Chapter 64 Volume II - Chapter 30: A Little Memory from the Past
I gently, calmly put Olivia down on a clean surface and then let out a deep sigh.
How did I find myself in this situation...?
When I opened my eyes a few minutes ago, the first thing I noticed was the brilliant stars peeking through the tree leaves. I didn't even remember where I was, but the view in front of me was so spectacular that I swallowed involuntarily.
I wanted to completely immerse myself in the view, but then I heard a sound. It sounded like someone breathing fast, hitting something, and crying.
I slowly sat up from where I was lying. Then I felt a throbbing in my head, and when I put my hand to the throbbing part of my head and saw blood, my eyes widened. I was already starting to remember exactly what had happened after that.
There was a big gap in my memory, but the last thing that happened was Justin and his group surrounding me. Then he said something about Clara and... I had gone crazy.
I paused with these thoughts. Then my eyes widened as a thought occurred to me.
Am I... going crazy just like the other wieras?
That was the thought that sprouted in my mind in an instant, yet it disappeared just as quickly as it had appeared in an instant.
Absolute Mind quickly blocked out the bad thoughts.
I squinted my eyes, sighing slightly, and this time something else crossed my mind.
Why didn't the Absolute Mind intervene at that moment?
I had so many questions in my head. Every one of them I really wanted to know the answers, but I stood up before the Absolute Mind could sweep them away again.
I could think about them later, now I needed to understand what had happened.
For example, what happened after I lost consciousness?
I looked around, and a few collapsed students caught my eye, but then I saw something blood-curdling.
A girl, Olivia, was holding a rock and she kept hitting someone on the head. The person whose head she had almost smashed in was Justin.
She was hysterical. She didn't seem to be thinking straight, and then all of a sudden she paused. Even though I couldn't see her face, she seemed to be thinking about something, but after a while she suddenly put her hand up again, holding the stone.
I don't know why I did it, I just had a hunch at the time, but I quickly approached her and grabbed her hand holding the stone.
"Calm down."
I... Why did I stop her? I don't remember.
I turned my eyes to Justin, whose head was covered in blood. Normally, his dismembered face would have been enough to make me, everyone, vomit, but thanks to the Absolute Mind, I wasn't too affected.
I slowly began to untie Olivia's fingers from the stone, and then something struck me.
Was it because I was similar to her? I'd been bullied, I'd gotten bruises all over my body like her, and I'd wanted revenge like her.
Of course, I didn't dare.
Well, what did I dare to do in my previous life? I was weak and Olivia was much stronger than me, but the longer she kept doing this, the more she would only regret it.
I didn't want someone like me to go through something much worse than I had. She had to have someone, just as I still had Clara, even if she hated me.
That's why I was helping her, so she wouldn't make a mistake that she would regret in the future.
And what happened in the end?
I felt relieved, that's all. No more, no less, but at least I was happy. Even if I didn't know her at all, I was happy to have helped someone like me and that was enough.
I looked back at Justin, whose face was unrecognizable. I wasn't sure about his condition before, but now that I looked at him...
He's definitely dead, his color has already started to wither.
He didn't have a 'good' role in the story, but he was useful in some missions. Of course, he was also a nobleman, so he had an important position in the kingdom, but now he's lying there with his face dismembered.
I grimaced, my brow furrowed and I couldn't help but take a deep breath. I had come here to avoid trouble, and now I had more of it than I ever wanted.
How can I get out of this?
Is there any way that both Olivia and I can get out of here with zero trouble?
I was lost in thought, but then I paused.
Oh, right... I forgot about the others. What if someone wakes up and runs away? Idiot... The first thing I had to do was check on them. n0velusb.c0M
Angry with myself, I left Justin's body as it was for now and approached the others. I crouched down next to the first student I saw and then just froze.
The first person I looked at, he wasn't alive.
Did... Did I... kill him?
I quickly turned to another, then another...
Second, third... seventh... fifteenth... and so on...
None of them were alive, they were all dead.
I felt the whole world spinning. I didn't shiver, but I stiffened as this reality hit me in the face.
I looked down at my hands.
They were clean, not a trace of dirt on them except for the faint traces of blood that had been transferred to me from Olivia's clothes, but I knew.
I... I killed people. Even if I wasn't myself, I'd taken the lives of people who weren't even twenty yet.
And yet... why don't I feel anything? Why... don't I feel like a murderer?
Those guys should all have dreams. Even though they're the assholes who followed Justin, they're youngsters. And I'm a murderer who took away their dreams, but... Why don't I feel guilty?
Is this an effect of the Absolute Mind? Or is it because my nature is chaos as a wiera?
I took a deep breath and looked at the dead bodies of the dead.
No matter how much I tried to feel, no matter how bad I knew it was, no matter how much I tried to deceive myself, to pretend to be human, there was not even the slightest bit of regret in me.
"Haaa..."
I took a deep breath and pushed these thoughts aside before Absolute Mind.
I can't leave this place like this, I have to think rationally and do what I have to do first, whatever I have done, I have to ensure my own safety first.
So I started to gather all the bodies together, including Justin's body. It didn't take very long because there were more than twenty bodies, but I did it.
I looked at the pile of bodies in front of me and started to think.
If I try to bury them all, it will take too long, I don't have time. So how can I get rid of them?
If only I could use fire or earth magic... It would be so easy.
"Ah..."
I paused after a very short thinking sequence.
There is a way, I could erase their bodies as if they never existed, but... How confident am I? Honestly, not at all.
I took a deep breath and imagined that my statistics window was in front of me. After ignoring everything in the window that opened in front of me, I stopped under the heading 'Chaos'.
<<------------------------------
--Chaos--
Devotion: Greed
Status: Representative Candidate
Grade: E+
Control Tolerance: F+
Limit: E
Authority: [Chains of Sin(E+)]
------------------------------>>
What I really needed, the Control Tolerance statistic, was F+. The fact that my limit was E was a blessing in disguise.
I guess it's because I'm a representative candidate... In fact, since I'm not really a wiera, shouldn't I be weak or something?
Although... Can I even use caora in the first place? Half of my body is still human, so that's a risk, but...
I have no other way, so I have no choice but to try... I guess.
First of all, I took another deep breath, closed my statistics window, and then looked at the pile of corpses in front of me.
I have to do it...
I braced myself, then approached them, put my hand on the huddled corpses, and closed my eyes.
Caora and ordea are not as simple to use as mana. It takes special training to use them, and even then, one cannot fully control them.
They are really complex energies but what I need now is not control from the beginning.
I just need to guide it a little bit. With the dialogs in the game and the information given during the training about the energies, I don't need a trainer to do that. At least I think so.
I focused on the darkness behind my eyelids and then I focused. Then I thought, I thought about my old memories, not the good ones, only the negative ones that caused me pain, and I imagined them as if I were reliving them.
Grief, despair, loneliness, sadness, hatred, stress; I imagined all these kinds of feelings and thoughts and I frowned.
These were memories I didn't want to remember. Each of them left scars on me, but I didn't stop. They had no effect on me anyway, thanks to the Absolute Mind.
I spent a considerable amount of time remembering all my past hurts one by one, all the while constantly focusing on the caora, but I couldn't help but pause when I realized that nothing had happened yet.
These emotions are not enough...
I slowly pushed my thoughts aside and focused on one of them: selfishness. In other words, greed.
"Ethan..."
Memories I didn't want slowly began to surface, but I didn't resist them.
"Come on, you too!"
And then I remembered. It was... one of the first memories I have of this matter.
A boy about nine, just like me, with black hair and brown eyes was smiling at me. He had a mischievous grin on his face, and behind him stood three other kids with the same expression.
"This is wrong, Carl..."
I was only eight at the time, still innocent, still trusting that my parents would come and take me.
"Come on, Ethan! We're just getting dessert for ourselves! That old witch won't give us anything, shouldn't we take matters into our own hands?"
By the old witch, he meant the orphanage director.
Our orphanage was not a generous place with money. In fact, we were quite poor and so things like 'sweets' were a luxury. Even at lunchtime, anyone who ate their second plate was beaten, maybe that's why I used to be so skinny...
"Still..."
Seeing that I was persistent in my hesitation, Carl finally dropped the smirk from his face and let out a deep sigh.
"Okay... Okay, Ethan. I don't care if you don't want dessert, but you can still come with us. It'll be so easy! That witch has a stockpile for her own enjoyment, I saw it out of the corner of my eye the other day when I was carrying the trays into the kitchen. We'll go in there, we'll get them and we'll get out! That's it! There's not even a camera, there won't be any problems!"
What can you expect from an eight-year-old? I couldn't even remember the last time I had dessert and Carl's plan made sense to me when I thought about it.
Of course, my mind was still childish because of my age. If I didn't accept this offer, I would be ostracized. I knew that and of course, I didn't want that.
I already had a lot of kids making fun of me because I believed my parents would come back. I was afraid that if this happened on top of that, they would ignore me completely.
"O- okay..."
At around midnight the night after I accepted Carl's offer, we left the dormitory and headed for the kitchen.
Everything was perfect. The idiot guard had already fallen asleep, and we had successfully made it past the cameras. When we finally arrived in front of the dessert stock in the kitchen, our eyes literally lit up.
We immediately took out the contents of the stock and started eating. We got sweets all over our mouths, hands, and everywhere, but we didn't care.
I still remember that those cheap sweets were so good for me that I couldn't stop myself.
That's how impressive the dessert was for us, but of course, we knew we couldn't stay here for long.
"Let's go now... We have stayed too long."
One of the boys, whose name I don't even remember, spoke anxiously. His eyes were darting back and forth in fear, afraid that we would get caught.
Carl, the oldest of us, both in age and strength, put another piece of dessert in his mouth, licked his finger, and sighed.
"Okay... Let's go then."
So we slowly cleaned up, shoved the spilled desserts on the floor under the cabinets, and covered the stock.
I actually had a strange feeling during this time. I don't know how, but... I felt like something was wrong. I was missing something, but I wasn't really focused on it because of the atmosphere.
"We're going to go back now, but be careful to be quiet. Okay?"
The atmosphere was tense, but truth be told, at the time I was excited by the tension.
It was the first time I had broken the rules, the first time I had hung out with my 'friends' and it was really exciting.
I was now a member of the group. I could now call myself one of them!
This feeling was so satisfying for me as a child that I felt like I could do anything.
The rules? Who cares if Carl and the others are with me!?
The headmistress of the orphanage whom I tried to respect? She was now an old witch to me too!
With these thoughts in mind, I didn't focus too much on my surroundings and what I was seeing, I just followed Carl and my 'friends' down the corridor with a slight smile that I couldn't keep off my face.