John lay in the grass, lost in the pains from his injured body. He wasn't sure how much time had passed but he was snapped out of it by the sounds of boots hitting earth and the rattling of metal. Unable to stand, with barely a few points of mana and heavily injured John drew the only weapon he had that would give him a chance.

As they rounded the corner he fired the pistol, using his a half of his meagre mana to push the bullet to go faster and be stronger. It hit the first guard between the eyes and exited the back of his skull with a splatter of brains and blood. The other guards all immediately raised their shields and drew closer together. An unenhanced bullet hit the knee of another, not going through but still piercing and causing his knee to buckle.

The three guards that remained standing had halved the distance between himself and them. Two were collapsed, bullets lodged in their knees and the final one stood above him. The final bullet in the magazine was sent through the eye socket of the gnome standing above him. He was still for a moment before his knees buckled and he collapsed on top of John.

He could hear the pained moans of the other guards who were scattered around the ground with similar injuries to his own. He collected himself, rolled over to the wall and managed to haul himself up onto his good leg. He reloaded the gun and began firing on the downed guards. Their rolling around made him miss more often than he hit and he went through over two dozen bullets before they were all finally still.

With that, he promptly collapsed back onto the ground and started meditating, lying on his back looking up at the dark sky above.

Hours later he had managed to heal himself all the way to full health, his debuffs had gone and he no longer felt any pain from his knee. He tried and failed to assimilate the corpses, they had apparently been dead too long for the skill to work so instead he ate his fill of them.

It was only then that he looked through some of his notifications. He was now level 9 and put the 10 stat points into his VIT because he never wanted to be that close to death again. His small arms skill had reached level 4, his elemental manipulation reached 5, his shield work had reached level 6 and thick skin level 8. Whilst that was a fairly large amount of growth in a short time he definitely did not feel like it was worth it.

By now the whole barracks was ablaze and the guards had nothing but basic equipment. Still, he took a set of armour put a sword, shield and spear in his inventory and set off back towards the city.

He had resumed his previous form, this time with the addition of a series of new scars including a deep one across his ear and the side of his face thanks to a quick use of shift. He approached the nearest outpost, doing his best to look haggard and covered in dirt.

It didn't take long for a group of guards to approach him, he recognised some of them from whilst they were training and they clearly recognised him eyeing his new scars and the dirt covering his clothes.

"HOLD!" The gnome at the front said to the group, she appeared to be a mage of some sort, probably a pyromancer going by her crimson robes.

Both John and the guards with her stopped as soon as given the command. The woman looked him up and down, obviously she didn't have children as the immediate look of disgust didn't cross her face until she saw his scars.

"What happened to you?"

"Ma'am we were hit heavily, a large monster attacked us, killing most of our company in the process and later that night a different monster managed to get into the barracks, there's no one else left ma'am."

A frown creased he forehead at his words and her eyes simultaneously hardened and softened when she looked at him. He could see that some of the guards behind her did not entirely believe what he was saying but dismissed that for the time being.

"Henrick, go put together a small platoon we're going to go investigate this, everyone else we're going to escort this man to a cell where he will remain in custody for questioning." She approached him and went to place him in cuffs "You'll have to forgive this, until we know exactly what is going on we have to tread carefully, I assure you we merely wish to ask questions."

John nodded and he was escorted towards the outpost, as he went inside he saw a human, dressed in leathers and with a sword and shield exercising in the training yard. John inspected the man closely, making sure he could copy his form but also so that he would not forget his face and resolved to ask more about that later.

Henrick was marching with the rest of the group of guards. He was fairly convinced that the man had been a deserter who was just making things up to try and get out of his duties, he had that look about him that only the most weasely people have. Then he saw the what remained of the barracks, ash and rubble were everywhere and parts of the structure had collapsed in on itself.

Outside were the bodies of several gnomes, clearly, the monsters around here had already taken what they wanted from them as there was very little left but bones.

They spent the next few hours searching, there were bodies in the barracks but nowhere else that they could find and even those were horribly charred. Unfortunately, they weren't able to find much that would give them a clue about what happened here. Hopefully, that guard would be able to shed some light on it.