Leaves rustled under Constantine’s hurried steps, twigs snapping like brittle bones as he sprinted down the forest path. His heartbeat pounded in his ears, urging him to glance over his shoulder. ‘Is he following me?’ Was the cultivator still back there, hidden just outside his vision—or worse, following him silently and invisibly, like a ghost?

The trees suddenly thinned, giving way to open pasture. Constantine stumbled into the sunlight. The light burned his eyes, momentarily blinding him. When his vision cleared, the sight before him made his eyes widen.

Smoke. Thick, black columns rose from the village below, spiraling into the sky. His breath hitched. It wasn’t just one or two houses—half the village was on fire. Dots, no bigger than ants, ran in every direction, panicking.

Too many were homes burning, some not even neighbors. Something deliberate about the destruction struck him. ‘This isn’t a natural fire. Someone—something—set this.’

For a moment, Constantine stood frozen, unsure of what to do. One part of him urged him to rush down and help, but another, the rational part, denied the notion as reckless and dangerous.

Then, a single thought cut through his hesitation, ‘My house!’

His eyes snapped to the hillside, moving leftward in the search for his home. His shack, untouched, stood alone on the hill above the village, isolated from the flames. Relief surged through him.

‘My wolf.’ Another realization struck him like lightning.

Without thinking, Constantine broke into a sprint again, skidding down the slope. His mind raced alongside his feet, conjuring one possibility after another. ‘Was this a test? Did the cultivator set this to watch how I’d react? Did his hunting drive some monster out of the forest?’

The shack came into view, closer now, but his pulse quickened with suspicion. ‘Is this an ambush?’ Mana stirred in his chest, ready to be called upon if needed. He wanted to draw runes to have a spell ready to use, but he couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched. The cultivator gnawed at his mind.

He shoved the door open and nearly collapsed inside, his muscles tense and poised to react. His eyes scanned the room for danger and his wolf. In the corner, a mound of dark fur rose and fell steadily. His wolf pup lay there, asleep.

Constantine’s knees almost buckled with relief. “Damn you,” he muttered, a small, tired smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. He hated how much he cared—how attached he’d become to the creature. The wolf was supposed to be a tool and a subject to study, but here he was, shaken at the thought of losing her.

It was a weakness, one he couldn’t afford. ‘You’ve made me reckless’, he thought bitterly. If there had been an ambush waiting for him, he would have run straight into it without a second thought.

His mind churned, replaying his earlier encounter with the cultivator. ‘I thought I was ready. What good are spells if I can’t even see the enemy coming?’ The frustration simmered beneath his skin.

A nudge at his leg drew him out of his spiral. He looked down to see the wolf pup, realizing how much she had changed since he found her. She had grown, standing tall enough to brush his knee, her eyes gleaming with mana.

“You’re growing fast,” he said quietly, resting a hand on her head. The pup’s rapid growth made sense—she was feeding on mana cores, after all. ‘That must be fueling her’, he mused.

For a moment, he wanted nothing more than to sink into his bed, to pretend the village wasn’t burning below. But the image of the smoke, the chaos, wouldn’t leave him—he needed to know what was going on. He took a step back, shaking his head.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, his hand lingering on the pup’s fur. “There’s something I need to do.”

He stepped back out into the daylight, his eyes locking onto the distant plumes of smoke once more. He couldn’t ignore this. Whatever was happening down there, he had to investigate. ‘I can’t just stick my head into the sand and hope.’

Drawing in a deep breath, Constantine focused his mana. His vision sharpened, pulling the distant village into clear detail. The villagers stumbled through the burned ruins scattered amidst the few remaining houses. Soot and blood covered, their clothes. Some were digging through rubble, others carrying buckets of water. Some cried, others just stood, staring blankly at the ruins.

‘Just the villagers’, he noted. No attackers, no soldiers, no monsters. Whoever had done this—they were already gone.

His tension loosened slightly as he scanned the scene again, but only for a moment. There was no lingering threat, but he still didn’t know what had happened.

With a burst of renewed energy, he jogged down the hill. The grass bent beneath his feet as he neared the outskirts of the village. The air thickened with smoke, burning his throat, making each breath more difficult.

He passed through the scattered remains of the village, his eyes taking in the devastation. A woman cradled a charred doll, her eyes hollow, lost in shock. An old man sat in the ash, coughing weakly.

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His heart faltered, his steps turning slower. He knew those people, not for a long, nor well, but he remembered their faces. ‘Are they alive?’ His thoughts wandered to the herbalist and her two grandchildren. He interacted with them the most. They were often annoying, but he kind of found them to be good children.

‘They always come to inform me when something has happened.’

With his heart in his stomach, Constantine unsteadily approached the man sitting in ash. He gulped down, hesitant to speak up. Gathering his resolve, he finally spoke aloud the question that burned on his tongue: "What has happened here?”

“Why?” He looked up to him, his face streaked with soot and his eyes bloodshot.

“What happened here?” Constantine repeated, his voice sharper than intended.

The man flinched under Constantine’s voice, eyes wide and bloodshot. “Bandits!” he gasped, almost choking on the word. “They came at noon—burned everything—killed—” His voice broke, and his entire body shook.

Constantine’s mouth went dry as the villager’s sobs grew louder and more frantic. Guilt knotted in his stomach. He didn’t even have to ask for the reason why the bandits came. He knew the reason: ‘I killed bandits so their friends took revenge on the entire village.’

“Why did they attack?” Constantine’s voice was steady, but his chest tightened, dreading the answer he already knew.

The old villager let out a bitter laugh, though it quickly dissolved into a sob. He wiped his face with a dirty hand, smearing ash across his skin.”'They accused us of killing their men. Those drunk bastards who stumbled into the forest and got killed. We told them it was the beasts, but they didn’t care. They wanted revenge.”

He looked up at Constantine. “Said we owed them three lives for every one we took.”

Before Constantine had time to think, the villager, who had been sobbing on the ground, suddenly pushed himself up. His legs trembled under his weight, but his eyes burned with a fury. His hand, blackened with ash and blood, curled into a shaking fist.

“It’s your fucking fault!” he roared, his voice loud and ragged. His breath came in gasps, as he approached Constantine, who took a step back. The crowd, which had been scattered, now turned their eyes on them. Constantine could feel their eyes on his back.

The man’s gaze locked onto Constantine accusingly. “It’s your fault!” he screamed again, and his words sliced the air, even louder than before. “Since you appeared here, everything has gone wrong!”

He staggered forward, his teeth clenched so hard Constantine could hear it. “Prices went up! People died in the forest! Bandits burned our village! The lord hiked up the taxes!”

Constantine could feel the weight of every gaze around him.

“You’ve brought us nothing but bad luck!” the man spat, his voice cracking with grief and fury. His finger trembled as it pointed at Constantine. Behind him, the crowd’s murmurs grew louder.

Constantine stood still, muscles coiled beneath his skin. The urge to speak, to defend himself, rose to his throat like bile, but he bit his tongue. Constantine knew the man was right even though he himself didn’t know it. He has caused it all, except for the taxes.

‘Hehe,’ Constantine chuckled softly, the sound harsh and bitter. ‘Maybe even the taxes are my fault.’

The thought came with a strange, maddened amusement as if every misfortune could be traced back to him. ‘Gangs fight, trade falters, and the lord raises taxes to cover for the missing revenue.’

He took a slow breath, forcing himself to avert his gaze away from the man ‘I can’t let this guilt blind me,’ he thought, steadying his mind. ‘What else could I have done? Let the bandits beat me? Kill me? No.’ His actions were the right ones for him.

The crowd shifted around him, the murmur of anger growing louder. ‘Maybe I should get out.’ It wasn’t unheard of for uneducated masses to resort to blaming a random person for their trouble, mostly the person they knew the least. He was the new one in the village—an ideal target.

Constantine couldn’t take it anymore. With quick, deliberate steps, he turned and walked straight out of the village. The man screamed after him, his voice hoarse and desperate, but Constantine no longer cared. The words fell behind him, swallowed by the distant cries of the villagers.

His thoughts spun as he walked. ‘This is my fault,’ he admitted, though not for the same reason he initially thought of. It wasn’t the act of killing the bandits that caused it, but the fact that he hadn’t gone further—hadn’t been thorough enough. He should have found their camp and wiped them out completely to the last man. Killing those who were in the village wasn’t enough; it was just enough to protect him.

‘That was my mistake,’ he realized bitterly, his eyes narrowing as he looked back toward the smoldering ruins of the village. The smell of charred wood still clung to the air, mingling with the sobs and the soft murmurs of the villagers who wandered through the wreckage.

He remembered the day he stood in another burning square, watching as a powerful cultivator ignored the suffering around him, too focused on his own monologue. Constantine had hated that cold detachment. He had despised them—how they treated everyone around like bugs not even worthy of their attention. But now…

‘Now I’m just like them,’ he thought, the realization sinking like a stone in his chest. He acted without considering the consequences for others. The cost of his actions fell on the innocent.

His fists clenched at his sides. ‘This is wrong.’ Not long ago, he had been horrified after killing someone in self-defense, even though that person had tormented him for years. But now? Now he barely could bring himself to care. He wouldn't even care if he didn’t see the impact on his own eyes. When he heard earlier of the war between the gangs in the city he caused, he didn’t care. Even today, the first reason to come down to the village wasn't to help but to collect information.

‘The mana… the cores… have they changed me?’ His mind spun with the possibility. Maybe it was the raw power coursing through his veins that dulled his emotions, and made him less human. Or maybe it was just everything he’d been through—all the injustice, all the times he almost died—finally hardening him into someone he never wanted to be.

Constantine staggered to a stop. He stared up at the sky, the clouds tinged orange by the lingering smoke. His thoughts swirled.

‘I can’t fix everything,’ he thought. ‘But I can clean up after my own actions. I’ll hunt down the bandits—every last one of them—and slaughter them. Only then can I make this right.’

He inhaled deeply, calming the storm of anger and guilt boiling inside him. He wouldn’t act recklessly. No, this time, he would be prepared. He would wait for his weapon to be finished, and develop a defensive spell. Although he would rather go for aura as his defense, it wasn't something that could be accomplished in the short term. He would ensure that the next time he faced the bandits, he would leave no survivors. ‘I will burn the entire camp to ash.’