Human trafficking, drugs, child prostitution, robbery, poverty, war.
They were all things people generalized as being inhuman. No place was supposed to tolerate such atrocities as long as there was someone who still called themselves human.
But if that was the case, why did humans themselves commit such acts?
Was a human supposed to be good or evil?
Why was it that whenever order collapsed, chaos inevitably followed? Why did that happen when evil itself was always called inhuman?
Did that mean humans would become inhuman the moment the leash restraining them disappeared?
Then what made them any different from animals? If they refused to use the intelligence they had been granted and instead chose to live like beasts?
Those questions, along with countless others, had been circling through Caelan's mind from the moment he stepped into the slums.
Or perhaps, even long before that.
In his broken, wounded state, he pressed his back against the cold wall of an alley he had passed through. His skin was deathly pale, and every few seconds, his vision threatened to fade into darkness.
All around him, people in the same state, if not worse, huddled together in a horrifying display of shared misery.
Homeless, broke, wounded, and exhausted.
He had chosen that exact spot for that exact reason. Blending in with people who looked just as ruined as he did made him far less likely to attract attention.
Even then, his own condition was a sight to behold. Blood continued to seep through the makeshift bandage fashioned from his torn shirt, staining the metallic floor beneath him as it mixed with substances he couldn't even identify. If it continued much longer, he would likely pass out from blood loss and die where he sat.
Logically, he should gather as much mana as possible and reverse the damage to close the blood vessels and repair the flesh around the stump, turning it into... well, a proper stump.
Or at least, that was what he would have done if he hadn't already felt like dying from exhaustion long before blood loss could claim him. His entire body was on the verge of giving out. It wasn't just physical fatigue. The aftereffects of overusing his time ability had left him reeling, while his head throbbed relentlessly as the world spun around him in a dizzying blur.
Even thinking required tremendous effort, let alone staying conscious.
"Damn... it."
Left with no other choice, Caelan half-consciously drew in the mana drifting through the polluted air. In his condition, the amount he absorbed was little more than a tiny trickle of water.
It wasn't much.
But it was still better than nothing.
Slowly, his vision darkened as time passed. Fortunately, Ren was helping him in the background, allowing them to split the workload. Caelan focused on filling the lower core while Ren maintained the heart core.
1/4
2/4
3/4
The process dragged on for hours. He had escaped at noon, but now the sky was painted in brilliant streaks of crimson and violet as the sun dipped toward the horizon, signaling that night was fast approaching.
Just before he could completely fill his lower core, his body finally gave in to exhaustion. His head swayed as dizziness overwhelmed him, his vision spinning uncontrollably. His breathing became ragged, while a biting cold spread throughout his body, leaving his fingers numb.
But he was far from giving up.
He refused to surrender to something as simple as exhaustion.
Especially not now.
Not when night was creeping closer, waiting to devour him beneath its darkness and all the cruelty it carried.
"Ren, do it."
The person in question didn't even bother to respond before carrying out the only logical course of action.
Ren immediately activated their time ability to reverse their wounds. Of course, he couldn't regrow their missing arm. Even if he could, he possessed neither the mastery nor the mana required for such a feat. Instead, he focused solely on closing the wound and slowing the bleeding.
Using mana from both cores to sustain the consumption rate, Ren closed the bleeding stump and reduced the severity of the wound on their back, slowing the blood loss while avoiding suspicion from the people around them. After all, it would have looked strange if a random wounded child suddenly recovered within a matter of hours.
Especially since he was shirtless.
His arm, however, was another matter. He deliberately left the makeshift bandage wrapped around the stump, allowing its already blood-soaked appearance to conceal the fact that the wound had stopped bleeding.
Fortunately, after reversing their wounds, his lower core still retained roughly a quarter of its total capacity, giving him at least some chance of surviving the night.
Because what's unleashed upon the world in the darkness is not a beast, but something worse. It was a perfectly intelligent human acting like one.
In no time at all, he heard it from afar, getting louder with every second.
VROOM VROOM
"WOOOOOH!!"
"YEAHH!!"
Music, vehicles' engines, and beast-like screams tore from the throats of those humans, fusing into one unholy sound.
His mom had always warned him about this kind of people. And even though he never met them, he always heard the nightmare they brought upon nightfall.
Now, seeing them in front of his eyes, he finally realized how much worse they are than his imagination ever could.
People with black tattoos covered their barely clothed bodies, engineered to instill a sense of dominance and the fear they brought along. The motorcycles and SUVs they rode were modeled after the devil that they worshipped, as they were designed with skulls, bones and the blood of humans themselves.
…And that's not even the worst part.
Man and woman, man and man, woman and woman. They didn't discriminate and used each other for what their desire wanted. Alcohol, drugs, weapons. Are nothing more than just to add to their fun. Each vice feeding the next until excess itself became their way of life.
They called it freedom, but he only saw men enslaved by insatiable lust for power, indulging themselves in violence as a means to prove it. Caelan could only watch in fear, silently praying that they would only pass the group he huddled with.
"YOOO!! LOOK AT THOSE FREAKS!!!"
"HAHAHAHA!!"
"WEAK ASS!!"
"THAT'S THE PRICE FOR NOT WORSHIPPING OUR DEVIL BITCH!!"
"WAHAHAHAHA!!"
Those people barely gaze at them before throwing alcohol bottles at them as they pass. Or that's what Caelan thought.
The moment the bottles touched the ground, they exploded into a massive mass of fiery hell. Instantly, they spread to those unlucky enough to be near the front.
Which, just exactly where Caelan was.
"Shit!"
The fire quickly spread to where he was. It's not that he chose to be there, but it's just because the back of the alley was way too dense to be even breathable. Even further back in the alley — or just anywhere else — was also too dangerous and dark for the injured to travel safely.
Instinctively, he leaped out of the burned area just in time by standing above a drunk man to provide extra cover. But for the so many near him, the fire consumed their body in no time at all, making them scream as if they were thrown into the pit of hell. The sound was terribly loud that Caelan had to cover his ear with his only hand.
The perpetrators themselves however, didn't even bother with the hell they created while laughing as if what they had just done were nothing more than a fancy circus performance. A sick one at that.
Then, just as fast as they came, they quickly disappeared beyond the horizon. For every path they take, destruction awaits for just anyone they see.
***
Caelan had suspected that something was wrong with the fire, and he was proven right. The flames had a dark tint along the edges of their tongues, and they burned far hotter and longer than ordinary fire. It burned for hours until morning came before it finally went out.
In the meantime, Caelan and the other people pressed together to get away as far as possible from it.
"We can't stay here," Ren said right after Caelan sat for the first time in hours.
Caelan opened his mouth to retort back, only to close it before saying anything. Just as much as he was angry due to his exhaustion, he also knew that Ren was right. It was too risky to stay at one place for a long time. Danger can come from any direction after all. Even if he forgot the doctor, the gangsters would kill him someday if he wasn't as responsive as last night.
Furthermore, his body was already beyond tired right now. It was only thanks to his reversing ability that he was even able to walk.
'So sleepy...'
Reluctantly, he dusted off his hip and walked straight away out of the alley to find somewhere with better conditions.
'Wouldn't it be better if I could just get out of this city?'
***
Standing atop a tall building, several individuals overlook the people huddled together in a certain cramped space. The leader stands upright at the very front while absentmindedly gazing at a certain boy with one missing arm walking away from the tight crowd. It was not for long however, before he blinked, looked away and opened his mouth.
"Are the preparations complete yet?"
A man, or judging by his voice, since his whole features were covered with a black robe with an indescribable golden crest at the top of the robe, asked the other people in the same robe as him.
"Not yet." The voice, a female, responded calmly.
"Hmm?" The man audibly raised his inquiry.
"The sacrifice we made last night was a bit lacking compared to what was expected."
The man sighed in frustration and disappointment.
"They can't even do their ONLY job right. Damned useless bunch."
"Should we directly intervene?" The woman tilted her head.
"..." He contemplated for a second. "It doesn't matter if we do it ourselves this time."
Standing above the huge group of filthy homeless people below, he chanted under his breath before a huge magic circle appeared at the top of his palm. Directing it to the unfortunate bunch below, he finished his last verse of chanting, and dark flames breathed out from it like a dragon's wrathful fiery breath.
"W — What's that!?"
"WAHHHHH!!"
"HELP!!"