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Chapter 2 - THE POST-MORTAL

Kurou walked for days. The soft sand was a pain to walk on, and he was stark naked in the middle of the desert, his feet burning as they trod the scorched ground.

In normal conditions, he would have been dead by the first hours. But even under a blazing Sun, with no water or food available, he was still going. That gave him a general idea of what his conditions were now that he became something...inhuman. He still couldn't understand why, though.

But was it really important? Well, there had to be a reason for him to become freaking IMMORTAL, but right there, alone in the middle of nowhere, he had no means to find out anything.

After a long time getting mortally burned by the Sun, stung by scorpions and frozen to the bone by the stupid cold desert nights, he finally laid his eyes on what looked like a settlement.

It seemed quite the poor neighborhood, with its sandy streets and poorly dressed people. Everyone was brownish-colored, so a dead-pale naked guy was sure to create a ruckus. Kurou didn't like the idea. He found a pile of garbage at the end of a street, with some beggars laying on top of it. There were a few rags he could use from that, but he chose to rob the beggars instead.

"Hey, what you'r doin'? Gimme back my cloth's!", a beggar said, in a language Kurou couldn't understand. But he did know what the beggar meant.

"Sorry buddy, my situation is a bit worse than yours, you see", Kurou said, in his native language. The poor beggar didn't understand a word, but as malnourished a poor soul as he was, there wasn't much he could do against the Post-Mortal.

"Go ahead and do what you do, beggar. Beg around for some clothes!", Kurou said, with a cynical little laugh.

Kurou put on the battered rags and strolled around the outskirts of the dirty village, but he was just too lazy to be cautious, after all. People started to stare at him like he was some kind of alien. His undead-like walking pace and reddened eyes gave everyone the impression he was a vampire of sorts, taken straight from the old books of lore.

Reddened eyes were a gift from his Post-Mortality, but his weird walking style derived much from the carefree attitude he adopted since discovering he was basically immortal. Why would someone who will not die ever be in a hurry?

There were a few stands with some junk for sale. Nothing really important or valuable. Some carpets, jars and useless trinkets, for the most part. But there he found a place of his interest, somewhere not even a Post-Mortal man could possibly ignore: a bar.