After coming outside the black market, they moved towards the carriage they came in.

Damien could see a plain carriage made up of black colored wood drawn by two black horses. The horses were more than two meters tall and had a well-built body with a red horn on their heads.

"Wait!" Damien shouted. He had no idea where they were planning to take him, but he also didn't want to wait to find out. He tried to struggle free from Oswin Rong's hold, but it was of no avail. Even if he were in perfect condition, it would be the same result.

He looked at the short hooded figure standing in front of him and said, "I don't plan on becoming your slave. You should let me go. Whatever it is you are planning, I don't have anything to offer."

The princess wasn't surprised and looked at Damien briefly from head to toe. Previously, she was in a hurry to get out of the black market, due to which she wasn't able to examine his condition properly.

But now, she could see that the clothes on his body were already disheveled and dirty, and his right forearm was a mess of flesh and blood with the bones exposed.

Most probably, he would never be able to use his right hand. In other words, it was permanently crippled unless he takes some expensive and potent healing medicine.

She felt pity and a bit sad seeing his condition, especially seeing how his dominant hand was ruined.

The princess spoke in a calm tone, "Relax, I am not planning to make you my slave nor make you do anything you don't like. I just want to know who you are exactly? Which family are you coming from? Maybe I can send you back to people whom you can trust."

Damien couldn't believe what he was hearing. He never expected that the person in front of him 'bought' him just to rescue him. All the people he has seen and met in this world had only malicious intent, especially the ones in the black market.

So he expected these people to also belong to the same sort of people. Why would a genuinely righteous person visit these kinds of places in the first place?

Even if they wanted to rescue the slaves, they would either rescue all of them or at least do something detrimental to the black market. Why would these people only rescue him, a cripple, and ignore everybody else?

And who was this guy in front of him? He guessed that it must be a boy seeing the height and small frame of her figure. Even with the hooded robe on her body, it didn't add much broadness to her figure. And since her voice was also disguised, he had no idea it was a girl.

Damien didn't know whether he could even trust these people. In the final few years of his past life, he had already lost trust in the world and only had hatred towards them.

After the death of Sofie, he was constantly on the run. He never trusted anybody, no matter how kind and nice they appeared to be. Because once they find out his identity, they would surely hand him over to his enemies.

He was a wanted criminal of the highest priority throughout the world. Even anyone trying to protect him would be branded as a criminal.

Before the calamity, he was loved and hailed throughout the world as a hero. Even though he was the strongest in the world, he never got drunk in his own power. He used his powers to help the world become a better place, to protect the public, and stop evil.

He was not born with powers. When he was a teen, he suddenly manifested strange powers that he had no idea of how it manifested.

But after the calamity, he lost his powers along with some of his memories.

Sofie's death was caused by one of his sworn brothers when he ratted out their whereabouts to people who hunted them.

The people he considered as his brothers and close friends turned against him except for a few. But the few girls who didn't betray him still died trying to protect him because they truly loved him.

But he only realized their feelings for him before their demise. Before that, he had only seen them as close friends or sisters.

Since then, he never let anyone get close to him and was always in disguise. He wanted to take revenge for Sofie's death and also for the girls who died protecting him. Most of all, he wanted to find out how he was the cause of 'The Great Calamity' and the person who mind-controlled him.

Yes, he believed he was being controlled on the day of the calamity. After the calamity, his memories weren't clear, and he felt like he forgot some crucial things that happened before the calamity. But no matter what, he couldn't fill in those gaps in his memories.

All he could remember about what happened during the calamity was how he killed billions of people like ants. He could feel their despair, pain, anguish, confusion as he was devouring their souls.

After that incident, he was mentally broken and traumatized. He couldn't believe he carried out a worldwide genocide without any reason.

He had never killed a person in his whole life due to his kind and benevolent nature. In fact, before the calamity, he wasn't even strong enough to carry out a worldwide genocide like that. Even if he wanted to, his powers couldn't even be compared to the powers he had during the calamity.

He even surrendered himself to the survivors since he believed he deserved to be judged for the killings he had done. Even though he didn't do it on purpose, he was ready to accept punishments even worse than death.

He had somehow lost his powers, because of which the survivors didn't even hesitate to torture him to vent their resentment and fury and also to get him to tell why he carried out such an atrocity. Still, all he said was, "I didn't do it."

He was in a self-denial state since even killing one person was inconceivable for him.

Even though he was in a self-denial state, in his mind, he believed that he was the one truly responsible for their deaths even if he had no idea why it happened to him. For the very same reason, he surrendered himself without trying to run away.

Some even experimented on him in the name of humanity to find out why he had special powers before, how he used it to cause the calamity, and to find out whether they could exploit anything out of him.

But he still didn't complain or resist in any way. He endured all the torture, suffering, and ill-treatment for almost five years, but they also made sure he didn't die.

His suffering continued until Sofie, and the girls came to rescue him. They were preparing all these years to come up with a rescue plan since Damien was held in a supermax prison monitored by people with superhuman abilities.

It wasn't an easy task to rescue him, and even with their planning, there was a huge risk of dying during the rescue process.

But after getting Damien out from the prison, they were surrounded, and all the girls except Sofie died protecting Damien.

Damien was already broken when he was rescued, but seeing his close friends dying for him woke him up from his state of senselessness.

Something cracked inside him, and suddenly he awakened some strange powers different than his old powers. Before they could kill him or Sofie, he went into a frenzy and killed them all instantly.

That was the first time he had killed people consciously. He felt nothing, not even a bit of guilt after killing them.

Maybe it was due to his mental state after years of torture, or it was because of seeing his close friends' death or because he had already taken billions of lives before.

Maybe it was because of all these reasons that Damien became a different person altogether from that day onwards.

If one were to see the current Damien, they would never imagine him as the Damien before the calamity.

But the power he used that day came at a cost since he unconsciously burned his soul essence to use those powers. He felt those powers a little similar to the one he had during 'The Great Calamity,' but the difference in power was like heaven and earth.

However, the more he involuntarily burns it, less the time he would have left to live or something worse, since he had no way of replenishing his soul essence in a planet without spiritual energy or it would take him centuries to replenish it on its own.

But he wasn't able to draw on that power later, no matter how much he tried. He thought it had something to do with the adrenaline rush he had at the moment and tried many methods to rekindle his powers but to no avail.

Of course, he was not even aware of the soul's concept. He also didn't know any techniques to use his soul essence, so he wouldn't be able to use his soul essence in any way consciously.

This is why he lived like a mortal with Sofie instead of trying to take revenge. He didn't want to lose Sofie either.

Sofie wasn't his wife or girlfriend before the calamity. She was his childhood friend, and they were there for each other for the majority of their life.

Sofie always had feelings for Damien, but he was so dense that he never realized it. She never confessed her feelings because she felt like she was not worthy enough for Damien.

After rescuing Damien, Sofie convinced Damien that the calamity wasn't his fault since she knew he wasn't the kind of person to carry out such atrocious acts.

She truly believed and trusted him. She helped him come out of his trauma and became his mental support.

During that time, they realized their feelings they had towards each other, especially Damien. Soon after that, Sofie got pregnant, which made Damien very happy and healed most of his emotional wounds. He even decided to let go of his vengeance completely.

But during these times, Damien never stopped thinking about how the calamity happened and how he was the perpetrator of it.

The only reason he could come up with was that he was being mind-controlled by someone behind the scenes. And his missing memories only proved this point further.

It seemed like someone had played with his mind without his knowledge, and as a result, he ended up bringing a calamity with his own hands.

He had combat skills, sword skills, medicine skills, etc, but he couldn't remember how he learned them or who taught him these things.

One day Damien came upon his sworn brother, who in the end betrayed him by leaking his whereabouts. Because of this, it led to Sofie's death, including his unborn child.

Going through all these traumatic, painful, and tragic events only made his distrust and wariness towards other people increase.

This is why even when the princess was trying to reassure Damien, he didn't let down his guard at all. He couldn't help but think twice about their intentions.

Damien looked at her face trying to meet her gaze as he said indifferently, "I don't need your help. I don't have any family or people to care about me. So it's better if you let go of a burden like me. I appreciate your concern in trying to help me. But I am better off al…"

Damien suddenly felt like the world was going dark as he fainted before he could even finish his words.