Valerie watched, transfixed, as the slaughter finally ground to a halt. The screams had died away. The roars of magic were gone. In the flickering light of a rising sun, only one struggle remained.
Jin was pucnhing the captain.
Both combatants had exhausted themselves beyond the limits of flesh and spirit. Their mana was dry, their blood spilled, their bodies broken.
Jin was punching the captain's face, but the blows were weak, clumsy things. He would raise his hand, a faint, ghostly white outline of Tremor flickering around his knuckles, only for it to fade into nothingness by the time his fist met the captain's guarding forearms.
It was a stalemate of the dying. The captain had lost the strength to fight back, his regeneration failing, but his survival instinct kept his arms up, blocking the slow, rhythmic impacts. Jin had lost the reason to stop. He was stuck in a loop, a machine with a broken off-switch.
Jin raised his hand. Gravity and sheer will brought it down. Thud. The captain's arm absorbed it. Jin raised his hand again. Thud.
His mind, usually a fortress of clarity, had gone blank. The adrenaline was receding, leaving only a cold, grey void where thoughts used to be.
How did I get here?
The question drifted through the fog. He had come to Rome only to follow a trail. He had tried not to kill people who weren't involved. He wasn't a hero, but he wasn't a butcher. Or so he told himself. He knew he was the aggressor here. He had walked into their bank. He had provided himself as bait for Silas. He had hoped Silas would be pragmatic, that the vampire would trade information for peace or not , maybe he want things to go this way deep down? .
Silas had chosen greed, and Tepes had chosen loyalty. To them, Jin was the monster. He was the invader. To them, he was what the Muten had been to him—a person that distrubing their world.
Now, he had slaughtered the high-level knights of a major faction. This wouldn't end here. This would only escalate.
Was I right to attack the Tepes faction?
The answer came, cold and absolute. No. I wasn't in the right.
But that didn't mean he was in the wrong. He had a reason. A purpose.
Some would say I manufactured that reason myself, a treacherous voice whispered in his mind. I poked the bear until it bit me, just so I could kill it.
Jin swung again. There was a wet crunch as bones in his own hand fractured against the captain's unyielding guard. The sound was sickeningly loud in the quiet slaughterhouse.
He didn't stop. He raised his hand again. This time, he didn't try for the vibration of the Tremor. Instead, he forced his last drop of power into his skin. His arm turned black, hard as iron.
He brought it down.
CRACK.
The deadlock broke. His hardened fist smashed through the captain's weakened forearms, shattering both radius and ulna. The vampire's arms collapsed, useless sacks of meat and bone splinters. They didn't regenerate. The healing factor was dead.
So, what did Jin do?
He swung again.
His fist met the captain's face unobstructed. The nose collapsed. The cheekbone shattered.
Jin raised his fist again.
So what do I do now? The thought was slow, heavy. Should I go back? Should I abandon my quest?
I can't.
It wasn't about logic anymore. It wasn't about justice.
To me, it's a matter of principle.
I am going to kill every single person involved in my mother's murder.
So what happens to the people who get in my way? The ones who weren't involved?
Like this person below me.
Jin looked down. His hand was no longer hitting a face. It was meeting a mush of brain matter, skull fragments, and grey pulp. The captain was gone. He had been beating a corpse for the last ten strikes.
Jin stared at the ruin beneath him. The rage drained out of him, replaced by a hollow, aching emptiness.
He tried to stand. His legs shook violently, refusing to hold his weight. He forced them straight, swaying like a drunkard.
He saw one of the sedans, miraculously untouched by the carnage. It was a means of escape. He took a step toward it. Then another.
The world tilted. The light left his eyes, not fading, but simply switching off.
He flopped face-down onto the concrete, unconscious among the dead.
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here some explanation some reader demanded