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Chapter 56

The bedroom was a chaotic scene of destruction. The once pristine walls were splattered in blood. The furniture had mostly been overturned and broken. Shards of glass and wood littered the floor. The curtains were torn and hanging by threads, and even the ceiling had cracks from numerous violent blows. Lying on the bed was a woman, an illustrious beauty, completely naked.

Her hair and body looked almost pristine. There were no signs of violence on her except a cord wrapped around her neck. She stared up at the ceiling, her expression dull and lifeless. I walked over to the bed, stepping over several corpses to get there. She had put up one hell of a fight, but in the end, she had succumbed. I reached out and closed Carolina’s eyes. Then, I lifted the blanket that had avoided most of the blood splatter and covered her body.

“Ggghhhe… stop…” A gravelly voice spoke.

My eyes immediately spun to the ground, where one person was trying to stand up. Where she had died in a nearly flawless state, he was covered in so many injuries that he was barely recognizable. One of his eyes was gone, and his body was covered in blood from head to toe. However, I recognized Tanner immediately. I ran over and kneeled next to him, putting a hand on his chest to keep him from standing.

“Relax. You’re safe.” I spoke.

He jerked slightly, but when his eyes met mine, he started to calm down. “Y-you’re him.”

I gave a single nod. “I’m sorry I didn’t come earlier. It’s…”

I realized I didn’t have the words. I couldn’t say if I evolved a year ago if I’d even be around to save them at this point. However, it was impossible to explain my feelings to a man I had never even spoken to with more than bubbles and splashes in the last fifteen years.

“It’s…okay… she’s okay?”

“Father!” Mara ran into the room.

She didn’t seem to see her mom know that she was covered in a blanket, but she quickly made her way to her father, throwing her arms around him.

“I will… fix…” I wasn’t certain of this.

I could put my cells inside him. In the same way, I killed that knight, I could fix the damage. However, I had no experience doing this. I was just as likely to kill him as I was to fix him. This was the kind of thing that needed a great deal of practice. I wouldn’t even attempt it for most, but for Tanner, I figured I owed him this much.

Tanner seemed to have an idea of what I intended, and he shook his head before coughing up blood. “No… don’t… you can’t… you can’t fix…this…”

“Father, what are you saying?”

“I… I’ll be joining, your mother soon. At least… those bastards… didn’t touch her…” Mara followed her father’s eyes and then cried out as she ran to the bed.

It was hard to say how much she had been touched. Tanner had certainly arrived and interrupted them. For the sake of her legacy, and Tanner’s pride, it was best to say they all died first. The one on the stairway had implied as much.

“P-pond… spirit…”

“Just Spirit.” I coughed, not sure why I was still going with that name, even now.

“Please… look after…Mara” He tried to lift his hand, but couldn’t. “Under… bed… House Capala… will protect… her… Take her… to Arc… arc… ahh…”

He broke into coughing, but his hand held it. “I will protect her. I’ll take her to Arcford and I’ll bring the letter of introduction to House Capala and make sure they will look after her.”

With those words, his body relaxed. “Thank you… I owe you… everything.”

For the first time, I felt my body shake. I felt a discomfort shoot through my entire body.

“You can rest now,” I responded, feeling like my eyes might burn.

I wasn’t even sure I could still cry at this point, but I felt a pain in my heart.

“Father, mother’s not moving!” Mara returned.

Tanner looked at her one last time, a smile on his face. “I… love… you…”

With that, his body went slack.

“Father? Father!” She started shaking him, but he no longer responded.

She continued to cry out, but I didn’t stop her. Instead, I got up and looked under the bed. Eventually, I found a box, and at the bottom of that box was a sealed letter. I didn’t know what words were written under the wax seal, but I knew this must be the letter they had prepared. It had the words Mara Capala on it. This was the cover they prepared for her if everything went bad. Even now, they were still thinking of her.

I headed down the stairs, abandoning the wailing Mara. I had already confirmed all the knights were dead, so she would be safe. As for the emotional things, I was ill-equipped to deal with that. Even in my previous life, I was never good with crying women. The only thing I knew how to do was flirt, and I had no intention of doing that to Mara, especially not now. I had taken Tanner’s final request, and I intended to honor it.

First, I found one of the horses that hadn’t taken off. The farm horses had all been freed and had been run off by the men and the fighting. The one I found was a well-trained horse and didn’t act too skittish around me. I tied it to the cart and then finished packing everything Tanner had started, making sure to do a good job. By the time I was complete, it was late at night. Mara had appeared in the doorway a bit earlier. She watched me until I finished.

I finally glanced up at her. Her cheeks were stained with dry tears. Her nose was red and puffy and her eyes were bloodshot. It was clear she had been crying quite a bit.

“We have to leave… don’t we?” She asked me.

“People will come… investigate,” I responded.

If my tribulation didn’t bring them, then the death of all these men would. I already used L Form Switch. However, many of them had been killed by Tanner, and I wasn’t sure if his death would throw such pursuit off. Either way, we needed to get away from this farm, even if he hadn’t told me to take her to Arcford, I would have done at least that much.

She nodded silently. “My parents… they said, if I’m ever alone, I should go to Arcford and talk to the Capala family.”

I nodded. This was nothing I didn’t know.

“Should… bury?” I pointed up at the top floor where her parents lay.

She winced, but then she shook her head. “It is custom in Arcford to do funeral pyres. A person is burned with their personal belongings. The more they are burned with, the more they can take with them to the Yellow Springs. I read once that kings would often have their living wives and concubines burned with them…”

She stopped, looking down shamefully.

I nodded, lifting a torch and touching it. I increased the temperature until it ignited. I then push the torch against a drape fluttering out a broken window. It caught quickly and began to grow. If the bigger the fire, the better, then I’d send Tanner and his wife with everything they had built for themselves. Mara stepped out of the house and turned, watching as the fire spread.

“The people who killed them… they’re nobles, correct? Paragons all belong to noble houses.” She spoke as her face was lit with the fluttering reds and oranges of the growing fire.

“They are,” I responded.

“I want them to pay.” Her face twisted with pain as fresh tears fell down her cheeks and her voice shook. “I want them to suffer.”

“Revenge?” I asked.

“Yes…” She responded, her face twisted in anger. “I want them all to die!”

I gently touched her cheek. “Too pretty for anger. I will be your fury.”

She blushed, shivering slightly. I couldn’t help but sigh. I was only freshly human, and I was back to my playboy ways.

“Spirit, you’ll stay with me?” She asked, looking at me, her eyes filled with desperate hope.

“Until you have revenge, I stay.” I nodded.

“Just that long…” She whispered, but then shook her head and suddenly jumped onto the cart, grabbing my arm. “Please, Spirit. Take me away from here.”

“First.” I reached out and touched her.

She looked back at me, her lips trembling. She was far too trusting. If I was a man with bad attentions, didn’t she know vulnerable looks like that would make me take advantage of her? I couldn’t help but look away, coughing.

My body split, and she let out a cry as she saw a second person emerge from me. However, that person’s body quickly twisted and changed until she looked exactly like Mara. Mara gasped as she looked at the doppelganger of herself.

“H-how? It’s me!”

“Today… all… dead… new name. Need.” I twisted my hand, and the mimic turned and then walked into the fire.

-2,000,000,000 HP

I winced at the pain. Although it was a mimic, it was still me, but I wanted it to be convincing, so I used a majority of my cells. Once they burned, they’d look like a fried corpse in the shape of her. The fire would destroy any more thorough evidence. To the best of my knowledge, this world didn’t have DNA analysis or anything like that.

After losing so much, I was feeling insubstantial. It’d take a little bit to replace all the cells I just lost. That’s when I noticed Mara glaring at me.

“How do you know what I look like? You even replicated the beauty mark!”

I stiffened. “B-being thorough.”

“P-pervert.” She declared, but rather than pulling away, she snuggled my arm, hiding her face in the crook.

I had a feeling she was misunderstanding some things, but my body was so thin after the split that if I tried to pull away, I might lose my arm. I could only sigh and strike the reigns. As we passed the barn, I used Electrogenesis to create an arc and then sent a bolt of lightning into a hay pile. It caught, and soon the barn was in flames too. We drove off down the road in the early morning, behind us the burning farm that once belonged to the Tanners, now all ash.