Sovereign of the Karmic System

There was no escape.

The feeling of defeat made its way into the mind of this group. They didn’t even have the time to cry for the loss of one of the member of their group, and now they were already going to die. Daniel on the other hand, was looking at them while shaking his head in disappointment.

While it was true that they were doomed, they had given up before fighting, and that, was unacceptable for somebody who had lived in a world where cultivation existed.

He remembered how many times he had been chased by Phyrri’s guards, or by the criminal organizations who used the traffic of merchants as their personal bank withdrawals and never accepted his presence in the city, or when he had to escape from the beasts in the forest right outside of the city.

He was weaker, had been beaten up constantly, and yet he never given up.

Once his mind went back to those moments, while proud of having been able to survive on his own, he couldn’t help but think about the fact that he would have really needed a bit of help in those times. So, he turned to look at the door that lead on the back of the shop, and with a sword that had appeared in his hand out of nowhere, he opened it and walked out.

"STOP!!" Shouted Hannah after noticing Daniel walk out. The rest of the group also looked in shock at his actions.

"What the hell is he doing?!" asked Josh while dashing towards the door, and pressing the side of his head against it in an attempt to hear what was happening.

"Fuck!.. If we have to die we might as well get over it quickly.." Said the man in glasses as he built up his courage and grabbed his gun from his backpack, and looked at it as if it was an escape from a painful death.

Hannah turned to look at the rest of the group, which were now considering the idea of putting a quick end to their sufferings instead of being devoured alive by the dead ones. The will to survive had never left her mind. Her group had survived for months, and she couldn’t accept that everything was going to end like this. However, for the life of her, she couldn’t think of a way to save her friends.

Every second that she spent in silence, for her group, was a second more spent considering the easy way out..

"It’s not even a discussion.. Alan’s screams as those two corpses bit chunks of flesh off of his legs and stomach. The horror on Han’s face as he watched his family being ripped to pieces and eaten.. I cannot die like that." Said the man in glasses as two tears formed in his eyes, and he looked at his gun with a disturbing form of affection.

The twins looked at each other in an attempt to understand what the other was thinking.. Without saying a word, they already knew that they too would have rather die like that than being eaten alive.

"We can try to force our way out.." muttered Alex with a crazed expression. The guilt was weighing on his mind, causing him to slowly lose his mind.

Hannah was still angry at him for causing this situation, yet, she looked at the faces of her companions, hoping that they wouldn’t discard the will of surviving right away.

Natives of this city, the two twins had always worked as the scouts of this group. They knew perfectly well that there was no way for them to survive even if they wanted to. The grocery shop was near a park, and was within a commercial area. The outbreak had happened during a holiday, and the banners of sale were all over the street. There was no worse time or place for them to be in the entire city.

The man in glasses was touching his gun.. Moving it increasingly closer to his head as his expression displayed deeper and deeper levels of desperation and sadness.

The only one that had been quiet so far, was the taller young man, whose expression, at some point, had gone from one of worry to one of confusion.

"What are you thinking about, George?" Asked Hannah while walking closer to him.

George, which had said nothing until now, turned to look at her, and muttered "Did he always have a sword?" These few words were enough to distract the two twins from their spiraling state of mind, however, they were not enough for the man in glasses, and Alex, which appeared to be going crazier by the moment.

While the four were looked at each other in confusion, a sound came from behind them.

*Click*

The four turned to look back in horror, and there, they saw the main in glasses breath heavily, and tremble like a leaf in the wind. His gun was pointed at his head, and he had just pressed the trigger.. Fortunately, the shot hadn’t been exploded.

"FELIX!" Shouted Hannah before marching towards the terrified young man, and slapping the gun off of his hand. She then grabbed the collar of his shirt, and was prepared to give him a speech that could set his mind straight, but not one word came to her mind. Instead, she looked at the desperation shown by his eyes, and hugged him.

Felix barely felt the touch of Hannah’s arms, and all he could think about was his failed attempt. His gun had ammos, he had always cleaned it religiously, and the safe was off. It had never failed him before.. This had been the first time.

"It’s not all over.. We just have to find a way out of this. We can’t do it if we give up." Hannah muttered in Felix’s ear as she squeezed her arms around his torso.

Unfortunately, her words didn’t have the effect that she had hoped for, and before she could react, Felix had already grabbed the handgun that was in her holster, and pulled it out. He then pushed the girl away with his shoulder, and pointed the gun at his head. "This is the only thing left to do.." He said apologetically in between sobs.. Then.. *Click* One more time, Felix had failed to take his own life.

"What are the chances?.." muttered James in confusion.

Due to the dangers that the apocalypse had brought to their life, they had been forced to adapt. They had soon learned how to take care of their weapons, and how to keep them always ready to shoot at all times. To have a gun fail in that time and age spelled death.. So while it was strange that one of their guns had failed, two in a row was absurd.

It had taken all of Felix’s courage to pull the trigger twice, and now that he had failed a second time, his legs gave up and he fell limp on the ground.

The rest of the group looked at their companion without knowing what to say.

The silence was so deafening that they could hear their own breathing, and in their mind, every second was a step closer to death.

However, a question which came from George’s mouth distracted them from their state of mind. A simple question, and yet, a question that gave them a spark of hope to hang on to. "Why is it so quiet?" He asked as his eyes narrowed, and lips curled up almost as if in an attempt to sharpen his hearing.

This question thundered in the minds of his companions, causing their desperation to disappear, and for more question to pop into their heads.

"Yeah, why is it so quiet?" Asked Josh before once again moving his head closer to the door.

The very moment Josh’s ear touched the metallic door, the handle bent downwards, and the door was pushed open. Behind it was Daniel. His clothes were perfectly clean, and not even a drop of sweat could be on his face.. Just calmness.

Without bothering to close the door, Daniel entered the store and walked towards Felix. He then sat on the floor right where he was sitting a couple of minutes earlier, and grabbed the dish of canned beans that the group had given to him earlier.

"SHUT THE DOOR!!" Screamed Hannah to the top of her lungs after noticing that the door had been left wide open. However, there was no response to her order. Josh was standing paralyzed in front of the door with eyes and jaw locked.

Except for Felix, which was still shocked by the failed suicide attempts, the rest of the group ran towards the door. What they saw later, hit them harder than a slap to the face.

The alley connected to the back of the grocery store was filled by corpses just like they expected, and yet, none of them was moving. Instead, they were lying beheaded on the ground. Their numbers were in the hundreds.

"Did you do this?" Asked George to Daniel while the rest of the group stepped out of the store, and walked down the alley in shock.

While not being able to say a word, nor to explain how somebody could do something like this, the weight that was pressing down their hearts had been finally lifted, and their will to survive had come back stronger than ever.

"Check the end of the alley.. See if there is a route we can take that isn’t full of dead ones.." Said Hannah while looking at the clean cuts that parted these corpses’ heads from their bodies.

Unable to understand what George had said, Daniel gave a second taste to the beans he had been given earlier, and for the second time, he was unable to swallow them. Beans were a common food in his planet too, and this canned version was nowhere near as appetizing as the worse homemade version he had eaten in the past.

After seeing that Daniel had no intention of responding to his question, George turned to look at Felix, and said "You better come and see this.."

George’s words were finally able to shake Felix out of his shock, and convince him to weakly stand up from the ground. He couldn’t understand why everyone had left and they hadn’t died, so he decided to listen to George, and walk towards the door.

However, as soon as he stood up, Daniel appeared in front of him. In his hand, he was holding felix’s gun.

Seeing Daniel disappear and reappear in front of felix in an instant was a shock to George, which muttered "How.. H-How did you.." His surprise was short-lived, as Daniel pointed the gun at Felix’s head and moved his finger in front of the trigger. "What are you doing?!" He asked with worry before turning towards the opened door, and shouting "GUYS! GET BACK HERE!!"

In a matter of seconds James, Hannah, and Alex walked back into the back of the shop.

"It’s alright.. The gun is jammed." muttered Felix to his companions.

Almost as if understanding Felix’s words, Daniel pointed the gun upwards, and put pressure on the trigger. *SPA!* A bullet was exploded by the gun without a problem, sending a shiver down Felix’s back which doubled down the moment Daniel pointed the gun back at him.

Daniel did not shoot, and instead made the gun roll around his finger until the grip was pointed in Felix’s direction.

Felix took Daniel’s action as a rude way to give him back his gun, but that was not all. The moment Felix grabbed the gun, it stuck tightly to his hand, and he was unable to let go of it. At the same time, the gun moved to the side of his head.

"I AM NOT DOING THIS!!" Shouted Felix in panic.

After the barrel of the gun was lined up with his head, his index was finally released, and he was able to move it once again. He carefully kept it away of the trigger in order to avoid pressing it by mistake, and at the same time, he was trying to force the gun off of his head.

As the rest of the group looked in worry, a single word spoken in the planet’s native tongue had come out of Daniel’s mouth. That word, was ’Shoot’.