With a soft thud, the village chiefs body fell to the ground, pulling Kai down to the ground with him. Has he fell, Kai mustered just enough energy to look over towards the only remaining threat in the village and found that it had already turned into a puddle of useless goo.
With that, Kai's vision turned black as he collapsed from exhaustion, the wounds on his body, and loss of blood.
It took him quite some time to regain his senses as he noticed that all the goo had evaporated from the ground, leaving a thick dark-green sludge in its place.
Pushing the dead body of the old man off him, Kai dragged his weary body to stand up. However, as soon as he did, the sight that met his eyes caused his pupils to tremble vigorously as he closed his eyes once more, falling down to the ground, unable to muster the mental or physical strength to stand up again.
Silence returned to the underground room once more, before the soft whimpers of a young child could be heard. Soon enough, drops of salty water fell onto the hard ground, but no one was there to clean it. No one was there to comfort the child. No one was there.
…
Yu, who experienced the same emotions, also began crying, to the shock of those around him.
"I am fine. I just remembered something about the past. It's alright." He said as he sniffled in the mucus that was threatening to come out of his nose. He stopped his work and put down the tools. By simply willing it to, the bottom half of the mask popped off and Kai pulled it out with one hand while using the other to wipe the tears from his eyes.
Unfortunately, he could not do this for too long as the half of the mask in his hand began trembling after 5 seconds. After 10, it flew directly into his face and was sealed shut once more.
This was a large issue with the mask.
He could pull it out completely; well at least the bottom half from his nose to his chin, but only for up to 10 seconds each hour.
Alternatively, he could just loosen it, twist and fold it such that he could fit a bottle of water, a cup of juice, or small pieces of foot inside and into his mouth. If he did this, he could keep it like that for over an hour.
Sighing, Yu continued his work, his mood rather dejected compared to a few hours before.
…
Kai on the other had taken a good half an hour to collect his emotions. Unlike Yu who expressed his emotions vividly, Kai did not do that, either knowingly or unknowingly. His face turned extremely cold as almost as though nothing in this world mattered to him anymore.
He slowly stood up once more and went to the corpse of the village chief. Without any hesitation, he dug around the clothes and took out anything that might be of use, pocketing them.
Kai moved across the dead green moss and towards the exit. Along the way, he untied the poor little girl who had been strapped to the stone altar, removed the blindfold, and closed her open eyes gently. He then picked up her body and brought it with him, holding her to his chest with one hand while the other was supporting her head, as though she was the most precious thing to him in the world.
However, not too long later, Kai noticed that someone was approaching him. However, within just a few moments he noticed who it was, and his senses heightened, as this person should not be here.
It was Victor.
"Wait! Wait! Before you attack me, let me explain myself first while healing you."
Victor had already been through the village and noticed that it was completely burned down, but such a thing was only possible if someone had killed all the mutants from the inside beforehand, and the only person he knew of who was close by was Kai.
Therefore, he put two and two together and followed the bloodied footsteps leading the village chief's mansion, and into this underground location. Seeing Kai here, bloodied and tired, he knew his assumptions were correct, so he immediately began explaining to Kai all the things he had left out in the original explanation, while also giving his reasons to do so.
Of course, he was also healing Kai's wounds, which was another reason why Kai had not attacked him.
Kai listened to this more elaborated story but did not respond. However, he felt no ill will towards Victor, since the information he had left out did not affect Kai in any way, and only allowed Victor to escape and survive.
Kai nodded to Victor and handed him the little girl's body when his wounds were fully healed after a few hours. Kai's hands refused to let go of the girl for a moment, but he did eventually while a complicated look passed through his eyes for just a second.
"Bury her." He said simply before leaving a stunned Victor in the passage where they had met, moving towards the location where Victor had found all the other items of the Village Chief.
Finding the location, Kai immediately began pocketing everything he could, while quickly reading through the books such that the system would have recorded everything. It took him 2 hours to read all the books, and pick out the most useful ones to take with him while burning the ones he did not need in the fire pit which had an opening to the ground above.
At this time, Kai also scanned everything and took all the useful items before burning everything not useful to him, like a large wooden statue which warded off ghosts and evil spirits based on the writings below it.
The scan showed that most of the items and books here were fakes, doing nothing but act as showpieces and confuse anyone trying to steal something from here.