The Twenty Virtues Book 1- The Twenty Generals

47-Reality's Failure

With Gaya's defeat, Helena relaxed and her red energy began to dissipate. Tired, the half-redhead began making her way back to her companions, passing through the trail of destruction that her recent battle had created.

A large part of the forest was devastated and dying; now, with the return of virtue, they were truly dying. Her companions remained safe from all that chaos thanks to the barrier that James had created; neither Helena's energy nor Gaya's shadows could destroy that barrier.

The older man continued writhing in pain, due to his severe back wound, while Stuart tried to staunch the bleeding and treat the injury. His agitation ended up awakening the unconscious, both the children, who were just sleeping, tired but uninjured, and the older ones, who had multiple injuries and signs of exhaustion all over their bodies.

The barrier was undone the moment James realized that his niece had returned from her battle. She sheathed her weapon and ran to her relative's side, helping to hold him.

"What do we do now? Was the cut too deep?" asked the half-redhead, trying to see if she could help with anything. Stuart's response came with a brief hesitation:

"Actually, it's not just the cut itself... the parts of the flesh that your... power touched are infected and more sensitive. It's making it harder to know what to do."

Helena felt a momentary pang of guilt, remembering Gaya's words about her being someone who would bring destruction to everyone. But she also remembered her own words: it didn't matter if it was her fault or not; she needed to focus on addressing the problem first.

"Don't worry about it," Pedro said, still sitting where he had woken up, unable to move. The last attack he had received was powerful enough to drain all the strength the priest had. But even weakened, he could still speak, and as he spoke, plants and herbs grew around James, wrapping around his wound. "They'll see what they can do to help."

"It's a miracle that we all survived up to now," John commented, coughing, his voice very hoarse and worn out. Observing each of those around him, "But it seems we are reaching our limits... some more than others."

"But there's still one left," Stuart said. "According to that general, the dark virtue is still missing. That means we just need to defeat one more of them."

"Do we need to?" Clark asked, making everyone look at him. "Isn't that the, like, bad virtue? Why restore evil to the Earth?"

"Why? Would you be jealous if there were more rotten people than you?" Stuart shot back, not at all pleased with receiving such a lecture from Clark.

"You're not getting it, man. I don't know about you guys, but I NEVER said I was going to save the world. I never even agreed to kill all these guys. I... no, WE were all thrown into this with no explanation other than: 'DO IT!' We managed to kill nineteen of them? Perfect, we did more than we said we would. We don't need to go after this last general, especially for something we don't even know if we want back in the world."

"Technically, all eight of us still have the dark virtue in us," the archer explained, but already dismissing that line of reasoning. "But you're right, there's no need to worry about restoring something the world seems to reject."

Emily and Lysa had nothing to add to the conversation; even if they did, their input would be dismissed, so it was better to just wait for the others to decide what to do. Helena and Pedro didn't seem too inclined to correct the two; one was troubled by sadness, and the other by anger. For them, saving those feelings was not a priority.

"No," James replied, even though he was in pain. "The dark virtue isn't evil. Evil is just a path."

"What are you talking about?" the redhead said mockingly. "Isn't your favorite book the one that most likes to separate these things?"