Altair stood on the building he was using as a lookout and observed what the people on the ground were doing.
All of them slowly separated in groups of 4 and spread apart. Just enough to move mostly undisturbed but still close enough that they could still see the next group.
In the groups, each person held a flashlight in one hand while their other hand rested on the shoulder of the person next to them. With everyone doing the same in the small group of 4, the groups moved towards the camp slowly.
Stressed as they were, they were in a hurry to get to the camp. It was as if they had a weird confidence that once they got to the camp, everything would be alright.
In their minds, all they had to do was get to the camp.
"Make sure to all pay attention to the direction you're looking!"
"Spread out a little!"
"Pay attention to the groups beside you!"
"Move a little faster!"
From time to time, as they moved, someone kept shouting what seemed like instructions or directions.
The silence was unsettling, so he decided to shout to remind everyone that they were not alone.
Altair kept observing this, having already lost his mood to have fun with them due to their rising fear.
He teleported near the first group of four and placed his hand on two shoulders and left immediately.
As soon as he left with these two, the other two in the group of four noticed this disappearance when they no longer felt their touch.
At the same time, the next group noticed this disappearance too. When Altair appeared, there was a brief moment when his body shadowed the light of the flashlights and when he dis-appeared with them, the light from their flashlights left with him.
This made it obvious that people did not just disappear, they were taken. However, the fact that whatever took them away did so in what to them seemed like an instant, made it clear that there was nothing they could do about it.
They barely had the time to process this information that Altair appeared where he was before and took away the last two in the earlier group of four.
The remaining groups of people were so shocked that they did not even think. At this moment, they did not know what was important and what was not.
They all became apprehensive towards everything from all sides around them.
In each group, the individuals moved back a little, to the point that, their backs were now touching, and they remained that way.
After some time of just staying like that, someone left his group and took off running away while shouting some unintel-ligible nonsense.
The others still stayed there, dazed.
Altair appeared close to the next group of people and van-ished with another pair of two.
This was like a trigger or a signal to everyone else, all those who were momentarily dazed immediately started running of in different directions.
Some shouted about wanting to be left alone and others shouted about wanting to live, but all of them screaming to-gether made it mostly difficult to tell what they were say-ing.
The fact that they were all shouting in Safaitic did not help either. Safaitic was already a difficult language to begin with.
Meanwhile, some people still thought about those who were left at the camp and ran towards the camp, hoping to alert them and run away with them.
Altair reappeared, ready to take away the next pair of peo-ple when he noticed the situation unfolding in the place.
'Now what?' He asked himself, a little confused about what he saw.
Listening a little, he heard what they said and he under-stood that once again he was the cause of this.
'Couldn't they just have quietly gone to bed like the others did the other day?'
*ugh~!*
He let out a low grunt of annoyance and teleported to the closest person in his line of sight. Since he had not gone for long, no one really had the chance to escape far. Thanks to this, there were still many people close by and he just had to make a choice of whom he wanted to start with.
.
A few minutes later, Altair was finally done teleporting all those around. There were not really that many people left so, even when pacing himself, he still managed to take eve-ryone away before any of them reached the camp.
'Me and my hastiness… I wouldn't have had to deal with this if I had just waited for them to all go to sleep.' Altair thought, tired.
.
For the next few days, Altair kept up a similar routine eve-ry day.
As soon as he woke up, he started by completing the Daily Quest. After which, he went to different places around the world with ongoing wars like in Hzat or disasters of some sort like the fire that occurred in Boubou, in Kyrnac.
There were quite a few of these situations in the world and he was always so tired after returning home at the end of the day.
A month quickly passed with him busying himself that way.
During this time, he was able to go to Boubou to know more about the charitable people that acted in the aftermath of the fire and see where each one stayed.
Once he had that information he sneaked into the places where some of them slept, and left them gifts.
It was money which he had exchanged in different places into the currency of Kyrnac.
Each person received 1,000,000 Kyrnac Gallis (KNGs), which was the equivalent of around 1,000 Svearian Crowns (SECs). Making him spend a total of 8,000 Crowns for the 8 people that he could identify and find still in Boubou and in need.
Spending this money, he did not feel pressured, since he was only reticent to use money on himself but never when it came to helping those who needed.
Altair is the kind of person that cannot see a person in need, be able to help, and do nothing to help.
.
About a week after he started with his super-hero activi-ties, he already wanted to give up. After all, it was a thankless task where he had to do everything in secret.
None of the people he teleported ever showed any apprecia-tion towards him for what he did since most of the time they were flustered and confused about what was happening to them.
He could not explain what was happening to them nor could he hang around long enough that that they got anything they could use to describe him. His paranoia would not allow him to even let them know his height so he mostly hunched a lit-tle whenever he teleported them.
That and a few other reasons made him understand why vil-lains were so popular and why there were so many more vil-lains than heroes in all forms of media.
Villains are just much more realistic.
It is more realistic that someone with the ability to tele-port anywhere he wants at any time, needing nothing more than an image of the destination, would use such an ability to do anything in his or her own interest, than it is to be-lieve this person would start helping people, and stick to doing so for no reward at all.
'But I am not anyone, I am Altair Rohan.' He told himself, in an almost boastful tone.
"Wow, talk about arrogance… Didn't know I had it in me…" He muttered.
Regardless, he felt motivated enough to continue his activi-ties for a few more days. But after some time, he felt like giving up again.
'Maybe I am not made for this.' He started thinking.
'Surely, someone else will take care of this even if I don't…'
'The world will not stop going around once I stop doing this. People already lived even before I was able to tele-port, before I had a system, and things were working for them…'
He kept on having such thoughts that would dissuade him from going on, thoughts that would convince him to put a stop to those activities.
But, on that same day, during the day, as he was watching the news, he saw the situation in the world once more and threw the thoughts away.
It was a catastrophic earthquake in country Phrygia. The level of damage as portrayed by helicopters and drones on TV was so great that he felt he couldn't just sit and do noth-ing.
It was to the point that he almost acted impulsively by im-mediately teleporting to the scene. He didn't know how him-self, but he managed some restraint. However, that was enough to reaffirm his resolve.
'This is why I have to do it. It doesn't matter what things were like yesterday or one week or even one month earlier. I must believe that I was given this power, these advantages for a reason. Whatever that reason might be, it can wait. For now, I must keep trying to patch things together to the best of my ability. Not for some grand purpose, simply, be-cause I can do it.'
Just like that, the little task he had started just because of a childish fantasy became his responsibility, a weight he put on himself just because he was able to carry it.
Even after he convinced himself of this, he still could not reveal himself to the world. He did not know if the world could accept him or if they were ready to do so, he was not even sure he would be able to bear the responsibility of ex-posing them to such a thing.
What he knew, was that he did not need to publicly reveal himself or what he could do to keep on helping the way he was already doing.
Therefore, he kept on helping people around the world.
he took people from one unlivable place, and brought them to a more decent place.
In case people needed food, he took it from a place which had no need for it, like an inaccessible ruined site, the way he did in Hzat, before giving it to the unsuspecting people in need, one way or another. Always doing so in a way that he left no traces and avoided contact with anyone.