Knight of Corruption (LitRPG)

58 - Warfare

What I did was a mercy.

What a wretched creature. Doomed to be nothing more than a pawn used in someone's sick game – living in squalor and darkness, a sprouting tree that would never break ground and see the sunlight for herself. It was clear to me that Ryan did not understand my perspective. If he was the type of person to do non-violent work, then I doubted that the legendary sword he was wielding had seen much use.

That was what separated a killer from a non-killer. Some people didn't like getting blood on their hands. It held a significance to them that cannot be understood fully until you've been on the other side of it. I only learned what it meant to be a 'non-killer' when I killed my first person. And that first person was...

I was only fourteen at the time.

I stabbed him in the neck and gutted him like a fish. His blood got into my mouth and eyes. He screamed a horrible wail that stuck out in my memory above anything else. The other orphanage kids who were watching pulled his body off of mine when he collapsed on top of me. I felt no remorse, he tried to rape one of us. It was only right that I protected one of my younger brothers.

Life is violence.

It sounded so dark to say out loud, but it was true. People who had never 'hurt' somebody else didn't understand that they're not innocent of that fact. Violence doesn't have to be physical; it can be verbal, emotional, and economic. A man waking to greet the day in his carefully constructed townhouse – eating a buffet of food from different peoples and places. He's violent and he just doesn't know it yet.

How much blood was spilled to provide him those comforts? And how would he react to someone confronting him over his excess? He'd lie, insist that he had done nothing wrong, and refuse to change himself. People like me were the asphalt under his feet. We existed to provide 'comfort' and amusement to others. We were ground up and fed to spoiled children like gruel.

We externalise our violence onto other people. We use middlemen and procedure to mask the truth of what we do and think. It was never my fault, I merely followed the rules set by others, I followed orders, and I didn't know any better. There was no real evil at the top of the pyramid, just a system made by other people to cause the same kind of harm.

The sobering injustice of it all. The good times back in my old life were a distant memory now.

"I can't believe you just stabbed her like that man."

"She was the one growing those plants, so I got rid of her."

"She could have been a victim in all this too. Did you feel safe doing that just because she wasn't human?"

I stopped on the middle of the steps and rounded back on him with a sour look, "Ryan, how many people did she need to turn into slaves before it became 'okay' to kill her?" He stopped in his tracks and opened his mouth to respond, before closing it again. It seemed he had the good sense to not argue that point with me.

"...What about the person who killed those folks?"

"If we can take them quietly, we can hand them off to a watchman and get those bodies inspected. They'll deal with it, but knowing the punishment, killing them ourselves may save them the hassle."

"Come on man."

"I'm joking."

When we stepped back out into the garden, a lone figure awaited in the footprint of the house. She made no motion to intercept us as we approached. She had long blonde hair, wrinkles under her eyes and a pair of eye-glasses perched atop her nose. At first her look was one of casual dismissal, but upon closer inspection of our persons her face took a turn for the dark.