Chapter 10 Men of evil are easy to handle. They seek to enrich themselves with power and opulence, which made them predictable, easy targets. The truly insidious ones knew that the real objective is to depreciate others for control.

“Wait, that’s not his grave? You were lying?”

“I never said that was her grave, Taku.”

“It was a girl?”

“Again, does that matter?”

“Well, no, I was just curious. But the grave thing, of course! Do you realise how much it undermines the credibility of your story?”

“I do, but once again, what does that matter?”

“You were misleading us!”

“I’m not here making a court case. I told a story. Whether or not this story relates to this grave serves no purpose. You were meant to infer some experience from this story, not to justify it.”

“But that story wasn’t true!”

“Who said it wasn’t? I just said it didn’t matter. Plus, does that mean the story of her life means nothing just because she isn’t dead? Or that the story wasn’t real?”

“I didn’t say that it meant nothing.”

“You implied it, like how I implied the grave being relevant. Does that mean you’re misleading me?”

“No? What? You’re going off on a tangent!”

“That’s true, in which case, I’ll state it again. Does it matter if this grave has nothing to do with the girl?”

“…”

"But… was it a true story?”

“Why do you ask, Kelvin?”

“Because if it is, then I’d like to help her.”

The difference between them made me chuckle. Rather than answering, I turned around and led the way, as edgy as possible.

Credibility? It’s like they don’t know who I am. Ego’s been much too kind to him, it seemed. I, on the other hand, am petty.

Humans are fundamentally parochialistic creatures. They’re capable of growing and therefore widening their scope of thought. Three vague concepts govern this growth: cognitive thinking, morality and social culture.

To simplify… people tend to think of the world in retrospect to themselves.

That form of thinking isn’t wrong, it just isn’t ideal to me, nor is it suitable for me.

See – Khondour had a clear difference to Earth. Khondour had three main species that differ one from another, specifically elves, humans and beastmen. In addition to that, monsters that only knew destruction made it extremely easy to unify your species against a common enemy. On Earth, with only one dominant species, humans turned against each other, identifying themselves through race, gender, appearance, intelligence, what have you. It’s ironic how we strove for unity and social companionship through classification, the very thing that segregated us into specific, unrelenting categories so that we can bicker and offend.

It had nothing to curb the human’s greed, selfishness, curiosity and creativity. Expecting humans to self-govern didn’t work out too well. This comes from the experience of ruling over Khondour for over a million years. We governed not only the humans, but every intelligent creature on the face of this land. The lives we’re responsible for, the lives we’ve nurtured, the lives we’ve ended… in the million years of history, our actions influenced everything in some way or another.

Yet… to us, we are weak. Simply because of how helpless we are. Every human has the potential to control death. They can foresee it, prevent it, delay it, receive it, inflict it. With enough growth, they can and will become the masters of death itself. But it’s impossible for us. We are prisoners, guiding others to a treasure we cannot possess[1].

We’re simply old men that regressed into young bodies with childish mentalities. We’re long past the stage of pondering our beliefs, to simply accepting our version of truth as the way it is. We’re not strong… I’m not strong. I’m just limited.

Anyways, that’s enough self-depreciative talk. Let’s go meet our new crew member. There’re quite a few problems I have with her.

When you’re physically or magically weak, it’s disastrous for you to have habits. Someone like myself knows exactly where she is at this time of day. What she’s doing, whom she’s meeting, why and how. Habit is a form of weakness – one you can’t afford unless your overall strength overwhelms the opponent. The trouble is – you don’t always get to choose your enemies.

Then, there’s her mentality. There’s only one way to describe it – inflexible. Whether or not I believe she’s naïve or noble doesn’t matter. The fact that she simply can’t comprehend a different perspective bothers me. I guess every flaw stemmed from her mentality.

Finally, the double-edged sword of all living creatures – emotion. I don’t think she can handle irrational feelings well. It is an imperfection that throws aside one’s life during scenarios where it would be best to be logical, but also a weapon that defines who you are, and draws other to your will. Balancing how much control we give in to our emotion is an art that separated a survivor and a corpse, a hero and a suicidal idiot.

Honestly, part of me agrees with Ego in that she’s simply not suited to be a JanZe at the highest levels. But alas, I am moved. The emotional side of me was eager to place faith, something nonmaterialistic with no basis or evidence, simply because of hope. I want to see, even if the chances are miniscule, someone as benignant as her, a pure unique soul seemingly untainted by hubris or greed, someone like her can reach the goal without going through the same path I took.

It is my goal to test them. All of them. How far they can bend before they break, how deep can the wounds get before it scars, how shattered can they become before it’s irretrievable. My prediction?

Hazel will be the hardest to break, but once it’s done, she’ll never recover.

Amelia and Callum are an interesting pair. It’ll be harder to break them when they’re together, but individually, Amelia would probably be more vulnerable. The key is that they supplement each other, which adds more variable to the process… Breaking them separately will be much easier, but breaking them together, or rather, have them break each other, may achieve a better effect.

Taku? He’s a normie like us. Breaking people from the 21st century is laughably easy, but they recover annoyingly quickly too. Conclusion? Pain in the ass.

Ah! I didn’t realise I’ve never really explained what I meant by breaking them. You see-

Oh, we’ve arrived.

The abandoned house, with cheap, mismatched furniture placed randomly on the ground floor. The five of us stood at the centre of the room, unnoticed by the world thanks to the Power belonging to that of a fully masked JanZe, who stealthily joined our party before we entered.

Whilst my three students were trying to recognise things from my story, I noticed things missing from it. The lamp was gone, and the occupants weren’t in plain sight.

A gust of wind carried yet another signal to my ear, confirming Hazel’s position. The show’s about to start. I asked myself once again – should I stop it from happening and play this the gentle route, or go for the harsh one? There’s no turning back after this. I confirmed once again – gentle route failed me last time, so let’s try upping the ante.

The sound of whistling, followed by hurried footsteps, arrived to the surprise party, unaware of the eight of us hidden in the house. Unfortunately, what awaited her wasn’t confetti or cake.

A body jumped out of her hiding place, with her arms outstretched to tangle Hazel. On the other side of the door, a lamp descended from above, aiming at her temple.

Even more surprisingly, a figure cloaked in black, its face masked by a ribbon, leisurely grabbed the wrist of the little boy holding the lamp, and stomped on the head of the little girl frog-jumping from the side.

Hazel was speechless. She couldn’t process what happened within the split second of her entry. Even when another group of four appeared out of thin air in her vision, all that came out of her mouth were incomprehensible gasps. It was a shitty surprise party, with a shittier gift coming up, but still.

“Happy birthday, Hazel. Why do all your birthdays suck so much?” (Hypocrite)

“Aaron…?” (Hazel)

“UWAHHHHH MY HEAD!” (Sasha)

“GET OFF MY HAND!” (Tony)

“In some ways, you’re a lot like me.”

“Why… are you here?”

“WAHHHH!”

“GET OFF!”

“Fight back if you want to stop being hurt…[2]”

“Tony? Sister?”

“AHHHHH!”

“OWWWW You’re hurting me!”

“…Yet you’re always the one enduring and suffering, never facing your problems head-on.”

“What’s goin-”

“AHHHH-“

“LET ME G-“

“Shut them up.”

Their mouths kept moving, but there was no voice. Not a sound was made, even as the two perpetrators threw their fists and feet around in resistance. I always thought of this ability as eerily dangerous, and I nicknamed it ‘Perfect Unknowable[3]’.

I introduced today’s session to the class, clapping once per syllable.

“Lesson of life 1-0-1 – decisions!”

“Imagine yourself as a JanZe operative. Figure out what happened here, and what should be done about it. First off, Amelia?”

“Is it really okay to just ignore them for this?”

“Well, yeah, because I say it is. Answer the question.”

“Uhm… Hazel was bringing a bag here. Since she dropped It just now, I can see they’re lunch boxes from our school. Ah! She’s that girl from Year 8, I think? I guess she was the one you were talking about earlier? Then those two who attacked her must be the sister and brother?”

“Are you asking me, or are you answering me? What should be done about this?”

“Uhm… calm down and talk?”

“Callum? What happened, and what would you do about this?”

“Like sis said, she’s the girl you were speaking of. It seems like she brings food for her siblings every night.”

“Oh? Why do you say that?”

“There are boxes lying around near the trash bag.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that they knew she’d be here at this time. They were ambushing her.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, maybe they were trying to free themselves from Hazel? Something might be missing from the story.”

“Pretty far-fetched, I’d say, considering what I have told you, and how she reacted. Good try though, much better than sparky. Well, what should we do about this?”

"Separate them, find out the truth and make our judgements after.”

“How mature of you. Now, Taku.”

“Obviously, the two brats were targeting best girl with the intention to harm or kill, so we consider the motive, mean and opportunity. They could be either jealous of Hazel’s success, or maybe they just wanted to show her who’s boss. So, they planned out how they will set up the trap, and even armed themselves. I deduce that they even moved the furniture around to create better hiding spots. All they’d have to do is wait for the right moment, which they knew would come at this time. It’s dark, it’s an abandoned home, they go unnoticed by the city… it’s a perfect opportunity.”

“I see. We-“

“Not only that, but we should also consider outside factors. I wonder if those two are the only ones involved.”

“Oh? What are you trying to say?”

“Well, firstly, they’re just kids, so to make a trap like this probably required planning and practice. Where did they get the idea to hurt Hazel? What do they gain out of it? Could it be that someone commissioned them to do it?”

“Would someone really pay these two to kill their sister, and if so, who?”

“It seems strange to me that this happened at this exact moment, right after your story. It seems suspicious how you know every little detail, and act like how you knew exactly what would happen. You only just recently stopped pretending at QPCS. Those two could’ve done this at any time, but it worked out so well for your lesson.”

“So it was my plan?”

“How else do you know the inside out of everything? It’s definitely not beneath any of you four to do this. You guys wouldn’t bat an eye at the outcomes of normal people so long as your goals are achieved. That’s why most inquisitors fear you, not because you’re strong, but because you’re reckless with human lives.”

“I see, very good. What would you do to those two?”

“I dunno, send them to the gulag or something. They were just being used. The person using them should face harsher punishment.”

“Did you do that? What Taku said, did you arrange this, Aaron?”

“That’s not my name, Amelia.”

“Did you? Yes or no?”

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hi4rO2bgOA0. From Avengers: Infinity Wars.

[2] Chapter 2

[3] https://overlordmaruyama.fandom.com/wiki/Tier_Spells