Man With Many Faces - Volume 1

A river that flowed further and further, stretching into an unknown distance, known as the Serpent River. It was connected to a waterfall that flowed down and stretched outwards. It was one of the places used for sea products such as fish, crabs, or other seafood. People of the Sunflower village used to utilize the Serpent River in order to stock up on food when the fields did not produce enough grain.

However, now the entire Sunflower village went up in flames, all of its occupants butchered by the knights obsessed with exterminating demons to the point that they see no difference between innocent or guilty. This resulted in a complete massacre with almost no survivors. Almost none.

A certain fisherman, covered completely in rags, even the face except for the eyes was bandaged up, making the person resemble a mummy. This somebody preferred to avoid the human village and would mostly spend time on a float in order to gather fish.

As long as fisherman did not come into contact with humans it was all fine. Fisherman could just live out a meaningless and pointless existence, it was a fact fisherman already accepted.

One day, while fishing, fisherman saw flames in the distance and the smell of corpses. Fisherman paid it no heed, preferring instead to use his net to catch some fish from the river.

But instead of catching a fish like fisherman expected, the catch was a child of eight years of age.

He was barely alive; apparently the fisherman’s net managed to catch the child by his leg and thus pulled him out of water.

After resuscitating the child, the fisherman took the unconscious boy’s body to the hut the fisherman lived in.

The boy’s body was covered in countless injuries and if he wasn’t tended to quickly, fisherman feared that the boy would die.

Two knife wounds and many wounds from arrows. Each one had to be stopped from bleeding immediately.

Luckily, the fisherman had the skills for just that. Using all the medicine fisherman could find, the wounds were disinfected and sealed. Fisherman even transfused blood into the child using fisherman’s own blood with water magic.

But the child will bear those scars for the rest of his life. There was nothing that could be done about it.

“To think I would use my blood to preserve a life of a human, if it was in the past I would have found it absurd.”

Upon further examination, fisherman found that boy had damaged three out of his seven mana points. Mana points are locations within a living being’s body that produces mana, mortals on average have seven, such was the case for this boy, and some might have more.

Mana points allow the usage of mana, thus magic. If one has seven mana points then one could use six of them in order to cast magic, but one is used in order to stabilize the body and keep it functional.

If one damages mana points, the ability to use magic is affected. This boy had damaged three of his mana points, and mana point cannot be healed. He will never reach his true potential. Fisherman suspected that it wouldn’t be unusual that if he does indeed survive, he might develop some kind of a mana disorder.

His body is destabilized, with so much damage and blood loss, and loss of three of his seven mana points.

“Strange, his body looks human, but for some reason I feel that is not quite the case.” The fisherman put one hand upon child’s forehead, using mana to examine child’s body.

Fisherman found the answer.

The boy is a demon, but his powers are not present, even his horn is sealed away within his head. It seems that the one who did this to the boy wanted the boy to be able to live among humans without fearing exposure of his true self. Thus his demonic heritage was sealed away.

But more importantly, the child was a crow type demon.

As the child kept sleeping, the fisherman proceeded to use mana in order to heal the child as he slept, pouring healing mana into the child’s forehead, alleviating the pain even if just a little.

After fisherman made sure to do everything possible to alleviate child’s pain, fisherman proceeded to stand up.

Looking behind at the child, fisherman removed bandages from her face.

Under the moon, the face of a beauty could be seen, but her forehead had unusual scar, almost as if two protrusions were hacked off from it.

“Seed of crow demon. I knew it, you are his son. Sleep well child, sleep well.” The woman looked at the child with eyes filled tears.

This was the son of the man who she once loved, but he was taken from her. That man disappeared in this human world. She thought that she would not see anything left behind him, but she now somehow saved his son.

Her heart felt somewhat conflicted, but she knew that saving the boy’s life was the right choice.