After having consumed the Warden, Gary looked back at what he had done for a moment. In reality, the Warden was just doing her job; her place here was to stop the prisoners from escaping.
To her, Gary was a criminal whether or not he had been wrongly placed here. Certainly, he had seen his fair share of people who deserved to be in the prison. Yet, he had to take the Warden's life for two reasons.
One, that at any cost she did what she could to stop him from getting out of the prison, because he was a criminal. The second… although he didn’t want to admit it, part of him needed the power he would gain.
From his experience of being put into the prison in the first place through the powers of the Phoenix Gang, Gary knew he had to get stronger. The power of one of the Kings was beyond what he had expected.
They had great influence in multiple systems, and they were even able to take out Austin at the level he was, even though he was strong and a Mythical type Altered. The strength of the higher members in the Phoenix Gang were to be sure to have a lot of power and that included Sin.
If he wanted to help his friends, or the people in his city survive along with the rest of them, he needed to get stronger; there was no option. He had killed those he didn’t want to before; he had consumed those that wanted to carry on living.
Perhaps, these actions had now made Gary a hypocrite in his thinking. For his gang, he himself had become someone he didn’t want to, but it was all for the sake of survival and protecting himself.
He understood to a degree why gangs at one point or another had to show their strength. Eliminating a small group of people with overwhelming power was a way to stop war, a way to stop others, and the Howlers Gang, due to Gary’s belief, had been passive in this way of thinking.
He looked at his hand that was covered in blood for a moment, and then looked at the staircase above. The criminals that had been contained, they were rushing up and heading towards the exit.
‘The new class quest I received,’ Gary thought to himself. ‘Escaping from the prison will give me the quest reward of becoming a Queen Grade Werewolf. That will unlock one of the class upgrade conditions.’
‘But getting to level 50 will be difficult. The amount of Exp required has increased dramatically each time. I get small amounts for just defeating Altered and nothing for beating the general mobsters I see.’
‘There won’t be many situations where I meet people as strong as the Warden. Even if I was to fight everyone I came across, I doubt I would be able to reach level fifty before I meet up with those in the Phoenix Gang; my current strength and stats will just have to do!’
Gary could feel the presence of one of the others coming up behind him.
“I think it’s okay to leave now,” Blackjack said. “I can hear it; I can hear that the others have already left the main prison. They must have found the keys and are opening up all the gates.
“Then they should be heading up the stairs. It will take a while for the White Rose to respond to it because they probably never expected a prison escape to happen. When they send the White Rose members to deal with them, that will give us the best chance to burst through all of this!”
Gary agreed, and he immediately jumped up, grabbing onto the railing of the second floor and pulled himself over. Ice took a big leap and reached the top, while Blackjack quickly appeared by his side.
The three of them could see some prisoners still trying to escape, and this would be good for them to blend in with as well. While running through the halls, although they could pass many of the other prisoners, they slowed their pace down for two reasons.
One, both Blackjack and Gary were faster than Ice and needed to slow themselves down, and the second reason, they wanted to blend in with the other prisoners.
“I wanted to ask something about what you said back there, that you're some type of knight, is that related to your Altered powers?” Gary asked.
Blackjack let out a little laugh.
“You really are a newbie, aren’t you?” Blackjack replied. “You know, for an ancient species that existed even before us, I thought your group would have taught you a lot about us. Just think about it a little more, I know what you really are, and know what you can do. Are there many that would know that, and to top it off, I’m not one of you.”
The way Blackjack was speaking, it was as if he was talking in riddles, but thinking about what he said more, he remembered something that Midwak had informed him about. That there was another species out there that the other Werewolves were worrying about more.
About who Marie and Olivia had come across in the forest one time.
“You’re a… vampire,” Gary whispered quietly; for some reason, it still felt embarrassing for him to say, even though he himself was a Werewolf.
“Now you might know why your nose tingles a bit when you see me. It's a built-in trait of yours for how long our two races have been at battle for,” Blackjack explained. “A bit like a dog, who eventually becomes domesticated, you have grown to have a natural reaction to us, and look at us now, we're working together.”
Of all places Gary expected to meet a vampire, he didn’t expect to meet one in prison. However, he wasn’t aware of the history because he didn’t grow up with the other Werewolves, but he wondered, when all of this was over, would they be enemies or friends.
“The exit is just up ahead at the end of this staircase!” Blackjack exclaimed.