Ch.194Army of the Dead (3)

“What’s that now…”

I watched the bizarre catapult brought by our enemies through half-open eyes.

It was a catapult that seemed to be woven from bones and tendons, and behind it was a cart full of corpses bound with iron chains. I could roughly guess what they were planning.

“Are they trying to spread disease by flinging corpses?”

“What else could it be? Human bodies are weak, after all. At best, one dead person takes one living person with them.”

If one dead person takes one living person, is that fair or unfair?

Hmm… thinking about it, I probably wouldn’t find an answer.

“…Were you just casually weighing the value of human life?”

“…Was it that obvious?”

As I was pondering this, the perceptive Lucia glared at me with fierce eyes.

Since I couldn’t make such a fierce expression myself, I tried to defend by deploying my wife instead, but when Casia also started glaring at me, our numerically disadvantaged side had no choice but to surrender.

“I need to speak my mind even if my head gets bashed in. You feel absolutely nothing when people die, don’t you?”

“I… can’t say that’s true…”

“No, I don’t mean feeling sad or angry when you see someone die. Even when someone dies right in front of you, you just feel sad inside, shed tears, and still stab the other person to death.”

“…What are you trying to say?”

I feel like we’ve had this conversation before… but I can’t remember clearly.

Perhaps back then, I didn’t consider that conversation particularly important.

“Your emotions and reason are completely separate. You as a person… do you understand what I’m trying to say?”

“…No.”

“Haah…”

The sigh came not from Lucia but from Raisha below me.

Raisha wriggled out of my arms, then puffed her cheeks cutely and said:

“Normal people… can’t clearly distinguish between emotion and reason. In extreme situations, they mistake emotional judgments for rational ones, and when the two conflict, their minds tend to collapse. But you’re not like that, are you?”

“Uh… me?”

That’s hard to accept.

From the beginning, I… never once thought of myself as a rational person.

I’ve known my interpersonal relationships were catastrophic since I calculated the statistic that I’ve killed 87% of people who approached me.

I’ve killed countless people in moments of intense passion, and because my past was lacking in many ways, I still enjoy ordering abundant food at inns and take special care to ensure even ordinary soldiers’ meals are luxurious.

“Sometimes you look like a reader reading a novel.”

“A reader…?”

“Yes. Like a reader who can’t wait to see what happens in the next chapter. You know that your love for adventure is different from that of ordinary adventurers, don’t you?”

“…”

“Reason unswayed by emotion is good, and emotion unfettered by reason is also good. But the external personality that emerges from your bizarrely mixed yet perfectly separated emotion and reason is, well, how should I put it…”

“It gives me chills. Like an arrogant creator who believes none of us can touch even a hair on your head no matter what we do.”

“Hahaha… Creator? I’m not such a grand being. Perhaps a devotee of such a being, at most.”

I said that while glancing at the sun.

But Lucia, as if unwilling to back down this time, narrowed her eyes and shot back at me:

“Then let me ask you this. Among the people you’ve wanted to kill, has anyone survived?”

“…No.”

“That’s why you’ve become someone with such bizarre and strange sensibilities. You saw the viciousness of women before you even tasted your mother’s milk, heard men’s drunken rants before riding on your father’s back, were stabbed by traitors before knowing the value of friendship, experienced the coldness of law and systems without tasting the stability provided by the system and state, saw men’s greed without knowing their reliability, and learned women’s selfishness before knowing their fragrance. Am I wrong?”

“…”

This conversation is surely something I’ve heard somewhere before, now being brought up again.

And there must be a reason for bringing it up to me again.

“First, let me ask… why are you telling me this now? There’s nothing to gain by calling the leader of the party you belong to inhuman…”

When I asked that, Raisha countered with a question of her own:

“Master, do you really not understand why Lucia asked such a question?”

“…I really don’t…”

“They say a beast that has tasted human flesh must be killed no matter what. Because to that beast, humans are no longer objects of fear but just slightly unusual prey.”

“Victor. You don’t see other people as beings like yourself. And you don’t know how wrong that is.”

“…”

“If you thought of us, and by extension other people, as your own kind, you would never show that look.”

“…What kind of look have I been showing?”

“The look of a hunter eyeing prey.”

That’s what Lucia said.

My wife, Lucia, and even the dwarf brothers who had only recently joined were all nodding in agreement.

“I see… No wonder I got chills whenever I looked at the captain.”

“I thought it was because of his strong aura, but he actually thinks of himself as a non-human being…”

I looked at Simon.

Simon gazed at me thoughtfully for a moment, then spoke:

“Party leader. I don’t think you’re a bad person. Just as men and women have different standards, your standard of humanity must be different.”

“…Then…!”

“However.”

He didn’t accept my rebuttal.

“There’s no denying that your standards don’t align with those of the vast majority. I’m not saying you’re evil or anything like that. Literally, your standards are different. Even I can’t help with this. People develop their own standards as they grow up seeing many things… and those standards don’t change easily. It’s like how it’s easy to make a young sprout grow straight, but impossible to bend a great tree.”

“I see…”

I covered my eyes with my hand and leaned against the wall.

Now I could understand perfectly why Seriya left me.

She’s a good person. That’s why she couldn’t understand my ways.

I see… Have I been thinking of myself as not human?

I’ve thought of myself as an orphan of Parcival, a gold-rank adventurer, and a wandering knight blessed by the sun.

But underlying all that, I lacked the awareness that I am human.

In a way, this proves that my mind is still stuck in infancy.

Babies are ignorant beings who only know themselves, recognizing everything outside themselves as different.

To have such infantile cognitive patterns at my age… this goes beyond innocence and borders on idiocy.

Come to think of it, my marriage was like that too.

My love for her was faint, closer to a sense of duty that I should love her because she loves me.

“Haah… My head is spinning.”

Crackle! Zap!

While I was sitting, the lightning sphere above my head had been turning the continuously flying corpses into charcoal.

Was my psychological shock so great that I couldn’t even hear those sounds? I never thought I could be so profoundly shocked by mere words.

“It’s truly unbelievable… The curses, anger, and hatred spewed by all those people I’ve killed never stirred my heart this much… Is this the wisdom of elders?”

“Hmph. Humans will always be inferior to elves in terms of experience.”

Saying that, Lucia withdrew her fierce expression.

“But it can’t be helped… Adults, children, elves, dwarves—they all died helplessly at my hands…”

I muttered as I stood up, still leaning against the wall.

“So… if you’re going to die anyway, die spectacularly. You’ve got to save at least one country before dying, or it won’t look cool.”

When I said that, Simon struck my helmet with his staff and clicked his tongue.

“Young man, don’t you know how precious life is! If you’re so willing to throw away your one and only life, this old man must be near his end too!”

“Why are you like this? I told you I’d give you 10,000 gold coins if we survive this time!”

I shook the old sage like that.

What does it matter whether I’m human, orc, or dragon?

In the end, I too am a mortal living a mortal life that will someday end, so I should consider all living beings in this world—and consequently, those who are dying—as my brethren.

Oh, except for those already dead, of course.

Having thrown dozens of corpses with no result, they now seemed ready to begin a full-scale siege.

The growling cries of ghouls and the thundering footsteps of golems were getting closer and closer.