The village where Boreas' house was located was within the territory controlled by the Aeterna and the joint government, but outside the town of Radford. It was located next to a large forest with practically no sign of human traces.
Nathan had only entered the forest a couple of times in his life. There was nothing really interesting there, so he had no real reason to go in. But now it was different, because it was the only way he could escape and lose his pursuers.
As soon as he left the house, it didn't take him long to run into Khan members. Fortunately Glyn was not among the group he had encountered. He supposed they had split up at some point to give themselves a better chance of finding him.
'Don't they have anything else to do?!' Nathan looked back quickly to see several Khan members chasing him. 'They're in the middle of a damn war!'
'I guess they didn't expect so little resistance from the government' thought Amelia. Nathan knew that too, but he was annoyed, nonetheless.
While the cataclysm was not as deadly as the previous ones had been, where even some of humanity's territory was lost, the permanent damage could not be ignored either. It was only thanks to the fact that over the years the force developed more to fight calamities that they were still standing.
Besides that there was some kind of struggle between Vcansire and the great whale. So the duke had not yet acted personally.
But Nathan did not care about any of that, there was only one thing on his mind now, and that was to leave the territory quickly. But first he had to escape from Khan.
He could hear the voices behind him and realized that they were getting closer and closer to him. Five members were chasing him and three of them were of second rank. While they were not particularly strong, they still outnumbered him, so he could not risk a face-to-face combat.
As he was wondering what to do, he suddenly stopped hearing the voices of the members, so he stopped and looked back with a frown on his face. He knew it was the perfect time to lose them, but he knew they hadn't stopped chasing him out of pity.
'What are you doing?' asked Amelia seeing that he had stopped.
'In this forest there are no calamities' Nathan whispered, thinking about the various options as to why they had stopped chasing him. Suddenly a scream echoed through the forest, causing the birds to fly away in fear.
There was no animal native to the earth that would be able to fight a person with essence, and certainly not in the forest, where the most there were wild dogs and at most bears.
'Are you considering investigating?' Amelia couldn't understand what Nathan was thinking, there was no use turning back. Then another scream echoed through the forest again.
Nathan quickly went to where he had heard the scream. He hid behind a tree and looked at a couple of bodies lying on the ground.
'Where are the others?' Nathan tried to look for the other three members of the group but could not find them. He frowned and stealthily approached one of the members lying on the ground.
When he saw him, Nathan frowned and grimaced. "What?"
His whole face was a greenish color, and his swollen veins were black. 'What happened to them?' Nathan wondered as he approached the other body.
'That's what your neck looks like with that calamity's poison' Amelia said. Nathan glanced sideways at the silver bracelet then crouched down in front of one of Khan's limbs and put his finger in front of his nostrils.
'He's still alive' Nathan muttered before looking around. 'So that calamity escaped into the forest...'
Nathan realized that he had made a mistake by letting that calamity live. At that moment he didn't think about the consequences of a calamity walking freely on the land, especially in an inhabited territory.
He knew the poison was powerful, but not to the level of incapacitating two second ranks. Even Nathan had survived the poison. But then he realized what the difference was between the members and him.
'The calamity has the advantage in an open area' Nathan stood up without taking his eyes off the Khan member. 'Surely the poison would have affected me like this if I hadn't been healed'
The calamity was stealthy, it could transform into a spider of a few millimeters and poison everyone and then escape and let the poison take effect. But that had not worked for Nathan, because in the basement the spider had nowhere to hide.
Nathan closed his eyes and tried to sense his surroundings, then a couple of seconds later he felt a presence a few dozen meters away.
Nathan took a last look at the Khan members, who were suffering on the verge of death. But he did not give them a good rest and left.
When Nathan approached the presence he had sensed, he saw the calamity devouring one of the five Khan members. It had transformed into a larger lizard than the ones that had been in the basement.
Nathan watched silently as the calamity devoured the poisoned corpse but did not move and continued to study it. The calamity stopped when it was satiated and slowly turned its head to look at Nathan.
The calamity hissed showing its elongated tongue but did not move, as if it had no intention of attacking Nathan.
'Now are you going to kill it?' asked Amelia.
'It would be the sensible thing to do' Nathan replied about to summon Adan's black fang but stopped abruptly when he saw the calamity begin to transform.
The calamity's body began to grow, its limbs lengthened, and its torso began to expand. But it seemed that it was having a hard time transforming because it was being slower than usual.
Nathan realized what the calamity was trying to do and frowned.
The calamity's head also transformed, and a pair of human eyes appeared on its face, then a pair of ears and a few strands of black hair.
'That's... repulsive' Amelia said as she watched the calamity's transformation.
Nathan nodded his head as he watched the calamity's failed transformation as it tried to turn into a human. His body was deformed, his limbs had no defined shape, his reptilian tail was still visible, and his torso had various lumps of misshapen flesh.
But the worst thing was his asymmetrical face. His eyes were unorganized, with one more underneath than normal. He had no eyebrows or nose, and his toothless mouth was longer on one side than the other. His ears were attached to his head and were oddly shaped. The skin on its neck was elongated and all over its body were reptilian scales.
The calamity did not continue to transform, then Nathan noticed how it moved its mouth as if it was trying to speak. Then, after a few attempts, a slight hoarse sound came from inside it.
Nathan had not yet invoked Adam's black fang, but he had no idea what to do. He could only look at the calamity with revulsion while a memory from many years ago appeared again in his memory, a memory that together with the first time he died was what terrified him in his dreams.
The calamity from the realm where Boreas had sent him, the calamity transformed into a child that had slaughtered the entire forgotten village.