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Mark
Originally written from February 19, 2024 to April 27, 2024, 68 days


Prompt

Book Description:

Mark's ordinary life vanished, replaced by a harsh new reality lacking compassion. Thrust into a brutal world governed by a game-like [System], he must rely on sharp intellect and cold calculation to survive where death lurks at every turn. He seeks dominance through ruthless violence and intricate manipulation, desperately trying to impose order on the chaos – both external and internal. But Mark is no simple survivor. Haunted by inexplicable guilt yet driven by a chilling pragmatism that often spirals into manic destruction, he walks a razor's edge between calculated control and psychological collapse. Battling monsters, factions, and his own fractured mind, can Mark master this unforgiving world, or will his quest to "become everything" ultimately consume him whole in this dark, fast-paced LitRPG?


Chapter 1
A Village of Ash and Ambition



In the silence, Mark heard of the first words his father told him: “It's the way the goblins were that left my brother scarred for good. I was not able to face him, and he was not able to face me. Even if we longed for companionship, it was too late for us to be together. What we knew to be normal was long gone. Today marks a new day for both of us. Let us celebrate it together.”

Later, Mark spat on the ground with a furrowed glare.

He lived in a mountainous land with paths that led down a vegetated slope, and his home lay in a village far from the various cities that crafted a sense of order in this world.

Earlier, in the morning, Mark woke up, having seen things that he felt obligated not to see in his dreams. He chastised himself for “choosing his dreams,” having convinced himself that they were a product of decision rather than the subconscious mind. In the end, this was a feature of the culture that raised him.

Everyday sounded like wet slops being chewed hastily and messily next to the ear. The beating noise perpetrated by the isolation his village cultivated made his day-to-day living hellish.

It could only be fixed with one solution—taking over this village and fixing things himself. He couldn’t bear to see his father be so irrational with his behavior, so he had to erect a world-renowned stronghold capable of dismantling the so-called virtues and values his father and his relatives and his lineage stood for to the point of stunting all growth. He had no time for games, so he had to prepare.

In the quiet noises buzzing and taking over the air, he continued silently in the dark, shutting himself away from the world his village had made. This time, he would seek out the broader land and the broader kingdom, that thematic term for the cities of the world, “Kingdom,” which his parents swayed him from. This way, he could get rid of this evil. He was repeating himself, but this emphasis transcended his psychological landscape.

It inhabited his actions with his sowing, with his trench digging, with his pit preparing, with his body looting on the periphery of a conflict, with his planting of suggestive evidences that contributed to his father’s descent to isolation. To explain all of this, if he could get his father raging on his side, then he could enact his next plan—division and control.

Once his father confessed his desire to leave the village, he looked around and made his way through and around the village, planning to meet his working father.

But his father had his head down, his body like a wet flag, his eyes like a sorry boy, his soul visibly displaced through the slumping body of his. Mark was enraged, but he held back his anger with rationality and control.

No more pain! No more suffering! No more endless torture!

Mark left the village, taking the big risk of his life. But it was rational! Oh, it was rational!

He ran through the forest, meeting monsters of various sizes. He made a deal. He didn’t even prepare for this, but he had to gamble.

He didn’t have to gamble, but this was his last resort. The monsters were not sentient nor were they even in psychological understanding with this deal. But he would bring them and bait them.

Once the monsters destroyed the villagers, he would win. No more pain! No more suffering!

He was a sociopathic murderer, and he would admit that. But at least, he didn’t live a life not worth living.

When the monsters revealed themselves, his father was terrified, and with the drop of a hammer, Mark heard the familiar term, smirking.

“Goblins!”

This was exactly the dream he foresaw.

Shifting focus elsewhere, after he saw how quick his father fell to the chops of a goblin horde, he knew the precision in which he would break open his emotional well needed to be consistent. In order words, he had to make sure the guilt didn't breech his emotional gates.

With several grandiose gestures and devilish affirmations, he blasted away the guilt mites and crafted within himself a temple of violence.

"I am the sin of man and the birth of a new age. Let me gamble with your lives together. These goblins will be your new fathers through freshly bathed blood. You are but children undergoing discipline. This is discipline. You must mature spiritually in the seconds before your deaths. Eventually, you will die, but pray that you will be saved prior to this..."

He stopped talking, not really taking what he said seriously because they were just fanciful projections of power. If he truly needed to gloat, he could sit down and feel arrogant all by himself. He was already in power anyway. All he needed was more.

It was not about power. It was about claiming what was rightfully his.

As soon as the goblins got bored and left, he came out of his hiding place, zeroing in on the various houses of the village.

He needed to store up his resources in order to move forward.

Hundreds of soldiers would be visiting soon, and he had to be prepared. Of course, they weren't aware of the village massacre, but every so often, soldiers in twos visited. By the time six months had passed, hundreds of soldiers would have come.

After directing his arms and legs forward, having dealt with the repercussions assigned to him by guilt, he grabbed loot from the crates, vaces, barrels, chests, and piles, making sure that anything of use was identified. Even if he didn't get much, having gone through the effort of appraising a village boosted his skill in machinations later on.

Afterwards, he discovered five sticks, several glowing orbs, and eight manuscripts that detailed common spells. As for the rest, he threw them into a single large container and made sure to toss it properly on the side. Violence required empathy toward neatness.

With these new items, he ventured toward the next village, following the smoothest path through which his father guided him during his early years. In response, he felt like vomiting, ounces of guilt bottling up toward the surface of his well. He had to cut down this guilt tree.

He made a swift, round motion, swinging his arms up and down. He physically attempted to expel the guilt demon inside of him because tears were already flowing down his face. The shock of having seen his whole village murderer in front of him had a subtle effect on him.

He couldn't bear to see it again, which was why he had to distract himself.

After successfully tossing the guilt to the side, he pressed forward, entering a new stage in his path. Now that the smoothest part of the path was over, he would be encountering various wild animals of various dispositions. He had to be alert and react appropriately, or else he might lose out on prey and hesitant too long near a predator.

As the seconds crawled forward, its limbs creating marks on the ground, he focused on the textures of the earth, following a line from the moss to the grasses to the trees to the canopy. He redid this repetitively, scanning the forest.

Each second required a smooth orchestration of his limbs toward a crouching walk, paying mind to alternative postures and gaits if need be. It was excruciating to expect high, sustained attention toward his environment while keeping guilt at bay and his body agile.

At every stretch, he needed to find new blind spots and corner from which monsters could bounce. He smelled the air and kept his ears peeled, else he won in the who-dies-first game.

His hunger and thirst intensified enough, accentuating his foggy head. His feet and legs began to ache, his limbs having carefully balanced around the hand-carried items he had taken from the village.

This took hours, enough to break a man to dust.

He burst forward at the end of the day, finding himself in front of a village.

This was where he could escape.

So he did, blending with the villagers. His guilt dispersed in the meantime.

Now, he was under a new sun that didn't know what he did wrong.

He counted his targets.

One, a man named "Shallow" began opening a box, checking for what he needed for the day.

Two, a woman named "Redhurt" launched her fingers against a cookery pan, inserting them skillfully to ensure that the sharp edges of her blades kept succinct alignment with the meat she was cooking. It was a strange technique having basis in magic.

Three, a child named "Soal" occupied his mind with his crush, seeing her everyday at the fence gates where the men worked.

Four, a foot soldier named Reeda counted coins everyday, keeping his spear lying next to an old, broken wall.

In the beginning, Mark patiently worked as one of the villagers, observing his fellows and waiting hours upon hours for his time to shine.

Later on, he readied his hands, rolling some cloth and wrapping it around his hands. A blade emerged from his pocket where it raised its tip in the event of a brutal cutdown.

Mark noticed that one of the villagers obtained information regarding the location of the soldiers, and he took advantage of the opportunity by befriending the the villager and offering his skills.

After establishing some initial trust with a test, Mark located several distant outposts when the villager asked him to travel far out of the village to obtain a few flowers. It was another case of magic being the basis for what would have been an arbitrary mission if magic was absent.

Mark didn't want to think too much, so with his spell manuscripts, he took one of them, saving the rest for later.

For context, before this, He put his items in a small container, and the villagers were kind enough to give him a place to stay and have privacy. So none of them had any qualms about his presence and his items.

Returning to the present, if he consumed the spell manuscript he took after placing it in boiling water and letting the words and runes on it separate, he obtained a new ability—[Cold Gaze].

Since the villager who had information and [Cold Gaze] were now among his cards, he looked for a new cards to play with to complete a set.

If that set turned to fruition, he would execute it immediately, breaking open the canister.


Chapter 2
The Outsider's Game



However, as Mark engaged in forethought, a stranger cocked her gaze at him, basically wearing the attire of a foot soldier but with much better equipment, wide-eyed like a predator.

Mark had a feeling that he would need to get the hell out of there fast.

He got up as one would do with a rabid dog and walked away, gradually increasing in speed so as to avoid provoking the dog more.

This had to be done carefully. He looked at various points in the village, so he had to make an efficient turn. He wasn't looking behind him, but with enough time and focus, he could make a perfect beeline toward an escape zone where most of the villagers hung out.

The footsteps behind him made sounds. It was like horses.

Mark gritted his teeth and made even more awkward movements, sacrificing naturalness for speed.

The stranger behind him stopped, and Mark immediately shifted to a more natural gait, taking a deep breath and pretending that his limbs had been crying for a good stretch.

"Mark..." said the stranger, a woman.

Nothing in Mark's body language and face indicated surprise and fear.

"Why do you have the title 'Village Murderer'?" said the stranger.

Mark knew nothing about that. How did the stranger know?

The stranger knew Mark was powerless to stop her, so she confessed: "Follow me. I know things you don't. I will help you achieve your goal."

Mark's ego could handle some help, but he was more concerned about his options currently. His options were not sure wins, and in the end, he had to choose between maybes. It was a matter of chance, and if the one he chose didn't work, he could only curse himself out of frustration.

In the end, he chose the stranger's command.

Following her, he began to notice her beauty, but that was not important to his goal. So he ignored it.

Later, Mark was still in shock.

"I come from another world, and I was gifted with this thing called the [System]. And it shows me things I would never have known by myself. It's actually crazy! Lol."

"???" Mark smiled with furrowed brows.

Inside him, he was hearing something his murderer ass couldn't understand. After risking his life to take down a village, he now had to deal with a lunatic, possibly powerful beyond measure?

He laughed politely with the woman because she was the one to start laughing.

He didn't even know why they were laughing. "Lol?"

"Don't mind it," said the woman. "I'm Sophia."

Mark squinted briefly and shook her hand, but the woman was offering a fist. "Are you angry at me?" It was a straight question, not something Mark would've done normally. He was usually the keep-it-all-in kind, but the woman's personality was strangely disarming.

"Who are you?" he continued.

"Sophia Strong."

Mark was asking a different question, but whatever. "Do you know why you intend to help me?" It was a weird way to phrase that question, but he didn't know how to respond to her either. She was weird.

Sophia smiled and showed him her hands, telling him to give her his items.

Mark pressed his right brow, looking down. "You know?"

"Yeah, I check every container. It's a game mechanic!"

Mark began rubbing both brows, finding himself in a pickle. Yeah, she was a pickle, an ugly, maybe not so ugly, good-looking pickle that bothered him and made him feel awkward.

He sighed, but the fact that he was so openly annoyed in front of her meant something about the girl.

"You." Mark was tired of this charade. "Who are you?"

"Sophia Strong—"

"Where did you come from?" He noted the blade in Sophia's sheath.

"Town of God—the title. They called it 'Marshishi-something'."

"'Marshishi-shy'?"

"Yeah." Sophia began looking around, showing her back, grabbing things from her uncannily ornate bag.

Mark had no blade right now, but he wished that he could get it. If Sophia was too much of a risk, then he had to get rid of her. Even if she might help him, he couldn't determine her intentions and motivations fully, making her a wild card.

He was supposed to be all-powerful, but Sophia was annoying and possibly capable of killing him on the spot.

"Okay, now here you go." She handed Mark a red potion. "For when you get hit by a monster and almost die—"

Mark burst into laughter before realizing that Sophia didn't intend for her words to be taken as a joke.

Later, Sophia led him to a cave near the village where they explored for exposed ores. After venturing deep inside the cave network, Mark was worried that she was going to use him as bait.

But Sophia was insistent on him using the potion she gave him.

He didn't know how to repay her if she killed him this early. It was such a wonderful thing for his life to be treated like a ragdoll. How cool is that!

Sophia smiled the whole way, not paying Mark's visible irritation any mind.

She was making him so obvious. Every expression he made was so revealing to her. It was as if she was controlling him to be honest.

"Damn, he felt guilt about killing his father, okay?" he shouted, his voice ringing through the tunnel.

It was his voice that invited the monsters.

Mark frowned, staring at his hands and forearms, wondering when he became so weak.

Sophia began thrusting forward with a spear, using distance to keep her foes dissatisfied.

The monsters were 7 spiders, 3 zombies, and one skeleton archer.

After Sophia cut them down to size, she used her arms and feet to beat them up like toys.

Mark's frown grew deeper and deeper until he eventually looked away and pretended to cry.

Sophia snorted when he saw that, returning them to the surface.

"What did we even do there?" Mark said, his expression full of regret after being honest earlier about his feelings. He didn't want to be a psychopath after all.

After rummaging through his items in his hidden container, Sophia gave him his blade. "Kill the villagers."

Mark trembled for a moment before saying, "Are you crazy!"

Her smile dropped.

He continued: "I thought I was not supposed to kill anyone! This is wrong! This is bad!"

"I want you to kill people. Isn't that what you did... before?" Her gaze was threatening, and her voice was cold.

"No, no, not this..." Mark pressed his hands against his temples for a while, eventually groaning, smirking. "Let's do it then!" Though, his worried brows said otherwise.

"I made you my friend because I needed a tool." She pointed at her and then at him. "You are my tool."

"Ugh..." Mark's expression was distraught.

She was crazier than he was.

He followed her, and the villagers that were calm a moment ago began screaming in rage and epiphany.

Whatever magic Sophia was doing to them, it was dangerous and broke their minds.

Mark grew sick, wanting to vomit, but he couldn't after everything he did. He had to fulfill his goal and become powerful.

While Sophia was looking at him, he demanded that she let him try and prove himself. He wanted to show her that he was the [Village Murderer].

Soon enough, they both stood side by side, with her blade unsheathed and traveling over to Mark. This was their new alliance, a cursed dynamic.

While Sophia wasn't looking, he stabbed her in the temples with her blade and his.

"You disgusting monster!"

Sophia's body fell like a wet ragdoll. "Damn you!"

He breathed hard, wishing that he was lying when he said that he was the sin of man. "It would be so great to be a sin of man right now, whatever that means." He huffed as he lay down.

In the meantime, the villagers fled, and this gave him an opportunity to flee with them.

But what he didn't realize was that the villager elder was watching.

Later, in a house far from the village, the villagers took refuge, arming themselves and stuffing their stomachs with energy food. If they had to fight, they needed to be prepared.

Throughout all the fuss and grief expressed by the villagers, the village elder was leading their planning. Even after what Mark did, he still offerred himself as aid, saying that he used to be the son of his father, who was a solid adventurer back in the day.

In response, the elder was glad to employ his skills in strategy.

Their strategy would involve mobilizing more units from other villages, but they couldn't do that without making a deal.

What Mark didn't realize was that his skill [Cold Gaze] was still off cooldown, which meant that he could still use it. He also realized that his muscles were now slightly more toned than before, and he remembered experiencing a sense of newness after he killed Sophia. He wondered if it had to do with his emotions or the [System] she was speaking of.

In the distance, Sophia still crawled like a frog breaking up floating petals, creating explosive craters with her legs. Her mana was releasing magic actively without her intention. It was because Mark damaged her head. Moreover, she was heavily wounded, leaving her little time to recover. If she didn't give her potion to Mark, she would have been able to heal up.

Mark knew that Sophia was still out there, so with the permission of the elder, he gathered three men and scanned the burning village for Sophia.

Since he was in a hurry, he didn't confirm Sophia's status and whether she was dead, wounded, or well. But the fact that Sophia didn't follow them hinted at good possibilities.

When he located Sophia, Mark and the three men held their offensive weapons: a scythe, a hunting knife, a hammer, and a butcher's knife.

Sophia raised her hand, pedaling her legs until she got off the ground. But the ground met her face again. The strong feet of several men bursted her back and rolled her arms into soft putty. The excruciating blood loss left her unconscious.

Her death signified a third stage of Mark's life, making him smirk with delight. "You will not defeat me."

"Sorry what?" said one of the men.

"Oh, uh, nevermind." Mark still had that confessing habit that Sophia had spawned in him. It was disgusting to imagine her limbs entering his body and breaking down his emotional walls. That sounded horrid, considering how evil Sophia really was.

Mark expressed his discomfort with a stonefaced stare and moved on, reuniting with the villagers, ending the discussion about getting help and mobilization.


Chapter 3
Whispers of War



The next day, in Mark's former village, a young goblin entered one of the houses.

She opened up a small cannister, discovering a hidden compartment inside.

She took it open and stomped it, breaking it and revealing a shining gauntlet.

She grabbed it and tucked it under her arm, viewing the wide assortment of new goblin villagers before her.

They were moving from their caves 6 kilometers away and exploiting this new location.

The assortment before her also went over to an arriving wagon and collected crates from it, unloading them into the houses. They would leave for now and venture into the nearby caves to wake up the goblins and other monsters hiding there.

The goblins left behind began to restructure the village.

Meanwhile, a kilometer from Mark's current village, monsters roamed, cutting trees down and putting them together into various wagons. They were delivering it to their bases.

In another scene, 25 kilometers away, tens of humans shot arrows at a small fort where tens of orcs threw rocks at a charging 6-man cavalry troop with prominently excellent armor. The cavalry slammed into the gate, but they bounced back with a roar of resistance from the gate. The projectiles rained on.

5 kilometers closer to Mark, a 30-year-old man shot an arrow, opening a large exit hole in a beast, magic influencing his great strength. His bow was impossible to draw without the level of power his magically empowered muscles brought. He rained down several more arrows throughout the patient course of twenty minutes, interspaced with long hiking and traveling and repositioning. Monsters fell to the ground, and his stealthy attacks gained notice. He retreated when the monsters acquired full vision control of the area.

Returning to Mark, from one of the villagers circulating the village, he got word of several goblins wandering around one of several spots that the adventurers spread traps around. The village was prepared, having dedicated much of their resources throughout the years into fortifications and palisades. Though, this much time spent into defences reduced their nutritious food and thus made them much more vulnerable to disease. As a result, several villagers had died since the village transitioned their focus to defences 3 months ago.

Now, Mark was at the forefront of this mess, so he had to contribute by helping out with farming. If he didn't manage skillfully enough, they were going to force him to leave or give up sleep just to do in 18 hours what could have been done in 6 hours by the average villager there.

In the end, he had to navigate through the challenges posed by his village amid the foundation of benefits it had offered him. He took this objective's offer.

A day after Sophia Strong's death, Mark sat on his haunches under an open wooden shed, engaged in a challenging task. He was separating the skin from pigeon peas, using only his fingers.

In the meantime, a group of several juvenile villagers removed peanuts from shells one by one, being one of many tasks teams constituting the male work force.

As for the assertion that hunting and violence were embodiments of masculine work, hunting was only done during the dry season when the food source from agriculture was scarce. Moreover, they synchronized their hunting activities on plant phenology. Having observed that warty pigs fed on a specific plant during the mid-dry season, they targeted them when the plant species "Ulayan" and "Kalingag" actively flowered and fruited. In addition, hunting teams were only composed of two to three individuals accompanied by domesticated dogs. Overall, hunting varied within the year, done chiefly out of necessity rather than social traditions.

Ultimately, Mark's previous violent actions were not pragmatic or philosophical. It was done for personal or emotional reasons.

After Sophia's death, Mark began to notice signs of life around him. Now that he saw that the fire was survived by a second-growth village area, he noticed the fresh and simple aroma filling his lungs. Furthermore, the late, richer and more complex scent of the village was survived by this new one.

Mark began to make his move, collecting baskets. Instead of distributing the resources he learned to get with the help of the villagers, he decided to look for goblins to lure. With the baskets full of pigeon peas, they would be convinced much easily.

Meanwhile, several kilometers away, a goblin, slashing the earth, began releasing his frustration upon a stone, his arms tensing virtuously according to his God-given instincts. He was given freedom to create, and so he destroyed, shattering the constituents of matter. A rock stood in his way, and he crushed it with ease, letting his heart relish the moment of surprise. The dust-like remnants waited, and soon, the air lifted it up in swirls. The sun highlighted the goblin across the gaps in the trees.

He walked around, gazing for a human. He shivered when he saw a stick before sighing with relief.

He began running, traversing the forest grounds, his movements swallowing a dance-like pattern wherein swirling became succinct.

He danced upon the ground, the rocks full of arrogance but fallen against his illustrious stooping.

He reached a thicket of trees through which he viewed over a wide arc, spotting several distant figures that appeared trapped inside the holes between the leaves.

He readied his blade, infusing it with his spirit. The blade swung several times on its own, controlling the fine muscles within the goblin's dominant arm. It continued swinging until the goblin was tired, but by that time, the spirit remembered the blade. And the goblin dashed out in a courageous charge, his form taking the secondary form of a bestial shadow whisking the distance off.

He slashed several figures to the ground, stomping them and clashing with their remaining strengths. They fell unabated.

The world crystalized in the palm of the goblin's hand as fast as a sip, usurping the area's power, but most of the power, which he couldn't carry, zoomed off.

The goblin retained the power he received, equipping himself with new agency.

The next targets lay in the distance, but they were out of his sight.

He jogged, climbing each step of the way, trespassing amid the wards stationed to give his opponents vision of him, his form creating more speed and tenacity.

He zoomed with a heroic sprint, grabbing and taking what he needed from the branches. launching himself further beyond.

He stopped, his essence relaxing, his weapon becoming primed with spirit.

He disappeared, blending into the trees.

Returning to Mark, his expression was frail because he knew that the longer he stayed in the village, the nearer he was to becoming its captive.

He was growing exhausted.

He gritted his teeth. All he had to do with his past village was invite the goblins at the best time, but he had spent his whole life in that village, knowing the ins and outs, knowing the people, knowing his father, knowing the goblins. Yet, now, he was in a place where he couldn't just use the same formula-solution. He was angry, but he knew that it made logical sense that this new village would present a hurdle.

He should have known! He should have known! Now, he was getting the whipping of a lifetime!

And the thing was that he knew all along! It was this stupid ass world that kept on giving and giving.

He had to find a way to control the village and fast. He was making progress, and sure, it was excellent by the standards his former village had applied to visitors. But he was starting to get impatient.

If he waited too long, he would spend two years being a loser-dooby-douser again! He was not going to do that anymore!

He prayed that his current village just burned to hell. He had to ruin his former village. He had to. If he hadn't done it, he would have gotten stuck. This village was the same. If this village didn't give him power beyond what he envisioned of a village, he would destroy it all. He couldn't sit down here and wait for things to change on their own. He had to do something!

But he couldn't just lure the goblins again without control of the village and its surroundings.

He needed all the help he could get. He had to destroy complacency and weakness and helplessness. He was tired of seeing his father suffer and be sad all the time. He had to remove his sadness. He had to do it! He couldn't bear to see him cry and insidiously ruin himself and the lives of those around him. He couldn't bear to see the children so weak and frail. He had to break this cycle of pain, so he had killed them all in one fell swoop. This was the war to end all wars. They were going to Heaven anyway. He would take responsibility for this because he was tired of being helpless all the time. He didn't want to see someone suffer and do nothing. He had to do something, and if he couldn't help someone suffering for too long, he might just kill them due to how helpless they made him feel. He would kill a human being if it meant they didn't hurt anyone anymore and hurt themselves in the process. Instead of killing someone throughout the course of their entire life, it was better to confront them. But if that didn't work after many years and the issues were worsening and still being ignored and not addressed, he had to destroy this suffering by getting rid of it all. He couldn't bear to see the children suffer under a banal system of ruination.

The system didn't address his concerns over people who were suffering that he decided to destroy the system in one fell swoop, freeing them all from this insidious massacre by releasing their souls into Paradise.

He couldn't live his entire life pretending any more. In the end, he spent years watching the children suffer under neglect and abuse. He had to do something. He couldn't let someone go through what he did. Just because his father was suffering didn't give him the right to worsen the lives of others. He had to stop it all. The children could never find peace in this world after what they had gone through—they didn't deserve this!—so he decided that it was better for them to live outside of their bodies and trauma. They were free now.

Shifting away from Mark toward a more objective, omniscient perspective, he was abused and neglected growing up in a remote village and had no access to education and alternative knowledge systems, so his framework of mind was likely a manifestation of that.

Honestly, the lesson to be learned was that well-rounded education and open-mindedness went a long way to preventing something like this.

Objective thoughts aside, Mark was already making his way up the mountain next to the village. Most villages were situated a distance from a mountain range.

He came upon a hamlet and began talking to the people there. However, he couldn't understand them, so he returned again to the village and asked about it.

"Those people are not with us..." said one of the villagers ominously. "Those are the Mongyon. They don't belong here."

"Here?" Mark was merely pretending to be confused because he knew all along that the hamlet was an indigenous community, having seen his former village killing them. But he didn't understand why they did this.

"Have you seen their appearances?" said another villager. "They're goblins!"

"What...?" Even Mark wasn't this dumb to say that humans were goblins. There was a very clear difference between goblins and humans, so the notion that the people from the hamlet were goblins was clearly racist scapegoat tactics. He might be a sociopathic murderer, but he wasn't discriminatory.

But seriously what the hell was wrong with these people? At this point, he just wanted to destroy this stupid village right now. He was one of them for now, but what was the point? It was annoying having to deal with their political shit. Nothing about this was fucking pleasant.

"Can I just say that the people from the hamlet don't look like goblins to me?"

"They are!" continued the villager. "Have you seen their faces?"

"What...?" Mark was reaching his limit. He might just execute this person right here, but he already had a plan in his mind.

With the baskets he had hidden, he lured tens of goblins into the village without making it inconspicuous.

As a result, the village spent all day fighting, leading to significantly weakened tempo and strength.

Now, Mark visited the hamlet, saying that he was finally leaving. The village couldn't stop him.

When he came there, he said that the village was attacked and the villagers were pinning the blame on them. He warned that foot soldiers would be coming.

The hamlet didn't believe him at first, but Mark showed him the coat that the village women gifted him. It was clean, so Mark dipped these clothes in goblin's blood and presented it as evidence of a goblin attack.

Mark added that it was advisable to attack the village now because they were still recovering for several days.

A deep sigh followed by a weary "It is what it is," embodied the hamlet's reaction.

The hamlet began walking to the village.

Mark tiptoed forward, reinforcing his message with details, his flavorous tones crafting the perfect guise of hurry.

As soon as the hamlet arrived, the hamlet leader offered to talk. But one of the villagers saw Mark collapse.

Seeing him groaning in pain, the hamlet decided to leave Mark with the village, expressing sorry because of the awry state of the village and returning to the hamlet. They would rather not hurt anyone, being peace-loving.

As soon as Mark stopped pretending, he said that earlier, he asked the hamlet for help, but they poisoned him and forced him to come help attack the weakened village. He added that as soon as the hamlet saw the village, they likely decided to wait for more goblins to stockpile weapons before they joined the next attack. He even alleged that the goblins and the "goblin" humans assaulted and murdered a village woman in his former village.

Several days later, the villager men approached the hamlet, attacking it, waging war, racking up the deaths of each individual in that hamlet, killing every single Mongyon there.

Even if Mark failed, he succeeded in dividing and conquering them as one of the villagers.

Soon, after Mark was gone, the actual goblins would return, destroying the battle-exhausted villagers.


Chapter 4
Threads of a New Game



Earlier, Mark learned that Sophia's death gave him access to a holographic view of the [System] that showed him his levels, stats, skills, and so forth. It had belonged to Sophia, but now it was his.

[Level up! You have gained a new skill—"Redburst"]

[Redburst (INNATE): Any enemy within 1 meter becomes marked with a red mark. If you or your allies basic attacks a marked enemy, they deal an extra 10 damage.]

[Level 2: Mark Reader

Health: 610/610

Mana: 311/311

Armor: 47

Magic Resistance: 32

Skills: Redburst; Cold Gaze]

[Cold Gaze (ACTIVE): Any enemy your eyes meet becomes affected with Cold. Cold reduces damage dealt, attack speed, and movement speed by 15%.]

One morning, Mark travelled to the nearest town with the help of a foot soldier named "Reeda".

The village was now set as a checkpoint and a second base with the town potentially being his primary base of operations. He still didn't know that it would be occupied by goblins by the time he returned.

When he reached the town, he discovered that goblin villagers were placed inside a small prison-like community within the borders of the town. They were being made to work and supply specialty goods as exchange for protection, security, and opportunity. Giant walls kept the goblins inside, and this made sure that the goblins were being exploited to maximum efficiency. Many of them worked in quarries and mines.

This was considered the natural progression of goblin subjugation, since goblins couldn't just be wiped out without significant losses on both sides. It was easier to trap and convince them to surrender in order to process them efficiently and systematically.

The goblins' professions included the armorer, butcher, cartographer, cleric, fisherman, fletcher, leatherworker, librarian, mason, nitwit (a villager without a profession), shepherd, toolsmith, and weaponsmith. Some goblins were even trapped in tiny, tight booths to keep them from wandering.

Though, at one point, the land where the town was built decades ago belonged to the goblins.

Anyway, if Mark was careful, he could abuse this situation.

As soon as he reached the adventurer guild, he learned that the adventurers made up a significant portion of the public enforcement. However, policing activities varied within the year, resting upon necessity. Ultimately, he began assessing how the adventurers pathed around the town.

He learned a breadth of things.

For example, with domesticated goblins, the adventurers were able to bring the utility to the front line of monster hunting and dungeon station checkpointing (the installment of forward operating bases in the context of adventuring).

Reeda, his companion, left Mark as soon as he arrived at the village, trusting him to navigate his own challenges and the town for himself.

Fortunately, Mark found an inn willing to accept him for work; however, he realized that none of the ten positions offered suited him. He left looking for another place. Wandering long and hard, he encountered a man who told him he was looking for someone who could read and write. Mark Reader, being surnamed such much later after birth due to his uncommon ability to read and write, was offerred 8 positions: scribe/record keeper, translator, message courier, map reader/navigator, researcher/librarian assistant, inventory manager, apprentice mage/scholar, chronicler/storyteller.

He later discovered that the recruiter was part of an adventurer faction.

The faction reverbrated across multiple divisions occupied by squads of individuals.

This was the time to commence the workload.

Mark climbed slowly, joining the faction and starting from the bottom of this high ladder.

The faction itself was a behemoth as visible from the various buildings that made up its influence.

The divisions were multiple giants, guiding the groups toward their aims.

The specialists broke ground in new ways, tearing through classifications and having groups circle around their unique potentials.

The squads separated across the expanse, sounding echoes into the nooks and crannies where goblins hid cowardly.

Mark stood before this sky.

At the training grounds, he was expected to learn his swings in order to develop camaraderie with his fellows, but for the most part, he did work as an inventory manager, spending most of my time watching the various training equipment and how they were used. In the end, he would see the various skills that adventurers exployed.

One time, a woman danced, sundering the earth, creating swathes of balls of colorful light, their beauty spreading across the scenery. Her eyes became disfigured like boiling flesh, her arms continuing to wrap around itself in never-ending bends and folds. She transformed into a floating bird with several arm-like appendances sprouting from her back, her form levitating above the ground, her buttocks separating into various compartments.

Furthermore, she summoned herself forward, casting a spell that wrapped around several dogs into a package, casting another spell that shooed several blades flying around her, casting a third spell that broke the earth and coated it with a black tearing acid.

Finaly, she emerged like a little pod, crafitng several different motionary steps toward oblivion. Her form hid among thousands of lights, she gloated, her soul tearing through them and bursting out of death.

Mark stared.

"Hey," he said.

The woman furrowed her brows in response.

"Uh. I was wondering if you can tell me how you did that?"

The woman was glaring.

"If you don't want to, it's fine."

After leaving, Mark entered another room.

It led outside where various villagers had gathered under the shade in front of a large gate.

They were resting, wiping their sweat with cloth, relaxing, and drinking water.

On the ground, next to the villagers, yokes attached to baskets rested.

Mark stared and began to recognize that this situation was familiar. He remembered what it was like to see hundreds of villagers in one place. He saw it many times during his village's interaction with other villages during feasts.

The ceiling was too high, and maybe, the ceiling was the friends he made along the way.

He fell to the earth, remembering the bodies of his friends when he passed them after he lured the goblins to massacre them all.

They were not his friends anymore. They had gone without him, and he had been left behind here on this dying world. They were free now.

He smirked, his lips trembling, his eyes flickering between grief and a smug expression. Under his eye, a twitch of frustration reared its head.

He was not to be limited. He was not bound by this stupidity!

He saw the woman again. This time, behind his polite eyes, he wanted to exploit her being, which meant empathizing with her and being sensitive to her humanity. This way, he would harness her power optimally. But with his empathy came a harrowing sensation of guilt. Though faint, it came alive like a thousand stars at midnight.

He walked up to her and greeted her politely with his head bowed momentarily. This served as a buffer for his next attack—he asked if she could tell him where the latrines were. When she helped him with this, he left for a moment before returning to say that he realized that his body didn't need to go after all. So in the meantime, pretending to have stuck himself in an awkward situation and be looking for a way to escape it, he asked her how she was doing, adding, "It's nice, no?" It was intentionally vague enough for her to fill in the blanks.

"Yeah, it was a good thing they finally got the goblin system functioning," said the woman.

"I was surprised that it happened so fast."

"I mean, I guess 50 years is quite fast."

'I'm talking about how it was placed."

"Uh, yeah, I guess they did have the whole town around it pretty quickly."

"I was wondering how long it would take though before it actually started working, you know?"

"Yeah, I'm guessing they're still testing to see if it can really help the goblins work faster."

"Uh-huh. But I meant that the people responsible were not really that."

His question made it seem as if she was the one being awkward and misunderstanding. So she felt the need to compensate. "You're right. Jay and Lumi have been really adamant against unpermitted constructions, so it's honestly problematic with how much adventurers have to build around."

"Basically," Mark said. "Something like that." He was rewarding her engagement with post-disagreement post-disapproval agreement and approval, laying the groundwork for him being a source of confidence to her.

Next, he pretended as if he was interested in having a regular talking with her because of her and as if they had much more to discuss and do together.

However, seeing that the woman was starting to feel too comfortable, he left, making her tense up and wonder if she did anything wrong. She also wondered who Mark was with the confident and self-willed way he left. It was unusual to see someone so leader-like, as if he was secretly the boss that controlled the area and didn't know how to feel fear, nervousness, and anxiety.

Her second-guessing and curiosity were groundwork for a potential informant, one that overshared and overexplained to hedge against every possible misunderstanding and root of offense.

If someone was so confident, respectful, and sociable with her, then she didn't want to say anything wrong.

Mark took a deep breath, and then he raised his delicate fingers, letting them dance around in a twirl. "Maybe I should be careful..."

His face became pinched with a smile.

It was a complexity, but who was he to stop now?

It was the destiny had been given—to destroy the ruination of this world.

He would do with his own hands instead of waiting for help as he did all those years. No one came to save him! No one did!

He grinned, assured that he would save someone this time. Indeed, he would save himself through them.

As for how he would do that, he needed to become the epitome of grace and beauty.

Mark viewed the [System].

[You may pick up leaves on the ground to improve your affinity with nature. Identify a leaf!]

Mark picked up two leaves and focused his vision on it until everything else blurred into the background.

[Leaf +2]

[Affinity with nature: 100/0.00000000000000000001]

[Witchman 💀💀💀 sent you a friend request.]

Mark was already inexperienced with the [System], so something like this was outside his expectations. Who sent this? What were their intentions? He wanted to know quickly.

He tried to get the [System] to answer him about what this friend request was.

The [System] immediately magically made him understand that he could send messages to others through it. However, the default settings made it so that two individuals needed to have each other as [Friend] first before the could send each other messages.

He decided to try turning off this setting. When he did, hundreds of messages immediately began pouring.

These messages were not private messages, but they were public ones sent throughout the entire world.

He looked for another setting that blocked public messages.

Now that he was calm, he wondered if the public messages offered free knowledge and information that he could use. So he asked the [System] how he could go through the public messages easily without getting bombarded with notifications and messages.

The [System] informed him that he could go to the [Forums] where messages were separated by categories and threads.

When he went here, the [Forums] showed up as a large rectangle that he could scroll through. He found several words that caught his attention. "Found diamond at 65 y."

"Survive the disasters ist still the best spell."

Hundreds of vague titles like these broke his curiosity and made him close it to relax. The stimulation was getting to him. How did people cope with this [System]? And who got access to view the [System] and who didn't? For most of his life, he knew about the [System], but he never knew about that it was possible for some to see it. The fact that he got access to [Forums] and private messages just because he could now view the [System] and interact with it better instead of using it only for skills made him a little nervous.

This great power he now held daunted him.

After accepting Matthew Cruz's friend request, the first message he received was friendly.

[Witchman 💀💀💀: Hello, I forgot that I shouldn't be contacting newbies. But welcome to the world. I'm also from Earth. I notice you've been ignoring my friend requests for a while now, so I've been spamming you the whole time. Plus, I notice your name's changed? How did you do that? Weren't you Sophia Strong before?]**

[Mark Reader: Oh nice!]

He didn't know what to say because he didn't know how things worked in private messages, so he just threw out something vague. Of course, staying vague for too long could be troublesome, so he had to add more to his current response later.

But now was not the time.


Chapter 5
The Scent of Opportunity



Mark already knew what to do, as he had a lot on his plate. But it was sufficient for him.

He began searching through the [Forums], finding locations of various dungeons and treasure. He also found the locations of cities of which he had never heard before. This continued on and on until he compiled a list, but he couldn't write it down because he was poor.

So he used his first pay to buy a pen and paper. The pen used minimal mana to create ink, and it allowed him to write for days. Though, he did wonder what he could do with ink. If he poured magically created floods of ink into a forest, what would happen?

He wrote the list of locations, finally accomplishing his goal.

But he wanted to see how well the people knew about these places, so he decided to kick up conversations with customer-facing employees, asking questions about the locations. However, he was immediately dismissed and directed toward an information shop. He was stumped that information ahd to be bought around here. His father would often tell him stories about dragons, monsters, and terrifying cities where bandits created factions and tortured peasants with summoning magic. But he was not here, so he had to rely on whoever was available. It wasn't as if his father knew everything. He had been stuck in that village for who knew how long. And based on the way he told those stories, they were probably all hearsay. In the end, he was glad that he had to pay for information because it made him extra sure that it was genuine. But who could say still?

His thoughts about Witchman remained pending, as he still had no clue what to do about the [System] really. He was still pondering how he could distribute his stats effectively after learning about them from the [System]. In the end, anything that had to do with holographic text was on hold until further notice, except for the [Forums] of course.

He tried to look for locations that he knew, but he found none. In fact, mentally typing place names he knew into the search bar yielded absolutely nothing. He was mortified about the idea that this world might be bigger than he thought, and his small world in the village and around was very small.

The only thing he could do was move forward until he found exactly what this world was keeping from him.

He sighted several adventurers standing around on the side of the street and approached them, asking if they knew about the locations he found on the [Forums]. None of them had anything to say, so he really gave up and went to the information shop a few meters away.

At the information shop, he greeted the shopkeeper, a man wearing several glasses all on top of each other. He had six eyes, but the two pairs of glasses and eyes above the respective firsts were illusory and transparent. So a few seconds after his greeting, these extra pairs of glasses and eyes disappeared.

Mark offered a piece of paper on which his list of locations were written. As soon as the shopkeeper stopped to pick it up and placed it on the counter at the opening of the fence protecting him, he smiled. "I have no idea what these are," he said.

His smile looked insincere and ambiguous, but Mark gave up immediately and left. He didn't want to piss off someone who probably knew people that he didn't want to meet on a bad day.

Since this ended in failure, he adjusted to his next plan—he reunited with Reeda, asking him about the village. Reeda told him that the village was destroyed, and he only learned about it recently from his fellow foot soldiers.

Mark didn't like the sound of the people he had spent so much time cultivating a relationship with killed. He spent so much time and effort grinding to cultivate that, and he didn't want to deal with setbacks this early in his journey.

Reeda frowned when he saw Mark's frustration, thinking it hinted at grief. "I also didn't know... I'm sorry..."

Mark was also happy to know that he could easily destroy villages with the right timing. He had intended to kill the villagers anyway, but he didn't have to this time. He just wanted to cut down their numbers to ensure that he maintained control of the situation. It was like bullying others just to remove the worry that they could be a threat. If they were, then the bullying would stop. He didn't want to have a bunch of people just within range doing whatever they wanted outside of his knowledge. He could predict people for so long before one of the people at the hamlet suddenly decided to lure goblins like he did. He didn't trust people because he knew how easy it was to hurt people.

In the end, he told Reeda that he wanted to find books to read.

Reeda responded by saying that they both didn't have enough money, and it was very expensive. But Mark said that he would soon have enough money.

Mark allowed Reeda to glimpse into his short-term objectives of intelligence gathering, but he only did this because he was planning to pull Reeda into the role of an informant.

If Reeda saw Mark struggling, as a foot soldier, he could provide clues as to what was going on.

Having a committed relationship with others was part of Mark's goals, but he was only there for their benefits. As soon as it became too rocky to manage, he would duck out.

After stringing Reeda along to get him some food for both of them, Mark found out that Reeda had a family here, so he asked if he could visit one day to give gifts. And Reeda, recognizing Mark was probably scared and grieving after what happened to the village, said that he could go. Though, he did add that Mark had to make sure that he was holy because being holy prevented sicknesses.

Mark, having ties with the [System], knew he was referring to the [Holy] buff that was also a debuff if the person who had it was undead or deemed evil.

Reeda was especially careful about diseases because it was expensive to request for a cure. Requesting healing at the temple involved buying animals. If a priest confirmed that the animals were holy, he would allow them to be used for sacrifice. If the sacrifice went smoothly, then a single use of healing was provided.

Since Mark was worried that he would be outed as evil and possibly killed, he said nevermind with regard to the family visit. His goal was to create footing in this town by having family friends that could make his presence here normal. The more normal he was, the easier it was for him to integrate into the broader community. Moreover, having friends was beneficial for his spirit and mind, even if he did intend to break off with them if necessary.

Since he was not one to think about things so much, he went to various establishments in order to look for the one most attuned to stranger conversation. He found that the adventurer guild was pretty slow-paced, but the groups of people were discussing at length, notably standing up. So he approached one of them.

As soon as he edged close, one of the adventurers sighted him, met him halfway, and offered to shake his hand, saying, "We're taking rabbits, want to come...?"

Mark declined, heading to another establishment—an inn where people were seated and more rowdy. He approached a 1-person table and asked if he could chat with them.

The person declined and pointed outside with an annoyed look.

Mark approached another 1-person table and succeeded.

When he sat down, the person across from him offered to buy him a drink, but Mark declined.

After that, Mark said, "I've always been surprised by the way the people here have been handling things lately."

The person smiled, squinting, before bursting into laughter. "Yeah, I had nothing the other day, but now I'm here."

After a few seconds, the door of the inn opened, squeaking loudly, as people entered and left.

"Oh, shoot, someone's calling to me," Mark said, standing up.

When he left the inn, he pretended to look around for a while before returning inside, sitting back down with the same person.

The person, with a look of clarity, said, "Who was that?"

Mark smiled politely. "It was a friend, but I didn't see them. Maybe, I was wrong about having seen them call me. Anyway, I was wondering about the events lately. It's crazy, right?"

"Yeah, yeah, the goblin system was the first time I've seen anything move that fast."

Mark nodded slowly before smiling in a way that very subtly expressed that it wasn't what he meant.

With a slightly surprised expression, the person switched topic. "Yeah, after the queen in Azkaelstra, I didn't have time to finish up the cards. It would've been great if I won a bet this early in the year."

Mark repeated his slow nod and particular smile to make sure that it looked more like a mannerism in case the person started nearing the point of suspicion where he realized Mark's more subtle style of communication. Most people had those very slight doubts at the bottom, which was a level strong enough to shift behavior but weak enough to be actual suspicion. Now that he had fooled the person into believing that his slow nod and particular smile was manneristic, he succeeded.

"The queen?" Mark asked, finally finding a potential well of information.

After the conversation, he came to understand that the queen was planning on creating a variety of goblin systems for the sake of generating goblin power.

What he didn't know what this was often compared to the use of sunlight as clean energy to power golems magically instead of embedding them with magical ores. Moreover, the new trend saw enchanced goblins being used to free humans from tasks that were dangerous, monotonous, or physically demanding.

Not bothering too much with it, he decided to go check out one of these goblin systems.

Even if he was aware of the [Forums], he preferred allocating his precious time toward tried-and-true methods of investigation—that of firsthand experience.

So at the site of a goblin system, it looked like a giant contraption with many different magical machines in lines and zigzags, all leading to a large pot.

He didn't want to bother too much about it, so he focused his energy on exploring the land, heading to an adventurer guild.

Here, he was able to verify his assumptions of adventurers. They were often very rowdy and rough-mouthed with their vulgar wording.

He didn't want to spent too much time with such problematic people since his late father used to be one of them and Sophia Strong probably as well.

Exiting the guild, he was quick to furrow his brows at the sight of a different kind of community, that of crafting.

Hundreds of dwarves—each accompanied by 10 to 30 adventurers making up a party with a few larger party exceptions with more than one dwarf—exited the guild building. They were an immigrated minority population inherited for the sake of exploiting their particular skills, but Mark didn't understand this.

Because they looked more reasonable and proper-placed than the adventurers, he approached them.

However, he was immediately motioned away by a foot soldier, and it was Reeda. Nearby, different teams of workers travelled along, not paying the dwarves too much mind.

"You cannot do this..." Reeda said, referring to the dwarves. "These... dwarves... are a specialized community actively working with the adventurers, really special. I know this is your first time, but look, assassin mages are watching." Furthermore, an assassin mage was commonly known as "coloraz"—or "colorazs" when plural—but he used a synonym to respect Mark's lack of world experience.

Unknowningly, Mark was taking hits from various areas, but how could he know? He was still a little babe about to take flight. Where was the eagle mother? She was pushing him off the cliff.

Returning to his awaited response, he was interrupted by the sight of a goblin that got stuck in a lying barrel, running from adventurers. He was being beaten from the bottom side of the barrel.

Mark ran to him and pulled its arms with all his might, its screams getting increasingly desperate. He could hear the heavy blows of the adventurers on the other side of the barrel. When he finally pulled the goblin through, it died. Its spine had been shattered.

From an objective viewpoint, Mark stood still for around 30 minutes, changing his posture every half a minute, his hands stretching around for much of the time. Furthermore, he turned around to scan the area every five minutes. Eventually, his eyes met the viewpoint.

His face twitched, dead-still everywhere else.

He suddenly smiled, shaking a little.

Mark left and returned his attention to progress.

In the city, he sighted various services offered by mages throughout the town. He saw a service for the "perfect haircut", another service for the "best wooden shoes", another service for the "most robust goblin thralls."

He went to a shoe store and asked how much one was.

It was 2 gold coins.

So he looked for a simple job, realizing that he would not be able to succeed in this town by being a hateful person. He had to build connections.

He found a small stall where a young man was selling. He had a long list of customers, selling shampoo.

Mark didn't know what it was, so he came to look. As soon as the young man saw him, he widened his eyes briefly before returning to normal with a smile as if nothing happened.

Mark was curious, so he waited for them to finish, beginning to feel his stomach grumbling. With Reeda's help, he ate outside his house for a while before returning to the stall.

There, he saw the young man putting various crates, chairs, and tent poles, among other things, into several wagons. He was alone, but he was doing all this hard work.

What Mark noticed was that the young man was carrying many things at once.

Mark didn't think much of it at first, but when he saw the young man carrying things that couldn't be carried with one hand alone, his eyes became wide open, and his mouth turned agape.

The young man was no ordinary man. He had Mark's curiosity at first, but now he had his attention.

If he could get into his man's good graces, he would be working with a powerful creature.

Even if he was exaggerating, he wanted to take the first opportunity at this point, or else he would starve to death.


Chapter 6
The Year of the Facade



The dripping rain waged a war with the heathen dirt, making mud civilizations under the ominous, staring sky.

Here, within this pin of a world, Mark carried several boxes, following the pouring rain and the man named "Richard" who sold shampoos at a stall.

Mark saw the customers coming close and away, into attention and out of it, and far off into the horizon where he could no longer see them.

He wondered what happened to people beyond what he could see.

This was the thoughts that spawned from his boredom, as he was busy helping out with carrying the things and helping explain to passersby why shampoo could save their life and health.

He didn't know what it meant to be like this, but he wondered if he could go visit an adventurer guild now.

After work, it marked his seventh day of work, having spent that time earning enough money to get a pace going enough that he could stay at an inn. He didn't have a cottage or somewhere quiet he could hide, since he had to be there at the stall at all times, starting from the early morning to late at night. He didn't know what he was doing beyond the physical, concrete, and first-hand level, but it was his focus right now.

Since he only got meager pay, he was asked by the young man whether he knew how to sauté jalapeños.

Mark was unaware of the terms "sauté" and "jalapeños," but he tried to do it anyway. With the help of Richard, he was able to get it down to memory.

"Richard?" he said, unable to comprehend a few things about Richard.

"Yes?" said Richard, turning around to face Mark.

"Why did you help me?" Mark began to cook a dish called "sisig," pouring oil first and then putting the ingredients into a pan.

"Because... everyone deserves a second chance," Richard said, as he accepted papers of recommendation from a group of colorfully dressed travelers.

In response to Richard, Mark rubbed his temples, feeling the same confusion he felt in Sophia Strong's presence. People were overwhelmingly unique and hard to interpret, predict, and understand.

"Why?" he said.

Richard smiled and gave a thumbs-up to a farmer father and his child. "It's also that feeling you get when you see a child."

"What feeling?" Mark said, rubbing his nose due to the numbness and tingling from his lack of sleep. The smell of the jalapeños he was cooking were also slightly strong.

Richard continued to sell shampoo, putting together various ingredients and combining them with a skill. "Your heart opens up, and you feel an overwhelming need, possibly even frustration, to appreciate life through them. You'll want to appreciate beauty and wonder, and it's not because they're children or they're them necessarily. Everyone is unique, but beauty is everywhere in abundance. You'll feel that feeling, something that you can only feel if you've lived a big life."

Mark stared at him. "A big life?"

Richard hurled a shampoo bottle accurately at the farmer father, who caught it with ease, both of them laughing at a joke he made in passing. He had been in a another conversation alongside the one he was having with Mark. "A big life, one that you feel afraid of forgetting due to its great abundance."

Mark kept tossing and turning the sisig pork. "Abundance? Of memories? Of events?"

Richard gave a thank-you, a thumbs-up, and a smile to a leaving regular customer. "Yes, but more than that, perspectives, feelings, and people. Images, flavors, smells, senses, long conversations, that idea that you had in your head and how you saw it throughout time. It's that and so much more."

Mark placed a plate of food to a group of cheery, loud, boisterous adventurers seated at an eight-top table separate from the three tables enclosing him and Richard right now in a square. "Really?"

Richard searched Mark's expression for a moment before he smiled softly. "Yes."

Mark slowed down his pace at the stall as the customers lessened in the afternoon.

During this time, he long realized that the streets belonged to everyone, being a community gathering, being a faster pace of life compared to his former village. It was much more exciting and full of so much opportunities for connection and larger goals.

Mark couldn't feel anything. He felt numb, yet he was relaxed and immersed in his surroundings.

As a manifestation of fluid intelligence, He knew well that the only reason things were along well was because of the provisions of magic. If it wasn't for that, everything would have fallen apart. Child mortality would be soaring probably up to every other child below 5 years old, but with the help of healing magic, that wasn't the case at all.

He wondered what was the philosophy behind his actions, and if evil could easily be quantified. He had so much time to think, and because he had a functioning brain, he didn't just sit there and plot narrowly around murder. If he had such a narrow-minded brain, he wouldn't succeed. It was through taking in everything as much as possible that he would be able to make effective decisions when the time came to kill. This was why killing was difficult, because when factors such as starvation, malnutrition, and living in a war-torn country were not at play, it demanded a very conscious decision.

He realized that he didn't need to kill after all. It was not the world he lived in. It was the world he had believed he lived in.

He couldn't find a good reason to kill. It was not pragmatic anymore to kill the way he did.

But he didn't experience guilt the same others did, so the only thing he could do was accept that what he had done was wrong.

He didn't need to be right anyway. He didn't have an ego to defend in the same way many others did. His relationship with his actions and his sense of self was unique to his circumstances.

With the same succinctness that he annihilated his former village, he came to terms with the consequences of his actions and acknowledged that moving away from that kind of life would be more pragmatic.

To explain the reasoning behind his change of mind, he was intelligent in terms of being able to manipulate and do complex social things without remorse, so that was be a sign that his intelligence could lead to an intellectual acceptance of the lack of pragmatic value that violence held. Moreover, Richard provided that opportunity by exposing Mark to new frameworks for empathy, community and viewing others and himself. Furthermore, curiosity, a natural facet of intellect, led to the fiasco with Sophia Strong, but it also provided him with knowledge and power he wouldn't have had if he didn't experience it. Lastly, he did experience guilt to some capacity.

Ultimately, Mark had reformed.

Shifting away from this cumulative accomplishment, Mark began his next plan, spending years in study.

"I want to get an education," Mark said.

Richard smiled. "Okay. What kind? If you keep working with me, then I'll show you all around the town. If you want to read books, we can visit Mrs. Sally. If you want to try swimming, we can go to the lake where you'll see boys like Adrian and Andrei swimming and fishing..." He continued on and on for thirty minutes, listing down as much names as he could remember and adding details about each one.

He ended with, "Whatever you want to do, I can help you.

"This place can be big enough for you, I promise."

Richard lived in this town for his entire life, and not once did he think that it was too small for him. In fact, it kept growing, and everything changed so fast. He remembered what it was like walking by that corner. That used to feel so big and giant. Now, it looked like any other corner he would see when traveling in other towns. He recognized that travelers would see that corner that way. To him, it was so many memories. To others, it never once made a single feathery touch.

He believed that people didn't have to live in a big city to be happy. In fact, he believed that a town only 30 kilometers away from the city was the happiest place to be. Many nobles also lived in towns like these.

Mark knew Richard was likely right, so he decided to stay for a year or two.

He stayed for a year, and he didn't understand many things. But as time passed, he learned.

One day, a young man walked around, finding his chest bleeding after he cut it to make room for the spiritual transformation. He found his arms developing emerging spikes. He screamed, his heart bursting with fervor. He giggled before laughing. The arrogance bled from his jaw.

He learned that the only true joy in the world arose from murder.

He slashed, crushing the heretical bastards, running into the streets, finding Richard and Mark selling.

Mark tilted his head before running.

The young man stopped, glancing around and assessing his situation relative to Mark.

Mark stopped as well.

The young man slowed down and prepared to fight Mark carefully.

Mark grabbed a blade and looked around. He flourished his sword skillfully, amazing the onlookers.

The young man squinted before charging.

Mark smiled before using a spell that allowed him to teleport a short distance away.

The young man had committed already, so the reinforcements on Mark's side caught him, killing him quickly.

Mark got a nod from the adventurers who ate at his and Richard's shop.

Meanwhile, several other goblins, tired from the lonesome feeling of being crushed and beaten. How long had they been tortured? How long had they been hidden away by adventurer scum.

They screamed for the rise of freedom.

They ran, bursting down the cages with the help of a secret helper among the prison guards.

The guards fell apart to the onslaught, having lessened their numbers in preparation for a coming war. It was a bad decision by the ruler, but what could the guards do?

They were massacred.

The goblins screamed. Did they see them? Did they see the beauty in death!

They ran around, crowding the way out of the prison into the streets.

Hundreds of them gathered at the city center, catching the attention of a mobilized army of soldiers.

The soldiers charged, cutting through the goblin horde.

The goblin squealed, casting magic with their hands and feet chained.

The soldiers fell apart slightly before bouncing back and overwhelming the goblins.

The last goblin ran clumsily and hastily, his foot getting caught on a rock. He tripped, stumbling before catching himself. He stood up and burst into a dash, his feet getting sick and tired, aching from the pain. He saw a way out—a door leading to a vast field.

But Mark stood there, watching him.

Seeing the soldiers behind him, the goblin ran, raising his sword.

Mark slashed and beat it down, crushing its leg.

The screams of the goblin made the soldiers call out to Mark to preclude his attempt to torture the goblin to death.

Mark nodded, making himself look meek.

The soldiers quickly gathered and pulled the goblin away, the goblin's screams dying down and becoming faint overtime.

Mark sniffed the air, smelling the blood of the goblin. He knew that blood was just an object, and he knew that the scream was just a sound.

The goblin was a different species from human beings. He knew that as well.

He knew that whatever he would do next had consequences.

He knew that he had power.

He tilted his head, watching the buildings around him. Even if they loomed over him, he didn't feel that at all.

[Your body has heated up slightly with a sense of empowerment. +1 XP]

To explain his seemingly contradictory behavior, it was okay to pretend. He would pretend for a long time. The comfort, the complexities of social groups, and the knowledge gained through interacting intimately with the populace were all necessary components to destroy. One year was enough for him to soak up experience in an otherwise disorienting new city, since he had lived all his life in a village. This was not calculated. It was patient and brooding, allowing him to hold his cards together until the perfect time struck. His enemies would come to him, using up all their cards and energy just to get his attention. But his teeth, ever so soft, would show their fangs at just the right time.

He minded the beggar in front of him, careful not to make unnecessary enemies and dismantle his own reputation, paying respect to the potential hidden strength by others, specifically in his own particularly vulnerable state. Indeed, he lacked information, experience, and vision.

He would appear strong when he was weak, and he would appear weak when he was strong. Aggression was not always the winning strategy, and it often wasn't. Instead, he would bait.


Chapter 7
The Abyss Gazes Back



He went up to a tower and watched the city, sighting several strategic locations and vantage points. He climbed up a particular road, sighting the nearby buildings of the city from the side of a small cliff. This road continued up the mountain until he reached the summit, seeing the whole city from a very safe place. Here, he found many travelers, workers, guards, soldiers, and workers roaming around. This strategic location was turned into a waypoint and a self-sufficient community directly connected to the larger town and city.

If he wanted to break objectives like this community to destroy the city, he needed knowledge and power. If he knew about the inner workings of the city and how they delegated power, then he might find key individuals responsible for defending this community. Once he found them, he would have to work around his limitations and these particular individuals' weaknesses. Sometimes, killing them was easiest, but that was rarely the case in a social fabric as cohesive as the city was. But that also meant that these individuals were rarely the best targets. Sometimes, working on indirect ways to dismantle the city's defences was more effective. Instead of risking massive amounts of resources for the unlikely chance of breaking the defences through assassinating the individuals directly responsible, it was better to hold an office or show promise in a certain field that could lead to a potential intersection between that field and the community. That way, even if it would still be rare, it would give him a better chance at getting information and giving it to an enemy. One man couldn't just destroy an interconnected city. Moreover, pretending as a regular person for very long was often insufficient to gain enough power to destroy a city. He had to shine and get attention, making himself out of to be of value. If he could do that, then that would allow him two options: he could integrate further into the city or he could utilize the advantage he gained from garnering approval, influence, and power to help enemies of the town and city. Anyway, returning to the social cohesiveness of the city fabric, indeed, the infrastructure that led to various objectives and vantage points was especially potent because they were on mountains that commanded a view of much of the region. The city would be very vulnerable if these objectives were lost, but in the case that they remained strong, the city was impenetrable in terms of vision. He had to study the city dutifully.

In the end, a spy could sabotage and gather information to send to an enemy, but he couldn't just destroy the city if he wanted to. If he had one-use magic that could wipe out an entire city, he would have to have a valid justification to do it if he represented a country, and if he was a non-state actor, he would be hunted down by the entire world who only wanted stability and territory. Furthermore, a terrorist that operated alone was the easiest target. Lastly, the world would probably be hiding magic far stronger than he could ever imagine.

This was why he couldn't just destroy things. This interconnected world would always find a way to hold him accoutable, and if he got away with it, he would have required a vast array of resources beyond his wildest dreams. In some shape or form, his actions would always come back to bite him. That was why he needed to invest into positive efforts if he wanted his negative (destructive) actions to work.

This was the "mutual assured destruction and benefit" that civilization offered.

Throughout one year, he learned all of this with the help of education, and it was all sponsored by his wealthier friends, those that he gained due to being Richard's employee and friend. This was during his integration with the particular part of town he started with.

This was Mark's more mature, strategic mindset.

He met with several boys, having gained an affinity with them through his own childhood memories of play. Certainly, even if he grew up in an unhealthy manner, he could empathize and connect with children.

He wanted to understand their mindsets, having low information on the perspective of children and what they would inevitably grow up to be years from now. He didn't only gain foresight due to this. He gained a broader understanding of instincts, play, and how people operated in teams and potentially in broader schemes of operation. Even if it was small, the nuances of play extended to far-reaching horizons. These were the benefits of exposing himself to children effectively.

He met with a group of laborers, having been intercepted by one because they knew him and that he sold sisig and wanted to buy it from him. Their behavior could be characterized by a more mature dynamic between the expectations of work and the elements of play present in their boisterous, inebriated behavior and their sarcastic and satirical humor. Even kids were expected to excel in the realms of study and more primitive precursors to work. However, these laborers had spent many years streamlining their lifestyle toward being a productive enough worker to reach standards while maintaining a certain level of self-care. But their lives had much room for improvements in health, productivity, and wellbeing, given the many issues plaguing them and their society. The adults were not only mature versions of their younger selves, but they were also mature indicators of the pressing issues of the time period they grew up in, having well soaked up the negative effects.

It mattered to Mark only to the extent that he understood the weaknesses of his enemy.

If his enemy was a child, it was fair game. But no human was ever alone.

If his enemy was a laborer, it was fair game. But no human was ever alone.

It took intentional effort to be alone, because even the poor were especially more likely to develop strong bonds due to pressing needs they shared.

This was why Mark had to be skillful if crushing his enemies totally was the goal.

This was why isolating an enemy, both in social groups and in warfare, was most effective.

An assassin couldn't just isolate an enemy physically. An assassination had to have been complemented by other forms of isolation: political, social, socioeconomic, and cultural isolation, among others—support networks, alliances, and societal standing. No one would take revenge for a man unloved by his people. Many wars erupted due to an incomplete assassination, one that focused too much on physically killing the target instead of killing them politically.

Punching an enemy and triggering a huge explosion were very low-level forms of power. Truly destroying a country's identity and turning it into something very foreign so as to influence the direction of evey single life birthed in that country potentially for centuries through cheap, strategic means instead of having to spend trillions of cash using hard power was an even higher-level form of power. It was easier to fight against a threat external than that which is introduced insidiously inside that even the white blood cells were insensible to the point that that very human being took that covert injection of subtlety as gospel.

This was massacre when it was most unseen and discouraged from conversation because it was "too political." Even murder could be excused if higher-level forms of power found a way to make people avoid addressing it.

This was power.

This was the key. He would descend into darkness as he sought revenge and liberation from his oppressive environment.

Since it had been a year, he had spent much of his time studying rather than getting experience with the broader world as much, he was able to integrate into a community of friends, families, relatives, co-workers, and church mates.

He got up, watching the sunset. "How did I ever get here?"

He went to church, but today was a strangely weak day. Nothing happened, and he wasn't given a strong enough power to destroy everything.

He even forgot about his ambitions.

He was a shadow of the sociopathic murderer that he used to be. Now he was a regular person. It was better than being part of a very vulnerable, marginalized population.

So now, his next goal was to break open this earth.

He crushed the earth with a mighty hoe. This was a symbolic process.

He was regaining his sense of self—the murderer hidden within.

He struck and struck. "Come back," he mouthed. "Come back."

He struck it again and again, striking vertically and diagonally with smooth, elegant motions. He struck it with his heart and with his soul.

He wished upon it death.

The ground continued to be broken apart, but slowly.

He breathed deep, and he found his heart returning to murder.

He saw a human being who isolated himself.

He hunted him down with a knife.

He stabbed him and cut his spine up and down.

He enveloped him with his loving touches, breaking him apart his spine.

He crushed and stomped his life out of him like removing from him his sense of self and agency. It was like breaking a child from the womb.

This was how evil he was.

He rendered them to be undying flesh, for he would preserve their agency in himself. He never wasted a breath.

He struck again and again.

The earth was now broken open.

He walked upon the streets, and there he felt at ease because he was now both Regular Person and Tyrannical. But with his regained self, he was also Sociopathic Murderer. These identities continued to simmer and blend together like a hot pot.

If someone struck him down during this time, they would have interrupted this ongoing transformation.

This was why even now with his newfound power, he needed to be cautious.

The human Mark had indeed killed lay on the ground, his agency robbed.

Mark made his way to Richard's shop, remembering that even now, with the challenges present, he knew that Richard had never intended to put up shop here and stay here for a year. He had wanted only to earn enough money to become a stronger adventurer, but life was harder than he thought.

Mark would exploit that wish.

He told Richard that he could help him become an adventurer after months of rejecting Richard's suggestions to visit the dungeons alongside the adventurers.

At the dungeon, Mark waited.

Richard came out, coming here on Mark's word.

Mark slashed it, ripping his clothes.

Richard backed off, raising his hands.

Mark was masked, but his form was telling.

"Mark?" Richard said, his voice breaking.

Mark broke through his shield and weapons, slashing at his head.

The helmet Richard wore blocked it.

Moreover, other adventurers were coming.

Mark retreated, realizing that this risky decision broke one year of investment. It was not strategical or based on efficiency. It was primal and instinctive, that centered around murder as an elevated mode of function.

While Richard rested nearby, he waited.

They wanted to enter the dungeon to find Mark.

But Mark didn't let them do so, as they were afraid of him coming to kill them.

Mark hid further into the dungeon where he encountered monsters.

He ran for his life, dodging arrows and the bodies of zombies.

He kept going, entering another chamber of the dungeon with a treasure chest.

But there was a large monster acting as a boss.

Mark ran, but he was blocked by the zombies and skeletons that followed him.

He went around the boss chamber, touching the chest.

But it was locked hard.

He pulled it, but it was too late.

He dodged an attack before leaping to the side, hitting his shoulder against the wall.

His life was going to drift away.

Strategy and effectiveness were lost.

What he needed was a divine savior.

He crawled before standing up quickly and burst forward toward the exit.

He slipped away, returning to the entrance of the dungeon.

Richard and the other adventurers weren't there.

He fled into the trees, bleeding from his shoulder.

He gritted his teeth, his mind beating hard with ferocity and terror.

The near-death made his nerves pop with quickness, and now, the energy crash left him on the ground. Lying like a fragile peanut, he stared at the horizon past the sunlight-colored interstices of the trees.

He didn't have it in him to stand up.

He was ashamed and helpless.

He got up weakly and kept walking toward the forest.

Beasts lay there in wait.

He gritted his teeth again.

He grabbed a makeshift weapon and flourished it in front of the coming, roaring beasts. He begged for mercy, because at this point, it was either he won or he died.

He won, crushing the beasts with a total victory, leaving only his legs aching and exhausted. He fell to his knees before falling to the ground sideways. Now, on the ground, he recalled the world he lived in.

He imagined his dead face reflected in the eyes of the human he killed earlier.

This was helplessness when it was most unseen.

He wished only to control the world.

He said: "I have to do it. Whatever it takes."

He screamed with pain and frustration, as he got up, hardened by his first near-death full-combat experience.

No one would stop him.

He realized that he was contradicting himself. He was unstable from the start. The guilt he experienced from eliminating his entire village was real, but he also wanted to "fulfill his destiny to resist the oppressive nature of his environment." But bloodlust from the empowering feeling killing gave him conflicted with these guilt and this idealism. Moreover, on top of those three, a more mature and strategic mindset emphasizing the long-term only served as part of his thought process, rather than his actual applied behavior.

In the end, the desire to become everything—effectively stretching him in so many extreme directions—left him inconsistent as a human being. No one could truly engage in extremely contradictory behavior for too long, not even psychopaths and sociopaths.

This sudden break was not just a break from morality. More importantly, it was a momentous mental breakdown overshadowed by a drive to kill. This drive to take control of his insane cognitive dissonance through murder was merely a symptom of an deeply, intricately dysfunctional and distorted psychological landscape.

This was only a framework to bring to light the underlying pathology driving his abnormal behavior. It would be different for everyone else.

The fact that he survived the dungeon was besides the point, but it did provide room for further psychological exploration, even if his goal was more physical.

No one would stop him.


Chapter 8
Hunter of Men



Mark stared at the quiet. He realized that after all this time, he made a big mistake. He spent a year in suspense and then ended everything.

He shook his head and got up. This was a minor setback.

He took out several orbs and went to the city before seeing a lone hunter aiming a bow at a giant scorpion rock creature.

He threw one of the orbs, which created a ball-shaped area that drained the life force of anything inside it.

It hit the hunter, who fell to the ground and died by hitting his head. The greatness that he was was conquered.

Mark sauntered, leapt to him, and bit him before taking the hunter's knife and cutting more human flesh. He bit and healed himself up by consuming human flesh. "I don't need morals to deny this world its disgusting nature."

He raised the knife and plunged again and again.

He earned sweet loot from this, having a new enchanted obsidian knife, an enchanted bow, an enchanted robe, an enchanted tunic, an enchanted surcoat, an purple-and-yellow insignia, and several different bracelets that added 5 [Health], [Attack Damage], and [Ability Power] each. He wore it, collecting it and preparing his next bandit attack.

He sighted several groups of travelers hiking up from a valley. He drank water from a nearby pond before crawling on all fours to watch them from a thicket.

After they sighted him, he got up and showed the insignia.

The travelers nodded, saluting casually.

Mark looked around before blending with the forest.

He reappeared in front of one of the travelers, slashing him on the neck. He learned that from Richard. He slashed several more times before the man grabbed his weapon.

Shields emerged from the other travelers.

Mark retreated, looking around for other food to consume.

He was hungry, sleepy, and thirsty.

The heat was oppressing him.

Incidentally, he cut a cloth out of his hoodless robe and used it for his head to keep his shoulders extra-padded for the heat. They were particularly sensitive and itchy.

Anyway, he looked for food, locating a source far away—a group of monkeys.

He grabbed them and broke their stride, pushing them to the ground before standing as if to leap and then pulverizing them with a sharp blade.

The blade bled them apart, leaving a trace across the earth, as Mark dragged them aside.

He retreated, dodging one of the monkey's attacks toward his person.

He slashed the monkey's arm mid-swing and crushed its posture with his foot, stabbing it several times before knee-choking it.

The monkey flailed its arms in fear before it aimed at Mark's face.

Mark punched it and crushed it before a monkey caught him mid-leap.

He slashed it before pushing it to the ground, breaking its stride before immobilizing it with a series of faints. He then turned and stabbed it sideways through the temple. (It fell aside.)

The monkeys reached for him together, but he slipped through them and above them by slashing forward in a series of faints, striding quickly ahead toward the travelers.

He rushed and arrived there within five hours.

Having been thirsty, he drank from several ponds earlier.

The travelers watched him before asking if he was there to attack them, summoning totem golems with a giant hole revealing a source of magical fire inside at the end of each limb.

He grinned before retreating, shooting a rock at them from afar.

The newly emerging magical shields blocked it, while the travelers looked pissed off.

Mark left, drank water, and ate from the monkeys he collected earlier.

He grabbed as much items as he could and focused his attention on preparing for the onslaught between him and the adventurers.

When they sighted him, he shot a skill that had come from the common skill–holding manuscripts. He shot 8 skills, breaking their defence multiple at a time.

He shot a rock and pissed them off, stealing their patience.

One of them broke out and stabbed at Mark with a spear.

Mark postured for it, slashing the spear enough to make the man fall forward. He pushed him back before slashing him at the perfect distance.

The man fell to the ground, as several others moved forward to help the man.

He slashed several of them, destroying their already-broken defences. He stabbed them one by one, cleaning them up and leaving them on the ground.

He collected their items and located the most important ones, sorting them by order of importance.

He had them put into a bag before equipping some of the wearable items, drinking the healing potions, switching his sword with a more powerful spear, and consuming two skill-giving manuscripts luckily left unused.

He gained a colorful appearance from the different styles of the original owners of the various items he now wielded as part of his person.

He moved forward, locating a group of adventurers attending a coalition raid. Furthermore, they were alone, having separated from the group within the dungeon in order because they were specialized for a specific chamber.

For context, he visited this dungeon in hopes of collecting information, and that was how he found them walking in one of the larger hub chambers.

After replenishing himself adequately outside, he entered the chamber where these adventurers were in through the dungeon entrance and hallway, having passed through many different chambers to get to them.

One of the adventurers was quick to ask for help.

But he said no, saying that it was advisable for him to focus on gaining experience alone. He said that he would wait for them to finish before he continued their work.

As soon as the adventurers finished, he eliminated them one by one, since they didn't have spells off cooldown anymore.

The armor failed to protect them long enough, shattering under the weight of his many skills.

He stabbed their necks one by one, putting them aside once it was over.

He watched their bodies decaying slowly, their faces like dog-shaped macabre objects.

He aimed his focus toward the monsters arriving.

He grabbed the bodies and threw them, taking the smallest and youngest body and consuming it.

With a sigh of satisfaction, he left the scene, exiting the dungeon and lying in wait near the entrance.

His patience was unravalled, and the only thing he needed to do next was contain and control.

So after the first group of adventurers exited the dungeon, not being able to wait to get home.

He dropped the boulders he had prepared, slaying only one adventurer.

But it was enough to terrorize the rest.

He retreated before he was seen.

The adventurers were in a state of terror after one adventurer came from inside the dungeon and reported the deaths of the adventurers inside one of the chambers that was supposed to have been the location of a specialized mission.

Mark was relentless, slowing his stride to watch for steps. He didn't want to have his focus and relaxation deterred when he had completed so many tasks today.

Being tired, he fell asleep on a tree, putting his back next to a bush of leaves and having his head-supporting arm fall asleep and cramping the day after.

He woke up with a startle, feeling his itchy butt, neck, and skin on his arms. He wasn't used to this, but he would have to cope.

He ran back down the diagonal-shaped tree and rested near the dungeon entrance, sighting several adventurers looking at him.

He ran when he saw their suspicious, intense looks.

He was caught, saying that he was a hunter who hunted large scorpion beasts, showing his insignia.

They nodded, believing him.

He left, following a trail that led to another dungeon. This was a larger dungeon, and it came after a large river that he couldn't pass.

He waited for a canoe paddler to come get him. Since he had to pay, he used the gold coins he got from the bodies and went to the other side of the river, finding the dungeon waiting at the horizon.

He travelled for a while before taking a break, finding himself in need of various containers to put his things in.

He only was able to get little things from the bodies of the adventurers who died in the chamber yesterday. But today, if ever he encountered a large group like that again, he would need a lot of large containers in order to supply himself for long.

He found a group of travelers that were seeking lodging.

He joined them, saying that he was a hunter and showing his insignia. Since he was an adept conversationalist, he operated them like a cannon, guiding them toward the understanding that he was a fair, common-thinking man, one that followed the rules but hated the nobles. This was the way common people thought, so he followed suit in his interactions. He didn't actually want to express his deep-seated feelings of anger, and he could control them easily.

He slept after paying the inn receptionist and slept in one of ten rooms, staying at the room farthest from the entrance. He wanted to have his next actions be secret.

He located a coming guest who wasn't staying at the inn, but he was entertaining people. He noticed that he wanted free lodging and drink, so he watched him, pretending to be entertained. Afterwards, Mark suggested that he would pay the fee needed to stay the night.

When the man agreed, he handed the man the money and waited for him to tire. As soon as he headed to one of the rooms, Mark told the man that he stayed at the room farthest from the entrance, indirectly insisting that it was a good idea for the man to do so as well. When the man entered his room, Mark pushed the man inside and killed him.

Some people saw him, but they thought they were friends or lovers.

So he was able to kill the man smoothly without question.

After man died from getting stabbed through the head, he threw the man outside the window, noticing earlier that the windows at the rooms farthest from the entrance were safe and hidden.

He dropped the body and left through the window, leaving the body behind the inn. Some people went there and saw him, but he merely said that he was looking for the bathroom. They didn't believe him, but he said that he could pay them. Before the men caught him off guard with an attack, he killed these unprepared, unarmored, and exhausted laborers and threw them behind him. He almost got his progress restarted since he was exhausted himself. Killing two grown men drained the last of his strength, so he returned to the same inn and fell asleep.

The night before, the receptionist questioned him, but he lied and told her that she was wrong about seeing him go up to the rooms already.

Returning to the present, he left the inn in a rush, wanting to avoid the city and the forest in the meantime to cover his tracks.

He chose the forest and hid in one of the palm trees.

After several days had passed and many groups of adventurers passed the area where he slept, he escaped and went to another forest and hid in a palm tree there.

After a whole week, he left the insecure border and entered a much larger rainforest, finding various species of animals and plants along the way.

He was stuck, having spent most of his time preparing to kill Richard only to fail. The good thing was that he was skilled enough to do so much.

Long after the patrols stopped months later, he reentered the city, finding that the wanted posters of him had grown old.

He looked distinct enough from the posters to blend in with the populace.

He entered the same forest and found that the roads were much better in certain places and certain dungeons were fortified while others looked abandoned. He concluded that the city had consolidated itself in response to some threat or because of some factors.

He entered the dungeon, finding himself at a loss when he noticed that the adventurers he expected to see were long gone. They had been replaced by miners.

"What's this?" he demanded, asking where the adventurers were.

The miners said that the city had not been an adventurer branch for two months already.

Mark was astounded, so he looked for adventurers in the city and found so few people who wore typical adventurer clothes like before.

He might have changed the city when he engaged in those killings.

He relocated to a different city, finding himself with a whole new set of ponds waiting in store.

He drank from them and found the water they provided particularly delicious.

He ate meat from bodies that had long rotten inside dungeons. It was a good thing monsters didn't just stay in one place after killing adventurers.

The dungeon was full of life, but he didn't want to eliminate monsters. He focused his attention on making sure he created a small slice of life.

He began to integrate once again into the populace.

He saw a group of ladies taking part in an event.


Chapter 9
The Dancers' Tithe



He saw the ladies dancing, and he watched them as part of a small audience.

He saw their opportunity and gave them money, supporting them.

He showed even more money and said that if they kept dancing but changed their location to a place near where people could eat, they would get more money.

Listening to his suggestion, the ladies didn't want to take it at first, fearing that the man would be much more controlling afterwards, but after a few days, they moved to an area near food stalls.

Mark was there, supporting them as usual, but this time, he wasn't the only one. A group of men, women, and children emerged to support her.

The ladies, at the end of their dance event, were glad to have gotten so much support.

Mark represented their new support, especially after he finished their dance by offering the audience a way to help the ladies. He said that if they gave the ladies orbs, manuscripts, and other adventurer items, the ladies would be able to chase their dreams as dancers.

The ladies didn't know what to do, so they let him say all that.

When adventurers, who enjoyed watching the dancers, heard Mark say that at the end of each dance event, they soon began donating manuscripts, orbs, and items that they didn't think were useful. Since it was not money and they only wanted "useless" stuff, they didn't think it was predatory.

As for what the ladies got, Mark continued to advise them on how they could get more dancers, being someone with a year-long experience in selling food at a large stall alongside Richard.

This became a cycle, one that both the ladies, Mark, and the audience benefitted from.

Sooner or later, Mark was raking in items of all kinds, increasing his skill count and orbs by so many. He found himself with so many new equipment as well.

After supporting them for so long, he pressed the suggestion for them to take a break for a day and that he would explain to the audience that it was their anniversary or the birthday of one of them.

After they agreed, he left to the forest, bringing some of the items he had hidden in 10 large chests and other containers.

He saw a group of travelers, finding himself troubled by their silence. He would usually hear them bantering, joking, and gossiping.

After a while, he shot at them with a bow, striking one of them down.

He returned to invisibility, blending between the interstices between the trees.

He shot at them again, striking a magical shield.

He was starting to realize the commonness of magic shields.

He shot again and again, moving to different angles to surprise them each time.

After the travelers retreated, he followed them, shooting them down one by one until the last traveler merely ran in his general direction. This last traveler got shot in the head.

He was inexperienced with bows, but since he spent months only hiding, he was able to train himself to wield the bow.

He admitted he perfected the craft, watching the last enemy fall to the ground.

He pulled them together and roped them to make them look like targets of a group or something. He wanted to make his tracks look less obvious and repetitive. It would make it harder to point the incident to him if none of his crime scenes looked the same.

He used the bodies as food and cooked them under a fire. It was hard to start a fire, but he learned that too over the months he was hiding. It was satisfying to admit that he had not wasted a single second.

He made sure to take off their stuff first before burning them. This would make them look like victims of a group kill more, since if it was just one person, it would likely look less like they had been tied up and burned by many hands.

He had to maximize the tomfoolery expected from a group of bandits.

Furthermore, he made sure to leave most of the items behind.

He didn't want to hide for months again clearly.

After returning to the city, he immediately contacted the ladies to prepare them mentally for tomorrow and to show that he truly cared about them even when they weren't actively making him money in the form of adventurer items.

He ate with them at an expensive restaurant, not making it obvious that he was doing it to bribe them further into his control.

It only looked like a wealthier person wanting to start a new enterprise and treating his employees to delicious food as part of an after-work session.

When the ladies were finally full, he asked them if they knew anyone else that needed helping.

He didn't want to make them feel that their positions were being threatened by future connections so as to discourage them from helping him network. So he showed them a magical contract that they would be working together for a year.

The ladies agreed, finding the idea of earning well for a year exciting and ambitious.

With the contract signed, the ladies finally got a salary directly from Mark, and they immediately helped Mark network more.

Mark learned about a hundred more people and requested the ladies to notify these new people about Mark before he made contact with them himself in person. This would facilitate the process and earn him a way into the network without looking like a random.

At the end of their session, they parted ways casually, and Mark realized that it would take months to go through all these hundred people, since the ladies were surely not going to want to spend the time to notify them in person about Mark in only a week.

So in the meantime, he supported the ladies, waiting months. He didn't hunt stray people in the meantime, leaving his tracks clear.

When he finally made contact with the hundred people, he was now a more established gentleman in a society, having coming into his own socially, similar to how a noble would debut into society.

He was among non-nobles though, but it was still sufficient for his proceedings, having contacted various adventurers with connections to higher powers.

Indeed, this encroaching establishment of violence and power (social and political)-control was his modus operandi.

He broke the will of flesh and the sky of mind. He raised his banner like a man of victory and a man of failure.

He showed off his greatness like a cloak, flourishing it and sensually dancing according to the tune expected from him.

He was establishment. He was greatness. He was I-see-I kind of creation. He was the fulfillment of all injustices.

He was gambit.

This more grandiose self-image was pragmatic in order to navigate an even higher realm of social needs, that of the need to impress and charm the likes of nobles.

He danced, ripping apart the lossy lines and preying upon those he mocked. He shut out the criticisms and cast his mocking gaze upon the ethereal and the magical, proclaiming his dividence (divine confidence; division)—the bifurcation into true darkness.

But it was all mechanistic.

After gaining a vast sea of societal authority, he left to the forest, embracing the night like a sea bat.

He entered the aftermath of a monster-human engagement and gorged the various bodies therein, replenishing himself.

He sliced several bodies to warm up and retrain himself.

For the next several weeks, he practiced his fighting skills to return to efficiency and streamlined ease.

Afterwards, when the ladies took a break again, he returned to the forest again, having obtained new items by looting the bodies.

Only bringing some of his items again, collecting specific range of items for his particular job. He sighted a wizard practicing in the forest and shot a bow at her.

The wizard fell, blasting magic toward him.

He collected the carcass and dumped it in a pond, looking at how the blood made this murky galaxy-like fog with many long outstretched lines that, if looked from a very close view, looked like roots.

He ran, waiting for someone to check the pond to drink.

He saw a bunch of archers, and they gasped at the sight of the body.

He walked up to them and slashed all of them to death, finding one of them hard to kill due to being trained in spear combat, using a shield, and certain skills.

His new assortment of skills, items, and orbs overwhelmed them though.

He had identified their skills though, and he already knew what they did, only targeting enemies that lay far beneath his presumed level of strength.

He almost always beat them by a landslide however, even if he expected to be a closer fight than usual. This meant that he was just that cautious and prepared, always focusing on taking gold, getting items, orbs, and manuscripts, and patiently waiting for enemies to make mistakes.

The problem was that mistakes were everywhere.

And that was because they weren't walking around and traveling expecting to get hit by one of their own. They could prepare for bandits, but it depended on the class of bandit.

He was different class of criminal, being one of a superior caliber.

He grabbed their bodies and dumped them into the same pond they had drunk from. This was after grabbing everything useful and taking a few bites from them.

He waited again.

He wished he could delegate this resource-collecting process that so happened to involve killing and maiming adventurers to other lesser bandits. The issue was that he had not stretched far into the criminal underworld.

He saw a group of bandits hiding at one of his previous hiding spots and also waiting for people to come to the pond.

He confronted them, saying that he was stronger than them by a long shot.

The bandits were fast to shoot ranged skills and arrows at him, seeing a lone target.

He retreated, reciprocating their projectiles.

But the bandits were much stronger, tougher, and more prepared to fight against other people. In fact, Mark survived very long for a lone target, indicating that he was probably also a bandit himself.

The bandits stopped due to this realization, offering Mark a position among them.

Mark said that a non-predatory magical contract that prevented friendly fire had to be signed.

They did, and Mark was accepted among the bandits.

The bandits prepared him for a mission, offering training aids since they were skilled at keeping each other prepared and trained for human-human combat.

Mark was quick to learn, sometimes guiding the bandits themselves in training.

The bandits didn't know everything, so they happily complied with his rare advice.

Soon enough, these bandits connected Mark to a broader criminal system organized under a boss.

Since a bandit organization was often loose like an adventurer guild, they spent most of their time working as adventurers or in adventurer-adjacent professions undercover. This made it easier to explain their physique.

Mark never got into adventuring, but he was tasked with working as an adventurer undercover.

When he did so, he immediately had to slow down his interactions with the ladies and delegate this task to a team. This was better for the ladies since Mark was never that involved and studied in dancing. Moreover, even if Mark wasn't there, many others had his type of people and street skills but better. So Mark didn't care to preen in that facilitator role with respect to the ladies. He began interviewing and filtering through connections, expecting it to last months.

Returning to the bandit organization and Mark being an adventurer, he switched tasks to that of someone who acted as an ambush initiator, especially since they learned that he killed the archers earlier.

One day, when the ladies had a break day, he met up with a group of bandits, and they immediately moved to a scene Mark suggested.

Here, they waited, and Mark noticed that none of the bandits were wearing fitting clothes for sleeping on trees. He realized then why he was more skilled than these bandits at hunting humans. He had much more experience living in the wild alone.

The process to delegating the hunting to the bandits was going to be very long, since he needed to become the boss.

Similarly, finding the right people to delegate the task of facilitator for the ladies was also a lengthy process.

He sought advice from his connections, finding that some of them wanted to help him out of their own good will.


Chapter 10
Gathering the Flock


    
After helping the bandits, back at the city, Mark walked around, being watched by a group of men far away.

Their smiles were bright.

It was a new day for them, and everyday was a quiet moment of celebration. As long-time friends, they concluded that it was easy to live in a world as cruel as this when one had friends behind one's back.

Soon, when they left, they disappeared into a church.

Mark found himself standing in the distance behind them.

He followed them.

Meanwhile, the men sat down, talking happily with the people around them.

Mark didn't know what he was missing.

Eventually, the men saw him and gestured at him, motioning him to come close.

Mark glanced from side to side and behind him before he turned to the men, who continued to beckoned him forward.

They had him sit down next to them, treating him as a friend.

"How are you, brother?" said one of them, Markus, his smile as genuine as what Mark had did to his first village.

Mark stared at the ground for a second before he looked up in response, his brows raising. "Oh, me? I'm alright... How are you?" He was just letting things happen.

Markus grinned. "How's it been? I've been seeing you there and here with the girls and the adventurers."

"You...? Really? I didn't know that." Mark genuinely didn't know, but now, gathering information, he would know everything.

The man showed him the three others. "He's..."

"I'm Lot, and this is Rebekah," said one of the three, his arms around the women next to him. From Mark's eyes, their dynamic looked standard, and the woman didn't show any subtle emotions indicating otherwise. "How..." He kept talking, but Mark tuned him out.

In the meantime, Rebekah nodded in a way that made it look more like she was shrugging. After a few good looks, Mark recognized this was only a mannerism, underscoring the idea that her mannerisms were the only thing distinct about her, her role in the group serving as a mere function. Indeed, she was invisible among the men, Mark having not registered her enough to call the group three men and one woman and only seeing them as a group of men.

Anyway, the last person among the three said, "I'm Esau..." He talked long as well, saying things that weren't too important to Mark's journey.

After the introductions, the first speaker, Markus, gave his name, prompting Mark to say that their names were similar before revealing that his name was "Mark."

The two bonded over the same name, and soon enough, they were eating at a carinderia. The men lived simple lives, so they laughed over simple things.

Mark found them hilarious as well, discovering it easy to laugh when his whole life had been so tense and marked by an almost feverish ambition toward ruthless behavior.

He was a self-aware person, but that didn't stop him from engaging in bloodshed.

A young adventurer came close, having stopped riding his lizard mount to ask questions about a guild entrapment between him and two other individuals wanting him dead in the pond. It was less about actual murder and more about reputational loss and removal of respect in the guild. So he was in a hurry to gather information, just like Mark was.

Mark wasn't the only system collecting data.

Soon, Markus concluded to the young adventurer, having wasted some time to tell a good story he had been keeping to himself for a while now: "It was then that they were declared dead. I couldn't stop laughing at how fast it all happened. But that was not all. Every time I sat there, I was immediately pulled in by how unstoppably fast that guy was. Like, how do you even... Is that like a super power, brother! Honestly, that wasn't everything, but that'll do for now. You should check at the information gathering guild. They should help."

The young man left, gesturing awkwardly and with a troubled stare at Markus.

Mark didn't really feel anything, but it was nice to see life that didn't revolve around him.

Even a sociopathic murderer needed foot massages.

He was massaging his feet right now as he sat, putting one leg over the other with his sandals on the ground. To easy any concerns, it was not impolite or indecent to do this among the everyday folk. In fact, it was common and a cultural trait.

Soon enough, the men were dancing and imitating someone, laughing all the while. This made Mark snicker as well.

It was hard not to like people genuinely in a good mood and friendly.

Mark smiled, eroding the thick ice wall that preventing him from connecting deeper with the men.

Eventually, Rebekah proactively walked up to him, releasing herself from her Lot's adjacence. "You guys didn't ask Mark whether he wants to stay or not. Did you guys even invite him to church?"

Markus responded: "Yes! You saw it yourself! We did! But of course, we'll let him stay with us. Mark, do you need somewhere to sleep? We can let you stay with us."

Mark didn't know how safe it was, so he declined politely. If he ended up going with them, who knew what would happen to his body?

Now that that ended, he soon found himself at the feet of a larger inn, entering inside.

Various people threw paper cards on the ground playing board games. It was an unusual atmosphere, but it was focused, polite, and almost looked like a discussion between men of high power. But in the end, the polite silence was due to the tense phase of the round they were on.

Mark sat down, grabbing a chair from on a table and placing it down, making a slight noise.

It didn't bother the people too much since it was only as loud as the intermittent coughs.

But when he sat, he soon found his eyes adjusting to the dimness of the inn, his focus gravitating toward the focus of the orange lamps.

They were seated around a single table, centered upon two people playing their last moves.

When they expanded their game time, various sides of the inn began whispering.

Eventually, it ended, and the whole crowd erupted with playful jeers and applause.

Mark was a little lost, but later, when the crowd began clearing, he sat down at the counter and asked for a drink from the servers, glancing at two women wearing archers' clothes. He was astonished at how much more sway they held here that they could just wear these battle clothes compared to his village of birth. Though he was surprised at Rebekah's level of authority within the group of men earlier, it was still within his ingrained understanding of reasonable limits. Even now, he still retained numerous attributes and sings of his lineage and upbringing, but he was more open-minded. He had to be, or else he would not survive in this city that expected much from its citizens. Even more relevantly, it expected barely anything from rural-to-urban immigrants like him.

If he wanted to survive, he would have to take hold of opportunities, not just as a man of suave business-think, but as an everyday man according to these cityfolk.

To grab hold of a red flag of opportunity, he walked outside and waited.

After some time, various people went out, but he was looking for someone lost or someone particularly lonely or vulnerable.

After a while, the two women came out, but he didn't see a sign of weakness from them.

Sooner or later, he found an older man stumbling about, sitting down on his haunches a short distance from a stall.

Mark approached him and asked for directions to probe into how the older man would respond.

The older man gradually stood up, shaking. After stabilizing himself, he pointed and made sounds with his mouth nonverbally. It was just a mannerism this time. The man had a condition.

The older man was an easy target, but Mark found more opportunity in looking for a vulnerable young master than a lost older man on the street.

So his first idea was to find a way to get this man on his side if ever he needed someone with his particular set of skills.

He told the man that he would buy food for him for giving him directions without asking for anything.

The older man was surprised, but he soon nodded.

Mark was a kind person, if it counted toward his goals.

Glimpses of humanity and nuance could be seen even within the sociopathic framework.

Mark had the older man follow him. He didn't want to underestimate him. In fact, he was worried that the older man would begin to love him excessively. However, if the older man remained dependent on him, that was his independence to act freely and remain in poise with his social environment.

At the guild, the older man and Mark stood in front of a giant lobby, darting adventurers zipping past and treading with gigantic footsteps. The place was a fountation of activity, providing avenues through which Mark could soar. But Mark didn't want to soar. He was an egg, waiting to break out of its cage to crawl upon the slithering vines, fully engorged with hope. This was salvation when it was most frail, because right now, he truly was an outsider with very little connections. In the village, he knew 100% of the village. Here, he knew much, much less than 1 percent of the whole city. This was his perspective on the issue.

That was why the older man was his first knowable thing. If he could get more knowables like cards on a playing deck, then the time to launch a ferocious attack on the board would be surely optimal-optimum.

For clarity, knowables were items or pieces of information that were within the realm of knowledge or understanding.

Mark struck treasure chest gold when a three young adventurers took them in as part of a mission into the muddy hills, where goblins would be hiding in caves.

The good thing was that Mark was an experienced climber, being a man of a village close to a mountain range.

This was why he went bare-foot at the event a few days later.

The older man was with him, and so was another woman, the one he spoke to at the faction before. As for why he wasn't working at the faction yet, he never signed up, only having assessed the place. It would have been a bad idea to take the first sign of light given to him, when he lacked so much information at the time.

Anyway, the woman and the older man had two different goals in mind. The woman wanted to remain in connection with Mark, whom she saw as one having authority, while the older man merely wanted someone to attach to in his time of great need.

Mark could exploit both requirements. The woman's was superficial, while the older man's was easily paid in roughly pressed gold coins.

He didn't even know their names, and that made it all the more easier to commit to the plan, his guilt bearing no presential burden upon his mind's eye.

His clarity was perfect.

He shot at a goblin, pushing it again and again with his awkward rocks, soon enough tearing it away from its grasp on the hillside and causing it to tumble down toward its concussion.

Mark was tasked with clearing away the goblins advancing by the hillside. With the pressure release one by one with every goblin fall, the woman, the older man, and the three young adventurers rushed into the cave, slashing every goblin in their sight.

The older man was tasked with blocking, and even if he was malnutritioned, Mark had been feeding him these past few days. And with Mark's oversight, the older man had decided to join up.

The goblins fell one way or the other.

The team was no longer bound by the fleshling nailed grips the goblins spurred.

But he would embrace them for as long as he wanted, because they were bound by fate. And six years was long enough for people to have known each other their entire lives, only for it to dissipate suddenly as if it was all a surreal, disorienting dream of a man who was and used to be and never became again.

(He could love and be a part of someone's life for their "entire lives." But sooner or later, it would dissipate suddenly as if it was all a surreal, disorienting dream of a man who was and used to be and never became again. He didn't hate them or would severe their relationship. To be more accurate, even the most meaningful connections that might have seemingly been bound by destiny grew apart. Him embracing them for as long as he wanted meant that he could be with them and be a part of their lives with a sense of freedom and strong intimate investment.)

In conclusion, Mark might have conversed with them. But in his view, it was not equality in the sense that it meant neither to rule or be ruled. He "ruled" over the older man and the woman. This was like violence in that it was mute and that it could never be great—a prepolitical act. But slaves were subject to violence.

To offer a more hopeful interpretation, the older man and the woman chose this path, and Mark was engaging in the facsimile of "collective housekeeping" (Volkswirtschaft).


Chapter 11
The Goblin Accord



Mark stood at a hill, raising his weapon and slashing at a goblin.

The goblin blocked his attack and struck him several times in the gut before kicking him away.

The goblin ran, dodging several arrows, but he soon slowed down to a magical effect draining his life force.

Meanwhile, Mark fell back and hit the ground, saved by a healer.

He was in a battle, and it had been three days since the mission.

He was no longer fighting with the intention to kill. He was fighting with the intention to assess his opponents—the goblins were surely enemies. But he was talking about the adventurers he fought alongside.

He aimed a bow at a goblin, failing miserably. He joined up a line of archers for a volley. It was a loose organization from these archers to the rest of the adventurers in this skirmish, so he voluntarily lined up to shoot.

Even with his bad aim, the volley was able to keep out goblin reinforcements crossing a mountain pass.

Mark was beginning to tire, his arms aching terribly.

Even with his numerous skills, he could only provide so much damage against a coordinated goblin foe. The barriers and harnessing of terrain and fortifications to mitigate area-of-effect damage and completely nullify certain magical attacks made him helpless.

But this was a lesson for him in warfare mechanics.

If he wanted to kill, guerilla hunt-downs were effective to some degree, but it was also very taxing. He lost so much potential waiting out adventurers and killing them when he could be upgrading his skills, hunting more powerful enemies with more powerful rewards, and gaining reputation as a reliable and trusted beacon of the community. All the advantages of society he didn't have were there in the fog, waiting for him.

He hardened his fists and stood up.

Large artillery explosions rippled across the adventurer forces, dismantling their mage formations.

Many died in this skirmish, and eventually, the humans were forced to retreat, as the goblins chased them down on all fours, slaying them rapidly.

Mark and some others found themselves back at their fortified camp, but they had clearly lost.

So they fled the camp as well, hoping the camp's forfications to slow them down.

Mark kept running.

Many groups were separating to catch fleeing, isolated adventurers.

Mark used one of his spells to dig underground and hid. It would do for now.

Once they were gone, he returned to the city, thirsty more than he was hungry. His lungs were aching, and his legs were heating up, his back sweating and prickly, the back of his hands wet with sweat from his head. He walked like a zombie.

But when he returned, he immediately washed and fixed himself up.

Time never waited for anyone.

So he armed himself and put on whatever armor and equipment he had like rings, gems, amulets, bracelets, and belts.

Walking outside, his next goal was to embrace the more peaceful side of the city with the hope of disparaging it in the long term. His patience failed before. It would not fail again.

Soon, while he foraged around and assessed the environment, several goblins appeared in the horizon.

He stopped, begging them for a fair fight.

The goblins watched his every move, walking close.

Mark glanced at the other goblins standing farther away, a tree and some vegetation partially blocking his view of them.

Mark waited for the goblin to make a decision.

But the goblin was only slowly taking a stance, as if it had not done it several times before. It began to form a gesture—that which expressed his desire for peace.

Mark nodded and readily showed what he presumed to be the same gesture.

The goblin gave an affirming nod, and soon enough, their fight ended with peace without verbal communication.

Mark decided to befriend the goblins, showing them gifts that he had prepared.

The goblins took these gifts respectfully and commanded their youngest member to offer a gift of their own.

This communication event marked a new step in Mark's progress as a bandit, especially since he had been tasked to visit the goblins by his bandit lord.

But even as he was being commanded, he had utter freedom to create connections that only he could.

He offered his skills as a hunter, describing humans and how he slew them as if they were animals, but never saying once that he was referring to humans.

The goblins readily listened, and soon, their connection became economically organized, as they offered each other a quest and accepted.

Mark's quest for the goblins was to hand him information about skills, levels, and stats from the knowledge systems the goblins had accrued over centuries.

The goblins' quest involved damning the human freaks one by one and handing them their heads, which they referred to as "pellets." It was then that the goblins clearly expressed their understanding of Mark's man-hunter role.

Mark was also informed that they could make arrangements for the human captives to be released if their "arrangement"' was "productive." He was sure that these captives included the camp followers from the goblin-human engagement earlier.

He accepted the offer, hoping to rope in more companions that would love to get on board with anyone saving human captives. If different kinds of people relied on his authority more, then naturally, it would be easier to move through the strata of civilization. Essentially, it meant more power.

Overall, having set up early leads in various areas, including bandits, goblins, an entertainment business, his position was much more secured, and people would be willing to work with him instead of against him, depending on how much others needed his authority.

Shifting to a more interesting acquisition from this partnership, the goblins showed him a path to a goblin seaside fishing town with 50 families actively living there.

Mark joined them, walking alongside them by the rugged, mudded, rock-studded trails that ran and spread through a tropically vast and diverse ecoregion of opportunity and potential development; though, because of this high potential, it was important to promote policies that aligned with a approach that could sustain its breeding ground perpetually.

The light shone upon the town, and soon, Mark found various walking simple people walking, some carrying logs on wagons, the sounds of working in the shops, among other details.

He came toe-to-toe with a new way of living life, that of simple progression.

He noticed that being in this village granted him a sense of experience.

Even the [System] rewarded him so.

[Your body has learned to love simplicity! This is empowerment! +1 XP]

Mark didn't understand what this meant for him moving forward, but he had a long history of violence. And he knew that he couldn't just reject who he was. He would inevitably return to that cycle.

Maybe, he was wrong.

Maybe, he could change.

But he didn't want to spend too long figuring it out.

So after staying there for a while, he found out that the town itself had a hidden entrance to a dungeon.

Even if there weren't any humans there, he knew well that sooner or later, he would grab the next human blocking his way and drag him down straight to Sidapa, the goddess of death.

"Will you smile at me one more time?" said a father to his daughter nearby.

Mark found that he couldn't move. The memories flashed through his mind of being an innocent, kind, caring child. He was never like this.

But time refined him.

He walked to the father and daughter and offered them packed food that he had prepared.

The father and daughter thanked him and moved onward. They were goblins, but they shared the human quality of thankfulness.

Mark wanted to make sure that everyone had a happy life, and on the side, he would engage in all sorts of murderous conduct to resist his oppressive environment. It was relaxing as being able to fish while reading a book.

When he returned to the city, he noticed a wounded man on the way.

He aided him and picked him up.

The older man he helped and the woman he convinced gathered together under his flock. He was their shepherd, and now, the wounded man that he helped joined this troupe.

He needed fresh troops.

He stood and opened his hands, using hundreds of words without lifting a violent finger to get what he wanted.

So when the time came, he could fight the battles that words never could.

Soon, he slashed a human in the face, burning his eyes with lava that he brought in a crucible. He brought it all the way here because he had obtained a magic bag that made storing it easy. The human was particularly hard to kill, having a shield that blocked all his skills and attacks. So this was his last resort.

The human screamed, dying under duress.

[You have received a bountiful reward! +1 Gold Coin +1 Skill Point]

He expended this skill point by upgraded one of his skills, the one that allowed to dig into the ground and hide from the goblins earlier. It was called [Dig Straight Down].

And now, it was level 2. It was noticeably faster, but only slightly.

When it came to the names of his group of members, the wounded man that he saved was apparently a gay young man named "Roservelt." And the fact that he liked men made it easier for him to integrate him, since it was always those who were treated unfairly by society that were the easiest to convince when any semblance of acceptance finally came. The older man, Blanc, was the beggar. The woman was Summune, a member of the faction he had gunned to get into at one point.

Anyway, he was all alone here after killing the human, who was a traveler. He noticed several other humans coming his way, so he dragged the body into the doom of the darkness of the dungeon and threw him there to be eaten by tendril-controlling wolves. This ensured the true defeat of a particularly nasty enemy.

He was the true enemy.

The travelers that came next were fast and smart in areas such as navigation and exploration, but they didn't exactly know when to attack.

He immediately grabbed one of his skills [Wheezing Aura] and emitted it toward the travelers.

The travelers began coughing.

Mark noticed that one of them was coughing more than normal. The man had asthma, but Mark didn't know that.

With the help of his [System]-sponsored skills, he began a sequence of attacks.

He kicked up a dust cloud to obscure vision temporarily, creating confusion and limiting the travelers' visibility.

The travelers retreated a short distance to deny further deterioration over the battle, making sure of the extra space even within a sparse rainforest. But Mark was close enough, tossing a rock within an accurate range.

The travelers protected their heads with their arms, but this also lowered their visibility briefly.

Mark was already running, having anticipated this, swinging and striking with his blade.

He wasn't able to scratch them, slap them, or poke them.

But he faked a stumble to avoid one of the travelers' spears.

He taunted the opponent, using insults that the older man taught him. And he successfully confused and made the travelers slightly impatient, provoking them to make a hasty decision.

The travelers expressed this impatience by jump-running forward practically and grabbing at him, using their strong calves to avoid the momentum loss and imbalance.

Mark used [Minor Distraction] this time, and the grip of the travelers became slightly weakened as a result.

He also spat at them and blocked them, nudging them, dodging, and parrying. These were all skills.

He barely got away from their grips, as their hands presssed tightly on his wrists.

He continued to pester them with feints, scratching, slapping, and poking them before bringing his blade to do heavy damage.

After slaying them, he backed off, falling to his knees.

He then used up all his other skills hopefully to get the [System] to level them up.

Here's the provided list formatted as a markdown table:




Skill Name
Description




Paper Cut
Inflicts a minor scratch on the opponent with a sheet of paper.


Dust Cloud
Kick up a small cloud of dust to temporarily obscure vision.


Rock Toss
Hurl a small pebble at the opponent for minimal damage.


Weak Swing
Swing your weapon with little force, dealing minimal damage.


Feeble Strike
Attempt a weak attack that is easily blocked or dodged.


Scratch
Lightly scratch the opponent with your fingernails.


Slap
Deliver a weak slap to the opponent's face.


Poke
Poke the opponent with your weapon or fingers for minimal damage.


Stumble
Intentionally trip or stumble, possibly causing the opponent to hesitate.


Taunt
Insult or mock the opponent, potentially lowering their morale slightly.


Slight Push
Give the opponent a gentle push, causing minimal disruption.


Minor Distraction
Create a minor distraction to momentarily divert the opponent's attention.


Feeble Parry
Attempt to parry an attack with little skill or strength.


Weak Shove
Push the opponent weakly in an attempt to create distance.


Glancing Blow
Deliver a weak strike that barely affects the opponent.


Feeble Kick
Execute a weak kick aimed at the opponent's shins or knees.


Hair Pull
Grab a handful of the opponent's hair and pull lightly.


Spit
Spit in the opponent's direction, more for annoyance than damage.


Feeble Thrust
Attempt a weak thrust with a weapon, easily countered.


Minor Jostle
Bump into the opponent lightly, causing minimal disruption.


Barely Block
Block an attack with minimal skill or strength.


Flick
Flick a small object (like a pebble) at the opponent for minimal damage.


Feeble Grapple
Attempt a weak grappling maneuver with little effect.


Dishearten
Say something discouraging to lower the opponent's morale slightly.


Pinch
Pinch the opponent with minimal force.


Distracting Whistle
Emit a weak whistle to momentarily distract the opponent.


Slight Nudge
Nudge the opponent with your shoulder or elbow.


Weak Charge
Charge at the opponent with minimal speed and force.


Feeble Tackle
Attempt a weak tackle, easily shrugged off by the opponent.


Barely Dodge
Dodge an attack with minimal agility or finesse.


Wheezing Aura
Emit an aura that subtly disrupts the enemy's breathing, making it harder for them to catch their breath.


Dig Straight Down
Digging straight down.



He had 32 common combat skills that he had gained through hunting humans. Sure, he could hunt monsters, and they were easier to fight. But humans gave tons of XP and skill points, which allowed him to upgrade his skills. Moreover, the [System] rewarded him with these skills in the first place. Though, they were rather weak compared to the skills he had seen. The good thing was that he only fought people with weaker skills. The [System] offered him an ability called [Identity] that allowed him to look at fellow humans' status page and see their levels, skills, spells, and titles. So he naturally avoided fighting stronger enemies due to this. He had looked very, very cunning to the point as if he predicted whether or not he could kill them or not, but he was just exploiting what was already available to him. And not everyone could see the [System] as he did and use [Identify] here. So that was his secret power.


Chapter 12
A Public Reckoning



Soon, he used all his skills in sequence again. He treaded the path between monster and human when he began smiling and engaging in casual conversation with a group of traders some time after the fight.

All the while, an elf followed him like a child with a mother who liked talking for hours when she encountered an old friend.

Earlier, he did notice that the two travelers he killed had come with a slave—an elf slave, a woman, beautiful in every category.

During that time, he first picked her up, fed her, quenched her thirst, made her bathe, helped her dress up in clean clothes, and made her feel pretty again by showing her that the world was beautiful and that she was a part of it in a humorous, light-hearted way. It was a simple gesture and cliche, but the hints of Mark's serious, unyielding, intelligent demeanor validated that a million times over. Moreover, Summune, the only woman in his group, helped in this regard.

He wanted to use her, but he needed her to be happy and motivated to improve herself. Coercion was too difficult to maintain, so he cared about her insofar as she benefitted him in the long run, even if she inevitably became free from him.

But the elf was traumatized and struggling to make sense of herself and the world, having lost something precious inherent only to her in the process of being enslaved.

Mark knew that he couldn't save her outright and that the only thing he could do was give her time and space and resources. He had to show her that she could exist even in a world that hated her so badly. She deserved a second chance. And no one could take away her uniqueness.

That was specifically what he wanted to exploit—her potential and her uniqueness. He saw the person behind the beauty that invalidated her pain tenfold and that others had used against her. He saw the human being inside that form that she now considered putrid and disgusting because it had "inevitably" brought her great suffering. He saw the soul behind that, and he didn't need her to satisfy his physical needs. He needed her to be herself and be useful. He knew that the soul made her distinctly useful among thousands of hosts of people, so he wanted to cultivate that.

Ultimately, he would dispose her if needed. He wasn't compromising. He was adapting.

Mark let her be weak and helpless. He let her be lost, be confused. He let her think, ponder. But he had to remain present, or else she might do something that ruined her own life out of impulsiveness.

He expected that she would become useful after years of recovery, but that was the point. He wanted long-term investments. He chose to love her as he would a sibling or a close friend, because that was what a human truly needed—someone to see them as a person because they were flawed. No one was a beautiful elf, a sociopathic murderer, an older beggar, a faction member, or a gay young man. Those facades never encompassed a human's full identity. Human beings were too complicated to be defined in such an invalidating manner.

Those was Mark's eyes amid his sociopathy.

Furthermore, one could argue that Mark's actions, while stemming from selfish motivations, could have a net positive outcome for the elf slave.

Anyway, the traders introduced to him a line of new swords produced thanks to the collaboration between craftsman and traders in the city guild. The dwarves were complicit in this celebrative event.

Before buying, he returned to collect money from his workers, including the ladies that he had procured.

He was happy to have his money reach the maximum again, since the [System] had limited him only to 50 gold coins. As for whether he could hide it, the [System] was all-knowing and acted instantly.

It was the benefit and cons of having such a [System].

He gave the 450 coins he couldn't use to his group, and this was why he was so confident about taking care of the elf woman and taking in his current members.

Now because he didn't want those coins being used carelessly, he regulated their usage as an overseer, giving them options to choose and then redirecting them toward more sustainable options. He basically gave them a list of options, and whatever they chose led to another list of options. This way, he could understand their true intentions since most people expected to get the first thing they chose. He did with all 4 members, including the elf woman, and they were all pretty reasonable. Even then, he wasn't discouraged and planned to keep using this method of verification.

While Mark was walking back to an inn to rest, some guy dressed in purple and yellow clothes emerged and said: "Hey boys, what's a good day for all of us, today! Huhuhuhu! I haven't been so glad since the day I was a little poopoo! Isn't it crazy! I cannot believe it! My entire existence is like molten lava! It burns! It burns! It burns! Tell me! What the hell is happening here!"

Mark cringed. "Who are you?"

The guy continued: "I love it when somebody looks at me and says that question! Isn't it crazy! We're all here because of a good reason? I don't know. I just think it's cool!"

"What? What? Huh?" Mark, for the first time in his life, met someone like this.

"Really so cool! Isn't it!"

"What are you talking about?" Mark was confused and starting to get a little annoyed.

"Uh, you know. I'm talking about the fact that you kill people and you get away with it! Hahaha—" He inhaled his laugh.

"Oh, bullshit." Mark had killed three travelers even after the city countered him with a skill that provided sight over a large area because he was outside of its range.

But the man in front of him knew somehow. To add to that, his eccentric personality or persona only emitted a sense of unpredictability, leaving Mark at a loss for what to do.

Mark couldn't plan what to do next in this span of time, so he invested his brain energy into dodging or whatever instinctive action immediately needed.

However, soon, things started appearing. First, the sky turned dark, fiery flames bursting in the distance. Second, dark shadows joined hands with fairy creatures, two contrasting elements working in concerrt. Third, horrific sounds hummed, droning rapidly. Fourth, several forms shifted in size, as their shadows went down the surrounding hill. Fourth, the growls of hungry berserkers struck the ground, supernaturally making a temporary smooth path to Mark. Five, roars preceded the appearance of kingly men, who wore elegant, ornate, and gorgeous outfits.

These men all had long, dark, flowing hair and facial hair, and they jumped and danced in the air. They had outstretched arms and serene expressions. Their magic were a spiraling mix of colors, lights, patterns, and shapes. Most of them had magic that included flowers and leaves.

The first wore a black suit with a colorful, patterned vest and a white shirt. His fists were clenched and his face was determined. His magic carried patterns reminiscient of a cityscape and a cathedral.

The second cast magic creating a colorful, patterned background. He wore a blue and white striped shirt, a black vest, and black pants. His right arm was outstretched and his left hand was on his hip. His magic formed a large archway at the center, with a bright light shining through it.

The third had a serene expression and wore a blue and purple tunic with gold embroidery, and a brown belt with a large buckle. He had a necklace with a large pendant, and his arms were adorned with bracelets. He held a long, flowing scarf in his hands, which trailed behind him as he danced. His magic had a large, circular design in the center.

The fourth wore a white shirt with gold embroidery, brown pants, and a brown sash. His eyes were closed.

The fifth wore a long, flowing blue robe with gold embroidery and a red sash. His magic resembled a twisting mix of clouds.

The sixth had a bare chest and wore an orange cloth around his waist and a blue sash.

The seventh had curly hair and also wore a white shirt that was open at the chest and green and brown pants. He had a brown sash around his waist, and he was holding a rose vine in his hands.

The rest were even more diverse in clothing, shape, and demeanor, each member projecting a sense of bountiful purpose and collective destiny. This was their stand-off against the measly sociopath.

In conclusion, adventurers emerged all around him.

They were too many for Mark to handle.

He raised his hands in defeat.

If they killed him, this would be bad. Truly, in this rational situation, he chose a fifty-fifty chance of living rather than the 1 percent chance of escaping if he tried to fight now.

After they took him in, he was immediately given the chance to present witnesses on his behalf, choosing the group that he had cultivated.

The 2 women and 2 men under his motherhood were quick to defend him.

And he came out very easily. These four varied in terms of background, and they only saw his good sides. As for the only exception, the elf woman had seen him kill the two travelers, but her standards were so low that anyone, including Mark, was a perfect saint compared to her previous owners.

When it came to the evidence, they only had the word of mouth of the adventurer who wore a purple and yellow outfit. Moreover, Mark learned in the trial that his name was Hitchcock from Summune, who said that they were both part of the same faction. This meant he was dealing with the faction that he had planned to join at one point. This situation made Summune's loyalty to him look strangely devoted and by extension, unclear, so he kept an eye on her to see what she would do next, since engaging her directly would likely disrupt his more important objectives.

Mark was released into the wild, his flock reinforced in strength by this event. He himself too had learned new things about this world.

One thing he realized was how easy it was to get away with doing horrible things when one had enough money and power to do so, especially when the electorate was informed on abuses and exploitations conducted against the lower class. Many travelers that he killed were lower class folks, not powerful creatures of immense power. That was how he was able to get away with it.

But he was sorry. He was so, so sorry.

To make up for it, he was planning to overthrow the local government and consolidate political power. And he needed the support of the lower class, which was why he began wearing a purple and yellow outfit, which was a typical working-class attire.

However, in order to do that, he needed to keep his current "rank" within society. And currently, it was very low and decaying overtime the more he tended to other important matters.

Moreover, he had to begin working with adventurers.

But first, he would move to the various towns around the city in order to gain support. But this had to start slowly and with the initial goal of testing.

His end goal would involve an organized mass demonstration and coup d'état, because he couldn't just walk up and tear it all down on its own. The thousands of adventurers hiding their strength behind the walls of the streets and in the shadows of dungeons, castle walls, caves, and strategic locations had to be baited out of their hiding place.

In response to the adventurers having ganged up on him, he would be fighting fire with fire, or organization with organization.

So he had to stand out, moving from individual survival and accumulation of power to a larger, more systemic bid for control.

Since he was confirmed an adventurer after he registered one or two days ago, he began heading to the remote towns, making up reasons such as monster hunting. As mentioned before, it was the bandit lord that had made him register, and his current situation with him was that he needed to keep bringing him gold and skills. That was why 70 percent of the 450 gold coins was relinquished to the bandits.

Anyway, he wouldn't be bringing his group, but he had to be careful lest the adventurers ambushed him like he did to many travelers and adventurers.

So what he did was work with the goblins to safeguard his passage, offering them the heads of the last three people he had killed as a sign of their continuing friendship. He passed by the fishing town again, saying hi to a familiar father and daughter. Their new layer of interaction convinced his new goblin companions of his respect, or even good nature, to the goblin species.

Eventually, he arrived at a remote town, with his gang of goblin companions watching out for danger. To expand on their behavior, they acted similar to the bandits he worked with before, but the goblins' culture differed strikingly, being more given to discipline and formality.

Meanwhile, near the horizon, several colorazs, or assassin mages, appeared between deep forest groves, squatting efficiently. Their burden was to observe Mark.


Chapter 13
Labyrinths and Loyalties



Now that he was here in the remote town, his first goals were to establish an effective defence against any possible threats. He knew firsthand what happened to villages when their defences were inconsistent.

Since he was an adventurer, he inserted himself into the village as an adventurer, showing the goblins as an implicit show of force that he was capable of protecting them. But it also meant that it would be a good idea to listen to him while he was on their side.

He suggested various defence strategies, but he mainly kept his focus on monsters, assessing various locations and spots for the risk of monsters passing through and gaining control of vantage points and other strategic locations surrounding the village.

His past experience of identifying possible ways to infiltrate his first former now-destroyed village was crucial here.

He got the aid of various eyes, asking the goblins for their advice on how to keep this town secure.

It was a strange situation, since the goblins' interests lay in killing humans. However, they would let go of townsfolk if that meant killing human adventurers first and foremost. It could be considered idealistic to consider townsfolk separate from adventurers enough to spare them from harm. But that was their decision.

Ultimately, the goblins did agree to help Mark, leaving him relieved. It was great having connections pay off. He couldn't say the same for the people who had made connections out of him.

The goblins suggested various vulnerabilities that needed addressing; however, they also noted the assessments given by the townsfolk themselves, those relaying their limited resources.

Mark knew that in order for the town to utilize their resources fully. He had to be a lot more heavy-handed, which meant imposing systematic demands from a much less organized group compared to the city.

Moreover, he still had little to zero reputation, so even if the town was not that big, only numbering around 10,000 people, he was still expected to engage in dungeon quests nearby as an adventurer.

So he got to work.

He entered his first labyrinth, adjusting his posture in the presence of the goblins so as not to offend them. As for the reason of this, he had begun mimicking the posture and style of fighting of the adventurers, which made it awkward now that the goblins, who had a lethal bone to pick against adventurers, were involved.

The goblins didn't want to leave just yet either, especially after he sought advice from them.

It became clear that Mark's position here—no matter how more solipsistically strategic taking immediate control of the town was—would revolve around these goblins' facilitation. They were essential components of a key strategy that he could extrapolate toward greater heights of power—one that considered the strengths of monsters and humans under one collective mark.

But he had to be careful.

Returning to the moment, the labyrinth was full of different rooms each representing various challenges he and many adventurers had to undertake. Since he was new here, he expected to take on at least once a day for the next week or so to start. The default requirement was actually only once a week; however, it became more and more common for adventurers to have this sprint of a start due to precedents set by genius adventurers.

His first room involved a bow and enemies coming in waves. Moreover, the [System] prevented Mark and the goblins from using skills for the duration of their defence in the room.

The goblins were well-aware of the mechanics involved with a bow and arrow and what one had to do to operate efficiently.

But Mark's bow prowess had always been a supplement to his skills, strong villager calves, and blade-wielding quickness. But he was skilled.

In the end, he had to fade into the background in order to deliver shots effectively, even if it meant putting the goblins on the spotlight. The goblins manned up as well; reciting their oath to protect him and stating that this was part of the job.

He nodded, finding their way of saying it hilarious. Even now, he still had that sense of humor that he had gotten from Markus.

When the fight began, he immediately covered his head with his arms in case the room had surprises for him in the form of projectiles. But he was fine. The goblins also did the same anyway, but soon enough, they had to uncover their vision to track the opponents that emerged. These opponents were cat-sized slimes, spiders, and ants.

The bow was enough to penetrate them and even kill them in two hits.

[Cat-sized Spider defeated! +5 XP gained.]

The goblins were killing a lot too.

[Cat-sized Slime defeated! +6 XP gained.]

[Cat-sized Slime defeated! +6 XP gained.]

[Cat-sized Slime defeated! +6 XP gained.]

[Cat-sized Ant defeated! +4 XP gained.]

[Cat-sized Ant defeated! +4 XP gained.]

So Mark kept shooting, pausing between shots to move sideways in order to keep omnidirectional vision of the room. He knew the goblins were going to be playing independently as well, seeing how the room's floor tiles were shifting magically and randomly. It made balancing a challenge, as two feet could be on two different tiles headed in two contrasting rectilinear motions.

But Mark was off the list of fast deaths, as his calves had been dependable since childhood.

After sweeping the room of the opponents, Mark fell to the ground, having aching calves. He needed a break after avoiding so much attacks. It was the first wave, so he hadn't completely adapted just yet to the way the opponents moved each. But his past experience with humans supplied him with just enough know-how to use the goblins as a guide and extrapolate key info.

However, after 5 waves of relentless onslaught, Mark was surprised to see that the room was still going. For the sixth wave, it had a surprise boss at the start of the wave: a group of skeleton archers accompaned by a few slimes.

[Cat-sized Slime defeated! +6 XP gained.]

[Cat-sized Slime defeated! +6 XP gained.]

The skeleton archers immediately hit the goblins straight through the armor, their spectral arrows breaking their stride and any momentum.

This was dangerous, so Mark pressed the door that led to the exit. Immediately, Mark and the goblins teleported out of the room.

This meant that they wouldn't be getting any loot or rewards; however, it still served as previous experience moving forward for their next attempts at defeating the waves and uncovering the treasure hidden within.

When Mark returned to the town, he was quickly given several warnings by the guild not to engage the room without registering as an adventurer there.

Mark was surprised. It was a common practice for adventurer IDs to work throughout the region. But this town was particularly against letting any adventurer take on a room without signing up first. He was told to sign up, but he didn't think they meant to sign up again but locally for this town and its adventurer guild.

This was tricky as well, since he never mentioned the guild to the goblins. They probably knew about it, but the guild here was not that well-known. So they might not see it too much as a threat.

But if Mark entered the guild and it was blooming and showing great potential, his relationship with the goblins would be a lot tricker. But if they left, he knew that as long as delivered fresh human heads, that would be enough proof that goblins could soon infiltrate human borders. But for now, they were silent. The humans were too interconnected, and they had many powerful allies. If the goblins dared step out of their territory instead of defending only, then the humans would not respond so well to that.

This was a battle of tensions, and no one wanted to strike first. They needed a justification, so it was a tense standoff that meant a lot for Mark moving forward. The humans could strike only up to a certain degree, and all the battles were limited to skirmishes. It was a standoff in broader proportions, but in the details, it was hectic. And Mark was in those details. Wiggle room with respect to the conflict was growing thinner and thinner, and they might need a spark like Mark to blast everything out of the water.

However, Mark was more concerned with single-person matters, having temporarily let go of much of his influence and power back at the city. Now that he was here, it was a refuge, a place to address common goals and ideas and interpose chain links between different levels of strategy and action—a reflective stage where isolated ideas each generated in a vacuum were brought to light and married together within a singular-minded capacity.

This was not actually how he saw it. He saw it as taking a break merely; however, he felt strongly in his heart that this was pivotal.

Once he got his adventurer licence, he went down to the next room.

There, the goblins were absent, but he was here with a passing adventurer party that only wanted to test him. They even brought candles to place next to his face to see if he was scared. It was petty, but they didn't seem too ill-intentioned. It felt more like a bunch of children not knowing how to approach strangers politely and sociably than anything. Mark knew that the best way to be polite and sociable was to be mostly quiet, especially if he didn't know what was going on, and the urban city gave him many opportunies to do this, given he had lived almost all his life in a rural village.

When he and the party entered the second room, Mark was asked to cast all his skills to demonstrate his prowess. They pointed out an army of doors and other wooden objects blocking their path and encouraged him.

Mark cast several skills, breaking open various doors. It was getting difficult to navigate this dungeon, as it had a giant creature roaming around that was difficult for them to kill quickly. If the adventurers were alone, they would kill the creature, but since the creature targeted the weakest one first with a long range skill and couldn't miss with this skill, the adventurers had to play around positioning with the doors that emerged and blocked their path every so often around the labyrinth-like room.

When they finally escaped, the creature was still running after them. This time, however, Mark was able to show his bow skills, giving the creature pause by hitting it in the head.

The creature regenerated its flesh, the new flesh pushing out Mark's arrow.

But Mark shot again, using his two first skills [Redburst] and [Cold Gaze], the ones not included in his common skills and that he rarely got to use due to their long cooldowns. He used them here since they were available again.

If Mark could work at this pace, then handling authorities that seemed like gods compared to the elders of his first village would be a tiny bit easier.

[Level 7: Mark Reader

Health: 710/710

Mana: 350/350

Armor: 62

Magic Resistance: 34

Skills: Redburst; Cold Gaze]

[To enhance clarity, common skills were omitted for brevity's sake.]


Chapter 14
The Nightmare Cage


    
Eventually, Mark returned to the village, but he only had so much time to spend before the Bandit Lord called him with his colorazs.

While traveling back home, Mark contained himself from stabbing a traveler. His impulses had become refined with combat sophistication. Basically, the better he got, the harder it was to hide it.

His heart burned in his chest for release. He had to invert a human being.

But he was among tense goblins and human colarazs. If he dared show violence, even toward a traveler, that might trigger them to unleash their fervor at each other's necks.

When they finally returned, Mark fell to a drowsy phase, his back against the wall, his heart pounding in his chest. The night sky bleated at him like a goat, inspiring him to rise from the ashes of his former two villages and become a queen-god.

He needed only a blade strong enough to pierce through a lion's neck; then, his heart would jump at the opportunity.

Basically, he only needed the weapons of war; then, his heart would follow through.

He would not let himself be wielded as a tool.

He would try again and try harder.

His introspection came to an end, his mind stolen into a dream.

The sky fell down, and his heart leaped many steps backwards.

A nightmare flew around him and throughout, casting chains upon his wrists and the ankles, striking him down with a long bouncing heavenly sword.

He saw that the dream was particularly vivid and lucidly composed himself.

A dream-maker had appeared, expressing his deep admiration for his ability to navigate an otherwise terrifying dream.

But Mark was not impressed. He was scared of letting his murderous intents slip, so he castrated himself with a cognitive push to the abyss of his heart where only he himself could appear. It was a mental spot in his mind that no one could enter.

But the dream-maker was persistent, revealing new skills with which he struck the mark on Mark's head—representing a teardrop, the tears of blood he spilled all day long.

The dream-maker grabbed Mark's arm and ripped it off, roaring at the Mark and making sure that his existence was under his might and power.

He created towers and castles in this imaginary place, but they were as physically tortorous as though it were real. He threw it with only his mind.

Mark's form disappeared, as the limbs, joints, and outlines that made him up became blurred in tortorous composite. The castles and the towers made him their bitch.

Mark's body was let go: what was supple flesh was now mud and blood.

Mark recreated himself.

And the dream-maker, despite his extensive experience, didn't realize that Mark's power was growing as his lucidity bloomed.

Mark struck down the dream-maker, making his eyes burn with blood. He struck him again and again. And on the night that Mark awoke, he saw blood all over his clothes. The dream-maker was nowhere to be seen, for he was now in a dream of his own, in non-existence, and in a place untouchable by anyone else. His death midway through his nightmare target spell became horrific.

Mark stretched his neck like a giraffe, indicating that his urges were filled and his heart was light.

The pain from a lack of release was removed. Now, he could kill again with less impulsivity and greater control.

That was the life-sucking nature of his operation—the more he killed, the more his soul thirsted for blood. It was a consequence of this life that he had chosen. But it was his goal and his destiny.

Whatever magical creature or man carrying spells untold came his way, he could only sit and unleash the greatness which his life had bestowed upon him—that of murder, that of grace, that of a hundred swords lashing at the back.

He was a murderer, sociopathic.

Since he was half-asleep, he cast the blade again, striking the still-living dream-maker partially. The dream that the dream-maker has cast upon him was now his prison, and Mark could now do anything he wanted there until he was awake again.

But for the time, the torture was here-to-do.

The dream-maker screamed, his piercing screeches becoming a song as old as time.

Mark released himself from the dream and from his drowsy state. He was elevated beyond a simple man, as he could render a magical man to a simple self-tortored soul. This was his simple action.

The dream-maker's continuous "losing" within his dream became a source of XP for Mark, adding up to his overall control over the narrative spoken by the city authority. Whether or not this dream-maker represented a new shift in the priorities of the city and its citizens with respect to a new stage, he held the crystal ball in his hand.

Eventually, Mark revealed himself to Summune, his hands surrounded by magical particles emitting his increased incense. This incense was a smell brought about by the winds of magic. So the more this wondrous incense smelled, the more power he held behind that grip of his. If he let his power loose, the smell fell silent.

Summune knew this. She also knew that Mark was not a member of her faction, which was initially reason she came to respect him and follow in his footsteps, even to the point of defending him in trial. She had her own agency, so she decided that in order to keep her growth secure, she had to fulfill a need she noted that Mark lacked—potions and alchemy. Since she was secondarily an alchemist, which lay peripheral to her role as a berserker in combat, she made it a point to Mark, interrupting him and placing her discussion about this on the table.

Mark was surprised by her insistence, but he welcomed it, saying that her help would be appreciated. He said that health potions were the most useful. Summune nodded, but she secretly preferred poison potions to keep her enemies out of position and unable to chase. It was the base for her breaking enemy harmony and tempo.

Mark nodded again, demanding that she employed immediately.

He went out, relying on her powers to castrate the goblins and keep them on the noose, as the poison could terminate if they intentionally braved the poison storms she had unleashed. It was suicidal to dare against the choking power, and they lost their lives to her poisonous clouds.

Mark was impressed, as he struck thrice three goblins in the face, breaking what was supposed to be their three-pronged armament. They fell to the earth, dead.

Mark leveled up, Summune following alongside.

Meanwhile, an armored tall goblin emerged, followed by groups of threes.

Mark struck the tall goblin, removing his crown and piercing the soft pads of his armor, threatening him with his great might. He slammed down, cleaning the earth of his kind one at a time.

The groups ran, as Summune surrounded them with her poisonous smoke. It didn't damage herself and those she assigned as allies, making it convenient to choke out the enemy literally, within a tight place.

Mark fell to the earth, as ten goblins crowded him. But he caught himself and slashed omnidirectionally, striking an opening in each direction before attacking in all diagonal cardinal directions, bursting forth in a concentric victory.

Summune raised her hand, bleeding from her chest. A now-dead goblin had placed an ax on her belly, and a living goblin continued to attack her from behind.

Mark caught her and slashed the goblin face-wise.

Summune and Mark left the cave, furthering their path toward the next dungeon. They were not in the dungeon with the rooms. It was a regular dungeon, and their goal was to keep an eye out for opportunity and chests. The adventerers usually relied on beginners to scout around before the big boys and girls made their way promptly like a bunch of golden arrogant ducks. It wasn't that serious, but 'twas was the way their little system worked around here.

Mark relished the opportunity to contribute to a wider network, having contacted the ladies about his contributions, showing off a simpler, more innocent side of him in the face of his big, larger-than-life self that usually appeared in front of these ladies. It was a gambit to secure their trust in the face of the new team managing them. He had to keep his eyes open, because risks were everywhere.

While Mark and Summune trekked to the next dungeon, he continued down the narrow lane, striking any shadow that popped ghastlily. It was the time for tension. If a man like the dream-maker struck again, he would lose his tongue, his greatness summarized, and his will to burn through the ever-lasting presence of death and suffering, his body.

He touched his collarbone with thought, recognizing the soul that beaten within him.

He had to strike faster than anything seen.

Summune released her gas clouds, poisoning a crowd of bats obstructing their vision. Mark followed up with a sweeping triple slash, one guided by the desire to remain an omnidirectional presence. It was his habit now formed, and he restrained himself from embracing Summune or going too far from her. He had to keep combat distance to make sure their dynamic remained secure. It was about combat really.

A bat struck, But Mark was omnipresent, removing it from its place, tossing it aside.

Summune released her gas clouds in a focused gaze to the ends of the cave, but she left multiple sides vulnerable, which Mark exploited by baiting the bats into tight clumps. "You're screeching real loud for bats in striking distance!" He struck them multidirectionally, in all four corners of the earth, and proverbially like he was quoting ancient scripture.

The bats dissipated into nothing, while Mark positioned himself relatively close to Summune. "What happened back there? You forgot to use it to block out the cave instead. We could have been more careful."

Summune nodded, finding that his proximity was strangely comforting but also abnormal. She moved obviously away, as he began taking loot one by one.

Mark didn't really need to hide it. He wanted to test Summune in order to glimpse into her heart. That controlling her required him to do things he wouldn't otherwise do made this challenging for the people he was testing. But for him, it was a procedure, a manual expression, a robotic execution.

That was how Mark beat the dream-maker—through loving the act and reducing his emotions to a pinpoint that it never became complex or humane whatsoever. It was the exact nature of this telling.

Summune was awkward again, similar to when they first met. She thought she was being weird. So she began oversharing to reduce the discomfort Mark had injected into the mood and to clarify an otherwise out-of-control situation for her: "You know, like, I actually don't know, like, what I'm doing. And I.. hehe... feel a little strange that... I don't know what I'm doing. So... hopefully... we can... do something about that. Ah, yeah, I'm sorry. Just forget what I said, I think." She began bouncing side to side without thinking, indicating her desire to lighten up the mood and dispell any confusion and taut awkwardness.

Mark was curious, so he leaned back and motioned for both of them to leave, pretending that he himself found the situation awkward as well. This was him doing better since Sophia Strong, who had destroyed his sense of control when she introduced the existence of the [System]. But now, he finally did it and kept his composure all while manipulating and gaining from his target. This was him surpassing the him that fell prey to Sophia's schemes—an evolution of his spirit.

Summune smiled nonetheless. The wind would blow happily whatever lay behind the smile Mark shared with her.

[Level 8: Mark Reader

Health: 730/730

Mana: 390/390

Armor: 64

Magic Resistance: 35

Skills: Redburst; Cold Gaze]

[To enhance clarity, common skills were omitted for brevity's sake.]

But Summune was a berserker, and she had never established that to Mark.


Chapter 15
The Boiling Point



Earlier, when he killed the dream-maker, Mark went back and grabbed the dream-maker's body. He was in his inn-room, so he had to be very careful with bodies. 

But on that day, he had proof that the dream-maker was an enemy when he was inspected by a guilt-keeper, a role within the policing force in the town. 

As for how this happened, the guilt-keeper came into his inn room with a flirtatious smile, being a straight woman. 

In contrast, even if she was more within his expectations compared to Roservelt, the only gay member of his little group, Mark was disinterested; only concerned with the possible consequences of being targeted like this.

Furthermore, if the guilt-keeper diverged from what was expected from her role, then that would be problematic for him, as he wanted to keep his shoulders clean of complicit hands. If he had to kill her, he would, but cleaning up would be troublesome, like having a village feast in the middle of the night and then having to clean it all up in the morning. That was why back then, his first village would do it very early in the morning before sunrise when people still had energy to think and clean.

"What's next?" she said, carrying heavy sadness on her back. She had been adjusting her steps, avoiding the line gaps in between the tiles. "I know you killed those people, so what are you going to do next?"

Mark sighed visibly. "Okay, what do you want?" He didn't want a repeat of that adventurer confrontation.

The guilt-keeper demanded: "I want to see how long you can handle being in a room. Can we do that? If you do that for five days, I'll let you go."

"What makes you so sure that I'll just let you do that?"

"Well, I could always tell the adventuers again."

"And if you don't have proof?"

"Well, I do... actually." She expended her mana to cast a skill that showed a symbol representing evidence of his acts of violence.

Mark chuckled. "I've seen many of you do the same thing for animal killers."

"Oh, wow. You don't know that it only detects humans then?"

"No, I knew. I just meant that animals turned into humans are counted then."

The guilt-keeper paused. "W-what do you mean? There are no animals that can turn into humans—"

"But there are humans that can turn animals into humans as well. You've seen beastmen."

"B-beastmen? That's how they are normally."

"Are you sure?" One of the things about this culture was that they hated beastmen to the point that they made it a "fact" that all beastmen were originally just animals. And beastmen were somehow counted in the detector, so that made things complicated.

"Fuck, then, how can I make you give up?"

"What? Why are you saying that out loud?"

"No, I just need a way to fool someone into thinking that they have nowhere to run. I was hoping to get some points, because the more I got people arrested, the more points I got. It's a fair system for me, because I've been able to make some fast money by just arresting anyone I saw that had the red. I knew that it wasn't reliable, but no one faulted me for it, okay? It's not my fault!"

Mark sighed genuinely this time. "Okay, whatever. If you sign this contract, I'll help you." He handed her a contract.

She looked for a moment before asking, "What the hell is this?"

Mark raised his brow. "What?"

"Why is it saying that you'll be my slave?"

"Okay, I gave you the wrong one."

"Here." He handed her a contract that made them collaborators, so that she couldn't do anything against him and he couldn't do anything against her. If he was doing something with the intention of hurting or killing her, then she would be alerted. And vice-versa.

To explain how the guilt-keeper lost, her evidence was shaky and was simple trying to bluff and intimidate Mark, like a lot of police officers tended to do. She was overplaying her hand, hoping to scare Mark into compliance, rather than having a truly airtight case. This was why she acquiesced relatively easily to Mark's counter-proposal once he called her bluff. When it came to Mark's side on this, he knew this, tacitly threatening a court case, considering he had survived a court case previously thanks to his close allies.

Anyway, Mark was doing this because he wanted to know where the dream-maker came from, and if an ally in the peace-keeping force here made that happen, he would take that opportunity.

This might take a hundred years to complete, but he was willing to undertake this series of steps, whatever it took.

The guild-keeper was now in his metaphorical right pocket, while the ladies, the team managing them, his current accompanying group, Reeda, and the various connections he had made were in his left one.

Meanwhile, a man staring at the horizon ran, crushing trolls by the chin and rolling goblins up and smashing them. He used baking equipment to slash through them. He was the self-proclaimed Butcher, his butcher knives spinning in his delicate hands.

He hated adventurers, but he was one.

He wanted to drag adventurers down one by one into their doom, which was why as a beginner, he trained his combat skills and ability to make connections, dropping his knives frequently when he spun them. He was on a similar journey to Mark, so if they ever butted hands, it would be a handshake.

He grabbed the faces of goblins and ripped them apart, slicing them off cleanly before crashing to the ground. The goblins beginning to pile on him, he pushed them off and retreated, healing himself fast with potions. He was still learning how to fight.

Seeing Mark, he noticed that Mark wore an adventurer's outfit confidently, as if he was about to kill hundreds upon hundreds of goblins. His eyes reddened, but he kept his impulse in control. He then asked, "Do you know where the bathroom is?"

Mark recognized this technique and said: "I don't know, sorry." The man could have been just asking for no reason, but anybody that asked like this straight out of the open potentially had an agenda. It was a cynical scenario, but it was how he operated as well, being wary of people like him.

The Butcher then said: "Okay then. Excuse me." His outfit was messy, but it revealed ambition and recklessness, with blood still staining some parts of his clothes, barely cleaned. His mind was so self-contained.

Mark watched him leave, wondering how many more people were like him.

He went into a dungeon and noticed a group of adventurers there telling him to back off.

He was being pushed away by a group of adventurers, and he could just kill them.

But since they immediately distrusted him, a violent option warranted caution.

He left, being forced out of his own forte for the first time. He never had any physical territory to work with, but he did have fortes. When it came to territory, he just borrowed and rented and operated within the organizational processes overlying him.

Meanwhile, the Butcher came into contact with four groups of adventurers, having four options to choose for a long quest. But none of them accepted him, frustrating him.

Several other adventurers who excelled in support roles faired better and got immediate acceptance rates.

Returning to Mark, he began to notice a trend in the adventurer guild, having been a part of the bandit organization. None of the adventurers that did well in the guild were secretly bandits, and often times, the bandits wearing the adventurer mask were "sweepers" or bottom-barrel chewers. If he dared put himself at a higher role, he would be neutering his role as a bandit, because power required a hierarchy. If he dared speak out or take actions unfit for the role assigned to him, he would be killed, or hunted down, which was worse because that denoted an organized attempt to dismantle him and his assets, including the ladies and such.

He had to be nail-bitingly serene.

All the while, within Mark's left pocket, Summune and the rest of her group began working in small-time quests, as requested by Mark. Mark supported them by paying them each a fixed rate, but he made sure that it wasn't just money. He often used food gifts and souvenirs to make it more personal, making it easier for him to skip paying them from time to time by asking nicely.

At the same time, Butcher chased a scout goblin, wearing him down by smacking him and then grabbing him from a tree, kicking him and tying him up to the tree, smack-playing with his weakened, still body. He hated goblins, not because he hated them, but because they were objects upon which he displaced his rage toward adventurers. He hated this role, and he wanted to rid all of it from his eyes.

Every image of torture was him displacing an ounce of his rage.

But he would it all over again, because that fountation of anger never faded.

Returning to Mark, he agreed with Summune to begin having regular meetings with allies at a nearby cafe, because the last events had left him in a state of unfulfilled communication. He had lots of experiences and knowledge now, but none of them were being incorporated into a larger system of networks and loyal allies.

Summune was the one who suggested it too, so he trusted her to do the talking for now, even if he mind-gamed with her when they first met.

Meanwhile, the guilt-keeper was blocked and executed after she was discovered to be colluding with someone.

Mark could only accept reality, closing his eyes. "I'm inches away from being discovered."

He had to bite that fingernail harder.

In the meantime, the Butcher slashed before he was slashed and murdered immediately by a gang of goblins, whose actions mirrored the bandits of which Mark was a part. He could only survive so long before his arrogance got the better of him. 

To elucidate this further, if he was humble and took on a support role to integrate into a team because that was the current demand, he would have lived a longer life and even succeeded enough to make his own party with him as the playmaker. Without allies and with only enemies, his self-sufficiency could only fair well so long, as even the blacksmiths who repaired his equipment, items, tools, and weapons and the cooks he made his food didn't give him discounts due to his confrontational, uncompromising nature and sometimes even increased the price when they heard he was coming to their shop. They wanted him out, gossiping about his nature as a bully who sought power but didn't recognize the empathy-, kindness-, and loyalty-building charisma required to achieve it.

Humility was a common theme for bottom-lickers.

The successful were lucky and survived due to their great luck and opportunities handed to them on a silver platter, enabling them the gift of arrogance, complacency, and even imposter syndrome.

And Mark was not a part of any of that.

Zooming into the moment, his sweat travelled. It first dripped down his head, touched his chin, dripped down his neck, crossed the slopes of his collar bone, slid down the sides of his belly, dewed his legs, and finally rested upon his skin.

Mark knew exactly what to do, but the problems later came piling up on him.

To begin the list, he learned secretly that when things went wrong in the group's quests, Summune deflected blame and responsibility to the older man, Blanc, and tasked Roosevelt's adventurer skill to do her menial faction work. She was controlling them like two puppets.

Moreover, he came to find out that the ladies were being thrown out of places due to their affiliation with a particular member of their new managing team. This meant problems left unaddressed during Mark's hiring now appearing in a strong way.

The ladies themselves were also being pushed so much to entertain in places with much fewer people, resulting in them being pushed and stressed even more. They needed a break, indicating a large drop in Mark's resources.

Fourth, he heard that Reeda was being forced out of his home due to having been outside of the city for longer than 3 months. This came up late, which confused Reeda that he promptly informed Mark.

Fifth, he came to learn that Markus and his family was being removed from his church due to the cleric's attempt at sexually blackmailing his wife.

Sixth, the bandit lord wanted things to happen already, having gotten wind of his many activities, which began when one of the bandits saw him at his previous court case. This placed Mark in a do-or-die position.

Seventh, the dream-maker and the guilt-keeper's deaths could mean that an official's lackeys or the police force would come finding him. 

Lastly, Richard and everyone he knew were still alive, and he had witnessed Mark firsthand try to kill him.

Mark's eyes were clear through it all: the power he had built on deception could collapse at any moment.

A grin that hailed back when he was still struggling to contain his guilt emerged. He loved the silence of absolute chaos.

He got up and headed to a cave first, letting the problems simmer while he prepared his fist for the boiling intensity.


Chapter 16
The Breaking of Rosie



Mark came out of the cave, his body clean of blood, his weapons carrying greater understanding, his hands now readied and prepared to receive the burning.

He went to Summune, who said she would be at a remote dungeon, but he was immediately faced by a group of armed men straight from the faction to which she belonged. They sought to control him.

Summune was the ringleader of it all.

Mark grinned, laughing, as he ran.

Summune used her poisonous smoke to entrap him. They wanted to entrap him legally as well, so they were hoping to capture him and then have him admit affiliation with the bandits with entrapment as a threat. They needed him alive and outside of prison.

The factions were on his tail.

Mark struggled against this entrapment, wielding his blade with a distinct flavor or intensity.

He struck them once before blocking several attacks, catching a hit from a magical spell.

As he cast his own skills, he began punishing them again and again, tossing them aside as he ruptured their flesh and integrity of spirit.

He crushed their momentum. Each time they stepped forward, he destroyed them until they fell to the ground naked, their armor torn to shreds.

He grabbed each of them and lay them against the wall. "What the hell were you guys planning on doing? Seriously, all you guys needed to do was listen and be careful. Why did you guys do this? Who sent you? Whoever send you is doing a bad job, seriously! I should have been the one who took care for you. I would've done a better job. Isn't it annoying to see people try so hard but rely on faulty methods? Do you want power and success? This is not it. I have spent so long improving my fighting skills and becoming powerful, yet you guys are babies compared to me! It doesn't make sense. I expected better to be honest. Damn, come here..."

The faction members glanced at each other, not budging even slightly. 

Mark emphasized, "Come here!"

The faction members huddled up next to him.

"Now if you guys—"

One of the faction members raised his hand as if to strike him.

Mark punched him and beat him to a pulp. "Whatever you're doing, do it subtly. Don't make it so obvious. If you're asking a question, just say so. Stop with this raise-hand bullshit. I need answers. Now, tell me. Who the hell are your senders?"

"Senders?" said one of them.

"Superiors! Masters! I need answers! Now!"

Mark continued, murmuring: "Usually I'd just kill you. But this... this is different. I've changed.

"Ugh fine. I'll just kill one of you for the sake of it!" He struck one of them dead. It was Summune.

The rest of the faction members shook with fear.

Mark gasped. "My bad. That was supposed to be someone else. Summune was at least strong enough to trap me. Damn..." He giggled. "Ah, whatever. We're here now, and I'm excited. Now, tell.... me... What is it like to be in your heads right now? Do you guys like the feeling of being here? If so, then we can continue this all year long if you like. If not, then why don't we talk... and... do stuff with words? Speak!" He sounded like he wasn't mad at all.

Maybe the adrenaline was kicking in in high intensity only now.

The faction members wanted to talk, but they didn't know what to say. Mark made it clear that he could just kill them on the spot.

Mark stopped for a second. "Okay, let's relax, right? Why don't we chillax and take our time... nicely? I want all of you to take your time and breathe." He inhaled through his nose. "Take a deep breath. And..." He exhaled through his mouth. "So if you guys are done taking these breaths, I want all of you to also fix yourself and prepare yourself, because we're moving... somewhere else. We're moving to a cave. I want to see how exactly you guys are going to manage. I've, I've been testing this whole time. And I'm so hyped for the idea that maybe I can do something different, you know? If you guys won't talk to me, that's not going to be great, isn't it? So I need a conver—convo-sation. I need some sense that you guys are going to speak. If you guys don't speak... well... isn't that great! I could try out a couple of things I've never done!"

"What... are you gonna do?"

"I could see if you guys are receptive to getting beaten. Then, we can try if maybe you guys actually care about each other, I could try you and you will be put together and I'm punching or hurting or... torturing... the other to see if you actually, if either of you, actually care. I want to see that, you know?"

"No..." said one of the faction members softly.

"Yeah, isn't it sad? It's sad. It's sad, isn't it? I honestly think it's sad. But like, I understand also that you guys are incredibly amazing creatures. You think real hard. And I like that... I like that really. So if you guys don't work with me, I think, I think it's not gonna be great. I'm not saying that you guys are going to feel like shit. I'm just saying that this is an opportunity and for you and everyone in the world. We're going to have a... time. I, I, I imagine that one of these days, I'm going to try something new. I've never that kind of guy, always in my home in that village, never really went out! Never travelled... really! I've always been a indoors kind of person, or in-village. You know what I'm saying?" He spoke in a laughing manner. "I just want to try... Maybe I'm wrong, maybe there's a mistake here. But here's the thing. I'm going to make sure that you guys have the best time of your life. And I'm saying best as in best. I'm saying 'bestest'... because that's, that's the best, right?" He was smiling.

The faction members were stuck. They had no information to share really, and their plan had been to kidnap Mark and get information from him.

"So... why don't we work together? I'm going to put you into a dungeon, and we're going to see how long it takes for people to notice. Because it takes a long time, doesn't it? It's a missing person, you know. I just want to experience something that just isn't just the usual. I want you guys to live. I have an idea that people are amazing creatures, and I would love to see everyone gathered together and having the funnest time in the world. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to put you guys in a dungeon, and I'm going to see how long it takes. I want to experiment. I'm a learner. Look, I get it. I'm playing with people, and that's kinda scary. But at the same time, I'm also like, 'Bruh, I just love the idea. I love doing this shit. It's fun. It's exciting. I did that because I loved it and not because it was scary. But the scary part was really good. I loved it as well.' But I do, I do care. I do care a lot about all of you, about the people. I'm here because of people! People matter to me. And I know it sounds wrong, but don't you think people deserve to have a... something different. They need a chance at experiencing life at its full-est. I want them to get so excited. I'm going to make them excited, and I'm going to make sure they care.

"So with my thing finished, I will put you in right now." He dragged them to a dungeon where the monsters were and tossed them in.

The monsters began to tear them apart.

He suddenly calmed down, since he still had two faction members left. "Look, I don't want to hurt you. I'm doing this because I just can't help myself. I'm not sorry. And I'm also not happy I'm doing this. I shouldn't be doing this. This is wrong, but it's also right because it allows me to express myself. I love doing this shit, you know.... man? I love this shit." He tossed one of the two into the dungeon, as they screamed as they were torn apart.

"I can't help myself. It's something I have to do. It is essential to my being. I am a sociopathic murderer, and I feel guilt all the time. I try to remove it, but it never goes away. That feeling of both excruciating pain that I have to beat so hard out of myself and that excruciating urge, the love of God in that urge, the sense that this is life in that urge. I have to do it. I have to do this." His voice lowered to a whisper. "I have completely done it all, and no matter how hard I try to plan and make sense, I come back to this." He took on a sarcastic, mocking tone. "This is exciting. This is funny, isn't it? It's funny, right?"

The last faction member was not thrown in.

"I will prepare you for something better," Mark said.

The last faction member was a woman named "Rosie."

Rosie said: "Why? Why not my friends? Why not the people that I trusted? Why not the people that I gave my life for? Why not the world? Why? Why this disgusting filth of a person? Why... could it be? Why me?"

Mark said: "Come on. Seriously. We need you to get things done. So get things done."

That triggered a core aspect of Rosie, who relied on obeying orders within something bigger than herself to stay afloat and sane.

The elf slave woman part of Mark's group found it awkward when she saw Mark asking her to let Rosie to stay with her in the meantime. This was a weird decision, one with numerous implications. What if Rosie killed the elf slave woman? How could Mark be so sure that the elf slave woman and Rosie would collaborate? What if Rosie just escaped and reported Mark to the faction?

Mark knew these questions, but he made it so anyway because he was pressured. He had other demands. It was not the end of his journey.

Shifting to an omniscient perspective, he had never shown this level of excitement, playfulness, enjoyment, and childlike curiosity with anything, especially violence. He had shown emotions such as guilt in earlier events, but it never really ruined him to the point of nothing. He was still able to operate effectively and kill many, many people. But to become like this meant that his new state of power has made him a lot more comfortable and validated. So it already grew from there to take on forms such as childlike excitement.

Maybe, it was the newfound power combined with the sudden threat of issues converging on him that it suddenly manifested as this manic glee; maybe a coping mechanism to deal with traumatic stress that could propel him back to the village where all his problems began. His first village where he grew up did traumatize him.

Literally hitting himself to expel his guilt and grinning and becoming hysterical and very impulsive were his last-resort attempts at coping with his cognitive dissonances: his pivotal event of attacking Richard after one year of living an innocuous life was one extreme past example of what happened if those dissonances were left to simmer for far too long. The end goal of his unconscious was becoming a single, cohesive identity, something impossible to achieve with all the new pressures he felt compelled to tackle as a segment of his personality.

Rosie was his new object, a tool to be utilized within his framework of insanity.

The next problem would confront him—[The Bandit Lord].

He wet his blade with water, knowing it would only dull it if he left it wet. They called him mad: true beauty lay in imperfection! He would clumsily ruin this whole organization.


Chapter 17
A Collision of Worlds



Even though he had lots in hand, Mark continued down the route of gathering information and training his fundamentals of combat.

Slowed down his pace as he moved from spot to spot with a wary gaze, he shot.

The shot missed.

Later, after hiding for a while in one spot, he spotted his goblin target running past the trees again, readying his bow.

He shot it down.

He recalled his battle with Summune and his acquisition of Rosie, who was currently here with a leaf over her head. The leaf was one of the skills provided by the elf slave, which guaranteed cover from the rain. 

Anyway, his victory over Summune had been carried out with intensity, but it did have many areas of improvement that he had to correct before he fought the bandit lord.

Even if he himself was a conquerer and killer of adventurers and travelers, he didn't consider himself a big bad boss.

He was just a regular guy committing acts of violence on a regular basis like everyone else. It was a monster-killing world.

He shot several more shots, dispatching three goblins back-to-back.

The goblin tribe he was targetting were beginning to despise him.

After he relaxed and finished up, he left, keeping in mind the people looking for him.

These were the people investigating around because of the dream-maker's death and the guilt-keeper's betrayal. They didn't know who, so he had to keep his head low. Killing basic goblins was a neat, practical way to do that.

As part of his bandit duties, he immediately headed to a place where a boss was shining its blades. Similar to the appearance of a spider, the boss possessed a repulsive bulk covered in damp, abnormal growths, reminiscent of fur and scabs. It was equipped with venomous fangs and massive legs, which it employed to haul its corrupted form.

The bandits had gathered in various groups all around for a coalition, planning on defeating the boss.

Their first layer of battle started with shooting from the trees.

The boss takedown began.

In background, some moments later, Mark was tasked with a team to shed and poke some of the flanks of the boss' forces. He did this by slicing and dicing its underlings and spawnlings. 

First, giant goblin-like creatures called "Thralls" moved about with spider-like appendages sprouting from their upper bodies and arms growing from the side of their legs. 

They weaved to him effectively, slashing and grabbing his wrist before aiming to cut off his hand. 

Before the final death throe, Mark removed his hand.

It was a close call, but he knew that with everything came a price.

He had to leave immediately.

He backed off before he could get bitten with poison by a group of smaller creatures called "Sunderlings." They were 5-foot-tall creatures with giant heads, spider-like limbs, and an ant-like body. Their height paled in comparison to the Thralls, who were about 11 feet tall.

This made the situation that much more complicated, but he had a team. That was how he quickly healed and got rolling into the next formation attack.

In the meantime, while his attention was scattered, a man, Lowtard, approached Mark after he saw him fight: "Nah you stay right there! You stay right there! You got me all fricked up!" Stay right there for real!'

Matthew stared at him. The hell?

One of the bandits who had helped Mark heal up, Zanny, began threatening Lowtard likewise. "You better shut the hell up talking to me, bull's pizzle! I'm not playing! I'm looking for Thralls, mutton-headed miscreant!"

Lowtard shouted back: "They with you? They with you?"

"They with me, guts-griping knave!" Zanny said.

"Oh!" Lowtard kept his distance.

Zanny continued: "This Thrall positioning! Stop playing with me!"

"Oh!" Lowtard began apologizing, walking away. 

In reference to what he was discussing earlier with Mark's team, Zanny went right back to business: "I love it, I love it. this is the perfect position." Zanny was only here to give some pointers since Mark was new to this kind of event. Although he gave it politely as if the entire team didn't know, the rest of the team apart from Mark already knew what to do.

To understand Lowtand's behavior, what he was doing earlier to Mark was "checking." In other words, his aggressive approach was an attempt to assert dominance and establish hierarchy within the group, especially considering Mark's status as a newer member, not necessarily because of Mark's martial performance per se—a matter of "putting him back in his place."

As for why the bandits with which Mark previously interacted didn't give him such an annoying hard time, bandits relocated to ambush duty were often low-level bandits, as the wilderness was a challenging place to live in. They had been turned so humble and avoidant by the kind of domineering and hierarchy-building interactions within the organization that they didn't want to emulate the same scenes during ambush waiting hours, making it easier for Mark to transition initially into it.

Returning to the present, Zanny prepared several different containers for all of them to get food from. He didn't want to leave them starving, so he had specifically asked to reroute some of the money that would go to him and spend it on buying extra food for the boys and girls.

Mark was paused, wondering if they were going to fight again. Zanny had spoke of the Thrall positioning. But in his head, he had the faintest clue what that could possibly mean.

He worried he would have to deal with an onslaught of details specific to this league of bandits that was all organized under differing circumstances, roles, expectations, structures, and leaders.

It was going to require a lot of flexibility on his part. 

If he wanted to continued his blade-striking, dagger-stabbing rampage, he would need to consider this with a cadence of introspection and information-gathering curiosity.

He struck deep: "Zanny, what's going on?"

Zanny looked at him, curious. "Hm? What do you mean?"

Another man emerged from behind, "Listen up! We won't be here for long!" He lowered his voice and lowered his head. "Zan, keep it going. But don't forget, we're going to be heading to Askalatt tomorrow."

Zanny nodded and said, "Oh, yeah! Right, right..." He returned his gaze at Mark's group. "Okay, everyone, let's go," he said calmly.

After walking for a while, they encountered the rest of the bandits fighting the boss. It was a large area, so they could walk around comfortably in the meantime.

They headed to one of the dungeons in the area, heading inside and strking down the webs and lush vegetation that blocked their path.

Inside, they got a small chest, which Zanny carried and gave to Mark. "Okay, I'm heading off." He redirected his focus to the group, except for Mark. "Guys!" That was all he needed to say because the group already knew what to do. Zanny turned his attention to Mark: "Mark, they'll say what to do, okay?"

Mark was surprised he was getting this much hand-holding.

Either way, it didn't matter whether Zanny was going to be of help or not, as long as he got his way and no one attempted to backstab him.

He followed the team and engaged the beast, attacking from several fronts. Zanny kept his eye and told them to adjust their position; instead of telling them the overall composition of the fight, he focused on adjusting them with commands from time to time, because he trusted them to understanding micro-scale dynamics at least.

Mark was not really understanding, but he knew intuitive ways to surprise enemies. However, in this fight, he was at a disadvantage.

He kept his bow in hand, drawing and shooting quickly, focused on getting the message across that he could fight well. This way, the rest of the team would give him more major positions within the ongoing fight. He was immediately told to step up and replace one of the other members, after he shot three Sunderlings down in twenty seconds. It was hard to hit them, given the very back-and-forth nature of the fight. No one wanted to engage because both sides were dancing back and forth and trying to bait the other into a disadvantageous position.

Mark kept his shots simple and nice, aiming at the bulk of the sunderlings.

Each time he hit, he got a notification from the [System].

[Hit +1 XP]

[Hit +1 XP]

[Hit +1 XP]

The hits were satisfying, and he knew just where to move when the Thralls gathered and tried a charge formation.

It was easy to follow along with his team, because the enemies hilariously telegraphed where they would surround next.

It was like watching a bunch of birds fly and perch at the same spots in his old village.

He kept a straight line, always navigating with the intention of simple movements, because he knew that most of the work was going to be done by the people at the vanguard. They were the ones who needed to be moving diagonally, around, and in a complicated manner. It was him and the others in his position that only needed to keep their movements predicatable for the outer layer or vanguard to match pace easily.

The fight went, and soon enough, the Thralls fell. The Sunderlings were long gone, having retreated as soon as they sighted the best Thralls fall. At that point, it was a grind fest, where they slowly shot down and weaved around the Thralls until they died in frustration.

After the fight, they relaxed around a tree. Mark still wanted to know about the boss. "Hey, was the boss strong?" he said, not going too casual or too formal. He wanted to be careful around these fellows, because he didn't understand the culture around here. He was just relying on his past interactions with regular citizens of the city, so he made mistakes here and there.

The team members saw him and grabbed his hand, pulling him to their bodies in a friendly gesture.

"Good work!" said one of the members, Joshia. "Marvelous. You looked like a little dog when you were fighting!"

Was that a compliment or what?"

Mark nodded. "Thanks."

"That was a joke. You were more than a dog. You were a monster."

"Huh. I see. Thanks."

"That was incredible... so you were..." Lovosika began stuttering. "m-m-m-m-m-m-making arrows move on their own. It was like they had a soul!"

"Nah, that was just... shooting."

"Really," said Roksnan. "I was sure it was black magic!"

Lovosika said, "Yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah."

Joshia said, "Yeah!"

"I mean, it could be, but I ain't completely sure," he said, keeping a casual, playful tone. 

"That's great. Anyways, let's go!"

They parted ways, but before that, the bandit leaders gathered everyone, including Zanny and Mark's team.

Mark was watching the team leaders giving generic speeches when he saw a familiar woman—the elf slave. She was a bandit?

He looked away and kept his head down. When did he see her? Where was she again? He forgot where she was standing. Right! At the corner of the stall at the right side.

He was currently in a field flanked by cliffs, hills, trees, and a wide path that led to the city.

Mark was ashamed of himself for not realizing. But could he know? It was comical how the elf slave ended up being a bandit. It didn't make sense!

He was so bothered that he wanted to be honest for once like he was with Sophia Strong. He was losing his grip, getting sucked into civil pleasures and challenges. Where was the ruthless him, huh? He was not ruthless actually. He did it because he had to learn, but in some ways, yes, he admitted he was "ruthless." But he didn't want to admit that 100 percent. He was just abiding by the laws of this world, and if he had to abide by it to get what he achieve what he thought was right, so be it.

He hated how out of control this bandit event ended up becoming. He was out of his element, surrounded by people he killed before. But they were not adventurers. They were bandits, and strangely enough, from what he had seen, they were more organized ironically, which left him secretly baffled. He had never seen such organization back in his village. The city was a big place, but he never thought any organization would reach this level of size and structure. He wanted to run off for now, but he would grit his teeth.

This would take a while, but he would assimilate into this and slowly earn the skills necessary to replace whatever this aspect of the city was.


Chapter 18
The Architect of Ruin



Mark slowly read a tome about how adventurers navigated the most horrific dungeons; it looked more fiction than reality given how much praise it gave the adventurers. He put away the book for now, entertaining a visitor.

One of the ladies with whom he had began a relationship was surprised to see him so relaxed. "Why are you sitting here? Let's go! They're waiting for us."

Mark smiled before standing up casuall and then adjusting his tunic politely and with an air of patience and composure. He didn't need to hurry. A hurried life was a fast death.

Outside the rest of the ladies that he used to manage were hurrying to a small area.

A man was lying down, laughing and guffawing. Behind him, a goblin lay still against the tree, blood pouring from his chest from an impaling spear.

The man was supposed to be one of the new managers. He was the reason the entertainer ladies were being locked out of places.

He had suddenly lost his marbles after his parents died.

It was tragic, but Mark couldn't do anything about it. The man was effectively having a mental breakdown, and because he made it so public, Mark noted that it was more like a tantrum if anything, given that the man had been continuing this behavior outside where the ladies' audience regulars could see.

Mark hated these types, because they reminded him of his father. So he immediately impulsively reached for the man. Before he could touch him, the man shoved him off and growled in anger. He didn't start fighting Mark, but he also wasn't letting Mark move him.

Mark realized that he had to call the authorities, so he did. Sooner or later, the tragic man was thrown away. Not a single ounce of help was given to him. but Mark had other plans.

Mark visited him in a jail cell and told him that if he (1) listened to Mark and obeyed his orders, (2) followed the path to Sarsagon, which was a place that had lots of rumors around it, and (3) apologized to the ladies and the regulars publicly, then Mark would use his contacts to help free him.

The man agreed, realizing somberly that he didn't want to be in a jail cell forever.

[Manipulation skill check! Success! +75 XP] 

Mark knew how to use the weaknesses of others against them, especially when they gave up their playing cards just like that. How could he lose against someone so vulnerable?

He then freed the man with the help of his most crucial connection, Reeda.

Because of this success, he decided to play along with it and asked Reeda about the former villages of the second village to which he had gone.

Reeda said that they were here in the city, but he said he wasn't sure if they would be so keen to seeing someone that reminded him of the village.

Mark expressed empathy, saying that it was understandable and that he could wait. 

This was planting a seed on his part. He made himself appear as if he had been in a hurry and was now relinquishing his need to talk to the villagers in a feat of patience and empathy. It was his way of anticipating and preparing for future events. 

So long as he maintained this attitude, he would be able to maintain calculably high rate percentages of success across his plans and methodologies. This vast landscape of skill was not limited to the status page skills. He was a quick thinker and a strategical juggernaut. Anybody that dared face him would face the man who had slayed his own village in service to a broader plan that covered regions that he had never even visited.

This was his ability to think ahead and in abstract terms regarding the unknown realm sutured into his cognition—a masterful feat of skill. More accurately, he was hedging his bets by planting seeds all around with the goal of reducing the likelihood of failure through the mechanism of redundancy, a characteristic he saw in plants growing up in his village. To explain why, many plants had multiple parts that offered the same necessary function to stay alive so that even if one was lost, life went on.

By slowing down the pace and setting things up in advance, everything made sense within his larger-thinking mind, which required that he kept along with the fast pace of the city while maintaining a sense of psychological stability through it all. His mind was genius in the fact that he knew how to think beyond the moment. He was the moment, and he was the pre-formed genesis of the aftermath.

Even without a formal education, he had cognitive intelligence beyond what a dictionary of jargon could provide, something provided by the challenges of living in a world navigated by monsters and the powers that were, in an unforgiving rural environment riddled with diseases and all sorts of problematic tampering by the city, along with the complications with which his village social structure cursed him.

He was more than welcome to assuage this world, captivating it and becoming an entertainer.

He diligently paid attention to his body, offering moments of exercise and nutritional thought. He knew nutrition even without the term "nutrition". He recognized that his body was a slave to the organic fabrics making up this planet.

He cast himself upon the tables and feasted upon meat and all sorts of pulses and plants, his stomach readily processing them and allowing him a chance at a fighting chance when the hard times struck. His cognitive abilities improved as a result.

So now the ladies under his attention were given much more time to talk to him, since he could handle their inquiries and their expectations. Their hearts would be inclined toward him as time passed, because he would respond to them in their need and concerns without asking too much in return. He knew the power of love and kindness, which was why he had to castrate others using it. But the ladies, in this case, would be empowered, empowered beyond measure. He would ensure that a single one of them was left starving and uncomfortably disturbed so as to leave.

He drafted everything out within that village map–making mind: the skill he gained in his childhood caught up to him.

He smiled.

"Rosie," he said, having arrived next to her. "Remember what I said about Summune. She was nice, but she was a disgusting thing." He wanted to convey hatred toward Summune, but he himself was not angry or emotional about her. He just wanted to make Rosie a part of a new world by shocking her with easily distinguisable emotions, ones that she could understand and readily adapt to. This way, she was free to live, unknowingly underpinned by him.

When Rosie was adapted, she showed him a bright new world, encouraging her to leap out for salvation. He planted easily identifiable ways to escape his domain with the same motifs that characterized his false hatred. When he expressed anger, he showed openly that he had forgotten to lock the lock on the door. Even if she herself could go out anytime, showing these moments of fake weakness planted an idea inside her head. He wanted him to try to leave. That way, when he caught and spared her, it was not anymore her domain. Even the idea of escape was a falsehood, because he would be there running to spare her. He was not here to hurt her, only to show her that he didn't want her to leave to a large world where she could just inform her faction about him. He didn't want them, and he made that very clear, implying that he would treat her well if she only did one thing—forgive. That was why he made the elf slave girl one of her companions in this awkward phase. Even if she could leave, she didn't know whether Mark was outside the door waiting for her. So it was conditioning on her part. He cast a metaphorical spell that made her dizzy and confused enough that any thought outside of leaving became a relaxing feeling because it was relieving, not because it was true happiness. She began to enjoy something called "relief" over happiness.

This would take some time and would likely fail, Mark knew. Some people never gave up, and when they did, they gave in to death rather than submission to him.

[Manipulation skill check! Success! +1000 XP] 

However, he was willing to pay the price involved in organizing this operation, and he learned much of this from his own father, who had showed him what it was like firsthand, though one that Mark personally refined for his uses.

Mark masterfully guaranteed one source of information—Rosie Lasuza (Her Full Name.). 

Even if it was a failure, future operations could derive from this prototype and expand the findings and detailed ascertained. He guaranteed a success, whether it failed or not.

But shifting to his broader philosophical ideas and rationalizations, he believed this to be a form of child-rearing. He was taking care of people by caring for his own needs to learn. The more he learned, the more he satisfied those thoughts that needed to devote effort into loving this world and saving the people. He was stretching himself for his broader plan, and killing all those people was worth it if that meant he could potentially save millions of times more people. The notion of killing benefitting his broader plan sounded counterintuitive, but it gave him lots of experience and confidence moving forward, which advanced his strategy.

In the end, this was the unspeakable things he did as a man to secure Love firsthand, a very calculative operation resting upon a very philosophically- and psychologically-grounded mind.

Meanwhile, he struck a tree, breaking it and touching it only to see it explode. It wasn't his skill, but one of the adventurers he witnessed showcased a unique skill of his, demonstrating that he could make inanimate matter very weak enough that a few slashes could make it explode. That was what happened with the tree.

Many adventurers were this cunning, not with their intelligence, but with their luck. It almost conveyed a sense of cunning with how fortunate they were in acquiring such revoltingly powerful abilities when he only was left with the scraps.

His skills were common, but not necessarily useful to the point of breaking the rules of combat. He still abided by the principles of surprise and team coordination, especially recently with the bandits.

Oh, he hated the bandits. They made him lose his marbles with how hard it was to rely on an organization that was supposed to be a non-state actor. Yet, they openly declared themselves to be this large threatening group. It took lots of effort to deal with internal tensions and the threat of a possible outing session wherein he was exposed to the public for his misdeeds and disgusting nature. 

But he was not disgusting. He was not crazy.

He was just in a hurry, and that urgency and alertness required him to pursue dangerous and uncompromising acts. 

This was his show.

Soon afterwards, in a dungeon, he walked up to one of the Thralls, and he attempted to beat this beast, with the help of the members of the bandit team from the boss fight earlier. They were specifically asked to accompany him when he requested for extra training, a freebie provided by the bandit league, but often left unclaimed due to time constraints and the inherent dangers of acting separately from the main mobilized fighting group.

He struck the Thrall on the right arm before striking his left shoulder with the help of the tank member's tackle and the archer and mage's combined projectile attack. He leapt out of the way, as the berserker of the team charged, breaking apart the Thrall apart. The weakened Thrall was fresh food for the berserker.

Clapping, the group gathered and had another meal. It was easy times and easy life.

[Thrall down! +50 XP] 

[Level up!]

[Level 9: Mark Reader

Health: 750/750

Mana: 430/430

Armor: 64

Magic Resistance: 35

Skills: Redburst; Cold Gaze]

[To enhance clarity, common skills were omitted for brevity's sake.]


Chapter 19
Beyond Calculation



He set a trap, watching and waiting, his heart pounding in his chest.

He had killed many times before, but this was different. 

He noticed the violet clothes the adventurer he was targetting wore. She came from a faction, and indeed, attracting possible attention by killing faction adventurers was risky. But that risk serviced him with experience.

Once the woman walked into his trap, she immediately removed it, surprised, thinking that one of the hunters had left it here by mistake, given that it was a remote road. And because it was a remote road, she didn't think bandits were here. Most of the bandits she knew operated within the cities or dungeons. A bandit here would be very low-chance.

But before she could fully discard the slowness effect of the trap, Mark was there.

Several minutes later, Mark struck deeply, his arms grasped behind the woman's back. He immediately propelled his pelvis forward to claim stability on her body, as she had disempowered him from a healthy stance. With his newfound claim, he struck with his arm, choking her neck and pushing her down, kicking behind him to claim support on the cave floor. He struck and struck with his elbow along the distal margin to claim stability on her chest. As she began punching into the side of his belly and pulling at his hair, he got up quickly and then kicked her on the belly, as he was the one on top of her. He kept doing this until she attempted to grab him, but he immediately utilized sweeping sideways kicks to keep her guessing. She attempted to grab her feet again. He grabbed a knife that dropped earlier and struck her feet instead of making it obvious by striking her torso. She kicked at him with her feet and legs, stunning him slightly, before he grabbed her and placed his entire weight down on the stabbed leg and foot. He demarcated her view from her stabbed foot and grabbed the knife to deliver heavy strikes upon her calves. The woman fell apart psychologically, as she began getting more impulsive, using up lots of energy in the process. He backed off, as he had already won. The woman could barely run and was bleeding heavily. He followed suit like a bat, stalking her like a hunter, and brandishing his blade like a bandit.

He had won.

This was his next victim as a bandit. But he had also laid his past experiences with animals as a village child and as a hunter of men as the material basis of his animalistic and hunting intuition.

The woman screamed, begging for help.

Mark saw that artifact of hers that he threw to the side earlier and couldn't help but nod happily.

He grabbed it and noticed that it glowed green. It exploded, destroying Mark's focus.

Mark was dying.

He saw the woman giving him an offensive gesture, as he wondered what he had done wrong specifically.

But his thoughts were not his. They were immediate responses to oncoming death. In reality, he had a plan. He grabbed one of the potions of hers that he had tossed aside and began drinking it. He then got the other potion and drank then. He drank and drank until he finished them all, except for one.

Even with his destroyed face and death throes, he was able to revive himself.

He kept himself next to the potions in case of an adverse reaction, something he learned as a village hunter when dealing with non-lethal traps that could suddenly fail and stop holding the prey down.

The woman squealed in fear.

Mark gave her the last potion and told her that if she signed a contract, he would save her. He needed more troops, and unwilling participants were bad. But a magical contract would make things easier.

The contract included lots of dos and don'ts, and they were enforceable because the gods were watching, or at least that was what he had been told. He had seen it firsthand with travelers, slaves, goblins, and adventurers. But he had never actually seen the initiation of the contact, though he knew it worked.

The woman sighed and said yes, signing it with pain in her teeth.

Mark looked at her, watching her, staring, possibly glaring.

The woman, Xinyi, was silent. Who was he? Why did he do this? Where am I?

She wanted to leave immediately, but where could she go?

Who would help her?

She couldn't escape this easily, could she?

But she had a plan. She did.

If she could just remove him from existence, then this would all turn out alright, right?

She was jinxing herself, but she had to believe in faith: believing in believing.

Time passed, and Mark was still looking at her. Her gaze had long left contact.

"Oh gosh," she said under her breath.

Mark grabbed her shoulder, and then she realized. He was going to do disgusting things to her.

She screamed, "Help! Help!"

He made her drink the potion by hand—cupping his hand and bringing it to her mouth—since he wanted to save some more for later. He had no other container so.

The woman did not feel anything, but she felt strangely at ease despite her terror.

Mark was diligent not to let it spill, and his handsome face wasn't helping either.

The problem was that the woman didn't want to feel this mix of ease and terror.

Mark did not also want to feel guilt, so he would understand if she told her.

When the woman's body finally healed, she turned away from him and walked toward the city, Mark following along behind her with an easy gaze. He had finally controlled her for the most part, so he relaxed.

Attachment was a very important factor in maintaining control over prey, and if that prey relied on him for emotional support, then that would make things easier.

"Don't trip," he said, grabbing her since she was not looking where she was going. His hands didn't feel forceful. It felt gentle like he wasn't just attempting to murder earlier. Now, he treated her better than her father ever did.

"If you're mad, I understand. What I did was horrible. But what I want you to know is that I made a big mistake. I will not apologize for it, because I know it's not something I can get forgiveness for. But you're here. You. Don't let me take away that from you."

"I..." What was she saying? What was she doing! "...lost my father years ago..." Fuck, fuck, no, no!

Tears pooled in her eyes, and she hated that she felt this way.

She hated her aggressor, yet paradoxically, this was the only time in her life she was treated like a human being.

Mark listened to her and didn't treat her like an object (of sexual desire).

In fact, Mark didn't give a shit about a woman, only seeing them as men. And that was what made his actions even more easy.

Because he was impartial.

Guilt struck him, gripping his heart.

He fell to the ground. Tears dripped down his face. "Ugh..." His stomach ached. The underlying psychopathology of his behavior was clear, and it was impinging upon right now.

"Are you okay?" said Xingyi. 

He smiled weakly. "I got a tummy ache..." He made a silly look to downplay the situation.

Xingyi found herself frowning to combat the smile that threatened to emerge. She didn't like that she felt at ease with him.

This was terror. It had to be.

She grabbed him, feeling her heart pulsing not out of fear but out of a sense of ease with someone who listened. She removed her hand, accidentally dropping him.

Mark groaned before suppressing it, trying not to bother her. "Sorry..."

"No, it's okay, it's okay." She squatted down and placed her hands on his left shoulder and hands.

When they locked eyes, Mark looked away, unable to think straight. His cognitive functions were impaired due to the dual effect of his sudden pang of guilt and psychogenic tummy ache.

She helped him up, compressing her lips, repeatedly glancing away and keeping her head faced away from him.

She sat him down onto a rock. "T-thanks," he barely said breathlessly, mostly mouthing it. "Argh."

Mark had never had anyone. Or to be more accurate, he had had so many people, but he had lost them. "Argh..." he said as he accidentally slipped down the rock.

When Xingyi saw him, she stood still, only glancing sideways at him and putting a finger on her lower lip in contemplation. She looked away promptly.

Mark was tired and exhausted, and the contract made sure that she couldn't kill him. That was why he was at ease.

Xingyi was standing, staring at the horizon, while Mark was sitting against the rock on the ground, looking at her back and then at his surroundings

They stayed like that for a while. 

The wind, the rustling of the trees, and the calls of birds, cicadas, crickets, grasshoppers, and all kinds of animals made that scene tranquil.

They parted ways with a sense of regret and frustration, Mark with his vulnerability, Xingyi with her despicable emotions.

When Mark left, he returned to Rosie, seeing something different in her.

He let her out and told her that she was free to go. "Do what you want," he said. "I'm tired right now..."

The silence played a longer role than he expected.

"No," Rosie said.

The sound of him removing his clothes was drawn out longer than he thought.

"What?" he said with exasperation.

"You won't let me go like this. You already did it so many times, so no."

Mark blinked hard, his head aching. He was unable to render a response, so he repeated, "Just leave."

He fell asleep.

Rosie sat next to him.

Mark sighed when he woke up later. Seeing Rosie, he jumped. "Argh!" he said.

Rosie looked at him curiously and with a determined look. "I want to join you."

"Fuck off," he said. "There's... no way..." He had attempted to manipulate her, but he didn't think she would do this. She was unpredictable. Humans were unpredictable. He was unpredictable.

He needed to freshen up. He was a little drowsy and dead inside. He took a shower by the river and got some fresh clothes to match. He was confused what he was doing.

Everything betrayed his understanding of patterns and theory and his intuition.

He saw Rosie and Xingyi looking at him in the distance, as he stood there with his clothes on by the river. W-what the hell was going on!

"We want to help you," they said.

This was not in his plan at all.

But it was a good thing. It was. But losing control of his plan made him frustrated.

He experienced guilt still, something that popped up when he least expected it. He had to control himself and compose himself yet again.

"Okay, then. sure. We can go." He smiled, as if he wasn't breaking inside.

These losers were irrational. Why would they go with their aggressor?

Who were they to break his rational plan?

This was irrational.

He couldn't comprehend why the hell they would do this. It didn't make sense. It didn't.

"Rosie, Xingyi, welcome!" he said. Even he was not sure what he was doing anymore, he had to adapt to this new development, lest he lost track of the game.

They would hopefully play a big role moving forward. He didn't want another Summune incident.

Later, in a dungeon, with Mark having signing up a new adventurer party, Rosie showed off her skills as a member of the faction.

Xingyi showed her skills as a member of her faction.

They were strong, he thought, when he saw their skills.

Oh, this was going to be good. New recruitments. New allies. New people to fill in gaps in his broad plan.

He was not going to do this alone. He was going to have to blend into a giant monolith entity.

And these two were the early birds.


Chapter 20
A Spectacle of Power



Mark's sword slid through the cracks, emerging out with a broken armor finale. He had destroyed the Juggernaut.

He signed up in a tournament, and he was hoping that the giants of the arena could compare to the thralls in strength and constitution.

The reason he found himself here was due to the ladies and their former manager who found himself mentally broken.

He didn't predict it, but the manager was someone with connections. And he knew someone who could show him how to find better paths for him to take to get to the destination that Mark tasked him to go to previously. This led to this former manager telling him about the tournament competitors who ran across the road that led to the destination as a part of their traniing. So Mark was immediately curious, because he never heard about this. It was like he had been living in a village. Oh, wait, he had.

So Mark immediately signed up with the goal of experimenting with Xingyi and Rodie. Moreover, he even got Roservelt, the gay adventurer; Blanc, the older man; and a group of adventurer friends from previous quests along.

So that was how he was here in the scene of a battle, finishing off Juggernauts by penetrating their armor and crushing them apart.

However, he was much weaker here. The cheers of the people breaking his sense of orientation. He was not used to this environment, but he was learning.

He skewered a portion of a Juggernaut's armor, and these Juggernauts were aplenty, roaming and running around the map, chasing after each other.

Mark was not running. More accurately, he was daring the Juggernauts, hoping to test his [Redburst] and [Cold Gaze] here.

He skewered and broke the stride of a Juggernaut, who attempted to grab him but ended up tripping in the process.

Mark stood atop him and checked around him.

The Juggernaut grabbed at him before Mark used his blade to push himself off and block the succeeding attack.

The Juggernaut fell to the ground, as he was swarmed by the approaching Juggernauts.

The screams and bursts of emotion leaked out like friends surprising the birthday girl at a party.

Xingyi raised her sword, but she immediately fell to the ground at the bombarding abuse of the Juggernauts.

The Juggernauts kept walking, finding themselves breaking each other's strides and crushing each other like wolves chomping dead sheep clumps.

Xingyi stood out, reaching out to where Mark was. He reached out and helped her, telling her that if she couldn't stand on her own, she would be left behind because the Juggernauts were too fast.

The Juggernauts ran, bringing their giant blades to the throne wherein Mark sat—a pile of fallen leaves from a high tree within the arena.

Xingyi began climbing one of the trees, recognizing her limits and relying on Blanc and Roosevelt's skills in conversation to keep her at ease.

Rosie joined Mark, striking Juggernaut's attacks. Instead of dealing damage, they mitigated the charge and stomp.

Mark rested upon Rosie's help, closing his eyes, before releasing his next protocol—a group of goblins went out at the call of the tournament master who mandated the proceedings of the area events. His protocol involved their participation.

He leapt, distancing himself.

"Let go!" he said, getting Rosie out of her daze.

He ran alongside Rosie, as the goblins began sprawling around the jungle-designed arena.

Juggernauts glanced around, unaware of the threat these Marchacha goblins posed.

The goblins struck and beat the trees, making thunderous noises that echoes throughout the forest.

The Juggernauts scoffed as they spun their blades, commanding the air and the wind.

Mark sighed. With relief, he joined Blanc, Roosevelt, Xingyi, and finally Rosie in the palm trees.

The goblins screamed like tortured rabbits.

The Juggernauts stared, a slight depression in their brows. "What is that?" two of them said. Then, three of them. Then, four, five, six. And eventually, all of them shouted: "What the hell is that!"

A goblin bit another, turning it undead with the skin exploding part, a new set of skin replacing it. 

The goblins didn't approach the Juggernauts, but the Juggernauts were in fear.

Here, Mark went down, slowly approaching his friends, the goblins. They were not actually friends, but Mark called them his brethren.

The goblins glanced at him before scanning the environment, as if looking for Mark's allies.

But Mark had no one, all alone.

The goblins began attacking at him.

But Mark was swift, gently embracing them, thrusting forward, advancing his legs and then back. He struck the wind as he fell, before cancelling his fall. He equipped his blade, striking them down in three straight skewers, a wind full of glorious power becoming at his beck.

He endowed them with his bloodiest embrace.

He sliced their souls afire.

He screamed, as the reinforcements that he had cultivated so well joined his arms. They became his soul-pieces (soulmates or kindred spirits; chess pieces or playing cards).

He absolved them, his hands flailing around recklessly, his form exploding and reverting together again and again.

The fiery passion burned them apart.

The goblins then lay on the ground.

Mark lay victorious.

The friends that he relied on came out of the woodwork, joining him, goblins lying behind them.

The Juggernauts saw this all, remarking with a passionate glance. "This! This! Is Glory!""

Mark said singularly, referring to the goblins."I need not them. 

"I need only myself."

Like a man matured, he stared, praying that this was short-lived. As for what he meant by "this," that hid inside his heart.

He advanced, watching the ground play-fight with the shadows of his brethren.

Xingyi remarked, passing by a goblin dead. "What are we to do next?" she said with a playful tone, as if Mark did not just almost kill her previously.

Mark was smart, leaving her to answer that question, "What do you think? I can have you guys talk and make plans? Maybe, we should go to the Alabasta?" 

Xingyi said, "We can try."

Rosie said, "But..."

Xingyi said, "What? Why?"

Blanc said, "Guys, we should be able to afford the food later no?" This was what made Summune annoyed by Blanc enough to exploit him. He liked asking about affording food.

Xingyi said, "Sure. Fine. Mark said we can use the cash he lent us.

"Is it 'lent'?

After the tournament ended with the Juggernauts giving up the match and Mark's group accepting, they left, passing by the main road.

A child stood, staring at them.

Mark saw himself—the meaningless utterly sorry useless boy he used to be.

He approached him. "Hi, how are you?"

The child responded, flanked by his two parents. "I'm good." Even when his parents were next to him, they didn't react or look worried at all. Moreover, he didn't sound too bothered or happy, though he did look curious.

Mark smiled knowingly. "How are you? Really?"

"What do you mean?" the child said. The parents were beginning to notice, casting glances at Mark.

Mark dodged their glances, turning to his group.

Xingyi and the rest were laughing about something as if nothing happened.

Mark shook his head subtly before returning to the boy. "Do you still want to change?"

The child said, confusion clear from his voice, "What do you mean?"

Mark smiled toward the boy before averting his gaze politely at the concerned parents' looks. He gave them one final smile before leaving.

The parents wouldn't remember it. Nor would the boy.

But Mark would.

Later, he took Butcher's blade, finding it at the foot of a beautiful Narra tree. [The Executioner] the blade read.

Meanwhile, the human form of the [System] stared at him from afar, finding one of his protégés tiresome. Very tiresome. He wanted Mark to be his new protégé.

Mark shook away the glances and expectations of others, leaving everyone on himself.

He went to the fields where slimes roamed. There, he slashed and crushed slime butt; shredding them apart and gaining small XP.

[Slime +1 XP]

He struck another, bleeding away its juices and placing it away, making it an altar on which slimes were removed away.

[Slime +1 XP]

He crushed them recklessly, almost falling and tripping. He carelessly raised his blade and struck the ground.

[Slime +1 XP]

He threw a dagger, missing the slimes. He shot with a bow, hitting square at the slime's head.

Splat, splorch, squelch, squish, fizzle!

[Slime +1 XP]

He raised his blade before wielding his bow.

He cast his arrow before readily pouring his blade's juices upon the slime top.

He rested.

Slimes were oozing away.

He stood up, leaving the flattened slimes to natural causes.

He sharpened his eyes when a woman came up to him from behind.

Rosie was smiling strangely.

He raised his blade at her.

"What are you doing?"

Rosie was not smiling strangely.

He was just thinking it.

He shook his head. "..."

Rosie looked at him curiously.

He did not have enough information to determine his allies' next behavior.

He had to suffer these limitations and trust the people around him.

For now. He struck the guilt away, creating a stage wherein the 100-meter-tall Guilt stared down at his tiny form at the stage's edges.

He barked at the giant. "How dare you!" his voice was weak.

Another giant, "Fear (Limitations)", emerged, putting his buttocks down on a giant crate. He adopted a thinking pose and had Guilt sit down the same but on the floor of the stage.

Mark watched them before drifting back to reality, where Rosie stabbed him with good news: "The next tournament's tomorrow!"

Rosie saw him turn to the right and take a deep breath, suggesting that he was indeed prepared.

She led him to the streets where the colossal giant buildings stood, gazing at the peoples and at them.

Mark balled his hands into fists for the first time, his arrogant form telling him to sit back, relax, and watch the show.

He and Rosie came hand-in-hand to the home where the elf slave woman was.

Mark needed to calm himself. If he saw the elf again, he would remember the days his father told him to kill any elf that came in his path, mentioning the elves' tendency to kill after a long period of premeditation.

It was just superstitions.

He confronted the elf woman at the dinner table, flanked by Rosie.

The elf slave woman stared at him, awaiting his words.

"You..." Mark said, his voice weak. He could do well with the ladies, but with individuals that he felt were compromised by their circumstances, he felt guilt. He was reminded of his own conditions of life in the past. He hated being reminded of that time of his life, yet he desired strength and power. The weaknesses of those around him irritated him.

He composed himself, standing up and promptly shaking her hand. "I hope we can continue working together."

The elf slave woman shook her head in confusion. "What do you mean? You're the one helping me."

Mark nodded, smiling, though nothing he felt lay behind that smile.

He would castrate her soon enough.

He arrived at the tournament the next day, his hands gripping his waists, his sword bleeding to be let out.

He was not a tough guy. He was nimble and careful.

He was prepared to face situations outside of his control. And he was prepared to lose.

He waited patiently, as the Juggernauts emerged, sighting him. They were all the same, not a single one of them standing out. However, that might also be their strength. He had to pay attention to deviations and divergences in their individual behavior. He calculated their walk. Three attacks per step? He realized that he was calculating wrong. He discarded these calculations and focused on keeping his balance, as he stood with one leg.

He saw Rosie emerging from a tiny bush, appearing with her cute face and her lips pursed. "I haven't seen you do that in a while... What... are you doing?"

Rosie said, "I'm trying to meditate. So I'm trying to get my head and magic together. It's a weird ritual, but I'm nervous. So I have to do it before the battle. She showed her scarred hands and the glow that had scarred them in the first place. 

"This is my power."

Mark stared.

He nodded.

The Juggernauts quietly waited.

The gates inched, making a thunderously loud echo throughout the cheering crowds and the entirety of the arena. The trees swayed heavily, leaves barking and making noise. The ground was silent, with the sight of the gate moving a tremendous event.

Mark stopped the moment to think.

He neeed to weave through his attacks effectively. So his mind repeated it again and again through his head. It was muscle memory mixed with premeditation.

He remembered the elf slave woman again. He cast her out.

He refocused his gaze to a pinpoint, interrupted by the next inching of the gate. And its sound was terrifying.

The metal hinges that squeaked did not do so in silence. It reverberated, until it reached the sun-lit fringes of the arena.

The gate waited a long while, as if waiting for the audience's quieting down.

Before it opened! A light crack allowed a black smog-like energy to dance and whirl at the outer edges toward the arena.

The Juggernauts glanced at each other, stretching as they sat.

Mark pursed its lips, taking a deep breath—

The gate opened a dam-size more. A claw reached out and grabbed the sides of one of the two gate leaves.

Mark stood up, as the Juggernauts slowly followed suit, putting down their useless things.

Mark's allies watched the green light man make his aim clear. He would destroy the threat.

A demon burst out, blackish decorations making his form ornate and sophisticatedly elite. He guffawed in deep pinched roars.

The Mark watched it, raising a signal for the Juggernauts to come up to him.

The Juggernauts and Mark had their convo, letting the rest of Mark's group in on it.

The demon stared, creating stomps across the arena. The trees caught on fire, as Mark circled in opposition to the demon's movements.

The rest of Mark's new combined group explored paths to keep their entire force's shape out of the demon's direct line of rage.

Mark smirked.

The demon.


Chapter 21
The Demon's Lesson



The demon stood in front of Mark.

"Death is coming for you!"

Mark stared, his heart beating slowly.

Facing against a demon, Mark found himself thinking.

"What did it mean to be human?"

The demon charged.

Mark responded by slashing the demon aright. He couldn't stop its momentum, but if he struck when the demon was midway through attacking something else other than him, then he could strike him then.

He did this again and again, until the demon slowed down to focus.

The demon began beating up the Juggernauts and Mark's team.

Mark realized quickly and surrendered in front of the tournament master.

The demon stopped attacking.

"You're too weak."

Mark knew he was right.

He had only just started.

In fact, was he ever strong?

He found himself walking where beginner adventurers often travelled. This time, he didn't kill them.

When had he ever thought this much?

Maybe, it was because the demon was particularly stronger than him.

He found himself watching over them like a god.

A god would always be distant, watching all the time.

He didn't understand it, but he saw a lot of life in these people.

His motives were hard to pinpoint, because he himself could not completely find a logical basis for his actions.

His actions were arbitrary, but they aligned with his overall intention to conquer and do whatever he wanted, even if it meant killing travelers and adventurers.

He knew that he had to make a decision.

So he disappeared.

He could not be truly invisible, but he could pretend to be so.

He decided to become ethereal for a moment.

Why was killing so much more moral to him than engaging in the act of silence?

When was silence such a horrible thing?

He silently watched.

He saw a young girl walking by.

He stopped and wondered why a young girl was walking around all alone, but he realized that this city offered even young girls the power to establish themselves.

The idea of a young girl killing slimes all alone sounded so wrong compared to how he lived his life.

Yet it was possible in this city.

He wondered why he was watching.

Nobody was out to get the girl. And she was fine.

It was Mark that had a track record for murdering innocents.

But Mark did not see it that way.

However, he knew that this world was terror and horror.

Many abusive relationships hid under the surface, and it was typical for people to accept that.

Mark did not want to live in a world like that anymore. That was why he burned down his village.

He wanted to be free to live in a world where everything was okay, but he did not want to escape this world.

He was human after all.

He thought this world was like his village, but what he discovered was that the world was more beautiful and kinder.

Mark was not an evil man, but he had misunderstood what it meant to be human.

Being human was more than becoming a blight upon the land. It was about learning how to find humanity even when one's upbringing had taught one to eschew what made humanity great.

He stopped for a while and decided that today would be another day.

But everything had changed.

Mark realized that in order to be a murderer, he had to understand what it meant to kill. How many resources was he spending in order to kill? What were the pros and cons of killing as opposed to not killing? Advocating for murder through murder led to a world where people mistrusted each other. Society would not function without cooperation, and in long-term relationships, it was better to be cooperative than to be selfish, because that was the inherent value of a relationship. 

In light of this, his village was very unique. In smaller communities, it was easier to find togetherness and shared identity due to their limited size; however, the village that he had grown up in was unique in that it had systemic issues left unaddressed that were crucial to his development into a murderer.

Mark thought long and hard. What determined his humanity and his actions and his desires and his motives?

Was he a killer because that was what he wanted, or was he a killer because he thought it was the only way to live life correctly?

What was correctness?

Who were the people in the village really?

Maybe it was all a lie.

Did they really do anything wrong?

If he was here now and they were dead, what was the difference between them and his own perspective?

What he was trying to say was, "How could he determine whether the abusive and oppressive nature of my village was true or just a figment of my own perspective?"

Was it real?

But abuse did not rest on the distinction between aliveness and deadness. The deadness of the villagers did not mean that their abusive actions never existed, and Mark's being alive did not mean that he was actually the horrible one.

His decision to destroy the village was not preemptive either. It was the culmination of everything he had undergone in that village.

All the pain and the suffering was real.

But did they warrant that?

Were the deaths of his siblings and his friends worth the price?

They were not all bad.

Why didn't he save them?

Because they were cursed beyond measure. They had been tainted by their upbringing.

Then why was he alive? 

Because he was the only one who had the will to change things. To do it anyway even if it was hard.

Even if he was tainted, he would correct things, he had thought.

The world had to be improved upon.

But the world was so many things that he did not expect.

Did that mean that he would fully give up everything?

No, but did he know for sure? No.

Mark realized that he had no reason to be doing what he was doing.

There was no single reason that he had to do what he was doing.

This world had changed everything.

And Richard showed him that, but Mark did not let that affect him for a long time.

However, it changed him.

Mark was much more impulsive and out of control, yet he had learned so much after spending that one year with him.

He was the reason Mark had gotten so far.

Mark sat down and saw the young girl adventurer looking at him.

He ignored her, but the girl would not let that stop her from greeting him.

He reciprocated it late when she was already back in the city.

Mark shook his head and returned to his thoughts.

But what could he do?

Mark had lived a life without comprehensive formal education, so he had not been exposed to ideas reminiscient of the Renaissance such as humanism, rationalism, and individualism. As a result, he relied solely on his experiences that had lain in a vacuum.

This made his actions incredibly efficient in many areas, but lacking in others such as learning how to navigate a complex long-standing civilization in a rationally defended manner that took into account culture, history, and classical texts and ideas.

If Mark wanted to succeed and reach the top of society, he needed more than just combat physicality.

He needed justification, rationalization, and well-thought elaboration of his actions.

He couldn't just make tantrums like a child and just kill whomever he wanted.

In the adult world, he needed to learn how to communicate and do things with a motive beyond "I just felt like it" or "Because I want to."

He needed an intellectual basis for his actions, rather than the mere basis of the whims of a child.

But maybe that was all he needed.

Maybe this child could do whatever he wanted just because he could.

But when would that arrogance end? When he finally got his first job with that happy-go-lucky arrogant young attitude among jaded seniors excitedly waiting to see his composure crumble?

When would it end?

Who would stop him?

Many children who grew up into wealth never had that distinct moment of humiliation. So they just kept up the systematic abuse propagated over a millennia.

Humiliation was essential for growth.

But Mark only failed once, and even that was not enough.

Mark was a child given power, and he did what children did with power. They played.

Adults learned how to accept compromise—the pinnacle of nuanced and sophisticated understanding of complex situations and factors.

Children like Mark never learned and advocated for extreme solutions to everything—black and white.

Suffice to say, Mark was in his early twenties.

He was a man-child with a world-destroying bomb, killing millions in his wake, and for what?

The tantrum-rooted whims of an arrogant, privileged, entitled child.

How many lives had he killed?

In order for him to appreciate even the act of killing, he had first to appreciate human life.

Then could he truly say that he killed, because he would be killing something within his own comprehension instead of relying on core preconceptions that emerged during his formative stages.

So he thought about killing and how he wanted to kill someone.

He realized again that in order for him to enjoy the act of killing in order to grow, he had first to appreciate the person in question.

So he followed a man in his thirties who was taking care of a garden next to the grass fields where the slimes were.

The man looked at him and said, "Hello, I haven't seen you around here."

Mark watched. He wasn't socially compromised. He knew how to say hello, but he was in deep thought. He was recalling his past from when he was growing up in the village. He remembered so much that he couldn't even count.

The man smiled at him. "I was expecting my friends to come. See they're late right now. But they'll be right here very soon." He was implicitly warning Mark not to do anything weird, since Mark's demeanor was strange.

Mark nodded, but he wasn't understanding. His head was too full right now, leading him to focus on the grass instead.

With that focus came a sense of a recognition of beauty.

Mark had experienced this before, but he did not remember it. All his past good memories were overshadowed and replaced by his bad ones, which fundamentally changed him as a person.

The man took a deep breath, when he jumped slightly at the call of his name.

"Adrian!" said a man coming close, followed by ten other people of all ages.

"How are you man?" said the man, hugging the gardener, Adrian.

Adrian grinned. "It's been a while. I was hoping you guys would come faster. We're going to set up a picnic here, is that alright with you?"

Meanwhile, the man glanced at Mark, who looked awkwardly postured.

He responded to Adrian, "Yeah sure." He glanced at the children. "They're not going to complain this time. I strictly told them that I could just use the mat."

Adrian nodded pleasantly. "Okay then. I'm going to give them one of the plants, is that okay?"

The man gave a thumbs-up, as he gathered the rest of the group and had them set up the picnic.

Mark was confused and alienated by this weird social event. He had never experienced something like this back in the village, so he looked like a ruffian in comparison to them.

In conclusion, this was in line with Mark's intelligence. He was not so dumb so as to avoid questioning his actions. He was also not dumb enough to pretend as though he understood everything, which was why he stood there awkwardly in this scene. It reflected his social self-awareness. He was self-aware, but it was definitely limited by his lack of experience with the more sophisticated societal structure of the city, as he had grown up in a very unique remote village.

In fact, the cognitive ability to appreciate beauty shared the same area as identifying vulnerabilities in a weak combatant male. To phrase this differently, the same mind that could identify vulnerabilities in innocent travelers for killing was the same mind that could show basic abilities for appreciating the beauty of grass.