For the last few months, I always thought I killed them all. I was sure of it because I remember a bit more about what I did back then every day. And I killed a lot of people, too much to count.

I never thought I'd be able to see one of the villagers. And he even is the only one who at least tried to stand by my side.

He looks like he lost a lot of weight. I can't keep a tear from falling down my cheek.

He must feel guilty for not protecting the village.

Those weeks must have been hard on him. And I'm the cause for that.

Miles seems to be struggling with his words.

'You really are Civitas? How could that... how could you be alive?' Miles asks while he's visibly shaken.

The other fighter seems to have lost his cool, so he starts shouting into the room.

'What is going on here? We just took you with us, because you couldn't find anyone else who'd form a party with you.

I guess we never should have taken someone in, whose background we don't even know.

You seem to know this little demon over there. Are you also one of his kind?'

Miles looks very confused since he doesn't know, what I truly look like with my dragon eyes.

He probably thinks they must have mistaken me for someone else. I think he will try to make them spare me.

But I was wrong.

'I have no idea, what you are talking about, but...' And with that, he slowly stands up while drawing his weapon.

'But I know one thing for sure. I won't let you kill this kid who I finally met after all this time.

I can't tell you why, but I can tell you this much. If you really want to kill him, you'll have to get through me.'

After telling them this, Miles starts to circulate his mana, which puts the area under a lot of pressure.

I almost forgot about it, but Miles is strong. Very strong.

Instinctively I examine him with my system, and I can't believe my eyes.

Name: Miles

Level: 120

Race: Half-Human

Class: Breaker

Title: ???

| Vitality: 636 | Strength: 577 | Dexterity: 461 | Agility: 292 | Intelligence: 321 | Willpower: 290 | Mana: 400

Skills: ???

How could this be? How could he be this strong? Isn't this a bit too much?

I know he was called the strongest, but now, that I know the stats of others in comparison, that is too much even for "the strongest".

When I was in jail he said he was somewhere around level 50! Did he get stronger this fast, or did he lie to me?

That would mean, he went up by at least 220 level! Since you have to restart from level 1 after a class change. Although the first levels go faster, this is still inhuman!

All these questions race through my mind, but there is no point in denying his strength.

I can see it. The amount of mana around him is frightening.

And the people around him can feel it.

Suddenly all of them turn pale. They fall to their knees as if all strength just left them.

So this is suppression of pure might.

Only the leader of the group manages to keep standing, although just barely.

Then, Miles retrieves his aura. The group immediately seems to recover, but they still look different than before.

They are frightened. They are shaking non-stop because they fear the result of offending this man they only know for half a day.

'if you are this strong, why didn't you show it? You could have joined the best parties out there.'

The leader asks while trying to keep his calm.

'It's none of your business. Come Civitas. Follow me.'

Is this even the same person? He is completely changed.

At first, he was struggling with his words and looked like he'd cry any moment, but now...

There is no sign of any surprise in his facial expressions. He looks cold and calculative.

But still, I follow him.

Meanwhile, some of the stronger and more sensitive people in the dragon fight noticed the sudden outbreak of magic.

But they deemed it to be less important than the dragon in front of them.

But they'll remember this energy.

Miles leads me to a room, the size of the cave I stayed in so far.

There, I can see his straight shoulders, as well as his grim face, relax.

He seems to leave something like a battle mode.

Out of curiosity, I check his stats again to see if that was some kind of temporary boost, but they were still the same.

He walks to one of the walls of this room, and sits down on the floor, with his back leaning against the wall.

With one arm he gestures me to take a seat next to him.

I follow along. I don't think, there is any reason, I shouldn't.

{Be careful, I can feel some weird emotion coming from him. Like they are permanently changing at a very fast rate.

Just don't get too close to him.}

After almost an hour of silence, in which we walked to this place, one of them finally talks again. And now it's Zabula warning me from getting too close to the only person, who could tell me if someone else survived.

I don't want to listen to her. I won't listen to her.

So I do just as Miles suggested and sit down next to him.

But I didn't expect his next words.

'You killed them, didn't you? I'm talking about Sanctuary.

You don't have to fear me, just be honest.'

What should I do? How did he find out? Did he see me kill them?

Or is it just a guess? Will he really let me live, if I tell him the truth?

Why is he that calm while talking about the deaths of all the villagers?

I can't muster up any courage to start talking.

I sit there for at least 10 minutes without talking. Then Miles starts talking again.

'I guess, I was right. Well, I can't say I didn't get surprised when I found the Village like this, but well I expected it.

You could say, this is my fault since I never told anyone the truth.'

What is he even talking about?

"Zabula, is he angry?" I ask her in my mind.

{No I don't think so. And if he is angry at someone, then on himself. He seems to just be sad right now.}

"I'm sorry." Those are the first words, I manage to say.

Then Miles looks at me, while seemingly struggling with his words now himself.

He has such a bitter smile on his face.

"Why aren't you killing me, to rid this world of something like me?"

I just want to know, why someone as strong as Miles doesn't just finish me off.

Then Miles turns his face away from me and starts looking at the ceiling. Then he begins to talk.

'I guess, I should tell you. But first, do you know the story of me rescuing you from the debris of a collapsed building?'

I nod.

'Good. But this is only half of the truth. I indeed rescued you. But I didn't find you in a collapsed building.

That day was pure chaos, and only one other person knows the real story. I think you know who that is.'

"The priest..." I say under my breath.

'Yes, you're right. Do you know, where it was, that I found you? It was in a nest of demons. You were lying on some kind of altar when I broke into the base.'

"Zabula we have to talk later" I hissed in my mind.

'I was really strong, in comparison to these lowly regular demons. I walked in there alone, and they couldn't even resist me.

After finishing all of them off, I wanted to rescue you, but I didn't expect the next thing to happen.

When I took you up, I felt an insane amount of magic energy being absorbed from me into you.

But you know? maybe it was fate for me to find you and not someone else.

You probably noticed the insane amount of magic coming from me before, but now the isn't even a sliver of it.

This is because of my innate ability. I never told anyone about this, but I have the ability, to stop any magic coming from me, so opponents won't be able to judge my strength.

But there is more to it. I can also suppress the magic power of anything I touch. I could stop any energy from flowing in, or out of you since my ability works in both ways.

I had to make a decision. Should I treat you as a human? Or should I treat you as a monster?

I think I got affected by my feeling there. I wasn't born in Sanctuary. I am the bastard child between a giant and a human. I had it hard in my life, had to start fighting before I even remember, and when I finally reached Sanctuary, they rejected me. They even feared me, because I was too strong. I was 12 years old at that time and I already could beat all of their fighters.

That was 300 years ago. I can live a lot longer due to my bloodline. But at that time, there was this one person who spoke out in favour of me. It was the priest. I have no idea how old this bastard is, but I can tell you, he is and always was stronger than me.'

He pauses for a while, seemingly waiting for my reaction.

I would like to ask a lot of things about my origin, but I want to ask these questions when he's finished talking.

So I ask another question.

"So you are telling me, you as well as the priest, are at least 300 years old? How did none of the villagers notice that?"

He sighs.

'We never built up any close bonds to any of the villagers. We both sometimes changed our names, to ease out any suspicions, and we sometimes faked our deaths.

The people were always glad when some recruit suddenly showed insane combat prowess after the death of their strongest. Of course I never really attended any recruitment. The priest helped me with spreading those rumours. We worked together pretty good. Until the day, I brought you to the village.

I told everyone, I found you in an accident when fighting off monsters.

But the priest could tell, there was something wrong with you. He insisted, it would be better to kill you, but I fought for you. I'm not even sure anymore if I really fought for you, or if I fought for my sick peace of mind.

Anyway, I could convince him to let you live, as long as you didn't do anything wrong.

In your life, you got assigned to numerous families. You never stayed for more than a few months. They always said, there was something wrong with you, or that all other children were afraid of you, and so on.

For the rest of the story, you should be aware of yourself.'

How come, I never noticed anything like this before? Does this mean, I never was a human, to begin with? Or did I get changed to something else on that altar?

"Am I human?"

'I don't know.'

"Is the restraint, you put on me, to hide my origin still active?"

'It broke at the time, your execution should have been. I thought this was due to your life ceasing to be. It was at this time, I realized, who the boy, that was executed, really was.

I hadn't seen you for more than 12 years at that time. I didn't realize, you were the child, I rescued. The thing is, I can't feel the existence of the restraints I place unless they break. I think the restraint broke because of the huge amounts of mana, they wanted to pump into you. On top of that, I already felt one of my restraints start cracking a few days before that.'

The time, it first cracked was probably the time Zabula joined me, I just became aware. And the second time should really have been during the execution. That explains the weird feeling I first had. It felt like something crawling over my skin until something suddenly seemed to break. So that was the restraint.

'I see, you indeed felt something in that direction.'

"Yes but, does this mean, you are the reason, I could never use mana before that day?"

'Yes, I fear so.'

So that's the reason, why I couldn't use magic. This was the reason for so much discrimination in my life. Still, I can't be angry at him, I fully understand, that he did this to protect me.

We just sit there for a good 2 hours. None of us says a word. We both don't know what to do with this situation.

But I have to say something, even if he might not believe me.

"I don't know if you'll believe me, but I didn't want to do it. Something took over me and I lost all control over my body. And this thing is still there, I can feel it."

I can't tell him about the three mightiest beings on this planet staying inside me, or the system, that can analyze anything, but I want to tell him about the thing staying inside of me. Maybe he knows something about that since he is the one who found me on top of the altar.

'No, I do believe you. I brought you here, so we can talk, and if you would have seemed to really be evil, I would have killed you right here. This would have been my task as the one who brought you to Sanctuary. If you hope to get any information about that thing out of me, I'm sorry to tell you, I have no idea, what this thing, as you called it, could be.'

"Then, what are you going to do now?"

Silence. He seems to be thinking about something.

Suddenly I feel a terrible headache.

The kind of headache, I get from mana exhaustion.

Fuck I completely forgot about my eyes. They are permanently concealed by Zabula, but that consumes mana. I can't keep it up any longer.

"Miles, no matter, what you'll see now, nothing changes!"

I hurriedly say, while having my head turned away from him.

"Zabula, you can deactivate it now," I tell her in my mind.

{Are you sure, he's trustworthy?}

[I'd be careful in front of someone who is this strong.]

"I want to put my trust in him."

{Ok, there you go}

With that, she deactivated the illusion.

I can see Miles looking confused at the back of my head. These eyes are really useful sometimes.

Then I slowly turn around, while paying close attention to his expression.

I can see his eyes widen until they are completely round.

Then he quickly changes his expression, to one of doubt.

'How did you get these eyes? And how could you hide them until now?'

I can't tell him the truth.

"I don't know, how I got these eyes. I just woke up with them after losing control of this thing. But I can tell you about their abilities. My field of few is dramatically increased, so I can see things behind me and I can see in the dark.

I learned illusion magic just to hide these eyes, but just now I ran out of mana. These eyes are also the reason, why the group before called me a monster."

I better don' tell him about my ability to see mana."

'Those are some incredible abilities I have to say. And you even learned illusion magic in such a short time? How did you do this?'

"I guess I just got really lucky. It was quite easy to learn."

I say truthfully. Well, I had a great teacher, but I can't mention that.

'That is really impressive. Did you ever get a chance, to check out your current level?'

Damn. I think I should say no.

"No, the only place I knew of that had items for that, was Sanctuary and I want to never go back there."

'Well, luckily I have such an item with me. On top of that, it can show you your current stats. This thing might be quite expensive, but I'll gift it to you.'

Oh no. I never thought about this. What will he think, if he sees my abnormally high stats? Well, currently I could still explain it with having really high base stats. Since my level isn't that high yet, the difference isn't that big. But that will change later, what do I say later when the difference is huge? I guess that's something to contemplate later.

"Oh! That sounds nice, let's do it!"

I say as enthusiastically as I can.

Then he pulls some kind of white, bone white needle out of the pocket, hanging on his waist.

'You have to puncture one of your veins with this so that it gets into contact with your blood.'

[This is such a crude way of measuring stats! I know of these kinds of tests, but they tend to be inaccurate, or sometimes even misfunction completely. We angels stopped using such things aeons ago!]

At that time I just do as Miles told me to while ignoring Gabriel's rant.

It hurts a little, but I've felt worse things.

Suddenly the needle crumbles and the dust of it starts floating into the air, where it starts to resemble some numbers.

One at the top and seven below that. The one at the top clearly reads 11, but the lower ones seem to be changing a lot.

They vary between 5 points lower and 5 points higher, than my real stats.

'Oh, so your stats are already at the top twenties! That's pretty good!'

Did I just get saved by the fact, that this test is really crappy?

Well, I won't complain.

After some time of talking about unimportant things, like some monsters walking around in this area, Miles changes the topic.

'I made up my mind. Do you want to follow me into one of the nearest cities? I'd like to confirm a few things, which will take some time to do.'

"Alright, I'd be happy to follow you."

And with that, we set off to the nearest city called...

Anor.