Cain thought it might be okay in the sight of God to murder him, that is his fear, death. God further cursed the ground so that it would not yield its "strength" to him and He also sentenced Cain to be a fugitive and wanderer (of course he paid no attention to that second thing, he settled in the land of Nod). His only concern was that someone would kill him if they found him. He had no concern for his brother's life but a great deal for his own.
When Jesus spoke of murder, he said if you hate your brother it is as if you murdered him. His standards are incredibly high regarding sin, so high in fact that I can't even pretend to be righteous. I get from his words about lust and murder that he has a very different definition of holiness, one I can't ever attain. I can more or less restrain conduct but there have been many times when I realized my only hope of righteousness is a lobotomy because my mind seems to have a life of its own.
We carry around all our anger and our thoughts about people and then we become like Cain, paranoid that other people are probably just like us, filled with the same garbage and it will be directed towards us. Cain needed to be a fugitive and wanderer, he was a guy unfit to live with other people (I don't where those other people come from by the way). His attitude got passed down to his descendants, culminating in the arrogant boast of the thoroughly obnoxious Lamech at the end of chapter 4. Attitude isn't DNA, it has to be deliberately passed down. Self-centered, now that is DNA.
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