章 33: A Devil Who Does What His Heart Pleases
"Before returning home and resuming my life as Zed... there are two things I absolutely must do!" Kiba mumbled as he turned towards the western direction of Delta City where the slums were located.
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The weak and poor lived a life far worse than before the era of evolutions. Most of them lived in resource-barren lands such as slums. The infrastructure there was basically broken and discarded, with living conditions not worthy of mentioning.
On paper, the World Government has given billions of dollars for the benefit of slums, but in reality, those funds were embezzled by the corrupted officers and regional overlords. The slums were basically the lands forsaken by the gods...
One such slum was the Western Slum of Delta City.
The slum occupied an area of some 200 sq. km in the gigantic Delta City. While it was called a 'slum', the truth was that it wasn't overpopulated as the definition of the word slum says.
The slum was congested with damaged housing units, ruined buildings, and ravaged factories, but not people.
The population was rather sparse compared to other regions of Delta City. Even the composition of the people here was different.
Most people in the slum were starved and barely hanging onto their life. The streets and buildings were not lacking in people who had died due to malnutrition or starvation. The corpses of young children dying from cold were plentiful.
There was no law or order system in the slum. At least not the ones observed in the other part of the city.
In the slum, a starved man wouldn't hesitate to murder someone for a piece of bread or a slice of fruit. Men would happily sell their children if it could bring them food.
Dignity? Self-respect? Could they satisfy a hungry stomach? If not, then those things were useless.
But were slums truly hell for everyone? The answer was, there were people who almost lived the life of kings! They were known as the overlords!
They were the ones who truly ruled, with everyone in the slum forced to kneel before them, including the mutants.
In the slum, it didn't matter if you were poor or a mutant. In fact, having special abilities made it even worse.
People with special abilities needed a lot of nutrients. The cells of mutants had evolved, and so had the need for food. But the slum couldn't even provide food for normal humans, so how could it provide highly nutritious food for mutants? The pain of starvation was a lot more painful in the case of mutants.
Even if you had a great ability, you couldn't use it unless you had the energy. The energy which only food could provide. And what food resources existed in the slums were controlled by the overlords; forcing both ordinary humans and mutants to follow the commands of overlords. This created a vicious cycle impossible to break.
This also allowed overlords to conduct multiple businesses: mining, organ harvesting, brothels, begging, etc.
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Around 2 AM.
In an abandoned building, a woman and her two young children slept on the floor. They were the ones whom Kiba watched when he was at White Angel Corporation.
Swoosh~
A blinding flash of white light emerged on the terrace opposite to his building. The flash turned into Kiba.
"I always thought my sadness for the people of the slum was just an emotional imbalance caused by the after-effects of sex. But perhaps it was never so simple."
Kiba muttered to himself as he observed the woman and her two children.
"Maybe Lisa wasn't entirely wrong when she told me that I have done nothing, even though I possess such power..."
He stretched his right hand towards the floor where the woman and her children were sleeping. Ripples of energy swept forth, converging on the floor.
CRASH!
The woman awoke with a fright.
She took out a curved knife from her torn clothes and aimed it in front of her. Even though the lack of light made it impossible for her to see, she didn't let that show on her face as she waved the knife.
"Don't move or I will kill you!" The woman threatened, but there was no response.
Inwardly, she trembled, but she continued to put a brave front. She knew she couldn't afford to show her weakness, otherwise, her poor children would suffer.
After a minute of no sound, the woman thought she was being overcautious. She had assumed the overlord had sent someone to sell her to the brothel and use her children either for organ harvesting or begging.
The woman cleared her mind and lit a candle adjacent to her. She wanted to confirm what woke her up.
"What woke me up?" she thought, "Was it the sound of this box crashing?"
She moved closer to the box, with the knife aimed in front of her. She was a mutant, but the lack of food had made it impossible for her to use her abilities. The only thing she could rely on was the curved knife.
"Ahh!" She didn't dare believe the markings on the box. If she wasn't mistaken, they denoted the box contained food!
She started opening the box while trying to not excite herself.
"Calm down, woman! It is too good to be true!"
The woman said to herself, but she was anything but calm. She thought it was someone's idea of a joke or a way to knock her out, but inside her, there was hope!
Hope that the box contained food.
As she saw the items inside the box, her eyes erupted with tears.
There were over 100 cans of food items along with thousands of dollars cash!
"High-grade food items specialized for mutants!"
The woman couldn't believe the text on the food cans. She nervously opened one food can, and her spirits lifted as she smelled the aroma.
"They are genuine!" She fell on her knees, crying in excitement. The woman was suspicious before, but after smelling the aroma, she thought no one would waste so many efforts for a prank.
"Who would give them to me? Or maybe someone has placed them here temporarily...and later on, will come back for them? If then, I and my children..."
When she thought of this, she quickly let go of the food cans. She quickly started wrapping up the box, afraid the owner of the box might catch her.
In the slum, she was at the bottom of the food chain and she knew she didn't stand a chance against someone who can afford such high-quality food.
"Sighs~"
A sigh suddenly sounded inside her mind, startling her. She checked around, but there was no one besides her children. They were still in deep sleep as if under a magic spell.
"The food and money are yours and yours alone," A strange voice rang inside her mind," Neither do you have to pay me now or in the future, in any form."
The woman wasn't able to judge if the voice belonged to a male or a female, but she was able to feel the voice carried no nefarious thoughts against her.
"Why!?" The woman couldn't understand what has she done for deserving such a good fortune.
"You have proved that true unconditional love is possible in this cruel world."
"Thank you!" Her eyes were filled with tears as she knelt towards the box. But there were no more words from the mysterious voice.
After a few minutes, the woman rose to her feet. She started hiding the box under rubble in an adjacent room.
"The benefactor might not come for the food, but if others came to know, especially the overlords..."
In the slum, people murder for bread, much less the highly nutritious food items she had.
Her food cans were nothing less than a treasure, and the woman knew it very well. She was fully aware of the consequences if her secret was revealed.
"AHHHHH!!"
The woman was shocked as she heard a horrifying scream from outside. She ran to the window with the candle in her hand.
She felt a chill down her spine when she saw the condition of the person who had just screamed.
That man had his body sliced in two parts from the torso. His eyes were wide open in shock as if he couldn't believe how he died so suddenly.
"Isn't that Beggar Liu?" The woman was terrified but also pleasantly surprised.
Beggar Liu had always taken a share of the food she earned from her activities out there. It was due to him that she would often stay hungry in the past since not paying him would result in death. Beggar Liu carried connections with the overlords that made slum dwellers with no choice but to obey.
"Urgh!"
Multiple screams emerged one after another.
The woman saw a red light, in the shape of a sword, passing through the slum. Heart-wrecking shrieks would follow.
"I am an overlord----"
"Don't kill me! I am working on the mayor's pay---"
"Colonel James would---"
"My boss is---"
"Please--"
There were beggings and warnings, but the red light killed its targets before the words were complete. The targets used their mutant abilities and modern weapons, but they were completely useless in front of the sword-shaped red light that sliced them into two.
The slum reeked of blood...
Everyone in the slum awakened as they heard the heart-wrenching screams of their oppressors.
"They are dead!"
"Overlords are no more!"
The slum dwellers cried in joy. They didn't know who killed their oppressors or why, but to them, it didn't matter. They were free, even if for a brief time, and that was enough for them.
"Thank you!" The woman once again whispered her gratitude.
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Kiba gazed at the carnage caused by his powers. He then observed the joyful expressions of the slum dwellers, and his lips curved up, forming a smile.
"I never thought the joy of others could make me happy."
He sat down on the terrace, lost in thoughts. He wondered why he did what he just did.
"Was it because I realized my responsibilities after my encounter with Lisa!? Or maybe I no longer want to feel guilty by doing nothing for those suffering what I have suffered?!"
"No! I have no responsibilities in this world! My powers are mine alone! I risked my life to gain the Cosmic Spark!"
"Similarly, why should I feel guilty and sad for others? The world didn't help me when I was down, so I don't owe the world anything!"
"I am no hero. If I am honest, my actions in Kiba's form have been more of a villain's. And yet my actions of tonight..."
After a few minutes, he started laughing as he found his answer.
"Earlier I used to think I am neither a saint nor a devil. But I was wrong! I am the true devil! I just didn't know what the true devil meant! A true devil was not some evil entity as I originally believed!"
The actions of a saint were guided by the moral convictions of the world. The saint would never do anything that society believes was morally wrong, no matter how right it was! The thoughts of saints were molded by the concept of right and wrong of others instead of themselves!
On the other hand, the true devil was someone who does what his heart desires, unafraid of the labels of good and evil!
The true devil did what he pleases, regardless of whether it was good or evil from the perspective of the world! The labels of others don't matter to the devil as long as it pleases him!
"I do things that give me happiness regardless if they are considered as good or evil!"
"Making love with the beauties give me happiness, and so does stealing others' wives! Losing myself in the vanity gives me unrivaled joy!
"The same applies to the life I live as Zed!"
"I helped that woman because it brought a smile to my face! And not because it was the right thing to do!"
"I killed the overlords and their subordinates because it gave me happiness to see the slum dwellers no longer being oppressed! And not because they were abusing their powers by harassing the weak!"
A stream of white light enveloped Kiba as he disappeared from the slums.
"I am the devil who does as my heart pleases!"
His words rang in the night sky...
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