A drop in the ocean

'Now, what is my direction?'

'Do I want to kill or protect?'

'The answer is obvious right? I just have to keep judging people. Weeding out the rotten ones so that the pure ones can grow. Upholding justice and all.

When you think about it, it is both isn't it? Depending on the situation, I can attack to kill and shield to protect.

But is that what I really want?'

Aster prepared a nice rock pillar in the middle of the ocean, not far from the shore.

He absolutely had no idea what could be lurking beyond the horizontal line that separates the dark ocean and the azure sky.

So he swam only for a little while. A couple of hundreds of meters to be exact.

The pillar was small. Roughly the size of a queen sized bed.

It was about half a dozen meters above the water.

He laid on the cold, hard ground and closed his eyes.

The consistent, serene sound of waves colliding with the rocky shore, accompanied by the howling wind.

The harmonious melody soothed his body and soul. 

There was no harsh sunlight so the wind was cool.

The ideal weather for Aster.

The weather combined with the fulfilling music of nature toned down his sensitivity a several notch, making him drowsy.

He wanted to just rest and recover some of the sleep he lost before but understood that he needed to be on the lookout for any potential threats on an uncharted territory.

'Tsk, what a wasted day.'

Aster practiced the basic breathing method he acquired from Baub.

A slow, deep inhale then hold it for 3 seconds and exhale slowly. Repeat.

This was the breathing technique. It was basic on every level. There was no absorbing mana or some other mystical energy through the lung, just oxygen.

Memories that weren't even his resurfaced in his consciousness.

There was a theory that dreams are the brain's way to analyze and sort memories. Now that Aster was half asleep, it started to do its thing.

The only problem was that the memories, the information was too much. If his brain was a storage device then 99.9999% of it would be other people's memories.

He really needed to sort them out before he started to misremember his name.

He slowly went through them. Story of the lives that he had reaped.

And with each memory he had called forth, hysteria followed.

He remembered 'his' conversations and connections with people he had never met before, ate foods he never even knew existed and done and accomplished things he wouldn't have done even within a fever dream.

There was a lot which caused his blood to boil and grit his teeth. He cast them away from his soul.

Aside from those, he felt melancholic.

He was going to use [Erase] and get rid of these memories but he wasn't so sure now.

People he had 'judged'....

Killed is the right word.

They were humans too. They did something inexcusable but they experienced joy, sadness and frustration in their lives.

He continued to analyze the memories of the fallen.

He laughed alongside some and gritted his teeth in frustration that he can't kill them a second time at others.

He felt affection towards some people in the memories. For example, a kind janitor that gave a young starving orphan his lunch. The kid would later become a murderer but Aster could feel the respect he had for the janitor.

In fact, his very first kill was a scum who was going to force himself on the Janitor's daughter.

He felt sympathetic, emphatic and apathetic at the same time.

As he slowly read every book in the grand library that was his brain, he learnt some useful information.

It was a very well known fact that merfolk have scales like fish but some subspecies of merfolk have very smooth skin.

Their skins are infused with a property that repels water so that they can swim with little to no difficulty in water. This makes it smoother than a well polished stone.

He also learnt how to properly gut an animal from one of the people who used to be a hunter. He learnt how to properly do a roundhouse kick from one who was a fighter.

The memories, the essence of humans, assimilated with him.

"I am Clark" He muttered to himself.

"I am Kate."

"I am William." 

He could perfectly impersonate those people with proper make up. He was sure of that.

He soon encountered a huge problem. His life as Aster was just a drop in the ocean in his mind. The possibility of him losing his identity and adopting a different one became more and more imminent the more he analyzed the memories.

He wanted to remain himself. That was his wish.

He wanted to preserve through whatever his new life as the judge throws at him and ultimately remain himself at the end of it all.

He found the direction he wanted to take.

Aster slowly opened his eyes.

Eerie darkness enveloped the surroundings. He guessed it was nighttime.

'Damn, that took long.'

CHOMP

GULP

His eyes slowly drifted to his abdomen. A feathered creature was chomping on it hungrily.

'Ahh, I let my guard down.'

As his eyes adapted to the darkness with haste, he recognised the creature.

A bulging torso thanks to the feast it had, long arms that had feathers going down on it.

A talon like legs but a monkey like physique. It's face was painted red and a staggering amount of sharp teeth was visible.

'A Nocturnal impir.' He thought.

Few people had known about this creature and Aster had inherited their knowledge.

  'A typical scavenger that comes out at night. Rank 1 is the highest they can go to and standard is their cap. As the name suggests, they are nocturnal and leave their nest only at midnight. 

They cover quite a lot of distance every night to get a free meal. The name is a combination of imp and bird.'

'Nothing valuable or extraordinary about it. Just a trash mob.'

With a speed invisible to the naked eye, his hands shot forwards and grabbed a hold on the creature's long neck.

CRACK

It couldn't even put up a resistance.

'Considering this thing was dining on my guts alone, the night should still be young.

Otherwise tougher guys would have been on top of me.'

He stood up awkwardly.

SPLOP

'Oh, there goes my intestines.'

He lazily picked up his insides and stuffed them inside. He ripped a part of his dirty trench coat to act as a bandage to hold it in.

'Ughh, I should wash it again. I hope my body has some sort of resistance towards infection now. If not then this is a good time to acquire one.'

His coat couldn't even be called a coat anymore, it was just fancy rags at this point.

His nose scrunched up at the horrid smell the corpse below his feet gave off. It had emptied its bowels as a final 'Fuck you' for Aster.

He paid no attention to it. He did a big leap to reach the shore.

Meanwhile, something or someone was observing him from the sky.