“We finally did it, honey.” Said Aiko in a soft low voice, by the voice, it was evident that she was drained of all of her energy. Although she felt relief, cold chills went through her back as her legs were extremely wobbly.

“hmm? Ummmm..” Murmured Ichiro as he was having a hard time putting words together. Although Aiko was able to speak after all of that Ichiro wasn’t that lucky, the frog had done numbers to his body. Even though the frog didn’t have that much of offensive capabilities, it still managed to land a few good hits on Ichiro’s body.

Ichiro had several broken ribs; he was standing while he was supporting his body on a tree trunk. Seeing the condition Ichiro was in Aiko tried to run towards him but when she tried, she fell to the ground face first. Hearing the sound of Aiko’s body hitting the ground, Ichiro turned his body to face Aiko, but as soon as he turned around, he was come by dizziness and he too fell to the ground right after her.

……………………………

In the hospital inside the fortress city, the couple was declared untreatable with normal medicine as they required the assistance of a healer or alchemist. Healer awakeners were rare and having them treat your illness would cost your entire life savings for an average human. As for the alchemist most were illusive and rarer, most of the time they spend is on studying the art of alchemy trying to get their help for the couple would be next to impossible unless you had a connection or a fortune.

Unfortunately for the couple that had neither connection nor the funds, they were left to live a painful life with the poison active inside of their body. The couple was told that if they didn’t have the solution to their poison problem soon enough, they would be dead in 2-3 years. The group members tried to help the couple by trying to collect money from friends and family but they couldn’t even collect enough money for even one person’s treatment.

Before the incident, Renji’s family used to live inside the fortress city rather than in the wastelands, before the incident the couple had enough income that support the family living inside the fortress city. But they had no savings to speak of as living inside the city was very expensive, at the end of the day all of their money went into maintaining the life inside the city.

After the incident, when they couldn’t go hunting anymore, they had no income to speak of, and doing odd jobs inside the city wouldn’t amount to much. So, after a few days, the couple decided to move out of the city to the wastelands, where they were confident enough that they would be able to make a living by doing odd jobs.

Making such a decision was very easy for the couple, but their friends did not approve of it. They insisted on making separate funds for the couple where they would give some percentage of their earning towards their family so that they could live inside of the city. Although all of the members approved of the plan, Ichiro and Aiko both outright rejected the proposition as they were well aware of the conditions each one of them was in.

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Like them, most of the members were barely making enough to live in the city, so taking some percentage of their income would be like taking food away from their family's mouths. So, they decided against such an idea. All of the members were angry at the couple for not accepting, but they also knew why the couple rejected their help in the first place. So, they bid farewell to the couple.

Although they all had to go and live in the slums of the wastelands, Renji never hated it, rather he was grateful that his parents managed to survive such an ordeal. They had shifted inside the slums a few prior.

……………………………………………

‘I wonder how uncles and aunts are doing, I hope they are fine.’ Renji prayed as he hadn’t seen a single member of the hunting group for a month straight. Before this month members of the group came by usually once or twice a week to bring some meat for his sister Hana. But, for a month now no one has visited them which was highly unusual for them. So, Renji was a little worried about their safety.

His parents had known that his sister was an awakener a few days after her birth, since then they had been feeding her mana-infused food. Feeding a baby such items was very crucial to their growth as they provided the babies with healthy bodies and prevented any diseases from attacking the child. At first, his parents fed her mana-infused milk which had 2 times the nutrition as normal milk. After Hana could eat meat, they started feeding her tasty monster meat.

As the tragedy struck the family, their friends from the group started to give the meat to their daughter. All of the members of the group had known about Hana being an awakener, his parents didn’t inform the authorities before the tragedy because Hana was still a small baby. So, they had planned to inform them when Hana turned 5 when she would be able to officially go to school. Back then it was just a choice that they didn’t disclose the information but now it has become compulsory that they don’t tell the authority.

If Hana being an awakener comes to light, seeing that her both parents are on their death bed some of the organizations might try to take Hana forcefully from them. There were many bad organizations in the world that wouldn’t blink an eye while taking advantage of someone’s misery. Although there were also a lot of good organizations, the couple decided not to gable with the life of their child, so everyone from the hunting group concluded that keeping Hana’s awakening a secret was for the best.

‘At least the butcher didn’t catch me, he doesn’t even know who I am so I should lay low for a few days and not show my face anywhere.’ Renji was happy that he wasn’t caught by the butcher in their chase, he was also quite confident that the butcher didn't know who or where he had come from so, he had nothing to worry about. He just had to lay low for a few days and he hoped that the butcher would just forget about the incident as it wasn’t even that big of a deal. He had stolen just a small piece of meat from a pile of meat which was considered garbage to them.

……………………………………….

“Mom, I am home.” Said Renji as he entered a cottage, the cottage was too worn out. It seemed so weak that it seemed as if it might even collapse by a small gust of wind. Even though the house didn’t look livable from the outside, the inside of the house was different. The inside of the house was neat and clean, knowing his parents couldn’t do much nowadays Renji helped them by cleaning the house and doing some chores.

“DADA DADA” a cute shout came just as he was taking his shoes off his sister came running towards him barefoot.