Starting With The Sefirah Castle In The Anime World-Chapter 116 - : The Problem of Human Nature

After the special forces completed the clearing operation, the regular officers from the Metropolitan Police Department moved in to investigate the back mountain.

Naturally, Inspector Megure was among them.

"..."

Even with his years of experience on the force, the scene before him left him speechless.

He had seen many gruesome crime scenes throughout his career.

But this... this was different.

Seeing the lifeless bodies of middle-aged victims was already tragic enough.

But now, several of those corpses belonged to children.

The horror of that realization made his stomach churn.

Megure lowered the brim of his hat.

"It looks like things on this island are far more complicated than I thought."

He had initially assumed that once the drug dealers were subdued, the remaining work would simply involve collecting evidence related to drug production.

Confiscating the drugs and dismantling the equipment should've been the straightforward next step.

But he'd underestimated the scale of the crime.

What lay before him wasn't just about illegal drugs.

They were dealing with a massacre, dozens of innocent lives, snuffed out in the name of experimentation.

He approached one of the lab tables and examined the sheets of paper pinned to its surface.

Chemical formulas and data were scrawled across the pages.

The cold, clinical precision of the text contrasted with the brutality of the acts committed here.

There were no names listed, only numerical designations.

But the patterns clearly referred to test subjects.

Human subjects.

Megure clenched his teeth so hard his jaw ached.

He was a police officer, he'd seen his fair share of human cruelty.

But this crossed into something else entirely.

Even so, he knew he couldn't let his emotions cloud his judgment.

Taking a deep breath, he pulled out his phone and dialed his superior.

The line connected after a few seconds.

"Superintendent Matsumoto, sir. The clearing operation has been completed."

"Good work, Megure," came Matsumoto Kiyonaga's voice from the other end.

Megure hesitated before continuing. "Sir... the back mountain was indeed a drug dealer's base. We've confirmed it was being used as a drug manufacturing lab."

"..."

The brief pause from Matsumoto told Megure that his superior was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"There's more, isn't there?" Matsumoto asked, his voice low.

"Yes."

Megure steeled himself.

"In the basement of the drug lab... we discovered a hidden facility."

"There were dozens of bodies, sir. Men, women... the elderly... even children."

"We're certain the drug dealers were using living people to test new drug formulas."

"What!?"

Matsumoto Kiyonaga's voice shot through the phone like a bullet.

Live human experiments?

On that scale?

The implications made his mind reel.

Drug dealers had always treated drug trafficking as a profit-driven enterprise.

But now, it seemed they'd crossed a line, moving from distribution into experimentation.

The goal? Developing new drugs at the cost of innocent lives.

Who the hell gave them the audacity to try something like this?

Matsumoto's grip tightened around the receiver.

This wasn't something they could quietly sweep under the rug.

The Metropolitan Police Department had already mobilized significant resources for the raid. The public would be expecting answers.

And, more worryingly, if the data from these experiments had already been shared with other drug syndicates...

The consequences could be catastrophic.

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"Megure, secure the scene," Matsumoto ordered, his voice sharp.

"I need a full, detailed report as soon as possible."

"Understood, sir."

The line went dead.

Megure lowered the phone and looked around the lab.

The stench of death clung to the air.

The corpses hadn't fully decayed yet, but their contorted expressions and visible wounds told the story of their suffering.

"These victims..." he muttered to himself.

"They were locals. People from Tsukikage Island."

He knew what had to be done.

Identifying each victim, one by one, was going to be a painstaking process.

But it was the only way to bring closure to the families left behind and to build an airtight case against those responsible.

He sighed and rubbed his temples.

Today was supposed to be his day off.

He'd planned to spend the weekend relaxing at home with his wife.

But now...

He'd be lucky to make it home before next week.

"Looks like I'll need to apologize to her later," he muttered, forcing himself to focus.

---

After resting for a while, the girls at the hot spring hotel seemed to be in slightly better condition.

Unfortunately, none of them had much of an appetite left after what they'd witnessed.

"Ugh... I feel awful..."

Chika groaned. After vomiting so many times, even her stomach acid was gone.

Her limbs felt weak, and she could only lean against Ren for support.

Being close to him was the only thing keeping her fear and nausea at bay.

Ren let out a quiet sigh.

He gently patted her back, just as he'd done earlier, hoping it would help ease her discomfort.

"This is why I said some things aren't meant for you to see."

"Ugh... yeah... I definitely get that now."

Chika finally understood how out of her depth she'd been.

It wasn't about gender or age.

There are just some scenes that the human mind isn't built to process.

Even now, when she closed her eyes, the images of those mangled corpses haunted her.

The bodies of those children, especially, were burned into her memory.

"What kind of torture did those kids go through?" she whispered, her voice trembling.

Ren gently tapped her forehead with his knuckles.

"Don't dwell on that," he said softly.

"Trying to imagine what those kids experienced without any concrete information will only drag you into endless mental exhaustion."

"If you obsess over it too much... you might end up with lasting psychological damage."

Chika rubbed her forehead where he'd tapped her and reluctantly abandoned the thought.

"Okay... so what should we focus on instead?"

The question seemed to resonate with everyone else.

The others, who had been silently processing the horror they'd seen, turned their attention toward Amamiya Ren.

"What we should be focusing on," he said, "is how to hold on to our humanity."

"Humanity?" Chika repeated, confused.

"Wait... are you saying the drug dealers lost their humanity?"

"Exactly," Ren replied, nodding.

He turned to look at Shinomiya Kaguya.

"Shinomiya-san, remember what I said to you earlier?"

Kaguya's expression shifted as the memory surfaced.

"You said... that once someone gains power, they'll start pushing past the limits of their humanity without even realizing it."

"That's right," Ren confirmed.

She lowered her gaze.

It hadn't even been that long since she'd obtained the Ice-Ice Fruit and her first instinct had been to think about how it could help her escape the constraints of her family.

"Humanity isn't just about morals or kindness," Ren continued.

"It's about empathy."

"Once someone loses the ability to empathize with others, they stop being human."

"Without empathy, there's nothing left but instinct, desire, and a hunger for more power."

The room grew heavy with silence again.

"But... if they lose their humanity, aren't they still technically human?" Ran asked hesitantly.

Ren shook his head.

"No."

"Someone who discards their humanity in pursuit of power isn't human anymore."

"They're just monsters that happen to look like people."

The words sent chills through everyone present.

Monsters.

The drug dealers they had seen earlier fit that description perfectly.

They had looked like ordinary people but their actions had proven how little of their humanity remained.

Ren's gaze sharpened.

"This isn't just a philosophical debate," he said.

"It's directly tied to the path I'm walking."

"The path of Sequence... is the path of human nature."

Even gods, after all, needed an anchor to hold on to their humanity.

Sequence 0 wasn't the end.

It was simply the stage where one became powerful enough to bear the responsibility of retaining their humanity, no matter the temptation.

Because once someone became consumed by their powers...

They stopped being the master of their abilities.

And became the slave of the power itself.

***

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