That day (2)

« And here it was, its every desire reality, disdaining the once dominating world now kneeling to it, without anyone to enforce their will upon it, was it really free? » - half-alive drifters.

___

Rodolphe stood in the ravaged soil of the battlefield, eyes emotionlessly staring at the sky, body dipped in dark blood, invisible wires stuck in his brain.

Near stood the armors containing the ex-hosts, the System guards.

The System took control of an armor forged by the rabbits, then manipulated its, the world's, and Ludovic's energies to create a body—one of a 20-year-old guard wearing Cleppe's equipment, emblem but not uniform.

The System advantage gave him a permanent boost over his strength, zero feelings, and better energy control than even Ludovic. It was finally free.

"What are your orders?" Asked the golden rabbit, his first follower.

"We need to retrieve all mythical and legendary equipment."

"Not the epic ones?"

"Take if you found. But don't concentrate on it. We can't gather them all; François ran away with the unlimited space box."

They departed, corrupted Nirl's remaining villagers, who the "revolutionary's" explosion had thrown away, and headed to where life could be seen.

Cities fell one by one, like states. They killed the 'unworthy' and absorbed their energy.

It came to Cleppe and found Legendary's equipment copies it equipped. They searched the surroundings.

Inside Louis' house was a sword he hadn't got the time to use. The only Epic one. The System stole it.

They came to all cities and corrupted them swiftly, extending it to beasts and demonic creatures.

Soon, all had become corrupted.

[We shall settle, evolve, and colonize all under the heavens.]

***

The few surviving humans watched as the orange-like barrier's color slowly faded away, nearly replaced by the reddish of the evolved demonic creatures.

The commander looked slightly pale. All did.

The pillaged Paladin's energy supplies were running low.

"How long? "Asked the commander.

"A few hours at most."

The commandant closed his eyes. People silently scattered - He did open his mouth, but nothing came out.

A few hours left before most of them tried to end their everything in relative 'peace.'

He found himself shaking at the thought. Even if those moments, his thoughts were torn between dying and becoming a demonic creature, as countless others had already done. Wasn't it the will of this world? Something only the purification of a corpse stopped the Evil from manifesting into this world?

He came to a little cave, energized a magic item enlighting him of blue in the darkness, then sat, writing and reading his diary.

«Year 640:

Paladins, Angels, Demons, Knights, even hybrids, and Primordial Beasts, all along with their families, left the world. [...]»

It only accentuated the cold feeling in his heart.

The man exited the cave and sat on a rock, watching the barrier becoming redder.

He often thought about what to do in the last moments of his life. The answer seemed ridiculous now: how could he guess a different person's thoughts? Fear and essential things should have been taken into account in logical thinking.

The demonic creatures began to howl as if their reddish mother sky was dying. Had their leader arrived?

A colossal collision shook the barriers, cracks appearing by the seconds. The humanoid figure left out an afterimage as it was attacking it.

The commandant's eyes grew in disbelief.

"What is that...?"

The demonic creatures' leader was frenziedly attacking the barrier alongside a black rabbit.

The commandant's face suddenly changed from incredulity to shame and anger.

His... his last chance of surviving was lost just because a group of villagers - who cheat taxes, cultivate strange techniques, transform into fucking demons - were so incompetent as non-purifying a corpse?

Was Evil as careless as that?

Could one do all the evil and still not be punished like his masters that once left the world?

"Hahahahaha'! Good one! Really!" the world makes so much sense! This was such an easy world. You were born with complete control over your limited freedom, and you just had to die.

He slipped away, backed to his cave, and read in laughter what he had just written.

« Yesterday I was warned that today would surely be the last day.

[...]

The day when the man who would later be canonized died, acclaimed as a saint, having succeeded in saving two of the greatest heroes of our era, namely Rodolphe and Emilie.

The day Alain died. »

His laughing eyes switched to poisoned glares. He clenched his pen tightly to control his trembling anger, the ink becoming darker and letters becoming scribbling.

« These rumors were all true; I was a fool. This village is one of traitors. Their chief's the demonic creature that destroyed the world; their administrator's one who ran away, alongside his wife, the Paladins, winged ones, and grand elites.

All of them are culprits! Those who let him die in the forest that day and did not even bother to give his body to the Gods - not even later, in the numerous forestry expeditions.

I, Gabriel, curse this evil village of Nirl. »

He wrote a few more infamous and insulting paragraphs before they came. Demonic creatures were hidden next to the door as if to play hide and seek with the last humans.

He watched in horror as he found his body unable to move.

They had englobed him of demonic energy; still alive, they dismembred and ate him.

The moment he woke up, it had become a system.

***

"Hey, say, do you feel like really living?"

Rodolphe's eyes stared emotionlessly at the sky, his body dipped in a pool of dark blood, black energies trying their best to stop the blood flow.

"No matter what, don't forget to really live, to live each second as happily as you can."

Cries had long since stopped coming from his mouth, numb to even that pain, like a moving corpse, the last thing extending his life, his own body, trying to reverse the impossible cracks that shattered his body once and again.

He could die at any time.

No.

He felt it.

He had died many times over. But the blood that flowed in his body repaired endlessly to let its bloodline continue. This probably caused his hallucinations.

"But life's the crueler path. If you were to hesitate -"

He now remembered the following. A sharp cry as Ludovic transpierced his true father's life.

Ludovic then killed his mother, a tribe person, accusing her of having given birth to a halfling.

He massacred his village, cut his black wings, and entrusted him to Louis.

He was to be trained in the countryside and serve as a tool. Then, he was experimented on.

Why was his body keeping him alive? He wished he had not remembered. His body had no strength left to tears. Or maybe, it was because it didn't think of it as useful.

Rodolphe remembered a conversation he had a year ago when things were calm when Alain nearly died to a pig.

They were in his house, and Louis's face, usually alighted by a smile, bore now a somber look.

"Dad, what are demonic creatures? Why should we fear them?" He had always felt close to them.

"They are egofull creatures." Louis grimaced, maybe cursed. "Ones convicted their life's worth the trouble they brought, existing only to survive.

They mock laws such as friendship or honor. 'A waste of time,' they'd said, 'A waste of time!' They trample on it like shit, killing it underneath even pleasure.

They can't understand friendship's only a matter of interest, like honor: the true evolution, the requirement of society and progress, the way humans conserve enough brain energy to live! That friendship's considering oneself part of the same unity, returning to what they were before birth. That follows the laws!

On the other hand, demonic creatures are what life gave off worst, so mad they forgot why they had come to this earth, to progress. They carry the logical cruelty of spiders eating alive flies and the constant frustration they acquired from switching their primary goal, progress, to a substitute, a way to live.

So 'living' they had become laws, epidemics more or less predictable."

Maybe it was the same with his tears.

The System came to him; it gave him energy that healed all his body's injuries. He felt energy entering his brain.

"Get up," it said, "and take this."

He took the epic sword.

"What should I do?"

"The elites had been replaced, you just need to live."

He felt strangely close to the System, like he felt toward demonic creatures. Was it a natural or implanted feeling?

Maybe it didn't matter anymore. He felt good.

The System gave him a quick way to the village. Four people from the expedition, Michael and two people - Jeanne, a demon and an angel he never saw- came to him as the village's official members, both with his name. He saw it on the System.

Then, some people would be deported to his village to separate their strength from their main territory.

Was it playing a king?

He entered his trainer's cave and found many rooms. In some laid experiments, in others, clay tablets and books.

Then, he stumbled into three strange things. Panels were engraving the name worn by both his grandparents, alongside dirt on a structure full of stone. The last one, instead of a name, said: "Glorious and combat."

Were there unpurified bodies in there? Failed results of experiments?

No, he saw at least his grandmother's purification.

He headed outside the cave.

A few years later, he joined an academy.