BXBX NOVEL Chapter 270 Decisive Strike
He could not see the man on the other side, there was only a void, but the voice carried through the crack unhindered. The voice that spoke through the tear in space was familiar, in that it mimicked Guy's own. However, there was a difference in tone and diction. There was a self-assured piousness and confidence in the voice that was lacking in Guy's.
"You did this!" Guy accused immediately. His voice was tinged with anger and betrayal.
"Technically, we share the same body. So for all intents and purposes, you are equally liable for what transpired."
"No!" Guy denied it vehemently. "Y-You took over my body a-and you did... all that!"
"Took over your body? Need I remind you that the body you're inhabiting does not belong to you in the first place."
That retort caused Guy to pause in his decision to argue back. He caught on to his current hysterical state and tried to calm himself once again. There was no use arguing with someone so entrenched in fanaticism as the Other Guy. It was best to ask rational questions so that he could extract the most amount of information from him as possible.
"Why did you do it?" A plain question inquiring upon the man's purpose. If he could take over Guy's body like this, why didn't he do it earlier? Maybe when the bandits attacked the caravan, or maybe when that boy threatened Guy and the Sect.
"Because it was necessary," the Other Guy answered without hesitation.
"You decided that by yourself?" Guy challenged.
"It isn't my opinion, but a fact," the Other Guy reaffirmed. "What would you have done differently? Talk to them? And then what? Tell me, what use is diplomacy when dealing with animals?"
"It is not our right to take away the life of another-"
"What gives them the right, then? You read it yourself, that man alone blinded over two-hundred and forty-three children."
The Other Guy paused, and Guy could feel a genuine rage emanating from the man's voice and aura.
"TWO-HUNDRED AND FORTY-THREE!" The voice boomed through the crack, causing Guy to flinch involuntarily. He then heard the man draw in a deep breath before continuing, "Interestingly, that number only consists of boys. What do you think he did with the girls? You can find the answer to that question in any of the brothels connected with the Beggars' Sect. Do you still think the man doesn't deserve what I gave him? Can you honestly tell me that NONE of the filth parading in human skin whose lives I liberated deserved it?"
"I don't know!" Guy blurted out. "Look, I can understand what you did to the leader, but can YOU honestly tell me that everyone else affiliated with this Sect deserves death?"
"Yes." Once again, no hesitation. "They made their choice when they decided to throw in their lot with this ilk. Children, I can understand - I can empathise. They have little to no agency in their lives, and their actions are heavily influenced by what they observe around them or what the world foists upon them. Adults, on the other hand, have the agency to control their own lives."
"Do they? What if their life is set out for them from birth? As you said, a child lives their life like a sponge, what if all that sponge absorbs the maliciousness the world has to offer? What if this is all that they know to be their truth? Do you still think that they cannot be redeemed?" Guy argued.
"There are some stains that cannot be purged. No matter how much redemption they seek, the damage they've done to others cannot be rewound," the Other Guy declared with complete certainty. "I am not going to argue over the morality of my actions, especially not with you, who still teeters on the fence even after the world has gently guided you towards a conclusion since you transmigrated."
"What do you mean?"
"This isn't Earth. I don't know what it will take to get that fact through your head?" The Other Guy growled exasperatedly. "It will chew you up and spit you out if you let it. There is always a place for diplomacy, but that does not mean you can just toss aside the power of physical force. Take a moment to evaluate my actions more critically. Do not think my measures to be that of a narrow-minded fanatic. In many ways, our goals align. Our values align. It is just our choice of action that differs. I don't know why I'm even trying to assuage you... Well, this ends our conversation. Till next time (and I promise that there WILL be a next time)!"
As the Other Guy finished his sentence, Guy could hear his voice receding into the distance. Now, he was left all alone, by himself, in the RoK in front of the mysterious tear.
Every mind has a threshold where it is bombarded with so much information that it breaks. However, there is a bandwidth before that point where the damage is fairly perfunctory in the form of cracks. Since it isn't an irrecoverable outcome, the mind, just like every biological system, tries to fix itself. Take the analogy of a human body, when there is a cut, the body tries to heal that injury by first clotting blood over the area to isolate it from contamination, and then slowly reforming the cut skin underneath the scab. This is a basic regenerative operation since the cut is only at the surface level. On the other hand, if an entire appendage is sliced off, the process of healing becomes more impossible if care is not administered immediately.
There is, however, a bandwidth between these two extremes where the damage is sufficiently extensive but still recoverable. For children and people with deformities in the bone, there is an operation that seeks to correct it by breaking the affected bone and holding the two ends in a frame that orients them the right way. The change is done incrementally so that the bones "know" where to connect. Some use this procedure to aesthetically increase their heights; by incrementally increasing separation between the sliced bones, they are forced to form new bone cells to fill in the blanks. The mind is also known to do something like that at a psychological level.
Guy's mind had cracked under the sudden influx of shocking information. Regardless of how calmly he carried himself, he was floundering internally. The paint was spilt on the canvas without his control, but it was his body that ultimately spoiled the artwork. The blame would fall on him. He now had to live with this fact.
If this was in his past life, there were ways to deal with it. First off, he would admit himself to an Institute of Mental Health and seek treatment. Of course, if he had murdered someone, he would first need to turn himself in to the authorities, which would lead him down a rabbit hole of litigation and convincing the government that he wasn't in full control of his body, which shouldn't have been too hard given the level the field of psychiatry and psychology had reached during his time. Even if that wasn't possible, he could always leverage the capacity of an expert criminal lawyer to plead insanity through any means necessary.
However, just like the Other Guy said, this world was different. First off, the so-called order prevailing in the Empire was tenuous at best. A small gust of wind could push everything into chaos. If Guy confessed to the crime of massacring all these people, he most likely wouldn't stand a fair trial. Furthermore, the end outcome would either be an execution or imprisonment after forcefully destroying his cultivation. He really didn't want that. Which meant that...
'I guess I will have to live with this,' he concluded with great discomfort. The thought itself left him with a horrible taste in his mouth. However, this conclusion marked the first step of Guy's cracked mind attempting to fix itself by filling in the blanks.
Excess rationalisation.
"Maybe the Other Guy was right... that this end was inevitable. There is no justice. Reporting them to the authorities would yield me nothing. There was nothing I could do to change the alter anything peacefully..."
"At the very least, I fulfilled my promise to Yohn. He can live his life free from the weight of vengeance bearing down on his soul. His suffering was great, but now he will have the opportunity to heal."
Guy mumbled to himself as he made his way out of the room. Right as he moved past the entrance, he paused and turned. He looked around one last time and furrowed his brows in thought. Then, pulling out the wand from his coat, he pointed it towards the central pillar. An intricate spell circle formed at the wand's tip following which a steady stream of what looked like liquid fire gushed out. Guy moved the wand's point all around the room and doused it thoroughly in flames. While retracing his path out of the area, he did not forget to release more of the liquid fire.
The metal door banged close, stopping the rapidly expanding embers in their track. No evidence could remain. Although the Other Guy was generally hands-off in handling the opponents, his presence in the area itself would allow a mage to derive his identity. However, fire cleanses everything, there should be nothing left within a few more minutes.
Guy didn't need to wait to confirm this. He turned and walked out of the alleyway and into the Flea Market. He avoided the crowds by securing high ground through physical means. Moving between places via rooftops, especially with the largely dilapidated buildings and slum housing, was a chore, but far more comfortable than getting squished between people and potentially getting trampled over.
Once he exited the district, Guy wanted to beeline back to the recruitment grounds, but a recent memory held his feet back. He turned perpendicularly and walked in a different direction. His destination was known, and there was a growing suspicion in his heart that he just had to confirm.
Unfortunately, he realised that the suspicion turned out to be true the moment he arrived in front of his destination: one of the more famous brothels in the Middle-Class Districts... or whatever was left of it, anyways.