"The snake… its back!" The solider was panicking and judging from his attitude, this was serious.

"Oh yeah, I heard that too." And not to mention that was why I was here.

The geezer looked at me with a lot of emotion, mostly just plain surprise. "You can understand them?" His jaw was literally hanging.

"Isn't that a bit of an exaggeration? What's so big deal about understanding them?"

"It took me ten years! It took even your grandfather four! And you say, you can understand him fine just from an hour of walking around!" Okay, he was definitely losing his mind. He started to tear his hair.

"Calm down?" I didn't know what else to say.

"Boy, why did you come to this place?" the headmaster turned to me, utterly frustrated.

"To get a core." I didn't have things to hide from this guy.

"Then let's make a deal. You keep this place a secret and I let you kill the snake to get the core?"

"And if I decline?"

"I'll have to kill you, to protect this place." This geezer was serious. He was also acting rather high and mighty all of a sudden.

"I know you're strong, but lately my mood hasn't been that great. I learned more about gramps and frankly, I'm in a very bad mood. So saying stuff like killing me to protect Mutors, when you know, I can fry the whole island if I wanted to, kind of seems like a hypocrisy, doesn't it?" And more importantly, I was freezing, so I really wanted to set things on fire.

The headmaster laughed. "I really hate you bastards. Just go kill that thing and leave. This place was built by your grandfather too, so if you respect him-"

"Yeah, yeah, I know. I don't have any reasons to sell this place out. Besides, this place seems peaceful enough. There's no reason to make them our enemies." Besides, I still had a lot more questions.

If these guys could live here quietly, then there wasn't any point in making them humanity's enemies. And if this small place was possible, then maybe we were doing things wrong, all along?

He snorted. "Right. You!" He glared at the soldier.

"SIR!" the soldier straightened himself.

"Lead him to the volcano and once he secures the core, escort him out."

"Sir!"

I didn't know why, but this whole thing seemed bit like roleplaying than actual reality. Were these people really taking this seriously?

***

Roger Vermillian sat on the throne, massaging his temples.

He had some worries on his mind. The soldiers in the room didn't know how to respond to this. They never saw one of their gods worried like this.

"My lord," the amphibian began. "Was that human, really-"

"He is part Kin, don't worry about it. And he's the son of Julio, I don't think he will do anything rash." 'At least I don't hope so.'

But he knew how the Romswells were. That's why he couldn't rest easy. And more importantly, 'How the hell could that brat be so damn lucky!?'

It had taken him ten years of mindless grinding to be able to speak fluently to Mutors. But then again, it was also probably because he was too busy trying to manage the new academy. Though it was his idea to take over the academy, after just a month or two, he regretted it more than he could ever imagine.

In the end, life wasn't as rosy as he'd hoped it to be.

"But will be truly be able to kill Zamus, when even you-"

Roger stretched his right arm and frowned. "Well, it's not like I tried hard anyway. The place was too hot for my taste, so I kind of just ignored it till now." He laughed hard.

The amphibian grimaced. 'If only you weren't so lazy.' Of course, he didn't say it out loud.

***

With a sigh, I followed the soldier out. He was a lizard man, but unlike Zig, this guy was a lot slimmer. And he looked more like an iguana than a croc anyway.

"So, where's the volcano?"

"Right that way, my lord." He pointed in the west distance. The same way I came from. Meaning, we would have had to climb back up.

Drag.

Now that the soldier was leading me, everybody left us alone. I didn't see Zig or Remia either. I didn't know them, but I was glad they gave me this cloth when I needed it. Otherwise, I'd have been cruising through the streets with just my underwear.

I was still kind of cold though.

I had tons of questions about this place, but I didn't know if asking them was the right thing or not.

But I got one answer of my own. I wasn't part Kin because I had the virus, rather, I was part Kin because I inherited that part. But it was still just a theory. What if that half kin girl was just gramps' side hustle?

But then there was the problem of the virus. How did I even get that?

I did have a few more questions though. Were Mutors and Kin fundamentally the same? We called humans who'd gone mad, Kin, but what about the Mutors?

Just thinking about all this gave me headaches.

I had no idea what all this meant but one thing jumped rapidly on my mind as I stared at the ceiling. It was even darker.

"You know-" My whole body twitched a little as the concept of time dawned upon me. "What time is it?"

"My lord? Are you referring to where the sun is?"

"I guess you can say that?"

"It has set not long ago, my lord."

'Shit.'

My battles for today went out of the drain.

And with more sighs, we both walked to the top. There were boards used to skid down, but walking was the only way up.

For the guard, it was nothing, but for me, this was more terrible than climbing stairs. Who'd have ever thought my worst nemesis would be back with in another form like this?

***

It took roughly ten minutes to reach the place I first woke up. Now that I looked carefully, there actually wasn't anything in that place. It was just a back alley. 'How did I end up there?'

"My lord?"

As I stopped walking, the soldier stopped as well and glanced back.

"Lead on."

But this did get me wondering. Before I passed out, I might have heard the voice of the shadow. 'Did he save me?'

I didn't know and there were no answers anyway.

If I died, he'd have died too, so I guess he did have a solid reason to save me.

After passing that point, things became a bit easier. And I for once, wasn't dying from panting. But this place was relatively warmer.

"The entrance to the volcano is located just around the corner." Meaning, the volcano was underground.

This also meant, not many should have known about this place, and yet people still knew.

"Say, is there more volcanoes on this island?"

"Not to my knowledge, my lord. But this volcano is pretty big and has multiple heads on top of the soil."

That actually made sense. Meaning, I should have never dived down in the first place.

"How long have you been down here? And why weren't you afraid of me? I mean, why isn't anybody afraid of me or hostile towards me for that matter?"

"Because…" He let out a breath. "You smell similar to us and you look like one of our gods."

I guess he did have a point. But he sure evaded my other question.

I sighed and walked along with him. This place still looked like it was daytime.

We reached what seemed like a border of some sort. The walls of this place were much like the black ceiling, meaning this was the literal boundary of this place. And to the right, there was a hole, a very large hole: very similar to the one I dived into.

I had a very bad feeling: again. 'This won't end well.'

But I had to put it to rest anyway, so the two of us, descended to the cave-like opening and kept on going down and down.

'What about the return trip?'

I did not like this.

"If you guys are sentient and can get awareness eventually, how come you're okay with me killing one of your own?"

He didn't show any emotion. I didn't even know if these guys were even capable of showing emotions. "As humans are good and evil, so are we."

That was all he said and he didn't look at me. I guess he did have his point.

It took roughly three minutes for everything to make a U-turn. This place was a lot darker than the outside, but now, it did have light, light in the form of red.

If I was shivering just moments ago, now I was sweating buckets. But I was still shivering. What was going on, was I dying or something?

This place was hot and the walls were literally glowing red.

"The snake should be right up ahead, right?" I wiped off the sweat from my brows.

"Yes, my lord."

"You can drop the lord. And stay here. I can take care of it." I already knew doing everything on my own had limits, but I couldn't ask this soldier to just watch one of his kind get murdered right in front of him.

Moreover, the guy was panting way more than me.

"Very well my lor- Ahem, sir!"

I had no idea if that was better or worse, but I bid him goodbye.

It took two more turns and a little bit more downward climb before I reached the snake. It was literally swimming in magma.

The room was as big as the gym and it was filled with pools of magma with rocks situated here and there for footing. Did someone design this whole place to be like an arena of some sort? What kind of sick monster was he?

And I was swimming in my own sweat but still shivering. My crotch was abnormally cool. Seriously, what was wrong with me?

But more importantly, what was wrong with this snake? Why did it have to eat and swim at the same time?