"I see, so this is my brink end." With a sinking heart, the demon crawled to plead, prostrating. His bright smile was still there but now was sullied by his own tears. Not even facing his opponent eye to eye, his confidence and courage was challenged and his justice didn't prevail. "If this is my fate, then I, Jaro Lagoon, shall be your—"
"Fool!"
The word echoed in his mind. A 'fool', wherever Jaro goes, there would always be this title following him, numerous voices from the people he knew were haunting him.
'You're such a fool, there is no way that us demons would mingle with those mortals.'
'So what? Even if they had feelings, they didn't deserve a single bit of it.'
'There is no such thing as justice! Don't act like a kid and go clean this street!'
'Are you a fool!? You almost died! The village is no more! You hear me? No more!'
'You can't cultivate, forget about it.'
When someone lives in a place of inequality, they mingle and take the weight of undeserved life in the coating of faith and hurdles in their journey. One out of tens of millions, there will be an unnatural seed that was casted by the lumping subconscious energy of that place.
Freedom, equality, and justice.
Jaro Lagoon was that lump of energy when he first said his resolution in the past.
'I want to be the symbol of justice!' that young Jaro proudly exclaimed to the world before getting booed.
He always met with a harsh truth, time over time, the reality didn't stop after crashing on him again and again.
"What kind of justice kneels and begs at the villain, huh? What kind of justice is that!?" MF heightened her tone and pressure. "There will be no evil in the world that will ever help you to become stronger, they will twist your reality, slowly devouring your faith into a killing machine.
"If I were a real villain, I would brainwash you, slowly enticing you with all the power you could have ever wanted in the exchange of innocent blood sprawled all over your body.
"So rise up! Is that all? Only when your bones are broken do you decide to start being low and cast away your justice!?"
The hero wannabe fumbly wiped his own tears. A hero never shows his weak side, or else how do they convince whom they try to save that everything is alright? To show that everything is under control, despite their hands being too far to be the one who is in control.
"... You're, right. Justice, never, begs, to the, evils…"
"Rise up!" The smile on her face widened. "Imagine that everything, anything that you know ever existed will disappear by the hand of a cruel villain. Thousands of people died! That evil villain has unleashed a horde of monsters! Calamities are devouring childrens, slowly feasting on their feeble meat and licking on their bones. Stronghold fall, creating terror to the civilian, screaming in the hope of someone coming for them."
"Then I'll save them." Jaro could barely stand with all of the blood and muscle scars, his neck couldn't let go of the hunch. "I'll be their glow in the dark."
"Foolish idiot! You can't save everyone, what you need to do is throw a precise shot at the center core of evil. Even if you saved thousands of people, that true evil is still out there, unleashing more monsters and spreading a carnage that you won't ever solve.
"Let's play some fun test." MF sprawled the dripping blood from every crevice of her wings feathers, all of them making up thousands of spears that spread onto the night sky. "All of those sharp thingies, will seek the world and impale the first person it sees, many people will die if you don't do anything.
"WHAT WILL YOU DO!? HUH!? YOU HERO WANNABE!"
The weight had finally materialized itself in front of Jaro, the weight of someone who could change something, or end up not doing anything.
If a person is there when the crime unfolded in front of them. They had two choices, run and wait for others to act, or do something. That is, if there were any other people to begin with.
Jaro excruciatingly moved his body, he placed his left fist forward straight with his shoulder, aiming his enemies with his knuckle as a scope and retracted the other arm to the back, winding up for a punch.
His muscles heated, throbbed, wailing for the pain to stop. The shards of the broken bones were slowly scratching him beneath all of it. If it weren't for his will to tighten his muscles, his whole body would already have collapsed.
The pain reminded him of the last conversation he ever had with his brother.
'No, they didn't mean anything.'
'But bro, they have announced a breakthrough, a new method and teaching! They said that almost every mortal can cultivate now!'
'What the so-called mortals in the newspaper didn't include us, demons, as one of them.'
'That is, unfair! They can't just persecute us!'
'Deal with it!' shouted the dark silhouette. '... I won't cultivate despite my mana, just leave your life doing something other than getting yourself wounded after helping someone all the time.'
Jaro was dumb, he knew that he couldn't cultivate yet his relentless will of becoming stronger to protect the weak had converted himself into a self harming machine.
He then trained his physical body instead. Thousands of push ups, thousands of sit ups, thousands of Calamities' skulls that were crushed by the fist of the stubborn. He knew that his body was abnormal, sometimes when he worked out all day until his muscles were sore, he noticed that the pain was only temporary.
So he pushed his limits nonstop for a week straight. From a skinny boy, he developed an otherworldly concentrated mass of muscle that couldn't be penetrated by almost everything in just 20 years.
Despite this, it wasn't enough.
"I won't stand aside… and watch the world fall away." He tightly clenched his fist, until his right giant gauntlet was shattered into pieces. "I feel a heavy, rancid pain inside… but I must go, all the way."
His veins became purple. The moment one of the gauntlets broke, the other also shattered. His body began to emit a dense substance akin to the 'void' that the Calamities had. His sharp gaze was more confident than ever, because he knew that he made the right choice.
The demonic substances began to eat his mind in return for power. Vortex gathered in his retracted fist, ready to be hurled.
Jaro's muscle then began to shrink, all of it, turning him into the skinny boy he once was. He gritted his teeth, smiling through all the pain. 20 years of progress had been converted into an angry force that could devour all kinds of evil in its path.
Everything for this moment.
"DO YOU THINK THAT PUNY FORCE IS ENOUGH TO STOP ME!?"
"IT IS ENOUGH!"
Jaro hurled his fist.
A massive shockwave filled with destructive force immediately engulfed the whole wasteland. Streaming and filling the whole area with absolute judgement. Everything within a 500 meters radius was met with turbulent energy for 5 minutes straight.
MF didn't move an inch through the whole land, yet she was unscathed. She glanced back, and noticed that all of the floating spears had been destroyed.
"Always a fool in the end, a good one at that."
Jaro stood lifeless, with his fist still clenched on the front. The light in his eyes was gone, but the smile was still there.
His target was the thousands of seeking spears that may result in a massacre all along. He had accomplished his task, selfishly, at what cost?