I'll take you home

Miss Crow carried a gun, and she was good with it. Everyone in the Wild Dog Gang knew that.

But Miss Vanessa had been empty-handed!

Five or six thugs lay on the ground, every one of them armed. The Wild Dog Gang knew full well that even if they all rushed those gun-wielding thugs together, they would suffer heavy losses even if they won.

The members of the Wild Dog Gang exchanged looks, their eyes full of incredulous awe as they looked at Vanessa.

The Mad Caregiver certainly lived up to her name.

Beside them, Dorothea lowered her hand in bewilderment, looking at the revolver she had not even had time to fire.

Everything had happened too fast. Before she could even shoot, no one on the other side was left standing.

She vaguely recalled the rumors. Was Vanessa really a transcendent?

But the Circle of Vitas's transcendents didn't seem to have any ability to enhance their bodies, did they? And there hadn't seemed to be any obvious fluctuations of supernatural power during that fierce fight, either...

Damn it, was she just an ordinary person who was exceptionally good at fighting?

For a moment, Dorothea's expression was complicated.

"Ahem!" Dr. Norman's voice broke the strange atmosphere. Forcing himself to remain calm, he raised his voice. "Anyway, since he died in an accident, I'm temporarily requisitioning this carriage! A few of you, move the bodies in the carriage to the side! Then search it thoroughly for medicine!"

"I'm going to perform surgery now. Don't bother me!"

Dr. Norman turned and walked away, and the people cheered as they cleared a path for him.

Vanessa glanced down at Caldwell's corpse, then looked toward the guards.

She had broken all their arms and legs. When her gaze swept over them, they disregarded the pain and forced their broken limbs to move, wriggling away.

Vanessa stepped forward and planted her foot on their leader, speaking in an even voice. "Now you're useless trash too. All of you put together aren't worth two hundred leo."

"Does that mean you deserve to die too?"

Vanessa looked at them one by one. None dared meet her eyes.

Their leader fell silent for a moment, then closed his eyes. "Kill me."

But Vanessa slowly shook her head. "No."

"I'm not like you."

"I won't take your lives."

"I'll even ask Mr. Norman to treat you-after all the other wounded."

The man's eyes flew open. Even the groaning thugs beside him instantly fell silent, all looking at the girl,

their eyes holding some confusion, some relief, and some... thought.

Vanessa straightened, stopped looking at them, and turned toward the carriage.

The people around her cleared a path of their own accord.

Dorothea's expression was complicated. "You're not killing them? Who knows how many terrible things these scum have done... I don't believe they'll repent."

"Living is what will torment them." Vanessa's voice was utterly flat.

Dorothea froze.

Indeed, these thugs had once relied on their fists and feet to throw their weight around. Now, with all their limbs broken, they could only become the weakest at the very bottom of this cruel world, tasting the malice they had once inflicted on others.

"As for repentance..." Vanessa's gaze swept over the thugs waiting in agony for treatment, like lambs awaiting slaughter. "People never repent unless they experience it themselves."

"Experience it themselves..." Dorothea repeated softly, looking thoughtfully at the thugs forced to wait their turn for treatment.

A thought quietly took root in her heart like a seed.

Vanessa walked toward the carriage alone.

She recognized Winnie's golden hair at a glance. It was as smooth as satin, and she had always envied it.

During their hardest days, Winnie had cut off the long hair she had grown for years and sold it for a few pieces of hard bread, allowing them both to survive that winter.

Vanessa instinctively smiled and reached out to stroke it, only then discovering the dried blood clinging to the long hair.

She climbed onto the carriage and carefully moved the other cold bodies aside, finally revealing her friend's face.

It was the face Vanessa knew so well, but nothing remained on it except frozen terror. Both eyes were wide open, and a ghastly wound marked her chest.

She had put on makeup and dressed with care-perhaps she had been waiting for Allen? Whenever she had a spare moment each day, she always went to the Harbor District to wait for him so they could go home together... Vanessa had even felt a little jealous of that.

The girl silently jumped down from the carriage. A moment later, she returned with a relatively clean damp cloth and carefully wiped Winnie's cold face, little by little.

The makeup and blood were wiped away. Winnie seemed to have returned to the way she had looked as a child, when the two of them had huddled beneath a dilapidated roof, secretly imagining their future.

They had both thought they would die by thirty at the latest, and would laugh as they argued over who would die first.

Both wanted to be the first to die, so they would not have to watch their friend die in their arms.

Children were always that childish.

As she thought about it, Vanessa could not help giggling, yet large, scalding tears fell onto her stained clothes.

She gently closed Winnie's eyes.

A corpse was difficult to carry on one's back. Old Razi had taught her that. One could only carry it over a shoulder or drag it along.

But Vanessa still wanted to carry her friend on her back, just as Winnie had carried her whenever she was hurt.

She found some rope and had Dorothea help tie Winnie to her back.

"This time... it's my turn to carry you." Her voice was so soft it was almost inaudible. "Winnie, let's go home."

With her friend's cold body on her back, the girl climbed down from the carriage, step by step.

The people cleared a path for her of their own accord.

Dorothea followed. Her lips moved, but in the end she said nothing, simply following silently behind the girl.

Vanessa passed the wounded who lay groaning all over the ground. Most had been infected with Mad Rat Disease and would mutate after death. People had been assigned to watch them, and scattered gunshots rang out from time to time.

Some saluted her in awe, some shrank back in fear, and others murmured desperate prayers at her retreating back.

Vanessa walked through the ruins. She raised her head. Not far away stood the Poor Relief Committee's building, in the most prosperous part of New Scandinavia, a place the people of the slums could never visit in their lifetimes.

How strange. They were clearly in the same city, yet seemed to be at opposite ends of the world.

This city was so prosperous, yet so rotten; so peaceful, yet so chaotic.

The Harbor District was strewn with corpses and filled with cries of anguish, while in the Mist Harbor District, just a wall away, ice cream shops were advertising Sunday discounts.

As Vanessa walked, she suddenly stopped.

A short distance ahead stood the cordon leading to the Mist Harbor District. She merely gave the barbed wire and uniformed figures symbolizing "safety" a calm glance before turning without hesitation and walking in another direction.

"Hey! Vanessa!" Dorothea caught up from behind and called, "Where are you going?!"

Vanessa looked back, her face expressionless. "To save people."