almost ceremonial gesture. The steel emitted a muffled growl as it brushed against the leather.

"Keep in mind the enemy is in a group."

They exchanged a glance.

And that was all.

Then they began to move.

And this time... they were no longer a group.

They were predators.

Each moved apart, forming a wide arc to encircle the area.

The trap was being set.

And in the shadows... the others had also begun to hunt.

They moved slowly, but the tension accelerated. Their entire bodies spoke the language of the hunt.

Élisa slipped between the stalks like a shadow that listens, observes, gauges. Dylan stayed back, but his steps were sure, precise, calibrated to be forgotten by the ground, and Maggie, she barely advanced, but each stride already seemed to deliver a blow.

Nothing was exchanged. No glances, no unnecessary gestures. It wasn’t needed. Everything had been integrated, planned, rehearsed into their flesh. The rhythm of their steps, their silences, the other’s breathing. The balance of a human pack about to face another.