After seeing the two of them leave, Dave lowered his gaze to the palm of his hand and began counting the money Zavi had just given him. The amount was enough to shock him: 10 Pace.
He froze. That amount was equivalent to a full month's salary at his current job, even though he had not worked a full month yet and had already asked for an advance earlier.
Even though the average salary of employees in the city was around 100 Pace, Dave felt extremely grateful for the money he had received for free, feeling that the question in his mind earlier had finally been answered.
'Thank you, Goddess Nagreitta.'
Dave frowned, trying to understand why Zavi had given him that much. The more he searched for an answer, the more confused he became.
He put the money into his wallet, then slipped it into the pocket of his coat. Just as he was about to stand, he turned to the right and saw Han asleep with his head slumped over the table, in a pitiful state.
The wound on Han's arm had started bleeding again. Fresh drops slowly fell onto the café floor, forming a small puddle right in front of Dave's brown shoes.
"Hey, what's wrong?" Dave shook Han's body in panic. But Han did not respond at all.
Dave heard the faint sound of blood dripping, soft but continuous. He lowered his head and stared at the small puddle beneath Han's already dirty brown shoes.
"He endured all that pain this whole time?" Dave whispered in disbelief, then took off his coat and placed it over Han's back.
"Should I take him to that old man?" he thought anxiously, unable to bear seeing a child endure that kind of pain.
He saw the bloodstain still seeping through the brown fabric and dripping onto the café floor, sending panic through him. He worried the café manager would scold him.
In a panic, Dave pulled out his wallet again, took one bill, one Pace, and placed it on the table, weighing it down with an empty glass.
He quickly wrapped his coat around Han's body, lifted the trembling boy onto his shoulder, and carried him outside to find a doctor, even as the wind grew sharper and the rain poured down harder.
...
Meanwhile, around several hundred meters from the outskirts of Vica, near the border with Ahiston, Zavi and Karl stood under a shabby tarp above the street and entered an empty merchant tent, deciding to take shelter from the terrible weather.
They planned to continue their journey to the city square, but the stone road had become slippery because of the rain, hindering their steps. They had to move carefully so they would not slip.
Five minutes later, Zavi's heart grew increasingly uneasy as the sky darkened further, as if reacting to his mood. "Come on, we have to go!" he shouted in panic.
But for no clear reason, Karl refused to leave the tent.
"You go first. I'll follow… don't worry," Karl replied calmly while pressing his glasses, feeling his vision getting worse.
Zavi's eyes widened. He was worried about his mother in the city square after hearing the horrifying information Karl had told him earlier in the café.
"Hey, damn it…" Zavi hissed, grabbing Karl's collar tightly. "If only you hadn't told me about that…"
The glasses fell.
Before he finished his sentence, Karl brushed his hand away and picked up his glasses again. He put them on and gave a faint smile before speaking in a restrained tone. "I know, Zavi. So be quiet. Should I tell someone about this? Ren? Or your younger brother?"
Reflexively, Zavi stepped back two steps. His face darkened when he heard that subtle threat. Two memories of Karl flashed through his mind: when he saved a teenager from a beating that clearly was not an ordinary incident, and how Karl concluded that someone had been controlling the people who attacked that boy.
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Karl had followed him since he left the house, helping him, intentionally or not, by drawing attention to himself and the crowd around them, creating illusions of people passing by to help him escape, whether they were involved or not, during the boy's beating. The only person who seemed to truly see Zavi clearly at that time was the man wearing a bowler hat, who was unaffected by Karl's illusion.
After learning about his supernatural ability, level two, Magician, which allowed him to become anyone he wanted with one condition: taking a part of the target's body, everything began to make sense.
When he first heard it directly from Karl, Zavi did not immediately believe it, but he thought it might be true after remembering Ren's pistol earlier. He wondered when and where Karl had obtained a part of Dave's body. But after thinking further, he finally understood.
But why did he reveal his own ability? That question suddenly appeared in his mind.
Karl was not merely a shapeshifter. At his second level, his movement speed could approach the speed of light, fast enough to steal a strand of Dave's hair without anyone noticing.
Within four months, Karl could also create up to three avatars of himself, a dangerous yet effective power for disguise, although he regretted using it every time. Each avatar only appeared briefly to replace his main body if the original body was dying, no matter the cause.
In addition, there was another effective Magician ability, the symbol of a Sorcerer, Mirage Exceed, hidden behind his glasses. The illusion activated automatically when he wore the glasses and became passive when he removed them.
Karl had only revealed part of his abilities to Zavi, although the members of his team surely already knew everything.
After recalling Karl's words, Zavi finally understood something. In this world, he was merely borrowing someone else's body, yet he treated that unfamiliar family as if they were his real family.
He knew that on Earth he had never truly felt comfortable with his real family. So what was wrong with accepting this new family in this world as his true one?
Thinking…
Zavi turned around and stepped forward. He stood beneath the edge of the tent, lifted his face, and let the heavy rain wash over the gloomy and hollow expression on his face.
"Damn…" he muttered softly.
Thunder roared endlessly, as if something were pressing down from the sky. The wind grew stronger every second. Objects around them were swept into the air, window glass shook violently, and the metal sheets above them rattled loudly.
Karl glanced at Zavi. The eyes behind his glasses began to glint. He adjusted his glasses and stepped closer, about to say something important.
"Come here. There is something important you need to hear." Karl raised his index finger, acting like a magician performing a trick.
Zavi turned around. Rainwater streamed down his face, dripping slowly and soaking the ground that had previously been dry. He stared blankly at Karl. They looked at each other for a moment before Zavi stepped closer.
He stopped just a few inches from Karl. Karl leaned slightly and whispered something into his ear, a sentence that erased the gloomy expression instantly, like paper being devoured by fire.
"What!?" Zavi staggered backward. He had never expected Karl to say that.
He fell silent. His mind spun, weighing the possibilities and consequences. After making sure everything was still within acceptable limits, he finally nodded. He agreed, and prepared to follow Karl's instructions from that moment on, with a time limit of two hours.
Time was almost up. They could not wait for the rain to stop, so they left the tent.
A few minutes later, they arrived at the city square after passing various obstacles: slippery roads, the piercing cold wind, and the heavy rain that struck their bodies and blurred their vision throughout the journey.
"Looks like we're right on time," Karl said briefly, slightly bending forward. He raised his head and looked at Zavi beside him.
"What time is it now?" he asked casually.
"Seventeen past seven," Zavi replied, handing over his pocket watch while scanning the city square that had now recovered from the previous incident, although the earlier wounds were still hidden within it.
"I see…" Karl touched his chin with his left hand, staring ahead before returning the watch.
'Where is that person now.' he thought in confusion.
Zavi accepted it and placed it back into his coat pocket.
"So… are we just standing here, or—"
Before he finished, Karl interrupted him.
"No need to wait. We do exactly as I told you earlier." He turned with a confident smile.
...
Previously, in the café, Karl had said something that made the hairs on Zavi's neck stand on end. The people who survived the kidnapping were not merely victims, they were targets whose time was almost up. Tuesday night was the final limit, today, and Wednesday noon was the thin line between survival and a ninety percent chance of death.
Two hours after leaving the building filled with bushes and weeds in the Forgenate district, Elmer felt it first. A dark premonition had pierced his chest since the previous afternoon, like a cold blade slowly pressing against his heart.
At dawn, he dragged Karl out, visiting the houses of the survivors one by one. The Morotuane Church helped identify their addresses and identities, eleven names who might be trapped between life and death.
In the Chapena district, two survivors, Mei Actitus and the woman who had spoken with Zavi earlier, Fernesa Hornami,were still fine. There were no suspicious signs from outside the houses. Through observation and intuition, both of them were breathing steadily, their homes calm. But that was only the beginning.
The remaining nine led them west of Tezny, through Silver Road and Bronze Road.
Four people there were found still sleeping peacefully with their families. Nothing suspicious, no injuries, the houses and streets calm as if nothing terrible had ever happened, because no ordinary citizen dared go outside alone except the two of them.
Until they arrived in the central district of Tezny. Around five in the morning.
At the first house, their hopes collapsed. Five people who had left the Mansion earlier that night were found in a condition that could no longer be called alive. Their right hands were missing, not torn off, not cut by force, but gone with a cut so clean as if something that should not exist in this world had taken it. The skin at the edge of the wound remained intact, without a single drop of blood. Even the most experienced killer could not leave a wound like that.
Three police officers and two investigators from the Tezny district had been called, and they could only stand there with pale faces when they saw it. They also found severe wounds on the back of each victim's head, like strikes from a hard object, most likely wooden beams they recognized, easily found inside the house as firewood for heating stoves.
But what made the two investigators fall silent was the sight in the living room: one of the victims who had just been discovered, the last victim, a woman, was floating several inches above the floor, her body slowly descending like a puppet whose strings had just been cut.
And that was not the only one. Four other houses in the same district experienced different strange incidents. One of them was the house of the Pinsone family on Ahiston Street No. 14, near the city square, where one corpse was found floating upright with its head down and feet above.
The other three victims were found dead lying flat on the living room tables of their respective houses. The police and the two investigators were already accustomed to the strange phenomena that continued appearing in this world. Yet every time they heard reports about "dead people," their bodies and minds froze instantly, as if they were already sick of the state of the world.
Exactly at eight in the morning. Tuesday. Five victims were buried at the Meirrena public cemetery, Tezny, Ahiston Street No. 15.
Karl and Elmer attended the funeral as a form of respect and compassion for the innocent people who had become victims of the cruelty of the "ritual."
After the funeral of the five victims was finished, Elmer decided to protect the six remaining survivors while also investigating how it was possible for people to be killed in such a way.
