Chapter: 257

Jay watched as Stephen began to gently rub his foot.

“It’s working” Jay smiled mischievously.

After a while, Stephen had to get down from the large boulder.

“AHH!” he screamed as he put pressure on his busted ankle.

After taking a moment to recover, Stephen began searching around the boulder.

“…What’s he doing now…” Jay wondered for a moment before realising.

“Oh right, he’s looking for his dagger.” Jay smiled, stopping himself from laughing – he didn’t want Stephen to know he was watching from a distance.

After this pathetic display, Jay had seen enough, his experiment was a success and he was still in a good mood – perhaps even a better mood after learning this trick.

“I’m not sure if his intention was to kill me, but not killing him was a wise choice – I won’t have a dead body or an investigation to worry about.”

“Besides, I don’t want to kill anyone…” he furrowed his brow.

“If I have the choice, I will choose not to. It’s not just legally wrong, but it feels wrong, and I bet my conscience wouldn’t let me sleep well.”

“Though I’m sure there’s people out there who don’t murder simply because they fear punishment… I wonder if this makes them evil – even though they have not committed the act?”

“Hmm… perhaps laws are only for those who are bad, requiring a threat of punishment to stop them?” he was getting quite philosophical as he walked through the calm woods.

Jay pondered such things as he walked through the beautiful forest, his thoughts quite contrasting to the environment.

He decided to put these thoughts aside for now, and enjoy the rest of his walk.

Jay made his way back to Losla, entering over the bridge on the north side of town.

It was pretty quiet today, and people seemed at ease as they went about their business.

Stopping at his butchery, he found no sign of Trenly.

“Hmm, I guess he’s still busy at the market…”

Little did Jay know, it was a little harder to find a carcass in the market because recently, many of the forest animals were decimated.

The scent of blood on the wind had kept away much of the normal wildlife.

“Oh well.” Jay entered his house, stocking up on some supplies – water and food.

He went to have a bath, but decided not to as he was heading to the stink-rat marsh. He was about to get much filthier.

“Hmm.. I’ll leave a message for Trenly”

He wrote a small message and put it on the butchering counter.