Andrew Robinson Leinbach
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Chapter 187: Moral Event Horizon
🕑 Added 2023-07-04 23:50:26 +0000 UTCMila
Mila let out a deep breath as Elder Haxor’s soul started to travel toward the Altar of Sacrifice. Then she walked over to where Isaiah was slowly taking his spear out of Kalin Hewin’s head and reached up to pat him on the shoulder. “Excellent job.”
Focusing everyone’s attention on Kalin Hewin had been a good idea. With the huge explosion and then the plagues, there was almost certainly a general confusion about why the reaction against the sect was so extreme. But, by pointing out Kalin and pretending part of Aalam’s anger was from how he wasn’t being punished at all, it changed the narrative in their minds.
Now, they weren’t being attacked randomly, but because of their own actions. And their actions were something they could change.
Given she’d already firmly entrenched in their minds that she and the ‘prince’ were youngsters from an A rank force, to them it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility she might let a few of them live. And, given they all knew they were dying and couldn’t live without medicine they had no ability to create themselves, they were willing to believe in that hope as it was the only one they had.
Sure, it helped she was able to subtly increase their greed and wrath using her upgraded Evil Eyes skill, her Third Eye Princess uniqueness allowing her to trigger the skill from anywhere within her aura. And, sure, the fact they all believed the medicine—which was actually for curing completely different varieties of Aalam’s plagues—could save their lives due to her clever wording and their faith in Lander Haxor’s truth seeing skill helped as well. But nothing beat having opponents who were dying and desperate to live.
As she already knew most of their personalities, things were then pretty simple. When pretending to ask Aalam a question in English while telling him how to respond over their bond, she’d said ‘There is going to be a hidden term in the contract’. And, while she couldn’t make any major modifications to the contract due to there being C ranks on the other side, she hadn’t wanted to make major changes, just altering ‘You may not kill Elder Kalin Hewin of the Violet Mountain Sect’ to ‘Elder Kalin Hewin of the Violet Mountain Sect may not die’.
While those who still lived after severing Kalin’s appendages fought to get their medicine, not having any time to recheck their contracts, she then took Kalin’s body and, when Isaiah killed Kalin, getting his revenge for his teacher personally, the remaining winners of the contracts died.
As expected, Elder Nivali, who could have destroyed her own mountain mark, was one of the winners, and she would have died even if Elder Weselin hadn’t killed her. Elder Weselin, who was too powerful, was one of the winners as well and died from Mila’s contract manipulation, his Territory passing onto Aalam. And, with Aalam’s tripled strength from his new C rank Territory, Mila was able to use his psyforce to empower Telekinesis with enough strength to kill Elder Haxor, who didn’t have a mountain mark in the first place.
“Aren’t I supposed to feel better?” Isaiah asked as he used his qi to clean his spear of Kalin Hewin’s blood before putting it back in his spatial storage ring. “I’m not really feeling anything.”
“Kalin Hewin didn’t kill Epecteos.” Mila began to use Telekinesis and her multiple minds to loot the bodies, putting all their non-spatial storage artifacts into the super high quality spatial storage ring she’d stolen from the Violet Mountain Lord’s residence while placing half their spatial storage artifacts on her person and passing the remainder to Isaiah. “He was just someone Epecteos beat up.”
“Do you think I’ll feel better when the Violet Mountain Lord is dead?” Isaiah followed her as she headed away from the mountain range.
“I doubt it. From what I’ve seen, revenge doesn’t really work that way.” Mila started running at her max speed and, with her soul in the middle of upgrading to level 108, the highest level for E ranks, she was quite fast. Isaiah, however, was also in the middle of the same upgrade from killing Kalin Hewin, so he could easily keep up, the boost to his Agility much higher even though his base Agility was lower.
“Aalam,” Mila sent, “the elders of the Violet Mountain Sect are all dead, so Isaiah and I are going to go start looting the cities. When you’re done with creating the new artifact and have finished what you need to do at the altar and the power plant, head to the blessed land and start the process of the inheritance. We have a time limit and we need to get off this planet.”
“Got it,” Aalam sent. “And thanks, Mila. I would have messed this up beyond just wanting to kill myself if you hadn’t been here.”
With that, Aalam cut off their communication, likely busying himself with creating his artifact, and Mila felt herself start to tear up again, but this time not from despair.
“Are you okay?” Isaiah, noticing the tears, asked, and Mila started to smile slightly.
“Yeah.” Mila nodded. “Aalam just said thank you to me, meaning he’s no longer suicidal, and that made me feel good.”
Using her sensory domain, Mila could see Isaiah smile slightly for a second, but then his face turned serious again. “Do you think he’s going to be okay?”
“Maybe in the long run.” Mila started to frown. “When he exits Id, though, things are going to be bad for a while.
“Epecteos’s death hit him just as hard as it hit you. And it’s going to take a while for the pain of that to lessen.
“Worse though is that Aalam crossed a moral event horizon and he can’t go back.”
“Event horizon?” Isaiah sounded slightly confused.
“Right, that’s a science term turned into a figure of speech. Of course you wouldn’t know what it means.” Mila took a second to think, trying to remember when she and Aalam had talked about the term a bit over two decades before. “It has something to do with black holes, though I think the science changed after the term was coined.
“Figuratively, it means a line which, once crossed, cannot be crossed back.”
“Ah, got it.” Isaiah nodded as they entered into the nearby city and began taking anything of high value.
“On Earth, before the integration, Aalam was a hero. Even with his death, he saved billions of lives. And before that he’d saved millions. While karmic merit and sin don’t mean much, out of every Earthling, Aalam had the highest amount of karmic merit, and that meant something to him. It was part of his identity.
“With his actions here, however, he’s done worse than the greatest villains in Earth’s history, so that part of his identity is now gone. And, by his own morals, he’s absolutely evil.
“That’s going to mess him up for a while.”
“Yeah.” Isaiah sighed. “I’m sorry I didn’t stop him.”
Mila turned to look at him as she telekinetically tossed five more spatial artifacts she’d found into one of her spatial storage rings, but she made sure to keep her voice even and without any of the venom she was feeling. “You should be. Aalam’s not sane, but you were. And you should have stopped him.”
She took a deep breath. “That said, you were having the exact same emotions he was for the exact same reason, so, while I’m pissed at you, I’m not going to blame you. And you shouldn’t blame yourself, either. It’s not healthy, and it’s unlikely you would have been able to stop him anyway.” She made sure to maintain eye contact. “Instead, do the healthy thing and try to do better in the future.”
Isaiah held her gaze for several more seconds, seeming to be truly trying to digest her words, and that made Mila feel a bit better. Isaiah, like Aalam, responded well to straightforward honesty, and if she could help him get over his grief faster, Isaiah would in turn help Aalam.
“Thanks, Mila.” Isaiah looked around at the dead bodies on the street they were running through and then back to Mila. “You’re always looking out for us.”
Then he frowned slightly. “But are you truly okay? This situation is really messed up and, if you were okay, I’m guessing that would be a problem.”
Mila took a second to think about it and the answer quickly became obvious. No. No, she was not okay. With Aalam in his Id state, Isaiah fragile, and all three of them on a timer, however, she couldn’t afford to deal with her emotions until they were safe.
“No, Isaiah. I’m not. But I’m okay enough that I can hold it in for a while, at least until we’re done with what we have to do.”
