"A Dark Conjurer?" Teerom asked, having déjà vu at the word.
"Men and women who can summon… demons." She suddenly took her knife up to Teerom's throat, "Are you possessed? Is there a demon in there!?"
The other nurses had been listening and froze, observing Teerom carefully with anxiety.
"No! I don't even know what a Dark Conjurer is!" Teerom pleaded, trying to back away.
After a moment of hesitation, the nurse let him go. "There are humans who have a strange connection to the Demon Realm," She explained, "I thought you had severe internal injuries like the other one so I used the ADD."
"ADD?"
"Advanced Diagnosis Device." She showed him the stick she scanned him with, "It can scan every part of someone's body instantly and tell me exactly what's wrong. It can also see magic anomalies. I once laughed at my professor when he told me that it can detect anomalies such as Dark Conjurers… I guess I was wrong."
"What does it look like?" Teerom, being a naïve child, didn't question his connection to the Demon Realm, a place whose mention bought chills to even High Knights.
The nurse turned the screen toward him and showed him the outline of his body full of a pitch black essence shaped like a chaos of countless strings. "My professor said it's a faint, almost unnoticeable anomaly, but your connection to the Demon Realm seems to be incredibly strong. You may even be possessed by a demon." She suggested, worrying Teerom.
"Possessed!?" He scooted back on the bed from fear.
"Don't worry. The possession doesn't seem to have become too severe. Do you have parents?"
"…Yeah…" Teerom thought of Jiggan as a father, though he would never admit it.
"Tell them to take you to Baba Shibara. She lives on the outskirts of the country; you'll have to travel for a while, but I've heard she has trapped a Black Spirit. She can help you."
"Black Spirit?" Teerom inquired.
"Demons can be killed by both regular magic and Spirit Magic. However, Spirit Magic is much more effective. It can counter Dark Magic itself."
"D-Dark Magic?" All of the new terms and knowledge had begun to muddle Teerom's mind.
"The essence of demons?" The nurse hoped he would understand, growing more and more frustrated with Teerom's dumb expression, "Whatever. I'll take you to Baba Shibara and get rid of that possession before it takes over. Rukae hasn't had a demon in it since centuries ago." She hurriedly left him to go check on the other boy who had just woken up.
"How are you feeling?" One of the other nurses, still wielding a shotgun, asked the boy.
"It hurts…" He replied dully but honestly.
"Of course it does. But we don't know any advanced pain relieving spells."
"No!" The boy suddenly shouted, "My sister…" He wept, "Hamma…"
"If only men didn't exist. The world would be fucking perfect." One of the nurses dashed a red towel dripping with blood into a tray and took a few steps toward Teerom, "How old was she?"
"No older than 8."
"6," The boy corrected, gritting his teeth.
"You're kidding. How could they… She was a fucking child." The nurse sneered and seemed to be on the verge of puking at the thought of it.
"I'll kill all of them." The boy suddenly said in a monotone voice, "I'll clean this world of scum like them!"
"Stay in bed, kid." The oldest nurse, the one who diagnosed Teerom a Dark Conjurer, said with authority, "Someone like you can't do shit in this world."
"Someone like me!?" The boy sounded extremely offended.
"Yes. A weakling. You. A weakling."
"I'm not weak! I'll kill them! I'll clean this world of scum like them!" The boy shouted, ignoring the pain he was putting himself through by doing this.
"You can't!" The nurse was suddenly furious and approached the boy, clashing foreheads and staring into his eyes, "This world will never change. You can't change it. I can't change it. Even the past 4 fucking Quimnias did jack shit."
The boy let out a desperate, silent cry with constant tears and snot streaming down his face. Sighing, the nurse loosened up slightly and wiped his face with a towel.
"I-I don't want to li-live anymore… Ple-e-ease kill mee…" He requested, the waterfall from his eyes not stopping and his voice breaking.
"You know I can't do that. Look." She schooted next to him and affectionately placed her hand around his shoulder, "My husband was like you. He wanted to change the world. So he became a knight to fulfill that dream. I thought he could do it. I thought he could become a High Knight and change at least Eri. But Luneia does not watch over us. No God does. The Moon Church revoked his knighthood after an incident with his higher-ups. He disobeyed orders during a crusade. They sent me my husband's head in a box because he refused to kill innocent men, women, and children for the sake of Luneia." She continued; Teerom began to admire this woman - this incredible strong woman, "There are no prophets, no deities, nothing. There is only us. We are… alone. And even if we all banded together, we can't do shit. We're all weak, kid."
A heavy misery filled the room along with the loud silence around a little boy's painful sniffles and agonizing moans.
After a while, the nurses left the boy alone to properly calm down, and he fell asleep from sheer physical and especially mental exhaustion, waking a few hours later to Teerom standing by the window and staring out at the stars.
"What're you doing?" The boy asked, nothing left in his voice.
"I realized something today. There is no such thing as a reason to live." Teerom began, looking back at the boy, "You know how people ask themselves what the meaning of life is?"
The boy nodded.
"There is none. We just are. So we might as well make the most of it. Even if it's the shittiest life in existence."
There was no reply, just a disagreeing look.
"What's your name?"
"Ligta,"
"Pleasure to meet you, Ligta. My name is Teerom. You got parents?"
"No…"
"I've got a father… figure. His name's Jiggan." The name seemed to ring a bell for Ligta, "What do you like to do in your free time?"
Ligta found the conversation pointless but humored the eager Teerom, "I like to try and come up with new spells."
"Ohh," Teerom sounded genuinely interested, "What Magic Type are you?"
"Poison,"
"Coooool. Tell me your three favorite spells."
"I don't have any proper spells yet. All I can do is create a wisp of purple smoke that makes you cough a little." Ligta didn't realize it, but he was beginning to heal emotionally.
"That's awesome, man. I can only use low-level Protection Magic. And a tad bit of Strength." Teerom lifted his arm and covered it in the faint, faint yellow glow of his Protection spell.
"Huh? But back there I swear, you…"
"I honestly have no idea what happened," Teerom laughed, "One moment I thought I was gonna die, and the next, they were all…" Confusion grew on his face, "What happened to them?"
"You-," Ligta paused when he saw the slightly worried expression on Teerom's face.
"Did I do that?" Teerom began breathing heavily, remembering a strange feeling of hellish power. He stared at his hands; flashes, images of them being covered in blood ran through his mind. In a panic, he stormed out of the Medical Center, wanting to go home.
Shivering, he walked down the street, horrified by the snippets of memories that were not his as if he was skimming through a movie. The sight of the three boys, Jillet's head fifty meters from the rest of his body, and the great bloodbath mid-air that was Killer's brains, haunted him.
He shook his head, hoping the images would fade from his mind, but they insisted. He tried harder to shake his head and bashed it against something.
No, something bashed into his head. In fact, he was soon losing consciousness on the ground with a figure standing over him.
It asked something and from behind it emerged a boy in a white vest. Harth.
But before, Harth replied to the question, Teerom had passed out.
Jiggan sat with his friends in the living room, his head low and his hands fidgeting anxiously.
"Where the hell is he?" He demanded for the fifth time.
No one said anything, and even more reluctant to speak was Aywa who thought Jiggan was going to murder him if he told the truth.
To attack Jiggan's worrying heart more, Seima stepped out of her room, struggling to breathe.
"Where's Teerom?" She asked, her expression ghoulish with dread.
"Seima! Go back to bed." Baluchta rushed over and kept her from falling.
"Where's Teerom?" Seima asked again.
"We don't know." Aleed answered dreadfully.
"I-I might know." Aywa raised his hand.
"What?" Jiggan turned, his face springing back to life.
Aywa cleared his throat shamefully and awkwardly. "I-I took him to the Crasca territory. We were collecting-"
"From your father's fountain." Jiggan cut in.
"Yeah…" Aywa's gaze shifted downwards and he held his hands behind his back.
"WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING!?" Jiggan suddenly shouted and stood, bringing the wind up with his enormous frame.
"I'm sorry," Aywa's gaze shifted even further down; it could've gone below the ground. Jiggan stood in front of him, suppressing enough anger to punch Aywa and splatter his brains everywhere.
"How did you even lose him?" Baluchta asked.
"You were too busy collecting the coins. Damn it, Aywa! You should know what the Crasca gang is like!" Jiggan punched the wall next to Aywa's head. His fist drove through the wood, creating a hole and huge cracks. Since he didn't use Protection Magic, blood streamed from his knuckles when he took his fist out of the wall.
Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. Jiggan looked to Aleed, who then opened it to find an aging nurse whose most notable feature was a knife sticking out of her pocket. Beside her was a panting boy with black hair and kind but pained eyes. It was Ligta.
"J-Jagged Jiggan?" The nurse asked petrified of Aleed's already imposing stature.
"That'll be me." Jiggan stood up and Aleed moved out of the way for him.
He covered the entire door frame; the nurse and Ligta had to look nearly straight upwards to see his face, "Who are you?"
The nurse gulped in apprehension, "I am nurse Heather, this is Ligta. We've come to tell you that your son was abducted outside our Medical Center."
Jiggan was silent.
"Baluchta, Aleed, Aywa, get ready. We're going to the Crasca territory." He turned to Aywa aggressively, "You're going to make up for this shit."
"Hold on," The nurse stopped them, "As strong as you are, you can't take on the Crasca gang all by yourselves… sir."
Jiggan turned to her, "We can." His eyes reflected nothing but fury and determination.
Seima watched the whole exchange with confusion. Baluchta, noticing this, decided to finally explain to her who Jiggan was.
"Have you ever wondered why Jiggan's so big and why he's so good at bad stuff?"
Seima nodded.
"Because he was a gangster once. In the Jagged Mafiaga, under Galavv The Crocodile. He was his right-hand man. But Galavv used Mind Control runestones to make him do his bidding. Eventually, he had to kill a woman who was taking care of a little boy and a tiny baby.
The boy and the baby were you and your brother, Seima. I don't know what he saw in you two, but it broke the Mind Control spell. He returned to our manor where the rest of us were celebrating the destruction of the Liviedo gang and their territories now belonging to ours." She pointed downwards – they were in the Jagged Mafiaga's territory, still untouched despite six years passing,
"He slaughtered our gang and beat Galavv to death in front of our eyes. At the time, our minds weren't under any spells but our own greed and ignorance. We fought him." She giggled, "He beat the shit out of all of us and killed our partner at the time. He was the one who gave me this car, cutting me with my own sword." She pointed to her left eye.
"You and Teerom are extremely important to Jiggan. Because you gave him life. You make him whole." Baluchta smiled on the verge of tears, then quickly went into Seima's room to prepare her equipment, turning on the newly fitted TV for her to watch as she waited, "We'll be back before night."
Aywa readied his pistols and checked his ammunition. Aleed checked through a rugged old notebook that hadn't been touched for years – it was his grimoire, containing all of his spells; he had memory issues so to use complex spells he needed to write them down.
And Jiggan, for the first time in 6 long years, prepared a bag of towels to clean up the bath of blood that would come to fruition soon.
They set out with nurse Heather and Ligta toward the Crasca gang's territory, heading straight to the head manor.