In the darkness of the woods that separate the frontiers of Mistral's towns, a small light flickered in the night.
A campfire illuminating the face of a 12-year-old boy who was sitting on a fallen tree trunk, roasting some meat and vegetables on metal spikes over the fire. The fragrance of the various spices wafting into the air.
The boy's sky blue eyes stared into the fire, lost in thought, as he absentmindedly kept rotating the spikes, allowing the food to cook thoroughly.
Once the food was done, he took a bite out of it lazily, uncaring of how hot the food was.
This was the advantage of being a walking Blast Furnace as he was thanks to his Semblance.
A semblance based on an otherworldly power.
As he chewed his food slowly, still lost in memories long past, his shoulders suddenly tensed. His enhanced hearing picking up the soft footfalls of padded paws.
Soon enough, from the darkness of the woods, the culprit made itself known, drawn by the scent of the meat.
Its snout held in the air and sniffing frantically, searching for the source of the delicious smell of meat, both raw and cooked, and the distinct tang of blood, while its eyes kept darting here and there, searching for an ambush from a larger predator than itself.
Its reddish orange and white fur highlighted under the warm glow of the fire as it stared with wariness and curiosity at the human sitting by the flame.
The moment the boy spotted the true source of the noise, his tense shoulders relaxed.
Slowly, he pulled out some of the meat from the spikes and tossed it to the fox, who immediately snatched it up from the ground while keeping a cautious stare and maintaining a safe distance from the human.
Seeing its behaviour, cautious of himself yet refusing to leave just yet, the boy knew exactly what the little one wanted.
With an amused huff, he pulled out his knife and got to work on extracting more meat from the dead boar near his feet. His dinner for tonight.
With a sizable chunk in his hand, the boy tossed the meat to the small predator, who immediately snatched the meat and disappeared into the woods, making the boy chuckle.
His eyes now held a hollow look as he stared in the direction where the fox had disappeared.
"Sam would have wanted to pet you the moment you made yourself known."
He muttered to himself as he lost his appetite completely, making him drop the cooked meat into his mouth unceremoniously and swallow with a gulp of water.
The rest of the carcass, he dragged it away and left it in the wilds some ways away from his camp, knowing that more predators like the little fox would come to eat it, leaving no waste behind.
With dinner done, he smothered the fire completely, not afraid of the cold in these winter months, thanks to his Semblance that is always active but on a lower setting compared to what he uses it for during combat scenarios.
After breaking up the camp and destroying all traces of his presence in the area, he climbed up the tallest tree nearby with his backpack and went to sleep in the hollow of the trunk, hiding from the rest of the world for the night.
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Oniyuri was once a beacon of hope in this kingdom steeped in excess and darkness.
According to what I researched, this city, along with its twin, Kuroyuri, were established by the wealthy elite of Mistral capital. People who were fed up with the council and its inability to rule properly.
While the reason behind its abandonment mid-development and the destruction of Kuroyuri later on are officially said to be the Grimm, the underworld has its own legends about this place.
Unlike Kuroyuri, which has definitive proof that it was destroyed at the hands of the monsters, Oniyuri is an eerie place that feels untouched by the destruction wrought by the hands of the Grimm.
Some say that the people of Oniyuri were forced to abandon the development because the council intervened in the process. Unable to accept that a new power was being established right under its own nose.
Some say that the burgeoning town was abandoned because of gang wars that were already starting to erupt before the place was even officially established.
Other rumors point to many other outlandish theories, like ghosts, strange variations of Grimm from old fairy tales called 'The Chill', and so many more.
Whatever the reason may have been, one fact is undeniable.
The people of Oniyuri left in a hurry, leaving behind a lot of valuables. Valuables that were mostly looted by bandits and gang members later on.
However, there is one secret about this town that I know about that others don't.
I walked through the abandoned streets of the town, watching the half-constructed buildings and a few burnt-down establishments for possible ambushes.
My Semblance, Extremis, based on the powers of the same name from another fictional world, but with none of the drawbacks, enhancing my senses to the extreme, allowing me to pick up even the tiniest of disturbances in the area.
Slowly, I walked towards the large building that was supposed to be the home of the mayor. A home that was only occupied briefly before its owners were forced to flee.
Its architecture and the construction style in general of this town reminded me of those buildings from China, Japan, and many other eastern countries from my old life. A life that I am slowly losing by the day.
I don't know if it is because of my current circumstances or a deliberate act by whatever brought me here, but my memories of Earth have been rapidly fading over time.
Or rather, I think it is better to say that my emotional attachment to said memories is fading over time, which is resulting in my mind slowly deeming those memories unnecessary.
If this theory is right, it means that the memories that hold the greatest emotional attachment, like Alex, Sam, and Diana, and a few others, would probably remain safe. But the rest, like the day-to-day life that I remember, might slowly disappear completely.
Shaking my head to get rid of those thoughts, I walked into the building, heading straight for the basement, ignoring how the house looked like a storm had torn through the place. Probably the result of scavengers turning the place upside down for anything valuable.
In the basement, the situation was similar, with barely anything remaining untouched.
Everything that was not nailed down, and in some cases, even things that were nailed down, had been looted by the scavengers long ago, which made sense.
It has been more than two years since this town and its sibling town fell. A rather long timeframe in the underworld's view for anything to be left untouched in such places.
Thankfully, what I am looking for is not something that is so easily visible and out of reach for those who don't know what they are looking for.
"Let's see here. Seven steps forward from the Northern corner and then twelve steps to the left, is it?"
I put away the piece of paper holding the instructions and did as it said.
There was no hollow feeling below the floorboards despite following the instructions perfectly. No feeling of anything being down there. But it made perfect sense.
If it was really that easily found, the scavengers with a little bit more IQ than most would have made off with it a long time ago instead of needing to negotiate with the surviving grandchildren of this town's Mayor, who are now living in abject poverty, for the secret instructions in exchange for giving then their heirloom hidden here along with a small cut of the profits I gain from this expedition.
I charged up my semblance, making my hands glow like molten metal, as I burned through the floorboards, revealing solid earth that had no traces of having ever been turned over.
But I knew that this was merely the meticulous care of the former owner of this place.
Using my charged hands as a make-shift shovel, I started digging out the soil, filling the basement with the crackling noise of the soil being heated up by my power, which can easily reach three thousand degrees Celsius and beyond should I desire it.
I dug for at least six feet before I finally found what I was looking for.
A metal box that had no adornments or markings. Tightly shut and sealed, making sure nothing would get in.
For most people, especially civilians, it would be so heavy that they would need two strong men to pick it up. But for a person with an unlocked Aura, especially with a semblance like mine? It is child's play.
Hefting the box out, I melted through the lock, carefully using my finger and fine-tuned control over the temperature that I developed over the past two years so that the things inside would not be harmed by the heat.
Once the lock was gone, I opened the lid, revealing several stacks of Lien that could probably set someone up for life, a rather large pile of jewelry and trinkets, precious gems, and a lot of other things that one would expect a Mayor's family to have.
However, my true prize is not all of this. It is the strange device sitting innocently under all these objects.
A Mechashift core.
The secret behind the mechashift technology used by almost every Huntsmen in existence and the various armed forces in the world, including the Atlas armed forces.
It is a miraculous piece of technology that is so heavily blackboxed that nobody but the higher-ups in the handful of tech giants that manufacture said technology knows how it works.
Any attempts to tamper with it triggers a failsafe within it that renders the internals into a molten mess, thanks to the Dust embedded within the cores, making it impossible for anyone to even know its inner workings.
This is a piece of technology that is so tightly controlled by the councils and corporations that even a single core out in the wild fetches several million Lien each, sometimes even going into billions, depending on how desperate the buyer is for this peerless technology that allows for versatility bordering on unnatural.
Of course, it does not cost that much if someone goes through the official route, like the students of various Huntsmen preparatory schools and academies, along with the Atlas armed forces, do.
For such people, it barely costs more than a couple of thousand lien at worst.
However, such traceable cores are hardly attractive for the people of the underworld, who don't want anything to point to them in most cases, hence the price hike for the old cores that were first released into the world when the technology was conceived more than eighty years ago.
A core like the one in my hands right now, which doesn't have the tracking systems like the latest models have.
In essence, they are not paying for the core itself, but the anonymity that comes with these untraceable cores.
Putting the core into my backpack, I left the manor and headed straight for the exit of the town.
I'll need to head to Mistral proper and sell off this hot potato in the underworld as soon as possible.