Lazar's attack had swept away all the Ganipotes and Garaches in its path, transforming them into a shapeless mass of viscera and torn limbs.
When Lazar thought he should bluff again to get the survivor out... A Ganipote bathed in the blood and the entrails of his pack began to make his way between their bodies.
It was only when the Ganipote managed to emerge from the mush that trapped him until then that Lazar understood that there was nothing underneath his pelvis.
Although blood covered much of his face, Lazar recognized the survivor as the leader of the pack.
Contort at the same time of pain, sorrow, and anger, Gillian began to crawl towards Lazar like a possessed with the help of his arms. The grass and the earth on the ground began to mix with his tears, his snot and the blood all over his body, making the sight of this legless Ganipote even more miserable for Lazar.
He just stared at him, letting him move forward and exhaust the little strength he had left. Moving only quickens the inevitable.
The trail of blood behind Gillian coming from his severed pelvis as well as the squirts which he vomited at closer and closer intervals indicated that he hadn't much time left.
There was no need to torture him further for Lazar, the Ganipote was clearly no longer a threat. At this point, it wouldn't even surprise him that a transformation will kill him.
"Stop here and die with dignity. You just look pitiful right now."
This didn't provoke any reaction from Gillian, he continued to crawl, inch after inch, clenching his teeth to forget the pain which was becoming untenable.
To make him aware of the ridiculousness of the situation, Lazar took a big step backward covering almost the distance Gillian had just crawled during the last 15 seconds. Indeed... Gillian had never dreamed of having a death as dishonorable as this.
'I want my death to have a meaning...'
Gillian took a deep breath of fresh air and stopped moving to keep his energy.
Gillian hadn't been there in person to see how Diane's pack had been slaughtered, but everyone was talking about it at the last assembly after the announcement of the Alphas. What had just happened was far too similar with the bloodshed that had been described to him for him to ignore who the man was before his eyes.
"Ahahahahahahahah..."
This reaction wasn't one of those that Lazar could have expected from someone he had just cut in half.
"If I were you, it would be difficult to find a reason to laugh."
Gillian's ambitions, his pack, he had none of that anymore and in a few moments, his life too was going to be taken from him. But in all his misfortune, there was indeed a valid reason to laugh.
"The Alphas have... really underestimated you."
Lazar's curiosity was piqued at the mention of the Alphas. Gillian's voice being weak, he came a few yards closer to hear him better, anyway, what could he do to threaten his life now.
"What do you know about the Alphas?"
"You really thought... that your existence was going to go unnoticed by them? But don't worry too much... they'll let you go wild... a little more."
What this Ganipote was doing was incomprehensible, by telling him that he was betraying his own kind.
"What is your interest in telling me that?"
It was very simple, Gillian considered that no other pack deserved to survive after the annihilation of his own.
"In your opinion... why do the Alphas... will not lift a finger for now?"
"Because it's in their interest I guess. But why?"
The golden rule of their race was that they had to have two priorities throughout their lives.
First, the pack to which they belong and second, the preservation of their species.
For Gillian, the second was just pure idealistic bullshit. There was only one important thing, the pack and nothing else.
"The only thing that matters to us... is the well being of our pack. But the way we are organized... means that we have to go and take what we want from the others."
The blood that Gillian was vomiting was getting darker and darker, he was nearing the end.
"So, packs are starting to take on too much power because of the Apocalypse. The Alphas are counting on me to get rid of as many of them as possible while they take advantage of them to strengthen their own packs, right?"
Despite the pain, which was only increasing, Gillian managed to smile. Like him and many other pack leaders, Lazar had managed to understand that in reality, he was serving the interests of the Alphas.
What made Gillian so happy was that they had all been mistaken about the magnitude of the danger that threatened them.
'The small and medium-sized packs aren't the only ones threatened by this man, the Alphas too would shit on them if they saw the same hostility as me in his gaze.'
The unity of the species is invoked only when a threat is significant enough to pose a problem for all packs at once. It was all the hypocrisy of this principle, there again it was only a question of protecting their respective packs.
'Preserving the species? Pff... It's only a matter of fighting side by side temporarily to avoid casualties. We did it for less than that before, the survival of the species will only depend on the ability of the Alphas to react in time...'
Gillian's eyes were losing their brightness and he was finding it increasingly difficult to breathe, it was time. His vision, although cloudy, seemed to distinguish Lazar's figure approaching him. When he saw him stop next to him, his position seemed to suggest that he was going to behead him.
Gillian was divided between an irrepressible hatred of him and the hope that he would take care of the Alphas for revenge.
Gillian breathes for the last time in his life and... hatred took over.
"You really thought... that I was going to leave what you did to my pack... unpunished!"
Lazar hadn't had the time to react.
Gillian transform his head so that in that of a wolf and he spat out all the blood that saturated his mouth at the very moment of his transformation on Lazar's leg. He died right after.
❗ [You have eliminated a beta Ganipote (E ★★★☆☆)] ❗
❗ [150 experience points obtained] ❗
Lazar immediately understood what Gillian's purpose was by doing this.
'He must have thought that I was going to run away and that by spraying me with his blood he would make me a target.'
Lazar didn't walk towards his backpack which he had hidden in a bush not far from here for his withdrawal. Instead, he went to the corpses of the members of Gillian's pack.
'Sorry to thwart your plans but I never thought of running away.'