[Moscow]
It didn't took long for Jinwoo to reach the area where August was passing by together with Claire. Upon arriving at the said location, the stench of blood rose into the air, as Jinwoo witnessed the massacre that laid before him. Bodies after bodies were laid out in the road on the road, and seemingly all those bodies came from specific types of people based on the way the clothes are worn.
Some are soldiers from the military force of Russia dispatched for this operation, some are agents who were part of the of the main group tasked to deal with the terrorist, but the majority of it are from innocent civilians that got caught up between the crossfire. No one, not even the innocent was spared from this massacre.
As Jinwoo was about to take a step into this bloody graveyard of bodies, a rattle then rolled over towards him on the ground, as Jinwoo saw the unthinkable which literally shook the calmness within his eyes. The rattle itself rolled over to him, from the hand of an infant who got killed in the massacre while its mother used her own body to save her own child desperately. Even though saving the child was the will of the mother in exchange for her own, the intensity of the attack was too strong that it bypassed all manner of defense and killed her together with her own baby.
Looking at how the mother was holding its child close to her heart, and the stream of tears flowing down its eyes, it was apparent how the mother had grieved from having her own child killed despite everything she did to keep it alive. A true misery and despair that haunted the mother even to her death.
Even though Jinwoo had seen a lot of this type of death throughout his dangerous career, seeing it once more literally took a toll on him as the apocalypse itself also left a deep scar within his heart. Jinwoo is the type of person who placed himself in the shoe of the person he observes, because of that it literally took a toll on his mentality whenever he see such a thing which often lead him into depression during his earlier days as an agent.
Back then he was too unstable to become an agent, he had a lot of issues, but due to his effort, he was able to hold on and turn his life around. For his mentality he always went to a psychiatrist before and after the mission to keep his sanity in check. In order to not loose his mind everyday and keep himself in check, he always smiles brightly and act as the cheerful person within the group back in the dormitory. All that was seen on the surface was just a mask to hide his breaking down self.
However this time in this operation, the mask that he was keeping in check in order to not break, finally showed signs of breaking apart. This huge amount of death wasn't supposed to happen. This operation was done with the intent of keeping the causality to the minimum, they were not supposed to involve the civilians. However fate can be tricky, almost every time you wish for something good to happen, fate will always most likely do the opposite.
Everything had turned into a mess, a lot of people died, innocent lives were sacrificed. From that moment on, an insurmountable rage filled within deep his heart as veins begun to pop out of his tensed muscles all over his body.
*********
Not far from where Jinwoo is currently standing, August then threw away a dead agent's body to the side, as he used his chaos ability to suck out all of its blood and gather it towards the huge red orb of blood floating above his head. From a total of 50 soldiers, and 10 local agents hindering him, none of them survived this onslaught as they all died alongside the civilians he had killed to proc his chaos ability.
The moment blood was spilled, everything went downhill for the people trying to stop him as they all got killed one by one. Beside him on another orb of blood floating on his side which is currently trapping Claire, the child himself was currently in despair from witnessing the massacre and seeing death all over again in front of her.
Since Claire has the chaos ability of life and death, August can somewhat imagine that the death of the people happening near her can greatly influence her both spirituality and mentally. There was even a theory given by Viktor that Claire can see the soul of the dead and be haunted by them due to her chaos ability which has a connection to the dead. If that was true then every person that was killed in front of her, were now currently haunting her, causing her to break down in despair inside the orb prison.
Bur just as he was about to make his move and leave this bloody area, a surged of energy then suddenly appeared behind him, causing August to feel threatened by whatever thing that was far behind him. In that moment he suddenly felt chill run down his back, as he instinctively raised up his arm and created a barrier of blood from the pool that is beneath his foot.
Just as he expected an attack came from his left as he saw a rod sticking out from the edge of his sight and got swung down towards him from his left. However due to his barrier of blood that he had conjured, he easily blocked the attack coming from his left and was able to withstand the pressure coming from the attack itself which broke the sound barrier.
But that didn't end there, the moment the attack from the left got blocked by a type of barrier from the pool of blood on the ground, Jinwoo then quickly kicked the body of its rod in order to forcefully break the momentum and give him opportunity to swing the rod on the other side in that split second of a single blink.
Just like that Jinwoo was able to successfully land a hit on August right, as he sent the person himself flying and crashing towards the building on the left. But that didn't come out without a price. After all the moment he had successfully landed a hit on August, the latter was able to do the same as he sent out a protruding spike towards him and successfully stabbed his side from the blind spot of his swing. Due to that both August and Jinwoo suffered a wound on each other, just at the beginning of their confrontation.