Chapter 11: Achilles Morningstar

Some times later, in the southwest section of the city.

An illusory figure was swiftly flying towards the outer perimeter of the slum.

The Abandoned in the slum were mostly those who couldn't find a job to make a living, so every day there was at least a dead body lying on the streets that could be found.

The government decided to invest a little to build a large graveyard on the outer perimeter of the slum. This prevented the dead bodies of Abandoned from rotting on the streets with no one to deal with them.

Mark had been flying for a few hours now, due to the massive size of the city, normally it should have taken two days just to travel from the northwest to southwest section on foot.

But since he was flying, the time had been reduced to a few hours.

He kept on flying without saying a word, his mind was occupied by many important things, namely:

'Being able to fly is great. If not for the mental corruption then I might consider staying in the form of an evil spirit forever.'

...Sort of.

A movie he once saw back when he was a kid had ghosts able to fly around with ease.

So he wondered now as an evil spirit whether he'd be able to do the same.

Luckily, he was able to.

2 hours later, an empty piece of land started to appear in front of him and snapped him out of his thoughts.

He started to slow down his flying speed and descended on the ground of the graveyard.

The graveyard conditions could only be described as terrible, there was no fence covering the perimeter of it. The ground was overgrown with weeds covering the entire area.

The tombstones had moss grown on them seemingly for a long time now.

Mark swept his gaze past everything in his sight until his eyes finally focused on a pair of tombstones that were lying on the east side of the graveyard.

He held his breath a bit and slowly walked towards the two tombstones.

His eyes lingered on them for a long time before he looked away.

"Hey mom and dad, I'm back now." He said in a low, barely audible voice.

"I'm sorry it took me so long to visit you again."

"A lot of things have happened over the past few days...and completely honest, I've changed so much."

"I wish I could join you two...so that the three of us would be together again, but there are still things I need to finish." He sounded strangely wistful.

He paused for 2 minutes, then continued in a slightly choked voice:

"...And perhaps, your son Mark has already gone now."

Mark silently closed his eyes and thought about all the pain he had suffered, about how he had died and how he was born again, beneath the morning sky.

He opened his eyes again, which flashed with determination and resolution. The trace of fear and hesitation was nowhere to be found:

"Goodbye, mother and father."

He turned around and spoke in a cold and emotionless voice:

"I am Achilles, Achilles Morningstar."

After that, he slowly walked away before his illusory figure vanished into nothingness, as if it had never been here before.

The date was January 1st of 2060, Mark Walter had died.

...And from his ruined soul, something else was born.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Night time, at the top of an abandoned building.

An illusory figure was hovering above it, the faint crimson moonlight draped over the figure, giving it an even more mysterious feeling.

It seemed as though the figure was both existent and non-existent

The mysterious figure was none other than Mark, who now considered himself Achilles Morningstar.

He was currently in a serious dilemma, but he didn't let any frustration show on his face as he kept an unperturbed expression.

He was considering how to infiltrate the morgue, which was situated on the east side of the city, near the latter's entrance to get himself a new body.

'The morgue definitely has some evil spirit detection devices. If I stepped a foot inside then I would be detected immediately.'

The government usually set up cohorts to go out and collect resources and materials for the city. Those who were part of cohorts had to venture outside the safe walls and fought against powerful Corrupted creatures; thus, had to constantly risk their lives.

Those who managed this city naturally understood this; hence, the city's hospital was built.

It used to be a regular occurrence that there were a few casualties for every expedition, but the Corrupted creatures became more and more powerful by the day.

This made the number of casualties gradually increase and this place was eventually known as the morgue instead of the hospital.

Since the morgue received a large number of dead bodies on a daily basis, they had to create evil spirit detection devices to make sure no evil spirits could sneak into the city by possessing the dead bodies.

As Achilles was pondering how to get past the detection system, a black crow suddenly landed on the rooftop.

It stood motionless for a while before turning its head in Achilles' direction.

He naturally noticed this as he looked directly at the black crow and tilted his head a little. The black crow mimicked his action and tilted its head to one side.

This went on for a whole minute before Achilles' eyes turned bright red like the crimson moon as he said in a domineering voice:

[Obey.]

The crow suddenly convulsed as its body twisted at a weird angle and it let out a horrified caw for one last time before dropping dead.

Moments later, its body started rotting at a terrifying rate and dirt worms started to crawl out from its body. It stood up again, and stared at Achilles emotionlessly.

Achilles snapped out of his trance as he stared at the now zombie crow in surprise while muttering:

"This..."

As he was perplexed about what happened to the crow which made him wonder what was going on, he suddenly felt some sort of connection to his mind.

He closed his eyes as he tried to search for the connection. A few seconds later, he found what he was looking for and it made him dumbfounded.

It was an image of him sitting while hovering above the air with his eyes closed.

He opened his eyes again and looked in front of him, what greeted him was the same zombie crow from moments ago.

'I've gained control of the crow...'

He was both surprised and exhilarated by this new discovery, but he wasn't sure why was he able to do this all of the sudden.

To make sure that he was indeed able to control the zombie crow, he tried giving it a mental command to fly up.

Nothing happened at first and just as Achilles was about to try something else, the crow slowly flapped its wing and flew towards his direction and circled around him a few times before it landed back on the rooftop and continued staring at him.

"It worked...!"

Achilles grinned happily from ear to ear at what happened, but quickly wiped the douchebag smile away from his face as a frown slowly formed on his forehead:

"This is good but...where did this power come from?"

He held his chin thinking for a while until an idea struck his mind:

'Could it be...?'