After the special forces completed the clearing operation, the regular officers from the tropolitan Police Departnt moved in to investigate the back mountain.
Naturally, Inspector gure was among them.
"..."
Even with his years of experience on the force, the scene before him left him speechless.
He had seen many grueso cri scenes throughout his career.
But this... this was different.
Seeing the lifeless bodies of middle-aged victims was already tragic enough.
But now, several of those corpses belonged to children.
The horror of that realization made his stomach churn.
gure lowered the brim of his hat.
"It looks like things on this island are far more complicated than I thought."
He had initially assud that once the drug dealers were subdued, the remaining work would simply involve collecting evidence related to drug production.
Confiscating the drugs and dismantling the equipnt should've been the straightforward next step.
But he'd underestimated the scale of the cri.
What lay before him wasn't just about illegal drugs.
They were dealing with a massacre, dozens of innocent lives, snuffed out in the na of experintation.
He approached one of the lab tables and examined the sheets of paper pinned to its surface.
Chemical formulas and data were scrawled across the pages.
The cold, clinical precision of the text contrasted with the brutality of the acts committed here.
There were no nas listed, only nurical designations.
But the patterns clearly referred to test subjects.
Human subjects.
gure clenched his teeth so hard his jaw ached.
He was a police officer, he'd seen his fair share of human cruelty.
But this crossed into sothing else entirely.
Even so, he knew he couldn't let his emotions cloud his judgnt.
Taking a deep breath, he pulled out his phone and dialed his superior.
The line connected after a few seconds.
"Superintendent Matsumoto, sir. The clearing operation has been completed."
"Good work, gure," ca Matsumoto Kiyonaga's voice from the other end.
gure hesitated before continuing. "Sir... the back mountain was indeed a drug dealer's base. We've confird it was being used as a drug manufacturing lab."
"..."
The brief pause from Matsumoto told gure that his superior was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
"There's more, isn't there?" Matsumoto asked, his voice low.
"Yes."
gure steeled himself.
"In the basent of the drug lab... we discovered a hidden facility."
"There were dozens of bodies, sir. n, won... the elderly... even children."
"We're certain the drug dealers were using living people to test new drug formulas."
"What!?"
Matsumoto Kiyonaga's voice shot through the phone like a bullet.
Live human experints?
On that scale?
The implications made his mind reel.
Drug dealers had always treated drug trafficking as a profit-driven enterprise.
But now, it seed they'd crossed a line, moving from distribution into experintation.
The goal? Developing new drugs at the cost of innocent lives.
Who the hell gave them the audacity to try sothing like this?
Matsumoto's grip tightened around the receiver.
This wasn't sothing they could quietly sweep under the rug.
The tropolitan Police Departnt had already mobilized significant resources for the raid. The public would be expecting answers.
And, more worryingly, if the data from these experints had already been shared with other drug syndicates...
The consequences could be catastrophic.
"gure, secure the scene," Matsumoto ordered, his voice sharp.
"I need a full, detailed report as soon as possible."
"Understood, sir."
The line went dead.
gure lowered the phone and looked around the lab.
The stench of death clung to the air.
The corpses hadn't fully decayed yet, but their contorted expressions and visible wounds told the story of their suffering.
"These victims..." he muttered to himself.
"They were locals. People from Tsukikage Island."
He knew what had to be done.
Identifying each victim, one by one, was going to be a painstaking process.
But it was the only way to bring closure to the families left behind and to build an airtight case against those responsible.
He sighed and rubbed his temples.
Today was supposed to be his day off.
He'd planned to spend the weekend relaxing at ho with his wife.
But now...
He'd be lucky to make it ho before next week.
"Looks like I'll need to apologize to her later," he muttered, forcing himself to focus.
---
After resting for a while, the girls at the hot spring hotel seed to be in slightly better condition.
Unfortunately, none of them had much of an appetite left after what they'd witnessed.
"Ugh... I feel awful..."
Chika groaned. After vomiting so many tis, even her stomach acid was gone.
Her limbs felt weak, and she could only lean against Ren for support.
Being close to him was the only thing keeping her fear and nausea at bay.
Ren let out a quiet sigh.
He gently patted her back, just as he'd done earlier, hoping it would help ease her discomfort.
"This is why I said so things aren't ant for you to see."
"Ugh... yeah... I definitely get that now."
Chika finally understood how out of her depth she'd been.
It wasn't about gender or age.
There are just so scenes that the human mind isn't built to process.
Even now, when she closed her eyes, the images of those mangled corpses haunted her.
The bodies of those children, especially, were burned into her mory.
"What kind of torture did those kids go through?" she whispered, her voice trembling.
Ren gently tapped her forehead with his knuckles.
"Don't dwell on that," he said softly.
"Trying to imagine what those kids experienced without any concrete information will only drag you into endless ntal exhaustion."
"If you obsess over it too much... you might end up with lasting psychological damage."
Chika rubbed her forehead where he'd tapped her and reluctantly abandoned the thought.
"Okay... so what should we focus on instead?"
The question seed to resonate with everyone else.
The others, who had been silently processing the horror they'd seen, turned their attention toward Amamiya Ren.
"What we should be focusing on," he said, "is how to hold on to our humanity."
"Humanity?" Chika repeated, confused.
"Wait... are you saying the drug dealers lost their humanity?"
"Exactly," Ren replied, nodding.
He turned to look at Shinomiya Kaguya.
"Shinomiya-san, rember what I said to you earlier?"
Kaguya's expression shifted as the mory surfaced.
"You said... that once soone gains power, they'll start pushing past the limits of their humanity without even realizing it."
"That's right," Ren confird.
She lowered her gaze.
It hadn't even been that long since she'd obtained the Ice-Ice Fruit and her first instinct had been to think about how it could help her escape the constraints of her family.
"Humanity isn't just about morals or kindness," Ren continued.
"It's about empathy."
"Once soone loses the ability to empathize with others, they stop being human."
"Without empathy, there's nothing left but instinct, desire, and a hunger for more power."
The room grew heavy with silence again.
"But... if they lose their humanity, aren't they still technically human?" Ran asked hesitantly.
Ren shook his head.
"No."
"Soone who discards their humanity in pursuit of power isn't human anymore."
"They're just monsters that happen to look like people."
The words sent chills through everyone present.
Monsters.
The drug dealers they had seen earlier fit that description perfectly.
They had looked like ordinary people but their actions had proven how little of their humanity remained.
Ren's gaze sharpened.
"This isn't just a philosophical debate," he said.
"It's directly tied to the path I'm walking."
"The path of Sequence... is the path of human nature."
Even gods, after all, needed an anchor to hold on to their humanity.
Sequence 0 wasn't the end.
It was simply the stage where one beca powerful enough to bear the responsibility of retaining their humanity, no matter the temptation.
Because once soone beca consud by their powers...
They stopped being the master of their abilities.
And beca the slave of the power itself.
***
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