A Lion's Way Home

4. Good Fiend, Bad Fiend

The door opened, revealing a chubby man in a black suit and a white...tiger-sized wolf? Wolves were never this big and didn't have a set of horns like a triceratops, right?

Wagging its fuzzy tail, the wolf stepped past the man and sniffed Leon's combat boots and cargo pants. Man, this little guy really reminded him of his big bro, a mercenary with a wolf GS. Leon's heart ached as a lump formed in his throat.

"Bright, get back here!"

The man's voice jarred Leon out of his reverie, and he watched as the horned wolf retreated. Good thing Leon could resist the urge to sigh and facepalm at his stupidity. Someday he should slap the title "The Master of Reminiscing at the Wrong Time" in his ID card.

Leon looked at the man, recognizing the black side-swept hair, the wrinkled face, the stubbles, and the thick horn-rimmed glasses. "Mr. Joshua Marino, is it?"

With the horned wolf standing beside him, the man smiled and nodded. "Yes. Mr. Burke had told me about you and sent me your CV, Hunter Leonhardt." He turned away. "Come in."

Once Leon stepped past the door and began walking away with Mr. Marino, the horned wolf pushed the door shut. Leon glanced over his shoulder and smiled. This well-trained beast really made an excellent pet; it being a wolf was a bonus.

But to have a pet... Leon's smile faded. Isn't that tough? It rarely lives longer than you. To have a pet means you must prepare yourself for the pain of losing your loved one.

"Sorry about earlier," Mr. Marino began. "Bright is a curious little fiend."

Leon returned his gaze to the man, his eyebrow raised. "Fiend?" That explained Bright's size and horns then.

"I've been searching for a dependable guard dog across the town. Then someone suggested that I visited the fiend tamers at Kraindr Academy," Mr. Marino said. Soon, the horned wolf caught up with them and walked beside him. "I know fiends often attack humans and many are skeptical about fiend tamers, but there's the Soul Cycle. I bet some fiends are aware of it and don't want to get killed by mercenaries and be reborn as fiends over and over again."

Leon nodded. The almighty Aedifex had created the Soul Cycle to manage the souls of the deceased: the good would ascend to a higher plane of existence, the evil would become fiends in the physical realm, and the intermediate would be reborn as either humans, animals, or plants. How Aedifex defined "good" and "evil," nobody knew, but everyone believed that those who tried to rival Him or travel to the other world would always end up as the genderless monsters known as fiends.

A crater lay in front of them, surrounded by men in hard hats and inactive heavy-duty vehicles. Some of them sat beside the machineries, either chatting with each other or playing with their mobile phones.

They're all getting paid for sitting idly. Leon stroked his chin. What a waste of money.

"As you can see, the construction is halted," Mr. Marino explained. "According to various articles on the Internet, structures built atop an Aedifex Dungeon will have communication issues." Bright barked from beside him.

Leon looked at the chubby man. "Correct. As long as the dungeon master is alive, the closer we are to the dungeon, the weaker our phone signal will be."

"Yes, the construction workers and I have been experiencing that."

"Moreover, your building will be very weak as long as the dungeon is there. The only way to remove it is by clearing the dungeon and bringing the treasures out of it."

"Uh-huh." Mr. Marino paused. "By the way, you look and sound much older than in the CV. I heard it's the side effect of wielding the power of GS?"

Leon nodded. "I'm supposed to be 17, but according to the lion, my body is already 22."