"Is that your talent?"
"Yes." Bill nodded, "It's a blessing. The power to do more than what others can do. It is the same for your power too."
Bill spoke and continued, "Of course, I couldn't understand it at first. A lot of people tried to kill me."
"I can relate to that." Dohyuk nodded, "It was shocking to have someone in the middle of a supermarket trying to kill me."
"Right. But I was more fortunate. I had my family."
"They… had the experience."
"Yes. They were with me until the end in the previous life."
They spoke as they walked over to the ship. At the center, there was a table and a chair. To a side, there was a bar set in place that was filled with liquor bottles. Bill walked over to the bar.
"My family owned a metal-processing shop. Over twenty of my family members collected metals and processed them."
"I see."
It meant that Bill had twenty of veterans from the beginning. As with Giwon, even if they were corrupt, it was hard to break the relationship between families. Cactus Bill probably started off less lonely than Dohyuk.
"I was able to adapt and gather knowledge more easily. …Want a drink? I have almost every type of drink."
"Anything."
Dohyuk spoke calmly, but he was still tense. Bill took out whiskey, snapped off the top of the bottle, and poured some out for Dohyuk.
"We had my father as a leader and we moved. Just like before, my father planned to unite all of Australia so there would be no internal fights."
"Until you grew in power?"
"…Yeah. Until I grew in power."
Something did not end well. Dohyuk could clearly see that.
"I didn't know anything then. I thought I did, but I didn't. I thought our plans would go well. My father thought that our relatives who were sent over to all regions of Australia would return with good news."
"…"
Dohyuk listened silently. He was now getting the picture.
'He was with his family until the end.'
No one died dead. It also meant that Cactus Bill, was always with his family at the center.
Dohyuk did not know Bill, but even if it wasn't Cactus Bill, there was no doubt that any man with power would treat their family better.
"What returned was bad news."
"They refused?"
"Worse. They sent our relatives' corpses."
Then, the forces within Australia revolted against Cactus Bill and his family taking over Australia again.
"It was a dark night. We were mourning for our relatives who had lost their lives… and something dropped. I am not sure what it was. Maybe it was a bomb… or a rock. But it was the signal of an attack."
Cactus Bill continued speaking calmly.
"Honestly, I don't remember what happened. Maybe it was because of the shock, or because I lost part of my head. The only thing I remember is that I killed someone, again and again. Until I was knocked out."
And when he came back to his senses, he was buried within scraps of metal. He didn't know if he dug himself in to survive, or if someone tried their best to save him.
Even after he regained consciousness, he couldn't come out of the scraps. His wounds were too severe.
"I heard screaming."
It was his family. The victors were torturing him. They wanted to know their purpose, and where Bill was.
"None of them answered. I'm not sure if they were hiding it, or they really didn't know. But I think they knew. One of them hid me within the scraps of metal."
The torturing went on for days.
"I don't know anything about the previous life. I only heard of it. That's why I believed it was possible to create a better world. To reach a better result."
He looked down.
"But it wasn't."
As he heard the screams from his family, Bill melted the metals away with his Nature.
"I filled them through my veins and flesh. Then I realized that I was wrong and that I needed to fix my way of doing things."
When he finished filling up his wound, the last family member stopped screaming. It was his father.
Bill lost his consciousness once more. When he woke up again, and came out of the pile, there were only corpses around him. His family had been carefully torn into pieces to have them stay alive for as long as they could during the torture.
"That's when I realized what I need to do."
He was no longer the Cactus Bill from the previous life.
"I was reborn."
Chapter end
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