I sat there, watching the runic details as they finished etching themselves completely into the bone; the only thing left was for the hand to fully absorb the radioactive fluid from the pit. As for me, I stood up, brushing the dust off my clothes, and looked around. I noticed that more and more mutants were falling under my command, a realization that filled me with a deep, mystical joy.
I walked forward and, lifting myself into the air, flew to the top of a tall building to survey the perimeter. From up there, I looked down at the police and military barricades. Driven by fear and the expanding green mist, they kept falling back further and further, abandoning ground.
I nodded to myself with smug self-sufficiency, but as I stared toward a specific point on the horizon, I felt a strange vibration in the energy. I could sense that something big was happening out there, but I didn't know exactly what. So, utilizing the mental link with the rats I had scattered across the country, I quickly began to investigate what the hell was going on in the world.
Miles away, a rat wandering aimlessly down a city alley abruptly froze. Its black eyes deepened, glowing with an intense, emerald-green brilliance as I took direct control of its body. Instantly, the rodent began to move with superior agility, sprinting through the shadows of the main streets, straining its ears to catch the conversations of the people around.
"My son... he has late-stage cancer," a woman sobbed on a street corner.
"Mine bled from his eyes after using his Quirk, then died in the ambulance..." a man muttered at a bus stop, his gaze completely broken.
"I had a friend who was near the coastal areas; he woke up with this brutal power, but he had a heart attack out of nowhere while walking..."
Nothing but bad news was spreading like a plague throughout the area. The atmosphere in society was no longer one of excitement over new powers, but rather absolute panic. The bleak picture only made me raise an eyebrow in curiosity from my building, until the rat picked up a specific conversation near a newspaper stand.
"Did you hear Endeavor has a nearly incurable blood disease?" a civilian asked, glancing from side to side.
The rat quickly perked its ears up and crept closer among the trash cans, locked in on this latest piece of gossip.
"Yeah, I heard! I thought these Quirk mutations only brought good things for the heroes, but apparently not. They have side effects that are completely irreversible..."
"Yeah, I know. I just hope my Quirk doesn't mutate, because right now, that's a damn death sentence."
"Same here!"
And so, my spy rat moved through medical districts and residential areas, listening to and gathering the news that had been piling up over the days. The aftereffects of my radiation were tearing human biology to shreds. Several mid-ranking Pro Heroes had died suddenly in combat because their hearts couldn't handle the energy output of their new Quirks. In hospitals, people with physical mutation Quirks—like those with animal traits or fat storage—began to deform and bloat out of nowhere, their bodies expanding in a grotesque and painful manner as they lost control of their cellular functions.
Emitter-type Quirks began to go completely haywire; people's powers were activating while they slept, accidentally setting fire to their own homes or destroying their neighborhoods. To make matters worse, a global food crisis had erupted. Food was now strictly controlled and rationed by the government, as health inspectors discovered that most of the livestock meat and crops from nearby prefectures were completely contaminated by the residual energy, threatening to mutate the stomach of anyone who took a bite.
Well, well... so the hero world was falling apart all on its own, consumed by the "edge" I had accidentally given them.
At first, I had been scared shitless. I thought that if Star and Stripe's Quirk (New Order) mutated without control and without side effects, it could give me a lot of trouble in the future. But now, seeing all those horrible physical drawbacks, I was convinced it would be a show worth watching from the front row.
Though, thinking about it, I was a bit confused. My own Quirks hadn't mutated at all from the radiation.
A twisted idea crossed my mind: Could I use my own Lich essence to modify them at will? It was an interesting thought, a theory to test when the time called for it.
I cut the connection with the rat and began to stroll quietly through the streets outside of ground zero. Sometimes people ran around in sheer desperation, and other times the avenues fell into absolute silence, completely deserted.
"Is this really okay?..." I muttered to myself in a low voice.
To blend in, I had taken the physical appearance of a man in his 40s. However, Eri's horn always stood out on my forehead, impossible to hide completely; that horn was key for desperate situations.
Out of nowhere, a strange noise coming from a dark alley interrupted my thoughts. Raising an eyebrow, I decided to go in and check it out.
Inside the alley, a path was marked by a trail of fresh blood. At the end of it, propped up against the brick wall, sat a man. He looked somewhat young and old at the same time, his face reflecting the wear and tear of a hard life. In his right hand, he held a vape; from his heavy, labored breathing, it was obvious he was living his final moments.
I walked into the alley without saying a word and stopped right in front of him, looking down at him.
"You okay?" I asked. I was feeling pretty easygoing that day; if he told me he needed help, I would have helped him without any problem, but his next words made me raise an eyebrow, completely caught off guard.
"Better than okay..." the man said, letting out a choked laugh as he spat out a bit of saliva mixed with blood. He took another drag from his vape, enjoying the smoke.
"What's your name?" I asked, analyzing him with my gaze. Maybe the guy had some useful regeneration Quirk that would be worth stealing before he kicked the bucket.
"Minou," he replied, flashing a smile with teeth stained red.
As if he could read my mind, he let out a short, dry chuckle.
"I don't have anything useful," he answered with total calmness. Then he locked his eyes directly onto mine. "I don't have a Quirk... I'm Quirkless."
The atmosphere between us remained incredibly peaceful as I observed him in silence. A human dying without the evolutionary power that was destroying the rest of society. I stared at the device in his hand and asked him one last question:
"What's your favorite flavor, Minou?"
Without hesitating for a single second, and with a spark of mischief in his eyes, he replied:
"The one on her lips."
The alley plunged into absolute silence after he said those words. I looked at him in a different light; he had earned my complete respect. But as I examined him more closely, I realized the reality of the situation: though he still held the vape firmly in his hand, his smile intact and his eyes bleeding from the radioactive atmosphere outside, Minou had already passed away. He had died happy, true to his own style.
I gave him a slight, genuine smile.
As I turned around and headed back the way I came, letting my human figure slowly fade into the shadows of the alley, I couldn't help but whisper to the wind:
"You were a warrior, Minou."
Apparently, the world wasn't completely screwed, or at least it still had a few interesting people left. I took one last look at that dark alley before turning around and resuming my peaceful walk through the streets of Japan.
As I strolled along without a care, I pulled a cell phone out of my pocket that I had stolen from a civilian a few blocks back. I started scrolling through the screen, checking the major news portals. It was the exact same story everywhere: alarming headlines about Pro Heroes dropping dead in the line of duty, doctors collapsing in hospital hallways, and nurses who could no longer keep up with the makeshift morgues. The situation was so devastating that the president was already desperately begging for foreign military and humanitarian aid. However, from the few international reports managing to leak through, things weren't going so well abroad either; global paranoia and the fear of the mutation spreading across the oceans had everyone completely paralyzed.
With a single, clean, effortless leap, I reached the rooftop of a high-rise building. I walked over to the edge of the roof to watch the sunset. The sky looked very different than usual: the orange tones were now mixed with a dull hue, much darker and heavier, but that was completely normal considering the amount of energy floating in the atmosphere.
I fixed my gaze first on a distant part of the city, a residential zone where the radioactivity from my direct nuclear blasts hadn't hit as hard, and then I looked toward the contaminated horizon, calculating my next moves.
Suddenly, a loud crash shattered the silence of the rooftop. Someone had just landed heavily right behind me.
I turned around slowly. It appeared to be a Pro Hero; his costume was torn to shreds and his body was shaking violently, giving the impression that he had collapsed out of the sky from exhaustion due to his own Quirk failing. With what little strength he had left, the man raised both hands toward me in a desperate gesture of entreaty, seeking help from what he thought was just an ordinary civilian.
Seeing such a scene of chaos and utter weakness, a cocky smirk simply spread across my middle-aged face. I walked over to him with total composure and firmly grasped one of his outstretched hands. The guy let out a sigh of relief, naively thinking I was a Good Samaritan who was going to save him from his misery... until he felt the skin of his hand begin to melt and fuse grotesquely with mine, unifying our tissues in a black and greenish embrace.
"Huh?..." the hero managed to stammer, his eyes wide with confusion and horror as he watched his body disintegrate into my arm.
"Sleep," I said in a chilling voice that echoed directly inside his head.
The man knocked out instantly, ceasing all resistance as I finished absorbing the rest of his biological mass and life energy into my own body.
Once the process was complete, I dusted off my clothes and took a second to test the new genetic information integrating into my system. I could feel the Quirk flowing clearly: it was an emitter-type power that allowed me to manipulate the air around me to generate high-speed gusts and wind currents.
Pretty useful and convenient for moving around without drawing attention, if you ask me.
"It's been a while since I stretched these bones..." I said, letting out a loud shout to shake off the stiffness.
In the blink of an eye, I shed the appearance of the 40-year-old man and manipulated my flesh and molecular structure to adopt a form that would cause immediate trauma to the heroes: the appearance of Overhaul.
"It's time to unleash chaos," I said, a cocky, villainous grin spreading across my face.
Using the new air-gust Quirk I had just ripped from the dying hero, I propelled myself violently into the sky, flying off at breakneck speed toward an undefined point on the map. I wanted to see firsthand how this world finished rotting away.
End of Chapter 20.
---XXX
Author's Note: What do you guys think? In the next chapter, we'll finally see the Lich cut loose across Japan in a real way! Are you ready for total chaos?
Bye!