Two military men walked through a corridor, their hard boots striking the floor with a sharp rhythm. "He’s in there?"
A twenty-eight-year-old lieutenant asked his mander, who wore a solemn look. "He is."
The twenty-eight-year-old soldier clenched his teeth.
"Are you afraid?" the mander asked and halted before the door.
"No."
The mander chuckled. "Better be. You don’t know. Fear might save your life in this one. Behind this door is the man that slaughtered an elite team of agents sent into a red gate because he believed they were all infected."
He held the handle. "Ken Asahi... the Executioner."
The door swung open, and they both walked into a room. A glass wall divided the room. On the other side of the room was a young man whose hair fell loosely on his shoulders, chained to the wall.
Steel bars went around his body, exposing only his head. Even his neck was locked, and there were special suppression cuffs on his wrists, meant to keep his summon locked away because, as much as they were cautious around Ken, his summon, Asahi, was to be feared.
The mander folded his arms while the young lieutenant squinted as Ken lifted up his head.
The lieutenant’s eyes widened. "He’s a kid!"
"I see you don’t know him that well. Agent Ken Asahi, just turned seventeen. Lost his older brother to a dungeon, awakened three months ago. He’s amongst those we call the new breed of summoners and, even in that group, he can be classified as an apex."
The mander turned to the lieutenant. "Do you know this boy has had the privilege to sit with Mrs. Fukushima, not just at her office but at her home? Privileged kid. According to our researchers, they said he was our Godfrey Daniels. In plain terms, he is going to be the one to kill Godfrey Daniels when he’s grown too much. That was the plan..." He sucked his lips and exhaled.
"But he ended up killing sixty highly trained agents," the young lieutenant muttered.
"Not just that." The mander placed his hand on the glass wall. "There are over two thousand extractors and professionals who were sent there. Two thousand of them have fallen sick, and this kid right here demanded to kill each and every last one of them."
The young lieutenant shivered.
"Check it out." The mander pointed at a diary. The young lieutenant picked it up, opened the book, and began to flip through the pages. He saw the sketches of the centipedes.
The final one he saw was a centipede, a huge one protruding out of the mouth of a sketched human being.
Two more came out of her back.
"Everyone in that containment center is infected with this thing?" The lieutenant tilted his head toward Ken.
"Is one of the symptoms of their sickness an intense itch?" Ken responded with a question that made the lieutenant turn to his mander.
"Yes, they’re all itching, Ken." The mander sat down. "So what are we supposed to do? Kill two thousand civilians without exhausting every means to preserve their lives?"
Ken looked straight into the mander’s eyes. "You can’t save them. This isn’t an illness that can be cured!" He glared at the mander.
"It’s a plague."
"Is that so? Well, we’ve recorded the recovery of fifty people so far. They’re perfectly fine now. They don’t even itch."
All forms of expression on Ken’s face died one after the other until only utter shock was left. "Did you do an X-ray?"
"Because of this centipede on the woman you drew. Not when they left, but most patients have gone through an X-ray, and I don’t think a centipede can grow this big in the span of a day."
"The boss of that dungeon is creating an army. Kill that army or live knowing, for the rest of your life, you were the last line between a monster and millions, yet you blew it."
"Is there nothing else of importance you have for me, Ken?" the mander asked after shrugging off Ken’s words.
When Ken refused to speak again, he got up.
"Why is he chained like that?" the lieutenant suddenly whispered to him.
"Because he came back saying he’s infected and his goal was to clear the others. So we locked him up. He’s a soldier who (that) has gone insane. Most probably, what we’re facing messes with his mind, and now he’s making up things."
The mander replied while eyeing Ken. "We’ve seen no centipede in the containment center. Now I believe there’s a pandemic. There’s something in that dungeon that makes people sick, but it also makes people insane. And concerning your question, that young man has the strength of a Demigod. All these restrictions won’t stop him. Nothing in our world can stop a demigod except another demigod."
"So... those cuffs don’t guarantee our safety?!"
"They don’t. His heart does. We know Ken isn’t a cruel kid, and that’s why we haven’t eliminated him yet. But if it gets past this stage, we might have to do it." The mander whispered, then turned to Ken.
"I just wanted to tell you. Godfrey Daniels, the acclaimed King Of Summoners... will be in Japan soon."
The mander went straight for the door while Ken slowly lifted up his head one last time.
***
"Ma’am." Mrs. Fukushima’s personal assistant walked into the office and saw her boss facing the floor-to-ceiling glass wall, staring at the neon screens on other buildings.
She tilted her head.
"What is it?"
"The Minister of Defence has gone ahead to invited the House Of Order. Master Godfrey Daniels will soon be in Tokyo."
Mrs. Fukushima turned. "What?!"
"And the plague has spread to the medical workers attending to the sick. It’s spread to some security men and even their families."
Mrs. Fukushima stormed over to the table, opened her phone, and began to check her messages.
Her eyes grew wider and wider until she slammed her palm on the table with a loud scream.
Then, she faced her personal assistant with bloodshot eyes. She knew her pride had put her in this mess. Once word got out, all the blame would e crashing on her. This could risk the authority of the Seven Heads, or her nation could even be kicked out in favour of Paris or Berlin.
"Make sure the public knows what’s happening. Put the blame on the HouseOf Order. We called for their aid, and they refused to e at the scheduled time. And make sure the Minister is silenced."
’He will cost me my career if I do not stop this rubbish.’
"What are you still doing here?" She tilted her head. "Go... now." Her voice was low but terrifying enough to make the assistant flee.
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