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The Lonely Wolf

"Hey! What happened?" shouted a person from behind the rock.

"He got Mick! How the hell did he do that?!"

"How the hell?! It's too fucking late to ask about that! We need to get the fuck out of here before that beast jumps at us!"

"How? We're pinned down here! He's got a fucking army at us!"

"No, he's not! Chief said he's alone! He must be running around-

A silent bullet pierced through the person's head, cutting his explanation short and leaving him motionless. His dead body didn't have time to fall to the ground proper when he died. His companion looked at him and exclaimed "Fuck!" before he looked around the ruins he was pinned in.

"Okay, stay calm Teka, stay fucking calm! He's alone. Ted said it. Can't let him-

"Time's up, chump. Did anyone ever told you not to stay still in the middle of nowhere?"

Teka gulped and his whole body froze in place. He never had thought about it because of fear, but he wasn't even able to see the target anyway.

"H-how the fuck did you..."

He felt something hot and blunt pressed against the back of his head. "Oh, no," he thought. "I'm gonna fucking die..."

"Give me what I want or I blow your brain through your eyes," said the voice. "Well, fuck that. You're not gonna feel anything anyway. Just a shot and you become a ghost, instantly. I might gonna scalp you, or maybe shave you up and sell you to anyone interested in a hairless dog. I know some guys who's into that."

"You fucking psycho!!"

"Ah, that's more like it. So, talk?"

You won't get anything from me, you fucking psycho! Wyrmtooth won't let you get away once you're in his territory!"

"Either way, you're going to die. Not sure if you want to call someone Wyrmtooth. I mean, wyrms were extincts years ago."

Teka spat on the hunter's face, then made a howling sound, presumably to call the bandit leader, but to his horror and surprise, a sharp pain came to his left eye where his howl turned frantic and he was yelping like a scared dog.

"My eye! Ahh!"

"Desperate, are you? Guess that's the cue for me to get going. As for you..."

The hunter pulled out his shotgun and blasted Teka's chest, revealing his ribs and his innards plastered to the rock behind him.

"You're gonna be the bait," said the hunter while carrying the wolf on his back.

Some minutes later, a pack of canine people came to the ruin, wearing scraps and cloth salvaged from any place they could find. Decent clothing wasn't a luxury in that place, and peace was only a fantasy, with violence being observed everywhere, just like this one.

The freshly killed body of the wolfman hung by a hook near the overturned beam. The leader, a hyena person walked up and said, "I should've known your tactics, bastard. This unorthodox tactic with no regard of a person's life is unique to one hunter. Are you there, Jek Barlow?!"

There was no response.

"Coward. Burn this place down if you have to, but give me Jek Barlow's head! I will skewer him and put him on my throne where I can feast on his brains!"

Meanwhile, Jek, the hunter, was reloading his gun and looked towards the other canine people lurking around the base. As a fellow wolfman, or what his race was called as 'Loup', he knew their tactics of sniffing around with their noses. He knew it was gross, and he would smell for days, but he had found an unprocessed machina oil in the ruin before stalking and killing the two wolfmen. He knew his race better than any other, so he used it to mess up their olfactory senses. This, however, became his own problem, too, because it messed his own, too.

"Well, better like that than being blind. Anyway, that wyrmtooth guy seems like the usual retarded one. Normally I'd shoot him and leave but well, it's harder to keep him alive, but I like the extra challenge," said Jek to himself. Let's see...one tranq shot left. Dammit, I should've stock up before taking on this shit. Better than having to shave my whole fur off, anyway. Let's just hope he's not a turncoat this time."

Jek knew that even if a Loup had that kind of agility to climb all the way up to his position, they wouldn't like what's coming to get them. Wyrmtooth was just sitting in the middle, near Teka's corpse, being flanked with some of his supposedly trusted hyena people. Jek's position was superb, and he only had one shot at this.

"Time for the reap, baby," said Jek silently.

He pulled the trigger, and the laced needle pushed out as air pressure came through his modified light sniper. Jek's bet paid off when it hit the Wyrmtooth's neck. He wasn't even looking towards his position, but felt the sting.

"What the hell?" That was what Wyrmtooth managed to say before he lost consciousness, to the surprise of his crew. To prevent them to warn the others, he shot them silently.

Now, the trick he did to surprise Teka was used again here. He used the remains of a cord near the pillar where he strung up Teka's body, and slide down it like a zipline. A Loup could survive a jump from the height equivalent to the third floor, and he did just that.

Luck was on his side this time as the Wyrmtooth's minion was far too dumb to realize that their leader was down. This was, however, partially because of the oil's strong smell. Despite of being such a slender and fit hyena person, Wyrmtooth wasn't that bright. Jek took his unconscious body and ran away before they realized what's going on.

"Now with stripey here gone, I guess they won't stick around this part anymore," thought Jek while walking through the ruined city, once a flourishing civilization of magic of old. It was overtaken by vegetation and had become its own habitat, with an assortment of creatures walked around and inside the former buildings. Jek always imagined the buildings to have a reflective surface, kind of like a magitech beside him. Looters had salvaged the wreck of anything useful. The car beside him was powered by fire element, based on the crystal slot in it. The crystal was far more valuable than the wreck itself, despite of its potential of becoming operational again. It wasn't all that long since the world ended. Well, at least for the elves, anyway. A Loup's average lifespan was around a hundred or so, but it might be longer five centuries ago.

As he walked out of the city, he met with some of the traders that was making a camp. From the look of the trader's camp and the chains linked to the car he was using, Jek could conclude that this human was a slaver. Slavery was a big illegal business, but in a world with no rules, no one's going to complain anyway. You fight to survive. That's the harshness of this world. Jek, and countless others that roamed the land knew this basic rule. Those with no will to fight or too weak would be sold to slavery. This human, however, had a very bizarre taste of furless beast people. Jek didn't feel like he wanted to associate himself with the slaver, but he gave a lot of muns, anyway.

"Got Wyrmtooth for ya," said Jek while throwing the hyena person down. "I hope you don't think of me as one of your bunch."

"Nah, you're not my type anyway," said the human. "Here, as promised. 400 muns."

"Just so you know, I didn't kill the others. Well, some aren't that lucky, but I think it's best for you to leave this place."

"Huh, you actually cared. Some guys just tell me to go to hell."

"This is our living hell now."

"Joke's on them, then. Well, I should be packing up now. I can sell his gears for some muns, and his fur, too. Oh, I'm gonna love 'branding' you up."

Jek sighed and left the human to his own business. He didn't want to know his fucked-up fetish or shit like that.

"Do what you gotta do while you're alive, I guess," thought Jek.

Travelling through ruined cities had some good things and bad things. The good things were that he found things he could sell or even gears, the main and only currency around the region. The bad thing was the presence of hostile wildlife and general contamination around the parts. Even after 500 years of disaster, the death and the weapons were not properly decaying and become one with the nature.

The most troublesome of all were the necros, living corpses as a result of necromancy experiments in the past and present. It's hard to kill them physically, but using light-imbued magic could soar through them easily. Unfortunately, Jek wasn't keen on using magic, the main reason of the world ending. Also, those magic bombs were expensive.

After travelling through the ruined landscape, he finally reached a settlement. Wall City, as it was called. Made from carving the inside of a defense wall, it had sections that Jek didn't bother to explore. He just wanted a nice place he could call the day. He found a tavern block, as they said in the settlement, and caught up with beers and stuff. He didn't mind about anything as he paid for the lodgings (20 muns) and went to sleep for the day.

Of course, like many wanderers, he wasn't shy from reaping a bounty. Unlike that slaver, this actually gave a lot of muns, 1000 at best. Usually it was about hunting some food around the settlement, but Jek didn't want to do that. He wasn't a skilled tracker. He took one that was about killing a fugitive (easier to kill than to let them live).

Like many of his bounties, he finished them swiftly with no unnecessary violence, especially this one. The fugitive was special, though, and was one of the reason why the bounty is more than 3000 muns. He could use magic and was devastating at that, almost destroying the whole complex.

Luckily, Jek used his earning to buy himself a unique type of bullet for his rifle. It could suppress magic for a minute, enough for Jek to get into a killing shot. Relying entirely on his marksmanship, Jek managed to shoot and kill the mage from afar. Another job well done, he moved towards the corpse. But before that, he looked around to loot anything that's interesting or at least valuable. Being in a mage's hideout, it is expected to find a lot of magical items that will fetch a good price in the market, especially during these times.

But when Jek looked around, he could only find scraps. He expected the mage to have crystal-powered objects, but they were gone before he was even inside.

"This guy must've been too distracted with his stolen things," said Jek. "Lady luck is on my side again. Still, someone robbed me of my things. I won't know them, but they owe me one."

The fight turned out to be taking more time than usual that the day turned into night. Coupled with the dangerous roads around the part and the fact that he was in the middle of a desert, Jek had no other choice but to make firewood then threw some alchemical solutions as fuel, without knowing its effect.

"Another day has gone...," said Jek while looking at the stars. "I wonder how the others are doing. It's not like I want to be associated with them, but...having a rival feels like I have something to live for. Heh, Raine won't get to brag about it after I deliver the target's head..."

He heard rustling from behind him. He was quickly alert and pulled out his gun, but he found nothing. He scanned the area for a moment before he sighed and said, "I should've eaten those desert critters when I have a..."

He paused and looked towards the source of something, or someone, eating to their heart's content. Jek looked at the person and slowly walked towards him. He then said, "Hey, kid, this is not a shelter."

The person, clearly one of the beast races, froze in place, unable to turn around. Jek took this as a sign of fear, and he quickly turn his pistol around and hit the person with the handle. The force was apparently strong enough to make the person fell to the ground unconscious.

"I know you're hungry, kiddo, but ask permission before you...well, well, interesting to find one around here."

The food thief had a slender, small body, unlike Jek's muscular one. Like many beast races, he also had fur, but unlike many of them around that part, this one had a different face altogether. He had four-toed legs, with pinkish color on them while the fur was all black. His hands were also furless and had a pinkish hue. The notable feature he had, however, was his round ears and long tail, the only things that Jek noticed to find out that this intruder looked like a rodent. If it wasn't one of the giant rats in the plagued regions, then he only knew one humanoid rodent race.

"I think this worm-tail have something I can sell," said Jek while putting him near the fire.

The Loup then put the rat person by the fire, and waited for him to wake up. He had a lot of things to ask him.