Two weeks later, Blake, Lillia, and Tina stood at the entrance of the mountain range. Both girls now had collars on their necks with two emblems hanging off of them. They were made of metal and depicted a dragon with a sword stabbed through it. On the side of Blake's neck was the same emblem tattooed into his skin.
While the girls did not like the idea too much, they still did not complain about it since they saw it as a necessity after hearing Blake's explanation. Blake even gave their fake faction the name: Slayers.
"Let's head to the nearest city to see what is left," Blake said as he began walking forward. He wondered just how many factions have formed in the past few months. Since most food supplies were destroyed by the dragons, factions of humans popped up all over the place within a few months. But he had no idea just how many had formed yet.
They did not walk this time around but ran through the forest at a steady pace to make quick ground. With their current powers being well over the strongest human in the world, they were as fast as a car that could move at sixty miles an hour. In what took them a few days before now took only a day to reach the road they had veered from before. "There seems to be a lot of survivors…." Tina whispered as she looked at the small groups of people walking down the road. Each one had faces of those who had no idea what to do. The sunken cheeks proved that food supplies were low.
"A lot of people did survive. It is just a matter of staying alive after. Drakes are slow and clunky, so if you can run away after hearing them, you can easily escape them. But that usually means leaving your things behind. As you can see, most of these people have nothing." Blake pointed at the groups who wore nothing but the clothes on their back.
"It makes me wonder what would have happened to me." Tina did not even want to think about it. Either the place she had hidden in would have become a charred wasteland, or she could have ended up as some plaything for some man she hardly knew just to survive. She wondered what choices she would have made.
"It's hard to say. Each person has their own way of dealing with the situations they face, but with your kindness, I am sure you would have tried to save someone and died in the process." Blake gave his honest opinion. Tina, before she met them, would have definitely tried to save who she could and died within the first month, even if she ran to the forest near the city. She was not the only one with such an idea.
"Either that or I would have starved to death," Tina said with a chuckle. She was actually more worried about how she was going to eat after she ran out of her limited supplies at that time.
"Either way, you are now going to see the new future, and you will understand that my words are not just a fantastical dream," Blake replied with a smile.
The group kept moving forward, this time towards the city against the traffic that was coming out of it. "You people should not head that way. It's like hell on earth back there." An old man stopped in front of Blake and warned. He was at least in his early sixties, but he still stood tall and strong. Seeing this old man, Blake's eyes flashed with a bit of nostalgia.
"Sir, no matter where you go in this world it will always be hell on earth. But I should warn you." Blake leaned in close. "Take your grandkids and move off the road and into the forest. It is safer than being on the roads. Stay away from other humans as much as possible."
The old man looked at Blake in confusion for a few seconds as he thought about what Blake had just said before a sudden realization dawned on him. He nodded and patted Blake's shoulder. "You are a good young man. Stay safe."
"You as well," Blake replied as he gave the old man a nod and kept walking. Tina and Lillia both looked at Blake in confusion. They did not understand why he was whispering. as if sensing their questioning gazes, Blake spoke up first: "He is someone from my past life that I once fought alongside. He looks older now, but when the age of magic came around, the older people slowly regressed a few years in age due to mana. That man saved me. We got to know each other, and he told me about how he had escaped the city with his grandkids and his daughter in law.
"But as they were traveling along the road, they came upon a group who were robbing and killing everyone for their items. Even though, as you had seen, he had nothing of value, such as food, they still killed his grandkids and daughter in law, thinking they were hiding things. He tried to protect them, but he was severely wounded. He was willing to die there with them. But in the end, he somehow survived. A kind doctor found him and treated his wounds, and sealed him up.
"When he regained consciousness, he made an oath to himself to find the men who killed his family if they were not already dead and behead each one of them and stick their heads next to his family's bodiless graves to watch over them for all eternity as punishment for their sins. But he never did find them, and he later died to a dragon during a large scale battle." Blake sighed as he continued: "I never did get to repay him. Hopefully, this time he will be able to live a different life from the last."
"I see. No wonder you were willing to go out of your way to say something to him. We passed many families, but you just ignored them." Lillia had thought it was strange that Blake would do something out of the ordinary.
"I wanted to repay him for what he did for me. I can not be responsible for everyone just because I have some knowledge of what is to happen. But remember, even I died during the Age of Magic at a young age, so I have no idea what the world truly ended up like, nor do I care. I will not live as I did in the past. If I wage war against anyone, it will be on my own terms. And to do that, as you said before, Lillia, to do this, I will need to become something other than human."
