Tens of Thousands of Seeds (1)

We caught up to Rose ten minutes later.

Katherine hurriedly separated her hand from mine as soon as we found Rose. She was still too shy to show to others our now very close relationship.

Even so, the bashful red hue in her face betrayed her. Fortunately, Rose was not in the mood to pay attention to it, so she did not notice anything wrong.

Rose's expression was very downhearted. In fact, she seemed even worse than when we started today's mission.

However, I was not worried. I knew that Rose had already been shaken for today's events.

Even if she did not admit it, inwardly she knew I was right.

It's just that… She could not admit it easily.

Due to that, Rose was unable to look at me.

Actually, the situation back then was not as bad as it seemed. Even if I would not have acted, neither Rose nor the children would have been in danger.

Rose is the hero, she is under the protection of the world. How can such a weak monster to kill her?

The truth is, at the moment when I acted, I felt at least two other people ready to act.

One of them was Evelyn, her teacher, and the other was the beyond-twelfth-layer practitioner beside her.

And I'm sure that even without them, the world would have found another way to protect Rose.

A Hero is the beloved child of the world. So in this world, it's almost impossible to kill Rose.

Not even a god can do something like that.

In fact, gods are shackled by the world's rules. I consider gods as nothing more than watchdogs looking after a property.

And if the world is the owner of that property, the hero is like its child. No owner will let his watchdogs injure his child. And if a watchdog tries to do it, its end will not be good.

Although that analogy is not exactly accurate, it perfectly describes the gods' position.

From a certain perspective, gods are even more helpless than mortals when it comes to dealing with a hero.

Thus, if you want to deal with a hero, you must be strong enough to stand against the world's will.

Just like Ysnay or me.

Returning to the topic, although Rose would have not been in danger even if I don't protect her, Rose did not know about that.

It's not like she herself knows she is the hero.

Thus, this incident was a huge blow for her.

It showed her that her naïve ideals could sometimes hurt the people close to her.

It showed her the helplessness of not having enough strength to protect her ideals and the people around her at the same time.

If I'm not wrong, after Rose overcomes this obstacle, she will experience a period of a crazy rate of improvement.

First, though, she must overcome this mental barrier.

Returning to the mission, we focused on catching the rest of the people on the list.

Because I had already achieved my goal, I did not mess with the seeds in the remaining people. But even without my intervention, some of the infected tried to resist when we were catching them.

On these occasions, Katherine and I moved to neutralize them (Although we did not kill anyone this time).

In the end, we caught twenty-one of the twenty-two people on our list.

Every person we caught was sent to the institute. There, some teachers in the eleventh and twelfth layers checked their souls to make sure they had a seed in them.

Each minute, people of each corner of the city were caught and sent to the institute. Thousands of people were sent like that.

At the start, some teachers were hopeful that not every person was infected. But soon, that hope turned into a sense of terror.

All the people pointed by Alice were infected.

When we returned to the academy in the afternoon, Evelyn, Dina, Alice, and the others were looking at the people caught with grave expressions.

"… What are we going to do with them?" One of the beyond-twelfth-layer practitioners asked concerned.

Nobody answered him. They were not sure about what to do in this situation.

None of them knew how to take out the seeds in their minds.

Perhaps the only two people in the institute able to extract the seeds were Ysnay and me.

But something like that is tiring even for me.

I will need around one entire day to save them all.

In the middle of that heavy silence, Dina sighed.

"… I'm thinking about keeping them confined for now. At least until we find a better solution."

"That is not so simple." Evelyn shook her head. "Where are we going to find cells to confine all of them. Plus, these prisoners need to be fed each day. Where are we going to get the money for their food? And even if we get that money, how long can we keep supplying them food."

Dina fell silent. She then looked at me as though asking for help.

I sighed. It looks like I will have to save them after all.

… I don't want my sister to carry with the burden of ordering the death of more than two thousand people, some of them completely innocent.

Their only sin is that they were unfortunate enough to be used by the Immortal.

But as though reading my thoughts, someone chuckled.

"What are you hesitating for? You should just kill them."

These words stunned the group. Instantly, everybody looked at the source of the voice.

Ysnay.

Ysnay seemed indifferent to their gazes. She stared at the crowd of infected and chuckled slightly.

"If you truly care about the people of this world, you should kill them."

After Ysnay said these words.

"Are you crazy!?" Rose berated in rage. "They are two thousand people! Many of them are innocent! How can we kill them!?"

Nobody else spoke up, but everybody seemed to share Rose's feelings. In fact, the gazes they were directing towards Ysnay turned unkind.

If not by the fact Ysnay was my personal servant, I'm sure many of the people here would have reacted much worse.

After all, each person here could be considered as someone virtuous. They could not kill these two thousand people just like that.

Their consciousnesses were not going to allow something like that.

Ysnay moved her gaze through each one of them. Finally, she fixed her gaze on me.

I hesitated slightly, but in the end, I nodded.

When she saw that, Ysnay chuckled.

"You are being naïve."

Then, she grabbed Alice's hand.

"It looks like you still don't know what you are facing. Allow me to show you then."

Almost instantly, thousands of threads surged from Alice's body, connecting to each one of the infected in the institute.

But it was not the end. After that, tens of thousands of threads more surged out from Alice's body.

Then, these threads extended to the rest of the capital.

Dogs, cats, cattle, rats, birds, and even insects.

The threads connected to tens of thousands of animals like that.

With a chuckle, Ysnay's voice reached to each one of the people around.

"These are the seeds in the capital alone."