Chapter 11

I find myself in a dark room, the paint on the wall is old with a dirty color, indicating it's long overdue for a change.

In it, there's a child about 8 years old sitting in the corner. The child is slightly dirty, with blood, a black eye, and several other minor injuries all over the body.

Just by looking, you can see signs of malnutrition and abuse. The clothes are tattered, and their eyes are lifeless.

"That's me," says Aurélio, realizing he's dreaming and that the one on the floor is him in his old world.

"Tsk," he clicks his tongue in clear irritation at the past.

A pitiful child, abandoned by his mother at age five in this decaying orphanage.

Where he would spend a considerable part of his life, being bullied by other kids. In the end, Aurélio doesn't even remember the names of all the kids who bullied him; they always changed when they were adopted.

At some point, he just stopped noticing who was hitting him.

Simply accepting it, while waiting for time to pass, it had been three years since he arrived, and his situation was only getting worse. He had to move to another part of the orphanage.

This part housed children aged 8 to 16, so the bullying only got worse from then on.

"..." Aurélio remains silent, observing his past, the pitiful sight of his old life, the one he did everything to escape from.

Even though he knows there are many people who might have much worse lives, he doesn't care.

Humans naturally care more about their own struggles than those of others, and at this point in life, Aurélio, a fairly intelligent child, already understood how life worked.

At this point, his younger self was simply thinking about what he could do to escape this situation, even if he had to do terrible things to make things slightly better.

"When will I wake up?" he says as he sits beside his younger self, who can't see him.

He waits to see what happens, with no clear sense of time in this dream. He doesn't know how long he's been waiting.

The image of his younger self is changing, as if it's growing while he watches.

Every second, wounds appear and disappear, as if he's watching a fast-forwarded video of his life. The most notable thing is that with every change, more and more injuries appear.

As a child different from the others, he was a clear target for others to vent their anger and frustrations. Due to the constant injuries and malnutrition, he was a weak child.

With no ability to fight back.

With each change, the child's eyes grow darker, like those of someone who simply hates the whole world and is willing to destroy everything.

But being weak, he knows that if he does anything, he'll only make things worse for himself.

"...Tsk, why haven't I woken up yet?" Now Aurélio is even angrier at this dream.

For him, now in another world, his past is simply trash, not something he needs to remember or feel any emotion about, which is why he prefers to leave it behind.

"..."

"..."

More time passes, and now that child looks about 14 years old.

"Looks like it's about a year until I run away from here," says Aurélio, recalling the memory that matches his current appearance.

At this moment, the image of his younger self has a broken arm. One of his bullies wanted to test a move he saw somewhere, resulting in Aurélio's broken arm.

The injury was serious enough that he could have lost movement in that arm, though he was lucky it didn't come to that.

Around this time, he met a boy, whose name he doesn't remember. However, he didn't do anything against Aurélio's younger self.

He even talked to him. That boy was the closest thing to a "friend" Aurélio could have. This boy had a tablet, and during the times he showed up, they watched several cartoons and anime together.

The last anime they watched together was Date A Live, but the boy simply didn't show up again afterward. Apparently, he moved away, so he couldn't visit the orphanage anymore.

"In the end, I don't remember his name…" Aurélio, who never had much interest in the boy, never bothered to remember his name.

Now, Aurélio, at 15 years old, looks relatively well, the first time in years where he didn't have many injuries on his body.

This was also the image he had the day he escaped from the orphanage. Determined to do anything, no matter how bad, as long as it put him above others.

That child, who from a young age had great selfishness, always seeing himself as the one who should come first, never had the opportunity to show it. Now, he had a slim chance to escape into the world.

"..."

Seeing a now-familiar ceiling, I get up from bed.

After this dream, Aurélio feels even more tired than when he went to sleep yesterday.

"Today is April 11th."

"Tohka should appear at school today, if I'm not mistaken."

"I'm too tired to pay attention at school, besides, I have things to do," Aurélio mutters to himself, thinking about what he needs to do.

"...I need... to increase my Karma. I think that's something I've been ignoring too much in recent months."

To increase Karma, any action that can be considered "bad" is needed, but how much Karma you gain from each action is hard to notice.

"Kurumi... she killed more than 10,000 people without any SpaceQuake to earn the title of Worst Spirit... If I start destroying several cities around the planet, how much Karma could I accumulate?" wondering about this, I decide to raise my Karma to try to contact the Goddess.

Truum Truum I start a call.

"Hello, Aurelio-kun, this is the first time you've called, do you need something?" says Shido's voice over the phone.

"Yes... I'll be missing school this week... I'm not feeling well, so I'd like you to tell Tama-chan the reason for my absence."

"I know I could call the school and let them know, but I'm really not well enough for a long conversation with the principal."

"Do you need help? If you're not feeling well, I can come to your house to help," he says with concern in his voice.

"No need... I can take care of myself. Besides, I don't want to burden you with my problem, it's nothing serious, I just need some time away from school."

"Of course, I'll let Tama-chan know. If you need help, you can call at any time."

"Thanks for the help, so I'll see you in a week," I say, hanging up the phone.

After that dream that made me remember the past, I only feel anger and frustration. It's as if a ghost from the past followed me into this world, even though it doesn't affect my current life.

This frustration over the past turns into rage, which I'll now unleash on several cities under the pretext of increasing my Karma.

Even though the past wasn't the worst of the worst, it doesn't change the fact that it was bad, and even though a bad past doesn't justify my evil actions, I'm too selfish to care.

Now I turn on the TV while making breakfast, to prepare for this one week of destruction I'm about to cause.

"News about the massive SpaceQuake that occurred yesterday, its magnitude was unprecedented, being the largest in recent years. Affecting the entire city of Tengu, the area it covered was about 4 kilometers, while its impact could be felt throughout the city of Tengu, destroying several structures that couldn't withstand the tremors. Nearby shelters were completely destroyed, resulting in the death of over 7,000 people."

I turn off the TV to have a quiet breakfast, ignoring the fact that my fight with Tohka killed more than 7,000 humans.

Change of Perspective:

It's been a week since Aurélio has been absent from school, so tomorrow should be the day he comes back. I never realized how lonely I feel when he's not here; we always have lunch together, and almost all my conversations are with him.

"Shido," a cheerful voice says.

"Are you thinking about something? You seem a bit distracted," says a girl with long purple hair, wearing our school uniform and some bandages covering various injuries.

Yatogami Tohka, the Spirit who fought the <Shinigami >, I ended up finding her at our school a day after the fight.

She had some injuries, and her dress was slightly damaged; apparently, she didn't have the strength to fix it, so she just kept it like that.

She was so weakened that when I found her, she wasn't even able to attack me like she did the first time.

Kotori said that if she hadn't disappeared from the attack site, she would have died.

I helped her with bandages since she is a Spirit, and according to Kotori, I need to make her fall in love with me.

I managed to get a date with her, and after we talked, it all worked out in the end.

Her energy couldn't be detected because it was extremely low, to the point where she was almost a normal human.

Our date went smoothly, and after three more dates this week, I managed to seal her powers.

Now she's enrolled in our school after registering today.

She was going to sit next to me, but I told her I already had someone sitting there, so she ended up sitting in front of me. Even though I had a date with her, I can't really care about her.

In the end, I'm doing this just because Kotori asked me to. "It can't be that there's nothing wrong with me," the same indifference from our first meeting is still here, even though I know her a bit better now. I still can't feel anything for Tohka.

"It's nothing, Tohka. I was just thinking about my friend; he hasn't been feeling well this week, so he didn't come, but tomorrow's the day he returns."

"Yes, you've already mentioned that, Shido." Shido, without realizing it, keeps bringing up Aurélio.

"Yeah, hahaha... Sorry, I'm just a bit worried because he hasn't sent me any messages or answered any calls this past week."

"Shido, we need you to come to Fraxinus," a voice comes through the communicator Shido is using, and it's his little sister Kotori.

"Tamae-san, I need the student Shido to come with me," Reine enters the room and says.

"Oh, yes, go ahead..." Tamae, a bit surprised by the abrupt interruption, agrees without thinking.

Shido follows Reine, leaving Tohka in the room. She seemed like she wanted to follow but ended up staying after Shido convinced her.

"What's the problem?" Shido asks Reine.

"We'll explain the situation at Fraxinus... but it's quite serious."

We enter the Physics room and are teleported to Fraxinus. Reine picks up the pace with Shido following her.

We arrive at a room that feels tense and heavy, almost palpable.

"Kotori, what happened? Why is the atmosphere so heavy?" Shido asks the commander of Fraxinus.

"The situation, Shido, is that the <Shinigami > caused massive damage over the past week, surpassing even the Worst Spirit. We didn't want you to get upset and disrupt your date, so we didn't say anything, but the situation has only worsened," Kotori says in a serious tone.

"It's gotten worse... how?"

"The <Shinigami > started destroying several cities around the world the day after your fight with Tohka."

"Without any pattern or reason, he just appeared and began killing and destroying everything in his path."

"Since he's an Inverse Spirit, this should be common, but since he hadn't done anything before, we ended up relaxing on the matter."

"Each day got worse, and by the fourth day, it was no longer possible to detect him unless he did something, besides noticing that his Reiryoku started increasing."

"Reine hypothesized that he's trying to summon his <Demon King> because other than that, there's no reason for the destruction he's causing." She finishes speaking with a heavy tone that leaves the atmosphere tense.

"This is..." Shido, shocked, wasn't expecting this at all. Given the previous explanation about Spirits, this is a slap in the face; his actions don't match what was said.

"And it got worse each day, with more deaths occurring as the days passed. Now he's averaging 80,000 deaths per city in over 250 different cities."

"That means..." Shido asks nervously.

"It means this Spirit has deliberately killed more than 20 million people, making it the second highest death toll caused by a Spirit, only surpassed by the SpaceQuake caused by the first Spirit," Reine tells Shido, providing concrete data to complement Kotori's explanation.

The weight of the situation falls on Shido; these numbers are absurd for a Spirit who until now hadn't killed even a thousand humans.

"And even after this, we still don't know why. All we know is that he started killing and the meter started rising, and that he was angry for the first three days," Reine tells Shido to keep him informed.

"Afterwards, he calmed down, but the deaths didn't stop, and he continued going from city to city, with the only breaks being a few hours, probably to recover his energy," adds Kannazuki, the Vice Commander.

"Shido, we really want to help Spirits... but it might be nearly impossible to send you after this Spirit; he's too dangerous," Kotori says.

"Even the AST has changed his classification from S to SS, and now he's marked as the number one target for elimination, with AST members having permission to cause any level of destruction if it means killing the <Shinigami >."

"And he's only not SSS because he doesn't have enough Reiryoku for that," Kotori concludes, thinking this explanation might at least clarify why it's not possible to send Shido after this Spirit, at least for now.

"I... I want to help this Spirit."

"???!!!!" Everyone in the room is surprised by Shido's response. After all, he even hesitated at first, but now he wants to help the most dangerous Spirit they've ever seen.

Meanwhile, in Shido's mind, he feels he knows this Spirit. "I want to help him... does that mean there's nothing wrong with me...? Even though I've been indifferent about helping other Spirits, I want to help this one, so I guess I haven't changed much." However, for Shido, he only wants to help this Spirit because Aurélio is manipulating him.

Even though Shido can't connect Aurélio to this Spirit, the fact remains that they are the same person.

"Shido, I know you're not very smart... but this is already too stupid. Did you hear what we said? If you go after this Spirit, he will kill you." Kotori isn't confident that Shido's Regeneration can save him from this Spirit.

"Even so, I want to help. Isn't that what Ratatoskr was created for? To help Spirits? You said he's Inverse, so we just need to make him return to normal, right?"

"Yes... but there's currently no way to do that. We barely know anything about Inverse Spirits, and this Spirit is a man; we've never seen a male Spirit before, so we know even less."

"Even so, we can at least try," Shido tries to convince Kotori.

"Sure... we can at least try, but if it gets too dangerous, you'll have to give up. Promise me, Shido." Kotori knows that when Shido is determined, he doesn't change his mind, so it's better to at least manage the problem to reduce it.

"I hope this isn't the wrong decision," Kotori whispers as she sighs at Shido's stubbornness.