Tag, You're It!

The man with dreadlocks had gotten quite furious at this point. From his stumbling, the flame of his torch was reduced somewhat, but there were still enough embers for it to start up again.

"I'm over here!"

Jack called out teasingly as he began running in a direction, giggling all the way.

The man in dreadlocks grit his teeth and sprinted, not wanting to delay this for another second. As for the sounds, they began to drop off. This time, instead of going where he predicted Jack would be, he remained in place, closing his eyes to capture the sound as precisely as possible.

Then, he heard the sounds of slight shifting gravel in another direction.

A smile formed on his face as he rushed in that direction.

"That's not going to work for you this time!"

The shifting of gravel became more intense, making the man think that the kid was panicking. Soon enough, he was able to make a rough figure of a child standing in front of him.

"You're dead now, kid!"

"Hehe, that's not me! But nice job catching someone else!"

Jack's voice came from a distance and was in fact quite far away. This made the man with dreadlocks furrow his brows. He held out the torch a little further, using the embers to get an actual look at what was in front of him.

It was definitely something that had the body of a child, granted it was shriveled up and wrinkled almost like a shirt that wasn't ironed. Though the elephant in the room was definitely the head, which was several meters tall, deformed so that its open mouth took up most of the height.

It was running over to the man slowly, but excitedly, and let out a wail like a baby.

"AA-"

Just as the man let out a scream, it was cut off right after, along with a rather gruesome crunch, like someone tore off the leg of a whole chicken. Though as that happened, Jack let out a displeased voice.

"What? Did you kill him? Hey, you're not supposed to do that! My Dad said it was bad to kill people!"

The monster let out a wail amid crunching sounds, almost like it was disagreeing with him. To this, Jack continued to push back.

"He just wanted to play tag and you would have joined! Now look what you've done, there are less people to play with!"

The monster let out a wail awfully reminiscent of a baby crying. From the sounds of gravel, it looked like it was walking away.

As for everyone else, there seemed to be a chill that spread as they realized what happened. The woman commanding them let out a long sigh.

"That dumbass..."

Jack let out a sad hum.

"...Was I too harsh? It looks like he doesn't want to play tag anymore. But still! He did something wrong!"

On the other side, Jessica and Mia began backing off, with Mia taking the lead. Although she was unsettled by the sounds in the distance, she didn't forget about her own situation.

For them, they no longer needed to take this fight, since the man was both bleeding and burning. And while the man was resisting the pain amazingly, it still impacted him greatly. Even more so when he heard the cry of his companion get cut off so suddenly.

While he was still stumbling forward, it didn't last very long as the man collapsed to the ground, unable to move anymore.

The woman from earlier cursed several times when she realized both of her allies were now dead.

"Those idiotic bastards!"

As for Jack, he was pondering over his situation for quite a while.

"Hm... I guess if the person that's it doesn't want to play anymore, I can be it instead!"

His footsteps were rather clear, skittering around for a moment. But soon enough, they disappeared completely. By now, practically all the light sources had been snuffed out. The only real light came from the few flames still on the middle-aged man's body, but they were hardly doing anything.

The woman began sweating a bit, looking around nervously before she began running.

While she didn't think that she would lose against them, she was still rather wary of the monster that had killed someone already, thus wanting to get out of there as soon as possible.

Yet, as she started running, the sounds of someone's footsteps also came from beside her.

Then, she suddenly felt a strong pain coming from her shoulder.

"Tag! You're it!"

Jack's cheery voice rang out. The woman groaned in pain while still running away desperately. She had no intention of sticking around any longer than usual. However, the pain in her shoulder continued to grow, to the point that she could no longer ignore it anymore.

With grit teeth, she pulled out the object lodged into her shoulder. However, the pain didn't subside at all. Instead, it just continued to grow rapidly. This confused her, wondering if she had been poisoned.

However, it did not take long for her to recognize the object in her hand. It was a broken half of a torch. With a frown, she decided to just continue running, despite the numbness that was spreading throughout her body.

She eventually got far enough until she couldn't hear anyone else. Though by now, she was incredibly tired. The feeling of numbness had nearly spread through half of her body, making it hard to move forward.

In fact, she found herself unable to move one of her hands already.

The woman felt the side of her shoulder with her remaining hand.

Yet, it felt like a rock more than anything. She furrowed her brow, thinking maybe she was feeling the wrong area. Though, as her hands traveled to other places, she found that it continued throughout most of her body, including the neck.

Most of her skin had dissolved and hardened. The blood could no longer travel through those parts of her body. Although it hadn't completely covered her neck, it still prevented half of the blood from going through.

And it was still slowly spreading.

In other words, it wouldn't take long for the heart to be unable to get blood to her head anymore. It took a little while for this realization to settle in. And when it finally did, she simply sat there.

Right on the cold stone floor surrounded by complete darkness.

This was how she slowly died.

Jack and the others were unaware of this. They heard her run off and didn't bother chasing. Eventually, Jessica called out when she thought things were fine.

"Jack, are you ok?"

He responded with a smile.

"Yeah! I'm no longer it anymore. I gave the it stick to her! But I wonder who she's going after to catch..."

After the man with dreadlocks died, Jack ran over to see two legs on the floor along with half of a torch. Strangely enough, there was no blood coming from the two legs. Also, there was still saliva on the broken end of the torch, along with sharp spikes like a broken bottle.

While the saliva didn't do anything to the wood, it did have a strong effect on living things.

Naturally, Jack had no idea. He just coincidentally ended up killing someone with an incredibly slow death. It was quite the accident, to say the least.

After feeling like nobody was playing tag anymore, Jack ran over to Mia and Jessica. However, he let out a gasp when he saw the middle-aged man on the ground.

"Ah! Did you guys kill him? That's a bad thing to do!"

Mia pressed her lips together with indignance.

"What else were we supposed to do? He was going to kill us otherwise."

Jack let out a hum, thinking to himself.

"I guess there are two of you... if he didn't die, I guess two would die which would be worse."

While trying to think through things logically, the middle-aged man let out a weak groan of pain. Seeing this, Jack's eyes widened as a smile spread out on his face.

"Ah! He's still alive! Sorry, it looks like I said something wrong."

Mia's eyelid twitched.

"Um... yeah. Anyways, did you get the cards from that other guy?"

Jack tilted his head to the side.

"Eh? But isn't it wrong to take things from people?"

Mia clicked her tongue.

"He's dead, it's not like he'll still be using them, right?"

Jack put a finger on his chin and thought for a while before nodding a few times.

"Ah, you're right!"

He then hopped off, to go collect the cards. As for Mia, she looked at Jessica and whispered to her.

"What the fuck is wrong with that kid?"

The corner of Jessica's lip twitched.

"I already told you before, he's been traumatized and is rationalizing everything so he doesn't go crazy."

Mia raised an eyebrow.

"Sounds an awful lot like he's crazy already."

As they were talking, a soft clack resounded. Mia looked down and fished out the packs of cards from the middle-aged man's belt.

"Looks like he's dead now."

Jessica blinked a few times.

"Huh? I thought he was alive just a moment ago?"

Mia shrugged her shoulders.

"When people die, the protection lock on their packs of cards disappears, letting other people take them. While you can play games to get cards, in the end, this is the best way of getting them."