143 Devil's Hour 2

Was she already succumbing to darkness? Falling into a muddy quagmire which would permanently entrap her underneath in this lifetime?

These were the questions Sofony asked herself when she accepted the last mission for level 2 that the system had issued her.

When she closed her eyes, the system's voice seemed to echo in her mind.

While feeling cold all over, she watched as the last man fell dead on the floor after being stabbed in the heart repeatedly by a short-haired girl. The system then asked her if she wanted to erase the memories or leave impressions that it was alright because they're bad people and were scums of the society.

To this question, she only shook her head and stayed silent.

Whether to remind her of her crime or her vow, she refused its offer and decided to keep the memories and everything that came along with them. She wouldn't erase anything, to always remind herself of how in order to not die by the system's ruthless and unseen hands within 24 hours, she completed a quest to kill ten people, which she accomplished by using borrowed hands.

'Time?' she asked with her eyes closed.

'Your hour, you mean?' she sarcastically asked.

The system sneered at her while she only opened her eyes to look around, braving the bloody sight before her. After a minute or so, she realized that probably close to 25 minutes passed since she turned herself invisible. The powder could only maintain her state within thirty minutes. Pursing her lips, she decided it was now time to leave this place.

She took one last look at the group of women nearby whose faces had become tear-stained again. They were no longer the same as half an hour ago, whether it was in looks or mentality. A few of them had blood splashed on their tattered and worn down clothes. Some even had on their faces. Unlike a while ago where everyone's eyes were full of fear, despair, and resignation to an imminent sorry fate, there were now hints of joy and relief in them. Fear was still present. But it was no longer the one directed towards the pigs and demons in human skins lying coldly on the floor. It was the fear of having taken somebody else's life.

Sofony tried hard to maintain a stoic face even though nobody would be seeing her. It was because, deep down, she knew. She, Sofony Mendez, was the one who gave them all of these. Joy, relief, salvation, freedom, and fear. She saved them, or rather, she helped them saved themselves. But her reason was not a great or noble cause, only selfishness and fear for her own life.

Suppressing the heaviness in her heart, she took a deep breath and opened up her mouth. These women needed her words, as she knew that they were still under her hypnosis. They were all pitiful people. It would be unfair to make them remember what happened to them and what she made them do.

"... Bury all the memories you experienced with these people, together with the events tonight."

'... Only I shall remember.... imprisoned by the guilt and mental pain,' she thought with her eyes closed.

"Leave. You are all now free..."

...

Several weeks ago, when Sofony had just begun her conflict with Clarissa, knowing that she had already sunk deeper into this water and could only let herself sink more to protect herself and the people around her, she knew that ridding some of the restrictions she had imposed on herself would be inevitable. That all she could do to not totally blacken was to wisely set the bottom line.

It was like there was a vertical structure in front of her with the word morality on top and immorality at the bottom, and because her situation dictated it, she had to lower the bar corresponding to her morality level. She did, but made a mental note to place the new bottom line to where some moral codes would still be restricting her.

Two of these codes were to never involve the innocent, and to only do the minimum when completing a mission.

Currently, she was wondering how well she had executed these two in today's task of killing in order to live.

'... I violated the first one,' she bitterly thought a few moments later.

She said before that even though the future missions would make her do immoral acts, she could at least dictate how she would complete it. Although some complications and contradictions arose, she'd still proven this point today.

The problem probably was that she had also proven how difficult she was as a person.

No matter how vile or good the other party was, when killing or destroying someone, she didn't want to use or stain her own hands. However, mysteriously, she could tolerate wielding others' hands to do the crime. And even without the system or anybody telling her this, she was aware that this kind of thinking was darker than killing by herself. After all, instead of bearing the sin alone, she pushed the others to commit the same evil. This fact doesn't change even if the person she used as a weapon had forgotten everything.

She sighed, trying to think positively as she could feel her dangerous pessimism surfacing from within.

'Stop hating myself. Don't cry. Don't show any self-remorse. This is me. I only eliminated society wastes worse than me. My bottom line is blurring. But I'll bear the sins myself, so it's going to be okay.'

A second later, she thought...

Maybe, she did manage to live up to her bottom lines. It was because if taken literally, the mission was certainly expecting her to murder. It could be some random passersby in the streets below the Golden Residences or the clueless staffs of the condo building. She had the choice to not go far away. If she wanted to complete it easily, she could have just copied Leo Jones and planted a bomb inside a random bus.

But she chose to go the hard way and even spent points on tracking this group of traffickers. She even troubled herself to hypnotize those weak women to vent the anger and violence in their hearts, to turn them into her weapon. Yet even then, she was betting that the system would recognize them as extensions of her body, courtesy of the hypnosis. That the kills would fall under her name since she was both the mastermind and the instigator.

Are all of these an attestation to her stupidity and hypocrisy?

Maybe. Maybe not.

Sofony looked down to her now visible hands. The effect of the invisibility powder expired so if there was still someone from that group of women around, they would learn that the voice which they thought was from a she-devil or a death goddess was only from a normal beautiful teenage girl.

'I have less guilt in my heart. After all, guilt and for some cases, regret, are what truly decide whether we just did something immoral. Right now, I don't feel so guilty, not that much, because at least, I've returned some people back to their proper lives.'

Sofony looked ahead, at the expanse of darkness in front. In the current moment of silence, it looked like the abyss staring at her, waiting to swallow her whole and convert her into a monster. It was also the devil's hour so even if one managed to shrug off the abyss' stares, there was a chance they would instead feel ghosts and evil spirits lingering on their skin.

The system's statement made her shake her head in self-mockery. Right. It was just darkness. The women from the hut managed to brave through it, what more of her? Anyway, this was not even true darkness. That one was a state of being. Of being cold and constricted; of being fearful of the unknown. And with the immoral system with her, the darkness or the unknown which she had to fear was not this laughable blackness in front.

'Yeah, this is child's play compared to being blind,' she laughed.

Thinking of the man who she doesn't want to wake up in the morning without her next to him, she let go of her fears and began to take steps after steps. She would have to walk through it if she wants to reach the main road.

She remembered, when the sun rises later, she would have to fulfill her promise to Gio.

...

...

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