Calamity Upon This World

It had now been around 30 minutes after his conversation with the village chief, and at the end of his talk, he had received a list containing the names of all of Maya's friends as well as the people the village head suspected to have been responsible for Maya's disappearance.

To start his investigation, he decided to first ask the adults before he looked for Maya's friends.

And his first target was a man named Mox, who was a childhood friend of the village chief, whose name he learned to be Reat.

Apparently, Mox and Reat were childhood friends until they had a falling out around a decade ago.

Right now, William was in front of a house where, according to the list, the man most likely responsible for Maya's disappearance resided.

William didn't knock on the door this time and instead used [Stealth] to erase his presence and [Shadow Step] to sneak inside.

It was pretty dark inside, which was very weird considering it was still daytime.

But thanks to Williams's ability to sense shadows that he gained from his second ascension, he didn't have trouble seeing in the dark.

However, even after looking around for a few minutes, he couldn't find anybody, which definitely weirded him out.

According to what he had been told, Mox and his wife had no child of their own due to his infertility, and Reat suspected that Mox was jealous of his status as the village chief as well as his having a child.

Mox's house was untidy and quite disorganised, almost as if the owners had left in a hurry. The more William learned about the man named Mox, the more suspicious he got, but William knew better than to jump to conclusions.

With his newfound knowledge of Mox's disappearance and suspicion, William stepped out, still maintaining his [Stealth] active, as he made his way towards the second and last target before he moved to the children.

**

~Slap~

A loud slapping sound reverberated through the house as a boy seemingly no older than 12 was slapped and fell to the ground.

~Thud~

This boy was Billy Morok, and the person who had slapped him was his father Dilly Morok.

Billy's whole body ached from his fall and when he tried to get up.

~Stomp~

His father, Dilly, stomped on him once again, pushing him back down.

"Ahh!" Billy groaned in pain.

Hearing his sons groan, Dilly spat on him, as he said.

"I can't believe such a disgusting thing has the same blood as me."

For a normal child, such a statement from their own father would've broken them.

But for Billy, this was practically a daily occurrence, so he was already past the point of letting such a statement affect him.

The reason behind why his father hated him so much, you ask?

Well, the reason was jealousy. Seeing Reats daughter Maya not just awaken but awaken with a Tier II aspect and be praised by everyone in the village enraged him, as he was aiming for the position of village chief.

When Billy was born, his mother ended up dying at his birth, which resulted in Billy not having the best relationship with his father.

While yes, he would still occasionally get taunted and be called a demon who killed his own mother, it never devolved into physical abuse.

That is, until last year, when his already bad life went from bad to worse.

All because some girl he didn't even know was more talented than him.

At first, Billy hated Maya for being the reason why his life was so shit; however, he quickly came to realise that the one to blame behind his shitty life wasn't some girl he didn't know but rather his horrible father.

If possible, Billy wanted to fight back and beat his father up, but he couldn't. He had tried once, and it had ended horribly for him due to the difference in height and weight.

While Billy hated this, he had already given up and decided to just wait until he was older.

However, it all changed once news of Maya's disappearance was made public a few days ago, causing everyone in the village to grow uneasy and be on guard.

Billy was a bit suspicious about the whole thing, despite his young age and lack of talent for magic. He was many things, but an idiot wasn't one of them.

After a lot of pestering, his father finally gave in and told him about how he had hired a gang of bandits to kidnap Maya and sell her to a slave market for profits.

That's right, slave markets still existed, while it was a capital offence to buy or sell a slave, but since when has something like that stopped the truly disgusting bastards with more money than they know what to do with?

And as long as there's demand, supply will always find a way to exist.

When Billy came to learn of this, he realised that his father, whom he always assumed to be a terrible father, was also a horrible human.

His hatred and disgust for his father had reached a new boiling point, to the point that he was repulsed by even the idea of having the blood of such a man run through his veins.

But he was too weak and powerless to do anything; even if he told anyone about this, they wouldn't believe him, thinking that he was just playing a prank.

So in the end, all he could do was plead with his father in the hopes of reigniting any traces of sympathy still left within him. What was the result you ask?

His current brutal beatdown, Billy was already bleeding from his mouth and having trouble breathing, but his father didn't care; he truly felt as if he were about to die today.

That is, until something shocking happened as the whole house grew dark. Billy and Dilly were stunned to see the change in their surroundings, but before any of them could adapt to the changes, a thick, dark tendril manifested out of Dilly's shadow and hit him at the back of his neck, knocking him out almost instantly.

By this point, Billy was too horrified to even speak, as the scene was straight out of a horror movie, but before he could pass out, a well-dressed, masked man materialised out of the shadows.