"Was it really worth it? Since then, have you ever had anything other than hatred in your heart?" Ikki asked back after a long moment of silence.
The moment that the kid heard this, his face filled with rage as he looked at Ikki and said, "What do you know about me?"
With a sigh, Ikki said, "I know more than you think. I understand how you feel since my parents were killed as well, but I never lost my way like you."
The heroes themselves were surprised to hear this.
After all, most of them didnât actually know Ikkiâs background.
Even if they were close to him, it wasnât as if they had ever asked him about this.
It wasnât that they didnât want to ask, it was more that they knew that it was a taboo topic for him.
Among the heroes, there were a few that did know because they had found out through various ways. But they had always kept it a secret since Ikki didnât want to talk about it.
"You think that you can compare to me?" The kid said in a voice that seemed to be filled with hatred.
He had never spoken like this before, but now it seemed like he specifically hated him. It was almost as if there was some kind of specific grudge that developed between him and Ikki.
Ikki just calmly said, "My parents were murdered right in front of me, so I know the pain more than you."
"You!" The kid screamed in rage, but it didnât seem like there was anything else that he could say. It wasnât that he didnât want to say anything, it was just that he couldnât form sentences in his rage.
It seemed like Ikki had hit some kind of nerve with the kid, but he also knew that there was something wrong with him.
After all, the kid had always been strangely calm in the face of danger.
"Heâs losing his connection with the Black Tide. It was the thing that was suppressing his emotions the entire time."
Once Percival said this, all of them looked around to see that the black ooze had pushed up on them once more.
It had only been a bit, but they knew that this black ooze was getting stronger.
Ikki still had one thing to ask the kid, "What about your friend? Did you even think of him?"
The expression changed on the face of the kid.
There was a stunned look that appeared on his face when that friend of his was mentioned.
That friend had been among the ones that had been killed in the village.
In fact, since the kid had waited so long, most of the people that he was supposed to take revenge on had already been dealt with. After all, they were heretics that worshipped a false god, so they had been dealt with by the executioners of the Heroes Association.
In the end, the ones that the kid had killed were only descendants or those that werenât related at all.
But it wasnât as if the kid ever cared about this.
It was as if something had suppressed those rational thoughts and only made him live for revenge this whole time.
That was the power of the Black Tide, the power to amplify the worst parts of a person.
"Iâve gotten all that I wanted, thereâs nothing else for me to care about in this world." The kid said in a resigned voice in the end.
Before Ikki could say anything else, there was a figure that suddenly appeared out of the black ooze around them.
Ikki could feel the danger that came from this figure, so he immediately moved away from it.
However, the target of that figure wasnât Ikki.
Rather, it was the kid on the ground.
This figure was a human figure, but it was also surrounded by the black ooze.
In fact, it was similar to how the kid had looked when it first appeared out of the black ooze. But just like the kid, it soon took on a human appearance that had the black tide around it.
This was a large man that didnât hesitate to bring his foot down on the head of the kid and smash it apart. When the foot of the large man fell, the kid scattered apart into dust.
"Old fool, you should have died a long time ago. Trying to act tough just because youâve been an Apostle longer than us, now youâre nothing more than dust."
It wasnât just this large man that appeared, there were others that also appeared out of the black ooze.
There werenât many of them, but they did surround the heroes.
However, the heroes didnât look down on these figures just because there werenât many of them. They could tell from the aura that these new figures gave off that they werenât inferior to the kid.
In fact, they were more dangerous than the kid that they had just faced.
But that didnât make sense at all.
The kid was the first Apostle and the strongest one among them, so where did these other Apostles suddenly come from?
It seemed like their intelligence hadnât been kept up to date.
The Black Tide hadnât been idle during this time, it had created even stronger Apostles than that kid. It was just that the Black Tide had kept them hidden all this time and never let them out.
Now that they had trapped them here, it seemed like the Black Tide was planning on wiping them all out in one go.
"The young will surpass the old eventually."
That was all that they could think when they saw this.
However, they knew that the side of mankind would be at a disadvantage if they just laid down and accepted their fate.
Which was why all of the heroes came to a single decision.
"Weâll make them bleed if weâre going to die here."