Paul’s eyes blurred as he looked at the dead bodies all around him.

The enormity of his error settled over him.

His heart pounded in his chest, a relentless drumbeat of remorse.

The bodies laid strewn around him, lifeless eyes staring vacantly into the distance, their deaths a tragic testament to his folly.

Innocent humans caught up in the destruction.

He had been so certain, so convinced that Jeremy was in one of the structures.

In the heat of his rage and paranoia, he had acted with lethal precision without thinking it through.

But now, as the adrenaline ebbed and the fog of anger dissipated, the awful truth clawed at his consciousness: They were just innocents, caught in the web of a cruel game played by the Hoarder.

Jeremy. The name hissed through Paul’s mind like a venomous snake. Jeremy, with his twisted sense of humor, had orchestrated this, he was sure of it.

The macabre prank was designed to break him, to gnaw at his sanity and corrode his resolve.

And it was working. He felt a chasm of guilt open within him, threatening to swallow him whole.

He had a large part to play too as a lot of it was his fault. If only he had been careful, it wouldn’t have happened.

He heard movements behind him and knew without looking back that it was the team leaders.

At the moment, he didn’t care for their presence.

Though he couldn’t say it out loud, if they had been with him from the beginning, it wouldn’t have happened either.

Not that it was their fault.

He had sped off to fight the Hoarder without saying anything to them.

His closest subordinates, loyal and steadfast, were by his side in an instant.

Beside him, Nye stood stoically, his rugged features set in a mask of grim determination.

"Don’t beat yourself up boss.We’ll make Jeremy pay for this," he said, a hard edge to his voice.

Lisa was sobbing quietly at the sight of the bodies.

She tried to say something severally but failed. After a while, she settled on crying on Tia’s shoulder.

"Pull herself together. I have to check if there are any survivors."

She sped off before anyone could say anything.

Her amber eyes scoured left and right, taking full note of her environment.

She activated one of her skills [Zero Noise] to ensure that nobody hiding heard her coming.

Now that she was alone, her mind replayed all that had happened.

Behind her were the other team leaders—four other people who looked just as careful and nervous as her.

When she had been dreaming of her revenge, the idea of the Pariah backing her had been strongly imprinted in her mind.

Now he was just as broken as the rest of them.

"Just how powerful are you," She asked into the quiet area.

Despite her best efforts, she found no sight of him.

All she accomplished was seeing more lifeless bodies.

She was disgusted with herself as her stomach growled at the smell of the burnt flesh.

It had been a while she had eaten with everything going on, there had been no time.

She was almost tempted to conclude that they were chasing a ghost.

Save for her own encounters with him, the idea of someone as powerful as the Hoarder would have been hard to believe.

How many places could he possibly be in at once?

She had to admit defeat after a while and headed back to the others to report her findings or lack of it.

"I’m certain... we’re the only ones here. If he was here before, there are no signs of him now." Her dark hair fluttered slightly as she gave the report to them.

They all looked at the Guildmaster to hear what they would do next.

Lillith saw his condition and decided to take decisive action instead.

She used her skills to push the dead bodies away from them as they were too gruesome to look at.

The whole thing made them remember Luke, this would have been his forte if he had been alive.

Her eyes wide with concern, she placed a tentative hand on Paul’s arm. "Paul, you couldn’t have known," she whispered, her voice trembling. "He manipulated you. This isn’t your fault."

He reached out to squeeze her hand for comfort.

In times like this, he was glad that he had her.

"But for now, we need to get out of here. This place... it’s not healthy for our minds right now."

He felt her hands on his shoulders, guiding him gently away from the scene of his torment, but the weight of his actions anchored him to the spot.

Each step was an agony, every breath a labor. He had led these people, commanded their loyalty and respect, yet now he felt unworthy of their comfort.

As they moved him towards the exit, the enormity of his mistake crushed down upon him, a relentless tide of regret.

He had killed the innocent, and no amount of retribution against Jeremy would ever wash the blood from his hands.

The team leaders spoke words of solace, but they were lost to him, drowned in the roar of his self-reproach.

In the quiet shadows of his mind, Paul’s torment echoed with a haunting clarity.

He saw Jeremy’s smirk, imagined the satisfaction in his eyes. This was the true victory, the real defeat.

And as he staggered forward, flanked by those who still believed in him, he wondered if he could ever find redemption, or if the ghosts of the innocent would forever haunt his broken soul.

He turned to his team, their expressions mirroring his own shame and regret.

"We have to go harder than we ever have," he said, his voice steadier now, infused with a renewed sense of purpose. "We have to make this right."

He saw the bright light from their camp. He felt happy as he saw that his team had had the good sense to protect the rest of the people before they came to his aid.

Even as he looked, the light suddenly went off and he stopped in his tracks.

The rest of the team leaders mirrored his movements too as they were shock.

His sensitive ears picked out loud roars and screams.

It was coming from the direction of their own camp where the rest of them were.

They were under attack!