Jax blinked in disbelief before a slow realisation dawned on him, and his brows furrowed. "You-"

Before the man could even get a chance to spit his curses, Damon’s back hand hit the side of his face, slamming him hard into the ground.

"I see you found a new group to follow around. How about telling us a little about it?"

"Go to hell!" Jax cursed, holding the side of his jaw, which was a little crooked now.

"You know him?" Nyla asked as she stepped toward Damon.

"Yeah. He was leading the scouting groups of the central station while I was gone."

At that time, the four guards and the man from the rooftop dashed inside, their faces fueled by anger at the sight of their slaughtered companions.

Damon didn’t panic.

He stepped into the shadows the moment the first guard came through the door, reappearing behind him and putting him down before the others had fully registered where he’d gone. The second guard swung wide and found nothing as Damon was already elsewhere.

Nyla handled the second guard a moment later, her hammer crushing against his ribs with a terrifying sound of bones shattering and killing him with a single strike.

Eve’s bullets roamed freely through the air, striking the next attackers just as Damon appeared beside them, cutting them down with two quick strikes.

Putting them down was no different than dealing with evolved undead humans, nothing but a matter of when he wants to put them down, not if.

The rooftop guard was the last one standing. He dodged a couple of Eve’s bullets and even evaded Nyla’s hammer, but alone against the three of them, he was nothing but a mouse forced into a corner.

Damon didn’t use his shadow step.

He simply walked toward the man, who backed away as much as he could until his back hit the wall. He raised the curved blade of his sword to block as he saw Damon move, but neither his strength nor the quality of his weapon was enough to stop the strike as the single cut tore through both the metal and his entire torso before his lifeless body slumped to the ground.

[You have slain a Level 46 Human: Henry]

[New Monster Index bonus: +7 Strength, +5 Dexterity, 11 Vitality]

"Now..." Damon turned toward Jax, who, although he rose to his feet, couldn’t bring himself to even take a single draw of his bow, his face pale at the slaughter before him. "Let’s continue our conversation."

Jax’s jaw tightened.

His eyes moved across the room, taking in the slain bodies, Eve leaning against the wall to his left with an amused look on her pale face, waiting to see what would happen next. Nyla stood to his right, her golden hammer resting on her shoulder as she waited for even the smallest wrong move to act.

Then, Jax’s gaze moved back to Damon. "Just kill me already and be done with it."

"That might not be necessary. If you help us, who knows, we might just allow you to live to see the end of the quest."

A moment of silence passed through the warehouse until Jax’s hand, the one holding the bow, slowly dropped. It wasn’t exactly an act of surrender but rather an understanding that there was no winning in this situation.

As much as it was clear to Damon that the man hated him, it was quite clear that he prioritised one thing: his survival. And so he knew, giving him a chance to save himself, he would not hesitate to take it.

"If he finds out I told you anything, he will hunt me down", Jax said after a small pause.

"He won’t be able to hunt you down if he’s dead."

Jax’s gaze rose to meet Damon’s. "He’s not like anyone else I’ve met. He’s a former military, focused, determined..." he shook his head. "This warehouse? This is where he sends his second-rate fighters to give them something to do and gather supplies."

"How many fighters does he have?"

"Almost three hundred. And I’m not talking about people who killed a few undead humans, I’m talking about people actively taking on rifts and levelling up."

A small, almost indistinguishable frown settled on Damon’s face. For a moment, he wanted to question whether Jax was overestimating the numbers on purpose, trying to scare him off, but that wouldn’t make sense since he was putting his life on the line.

"How are they finding that many rifts?"

"South of the city is infested with them. Can’t walk a mile without stumbling onto a rift. The same probably goes for the East. Areas without citadels are overrun by monsters."

Damon watched Jax in silence for a couple of moments. His ability already told him he was telling the truth but there was still a question of whether he was going to risk bringing him in.

Suddenly, a dark figure rose from the man’s shadow.

The Dark Knight’s blade pressed against his neck, making him flinch and catching him off guard.

"Take the wrong step and your head goes. Understood?"

Jax nodded.

"Good. Let’s take what we have use for and let’s leave. We’ll continue this conversation in the citadel.

Eve and Nyla moved around to take a quick look at the supplies around them. There were canned foods, water bottles and things like batteries or simple medicine.

They grabbed what they could, a single backpack’s worth of things, before regrouping near the main entrance.

But before they could head out—

The doors beside them suddenly slammed open, and a figure stepped forward.

"What the hell is taking so long? Henry said he’ll have your heads if—"

The man paused mid-step, the sentence dying in his throat. His eyes moved across the room slowly, taking in the sight of the slain bodies, the three unfamiliar figures and Jax clearly being taken captive.

Then, his eyes moved onto Damon, and a clear realisation of the situation flashed across his face.