The puppet silently raised the barrel of the rifle, and through the scope, she saw a corpulent noble leisurely sunbathing on the castle's terrace.
Interests, power, desire.
While farmers risked their lives for survival and commoners desperately prayed for a meal, he callously cut off countless supplies of food for these very reasons.
And such individuals were plentiful within the empire.
From farmers to trading companies, from trading companies to city lords, what's more?
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There are even more powerful nobles, larger trading companies, and above all... the extraordinary beings who stood at the pinnacle of it all.
Ravenna... With your ignorance, how could you possibly change anything?
The puppet thought, her eyes growing dimmer as she silently pulled the trigger.
Blood splattered within the scope, marking Ravenna's first true act of taking a life, yet she felt nothing.
"Nothing will change, will it?"
Ravenna, retracting Nidhoggur, spoke in a hushed tone.
"Even if he's killed, his offspring are likely no better. Nothing about this lord's city will change."
Ansel was momentarily taken aback, then smiled with half-closed eyes, "You're as perceptive as ever, Ravenna."
"... But I can't change anything, father," Ravenna whispered, "Nothing at all."
Ansel didn't respond, simply taking Ravenna to their next destination.
Their third stop wasn't a lord's city but an ordinary, albeit not so ordinary, village.
It was home to a farmer who had become the lucky one chosen to go to Pelican City.
He brought many things to the village, naturally, most were for his family. Ansel and Ravenna, in disguise, were guests in his home. While serving them soup, the farmer's wife lamented, "So, they're really insane... If it weren't for James becoming a big shot, his old man would probably be gone, and my family would be in danger too, sigh..."
She disdainfully criticized the violence and madness of some farmers from her village and the neighboring one, who attempted to kidnap Jame's father to pressure him into fear. However, the situation was resolved by the Pelican Trading Commerce's hired thugs, who mercilessly killed several farmers.
Since then, only a few young people remained in the village to tend to the unworked fields, with the rest either going mad or leaving, their whereabouts unknown.
Ansel and Ravenna knew where they had gone; they had killed their own kind and then died in that small lord's city, hailed as a place of miracles.
"The villagers are less and less... However, it matters not, for we are soon to move to the expansive abodes within Greenridge City, far removed from these madmen!"
The woman mused thus, before offering Ansel and Ravenna a warm smile: "Take your time with the meal, it has been a while since we've had guests."
After satiating their hunger, the duo meandered through the desolate village, where the fields lay largely abandoned, save for a few patches still tended by some.
By chance, two youths were seen laboring under the sweltering heat. Ansel, standing beside the furrow, inquired loudly, "Why are only the two of you tilling the land, where are the others?"
One lad, lifting his gaze to Ansel, responded with a voice as if from a jar, "No one tends the fields anymore, they've all fled or died."
"Died?"
"That scoundrel James, not only did he force us into a corner with his sorcery, making our crops unsellable, but he also had people kill the villagers!"
Their father... died, succumbed to illness, perhaps due to lack of money.
Their eldest brother... died, in an attempt to kill other farmers who left them no way to live.
And they... also died, because they posed a threat to the fields, so I killed them.
Did their entire family... die because of me?
Is this an isolated case?
Ravenna, continuously vomiting until she started to dry heave, questioned herself.
Why can't I... accept this? I was merely trying to ensure everyone was fed, I was doing the right thing, why...
"Isn't it because you are ignorant?"
Ansel tilted his head, his words piercing Ravenna's heart like a blade.
"If you knew what such 'revolution' would bring, you would have prepared in advance. If you had prepared, many things would not have happened."
"But you didn't, you are oblivious to the so-called revolution... you are filled with those vacuous ideals yet never considering how to turn them into reality, neglecting preparations beyond technology. Ravenna, you understand nothing, you know nothing..."
"You are nothing."
"And..." the devil lamented, "This is your absurd and pitiful nothingness, as if... you never knew why you were chasing those ideals in the first place."
"Ugh...no, no no! No...ugh, cough, cough..."
Ravenna's hands hung limply at her sides, as if they had completely lost control, naturally drooping.
Her body coughed instinctively, but there were no other reactions as she allowed the filth to trickle from the corners of her mouth.
The petite woman stared blankly at the sky, her eyes void of anything.
Ravenna remembered what happened afterward, but it no longer mattered.
Her world had turned to gray, as if reflecting her childhood, no... even more silent than her childhood.
Ansel took her through various lord cities and places, where she saw many people.
The dead, the living, those ecstatic, those driven mad, those seizing opportunities, and those completely numb...
It turned out that the Watson territory had undergone such drastic changes, that in such a short time, people could be transformed into such states.
Ravenna now realized all of this, but it was already too late.
Not everyone was fed, not everyone benefited; destruction, harm, and even annihilation... were constantly occurring amidst the salvation she had hoped for.
She could have avoided all this if she had truly understood, if she had contemplated what revolution meant, if she had observed and witnessed the world she intended to change.
But Ravenna Ziegler had neither contemplated nor witnessed.
She was merely chasing, unaware of why she was chasing.
Thus, when the brief journey ended, and Ansel brought her back to Pelican City—
The delicate and beautiful puppet's eyes had lost their light, those magnificent purple irises, like a dead gemstone.