Out in the wild, in a tall tree, Hikari felt heartbroken as she sat at the tree's strong branch. Her brown eyes which had a tiny different color were focused on the hoard of Undead below her.
She sadly let out a sigh, feeling helpless.
Being a nurse, she wanted to heal anyone as much as possible. She wanted to save as many as she could. Of course, she also knew how it was not always 100% guaranteed that every patient she has would survive.
But right now, for the first time in her life, she encountered something no one knew if it was possible to heal. There was hope, but there was a lot of failure after failure. Despair became normal until helplessness consumed her.
It felt like the Glitch Skill she got was mocking her.
She recently just got a new Glitch Skill: Light Savior.
Although the name of skill sounds grand, she couldn't save just anyone. Her skill works just like an adrenaline shot. Anyone who she deemed as companion gets an increase in their defense and also gets regeneration for a brief moment. It has a dire side effect, it weakens her considerably.
When her contractor forced awaken the skill, she became suspicious.
Why did it have to be that kind of skill?
There were a lot of questions she had, but right now, she needed to Rank up to access more information. The more she knew, the more questions she got.
That aside, she still moved forward. She wanted to save as many people as she could, even though she had failed saving her father and brother, there's still her missing sister and all other people around her.
She looked down to the Undead below her, sadness was more pronounced in her brownish-red eyes.
She had been traveling for quite some time, traversing the dangerous world that had become. She adopted her own skills for her survival kit. Although she still had her own goal of saving, that didn't mean she would show weakness to an enemy who wanted to kill her.
There was a cold glint in her eyes when thinking about the enemy, but that quickly vanished and was replaced by her usual kind light. She automatically thought of people she wanted to save.
For her, if she could save as many people as she could, then her parents in heaven would be proud of her.
She really wanted to save the people below her. She had tried and tried. Fishing one person to see the cause of everything, to find how to cure them.
It was basically useless.
Because no skills or medical knowledge could save the horde of Zombies below her.
*It has been more than one month. She said that anyone who got the virus would permanently turn into Zombies in two months… in the end, she still wants to mock me. I can understand her distrust, but it pains me to see how she became so heartless…*
Hikari was lost in thought as she remembered her encounter with that strong being.
***
The two of them traveled happily. Because Caelus was given the Thousand Faces, he decided to use it.
He was instantly amazed by the property of the item.
Just like his Soul Crusher, the Thousand Faces has different properties attached to it.
The first was able to alter his appearance. After putting the mole item in his face, he was given an icon of his appearance in his mind. He was free to change himself to someone he saw or he could create a new "avatar".
It was like creating a new character in a game. He chose that option because he didn't want to cause trouble for people he would like to copy appearance.
He decided to change to a much more common face with little remarkable note. He didn't want anyone to remember his appearance, lest he draw trouble with the Dragon Riders coming after him.
He thought of using "Caelus" real face. However, he thought otherwise. For now, he felt it was unnecessary to use his face. It might bring trouble instead.
Another thing he noticed in the item was how the energy he emitted immediately felt different. He realized that this was the "aura changing" property Asahi said.
To be precise, he felt his Mana Signature and Qi presence altering and giving off the feeling of unfamiliarity.
It was like how his Life Signature, that Sanctuary said was something unique and constant, suddenly changed.
Even he, himself, felt this wasn't his.
Nevertheless, he didn't have trouble controlling his Qi, Energy and Mana.
That wasn't the end of it. Aside from those, his smell, his walk, every little detail that could point to him being Sho's body was all gone.
"Amazing!"
"I know, right? I can't even tell that you're Sho even when I've known you for too long."
"Yep! Oh! How was Qi, Energy and Mana training I thought you about?"
"Hmm… Qi is too hard for me. I don't even get it at all even after visualizing your explanation. Same for Energy. But Mana is awesome! I didn't even know we could increase our Mana like this! Although I'm just starting, I could see the endless probability! In one more week, if I don't progress with Qi and Energy, I'll drop them and just focus on Mana. It might just mean that I don't have any talent with Qi or Energy. It would really be great if humanity learned Qi, Energy and Mana."
"I believe you'll be a better teacher than me. Although you didn't learn Qi and Energy, you still understood it. If needed, I can try answering questions you would have. As for Mana, you're better at it than me. You immediately learned it and already have mastery over it. I'll be ashamed to teach anything at all!"
"Hah! We're amazing. You're on Qi path and Energy path, and I'll be on Mana path. I wonder if there's also a way to learn Magic."
Caelus immediately sucked in breath. "That's a fantastic idea! Why didn't I think of that before? I'll look at my World of Knowledge and see if I can find details or instructions about it. When we come back to Sanctuary Shelter, we can also try asking Sanctuary about it. She needs Mana so the people would need to help. Maybe she does know something.
"Ah, this won't do. Sanctuary, can you make Asahi someone who has the same authority as me?"
[Master Sho, I can't do that. However, I can give him the Authority of Founder. It's an Authority lower than you but would give enough power.]
"Then, with that Authority, can you support the Research about magic?"
[I can.]
"Good, make him Founder."
[Understood.]
"You talked with Sanctuary?"
"Yes. I want to make you a Founder so that you can start with Magic Research even when I'm not available to give a go signal."
"Thank you for your trust. I'm sure our Research Team would want to know more about this. They would be ecstatic after knowing this!
"Have I told you before? According to them, we would need at least 1 million to 1 billion people participating to scratch half of what is the truth of Super Phenomena. It's really that hard to gather any information about the System or the Truth of our circumstances.
"But even if they couldn't reach the truth, they still want to try. They said it's something about the pride of researchers."
Caelus' gasped in amazement. He knew the researchers of Asahi's camp. Among the 10,000 people from the camp, only seven can be classified as researchers. And from those seven only two were really professional. One was a high ranked professor from the army, in which he participated in many intellectual military machineries. The other was a bio-engineer from the government.
There was no need to question their pride for being researchers. They had countless inventions that if people knew would shiver from fear.
One good example was the bullet bomb that only the military has access to. The other was a virus that had killed 70 million people 5 years ago. Both had been created by the two researchers respectively.
Although the virus was not released by the researcher, it didn't change the fact that he was the one who created it.
The other five were just starting on the path of researchers.
And knowing the truth of the system and Super Phenomena had been the goal of every researcher he had come across.
When the seven knew that Caelus and Asahi would travel together, the seven collectively volunteered to escort them. They wanted to know more especially after Asahi divulged some information about a safe place Caelus has.
But after careful consideration and Asahi's plea, they decided to give up for now and wait until they were called into the safe place.
Caelus actually was the one who pleaded to Asahi not to bring anyone else. He was afraid that Gouki would think that they were trying to capture him and would break into an argument.
He didn't want that to happen at all.