Chapter 32: Arc 2 End

My brother and I had lost all but the clothes on our backs. We had no place to rest our heads except for the solid concrete beneath us. We couldn’t sleep near any people because they would assault us if we did. I tried to look for work, but no place would hire me. My face had been spread worldwide as the son of the two demons.

As I held my brother’s shaking body every night, it felt like my mind was breaking. I didn’t get why this was happening. It does not make sense in my mind. It was like, if two pluses made a minus.

The real problem was that we had only so much time to pay back the money. If we couldn’t, our lives would be forfeit. So, with no other option left, all I could do was turn to crime, but if I got caught, my brother and my life would be over on the spot, so I needed to find a way to commit large scale crimes without being caught. It seemed impossible, but I did have one option, the invisible bandits.

During my high life, I heard of the constant annoyance that the invisible bandits were. They used to steal from our trade routes and were utterly untraceable. I made an effort to track them down once before, but I got involved with the issues in the business, so I couldn’t  follow my leads, but now is the time.

So, using my knowledge of their attack patterns, I staked out transportation from one of our former trading partners, and just as I predicted, they came out of nowhere and attacked them. Rushing in with all the strength I had, I went out and was able to capture one of them.

“Let me talk to your boss, or I can snap your neck.” The man whom I captured agreed to take me to his boss. He led me into a secret tunnel system that was incredibly well hidden. My family has patrolled these lands for centuries, and we have never come across something like this.

After we got deep into this tunnel system, I heard a voice. “Assface, I had wondered where you went,” the prisoner ran forward as he listened to this voice. As I tried to restrain him, I realized my situation; I was surrounded.

But this situation is still good for me. I get on my hands and knees, then scream, “I HAVE AN OFFER FOR YOU.”

“Oh really, guards restrain him” as he says this, multiple people come to hold me down.

The boss then comes down and kicks me in my face. He then gets down on his knees and holds my face, saying, “Me and my group have survived in this world by being secretive. Not a single person or group has been able to find us, but you managed to do it, so right now killing you would only be beneficial to me.” The man then stops and looks at my face.

“Wait, aren’t you? Oh god, this is hilarious. I never thought I would meet the demon’s child; I take that back; killing you would be a waste; I am pretty sure I could live comfortably for a few years by selling you. It would at least allow you to pay me back for all the money I am losing, since your business went.”

“That would be a waste, since I could offer you more money than that.”

“Now, how would you do that.”

“I can give you trade routes for almost all the major and even minor companies. I have them all memorised. I even know the location and layouts of most of their storehouse. You guys usually robbed my family’s transport, but you no longer have that option, so I think this is a pretty good deal.”

“If this is a deal, what do you want in return.”

“I would like a least twenty per cent of all our finds over the next ten years.”

After hitting me again, he tells me, “I don’t know what drugs you’re on, but I am not making that deal. Do you think you’re worth that much?”

“I do, with my help not only will you be making more than ever, but you will also get this,” after I said this, I knocked all the men onto me off. “I came from a family with formal training in spirit arts. Not only can I offer myself as a bodyguard, but I can also teach your guys this. I feel like this is quite the deal for you, especially since I could beat you all up and tell the world about your hideout, so how about it,” I say while stretching out your hand.

“Huh, you think your smart brat, but you don’t have any leverage, regardless of spirit arts, your all skin and bones you haven’t eaten. I am pretty sure we could beat you with sheer numbers, and if you were to report us, where would you go? No one wants to hire you, and would anyone work for a naïve brat like you who betrayed his own family, so get rid of that attitude.”

“But my deal is still good for you.”

“You're right, it is, but I haven’t liked your attitude, so if you want me to accept right here, lick the dirt off my shoe, and I will accept all your conditions.”

Disgusted by what he said, I get on my knee and start licking his shoe. It tastes horrible, but the laughs of all the scum around me are worse. After I finish licking his shoe clean, he says, “Assface come to hear.”

The man who led me here comes forward, and in a moment, the boss takes his sword from his sheathe and cuts his head off. “Now, boy, that was just a friendly reminder of what happens to lose-lipped people in our business, and that goes for all of you too.”

And just like that, I had become something I hated from the bottom of my heart, a bandit. The more I thought about why I was here, the less sense it made. It was like all my actions contradicted each other; I was lost.

I still remember the first mission—we were robbing a storehouse for a business my family used to work with. I knew the times they would be least on guard, so I formulated a strategy to get in and out, taking as much as possible, I thought that by putting all my effort into the plan, we could get this heist off without anyone getting hurt, but the reality wasn’t so kind to me.

“What are you guys doing? We were only supposed to take their inventory, not their people.”

“Well, since your parents were outed, there has been a giant opening in the slave market, so I thought I would dip my hand into it. With how great your plan of breaking in was, we have loads of time to get away with the cargo and the people.”

“That wasn’t part of the deal.”

The boss walks over to me and puts his arm around my neck. “I don’t remember our deal having things like that, but look, I am a reasonable man. Remove the 20 per cent part, and I will happily stop this, so what is your choice?”

I stand there, unable to speak any words.

“So, it seems you don’t have as much of a problem with it as I thought.”

“PLEASE LEAVE MY SISTER ALONE”, I hear someone shout. I see a young girl holding on tight to her sister as I look over.

“Hey Cole, go break them up.”

“Why should I do it?”

“Regardless of our other deal, I still pay everyone here depending on the level of work they do, so if you want more money, you better work your ass off. Now go break them up, bosses orders.”

I shouldn’t be doing this, is what I think as I pull the little girl away from her sister and throw her in a cage with shackles on; I feel like I am going to throw up.

“Good job Cole. Now go do it to the rest of them over there as well.”

“Can’t someone else.”

“Your loss then, but I am sure you and your brother will survive the winter with that attitude.”

As he finishes the sentence, I get up and walk over to the people clinging onto each other and rip them apart. After we return to the base, the boss hands me a stack of Lupas. “I am not supposed to be paid today.”

“Think of it as a starting bonus.”

“Why I thought you didn’t like me.”

“I like all those who speak the language of cash. I hated that holier-than-thou attitude you started with, but you have proved to me, you’re just like all of us, a man who will do anything for money.”

I walked back to Lionheart that night with the bosses words reverberating in my head. When I eventually found lionheart sleeping on a corner in the street. I laid beside him, but when I did, Lionheart woke up and said to me in a drowsy voice, “Welcome back, Cole.”

Unable to do anything else, I just held him and cried.

“What wrong, brother” Lionheart asked, but I didn’t respond. All I did was cry.

-Break-

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I continued to work with the bandits, whom I found out were called Gaia’s sky. I pillaged, plundered, killed, and robbed with them, and I was paid handsomely each time, and in no time was I even able to get my brother and me a bed to sleep on. But most importantly, I had started to pay off my debt. In the two years that had passed, I had barely paid off a tenth of it. I was behind schedule, which made me hunger for money more and more. I started to propose more risky plans with enormous pay-outs and was always in the front leading the charge. I needed to rack up more and more achievements, so I could get more money.

I stopped feeling bad about my actions during this time since it wasn’t my fault. It was the fault of all those who betrayed me, cast me aside, and kept taking for me because I did the right thing. I started to believe it was justice, I was simply getting what I was owed.

This feeling grew more intense the stronger I became. Because I was always on the front lines, I fought many people, which made me grow stronger and stronger. I was taught when I was younger that spirit arts improve faster in people who are in dire situations, and for the last two years have been in nothing but horrible conditions, and my strength has increased proportionally.

I felt like I was the best in the world and that I was some god, I could do things others couldn’t; I was smarter than most, I had justice on my side. These feelings ultimately led me to do something stupid when I returned home one day.

“What the hell is going on here,” I say as I see lionheart and the leader of the debt collector Tiburcio playing with each other.

“Oh, Tiburcio and I were just playing the word chain game.”

“We happen to hang out when you aren’t at home Cole.” Tiburcio says.

“Lionheart, why haven’t you told me about this.”

“It is just that,” Lionheart mutters.

“SPEAK UP.”

“I have been helping him with his language skills, since he hasn’t gotten any education from you for a while.”

“Lionheart, you could have just asked me. Doing this is just making more trouble for me,” I say, angry.

“Sorry,” he says while whimpering

“Stop whimpering as if I have hit you.”

Tiburcio gets close, he puts his hands on my shoulder, and says, “You should watch how you speak to kids.”

As the man who is responsible for my inability to put Lionheart in school says this to me, my rage builds, and an idea pops into my head. I grab the man by the hand and say, “Lionheart, your friend and I will be going out for a bit”

As I drag the man with me, I move at full speed until we are a long way out of the town, and I say to him “Right here, right now I am going to crush your face in and after that I will crush your bosses in as well.”

He sighs. “I thought you had more sense than this, but whatever, let’s do this,” he says as he sits on the floor.

“Continue acting like that all you want because, in a moment, you will be regretting all your actions.” I run towards him at full speed, then infuse my fist with spirit energy.

-Break-

As I lay bruised and battered in a large crater, I look at the man sitting beside me and ask, “Are you even human.”

“Take this as a lesson. I won’t kill or report you to my boss.”

As I lay on the ground looking up at the sky, tears fall down my face, and I say to the man beside me, “Your evil. I hope you know that, do you have any idea what it has been like living with the never-ending anxiety of whether I will be able to or not pay back the debt, the fear that you might forget about the deal and kill us, the fear that someone who wants revenge against my family will find us, I live with that every day, and then you try to be like some teacher to my brother, you get off on all of this don’t you.”

With a sigh, Tiburcio says, “This is my job. I do this, and I get paid for it. I have no ulterior motives. Suppose I kill you and your brother tomorrow; that is just how it is. Life is a game, and we are all players. If you had to kill me tomorrow to survive, I wouldn’t hold it against you.

“This is too unfair. A person like me shouldn’t be in this situation while someone like you has an easier life.”

“Your very existence makes me sigh. What a disappointment you are, I had rather high expectations with how brilliant your parents always used to say you are. I thought you would have figured it out.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, I am not one to honour promises to people, so I will tell you. Do you remember back when your family had their carriage attacked?”

“Of course, I do.”

“Well, back then, your family hadn’t gotten into any illegal business by that point. Your view of your parents was spot on during that period. They were nothing but heroes of justice. They helped everyone no matter what they needed. They brought jobs and prosperity to this country. Your parents made this place more than the country with eternal spiders.

But you see a lot of their business rivals, and this country’s royals weren’t so happy with how much more popular they were than them, so they tried to eliminate them.

How could a random group of bandits kill all your family’s elite guards, have you ever thought about it. It’s illogical. The bandits that attacked you that day were this country’s royal guard. Your parents, who figured out what happened, realised this country and their so-called friends had betrayed them, so they tried to strike back.

They got involved in illegal business, but if you ever bother to look, the people who took the brunt of the damage your parents did were people who had animosity against your family. They chose to be horrible and protect their family rather than be righteous.”

“No, that can’t be true,” I say, shocked.

“Of course, it is. You’ve seen all the so-called friends you have trying to destroy your family first-hand now that they were given an opening.

As Tiburcio get up, he says, “It is quite comical. You killed your parents since they were evil, but their actions could have been called justice from a certain perspective. I wonder, looking at everything that has happened since your decision would you tell you where the righteous in that situation? Because I wouldn’t to me your evil, but that’s great. Because evil people die old, rich, and surrounded by everything, they took from others.”

As I lay lying there with my body broken and my mind shattered, the only thing I could think to myself was that I was evil. Because of my ignorance, I not only ruined the lives of my family, but of all the employees who worked for us, I allowed true evil to triumph, as a human being I am a failure.

From then on, It felt as if my whole world was broken. I could no longer run from the truth or justify my action. All I had left was a realisation of how stupid I had been all my life, and during one mission, we were at the border of the mountain known as Fimbulwinter. As I looked into the white snow, I became assured of something for the first time in a while, that I didn’t want to live anymore. It was too much for me. I couldn’t live with my shame or the stress; I just wanted it to all go away, so I ran from Gaia’s sky into the mountain so fast that no one could catch me if they wanted.

As I ran, I felt free from everything for the first time since I was a lazy child. Nothing mattered, and at the end of my run, my body was frostbitten so bad I couldn’t feel anything, so I fell and landed in the comfy white snow.

But as if God was beckoning me to live, Orb saved me and brought me to the village. What I found there was nothing more than a utopia for me, I could of stayed and lived their my entire life, but the words Sequoia told me made me remember something, my brother.

I had not only ruined his life, but abandoned him I had already destroyed myself morally, but my brother was pure; I couldn’t let him go through horrible experiences due to my mistakes. So, on that day, I vowed to myself to embrace all the evil in the world to at least salvage his life. So, I snuck out, contacted my old team, and set up this plan.

Though there was one thing my crumbling set of morals didn’t allow me to do: take the lives of the people who saved me, so I left Orb, Maple, and Sequoia alone. But just as if God is laughing at me, they were the ones who ultimately left me with my body half frozen.

As I gaze over to Orb, I want to ask the boy who saved me, and who still wants to forgive me for all my transgression. To help me protect my brother, I want to scream that at the top of my lungs, but when I try to do that, my mouth doesn’t produce any words.

Then I realized something none of my problems are Orbs issue, I won’t allow my selfishness to ruin another life. Even after I vowed to myself, I guess my stupid sense of justice is what will hurt me again. So, with all my strength, I take my free arm and infuse it with all my spirit energy I then use that fist to crush my heart.

I won’t burden you Orb you already have enough to worry about. “Sorry Lionheart, I am the worst ever.”

Arc 2 End

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