I looked at the bodies as I immediately recognized the dead girl from earlier. She was tightly locked inside a large water capsule, floating half-dead. However, unlike what we had all thought, she was still alive.
It made little sense since I had seen with my own eyes earlier that she had indeed died back then.
'Did they manage to bring her back to life?' I frowned.
I began to wonder if maybe my power might be related to death and life instead of fire. But I still had no confirmation. I also couldn't get them out of those water capsules since they would most likely die the moment they got out.
The alarm continued to echo throughout the whole city. By my estimates, I had around thirty seconds left before people began heading down here. But what they didn't know was that I wasn't planning on leaving before they arrived.
I wanted to know what they were hiding in detail—the mayor, the guards, the citizens. All of them were extremely strange in their behavior, almost like... something might be slightly influencing their decisions.
'Their request had been quite a long time ago. Maybe something happened in the meantime...'
But then, just as I was about to hide before they arrived, the ring around my finger began lighting up.
[Do you wish to absorb the strange energy contained in this room?]
I already knew the ring was linked to my powers and the dying person I had found. However, it was the first time it had such a reaction.
I smirked and immediately said yes, even if my time was limited.
I was confident in my abilities to escape no matter what.
[The absorption has begun...]
Immediately after the message appeared before me, large strands of red energy began entering the ring, and the source of the energy was the hundreds of half-dead bodies before me.
Little by little, their vitals began going down as the rhythmic beeping became constant, hinting at those people's deaths. However, I didn't feel bad about them for a single moment. After all, their fates were already sealed. At most, I was liberating them from this unending trap.
[The absorption has been completed.]
[The amount of energy absorbed is enough to enable the ring's main function.]
[You have obtained a new skill: Soul Reaper (SSS-Rank)]
[Soul Reaper (SSS-Rank): You can now reap the souls from the enemies you kill.]
I frowned at the skill's description. It was extremely vague, barely explaining the use of the skill.
I was now able to absorb souls?
What did that even mean?
'My bloodline is related to souls? The red energy is the soul of those people being absorbed?'
My mind began thinking much faster than before as I had finally received a small hint about my powers. I had no idea if I was on the right path... but one thing was sure: I couldn't wait to kill my first monster or... human and try out this skill.
-Clack!
-Clack!
-Clack!
I smirked.
It seemed my thirty seconds had run out. The guards had finally made their way down here. And just like I had expected, there were a lot of them. However, surprisingly, the first person who came through the basement's door wasn't a guard, but the mayor.
"W-What happened here?!" His eyes widened as his knees suddenly gave out. "E-Everything we've been working on for months is... gone! The test subjects, they needed them for next week. W-We're dead... we're dead."
Despair overtook him. However, he knew there was only one solution to his problem.
"FIND THE PERSON WHO DID THIS AND KILL HIM!"
I smirked at the mayor's despair. I could still remember his smug smile from earlier. It felt great to have put him back in his place. And given my experience as an assassin, there was no chance any single guard here would manage to find me. At most, they'd think I already escaped.
Ten minutes later, every single guard had left and had started to look around the rest of City Hall and all of Altrix, leaving the mayor all alone.
'Wouldn't he be a great first soul to reap?'
I could already tell that he wasn't very powerful. At most, he would be around a D-Rank Mercenary.
"Hello," I coldly said as he turned around in panic, staring at me as if he had seen a ghost.
He immediately staggered and fell back on his own.
"Y-You... Y-You're the one who did this?"
His eyes widened even more than before. He couldn't believe the words coming out of his mouth.
He grabbed his head with both hands as he began scratching it again and again. "Do you have any idea what you've done...?" The mayor started laughing, louder and louder, exactly like a villain. "You really think you can handle becoming their enemy?"
"Who are you talking about?"
He scoffed as he started mumbling to himself. "You don't even know who you angered... You're even more of a lost cause than I thought. Do you have any idea what you've done... they'll be angry, very angry."
"Who are you talking about? Who are they?"
"ARGH!"
He opened his mouth; however, no words came out. Someone had cast a spell on him, making it impossible for him to talk about it. It became even clearer as he started gagging from trying to resist the spell.
In an instant, his mana, which had been around D-Rank, shot up to a point where I couldn't even tell how powerful it had become. Exactly like when I had fought Oliver. However, the only difference was that the mayor hadn't ingested anything. It almost felt natural to him.
His veins bulged, his body twisting as his bones cracked under the pressure. His spine arched backward. His mouth opened wider than it should have. He was transforming into something I had never seen in my life.
"Kill... kill... kill..."
His mental state was already gone.
I looked at him and used [Eyes of Despair]. If there was any moment for me to obtain information, it was now, and I wasn't planning on letting go of such an opportunity.