Chapter 106. Druid.
Chapter 106. Druid.
Before I left, I considered what punishment fit this bastard best. Simply killing him didn't sit right with me.
He was staring up at me, eyes filled with terror. I walked toward him slowly and spoke.
"Don't worry. I'm not going to kill you. For scum like you, there are things worse than death."
He shook his head, his expression deeply uneasy, but I ignored him coldly and kept talking.
"From now on, you're going to live exactly like the people you've always looked down on. Starting this moment, you won't be able to muster even a shred of power."
I reached out, placed a hand over his heart, and seized something. I methodically crushed the System formed from his Origin, stripping him of everything he possessed as an Awakened.
By erasing the 'System'—the very thing that let him live so arrogantly—he would now have to face himself miserably, mired in endless fear and suffering.
Something inside him shattered, the power draining from his body. Horrified, he clawed at the air, trying to grasp it again.
"N-no...! My power...!"
"Feel that helplessness for the rest of your life."
"I'm sorry. Please... please... give it back. I'll be good from now on..."
"With a body that's never known a day of exercise, and now down a leg, you'll be terrified every time you meet someone else—wondering if they might be the type who kills another person just for fun. Just like you did."
The man wailed, despairing over the fate laid out before him, but there was no escape from the quagmire of suffering I was inflicting. No, to be precise, a path to escape did exist.
'Try falling into Titan like I did.'
And so, with his screams as the soundtrack, I finished consigning him to hell. Then we prepared to leave.
"If you leave me like this, I'll be... sob..."
"Who knows? Maybe you'll suddenly sprout a regeneration ability?"
I could state with absolute certainty that would never happen. I left not even a one percent chance of future trouble. I had already firmly sealed his Origin with my mana when I destroyed it.
On the off chance he breaks through the mana barrier and awakens? The moment that happens, I'll return personally and kill him.
The girls, wanting to be free of this place even a second sooner, opened the front door and went out first. Through the gap as the door was closing, I threw a chill glance at the bastard and dropped a parting shot.
"You worthless piece of shit."
The elevator had already stopped, so we made our way down slowly using the emergency stairs. The one less-irritating factor was that this was a corridor-style apartment, meaning there were no zombies inside. We exited through the main entrance and left the parking lot behind.
— BOOM!!!
Something crashed down onto the parked cars, but I ignored the massive noise, and we moved out of the apartment complex.
* * * * * * * *
"Sihu, why do you think Jia's parents went to a prison?"
"I'm wondering about that too... Did survivors gather there because a prison is advantageous for defense?"
Judging by how that bastard from before knew about it, either people were actively going around rescuing survivors, or they stumbled upon a group heading there at some point. It had to be one of the two.
'Then what did they do with the inmates who were already inside?'
If it were me, I'd exterminate every last one rather than shoulder the risk of coexisting with criminals who could commit atrocities at any moment. Some survivors might argue that even criminals have human rights.
Still, do people like criminals need rights?
'Well, everyone's entitled to their own opinion.'
"Anyway, everything will be decided once we get there..."
Whether that decision turns out to be a good one or a bad one.
Sure enough, the prison was in a fairly remote location, as one would expect of a facility the public generally detested. Before long, we arrived within sight of the prison walls.
"First, I'm going to assess the situation. We'll observe from that watchtower before going in."
Perhaps because the watchtower was more spacious than I expected, it didn't feel unpleasant. Looking around from up high, the place was quite extensive, and I could make out a few people moving about here and there. It seemed they were self-sufficient, farming on what was a fairly sizable tract of land.
'Wait... Farming? You can do that on a prison yard?'
I wasn't the only one with this question; the girls voiced it too.
"Can you really harvest anything from ground like that...?"
"It is strange, isn't it, unnie?"
"Don't see your parents among the people out there, though?"
The two Solid Lines led toward the inside of the building.
'We'll need to find a way in somehow...'
Just as I was deliberating whether to simply smash my way through, the direction of the Solid Line I hadn't been able to sense due to the distance began to move, ever so slightly.
"I'm not sure if it's your mother or your father, but one of them seems to be alive."
"Really!?"
The direction of the Solid Line kept shifting, and then a man with the line piercing his chest came outside. Thanks to the girls, whose eyesight was now sharper than the average Awakened's, they were able to make out his face; he was limping as if movement pained him.
"Sihu, that person!!!"
"Dad...!"
There were several other survivors around Jia's father. He started heading toward the farmland.
'Huh? He knows how to farm?'
At the same time, Chaeyeon, equally curious, asked Jia.
"Jia, does your father do farming as a hobby...?"
"N-no?"
Just as I couldn't make sense of it, her father reached his hand toward the field and began infusing it with mana. That looked exactly like...
'A Druid...'
It seemed he had used a considerable amount of mana, because he appeared exhausted. He exchanged a few words with a man standing next to him, and then, without warning, that man slapped her father across the face. When he fell, the other men nearby began stomping on him viciously.
In that instant, Jia's mana roiled violently, clearly beyond her control.
"Dad...!"
'This is dangerous. If this keeps up, her mana will backflow...!'
Chaeyeon must have felt the surge too, because she slapped Jia across the cheek, grabbed her shoulders, and shook her roughly.
"Hey! Calm down...! Take a deep breath!"
At that, the mana churning from the sudden rampage began to slowly subside, and Jia steadied herself, breathing out raggedly.
"Both of you wait here."
Using the watchtower as a springboard, I launched myself straight into the air. Without slowing down at all, I used that momentum to brutally seize the head of the man who had thrown the first slap and drove it right into the ground.
— CRASH!
"The leader's dead...!"
"Don't worry. You'll all be following right after him."
Maybe it was the performance of appearing from thin air and popping a man's head with my bare hands, but they stood frozen in terror, unable to do anything. I simply walked toward her father, and the crowd parted to the left and right, clearing the way.
"Are you all right?"
Groaning in pain, he gently opened his eyes and looked at me.
"Who are you...?"
"Are you Jia's father, who lived in Seongnam and works for an IT company?"
"Who are you to speak of my daughter..."
"Your daughter is alive and safe. Now, excuse me for a moment."
I carefully scooped him up and ran back to the watchtower in a single breath, at a speed no one could track. The moment he saw his daughter, whom he had believed to be dead, he held her in his arms and began to weep.
* * * * * * * *
"So that's what happened..."
"Yes, sir. Please, speak comfortably."
"Haha, I'll try to adjust my speech gradually. It's a habit ingrained from a long corporate career... Still..."
Her father glanced at Chaeyeon and let his words trail off. Jia seemed to have the same thought as me, because she held onto her father's arm and spoke up.
"Dad! I'm fine. No, actually, I'm happy about it!"
"Daughter, your father isn't some rigid old geezer. What kind of man would risk coming all the way here from Gimpo to find his daughter's family? I don't mind it."
"Sir, more importantly, what happened here?"
The story was longer than I expected. They had confirmed the government leaflets, but one day, people showed up at the apartment complex claiming to be the rescue teams the government mentioned and took people away. They later discovered those people were actually vicious criminals who had taken them in order to exploit them.
"During all that, I developed an ability that helps with farming."
But they had taken his wife hostage to exploit his ability. The threats were a given, and they assaulted him as well. At first, he refused to use the ability, but with his wife held captive, he had no choice. His leg was also injured during the beatings.
"Dad, is Mom..."
"Don't worry. She's unharmed, aside from being weak from lack of energy."
'So the reason the Solid Line didn't move was because she was too weak...'
"I'll go and be right back. What would you like me to do with them?"
It was a blunt question asking whether to kill them or let them live. Such a question to a stranger might be sensitive and rude, but I had no choice.
"As the world became like this, a person has to become ruthless and live tenaciously. I've done the same. Whatever judgment our Cheon Seobang makes, I'll support it."
After hearing him say, in essence, 'Whether you kill them or spare them, I'll stand by your decision,' I nodded and leaped down toward the prison yard again.
The place was even more heavily packed with people now, as if word had already spread among them. I ignored them and ran in the direction the remaining Solid Line pointed. Smashing through everything—people, walls, whatever lay in my path—I advanced.
— BOOM! BOOM! BANG!!
At the end of my path, two men stood guard, likely because the hostage was valuable labor. Deciding they were all the same breed anyway, I grabbed both their heads with my hands, smashed them together, and crushed their skulls.
I opened the door and went inside. The weakened woman, having seemingly come to her senses from the commotion outside, spoke to me.
"Wh-who are you...?"
"I'm here at Jia's request. Excuse me, but I'm going to touch you a moment."
I safely brought her mother to the watchtower as well, then stood in the center of the yard once more. A vast crowd had already surrounded me. I ignored their stares and retrieved a jar from my Subspace.
"Paura. If you grant me a favor later, I'll give you every soul of the criminals here."
At this sweet offer, Paura's lips curled into a ghastly smile as she began to fly in all directions.