Liam awakened groggy and confused once again, his dark surroundings failing to capture his almost non-existent attention. A barrier seemed to exist around his mind, preventing it from gaining access to most of its functions, but that didn't last long.
The grogginess began to move, flowing toward Liam's lower waist, as if attracted to it. The warmth coming from that spot also intensified, spreading a sense of satisfaction and strength, but also exposing Liam to terrible scenes.
As the grogginess withdrew, memories from the previous battle resurfaced, unfiltered in their goriness. Liam quickly recalled everything, and panic promptly arrived.
Liam gasped loudly, retreating, only for his back to immediately hit a wall. There, he found out that he was sitting on a stone bed, but his hands went behind him, pressing on the vertical surface as he finally inspected his surroundings.
The rectangular chamber was no more, replaced by a small square room with no windows or doors. The place had no light sources or openings, but the air didn't smell stale for some reason.
Except for the stone bed, Liam spotted a wooden bucket in a corner among the darkness, but that was it. Moreover, his thoughts had already moved forward, focusing on the gory memories.
Liam inspected his hands, violently rubbing them. They were clean, featuring no trace of the blood from his memory, but they felt dirty nonetheless.
'What have I done?!' Liam cried in his mind, the strangeness of the situation making him hope that his memories were fake. After all, that wouldn't have been his first dream-like experience.
Yet, everything pointed in the opposite direction. The similar environment, Liam's tight black robe, and his vivid memories told him that the gory scenes had truly happened, forcing him to come to terms with them.
'I killed two more people,' Liam realized, digging his hands into his messy, long hair.
The victims' identity worsened the realization. Except for Adrian, Liam never had much of a relationship with the other village kids. However, he had still known them for a long time, and one of them had died at his hands now.
Nevertheless, a silver lining that couldn't remove the sadness of the situation existed. Liam recalled everything, from the foreign confusion to the white-masked man's final words.
'We were drugged,' Liam concluded, nodding to himself and lowering his hands. 'We couldn't control ourselves.'
Liam couldn't help but frown at that conclusion. While true, an exception existed to it. Unlike the other kids, Liam had retained some self-control until his problematic bloodline had taken over.
'Why could I move?' Liam wondered, standing up to stretch his legs.
The action brought some answers. Somehow, Liam felt stronger, as if nourished. He opened and closed his hands, experiencing their unfamiliar firmness, before they went to his lower waist.
'Is it because of my core?' Liam guessed, feeling that his answer was correct, but also incomplete at the same time.
The brainstorming didn't last long. Liam felt fine, so he moved to the other issue at hand. He started jumping across the room, testing, pushing, and knocking on its smooth surfaces, searching for an exit that his eyes couldn't find.
However, no matter how much Liam searched, the square room seemed to have no openings whatsoever. His nose said otherwise, but he couldn't find anything of the sort, eventually making him punch one of the walls.
'Damned cultivators!' Liam cursed in his mind, punching the wall again, the pain radiating from his knuckles delaying troubling thoughts that eventually grew too loud to ignore.
"Damnit!" Liam cursed again, this time loudly as he slammed both fists on the wall. Then, he leaned his forehead on that cold surface, his anger finally making room for sadness and disgust.
'How did everything go so wrong?' Liam wondered, sniffing, wiping his eyes on his sleeve before actual tears could come down.
Liam's wild emotions wanted to make him cry, but he forbade himself from doing so. Part of him felt that he didn't deserve to shed tears. After all, he was alive, and the same didn't go for the kids he had killed.
'I'm sorry,' Liam thought, sniffing harder while thinking about the girl, only for his memories to move to the boy from Krosstoen village. 'Caleb, I'm sorry.'
Liam suppressed the tears once again, lightly bumping his forehead on the wall. He struggled to acknowledge how much his life had changed in what felt like mere days, but he blamed himself nonetheless.
'Is this my punishment for wanting revenge?' Liam asked no one in particular. 'Are the Heavens telling me that I shouldn't have tried to make things right?'
But Liam wasn't alone in his brain. Another ancient presence existed, and its inhuman hiss soon started echoing in his ears.
"What do you want?" Liam asked, followed by a proper shout. "What do you want from me?!"
The hiss didn't reply. It didn't gain human words, either, but Liam's thoughts changed listening to it. They didn't become foreign but shed light on a different perspective.
Death was final. Even if Liam gave himself up, that wouldn't bring back the unknown girl and Caleb. Actually, chances were more kids would suffer since the culprit was still around.
'The Divine Cult,' Liam mentioned in his mind, stepping away from the wall, diverting his gaze in thought.
Just like the Ancestral Beasts, Liam knew he had stumbled into something bigger than himself. Something grand and seemingly illegal was at play there, and he was now caught inside it.
Actually, by the look of Liam's surroundings, he was properly trapped, and he only knew one response to it. Part of his behavior came from animals, and wild beasts wouldn't just accept living in a cage.
Despite wanting to focus on self-blame, the new perspective brought by the hiss allowed Liam to reach a more rational but problematic conclusion.
'They made me do it,' Liam thought, 'They made me kill even if I didn't want to.'
And Liam couldn't help but hate the Divine Cult for that. He might be a murderer, but the other kids had been innocent, and he couldn't forgive the white-masked man for what he had made them do.
'Why is he alive when they are dead?' Liam wondered. 'It's not fair.'
Liam focused on his hands now, experiencing the new strength that filled them. The change hadn't been as drastic as after the events with Crazy Uncle, but it existed nonetheless.
'Why can the Dragon King and these people do bad things without getting punished?' Liam questioned in his mind. 'Why should I surrender myself when they don't care about who suffers because of their actions?'
And Liam had an explanation for that, which didn't come from humans. Just like for animals, might made right, and the truth was that he was hopelessly weak.
'Reborn as weapons,' Liam recalled the white-masked man's words. 'I wonder, would it be fate if the weapon you created ended up slitting your throat?'