After seeing the two of them leave, Dave lowered his gaze to his palm and began counting the money Zavi had just given him. The amount left him stunned: one hundred and ten Zen.
He froze. That money was equal to a full month of his salary, even though he had not worked a full month and had asked for an advance.
Dave frowned, trying to understand why Zavi would give him that much. The more he tried to find an answer, the more confused he became.
He slipped the money into his wallet, then put it into the pocket of his coat. When he was about to stand, he turned to the right and saw Han resting his head on the table, asleep in a pitiful condition.
The wound on Han's arm was still bleeding, fresh drops falling slowly to the shop floor and forming a small puddle right in front of Dave's own feet.
"Hey, what's wrong?" Dave shook Han's body in a panic. But Han did not respond at all.
Dave caught the faint sound of dripping, slow but constant. He looked down, seeing the small puddle beneath Han's scratched brown shoes.
"Has he been holding that pain all this time?" Dave whispered in disbelief, then took off his coat and checked its back side.
He saw the bloodstain on his brown coat still dripping onto the shop floor, making him panic instantly. He was afraid the shop owner, who happened to be there, would get angry.
Panicking, Dave took out his wallet again, pulled out two bills, one being ten Zen, and placed them on the table, weighed down by an empty glass.
He immediately put the brown coat on Han, lifted Han's trembling body onto his shoulder, and carried him outside to find a doctor, even though the wind was freezing and the rain was growing heavier.
Meanwhile, a hundred meters from the border between the Chapena and Tezny districts, the two of them found a blue tent and stepped inside to shelter from the terrible weather.
They planned to continue walking to the city square, but the rocky road turned slick from the rain, blocking their way. They had to move carefully to avoid slipping.
Five minutes later, Zavi grew more anxious as the sky darkened. "Come on, we need to move!" he shouted with panic rising in his voice.
But Carlz refused to leave the tent.
"You go first. I'll catch up... Don't worry," Carlz answered calmly while wiping his glasses with a damp cloth.
Zavi's eyes widened. He was worried for his mother at the city square after hearing the terrifying information Carlz had told him at the shop a half hour ago.
"Hey, damn it..." Zavi snapped, grabbing Carlz's shirt collar tightly. "If you hadn't told me about that..."
The glasses fell...
Before he could finish, Carlz swatted his hand away and reached for his glasses again. He put them on and smirked faintly. "I know, Zavi. Should I tell someone about this? Ren? Or your little sister?"
Zavi instinctively stepped back twice. His face darkened at the subtle threat. Two things flashed in his mind about Carlz: the moment he saved that teenage boy from the beating that was clearly no ordinary incident, and how Carlz concluded that someone had controlled the people who attacked the boy.
And Carlz had been following him since he stepped out of his house, helping him, whether intentionally or not, by drawing attention to himself and the crowd, both those involved and those not, during the boy's torture. The only person who truly seemed to see Zavi clearly back then was a man wearing a bowler hat.
After learning about Carlz's supernatural ability, a Second Level Magician who could transform into anyone he wanted with a single condition, which required him to take a part of the target's body, everything began to make sense.
When Zavi first heard that directly from Carlz, he did not immediately believe it. He wondered where and when Carlz got a piece of Dave's body, but after thinking far ahead, he understood.
Carlz was not just a disguiser. He had near light-speed movement at the second level, fast enough to steal a single strand of Dave's hair without Dave ever noticing anything.
And within four months, Carlz could create avatars three times, each appearing briefly to take his place should his main body die.
Aside from that, his terrifying second-level ability, "Magician," Mirage Exceed, was hidden within his glasses and coat. The illusion activated automatically whenever he wore the glasses, and became passive when he wore only the coat.
Carlz had only revealed part of his ability to Zavi, though the rest of his team surely already knew all about it.
After recalling Carlz's words, Zavi finally understood. In this world, he was only borrowing someone else's body, yet he treated a foreign family as if they were his own.
He knew that back on Earth, he never felt comfortable around his real family. But what was wrong with accepting his new family in this world as his true one?
Reflecting...
Zavi turned away and stepped forward. He stood beneath the tent's flap, lifted his head, and let the pouring rain cover his gloomy, useless expression.
"Damn it..." he muttered softly.
Thunder raged nonstop, like something pressing down from the sky. The wind grew fiercer by the second. Objects around them were blown away, window glass rattled violently, and the metal sheets above them shook with an ear-piercing shriek.
Carlz glanced at Zavi. His eyes behind the glasses began to glow. He pressed the glasses and stepped toward him to convey something important.
"Come here. I have something important to tell you." Carlz lifted his index finger and gave a faint smile.
Zavi turned around. Rainwater on his face dripped slowly, soaking the once-dry ground with each fall. He stared at Carlz emptily. They locked eyes for a moment before Zavi stepped closer.
He stopped just inches from Carlz. Carlz leaned in slightly and whispered something into Zavi's ear, a sentence that erased his gloomy expression instantly like a sheet of paper consumed by fire.
"What...!?" Zavi recoiled. He never expected Carlz to say that.
He fell silent. His thoughts raced, weighing possibilities and consequences. After ensuring everything was still within acceptable limits, he finally nodded. He agreed, and prepared to follow Carlz's instructions from this moment onward, with two hours as the limit.
Time was running out. They could not wait for the rain to stop, so they left the tent.
Ten minutes later, they arrived at the city square after overcoming several obstacles: the slippery streets, the freezing wind, and the pounding rain that hit their bodies and blocked their vision along the way.
"We made it right on time," Carlz said with a short bow. He raised his head slightly and looked at Zavi beside him.
"What time is it?" he asked, breathing heavily.
"Seventeen oh five." Zavi handed him his watch and looked around the square, now restored after the earlier incident.
"I see." Carlz touched his chin with his left hand, staring ahead as he returned the watch.
Zavi accepted it gladly and slipped it back into his pocket.
"So... are we going to stand here or..."
Before he could finish, Carlz cut him off.
"No need to wait. We will do it exactly as I told you earlier."