Chapter 77: Morals

” Do you know him?”

Jorg asked after hearing Yime say a name.

He had thought it was going to be complex, the identity of the individual was necessary to determine what really transpired between Makun and him.

If somehow Makun was the one who caused trouble then he had to be punished for his actions.

Her knowing the identity of the dead man was perfect. She had the profile of the individual and thus could decide whether he was problematic or not.

” Yes, I have met him once and he had attacked Makun for the book.” She continued ” He then marked him and surely tracked him down to search for the book.”

“So Makun acted in self defense?” Jorg asked.

“he did, Zack was after something that did not belong to him.”

She shook her head.

She understood what happened with the book better than anyone. He had wasted his life on something he couldn’t even read.

She had noticed the moment he placed the mark on Makun at the night market. However She had decided against acting because she was not yet sure if the book really was for Makun.

If he were here, then he had used the mark to track Makun down, for the book. But that has ended poorly for him. He was here dead with a missing route core.

Yime knew what happened, reason why her shock was bigger than everyone else who knew of the result of the fight. Bigger than Zorak and Jorg who could not comprehend how an Initiate could kill an Adept.

From the Very beginning she had known Zack was a third grade Adept practitioner, and at the Market when he attacked Makun, Makun had been powerless.

She saw it, How powerless Makun was in front of Zack last friday. Now a week had passed and that same Zack who held him like some chicken now lay here dead.

Yime slowly walked towards Zack’s Body, she took a better look at what remained of his body.

The empty eye socket, Torn chest, Missing heart, then she slowly looked toward the missing arm.

She proceeded to touch his hand, her energy streaming into it at a very slow pace.

Tssssss!

She was surprised. There was resistance. Foreign energy in the body, It was not Zack’s energy as it had long dissipated, what remained here was chaotic energy, Makun’s remnant energy.

She understood why Zack had a missing arm, if he had not done this….

“He had been overwhelmed by chaotic energy. It had been too much for him to support, and from the flow of energy I saw when I examined his body, it seems his Route Core had been affected,” Silas said.

He had seen many bodies in his years, but this one was different.

“The energy didn’t just wound him. It corrupted his circulation. The arm was the epicenter. If he hadn’t severed it himself, the corruption would have spread to his Route Core and destroyed him from the inside.” He paused, glancing at the mangled stump. “He chose amputation over total collapse. It bought him time, but not enough.”

Yime withdrew her hand, the faint hiss of residual chaos still clinging to her fingertips.

She had seen practitioners corrupted by foreign Ashe before, but this was different. Makun’s energy hadn’t just invaded Zack’s body. It had tried to rewrite it, atom by atom, forcing his structured Ashe to bend to chaos.

This was good and bad news. Makun would be a valuable asset, but he might be too much to control.

Beside her, Jorg has not said a word till now. The report had already been given, He only sighed when Yime confirmed Makun was not at fault.

As such the three of them stayed trying to understand the structure of Makun’s Ashe.

….

It was the dead of the night in Naija city, a day after the MIO arrival. The main agents of the MIO were either patrolling, or resting.

Makun had been in his room, the conversion happening in real time. Similar to what Yime said, his Warrior Ashe was being converted into that of a berserk warrior.

And the energy entering his body caused some slight disturbance.

Makun’s eyes snapped open.

Pain lanced through his chest, sharp and burning, as if something inside him was tearing itself apart and stitching back together at the same time.

He gasped, his breath shallow and ragged, hands instinctively clutching at his bandaged ribs.

The room around him was dim, lit only by a faint glow from healing charms hanging overhead. White walls. Sterile air. A recovery room, not a cell, but the door was locked. He could feel it without looking.

Another pulse of pain shot through him, deeper this time, radiating from his Route Core. It throbbed beneath his ribs, swollen and volatile, processing something he didn’t understand.

His Ashe moved without his command, circulating through his body in erratic waves.

He tried to sit up, but his body refused. His muscles screamed in protest, every inch of him bruised and battered. His jaw ached. His stomach felt like it had been torn open and sewn shut. His left arm throbbed with a dull, persistent agony.

What happened?

Fragments of memory flickered through his mind. Zack, the alley, the book and the fight.

He remembered the rage he felt, pure and overwhelming rage flooding his body like fire. He remembered Zack’s face, twisted in terror. He remembered grabbing something warm and wet and pulling.

His breath caught.

Did I kill him?

Makun trembled, had he really killed someone? It was the very first life he took and to think he did it in such a way.

His heart trembled for just a second before it steadied.

It was logical, if I had not done it he would have killed me. He was the one that tracked me down.

He logically exempted himself from the act of killing Zack, However, he still felt unwell. It was his first kill, other than the dog, It was the first human life he took.

The trembling came even faster.

His hands shook against the sheets. His chest tightened, The pain he felt right now was not physical, It was something different, sadness?

His breath hitched.

His moral compass given by society made him feel awful. He was a murderer and had killed. No matter how he turned the situation around, He had killed a human.

A human that had a life to live, goals to accomplish and someone waiting for them.

but he remembered his thoughts before losing himself to his rage.

He was going to combat chaos through chaos.

This thought alone reduced his guilt.

It did not erased it, but dulled it enough that he could breathe again.

He hadn’t wanted to kill. He had wanted to survive. And survival, in that moment, had demanded destruction. Zack had hunted him, Zack had cornered him, Zack had left him no choice.

Makun exhaled slowly, his trembling hands finally stilling. The unease remained, coiled tight in his gut, but it no longer controlled him.

He had killed. And he would live with it.

Because the alternative was being dead.

He close his eye to remember what happened after, and could only see him being punched by a giant similar in size to Jorg.

What happned after, Makun closed harder to remember, when another wave of pain surged through his Route Core.

Makun gritted his teeth, pressing his head back against the pillow.

The chaotic Ashe inside him pulsed again, burning through his veins, rewriting something fundamental. He didn’t know what it was, but he could feel it happening.

His Ashe was changing.

And he had no idea how to stop it.

Makun looked around, the lighting was dim, the glow of healing charms were faint and the rooms wall was white. He had no Idea where he was. He did not know where to go to for help.

He tried moving towards the door that was at the other end of the room, but, The pain charged through his body.

There was nothing he could do.

He had to sit there with the pain, not knowing what happened, not knowing where he was.

He decided to look into himself as the pain came from his Ashe and his route core, as such Makun struggled, for minutes to sit his back upright on his bed and close his eyes.

He sent his attention inward to examine what happened, He saw it, the amount of ashe having crazily increased, it was flowing faster in his body, and was different from what had been there before.

It carried properties of destruction and the color had changed from blue to red, He looked at his route core, and to his shock Ashe was circulating around it, like it was going to change sizes after a while.

What the fuck is happening? Makun thought bewildered.

The Route Core pulsed beneath his ribs, swollen and dense, larger than it had any right to be.

The Ashe spiraling around it moved with intent, threading itself into the core’s structure, embedding itself atom by atom. It was circulating, integrating and rewriting every atom in his body.

His blue Ashe, the generic warrior energy he’d awakened with, was being consumed and replaced by something darker and more violent. Red chaotic and raw Ashe.

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