Rin was panting as he stood over five fresh corpses. The fight had been short but intense. He had used the close quarters combat technique that the military academy had taught him instead of anything Douge or Liliandra taught him recently. He felt they would have worked but he wasn't confident in his skill just yet so he fell back into old comforts. He had taken a few hits but they only left superficial wounds with the sounds of footsteps growing louder Rin ran.

  The facility he was in was a maze of branching hallways with various rooms lining them. Rin more than once ended up inside a random room. He was fortunate enough that no one was in them. The room Rin was in now was a locker room. The walls lined with lockers, benches were connected to them to give employees a place to sit and put their boots on. A large man bigger than Douge's old size in both height and width was walking out of a side room with a towel wrapped around his waist. He spotted Rin and groaned with irritation.

  “ I just got off my shift and was about to go home.” The man turned his back to Rin, seeming unconcerned.

  “ you guys work in shifts?”Rin asked, his curiosity getting the better of him.

  “ Of course.” The man said as he got dressed “ it's called organized crime. The boss even pays into a 401k for every one. The man was finished getting dressed so he turned around putting up his fist. “ Time to put in over time” the man moved at a speed that seemed counter to his size. Rin barely dodged, just as the man's fist planted itself firmly into the door behind him. The metal hydraulic door hissed and hydraulic fluid started to leak from the sides, his fist having caved it in. Rin immediately kicked at the back of his leg, his foot connecting. Pain shot up through his foot to shin as it felt like he just kicked a metal pole. The large man started to quickly throwing jabs left right left right. Ready for it this time. Rin was able to dodge. As he sidestepped out of the way of the second punch, something hit him, a burst of wind that cracked bones in his chest as he was sent flying, his back slamming into a set of lockers.

  “ Wind magic huh? Explains why you're so fast.” The large man didn't reply, continuing his onslaught of attacks. Rin didn't hear the man chanting spells. This was a clear sign that he was competent enough to use enchantless spells. Clearly a step above all the other mooks he has been fighting so far. With the man's speed Rin was struggling to get onto the offensive having to dodge attacks that he couldn't even see. Backing you up as he fought he led the two of them to the showers. The air was filled with the scent of soap and damp air. Rin swiftly changed his fighting style, moving from the basic style the military taught to wind stance. Its quick movements allowed Rin to flow from one dodge to another weaving himself in and out of the man's range of attack waiting for the perfect moment. The wet tile made it hard to move without slipping and Rin could see the man struggling as well. Rin Dodge a right hook and then a wind blast from the left, the man spinning using his momentum to kick out Rin moved in pushing his shoulder into the man’s groin pushing his leg up and throwing him off balance. They both fell to the floor and Rin didn't waste any time laying into the man's face delivering savage punches that flowed into elbow strikes. The man gargled as blood streamed down his face into his mouth. Grabbing the man's head Rin shoved it repeatedly into the ground.

  “Ha,Fuck.” Rin said exasperation evident in his voice “Still only human.” Rin felt no hate for the man he was just doing his job. He started searching through his pockets quickly finding a data slate.

  It was a map of the complex, something Rin had hoped for. He had briefly considered pulling the suppression spike out of his body just to get access to his map ability but the tapered nature of the spikes made him reconsider. He couldn't pull them from the back so he would have to pull the thickest part through his body and that wouldn't cause more damage to him then having his map ability would. He would most likely have to overclock just to heal his wounds and that was simply too much of a waste for him. The men chasing Rin were far enough behind that he felt comfortable reading over the map and plotting out a route.

  Sophia watched as the screens changed from camera to camera keeping track of Rin. She was out of energy, her throat hurting from all the screaming. The man had taken to torturing them as he grew bored of watching Rin run into dead end after dead end. This man had the ability to cast healing magic and would stab, cut, and dig at her skin with his knife. Before she could feel the relief of death he would heal her wounds just enough that she wouldn't die and he could keep torturing. The man had stopped torturing Sophia, having grown bored with her just as he grew bored with Liliandra. Sophia looked over at her friend, her tail was the first thing he cut off taking it inch by inch until there was nothing left. Her tiger-like ears were gone, cut and discarded on the floor with her tail. Liliandra had gone silent soon after that and now hung limply the cuffs cutting into her heads and blood trickling down onto the hard concrete below.

  “ Ahhh you're stronger than you look.” The man said a cheerful sing song tone to it. Douge spit in the man's face.

  “ You might as well kill me now, traitor. You serve the Demon King, willingly ” Douge said, trying to spit again but a quick punch to his face stopped him.

  “ Traitor? You call me a Traitor?!” The man yelled.” I am a servant of the betrayed. Your gods are the traitors, They ostracized my God or they did not understand his purpose. They were the ones who put him on this path.”

  “ I don't care what you say. Everything that comes from your mouth is a blatant lie.” Douge said blood at the corner of his mouth. The man punched him again, breaking his jaw.

  “Shut up!” Despite the broken jaw and the myriad of cuts and stab wounds Douge did not scream out in pain and the cavernous room was silent except for the faint whimper of Liliandra.

  Kenji sat up, the space above him now free, he was buried under rubble and debris following the explosion in Valders villa. Two men, presumably thugs of whom ever orchestrated this whole thing, lay dead, their bodies draped over the blocks of concrete that had trapped Kenji's legs. This was the first time kenji saw their mangled bodies a feeling of revolution bubbled up from his gut and into his throat coming out of his body as this his last meal. He was flooded with the feeling of their skin tearing as claws ripped through them and he rubbed his hands together trying to get the sensation to go away. Red his new familiar wrapped around his neck, its long tail coiling around its body. Red let out a soft chirp and Kenji understood what it was saying.

  “No it's okay Red you didnt do anything wrong i just…. I’m not used to this. I've killed monsters and humanoid like monsters but this, this is a whole other thing.” Red chirped again and Kenji smiled faintly.

  “Yeah you protected me.”

  Even though his legs felt crushed the new mana reserve inside him filled kenji with energy he could feel the newly enhanced attribute. His fire affinity had given him increased intelligence and now his wind affinity had increased his constitution letting him suffer more damage then he had before. Kenji hesitantly pushed the corpse over and off the rubble before he attempted to lift it. The concrete was heavy with broken rebar sticking out from it. Using one of the rebar he lifted the concrete just enough to pull his legs out, slowly lowering it back down. With the weight off his legs he could feel that some bone was broken in his right leg. Standing up he gently put weight on it only stopping and falling back over once blinding pain shut up from his shin and though his whole body.Red chirped again turning his triangular head towards Kenji's face.

  “It's okay red, it just hurts.” Kenji scratched Red's head. The dragon's skin was soft and supple; his scales had yet to grow into a hard shell to protect him. Kenji stood again this time keeping weight off his leg, searching the corpse was a hard task for him as he needed to stop and dry heave after he could no longer produce vomit. From the stories Rin had told him of his time living in the block Kenji had assumed and thankfully been correct in his assumption that the two thugs would have a maglock. The maglock was a common combination of technology and magic often used by government workers to swiftly move around the blocks. On the surface they drove cars and large trucks but that wasn't an option deep into the city. These two thugs each had one so Kenji took both. The maglocks were cheap for some on the surface however for anyone that lived in the blocks a single maglock would pay for a month's worth of rent so the fact that these men both had one further cemented his idea that they were in some large criminal enterprises like he had seen in movies.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  Kenji looked up at the large hole above him. He was unable to see the sky as the further up he looked the more the walls of the destroyed building seemed to close in. He thought for a moment. Kenji postulated as to how these men found him amongst all this rubble and why the police force had yet to even make far down enough for him to see even a speck of light.

  “ The police are probably searching top to bottom, those who are valued more by society. Live higher up so I bet they don't care what happens to those that are down here. But that was the case. I'm down here and I was at the house by that logic. You should have started down here so why.” Kenji started chewing on his lip as he limped his way through the still intact portion of what was left of the city scape building.

  “ No. They most likely consider anybody who ended up on the bottom to be dead, they're less likely to send a search party more likely to send a corpse retrieval team. That makes some sense. There's probably.” Kenji paused again thinking of how many bodies could be buried under the rubble all around him. He was weaving his way through mostly open patches of ground but everywhere around him were piles and piles of rubble some twenty stories tall. As he looked around he stopped thinking of them as piles of rubble and started to see them as a great many large cairns. In Kenji's mind, as a way to deal with death on a scale he never thought he would be around he started to see the area around him as an undead city, one that he needed to escape.

  The destruction of the building made the maze-like corridors even harder to navigate. Often Kenji would wind up at a dead end despite following a series of exit signs. He was on his fifth dead-end and Kenji collapsed to the floor exhausted, Red had started running up and down the hallways like a child without parental supervision, Red would disappear but always find his way back to Kenji. Red ran up to him, his tongue hanging from his mouth . Red didn't notice Kenji's sour face as he bound up leaping into his lap spinning around to get comfy like a small dog. The simple, small innocent action brought a smile to his face. He was exhausted, hurt, unsure if he would live or die of hunger lost down in the deepest depths of the city. A single thought occurred, one that he never really thought about before. He never used magic to help himself. His mana reserves were so small and that made his magic weak, he never considered it for anything more than a hand warmer. But looking at Red he considered and thought back to the small amount of knowledge he had about familiar magic and something didn't seem right. Kenji knew that to have a familiar the summoner had to constantly feed mana to the familiar. This process was something that had been noted as a draining, yet he felt nothing, no drain, no significant drop in his reserves. So he meditated concentrating on the central points that were his mana reserves. Where he used to only feel one he could feel two. Like two large ponds connected with a stream of bristling water. The original size of his reserve never felt this expansive. He examined them closer. Feeling the elemental affinities in both one was of fire and the other was wind. There was a sensitive interplay as the mana reserve associated with his wind affinity pushed its own mana into the reserve associated with his fire affinity. The effect was like the flame of a campfire being slowly fanned till they grew larger and larger. A tinge of guilt touched his mind, he felt he didn't deserve this. This power he had now felt like a gift given out of pity from the gods. His attention was quickly arrested back as he noticed a third reserve? It wasn't associated with any elemental instead he could feel Red.

  Kenji stood and walked over to the collapsed exit Red in his arms.

  “ Red burn me a path out.”

  Red turned his head inquisitively at Kenji before shivering as he felt mana suffice his body. The dragon chirped affirmatively as Kenji poured mana into his familiar. Red snaked his way around Kenji's neck before letting out a stream of fire. Kenji was startled by the proximity of the fire but only for a moment, once he realized he couldn't feel the heat from the flames he relaxed. Slowly the large cone of fire became tighter, focusing into a beam that melted the concrete leaving a small hole that kenji could crawl through. He considered trying to make it bigger but a headache was forming in the back of his eye.

  “Good job red, go ahead make sure there's no one on the other side.” Kenji said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He had studied and read about mana depletion but never experienced it himself, tell now. All he wanted was to sleep, to lay down and clo….close his eyes. Red jumped into Kenji with a thump startling him awake. Kenji had slowly drifted off even laying down on the ground all without him noticing. He needed to find help

  Kenji was finally outside; it looked different yet similar to the inside where he had just been. There was less rubble but trash was piled high coming up to Kenji's chest. The asphalt roads were cracked and even completely missing chunks in some places. The side walks were overgrown with weeds that grew in the various cracks and expansion gaps of the concrete. He scanned the buildings to see if he could find a power cable to attach to and he was happy to see just what he needed hanging limply across the street a length of cable coiled on the floor. It was next to an old store front. The old neon light signs were dead but intact enough for him to read them.

  “ Lenny's and Benny's emporium of pennies.” Kenji read the sign out loud prompting a response from Red who chirped.

  “ What's a penny?” Red chirped again

  “ Yeah it doesn't matter.What matters is that cable I don't think the maglock will work. The cable would need to have power running through it. And I'm not sure I can climb this leg.” Another chirp.

  “ You can? That would be nice, let's try it.”

  Red slithered his way down to Kenji's leg where he wrapped himself tightly around it. Pain shot up the leg but a soft purring from Red seemed to ameliorate it. Kenji tested the waters putting some weight on it to find that he could. Not much but enough. Stepping up to the cable, Kenji started to climb.

  Valder stood just outside the investigation van as Alverez made his phone call to Hazel. He could hear to upbeat and overly excited tone of his team member as she greeted Alverez he could also hear Alverezs persistent denial that they were in fact not a couple, Hazel didn't care and it honestly wasn't too much of a hindrance Valder knew that despite Alverezs grumbling and denial he had romantic feelings for her. The biggest stop gap for him was Hazel's proclivity for destruction. She would often destroy many of his scientific and magical experiments, her intentions of help were always in the right place but. Valder's thoughts wandered as he felt a familiar aura approaching from below. He wasn't used to it being so strong and it had fundamentally changed from a day ago when he last saw the boy.

  Valder stepped off the building plummeting feet first, he fell for a hundred stories before creating a cloud below him, his feet gently being enveloped as the cloud slowed his fall down. A young boy was ascending up a power line with a fierce look of determination on his face. His silky black hair was marred with ash and dust. There was something strange, his leg coiled around it like a snake. As Valder and the boy grew closer the creature’s head snapped to Valder's position and leaped from the boy. To normal Human perception the creature would have been a blur of speed however Valder was far beyond the limits of humanity. He simply grabbed the creature by the chest and held it up. The beast clawed at him doing nothing more than cutting the fabric on his suit.

  “ Red!” The boy shouted as he saw Valder, his look of determination turned to relief then horror.

  “ Friendly Lord Hunst is friendly.” The creature, a juvenile dragon Valder realized, calmed down and looked at him, his tongue flicking out to lick its own eyeball. With a flick of his wrist another cloud formed, picking up Kenji Iwatani.

  “ You are alive? That is good news for the others. Am I to assume you were the only one well enough to climb out of this hole?” Valder floated Kenji to him so they could talk face to face as his clouds floated the two of them back up.

  “ Uh no sir. I was alone when I woke up. Two thugs were looking for me. I overheard them say they had already found the others. Um.”

  Valder placed a hand on the boy's shoulder. Valder looked to the dragon as it coiled back around the boy's neck.

  “ Don't worry child, let's get you to a healer.”