After six days of being detained, a guard opened a jail cell in an underground dungeon. Dion, the one who was sleeping inside, opened his eyes after hearing the squeaking metal of the rusted door made with bars.

With widened eyes, Dion sat up straight and asked. “Am I going to be released?”

“Since you’re below the puberty age, your sentence has been deducted by a day, from a week to six days. Do you have any other words?” The guard replied.

When Dion heard the news, he boosted his foot and rushed towards the door, but the guard caught his cloth and dragged him back to the ground.

“Do you want me to lengthen your sentence?” The guard asked. “Don’t get too excited to leave. You’ll end up guilty soon.”

“Mom…” Dion muttered with wavy lips that shook. “Mom needed me… I need to go to her soon. If I were late, then she’ll…”

“Don’t do anything stupid. Your mom doesn’t want you to prolong your sentence too. There are still some documents needed for you to be filled up. Before that, follow my command.”

Dion followed the guard out of his cell. As they walked further, he saw the doctor sitting on the corner of a jail cell far from its door. The moment Dion noticed him, he stopped walking.

“D—Doctor…”

“Don’t talk to me like you know me,” the doctor replied, raising his head as his dead-set eyes stared at Dion. “Why I’m here? You’re everything at fault.”

“I—I’m sorry,” Dion said with a stooped-down head and a tone that pitied him. “I just wanted to cure my Mom. She’s critical right now. I need someone to cure her. Do you know some underground doctors that will cure her?”

“You’re too brave to ask that in front of a guard. And how can you assure that she’s still alive? Her disease was critical. In similar cases, the patient will die after four days left unsupervised. Your hopes were a little to none.”

The doctor’s words hit his heart, making Dion’s jaws clenched as nerves popped out of his forehead. Moments after silence, Dion rushed to his cell.

“You’re a quack! A liar!” Dion shouted, smashing the metal bars over his cell repeatedly. “Don’t tell me that my mother was already dead! If you’ve just accepted my offer, we wouldn’t have been through this! I could have paid the remaining balance after that!”

The guard Dion was supposed to follow dragged his body away from the cell. “I told you not to do something stupid.”

Dion resisted but couldn’t escape. Seeing Dion’s nerves popping out of his head, the doctor smirked.

“Even if I accepted your offer, things will turn out the same. Don’t you realize it? You’re being chased by the guards. I couldn’t care less about the criminal deeds you did. If you have the time to blame someone, blame yourself. Because of you, your mother is on the edge of the cliff to hell.”

“Damn you!” Dion growled. “My mother is still alive! She doesn’t deserve to be in hell! You aren’t God to dictate how she’ll live!”

“Kids do have beautiful dreams,” the doctor smirked, leaned his head back, and fidgeted his fingers. “… let us destroy your expectations, shall we?”

After going out of the dungeon, Dion filled the documents in the records room while bathing in a cold sweat. He unconsciously shook one of his feet, showing his irritability to leave as early as possible.

Dion only knew how to write his name by copying what was written on his guild card. His family name was something he never knew.

Most of the terms in the document were alien to him. The guard even scolded him for writing his name in all of the fields. After his lip bled out from biting, the guard only checked the fields where Dion could sign, then he filled up the rest.

The moment Dion finally stepped out of prison, instead of breathing the air of freedom, he rushed with rapid breaths. The direction? Towards the slums where his home was.

But he never expected what he saw.

A number of crowds gather around his home. Because of the volume of people, Dion couldn’t see what was happening. He could only hear whispers and murmurs of the gossipers talking about the incident.

“Poor woman, she became a victim of them too? Why does there’s a victim every week?”

“It’s the slums, you know? If you lived here, no one cared. If you die here, no one cares. We’re all dead weights from the kingdom and they want us to vanish… or to die.”

“It’s still abnormal! Women dying every week, no one can identify if she’s from the slums or not. Her face is too bruised to be identified.”

“No one would ever search for the culprit since the victims are poor people. But what the killer did was utterly brutal. After using the victim's body, he lies it in the open, naked and dead.”

Dion pushed the crowd for him to cross the narrow path towards his home. But after reaching the front of the population, his eyes widened with a suck of breath that was held for a long time.

A woman’s body lying on the ground, covered by a long cloth, caught his view in front of their house door.

No way! That’s not Mom! That shouldn’t be Mom! He thought, vigorously shaking his head as he froze in his place. His mouth dried up sucking a quick breath. With his eyes widened and furrowed eyebrows, his stomach hardened, but he didn’t throw up.

There were men blocking the crowd to give space to the death scene, but Dion broke through. He ran towards his home, screaming “Mom? Mom!” as his eyes wandered at every corner. But the sight he never wanted appeared before him.

The mattress had no one lying in it. Splats of blood paint the walls throughout the entire room. The blanket garnered thick volumes of blood passing through it.

Dion hyperventilated the time he witnessed the gruesome scene. Tears ran down his eyes as he gritted his teeth, holding his hiccups.

His watery eyes blurred his vision and his thinking. Despair, regret, anger, and mixed emotions fought inside him, leading him to a single conclusion…

His mother was dead.

He ran out and kneeled in front of the body, trying to reach out to remove the cover from the victim’s head. Suddenly, he remembered the earlier conversation with the people.

‘Her face is too bruised to be identified.’

Dion suddenly pulled back his hand, trying to avoid opening the cover that would lead to countless days of nightmares. Shaking and afraid, he couldn’t bear to see his mother in much a poorer state than she was before.

He put his face inches away from the ground to hide his tears of rage as he smashed the ground with his fists. His mourning blended with a silent growl of regret.

I shouldn’t have done that. If this were to happen, I would have followed Mom’s advice. I wouldn’t have done bad to save her. It doesn’t matter anymore.

None of these people wanted to help. None of these people cared. Ever since we are always alone.

Dion brought the body inside their home, teary throughout the day, until night… until another day. The people outside didn’t last too long. As he predicted, no one from the crowd actually came… actually cared.

Dion’s tears pool had gone dry after endless crying to a body he identified as his mother. His heart hollowed as his breathing shallowed. Redness painted his eyes as dark circles surrounded them.

After deciding what to do, he weakly stood up, wrapping the body with a rope to hold its cover. Dion carried it on his back and walked out the gates.

Connor, who was in charge of the gate then, didn’t bother him after gazing from his face. After the kid left from their view, a guard asked Connor.

“Hey, is that the kid from before? He looked like kid Moses. What was he carrying now?”

“Don ashk me,… I can’tch guaranzee if he’sh going shoo far.” Dion suddenly turned back and whispered. “IIf some life was in line, we shouldn’t have been involved.”

Dion walked endlessly until he reached the southern Halsey Forest, which the kingdom had already occupied. He was never wary of what was around him, only losing his way forward until his legs tire out.

He spent thirty minutes walking in the direction he couldn’t determine where. His mind only came back to reality after he stepped on the darker part of the forest where the leaves blocked the rays of the sun.

Dion stopped after spotting a vast space of wet dirt that could easily be excavated. He took a huge curved twig and dug a hole with it. He spent the afternoon digging a hole until a body could fit.

After putting the wrapped body in, he stared below with clenched fists and gritted teeth.

“Those people who looked down on us… those people who deserved this more than you… I’ll make sure they’ll pay for it.” After muttering his words, Dion put the dug dirt back into the hole and buried the body.

But halfway through his job, a dense purple smoke rose up slowly from a bush, covering the whole area in zero visibility. It carried a pungent stench that was both nauseating and poisonous.

The acrid smell invaded Dion’s senses and made it difficult to breathe, choking the airways and making tears stream uncontrollably from the eyes.

The dense plume gave the numbness of his limbs, resulting in him falling down the ground. Only his eyes were left intact, but because of the unwanted fragrance, his dizziness started dimming his vision.

Dion’s only view was the leaves blocking the sky, but two small rock golems entered the scene. It didn’t attack Dion, rather, they waited until another person came.

He was a mad scientist, and he looked the part. His hair was wild and unkempt, sticking out in every direction. His eyes were wide and bloodshot, darting around nervously.

His lab coat was stained with various chemicals and fluids, some of them dripping from his pockets. He wore a pair of thick glasses that magnified his eyes and a pair of gloves that were torn and frayed.

He had a maniacal grin on his face, revealing his yellowed teeth.

“I wanted revenge, I wanted them to suffer… those thoughts make me full! I love it! I love how you could emit a devilish aura in par with demons!

“So wonderful! Amazing! I’m excited! I’ve found my perfect subject! How exactly will you soon turn out? I can’t tell… but it’s something big!

“A corrupted heart will sure lead to a corrupted soul… And it’s my job to accelerate that.”

Dion captured the scientist’s last words…

The next time his consciousness awakens…

He couldn’t control his body anymore.