When Ron returned to the place where he had fought the many-armed woman, he discovered that the corpse was gone.
Only blood remained.
He collected samples from the ground and from various locations throughout the city, then used magically enhanced medical equipment to analyze them.
The process was slow and tedious.
The results, however, were consistent.
Blood found on the ground: 100% AB-positive.
Blood that had not yet touched the ground: O-negative.
Even O-negative blood would become AB-positive after spilling onto the ground.
Ron's own case was different.
His blood was black and unusually thick.
The blood of a corpse.
The blood of someone suffering from septic shock.
There was no room for argument.
Yet when he extracted blood from his severed hand, the result was completely different.
Bright red.
Healthy.
And unmistakably O-negative.
AB-positive was known as the universal recipient.
It could receive blood from any blood type, but could only donate to another AB-positive individual.
O-negative was the opposite.
It could only receive O-negative blood, yet could donate to anyone.
If blood types were treated as symbols, then O-negative represented giving, while AB-positive represented receiving.
The symbolism was difficult to ignore.
At the same time, Ron observed another anomaly.
The decomposition rate of corpses lying on the ground was absurd.
Bodies decayed within hours.
Not days.
Not weeks.
Hours.
The process was tens of thousands of times faster than normal decomposition.
Even the bones eventually disappeared, as though something invisible was feeding on them.
Another clue came from the black nylon lines he had installed throughout the hospital.
Originally, they had been prepared as an emergency escape route.
Ron had calculated everything.
The height.
The angles.
The weight each person could support.
Whether the injured could descend safely.
He had accounted for every variable.
Yet when he inspected the lines the following morning, he found that their positions had changed.
The anchor points remained the same.
The heights did not.
A route that should have guaranteed survival had become a perfect method of suicide.
That was when Ron recalled something else.
The city itself.
From certain angles, the entire city appeared unnaturally flat.
Yet in the distance, skyscrapers rose like colossal trees piercing the sky.
That made little sense.
Even lower-income districts required factories, warehouses, and high-rise buildings.
Furthermore, this was supposed to be a coastal port city.
Tourism alone should have created significant development along the southern shoreline.
The landscape did not match reality.
The city had been rearranged.
That was the most plausible conclusion.
And another observation only strengthened his belief.
The madmen were behaving strangely.
When Ron and Lunas first arrived, the infected attacked everything in sight like rabid animals.
But after nightfall, their behavior changed.
Unless provoked, they no longer fought each other.
Instead, they consumed human flesh.
Then, when morning came, something changed again.
Even when Ron stood directly in front of them, they ignored him.
They only fed on corpses that had touched the ground.
It was as though they had evolved from a society driven purely by violence into one capable of coexistence.
A hive working toward a shared objective.
Not unlike the wooden puppets.
That was also the reason Ron felt comfortable drinking coffee in the middle of the street.
Another important detail was the bald, emaciated man inside the hospital.
Ron believed he was a patient similar to the two siblings.
The reason he had retained his sanity was likely because he possessed a Gift.
His behavior had been bizarre.
His words even more so.
But Ron had dismissed it.
After all, a man with half his face burned away could easily appear insane.
That brought him back to the siblings.
The younger sister, not the older one, was the key.
The Gift belonged to her.
The older sister had repeatedly regenerated her eyes through magic, only to destroy them again shortly afterward.
More importantly, her abnormal abilities weakened whenever she was near the child.
Someone that young should not have been capable of consciously wielding magic.
Using magic required understanding.
Knowledge.
A Path.
Yet the child possessed none of those things.
Which suggested that the Gift was acting passively.
Spreading its influence without conscious control.
And according to Lunas, individuals possessing Gifts seemed to retain fragments of self-awareness.
Ron tested their blood as well.
The results were identical to every previous sample.
He could not explain why Gifts preserved sanity.
Nor could he explain why they appeared to affect him as well.
Because the previous night, Ron himself had suffered severe cognitive distortion.
That was why he had spent the entire night and morning repeatedly forcing these observations into memory.
He refused to forget them again.
Unlike before.
Piece by piece, a possible explanation for this reality began taking shape in his mind.
And the fake Lunas had provided the final clue.
This world was trying to construct an identity.
A self.
An ego.