Richard's POV
Vroom!
The engine roared to life as I turned on the car.
The vehicle was in a slightly better shape than expected. A few cracked windows and dents here and there, but nothing too serious.
The tires were intact, the engine responded without coughing up death, and the steering wheel didn't try to murder me with each turn.
It was good enough. For now at least.
Beatrice sat beside me in the front seat, arms crossed and jaw clenched.
Her foot tapped restlessly against each floorboard, each motion echoing her irritation from earlier.
Alice sat behind me, quiet and still, like a blade sheathed but ready.
I pressed the gas and the car groaned forward.
The road south was mostly clear. Too clear really.
The deeper we drove into the southern part of town, the more the world seemed to empty out.
The screams that echoed through the air before were now fewer, more distant.
The chaotic collapse of buildings, spells slamming against stone... all of it faded into a disturbing stillness.
And yet I didn't relax.
Because I knew it wasn't peace.
It was absence. An absence of people.
We were passing through ghost streets, buildings left mid-abandonment, with food half eaten on tables and blood smears trailing toward broken doors.
I noticed the patterns. These weren't places people fought back in.
These were places people fled from.
But still... there will always be filth. Even in peril times.
My hand tightened on the wheel.
Dow one alley, a shriek echoed–short, high-pitched, then cut off.
I turned my head, just slightly and saw it.
There, just between the concrete walls of what used to be a shop and an apartment, were the Serpents.
Their tattoos were easy to spot. A serpent coiled around a staff.
Four of them stood in the alley. One had his pants halfway down as he held a woman's face to the wall.
She sobbed, her voice hoarse from screaming.
Another one held a bloodied knife, idly twirling it while stepping over a man whose head was cracked open.
He was likely her husband or her father. Two others dragged another woman from a nearby building.
Beatrice gasped, barely audible. Alice didn't even make a sound. But I knew she saw it. The stiffness in her body and shift in her breath gave it away.
I didn't stop driving.
"Don't look," I said quietly.
Beatrice muttered a curse, her hands gripping her armrests until her knuckles turned white. Alice simply looked away, her jaw tight.
I remembered a time when I might've stopped.
The me before I became the Demon King.
That me would've jumped out, sword drawn, righteous fury in his chest, ideals clashing with reality like fire against ice.
But I wasn't him.
Not anymore.
That me died the day Jenna did.
My actions now, were more driven by rationale and calculations than emotions. And according to my rationale...
Helping them would mean drawing attention. It would mean delaying our goal even slightly.
And worst of all... it wouldn't matter. There were still more alleys. There were more men like them. Another scream. Another beast inside a man's skin.
I looked ahead and didn't speak again.
The buildings started thinning out the further we went.
Nature began creeping back in–grass sprouting through cracks, vines climbing walls, and trees lining the edges of the road like silent judges.
I knew this route quite well.
Home.
Well, what used to be home.
The orphanage wasn't far now. Just passed the tarred hill that curved sharply upward like a snake's back.
As we approached, something twisted in the air.
I didn't know how to explain it.
It wasn't a smell. Not a sound either.
Just... a sensation.
Off.
Wrong.
Like the world had inhaled and forgotten how to exhale.
I stepped on the brake.
Skrrrk!
The tires hissed as the car slowed to a crawl, then stopped just before the incline.
Beatrice looked at me, perplexed. "Why are we stopping?"
I opened the door without answering.
The moment my boots hit the tar, I knew I was right.
The atmosphere here was tainted. Not by rot or decay. No. Something deeper. Something malevolent.
I turned to the girls.
"We're walking."
Beatrice frowned. "Why?"
Alice, on the other hand, just opened her door and stepped out.
I pointed toward the top of the hill.
"If something's waiting, I don't want to announce our arrival with an engine roar."
Beatrice grunted but obeyed, slamming the door behind her.
We began moving up slowly.
Step by step, the incline rose, cutting off our view of the orphanage beyond.
The closer we got, the more that oppressive feeling wrapped around us, like walking into a fog that choked the soul.
Then–
"Ara~ you've come back, children."
A familiar voice called to us.
A warm, comforting familiar voice. One I had heard so many times before and yet now it felt...
Wrong.
It felt so wrong.
By now the three of us had frozen on the spot.
Slowly my head snapped to the left.
Out from the alley's shadow stepped a figure, bathed in low dusk light and coated in something unseen but vile.
My heart didn't just skip. It dropped.
Because I recognized the voice. It was Sister Evelyn's.
Except what stepped out wasn't her.
The creature that emerged had skin like pink leather stretched roo thin over spindly limbs.
It's arms were long, too long, with jagged claws on each hand.
A neck that extended like a serpent's twisting unnaturally with every step. It's mouth was wide, lips split at the edges, revealing rows of jagged teeth that did not belong on anything human.
A long tail curled behind it like a whip, twitching, flicking.
And around its neck, like some joke, was a silver collar.
Beatrice stepped back. Alice's breath caught.
At this point I had already drawn my sword.
From behind it, several other shadows slithered forward.
Serpents.
But not like the gangsters from before.
No. These were changed. Different. Their eyes glowed with sickly green light. Their bodies pulsed with mana that warped and twisted their forms.
Some had scales, others forked their tongues, all of them inhuman in ways both subtle and screamingly obvious.
And then the beast that for some reason wore Evelyn's voice spoke again, its eyes now locked on Alice and Beatrice.
"Don't resist," it said, licking it's lips with a tongue that was far too long. "Do that and it will be painless."
The girls didn't answer.
They didn't need to.
Their mana surged to life, crackling in the air.
I placed my hand on the white grip of my sword.
The fight hadn't started yet, but it would soon enough.