Khan walked back to the entrance of the mines, carrying the corpse of the Tainted rat on his shoulder. He even continued to wield his broken shovel. He didn't want to separate himself from his weapon so soon.
The miners screamed in panic when they saw his figure. The sight of the giant rat made them cling to the walls and punch the metal doors. They even resumed begging the soldiers to let them go.
"Shut up!" Khan shouted while lifting the rat from its tail. "It's dead. I killed it."
"Move that thing away from me!"
"He will infect all of us!"
"Forgive us! We were only afraid!"
Khan didn't obtain the reaction that he desired. He didn't want cheers from those people, but they didn't remain silent either.
"Can you all shut up so I can talk with the soldiers?" Khan asked, but the miners continued to complain.
Their fear for the Tainted creature made their minds go crazy. They didn't want to risk being infected, but they had nowhere to run.
'The risk of getting infected by a dead Tainted animal is almost nonexistent,' Khan sighed in his mind. 'They would need to eat its raw meat to find some leftovers of the Nak's mana.'
"Shut the hell up, or I throw this animal among you!" Khan shouted again while waving the dead rat through the room.
His actions finally managed to create some silence. Khan used that chance to reach the entrance and slam his hands on the tough metal door.
"We can't open the doors until we secure the area," The soldier on the other side replied in an annoyed tone.
"I killed the Tainted rat," Khan promptly exclaimed. "It's here with me. You can peek if you want."
"Nice try," The soldier replied. "Wait until the enhanced troops arrive. You can show that beast to them."
'Damned Global Army,' Khan cursed in his mind. 'We are in the Slums. The enhanced troops will need an entire day to receive the news of this situation.'
The Global Army kept its best soldiers near the center of the city. It never deployed specialized troops in the Slums unless a tragedy happened. A simple Tainted animal wasn't enough to make Khan's situation a priority.
'Though, I would like to see enhanced soldiers in action,' Khan wondered. 'Dad rarely uses his power in the Slums, so I could never understand what's the difference between them and normal human beings.'
Khan heaved a helpless sigh before sitting behind the entrance. The Global Army would probably force him to wait a couple of days inside the mines, so he had to save as much energy as possible.
The miners didn't have any food with them, but that wasn't a problem. The citizens of the Slums could easily go a day or two without eating. The water was a problem, but Khan could use his dead friend to take a few bottles from the workers.
'I feel so tired already!' Khan cursed again before relaxing a bit. 'I guess I should feel lucky that I found a mana core inside the crater. Well, everyone here is lucky that I'm the one who found it.'
Killing a Tainted rat had been hard enough. Khan didn't dare to imagine if the mana core were to infect one of the workers. Nak's mana was usually toxic for humans, but it was enough for one of them to survive and fall prey to the mutations to cause a mess inside the mines.
'I need to be more careful from now on,' Khan thought while closing his eyes to take a nap. 'I can't allow myself to die so soon. My last ten years of nightmares would have been pointless otherwise.'
As Khan's consciousness slipped away, the images of the Second Impact reappeared in his mind. He dreamt about that tragic day again. His nightmare didn't spare him even in his naps.
Still, a familiar voice woke Khan up from his nightmare. He suddenly realized that someone was arguing with the soldiers on the other side of the doors. The metal didn't make him fail to recognize his father's voice.
"Open this door immediately, you dumb soldier," Bret shouted. "My kid has already survived an infection. You have no reason to keep him here."
"The regulations in the eventuality of a leak of Nak's mana are clear," The soldier replied. "No one gets out until the enhanced troops complete a thorough inspection."
"I know what the damned regulations say," Bret complained. "I wrote them! There is my signature on those papers! They clearly state that humans capable of resisting the infection can go home."
"Sure, and I'm Princess Edna's fiancée," The soldier mocked. "Go away before I force you to leave."
Khan had straightened his position during that conversation. His family had to throw away its last name after moving into the Slums. Bret couldn't even use it to reveal his true identity.
"Dad!" Khan shouted to interrupt that discussion. "It's fine. I killed the Tainted rat. We are safe."
A moment of silence followed his words. Both the solider and Bret didn't know what to reply to that line.
"Son, is that you?" Bret asked.
"Yeah, in the flesh," Khan quickly replied.
"How did you even kill a Tainted animal?" Bret questioned him.
"I slammed my shovel on its head really hard," Khan explained briefly. "I repeated the process until it stopped moving."
Bret knew his son better than anyone else in the world. The Slums had been tough on Khan, and his past as Ylaco's citizen had always prevented him from establishing friendships with other kids.
Khan also knew how dangerous Tainted animals were. He wouldn't decide to fight one of them unless he had no other choice.
Yet, Khan was a kid among grown-up men and women, and Bret found it strange that his son had been in a situation when he could kill the beast.
"How did you end up fighting the Tainted animal?" Bret asked in a cold voice.
Khan recognized that tone, and he glanced at the miners behind him. They all wore scared expressions, but they couldn't imagine what was about to happen. They had never seen how scary his father could be.
"I found it," Khan lied, but his father could sense from his tone that he was hiding the truth.
"I will open the doors now," Bret continued in his cold voice. "Move away from the entrance."
Khan quickly stepped back while a series of complaints from the soldiers reached his ears. However, choking noises soon seeped through the doors, and a loud bang eventually resounded through the whole mine.
The miners couldn't understand what had happened. The doors had caved in. It seemed that a massive hammer had slammed on their surface and had bent their metal.
A second bang echoed through the mines, and the doors bent further. The screams of the soldiers accompanied that sound, and Khan could only make out the word "warrior" among that noise.
When the third bang rang through the mines, the metal doors opened, and the stench of booze filled the mines. The miners could see a short man with long black hair standing in front of the entrance and moving his black eyes among the group.
"Dad, the soldiers will raid our house again now," Khan complained while scratching his head.
Bret had been the head of the scientific division of the Global Army. He knew how to use the mana, and he had also caused a few problems due to his power.
"Who cares," Bret shouted. "We only have empty bottles anyway. Let them-!"
Bret interrupted his line when he noticed the blood on Khan's torn pullover. He quickly inspected his chest and shoulder, and he breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that his son was in perfect shape.
"I told you that I'm fine," Khan said while pointing at his pocket with his eyes.
Bret understood that secret gesture and looked at his pocket. Khan drew the mana core enough to let his father see what it was before putting it back.
"You are fine indeed," Bret replied while arching his eyebrows. "We should go home immediately. We need to clean before the soldiers come."
Khan performed a slight nod before following his father outside of the mines. A soldier was lying on the ground near the entrance. He wanted to complain when he saw the duo leaving, but Bret grabbed the rat and threw it toward him.
The soldier started to scream, and all the other members of the army began to panic. Khan and Bret could easily leave the area while that mess unfolded.
"Couldn't we gain something from the Tainted animal?" Khan asked once the duo left the crowded areas. "I thought you were out of booze."
"A true drunkard is always out of booze," Bret replied while exploding in a loud laugh. "On a serious note, you have been lucky enough to find a pure Nak's mana core, and I bet you can't wait to test it out. I don't think alcohol can make my hands tremble, but I don't want to risk anything when performing the transplant on my kid."
