Wonderful Insane World-Chapter 86: Spotless Crime Scene

It didn’t take them long to return to what they called their "hideout." A partial excavation beneath a rock face, barely wider than a makeshift shelter, but it had the advantage of being dry, camouflaged, and relatively protected.

There, Élisa and Maggie gathered wood. This time, starting a fire was much easier than the previous day. The air was less saturated with moisture, as if the forest itself was offering them a reprieve. The twigs crackled quickly, and the flames rose, casting a warm, flickering glow on their faces.

The smell of grilled meat soon dominated, acrid, thick, almost overwhelming after so many hours spent hunting and fighting. Maggie busied herself around the fire with unusual concentration. She turned the pieces, monitored the juicy thighs with almost methodical precision.

She was hungry. But it was more than that. It was also a way to keep her hands occupied, to push back the residual adrenaline. To stop herself from overthinking.

Behind them, slightly apart, Dylan had isolated himself.

He had found a flat rock overlooking a small mossy slope. The kind of place from which one could observe without being seen. He had settled there, the gem in his hands, nestled in his palm like a torn-out heart.

It was heavy, warm, almost alive. Smooth as glass, but traversed inside by black striations, like veins frozen in fluid light. It pulsed faintly, like a sleeping heart.

Dylan observed it in silence.

He knew what he was going to do. What he had to do.

But he also knew the risk. The slightest distraction, the tiniest weakness, and it—that thing inside him, that creeping presence lurking in the shadows of his consciousness—would seize the opportunity. It would insinuate itself. It would bite. It would demand.

He had to be ready.

And deep down, he felt vulnerable. Not physically. No. He had endured much worse. But he knew that Maggie was never far from watching him out of the corner of her eye. Even when busy. Even distracted by cooking. Her gaze remained a blade suspended above his neck.

But now, in this brief moment of respite, she was focused on something else.

And he could finally... breathe.

He rolled the gem between his fingers. It filled almost his entire palm. And he wondered, for a moment, how something so beautiful, so cold, could have formed in such a brutal beast.

But he pulled himself together. It wasn’t the form that mattered. It was the content.

It was what it contained that would decide whether he would live or not.

He took a deep breath.

Then, slowly, he closed his eyes. His breath slowed. His mind became as fine as a silk thread. And he slipped.

Into the gem.

Into its dark light.

The absorption of essence began.

---

Dylan opened his eyes as the last filaments of spiritual essence insinuated themselves into him.

His core pulsed like a second heart, but it wasn’t just a matter of fuel. It wasn’t only the energy reserve that had been strengthened... it was as if the furnace itself had been expanded, consolidated, enlarged.

He felt a gentle, constant warmth radiating beneath his chest. A new strength, almost euphoric, flowed into his limbs. Every muscle vibrated, tense, ready to leap. He had to restrain himself from moving unnecessarily. From running. From laughing, without reason.

He was stable. But too stable. Like a glass filled to the brim with a burning liquid.

He stood up abruptly—more suddenly than he would have liked—and nearly lost his balance as the energy surged. In a few steps, a bit too brisk, he found himself near the fire, right next to Maggie, who turned her head slightly toward him, a still-smoking skewer of meat in her hand.

Without a word, she handed it to him.

Dylan hesitated, his gaze shifting from his commander’s hand to the roasted meat.

"Don’t worry, I don’t kill by poison," she said in a neutral tone. Or perhaps ironic. He couldn’t tell.

He swallowed. Then took the piece.

Though reluctantly.

"I would have preferred not to have that information," he murmured, biting into the meat.

She said no more. But he thought he saw, just for a moment, a smirk pass across her face.

The fire crackled. And the sun was already high in the sky.

Even though they had a good catch, the day was far from over, and so was the hunt.

---

After the meal, the three of them set off on the return path, retracing the trails they had carved a few hours earlier, their steps heavy with vigilance and nervous fatigue. The sun had pierced the veil of mist, casting sharp, dry, almost cutting glints on the blades of the cemetery.

They soon reached the site of the battle.

And stopped dead.

Nothing remained.

Not a bone. Not an entrail. Not a drop of blood. The ground was clean, licked, trampled, scraped—as if the world itself had wanted to erase all traces. Only a few indentations in the earth, overlapping footprints, or shards of broken stone testified that a confrontation had taken place here.

Élisa crouched down, slowly passed her hand over the ground, where dozens of footprints overlapped.

"This shows how dangerous this area is," she said, more to herself than to the others. "If we had stayed a few more minutes... we would have been spotted by their pack."

She straightened up, scanning the surroundings with her gaze.

Maggie did the same. Reflexively, her hand already slid over the handle of her axe. Her gaze searched the horizon, the ruins, the half-collapsed headstones. It wasn’t a check. It was an alert.

"You and I know we don’t hunt alone here," she said to Élisa. "So I’m not surprised."

She took a few steps, circled a rock whose surface still glistened with moisture—or something else.

"I’d even say I expected it."

Dylan, a bit further back, observed in silence.

It wasn’t the absence of a body that bothered him. Nor the suspicious calm.

It was the precision. The cleanliness.

Everything had been consumed. And quickly. Even the traces of blood had merged into the earth, as if an invisible tongue had drunk them. Only their own footprints remained. Their passage alone proved that something had happened here.

And that was precisely what worried him.

"It’s not just that they’re feeding," he said in a low voice. "It’s that they’re watching us. And waiting for us to let our guard down."

His words hung in the air for a moment.

Élisa nodded slowly, her eyes fixed on an indeterminate direction.

"Maybe they’re testing us... These creatures are intelligent. They want to know how far we can go. How far we’re willing to go."

Maggie gripped the handle of her axe a little tighter.

"Oh, how I hate being ogled..."