But that doesn't explains why he had to be so close to Dennis. Or why Dennis's Trust was needed when he was only going to kill the sheep once.
In his presence*
I agree with this, I think Tobb need Deenis to trust him so that he would have no repercussions of his actions. Like for example, when Tobb ask Dennis to kill the sheep he was testing him to see if Dennis would have went against his morals for him. By doing that Dennis wouldn’t question Tobb actions. That why at the end Dennis left Tobb by himself with the sheep without question, because he could’ve just waited for Tobb so that they could have when to town together but he choose to leave him by himself.
It’s a manipulation tactic. He needed to have Dennis see him as NOT a threat. Dennis was willing to leave him there on his own, trusting he wouldn’t do anything and see him in town at the tavern later that night.
I think that was also part of the hunt for todd. He's portrayed as a malevolent predator after all especially with the dialogue at the end.
Don't know if the author was intentionally trying to dip into indigenous beliefs/realities but there's some similarities you can read about if youre curious.
Okay so Dennis here (the naive little sap he is), ended up trusting Todd, which when reading one of the chapters, you can see the manhwa tags and it says “NON-HUMAN”. This manhwa has a setting in the west or rural setting in the 60s. Todd was most likely a shapeshifter/skinwalker, nod to the coyote we saw in earlier chapters and the one who killed that sheep. Todd sunk his claws into Dennis, taking advantage of him and once the season was over and Dennis was to return, Todd used that and took or killed all the sheep. Coyote stick in packs so he probably had others to help him take them all.