63 Isolation

The arcs of pure energy soon become larger and a bright light blinds me despite my armor's best efforts to protect my retinas. I shudder to think how much it would hurt to have my eyes burned off by something of this magnitude.

I barely register the drones falling to the ground, this last blast of mana must've fried them. But it doesn't matter since another batch takes their places almost instantly. They arrived just in time to witness one of the most bizarre scenes I've ever seen, and I saw some weird shit.

The space inside the Gate distorts and tears while the metal rings start to turn into fine dust. Whoever was coming here is now unleashing a powerful and loud scream as parts of his body appear randomly all over the interior of the Gate and through the currently unstable portals. They soon lose their original shape and turn into some red slime oozing with what I assume is a mix of crushed cartilage and blood.

What a lovely sight, it honestly surprises me that I can endure such a scene without batting an eye.

The space inside the Gate soon returns to normal after the metal rings disappear entirely, and the portals I created implode quickly after.

My jaw drops when I see the monstrosity that my little experiment left behind. A big blob of pulsating flesh, composed of mashed-together body parts, is oozing blood while it's writhing in agony.

If I had to guess, I think that my interference somehow fused the people who were supposed to arrive together.

It takes all of my willpower to not vomit at the horrifying sight, and I hurriedly blast it with MH Shells until there is nothing, not even ash, left. Teleportation accidents are as horrible as they sound, and I think that if I were still able to sleep, then I would have nightmares for the next few years.

I leave the remains of the building and take a deep breath of recycled air. Things didn't exactly go as planned, but we achieved one of our most important objectives; isolating the Shard from the gangs' network.

As a bonus, we also reduced the gang population by a large percentage; the few survivors will be hunted down and killed.

I glance around and realize the carnage I caused: Limbs and dead bodies are strewn on the ground, and large scorch marks are visible on the ground where I fired my MH Shells.

Reviewing how the battle played out makes me a little scared, and I freeze the timeline to reflect on what happened. The voice and I were in perfect unison; we were guiding my body together to achieve the deadliest result in the shortest period possible.

But the worse thing is that I enjoyed it.

There's no point in denying it when it's so fresh in my memory. The sensation when I took all those lives was unlike anything I felt before. I felt euphoric and ecstatic beyond measure.

I have to face the facts now; I can no longer pretend.

It's evident that the voice in my head is my feral side, which formed after the forced recombination of my soul during my fight with Beelzebub. This side, which from what I can piece together from certain memories, is the combination of all the feral fragments of my soul that formed because of countless Rewinds that I went through during certain hard battles.

And I'm afraid that it will influence me more than it already has, what would happen if this wild side warps my personality beyond recognition? Could I even be considered the same person?

I need to find a way to keep this voice under control. I would like to suppress it, but I doubt that it will be possible. And I don't know if it would be a good idea since this feral side has its uses, especially during battles.

But I will need to figure something out on my own. I can't talk about this to anyone from the Order: A god can't have any problems, mental or physical. Speaking about it would shatter my image, and I can't lose the Order now.

And I can't speak to anyone about this in the first place since it would mean revealing the existence of the Rewinder. And that's something that absolutely must not happen, no matter the cost.

I shake my head, burying my trauma and mental problems to the back of my head worked so far, so I'll keep this perfectly healthy habit.

Now let's focus back on taking over this Shard, this will keep me distracted from my problems.

...??? PoV...

*Finally, it stopped!*

I lean back on my sofa and take a deep breath. I don't know why but I've been plagued by repeating popping noises for the past few months. At first, they rarely happened, but now they are way more frequent, and sometimes thousands are going off at the same time. The old man already examined me multiple times, but he keeps saying that there's nothing wrong with me.

He keeps saying that I'm too stressed and that I should rest. But I hardly have an average body in the first place, so his expertise is limited when I come to my potential problems.

I clench my hands and a small pack of wolves made of fire run over my fists, and I sigh.

This secret of mine must remain a secret for as long as I live, or I will be hunted for eternity. The old man sees me as his daughter, but I was just a nameless orphan that was fated to rot in the streets before he picked me up.

He gave me a name and nursed me back to health, and to this day these are the happiest moments of my life.

But my illness soon acted up again, and there was nothing that conventional medicine could do to save me. That's the moment, when I was eight years old, that changed my life forever.

The old man revealed the Hidden World to me. Magic and fantastical creatures fascinated me before, but learning that those were all real was a shock for the young me.

My adoptive father wanted to keep me away from all of this, but he had no choice since my disease was magical. From what he told me, my mana pool was going out of control and infecting my body like magical cancer. He tried to heal me with everything he could find, but my disease kept progressing. I was soon forced to stay in bed constantly or else I would pass out, and things kept getting worse and worse.

At this point, I made peace with my death. Seeing my father so distraught was hurting me, and I tried to comfort him and telling him to let me go.

But he didn't give up on me and somehow obtained something that was mythical, even for the skewed standards of the Hidden World.

A single, dried scrap of dragon blood. The artifact was barely visible to the naked eye, but my father somehow turned it into an experimental elixir and used it on me as a last resort.

It worked, and the drop of blood was still so powerful that it changed what I was on a fundamental level. My illness was immediately cured, and even my hair color changed; the tips of my black hair are now permanently red.

But the changes didn't stop here, and if someone looked long enough, then they would notice faint scales near the corners of my eyes.

I also became very proficient with anything related to magic and reached the level of my father by the time I was fifteen. It was also around this time that he discovered that I wasn't aging.

He still isn't sure if I'm aging at a really slow pace or if I'm immortal, but he assured me that I would live for at least a few centuries.

But being what is effectively a hybrid between a human and a dragon isn't all fun and games. My dad revealed the existence of the Enforcers to me, and they are an oppressive bunch of pseudo-nobles who are doing their best to suppress the technological progress of humanity, and they don't want us to know about magic. People like my father are a rarity, and they have to live in the utmost secrecy, or the Enforcers will kill them without mercy.

And those people are always chasing after ways to become more powerful, so they will do anything to capture and experiment on me if they find out about my secret.

I shake my head to chase the bad thoughts away; there's no way that these people will ever be able to find out about me. I refrain from using magic in any public place, and a robust and undetectable barrier surrounds my home so I can practice freely.

Well, not as freely as I would like since the barrier cannot contain my full power.

But let's go back to my recurring problem. I've bought a lot of different kinds of healing spells, but they aren't doing anything against those damn noises.

I slow down time and take a deep breath.

My transformation into a human-dragon hybrid also gave me the unique ability to alter my perception of time. So it allows me to think rather quickly, and even cast complex spells in what seems like an instant.

Of course, it only allows me to alter my perception. My ability doesn't affect time itself, that would be ridiculous.

I rack my brain to find a potential solution to my problem, but I can't come up with anything that I haven't already tried. My knowledge of magical illnesses is somewhat limited, and I can't get looked at by anyone since it could reveal my true nature to the world.

A deep sigh escapes my mouth, and I lazily glance over the news on the HiddenNet to keep my mind away from the reality of my situation.

Something catches my attention. Some negotiations ended in a Council of Enforcers from some backwater area of the country. I raise an eyebrow; this should hardly be news-worthy. Those Enforcers and their Councils are always making deals and negotiations, so what makes this one special?

The article begins by listing all the participants in the meeting, and I could hardly care less about these random people, so I glance over this section. The main paragraph is more interesting. It says that the partitioning of some random Family's possession ended, and it all went to a group that calls itself the 'Stonecrusher Empire'.

This is unusual, the Enforcers are very prideful and traditional people, and hearing some of them are willing to abandon the Family system in favor of a more modern nation-state is worrying. It's evident that it will not lead to a worldwide, or even nation-wide, Enforcer unification but it's still something to be wary of.

After all, it can't hurt to know a lot about your enemy.

Something else catches my attention, and it says that what the article calls a 'debacle' was caused by an event referred to as the Beelzebub Incident.

Now that's an ominous name if I ever saw one.

The article provides a link, and I open it to reveal another article.

I can hardly believe the pictures and what I'm reading, and I have to re-read certain paragraphs to make sure that my eyes aren't playing tricks on me.

Some ancient and terrifying demon has been resurrected after a super-weapon has been co-opted by the soul of a demon that was woken up by Devils who intruded upon a war between two large Families.

The premise is already unbelievable, but it's just the tip of the iceberg. There is a link to a video of the whole battle, but the video has been deleted. The flow of the article is also weird; it feels like it has been edited in a rush.

I smell something fishy going on there.

I crack my fingers and type 'Beelzebub Incident' in the search bar. Hundreds of results appear, and opening a few ones reveals that specific comments and articles have either been heavily edited or outright deleted. This can only mean one thing, that something happened in that battle and that the Enforcers don't want people to know.

But I won't be stopped by something like this, so I open another, heavily secured, browser to access the darker parts of the HiddenNet.

The old man never said how he got this secure browser in the first place, and the only information I got out of him is that some shady person owed him a favor.

Nevertheless, this browser should allow me to know more about this Incident. A grin creeps on my face when I see the first search results since they are all the same, very long video of the incident.

I lean back on my sofa and put my phone down to have a better view of the screen and press the play button.

An hour pass and the video reaches its end. I struggle to hold my mouth closed as I recall certain segments of the video.

How can something like that even happen?!

This disgusting, warped creature was already sending shivers down my spine, how can someone make something like this and think it's a good idea?

And, as if it wasn't enough, a group of random Devils just took it over and replaced its controller by the soul of an ancient demon. Were these people all completely insane?

But the star of the show is undoubtedly the one who killed this abomination with seemingly no efforts, the man named John Thomson.

First of all, he somehow broke through a strong barrier with what looks like pure, untamed mana. This feat alone is already enough to make me pause, using pure mana to destroy something is, frankly speaking, the worst idea anyone can have. It's incredibly inefficient, and this person could've achieved the same result with a quarter of the mana he used if he used a proper spell.

But even then, that still doesn't explain why he was lugging guns around. There's no way that he found a magical weapon. Guns are, as far as I know, something that is exclusive to humans due to our current situation regarding our knowledge of magic.

So he couldn't have bought one, especially one that is so powerful. This means that he either made a gun capable of releasing more mana than even I can in the same amount of time, or he's trying to hide his power.

The first option is just too ridiculous, I only know of a few materials that could handle the massive amount of power required to manage something that is so powerful, and they aren't cheap. Furthermore, if this person had the resources and the skills necessary to create such an artifact, then he could've made something with greater destructive power.

If we add the fact that he quickly shrugged off the powerful attacks of the demon and the Family, then the second option becomes the obvious choice. From this, I can deduce that this person must not be too familiar with the Hidden World if he thinks that he can hide his power by using something as mundane as guns.

At least he gave up in hiding his power by the end of the battle, where he outright disturbed the structure of the demon with something that I can only describe as a mana storm. This much power is something that I never witnessed myself, and it would be scary to think about facing such an opponent.

His way of fighting also shows that he has a lot of experience, he never wastes a movement and always make the correct decision no matter the situation.

To conclude, this person has access to a seemingly infinite amount of power, but he isn't using it correctly. Furthermore, he's good at fighting, so it must mean that he had to fend off countless opponents.

It sounds a lot like what I could have become if the old man died before giving me proper guidance.

I pass a hand through my long hair and sigh, could it be possible that there is another person like me? Another human with draconic blood?

Dragon blood is almost impossible to obtain, but it doesn't mean it doesn't exist since there are still a few fragments circulating the markets. However, could this man have made something similar, or better than what my father did?

It's possible even if it's highly unlikely. Then again, I have a feeling that nothing concerning this man is rational. He had a brief exchange with the attacking Family, and from the look of things, they knew each other. But the relationship was openly hostile.

I couldn't help but shudder and grin when he told off the Enforcers and announced his rebellion to the world.

Rebelling against the Enforcers has always been a dream of mine. But my father always told me that it was impossible, that they were too powerful and numerous to strike back.

However, this man changes everything. With a leader as powerful as him, we could easily fight the Enforcers and take back our planet from the vile clutches of these creatures. I'm confident that more humans know about magic than we think, and if we band together...

Imagining tearing apart those bastards makes me shudder, and I take a deep breath to calm my pounding heart. Another side effect of my transformation is that I've become... rather enthusiastic about battles.

At least I think it's because of my transformation; there's no way that I was like that before...

Nevertheless, I think I might pay a visit to this John Thomson. He must have gathered people already, and if I can convince my father to come with me, then we could maybe ally ourselves with his group.

After all, what's the worst that could happen? I bet they are nice and reasonable people.