Cail tossed the note on the table. It slid to the other side and finally stopped when it was almost falling off the edge.
"This feels like reading a novel only to slapped with a cliffhanger," he pouted as he continued spinning in the office chair.
He was staring at the ceiling, his mind calming down a bit. He finally managed to realize some disparities.
"Other people have investigated this void rift, right? But why is this office so clean?" Logically, no evidence should be left behind if Cail were in those organizations' shoes. Information is a good bargaining chip.
At first, he thought that the missing files were taken away, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
He stretched his feet. They were caught by the table leg. He stopped spinning and sat properly. Looking around the room, he guessed, "Maybe the door wasn't deactivated after all? Maybe my void energy managed to bypass some barrier, just like what I did to the plaza before."
Cail walked toward the door and twisted the knob once again. He didn't close it, but he just checked if he could open the door via the knob once again.
CLICK CLANK
"Yes, I can still open it," he said as he twisted the knob again and again.
He wanted to leave. He decided to leave the radio and the notebook behind. He closed the door once again, and now hearing it shut, it made a deep echo. Cail had a feeling that opening it once again would not be an easy feat.
Cail's eyebrows twitched looking at that. "Not my problem anymore." He ignored it as if he wasn't here a while ago.
He walked outside the building and continued his search. He went to the outside garden section and saw a platform with a statue in the middle. The statue, like in the picture, was damaged beyond recognition. The statue's face was shattered into pieces, leaving behind a decapitated body.
Cail checked the name that was written below, and sure enough, it was Vi__h_. If Cail didn't know what those unreadable letters were, he had no way of identifying what was written. But so far from his investigation, the name Virehn had been repeated again and again. So this time, it was an easy guess.
He picked up pieces from the ground and touched them. "This was shattered by brute force and deliberately." He wanted to piece it together like a puzzle, but some parts were missing. No, not just some, but a large chunk of the statue's head was missing.
Tossing the broken head back onto the ground, Cail gave up trying to fix it. He walked around and found that it seemed like nothing else important was left behind this building except all those things he found.
"That was all?" Cail sighed in disappointment. That seemed to be the case. He concluded his adventure in this building is over and finally went out.
He looked up. The rain had stopped and the sun was shining brightly. It was totally unexpected, but the void actually looked like the real world. Be it, the sky, clouds, sun, and the rain.
"I should search for some void users around here."
Time to find his way out.
...
This time, Cail wasn't as cautious as before. He had already started humming and skipping as he walked.
"This place doesn't seem to be that—" dangerous...
BAAAAM!
Cail was thrown away by the shockwaves. As he fell to the ground, he thought, "I really am jinxed." That was a proven by this incident.
It was so sudden. He had no time to react. By the time he managed to compose himself, what greeted him was a gruesome sight that he thought he would only hear about in Iven's mythology stories, not see in real life.
"AHHHHHH! HELP ME!"
"TRINA!"
In front of him was a huge monster. It resembled a titan with four arms and eight feet. It held a woman by both her feet and slowly ripped one off.
"AHHHHHHHH! ELJI! HELP ME!"
It was a group of people. Most of them had already run away, leaving behind a man and a woman who were in the monster's hands.
The man appeared to be in shock and devastated. He summoned what looked like a mini glowstick to Cail and smashed it into the monster.
The monster appeared to be very impatient. It lifted its foot and stomped down at the man. The man, despite being disoriented, managed to dodge the stomp. It probably also had something to do with the fact that the giant monster was occupied with its dinner.
Cail saw the monster hold the woman's head between its thumb and index finger. The monster seemed to know what it was doing. It pulled the head hard, and then—the head was decapitated just like that.
Seeing how easy it was, it resembled a human just pulling weeds from the ground.
After watching what the monster did, the man kept screaming and smashing the monster by the leg. The monster wasn't in the mood to deal with the ant. It tossed the rest of the torso into its mouth and made a 'hmm' sound together with the crunch of human bones.
Cail's expression was weird. The reason why he described this monster as a titan was because, despite having multiple limbs, its face still resembled that of a human.
It looked to be around its late fifties, with a thick graying beard and wrinkles on its face. It looked absolutely delighted by the human it had just eaten.
After satisfying his curiosity, Cail stood up and picked up his jaw that had fallen from shock (not literally). Although he had seen gruesome, he had never seen something this straight up disgusting and revolting.
He wanted to ran away when he saw that the titan's attention was on the man. Just as he was about to leave the vicinity, he noticed something under the rock.
It was a child's leg sticking out from under the debris. For some reason... maybe out of curiosity or something else, Cail approached the fallen concrete.
Under it was a little boy, around six years old. He was wearing a tiny suit and black trousers that matched his getup. He was covering his mouth and silently crying as he looked at the two people who had been victimized by the titan.
Cail remembered "Didn't it seem like that man approached this spot before?" Cail had been tossed by the force, so what he saw wasn't really detailed, but could it be that this man hid this child?
Cail's mind was turning fast. Bad thoughts and entertainment intertwined. This child, it was said that void users are the only people who can be brought inside the rift. Does that mean this child is a void user?
A soon-to-be orphaned child void user...
Cail made up his mind. He dashed toward the spot and carried the child in his arms. Cail felt a gaze behind him. He looked back and saw that the man was being eaten upside down, with his legs getting chewed first. The titan was already halfway through, around his waist area.
What Cail saw in that man's eyes was relief after seeing that Cail ran away with the child.
Cail thought, "Will that man die peacefully if he knew what kind of person I am?"
Probably not.
He could have done something to save them, but based on how powerful that titan was, it was better to conserve his energy than waste time trying to save strangers when it was obvious that everything was futile.
They weren't customers, nor were they people he cared about. Strangers are burdens, and unless necessary or he had other plans. Like mining for benefits and other agendas. He didn't want to risk himself for people he didn't know.
But...
"I'm not sure if your parents would be happy, but I'm planning on making you into someone... But who cares, they're dead anyway," Cail happily thought as he carried the child away.