Am I The Villain?

16. On The Road

The road toward the nearest town is well paved. It's an often traveled dirt path so there's no obstacles blocking the road. Moreover, thanks to the exodus 2 days ago, the path is much wider than it used to be. Gutt, the boy who told me about the town, said so.

Apparently Gutt's parents are traders and they were both on a business trip when the incident happen. That would explain how he's the least affected by the incident. Also why he know the road around Carina City so well. He's one of the older boys, about 15 years old.

The kids are walking merrily. Some of them have picked up branches and started mock fighting while giggling away. In a way I'm quite disturbed by how calm they are after experiencing a horrible incident like that. On the other hand, I'm really glad they aren't as affected as I thought.

Maybe they are just repressing the memories, though. All of these kids probably have a mild form of PTSD now. I wonder how they would react if I summon my tentacles...

No, no. Stop this line of thought. Bad Reika! Do not conduct experiment on the children.

There are still the omnipresent voices telling me to just kill them and take their mana, but ever since I lost control, my mind have grown stronger than ever. I still need to deliberately command my mind to stay focused and not to loose control, though. This is one of the reason why I want to leave the children at the refugee camp as soon as possible. They aren't safe around me.

Behind us, an ominous remnant of Carina City can be seen in the distance. When I first came, the city view from outside was breathtaking. Massive walls surround the city and a colossal palace with many towers stand strong at the heart. Lana was walking beside me, happily chatting away.

Now, these walls are covered in ooze with massive holes on them. The holes are blown from the inside. The beautiful palace have also turned from a glittering center of government to a glorified catacomb. Rooting from the palace, a disgusting tower of writhing tentacles and mucus spires toward the cloud. Floating still above the city is the moon with its perimeter covered in tentacles. And Lana is not walking beside me. 

"Haa..." I sighed in regret. If only...

A girl about my (physical) age who is walking next to me noticed my sigh and asked, "what's wrong Reika?"

I already gave my name to each one of them when I met them for the first time. Some of them were crying over some corpses when I found them. Others were out in the street looking for food. While a small portion of them were simply sitting and waiting in their house. 

This girl is one of those who were out and about looking for food. She was wearing a properly fitted leather armor with a sword dangling from her waist when I met her. Child adventurer?

"Oh, it's nothing. It's just..." I reconsidered my words, "nevermind."

"Really?" the girl stared at me and then shrugged. "You know, you're pretty great." She suddenly say.

I'm not interested in small talks right now, so I cut her short with a "is that so?"

Unfortunately, the girl didn't quite get the message and kept talking, "yeah! Most of the us, like me for example, wouldn't have thought about gathering up the survivors. And yet," she exaggeratedly outstretched her hands toward the kids behind us, "the first think you do is try to gather everybody." The girl looked me straight in the face, "you also gave us food! I was starving, you see the food that the black water touched is bad, but thanks to you I don't have to die of hunger in the street!"

...this girl talks a lot.

But thanks to her, I regained a bit of confident. That's right. I might've done all these, but I'm also trying to redeem myself by helping the survivors. The survivors are all children though.