Chapter 108: 112. Fire Part 2

Mere drops of the ignited liquid lands on the heads of many individuals. These people have their heads set aflame and their skulls melted through within a single second. The napalm-like compound burns at a high temperature and, though not explosive, is quite incendiary. Some of the luckier victims have their brains turn to glass, not feeling a moment of the heat and pain.

Fifty three people within the crowd die with their heads destroyed. Fourteen others die when the concentrated fuel lands on other body parts. The ignited liquid treats thin clothing like tissue paper, burning through it as if it wasn’t even there. These fourteen people receive fatal fourth degree burns on their necks, backs and around their chest area.

Hearts, spines, and even a couple livers are burned straight through. Though several of these fourteen people remained alive for several seconds, even minutes, after being hit, the remainder of their lives was a hell beyond imagination. These individuals are the ones able to at least scream in agony before their demise.

An intense pain like they’ve never felt before makes them destroy their vocal cords, before going into shock and eventually dying.

Several others however are “luckier”. Some are able to react to the unknown burning liquid falling on them by blocking with their arms, basically losing them in the process. For some of them, the liquid lands on their thicker clothes, giving them only third degree burns. The ones wearing some sort of light armor are the luckiest, suffering second degrees burns at most.

There are a few who receive droplets of the burning liquid, resulting in their faces melting, the destroyed skin sliding off their facial muscles.

Ajax sees many people die before his eyes. He looks around while hearing the sound of the burning fire; it sounds angry as if being generated by a powerful industrial furnace. He hears the bodies of the dead hit the ground before he even realizes they’ve died. He smells the smoke, a scent like burnt pork on a charcoal grill.

For a brief moment, the sound of screams is drowned out, the smell becomes unrecognizable. All Ajax feels is his own heartbeat. He thinks about how today started. He had only come here to attend a festival honoring a cultural totem, perhaps rather a cultural bogeyman. He wanted to experience a nice day with Shaula and his new friends.

He was trying to forget about his homeworld. At least for a little while. In the end, he somewhat succeeded. Nothing about today reminded him of anything he had personally experienced while growing up in the suburbs of Briboia.

There has never been a moment in his life on Earth when something like this was likely to happen. It’s not as if going to school might result in him seeing charred corpses or hearing humans screaming as if Lucifer himself were personally torturing them in hell.

He lived quite a blessed childhood upon reflection.

He lived a safe life. On Earth, Shaula was perhaps his closest link to the true suffering that was possible within his country. But, nothing like what even she had experienced compares to the horror he sees before him now. He only wonders why he decided not to stay away from things that didn’t concern him.

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Would he have seen the brutality he sees now if he just minded his own business? He could have left the festival even if Shaula had wanted to stay. She would not have forced him to become more involved in the affairs of this city than he wanted to. He had a safe place to return to in his hotel room.

I was safe on Earth too, wasn’t I? So… why am I…

The sounds of screaming return to Ajax. He sees the area around him burning, people screaming from the fire afflicting their bodies. He has to save the people he can.

He increases his reaction speed, forcing the world around him to slow down before him. He doesn’t like going into this kind of bullet time because it feels more like he's stuck in his own body. He’s tried before to force his body to move faster to make use of his reaction speed, but it makes him expend too much energy.

Once he expends enough energy, he has to absorb it through freezing things around him, draining their heat or energy or whatever. Otherwise, his physical strength and speed start to become like those of an average human, limiting him too much in what he wants to accomplish and what he needs to do.

However, right now, all he has to do is think.

How can he completely extinguish the fire in the area? Can he apply his cold into a field around him? If he freezes the surrounding area to a cold enough temperature, the fire would be unable to remain ignited.

No, no, that won’t work! I’ll end up freezing the people nearby as well.

Is there a faster, more effective way to deal with this than just going around helping people set on fire one by one? Ajax racks his brain trying to think of something, but he’s wasting time.

I… I have the power now. That overflow of strength from absorbing that woman’s energy. What would be a better time to use it than now, for this purpose!?

So, while remaining in his bullet time, Ajax forces his muscles, his tendons, his bones and his reaction speed to ascend to much greater power. Though he would have liked to keep his reaction speed to the level it was already at, he needs to use it without holding back right now in order to save as many people as he can.

He has to carefully snuff out the flames killing the people around him while not harming them. He also has to prevent himself from tripping or falling, and if he needs to move someone to safety, he has to be able to treat their bodies gently. Unless his reaction time is high enough, he worries he will fail at these tasks.

The screaming is not something he will abide by.

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