Chapter 434.

Chapter 434.

Chapter 434. Soul Exchange. (6/7)

“Choosing stability every time over taking a risk can be a stupid decision in and of itself. There could be a very tiny risk of something happening, but because you only want to choose the short term stable option, you could end up favoring stability of one small part while completely forsaking the stability of the greater picture leading to a disastrous outcome in the long run.”

“Short-term stability does not equate to long-term stability. The only way to ensure long-term stability is through an equal balance of both risk-taking and hedges against those risks with countermeasures and fail-safes to fall back on. It’s like implementing a fuse in a complex electric circuit. Risk management, just because one thing fails, the entire system doesn’t collapse and can continue to function in a certain capacity.”

“Somehow, it sounds like we’re talking about investment now.”

“It is investment. It’s investing in the future of humanity. You can’t only do one thing, you’ve got to do both in moderation. If you ever reach a point where one side is unwilling to compromise and meet the other side halfway...” I paused as several scenes in history flashed through my mind.

“Aren’t you going to finish that thought?”

“The system... truly does collapse.” I’d already lived through it once and witnessed it happen with my own eyes after all.

As populations grew larger and more concentrated, authority and stability won out over all else. One side accumulated far too much power. The concentration of power destroyed the delicate balance. The scale broke and crashed into the ground on one side. It was an utter disaster in the history I recalled.

I could still vividly remember the fateful day that freedom died. All that remained thereafter was a shell of what it once was. A joke. When people brought up freedom after that, they’d just be laughed at, ostracized, and treated like a fool.

I’d really like to... escape to somewhere far away before that day arrives.

As for trying to change it... yeah right. As if I was naive enough to think my actions would be able to do anything when going up against the giants of the world who held overwhelming power accumulated over decades to centuries. I’d be lucky just to survive through it all again.

Humanity can figure shit out itself. It’s not something I need to concern myself with... considering how I’m a devil now anyway.

It’d just be a little sad to see it all happen again. The inevitable fall and decline of freedom in the future we’re currently headed toward.

People like to see the good guys win, but what happens when you flip the tables and paint everyone’s perception of the good guys as the villains?

Good and bad is only determined based on the angle you look at it from. Politicians know this all too well and carefully manipulate that angle. This is why I hate politics. It’s such a nasty subject.

It is very easy to paint anything in black. But if you want to undo that, it’s very difficult to change something from black to white once painted black. Traces of that black paint will always remain and linger. You’ll never forget that it was there even if you try to perfectly paint over it in white or any other color.

In the case of paint, you can easily combine things that absorb and reflect certain spectrums of light, but completely separating or removing that paint once combined is typically impossible. No matter how much white paint you combine with black paint, the result will be a shade of gray. It could get very close to white again, but it will never be perfectly white again.

“Hey... Ran?”

“What?”

“With the way you put it, doesn’t it kind of sound like civilization is screwed as things stand?”

“It is screwed. But so what? Let it collapse. If you ask me, it’s better if it happens sooner rather than later. At least if it collapses sooner there’s less work to rebuild it from the ground up as there’s less of a mess to clean up afterward. The bigger it gets, the worse the aftermath.”

“Hmm... I suppose that’s true.”

“I’ll head back to the campsite and zip myself up in the tent.”

“Mmmm... then hurry up and do that. I really have to go. This is seriously embarrassing. I’m an assassin... but I’m losing to a bladder of all things. The humiliation is unreal.”

Her legs were shaking unsteadily, it was pretty easy to see how hard she was trying to hold it in.

“Can you raise your leg so I can get past you?”

“Impossible. If I move right now, we’ll both suffer a horrible fate together. Well, it might only be horrible for me, maybe you’re into that sort of thing.”

“Don’t you dare pee on me. I don’t have that sort of strange fetish.”

“Then you better get moving.”

How?

Well... there was one way out of this.

I grabbed onto the tree branch and rotated my body to slip down through Rosa’s legs. I hung down from the branch supporting the full weight of my body with only my arms. In this fashion, I was able to move one hand at a time to the other side of her foot on the branch.

When at the trunk of the tree I stretched my leg out around the trunk and placed it down on another branch not too far away. It was a bit scary, but thankfully I didn’t fall.

I carefully descended back to the ground one branch at a time and used my belt to safely descend the remainder of the branchless portion of the trunk.

“Hurry up!”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Upon her urging me to leave I didn’t stick around and quickly retreated in the direction of the tent. I wasn’t about to stick around to receive a golden shower.

I zipped up the tent and patiently waited for Rosa’s arrival.

About five minutes later, I heard a branch snap. I unzipped the tent, poked my head out, and glanced in the direction it came from.

“Rosa? You there?”

Wait, if she was here, wouldn’t I see that bright light? If there was no bright light... didn’t that mean she wasn’t there and asking was completely pointless?

But if it wasn’t her, what was it? Was it all in my head? Wait, maybe there was a wild animal nearby.

It was quite dark right now as the fire had died out by the time I got back. I’d used the flashlight on my phone to make my way back despite it not being too far away from the tree we were perched atop.

Man, being out here alone when it was this dark was actually pretty unnerving. What if it was a ghost or something? Haha, yeah right.