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Chapter 273: Hate and Mercy - Markets and Multiverses
🕑 Added 2024-07-18 06:35:44 +0000 UTCThat night, we set up camp quite a ways away from the Worldstrider camp. We didn't want to fight without my illusions and the ability to flee if able. When we returned the next day, we saw something unexpected.
Funerals.
The Worldstriders were taking the corpses of their dead, and lighting them on fire. Each pyre had a wooden carving of a creature I didn't recognized added to it. One by one, the worldstriders sent their dead off.
The worldstrider bodies didn’t burn with the fervor I had expected. Instead, they melted like ice cubes in the sun. As the voidstrider bodies burned, little bits of essence drifted out of their bodies and towards the sky. It was beautiful, in an alien sort of way.
The Worldstriders holding funerals for their dead made sense. It shouldn't have surprised.
And yet, it did.
It would be easy to start extinguishing more worldstriders. To just fall back into the same pattern I had been trying to get into before. But it felt wrong to me.
Seeing the worldstriders act so… human threw me off. I hated them for what they had done to Sallia. She was like a hospital patient right now. She was stuck floating in the void, without the ability to live her own life.
Not to mention, the worldstriders were invading the continent. While they claimed they only wanted the mountains, they had already pushed far beyond them. They had murdered tens of thousands of Vernese troops, and seemed bent on conquest.
But at the same time… was killing every Worldstrider we could get access to the right thing to do? Was every worldstrider deserving of death? It was easy to see them as a monolithic species, since I didn’t understand their society or culture. It was also obvious that each worldstrider was an individual. They didn't seem to be some sort of hive mind. Each Worldstrider had its own name and identity. Trying to remove their species from the planet felt wrong to me.
I looked at the worldstriders again.
Many of the worldstriders in the camp behaved just like human soldiers. They patrolled the area, dug trenches around the camp, or assembled hunting groups to go kill the Vernese. But there were also some worldstriders doing other things.
Far away, I could see a small worldstrider weaving together flowers. Near the center of the camp, I could see a few worldstriders making wooden carvings. They seemed to be the same wooden carvings that the worldstriders were burning with their dead.
For the first time, it struck me how little I understood about the worldstriders and their culture. As much as I hated them… I didn't think ending their species was the right thing to do.
<Anise. Are we doing the right thing?>
Anise hesitated. For a long time, she stared at the camp, just like I was. Finally, she sighed.
<I don’t know.> she said. <The worldstriders we’ve killed so far… didn’t feel bad for me to fight. When we were in the pocket dimension, they wanted to hurt me for what I was. And they killed Sallia. And when we encountered the next few groups, they were the soldiers of the Worldstriders. I know that the worldstriders have spent a long time hunting down and killing Vernese troops. So I don’t feel bad getting rid of them.> Anise frowned harder at the camp, before she shook her head. <But I wouldn’t feel right if we killed some of these worldstriders. We shouldn't hurt the flower-weaver or the carver. They look like human civilians.>
I paused, and then nodded.
I didn’t really feel guilty for killing the worldstriders we had hunted down so far. But I also didn't want to kill the flower-weaver or the carvers.
<I don’t think I’d feel right killing the civilians either,> I said, finally. When we had come to this battlefront, I had been thinking about just fighting every worldstrider we found. But now that I saw some of them living regular lives... my beliefs were shaken.
Anise tucked a few unruly strands of pink hair behind her ear, before she shook her head.
<Thinking about the way the river of souls works… I don’t think it’s ‘bad’ to end the life of someone evil. A bandit, or a serial killer, for example… and I don’t think killing soldiers is wrong either. After all, they’ve signed up to fight and kill other people. That's their job. When they're part of a war machine that's trying to hurt us, defending ourselves make sense. But I’m not comfortable killing civilians.> Anise hesitated. <I know that killing them might get me more Achievement, and make it easier to get my keyword ability. But I don’t want to become someone bad, either. I'm sorry.>
<You don't have to apologize. I don't feel right killing civilians either,> I said. As I said it, I felt a tension I hadn't realized I felt start to disappear. Trying to avoid civilian casualties might be dumb. It might get us killed. It would make it harder to get Achievement.
But it felt right. Achievement wasn't everything. I didn't want to become like the members of the Old Market. I had been horrified when I learned that some Market members had slaughtered worlds for Achievement. By having a code for who was okay to hurt, I felt... better.
<Then from now on, let’s never hurt a civilian,> I said. <We can hurt soldiers and monsters, and bandits… but let's avoid civilians.>
I felt Anise send a wave of relief through the friendship bracelets. I smiled.
It resonated with me, in an odd sort of way. On the islands, during our first life, we would always use up every single part of a fish that we hunted. It wasn’t just a matter of practicality - it was also a form of respect for the giant fish who gave their lives so that we could eat. A lot of my sense of identity and self came from that life, and so paying homage to it in this way made me feel more… myself. It made me feel good in a way I hadn’t felt since Sallia’s death. It made me feel like I was regaining some of the bits of humanity I had lost over the decades of reincarnation after reincarnation.
After Anise and I made our decision, we spent a few hours observing the worldstrider’s camp. Originally, we had been planning to attack immediately. But now we needed to sort out the civilians and the soldiers first.
It took a while to separate all of the civilians from the soldiers. That was because the worldstrider combatants didn’t obviously carry around weapons. Human soldiers were easy to tell apart - just find the people with guns. But after a few hours, we successfully made a list of which worldstrider did what.
The first group of worldstriders were the soldiers. They often left camp to fight the Vernese. They were the easiest group to sort out, because they talked about war strategies, and they left camp in groups of 30-50.
Second, there were the ‘carvers.’ These worldstriders made wooden carvings. I wasn’t exactly sure why - I couldn’t find any sort of practical purpose for their wooden carvings. It probably served some sort of cultural or religious need? Either way, Anise and I both decided that the woodcarvers were civilians. We would make sure that our attacks didn’t kill them.
The third group of worldstriders were farmers. Not that this was obvious without enough observation. The worldstriders didn’t seem to need traditional food at all. Instead, the ‘farmers’ produced giant drops of glowing energy. They did this by stretching themselves out and exposing themselves to sunlight. It looked like they were imitating tree leaves.
At first, Anise and I had thought that the drops of glowing energy were weapons. We had even debated whether weapon craftsmen were soldiers or not. Both of us had leaned towards ‘no,’ since I would feel guilty killing a human blacksmith from an enemy kingdom. But before we finished our debate, one of the other worldstriders came over and slurped up a drop of energy. That was when we realized the glowing drops of energy were food.
That made it a very easy decision. I wasn’t going to kill a bunch of farmers. Anise heartily agreed with me.
Finally, there were a few smaller worldstriders who zoomed around the camp. I suspected they were children. Anise and I had no idea why they were here. The idea of bringing kids to a battlefield sounded bizarre to me. Who would bring kids to the front lines? But regardless of my thoughts on the matter, the little worldstriders seemed to be children. They ran around camp, made a ruckus, wove flowers together, and played. They were also the easiest group to figure out what to do with. No matter what, we would avoid hurting them. Even in the deepest throes of my hate after Sallia died, I wouldn't have killed children. That was a level of wrong that I would never sink to.
With our new resolutions finalized, and our new assessments finalized, Anise and I started our next operation.
And this time, we made certain that the civilians were left out of it.
Author’s Note:
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Comments
Sean
So glad to see them make a decision to not engage in total war and mass genocide. This was a dark thread that was neatly resolved. I hope this is the seed for brokering peace for massive Achievement (save an entire race of refugees).
