Caelan hadn't expected Ren to willingly accept. But since Ren didn't complain, he didn't waste a single moment before seizing the opportunity and taking over their shared body.
One moment he was the observer — trapped inside his own body — and the next, he was the one in control. He didn't know exactly how to describe the sensation. But the closest he could get was the feeling of...liberation.
...Freedom, if you will.
Cracking his neck, Caelan couldn't help but mutter countless ideas under his breath, struggling to keep his excitement from getting the better of him.
"All right. First things first — let's see if I can make my punch reduce someone to dust."
Smirking wildly, he dropped into a stance he had pieced together from street brawls and years of self-taught experience.
He had never felt this good in his entire life. Part of it was probably the awakening. But mostly it came from the fact that Ren had healed their body to nearly peak condition.
Just as he was about to take the next step —
He collapsed like a princess who had missed her step during a dance, gracelessly kissing the floor while clutching his stomach as waves of hunger assaulted him.
"...That bastard. No wonder he gave this body back so willingly," Caelan cursed.
Left with no choice, he crawled his way to the old fridge like a worm. Fortunately, the house was small enough that his embarrassing journey ended almost as soon as it began.
Thankfully, the fridge had enough food inside that he could at least chew without hurting his jaw.
Caelan grabbed the fridge door for support, snatched a cat-stick-shaped food pouch, tore the packaging open, and immediately sucked out the contents. The taste was far from pleasant — terrible, honestly — but it contained more than enough nutrition for a human body without lacking in anything essential.
It took three more sticks before his hunger finally subsided. He lay on the floor, letting the exhaustion that had been chasing him finally catch up.
"Damnation... Why do I feel like I haven't eaten in days?"
In a way, he already knew the answer. It made sense that his body would take a toll after being pushed past its limits without rest, right off the back of his awakening.
Even so, it didn't stop him from questioning the sheer scale of his hunger and fatigue, which were by far the worst he had experienced in his already miserable life.
With that thought, he decided to postpone his experiment until after he had rested for a few hours. He didn't even bother dragging himself back to the couch, choosing instead to enjoy the cool air drifting from the fridge he had left open.
Just as he was about to doze off on the floor, the front door was suddenly pounded on relentlessly, hard enough that the poor old door nearly came off its hinges.
The sudden noise yanked Caelan upright instantly, every nerve on edge.
"Tch. Did the loan sharks finally decide to finish off that old bastard?"
He wasn't sure whether to feel relieved or scared. Relieved because his father might finally be dead. Scared because once his father was gone, they would likely transfer the burden of his debts onto his shoulders instead.
...Or maybe not.
Either way, the risks that came with his father's death far outweighed the risks of him staying alive, as much as Caelan wanted him dead. And to make matters worse, his father was far from easy to kill — his strength alone would overwhelm most people unless they were willing to sacrifice several men to bring him down.
"Well, I guess it doesn't matter. I'll just tell them where he is. It's too late to run anyway," Caelan muttered aloud, half hoping Ren would offer some kind of advice.
"..."
Sighing helplessly, Caelan made his way to the door and carefully buried his foul mood beneath a convincing mask of politeness, an amicable expression plastered across his face.
"Sir, if you're looking for my father, he's currently guarding the main ga —" Caelan froze the moment he got a proper look at the person's face.
His face was instantly familiar to Caelan. The same glasses rested on his nose, while the same lab coat hung loosely over his unnaturally thin frame.
It was none other than the male doctor from the rundown hospital.
Standing behind him, three humanoid robots watched in silence, their emotionless, mirror-like eyes reflecting everything without expression.
"Ah. You finally opened the door." The doctor offered a thin smile. "According to our records, you should have already completed your awakening by now. So, congratulations. Not many of the children around here even manage that much."
"What...?" Caelan tilted his head in confusion.
In the first place, it was strange for anyone to congratulate him at all, let alone for awakening. And the fact that the doctor had come in person made it even stranger.
Whatever his reason was, it clearly wasn't the congratulations.
Caelan quickly dropped the pretense of politeness and spoke coldly.
"Why are you here? Surely not just to congratulate me."
Seeing the shift in his attitude, the doctor mirrored it immediately. The lazy expression disappeared and was replaced with something more serious.
"Have you forgotten already?"
Caelan was taken aback. As far as he knew, the only thing connecting them was the debt.
"You mean the debt? I'm pretty sure you said to pay after three days."
The doctor chuckled coldly.
"Ah... of course. You must have lost consciousness after your awakening." He looked Caelan dead in the eyes, and there was clear amusement there.
"Guess what? Three days have already passed, boy."
!!!
"What!? That's impossible!" The words came out before he could stop them. There was no way he had lost consciousness during or after the awakening.
Unless the doctor was lying. Or —
Ren had done something he wasn't aware of.
But no matter how hard he thought it through, he couldn't identify a single anomaly in what Ren had done.
Or could he?
'Wait.' Something clicked. 'Right after Ren took control of the body, the cores suddenly emptied.'
Ren had claimed he only used the power to reverse their wounds. But what if he had done something even he hadn't realised? What if the cost of reversing their wounds was their own time? Or maybe... what if they had accidentally travelled through it?
Whatever the cause, Caelan was fairly certain it was connected to their current situation.
The doctor, having watched Caelan deliberate in silence for long enough, finally spoke.
"What a shame. It seems you don't have the money." He sighed in mock frustration.
Then, without a beat, he turned to the humanoid robots and issued his command in a flat, cold voice.
"Eliminate him. But leave his core intact. I still have use for it after this."
Caelan's eyes went wide as his body tensed and his heart lurched into a sprint. Even so, his instincts and sheer experience moved him before conscious thought could. He slammed the door shut and bolted toward his father's room, where the only remaining window in the house rested.
Instantly, the three of them lunged at Caelan with bursts of speed comparable to those of the Green Realm, smashing the door to pieces as their hands somehow morphed into sharp, spear-like points.
Just before Caelan could reach the doorknob of his father's room, one of the robots managed to catch up to him and slashed the spear-like tip of its arm toward his back.
The tip tore violently through the area it touched, blood seeping and dripping to the floor. He managed to avoid the worst of it by spinning out of the way.
Unfortunately, his action left him vulnerable for a split second. The second robot seized the opening and drove its shoulder straight into him, the momentum alone enough to send him crashing through the couch and scattering its pieces across the floor.
The third one wasted no time. Within seconds it was above him, one hand now morphed into an axe-head raised above his chest like an inevitable guillotine.
'Shit! It's too fast!'
The instant it descended, the world seemed to slow by an impossible degree. For a moment, Caelan expected his life to flash before his eyes as he stood on the boundary between life and death. Instead, his gaze drifted to the last remnant of his mother.
The cold metallic cylinder reflected the descending axe poised to split his chest apart and crush his heart, as though it were telling — mocking — him that he would soon join her as nothing more than ash.
That... if the doctor even bother with that.
Even so, the sight filled him with an inexplicable sense of peace. The frantic pounding of his heart subsided, and the haze clouding his thoughts disappeared, leaving behind only the single feeling that refused to leave him.
Rage.
Hatred.
Wrath.
Madness.
'Ah... I remember now.' A thought he had long buried suddenly surfaced.
'I remember why I never allowed myself to be killed.' His gaze drifted inward — toward the place where those feelings had been cultivated. Or rather, toward the person who inhabited it.
'To think that in my final moment, I would reach for that place. That person's place.' He laughed, coldly, somewhere deep inside.
'How laughable.'
'How damn disgusting.'
His eyes flashed with a cold silver light for a split second, not realizing that a split second was all it took for him to process such a lengthy train of thought.
Then, in the very next instant, an even brighter light flooded his eyes, enhancing his thought process and reaction speed.
At the last possible moment, he clenched his core and wrenched his body out of the axe's path — just enough to save his heart.
Nowhere enough to save his left shoulder and everything below it.