novelraw Chapter 40: Shattered Society
Chapter 40: Shattered Society
The sun rose over Tokyo, but it didn’t bring warmth. The sky remained a bruised shade of violet, a permanent reminder that the atmosphere had been tampered with by celestial hands. Down in the city, the Blood-Rust had hardened into a gritty crust that covered everything from abandoned luxury cars to the vending machines that no longer hummed.
Ren Hanshin stood at the edge of the Okutama shrine’s main plateau, looking down at the winding mountain road. For the first time in weeks, there was no sound of falling iron or exploding mana. There was only the sound of a broom sweeping.
SCRITCH! SCRITCH!
One of the survivors, an older man who had lost his home in Shinjuku, was meticulously cleaning the stone path leading to the main hall. He didn’t look up as Ren passed. He didn’t dare. To these people, Ren was no longer the boy who carried their bags, he was the lightning rod that drew the wrath of the heavens.
Ren stepped off the shrine grounds and began to descend the mountain. He didn’t fly or used the scythe to warp space. He walked. He needed to see what was left of the world he had supposedly saved.
As he reached the outskirts of the city, the Slow-Burn reality of the apocalypse hit him. The Sovereigns had retreated, but they had left a vacuum. With the Japanese Awakened Association’s leadership vaporized and the government in hiding, Tokyo had become a series of walled-off Safe Zones and lawless Grey Zones.
Ren walked into a neighborhood in Ome. The houses were mostly intact, but the vibe was wrong. There were no children playing. The windows were boarded up with plywood and mana-reinforced tape.
Suddenly, a group of men stepped out from behind a rusted bus. They weren’t divine soldiers. They were hunters, by the look of their mismatched gear and the way they held their rusted swords. Their leader was a man with a scarred lip and a Level 32 tag hanging from his neck.
"Hold it right there, silver-hair," the leader said, spitting a glob of dark phlegm onto the road. "This is ’New Dawn’ territory. If you want to pass, you pay the mana-stone tax."
Ren stopped. He just felt a profound sense of tiredness.
"I don’t have any mana-stones," Ren said, his voice calm.
The men laughed, a hollow, desperate sound. "Look at that coat. Look at that hair. You’re obviously a high-level freak who survived the Shinjuku hit. You’ve got loot. Hand it over, or we’ll see how many holes we can put in that fancy black jacket."
Ren looked at the leader’s eyes. He saw the flicker of The Fool’s influence, a slight purple tint in the man’s pupils. Loki’s whispers were infecting the desperate, the hungry, and the greedy.
"You don’t want to do this," Ren said.
"I think I do," the leader sneered, leveling a cross-bow at Ren’s chest.
Ren took a single step forward. He didn’t use a skill. He just moved with the flow, Jubei had hammered into him. In the blink of an eye, the cross-bow was in Ren’s hand, snapped in half like a dry twig.
The men froze. The air around Ren began to turn heavy, which is enough to make their hearts skip a beat.
"The God of War couldn’t kill me," Ren said, his crimson eyes shining with a faint light. "What do you think you can do?"
The men didn’t wait to find out. They scrambled backward, tripping over their own feet as they fled into the ruins. They saw the "Tyrant" the rumors had warned them about.
[The God of Fate is purring in the back of Ren’s mind.]
[God of Fate]: See how they turn on each other the moment the sun goes down? They are rotten, Ren. They are the weeds in my garden. Why do you let them breathe?
"Because I’m one of them," Ren muttered, though even he didn’t believe it anymore. Ren reached the center of Tachikawa, where a massive camp had been set up by the remaining Red Cross and a few rogue C-Rank hunters who still had a conscience. This was a safe zone, but it was anything but safe.
The air smelled of unwashed bodies, cheap noodles, and a strange, sweet rot that Ren recognized as "Mana Sickness." Without the System to regulate the atmospheric mana, the unawakened were literally being poisoned by the air they breathed.
He walked through the camp, his silver hair drawing gazes like a magnet. Some people pointed. Some whispered. A few mothers pulled their children away, covering their eyes.
"Is that him?"
"The one who killed the angel?"
"They say he’s the reason the sky broke. The Gods wanted him, and we paid the price."
Ren ignored the whispers. He was looking for someone. He found a small medical tent where a young woman with glasses was frantically trying to heal a row of sick children, her mana was low, her face pale with exhaustion.
"You’re over using," Ren said, standing at the entrance of the tent.
The girl jumped, dropping her staff.
"I am Ren." Ren continued.
She looked up at Ren, her eyes wide. "R-Ren Hanshin? The Zenith?"
"Just Ren," he said. He reached into his spatial inventory and pulled out a high-grade divine elixir he had claimed during the Draft. It was worth millions, a relic that could heal almost any mortal ailment.
He handed it to her. "Dilute this in a gallon of water. It’ll clear the mana poisoning in their lungs."
The girl looked at the blue bottle as if it were a holy relic. "I... I can’t take this. The Association says all high-tier items must be surrendered for ’Global Stabilization’."
Ren’s expression darkened. "The association is a pile of ash in Shinjuku. The ’Global Oversight Committee’ is in a bunker in Switzerland. These kids are here. Take it."
She took it with trembling hands. "Thank you. Why... Why are people saying you’re a tyrant? You’re the only one who brought us medicine."
Ren looked at a young boy in the corner who was staring at him with fear. "Because I have the power to kill the things they can’t, and people hate what they fear more than they love what saves them."
Ren turned to leave, but a hand caught his sleeve. It was an old man, a porter like Ren used to be. He was missing a leg, his trousers pinned up with a safety pin.
"Ren," the old man wheezed. "I remember you. You used to carry bags for the Blue Eagle guild. You were the one who always shared your water when the high-ranks weren’t looking."
Ren stopped. A flicker of a memory, a hot day in a D-Rank dungeon, the smell of damp stone, the weight of a 100lb pack on his back.
"That was a long time ago, Old Man," Ren said softly.
"The power... it changed your hair. It changed your eyes," the old man said, his voice trembling. "But don’t let it change the way you look at the mud. The moment you look at us and see ’ants,’ the Gods have won."
Ren didn’t respond. He felt the weaver’s threads tightening around his heart, her jealousy flaring at the old man’s touch. He gently removed his sleeve and left the tent.
As Ren left the camp, he felt a presence, not a divine one. A slick, oily presence that tasted like a bad joke.
A single playing card was tucked into the windshield of a nearby burnt car. The Queen of Hearts. But the face on the card was a caricature of the weaver, her eyes crossed and a tongue sticking out.
Ren picked up the card. It turned into purple smoke in his hand, leaving behind a faint smell of lavender and expensive cigars.
[God of Fate]: LOKI. That parasite! He is mocking me! He is mocking us!
Ren ignored the Goddess’s screeching. He looked at the back of the card. In small, neat handwriting, it said:
’The city needs a king, Ren. But you’re too busy being a martyr. Come to the Ginza Ruins tonight. Let’s talk about the ’New World’ before the God of Death decides to finish the job.’
Ren crushed the card. He knew it was a trap. Loki didn’t do talks unless he had an ace up his sleeve. But Arthur Vance was right, Loki was collecting something. If the Fool was gathering divine cores, he was building a weapon that could evade the law of severance.
Ren looked back at the camp. He saw the children drinking the diluted elixir, their color returning. He saw the "New Dawn" hunters in the distance, waiting for him to leave so they could go back to shaking down the weak.
Society was rotting from the inside out. The Sovereigns destroyed it by showing humanity how truly helpless they were.
"Jubei," Ren whispered to the air. "You told me a warrior is defined by what he refuses to let go. But what do I do when everyone is trying to let go of me?"
The wind didn’t answer. Ren Hanshin began the long walk toward Ginza. He wanted to feel every mile of the ruined world. He wanted to remember the smell of the mud before he had to face the man who wanted to turn it all into a circus.