---BBBOOOOOOOOMMM---

---BOOOOOOOOOOMMM---

Zeel was blasted away and the village was instantly alight with flames and destruction…

Chaos had descended, and for a split second, Zeel's mind could foresee the face of every life lost in the missile attack…

They were terrified…

Angry…

Anxious…

And some happy?

It was instantly obvious that someone, or some organization, had targeted the village with missiles, and even as he drifted through the air, Zeel knew this would not be the end of it…

Actually, there was never an end…

There was always another battle to be fought, and this Universe, just like all others, would be fighting that battle endlessly…

Floating through the air as the flames bathed his body, Zeel was somewhat grateful for the untimely, unfortunate reminder…

The reminder that he would never want to be these people – dying without knowing why…

Their lives snuffed out in an instant, too quick for their minds to even process what was happening…

Fathers and Mothers did not even get to hug their children a final time, and honestly, Zeel found that a bit sad since he couldn't recall a time when his Parents ever truly hugged him…

Sure, his mother hugged him once out of pity, but back then, he couldn't quantify the emotions involved, much less feel it…

The shockwave washed over Zeel's body and rendered him unconscious...

---------------------------

TEN MINUTES LATER

Zeel awakened leaning next to the wall of a semi-collapsed building…

A normal person would panic in such a situation, but the first thing Zeel did when he awakened was to evaluate the state of his body…

Of course, everywhere was hurting, from his head to his toes, so it was difficult to tell what to treat first since everything could kill him the next instant…

Most of his body was scorched with 3rd Degree burns that would take hours to recover from, but with the will of a demon, Zeel managed to perform some forceful healing…

For the next ten minutes, Zeel located all the lacerations on his body, and, regardless of severity, he pinched his skin together, holding it in place for five minutes…

Just enough time for the wound to heal with his natural regeneration…

For areas like his left shoulder, which was missing a chunk of flesh, Zeel dug into the skin from his leg and ripped some of it away, placing the skin against his shoulder…

Again, five minutes later, the wound on his shoulder had somewhat healed…

Of course, Zeel could only perform such reckless actions because Homo-Superior's flesh could assimilate to any part of their body…

That was actually the secret to Homo-Superior regeneration – taking resources from intact places to distribute to severely injured places…

However, this could only be done in the absence of energy to fuel regeneration, and without the nanites, that was exactly what Zeel lacked the most – energy!

With the most severe wounds taken care of, there was only one injury left unchecked…

Zeel relaxed his back against the wall, and poked the metal pipe that jutted through his Cyber-Mitodomen – the equivalent of a human abdomen…

"Fuck!" Zeel cursed, closing his eyes to concentrate on the loud wails and footsteps scurrying around all the wreckage…

From the organized temp of the steps, Zeel could guess this was not the villagers…

After all, who would be so organized after they just lost everything?

With no better options, Zeel pushed himself a bit off the way, balancing the metal pipe equally through the opening of the womb and the exit of the womb…

When he was comfortable with the balance ratio, Zeel reached behind his back and snapped the metal pipe, freeing himself from the wall…

Zeel hopped to his feet and used his hands to bend both ends of the metal pipe around his waist, securing the metal pipe in place…

With the toxicity of his blood, Zeel knew the metal pipe would dissolve inside his body as he healed, so all he had to do was ensure the metal pipe remained stable until then…

As long as the pipe did no more damage, then it might even aid in his recovery…

Finally free from the wall, Zeel glanced around, taking in the sights of the destroyed village…

Most of the village was destroyed, and even though Zeel's senses were not what they used to be, he could still hear the pleadings of those buried beneath the rubble…

Surely, they would not live, because he was not going to help them, and he was sure nobody would arrive to help them in time…

"Oh well…" Zeel shrugged "Too bad for them…"

Zeel started walking along the walls thick with smoke, trying his best to obscure himself from all views including satellite if it was trained on this village…

As he walked, Zeel smelt the usually sickening scent of boiling human remains – it smelled a lot like cooked Hawaiian Pigs…

The popping sound of fat cooking almost blended with the loud gunshots assaulting certain parts of the village…

The moment he woke up, Zeel knew that the survivors were being gunned down – brutally and efficiently so – but, it was until now he realized how many gunmen there were…

Probably dozens, but definitely less than a hundred…

With his hearing weakened, Zeel found it hard to distinguish between individual gunshots, but he could tell there was a lot… like – a lot a lot…

Zeel was forced to duck his head a couple of times to avoid ricocheting bullets…

The popping sound of gunshots was so loud that Zeel almost missed the distinct sound of footsteps that accompanied a possible ambush…

He pressed his body tightly against the wall, taking silent, shallow steps as he approached the wall's vertex…

It was only just before he was about to poke his head from the corner did Zeel realize his senses were not tricking him…

"[Shallow Time-Zone] …" Zeel whispered, stretching a single second into five…

Zeel pushed himself into the open, snatching the gun from a militant waiting in ambush…

Zeel redirected the gun to point up and away from himself, then he grabbed the militant with a vice-like grip, almost popping the militant's head between his fingers…

Sadly, Zeel's strength had not recovered enough to perform such an action as yet…

With all the strength he could muster, Zeel swept the Militant off his feet, slamming his head into the ground with a sickening pop…

Like a watermelon hit by a sledgehammer, the Militant's skull caved in and splattered all over the place; yet, somehow, Zeel remained unsoiled…

Zeel deactivated his Time-Zone and everything return to normal, minus one additional person dead, of course…

[Warp]

The air twisted and Zeel disappeared from the ground, landing on a nearby roof with the gun clutched in his hands…

Guns were not the best weapon, but there weren't better options available at the moment…

His first instinct was to kill, then relocate, and finally, move to higher ground in search of more targets…

And Zeel made it just in time…

The moment he warped away, he watched from the roof as several bullets impacted his previous location…

He would have returned fire immediately, but that would mean notifying however many militants there were of his position…

Using his peak human leg strength, Zeel leaped from rooftop to rooftop, avoiding as much of the violence as he could…

He didn't care about the people being slaughtered below, but suddenly, he stopped…

'Maybe I should?' Zeel thought 'Maybe I should care about someone besides myself for this once…'

Very briefly, his mind flickered to Alice and what she would do in this situation – obviously, she would save them…

Alice was kind so she would put her life on the line to save the innocents…

But Zeel was not Alice, but maybe… just maybe… he could be somewhere between?

"Maybe, I can help them without putting myself in danger?" Zeel muttered, glancing at the guns in his hands for the first time…

Closing his eyes, Zeel focused Divine Energy into his eyes, rousing his Draconic Eyes from slumber…

The moment his eyes reopened, no cloud of smoke nor rubble of debris could withstand Zeel's penetrative stare…

Draconic Eyes allowed him to see every biological entity weaker than himself…

---POP---

---POP---

---POP---

---POP---

---POP---

Zeel fired the gun, and each bullet found its way to a location of maximum damage…

Not every target was killed since the bullets could not penetrate through walls, but the ricochet at least caused some damage to the hidden Militants…

Zeel leaped from roof to roof and fired simultaneously, denying all Militants from finding his true position…

Of course, he had a very clear goal in mind…

Each leap, Zeel would check the lights on Stefan's phone, searching for the area that would allow some cell reception…

Right now, he was suffering from a lack of information, so Zeel was looking to rectify that… one had to know that a Homo-Superior with access to any Cyber-Network would become unstoppable…

Without the Cyber-lines in his arms, Zeel's lethality had downgraded somewhat, but he would still be an extremely troublesome enemy with access to the Internet…

Zeel's mind was so occupied with planning that he misstepped, and found himself falling through the roof of a semi-destroyed house…