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"...no!"

"Listen! H-Hide! Find somewhere to hide!"

"P-Please, no! I can\'t lose you!!"

"Son, this is not the time for you to be stubborn! Listen to me! Dad\'s got this okay, buddy? I need you to hide until the monsters are gone! I promise I\'ll find you once this is over! For now, find somewhere to hide."

"Dad..."

"You\'re good at that right? Cough! Y-you always win against your buddies whenever you play, so you must be really good at it! Now\'s the ultimate test to that, you hear me, boy!?"

"Mn!!"

"Good. Now, run and hide. If we\'re lucky, we\'ll each other soon, okay? Go! Quick!"

"...if there\'s another life...let\'s be bros, again..."

Gasps!

Cedric\'s eyes flew wide open as he was startled awake. The familiar ceiling of his prison room greeted him, allowing him to re-organize his thoughts up to speed.

He sighed as his head throbbed. Painfully being reminded of that awful past. He had thought that he was already past this since he hadn\'t had this nightmare for a couple of years now, but it seemed that he wasn\'t over it yet.

Harold\'s death certainly didn\'t help either...

Sitting up on his bed, he rested his back on the headboard. He closed his eyes and tampered his senses down. He didn\'t want to know what everybody was up to right now, he certainly didn\'t care either.

He just wants to spend time in silence. To mourn for the passing of Harold, his only friend, and brother in this shitty place.

What irks him about this is that he can\'t openly mourn for the loss of his friend. To the rest of the world, Harold was the worst...

A traitor to humanity. A willing participant of the Demons\' plan to conquer Prime Earth. The worst scum to ever grace this planet, and so on.

He already heard his late friend making the headlines. He even saw some articles about him online. He read and listened to the remarks of the ignorant people outside. They called him names. They spat on him. Criticized and cursed him to eternal damnation.

Yes, what happened to the RMC already spread to the rest of the world. But none of that concerns Cedric at all.

God knows how much Cedric wanted to defend the honor of his late friend. He wants to justify his actions and tell the world how pitifully ignorant they all were. He wants to call them out for their hypocrisy because they have no idea what it\'s like to live a desperate life like the rest of them have here.

Yet...he truly can\'t do that. Not that he\'s afraid of being criticized or having his public image smudged with dirt (he\'s already a prisoner of this place, public opinion about his existence was already at its lowest, so how can he care about that?)

He can\'t call them out because it\'s just a waste of effort. It\'s not like arguing with them would bring Harold back to life. Even if it did, the world would certainly not welcome him, it\'s as simple as that.

Harold wouldn\'t want him to do this in his stead either, so all he could do was silently mourn for him.

Even after turning into a demon, Harold was still Harold. His mannerisms, his attitude, even his voice, it was still him. Cedric could tell this much since he was the one who went against him. He\'s the one who killed his friend to stop the madness.

Unless they\'ve been locked away in his place for years, those people would never understand Harold\'s decision.

But Cedric? He gets it...he really does.

He already processed his emotions, and he didn\'t find any resentment towards his friend for doing this. Hell, he\'d even go as far as to say that he completely understands why.

Cedric was just not expecting it since, in his eyes at least, Harold was still doing good. His monitoring chip hasn\'t turned green yet, but given time, it will be. That\'s why Cedric was confused since Harold stood a chance.

\'There must be a deeper story here...sadly, I might never have the chance to know. He\'s dead, after all.\'

He wasn\'t angry about his friend\'s apparent \'betrayal\'. As he mentioned, he gets it. He understands why. And frankly, if Cedric didn\'t receive these eyes, he\'d probably consider the idea himself.

Cedric only ever felt immense sadness about this whole ordeal. Harold was right, Cedric is a cynical and sarcastic guy, he says things that he truly doesn\'t mean but most of them are, in fact, the truth.

This world was so fucking unfair. The lucky ones get to live comfortably while those who aren\'t so lucky must always keep one eye open whenever they sleep since there\'s always a threat to their lives.

Cedric doesn\'t blame Harold for siding with Demons since that\'s a valid, though immoral, option to survive.

Sadly, even though Cedric doesn\'t blame his friend for his decision, he couldn\'t just ignore what he did.

As much as Cedric hates this world and the life he lives in it...it\'s still home. Harold bringing with him all those demons caused the population of this place to significantly drop.

A lot of people died. Most of them are unresigned, unwilling, and resentful about their deaths. They too were fighting for their lives. Holding on to it despite living in absolute despair, yet they met their demise because Harold decided to side with Demons.

Hell, he could almost feel the lingering resentment in the air because of how thick it was. He wouldn\'t be surprised if resentful ghosts start appearing here and there in this place.

Cedric wished that it wasn\'t him. Truthfully, he was waiting for the reinforcements during his fight against Harold, hoping that whoever came to be the one to put down his friend.

That way, maybe...just maybe, it would lessen the pain he feels. Sadly though, that didn\'t happen.

Cedric truly believes that his friend isn\'t a bad guy. He just received unfair treatment from the world, which pushed him to the brink of desperation, and it caused him to cling to whatever means just to survive...to live. That\'s all there is to it.

Sadly, the world would never see it that way. And that hurts more.

What makes the pain even worse is that this wasn\'t the first time this happened.

This is the second time that Cedric lost his loved ones because of the Demon invasion.

The first time was when he and his family were just returning from the Awakening Center. Cedric could still vividly remember being so excited at the prospect of finally getting some training from his father. Yet, on their way back home, they got attacked by a horde of demons.

Someone turned into a node right in the middle of the city, causing a tear in space to appear which demons used to infiltrate the place. The savage demons attacked their ride and killed many people.

Due to his recurring nightmares, Cedric could still vividly remember it. As soon as their bus got hit, his siblings died. He remembered clutching their unconscious bodies as he desperately cried for help.

In his panic, he searched for his parents only to see them gravely injured. His father was trapped under the rubble while his mother was nowhere in sight. He tried to help his father and managed to free him but he was bleeding heavily.

His father then instructed him to hide, to live. Promising that he would find him as soon as everything was over...

A promise that he had failed to keep.

After the incident, he was met with the dead bodies of his family. Only the bodies of his siblings remained intact, his parents weren\'t so lucky. Only his mother\'s left arm and his father\'s skull remained.

And that left young Cedric severely traumatized. That image haunted him for years, and by then, he was already deep in his personal hell, which was the only reason why he managed to \'move on\' from it.

But with Harold\'s death, everything came crashing down once more. Perhaps, it\'ll be even worse than before. Only time will tell...

And whether he likes to admit it or not, he\'s scared — no, terrified.

When his family died, he was weak and that was understandable, he just awakened that day, after all. But now, he\'s decently strong, yet in the grand scheme of things, it\'s still nothing.

He couldn\'t save them. Even with the heavenly gift he received, he remains just as weak and vulnerable as he was before. And that scared him a lot.

How many people close to him would he lose before he achieves the right amount of strength to protect them? How long would it take? How much must he suffer, before finally having a break from this miserable life?

As far as he could tell, he had nobody anymore. No family, no friends. Just him and their ghosts, probably blaming him for their deaths.

This event was like a cold bucket of water dousing his enthusiasm. Although he could say that he hadn\'t slacked off the moment he received this heavenly gift, he knew that he could do something more.

"...never again..."

"More..."

"I need more power...more strength..."