Isaac keeps looking over the slowly fading away figure of William. His five red eyes are longing.
He, too, wants to help the victim. It may be the only thing he can do to atone for his cris.
The raven looks up at Blaze.
"You can go."
"But won’t you need my assistance, Master?"
"If I need you, I will call you."
"Thank you, Master!"
Isaac flaps his jet-black wings and follows William’s footsteps.
The two, once teammates and accomplices, now beco a bird and a man with heavy responsibility.
Blaze wonders if he made the right choice today.
Forgiveness isn’t always a good thing.
He will soon know the result of the seeds he has sown.
Hugo and Anton look at Blaze with big, teary eyes.
"What?"
"We want to help them too, Master!"
"We volunteer to take care of all the victims!"
Hugo and Anton straighten their backs and do a unison military salute.
"I have plans for you. Now return to the storage."
Blaze waves his hand, delivering them both to his Clone Storage.
He looks over to the horizon from afar. The sun still has not erged. He probably has so ti to browse through the mories of the trapped souls.
Blaze still needs to pick his new mount.
The Lantern of the Damned materializes into existence. Inside its yellow light, anguished screams of souls echo non-stop.
Blaze has been burning them since the mont he collected the souls.
A suitable punishnt, he may add, for these monsters.
He sits down, his eyes flare up, and the two yellow beams reach inside the Lantern.
Blaze is now watching the docuntary movies of all the bastards inside the Roof.
So of them aren’t even a goon but only a custor that is just so unlucky to be there.
He learns a lot of things from their mories.
Ian Yates has been cooperating with the Roof and many more EEs to kidnap young, durable female Awakened students to sell them for profits.
So, he even left for personal use.
The mayor kept a blind eye to this because he himself also got a cut.
The police are so corrupt that almost everyone has a hand in it.
The other officers even force good cops to take bribes to make sure they will never betray the force.
Dominic Renly, the good cop that Blaze knew, was tricked into going patrolling at the ti of the Voidgate so that he got sucked inside the Mirror Layer.
The state of the Akansa Police Force is obviously caused by Adam Gulliver. As the Chief of Police, he is the most corrupt of them all.
"You need to die, Adam." Blaze mumbles.
Then he keeps looking.
So custors in the trade union were at the Roof just to have fun. They knew that these girls were kidnapped, but they didn’t care.
Things like this happen everywhere in the country. They couldn’t do anything to change it, so why bother? Instead of refusing it, they thought that by buying the girl precious ti, they could sohow help them.
Delusional thoughts that tried to justify why they all turned a blind eye.
These souls are definitely going inside Blaze’s stomach.
And then the next. An ordinary goon inside the Roof that was raised in a cri-filled neighborhood.
It was what everyone did, joining a gang, so he did as well.
Dimon, one of the lieutenants under Nadyr, did everything because he enjoyed it. Not that he likes money or any specific reasons.
This one is also for the digestive system.
Then there is the other lieutenant, Slava, Timon,...
"Hmmm? What is this?"
Blaze finally cos across an interesting person.
Mitsuhiro Watanabe, a foreign-born Awakened, moved to Ranas when he was around six years old.
His actual na should be addressed as Watanabe Mitsuhiro, with the last na standing in the front.
Blaze looks back to the mont of his death. The guy was cleaning the toilet when Blaze blasted another goon through the wall.
Poor Mitsuhiro didn’t even know what was going on, and he was fried to death by the lightning bolt.
Apart from any other personnel inside Ranas, Mitsuhiro was forced to stay there and do a janitor’s job.
Originally, the guy was a high-tech engineer inside the Steel Legion. Unfortunately, he lost his promotion to so A-rank Awakened.
Mitsuhiro then quit the job and tried to jump to another organization, one that he believed would treat him better.
And then he was tricked and forced into slavery.
The guy was sold from place to place until he finally ended up at the Roof, a place where his intelligence was definitely not appreciated.
"Slavery is still legal?"
Blaze mumbles. Even though he knows Ranas is a godforsaken country, he thought slavery isn’t even a thing anymore.
Blaze is half-right.
North Ranas banned any slavery act around fifty years ago.
But in the South, where the main territory of the Hyperion Federation resides, slavery is still legal.
And then the scums try their best to trick naive people like Mitsuhiro to cross over the South and be sold for credits.
Blaze sighs. Injustice is everywhere, and it runs freely.
He pulls the soul of Mitsuhiro out of the Lantern, stopping the soul burning.
His soul expands into a translucent body, one that resembles his living form. Mitsuhiro lies on the ground, completely silent, and has no reaction at all.
The slavery has soon stripped away his self-respect and resistance. All Mitsuhiro has left is a mindless soul that will endure everything.
Blaze approaches the guy and looks at him.
He looks back, his eyes are lifeless, resembling that of a dead fish.
"What are you?" Mitsuhiro says.
"Does it matter?" Blaze says.
"No, not really. What do you want?"
"Let’s see. First, I would like to apologize. I looked at your mory, your death was unjustified."
Mitsuhiro lets out a chuckle, nothing can bother him anymore.
"A slave has no rights. I would have died soon anyway."
"Do you want to be resurrected? I can give you a physical body. You can continue to live your life."
"Live to do what now? I have no one, stranger. I have no life.
I used to have one, but it’s gone."
"You can try to rebuild it."
"I don’t want to."
"Then what do you want?"
Mitsuhiro’s dead eyes get their focus back. He grinds his spiritual teeth, making them screech.
"I want to kill them all!"
"Kill who?"
"The people who tricked ! The people who sold into slavery! I want vengeance!"
Blaze tilts his head a little, looking like he is pondering sothing.
"And what would you give to enact this vengeance?"
"Anything!"
"I can give you that. For a price."
"Na your price!"
"I need a mount."
Mitsuhiro’s brow furrows, visibly taken aback from the request of the strange being.
"You can refuse too. There is no catch.
I killed all of the Roof. I have snatched all their souls.
Now I will turn one of you into my mount. If you don’t want to, I still have a lot of souls left to choose from."
"Enough. I accept."
"Hold on. Listen to what I have to say.
You are a victim. Your soul does not deserve to be chained by . I will release your soul if you refuse so that you can return back to the normal cycle of life.
Or I can make you a body like I proposed so that you can live your life.
You have a choice here. You are not a slave anymore. You do not need to be my mount.
So think carefully before you decide."
Mitsuhiro takes these words to heart and finally stays silent to think about it.
"If I beco your mount, will it be forever?"
"No. Until you don’t want to do it anymore. Or maybe when I kill those slavers who took you.
You decide."
"You will kill them?!"
Mitsuhiro’s eyes shoot wide open.
"I will. That is what I do."
"Do you even know who they are?"
"The Federation, am I right? As I said before, I looked into your mory."
"Then make your mount!"
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