Chapter 12: Exit and Start (3)

Esteban was frozen on the spot. He thought of himself as someone with the ability to judge others' characters, and to him, Ryu was but a naive boy, that clearly didn't know any better about the world.

But was he truly fooled by this boy? The pretty boy which he had thought of as easy prey, turned out to be a horrendous predator, who mercilessly murdered the people he had hired.

Ryu stood still, the blood on him painting part of his silver hair red, glistening under the bright sunlight. Esteban simply stared, and stared at the boy still trying to recover from his initial shock but found himself unable to do so.

Ryu seemingly having recovered first took a step towards Esteban. Then another. And then another. Before, Esteban even realised it himself Ryu was standing in front of him.

"Hiiii!" Esteban shrieked before trying to move back. but his legs had seemingly fallen asleep and didn't move the way he wanted to, as he fell back. He pitifully tried to scamper backwards, but all of a sudden Ryu's figure seemed much bigger than it was before.

"I'm sorry! I apologise for trying to enslave you, I-I promise I won't do it again, L-let me go this once! Have mercy please!" Esteban begged. In his mind, he had discarded honour when he decided to become a slave trader, so he didn't have any qualms pleading for his life. He was used to doing anything to survive anyways.

Ryu silently stared at Esteban, conflicting emotions rendered his consciousness into a warzone filled with turmoil. He felt utterly disgusted with himself for having killed someone. Sure, he knew himself that there was no other way but to do that, however, he did not like to kill. 

Even when he had fought against his father, Ryu knew that the spear wouldn't reach his father's head although he had aimed at his head. Even if he didn't want to, he still killed people. 

On the other hand, perhaps it was a sick version of him, but he felt somewhat strengthened from this experience. Almost as if he had grown stronger by bathing in the blood of his enemies. This feeling only emerged in one other situation he had experienced.

When he killed monsters. But what did that mean? Was human life on par with monsters? Was it his twisted dark side that he never knew of? 

Esteban lunged at him before he could answer any of his questions. Perhaps, he had seen Ryu in an almost catatonic state and thought of it as an opportunity. He had taken out a small dagger and charged at Ryu with bloodshot eyes. 

"DIE!"

Ryu reacted instinctively and punched the man in the face. The man was weaker than he thought, and he had been rendered unconscious with just a single punch. 

Thinking quickly, Ryu saw some rope tied to one of the dead men, and he used that to tie Esteban up. 

As he got up and ready pride began speaking,

< You humans always refer to monsters as vile, bloodlust filled and unsympathetic creatures. But in my eyes, you people are the ones that are the monsters. Enslaving each other, treating the same species as inferior to each other simply because of things you cannot control.> Pride berated.

If this was Ryu before this encounter, then he would've offered resistance and spoke back to Pride. But now that the blood of his fellow man was splotched all over his hands, he suddenly found his voice missing. 

He felt nauseous at his own actions, as much as anything else he wanted to throw up for having killed someone that may have family themselves? What if these men didn't know any better or were in a desperate situation?

< Remember this, in the journey of the freedom that you seek, this wasn't the only kill and it's far from being the last. If you want to be uninhibited from the shackles of man, you must embrace the side of you which you suppress. With the feral instinct to destroy and conquer, especially being the prophet of death and destruction you need to accept your identity as a monster greater than all monsters.> 

The words left Ryu with more thoughts and questions than he had ever before. 

Pride understood that expecting Ryu to always act as a rational being was impossible. People, after all, were sentient and socialising beings, that favoured what is accepted by society more than what is actually correct. They are being who care for what others think, unlike pride who is a completely rational being without any imperfections.

It has no gender, thus its mixed voice, it has no physical stature as it can manifest itself in the form of a weapon. It cannot be subjected to any sort of prejudice or racial discrimination as once again, it's a weapon. Yet it could feel Ryu's worry for it is connected to his soul.

< I'm doing you this favour just once, you hear. And that's because there are still people in the caravan.> Pride sighed, as Ryu began glowing. Still in his shock, he didn't even realise what was happening.

Meanwhile, inside him, many processes were taking place.

< System Login check, Seven Deadly Sins: Pride. Re-establishing connection with the soul of the host.>  An ethereal voice described out. Had Ryu been able to hear this, he would question how something could ever sound so monotonous, but he never could. 

< Login in successful.

Safety lock disengaged, internal domain temporarily unlocked. 

Authority overload approved the beginning process of emotion suppression.

Suppression successful.>

A completely new feeling washed over Ryu. All of a sudden, the worries that were harassing Ryu, became a lot more insignificant. He felt his thoughts become clearer, and the warzone seemingly terminated unnaturally. Suddenly snapping Ryu out of his thoughts.

He moved towards the caravan, almost without thinking. As if nothing got in the way of his thoughts, he never felt that he had such a clear mind in his entire life.

Jumping through the back, Ryu could see groups of women huddled together in the dark. A total of 20 of them. All of them had blindfolds and were facing away from each other. Ranging from children to adults, all had a common trait of being beautiful and pleasing to the eye.

All of them had gags on their mouths, but one girl on the left side didn't. Ryu looked at the girl, who most likely was the one to have called out to someone to help.

He took a step forward, which made all of them flinch most likely in fear. Immediately, Ryu explained himself.

"Calm down. I'm not here to hurt anyone," Ryu soothed them, although he doubted that anyone believed it. Ryu didn't care if they believed it or not, but he moved to remove the blindfolds and wrist cuffs, of one person in each group.

"Please help me unbind everyone else," Ryu asked them. They all looked at him with shrunken eyes. They often shook in fear, most likely due to the appearance of Ryu being covered in blood. He quickly realised that telling them that he is not there to harm them will not work, so he just sighed and left the carriage.

He would rather they calm down, and think about what they want to do. In the meanwhile, he had some other things to do.

He turned and looked at the bodies that were laying around. As much as he didn't care for it, not only was it bearing down on his conscience that he is just leaving the bodies of the people he killed lying around, but also that there were children inside the caravan. He didn't want to risk them getting traumatised from the sight of these dead bodies.

"Pride, is there any easy way for me to get rid of these bodies?" Ryu asked. Pride being more knowledgeable in these sorts of situations was obviously easier to choose. 

< Well, you could always burn them to ash.> Pride suggested.

"Without creating a bonfire please." Ryu amended his previous question, he realised that he forgot that Pride wasn't a being with such consideration for him so he indeed had to fix his approach.

Pride seemed to think for a little bit, Ryu could tell that he had an idea thought up but was clearly refraining from saying it. Nonetheless, he mentioned it anyways.

<Well, I could always devour them.> Pride stated nonchalantly.

Silence quickly ensued between the two, as Ryu didn't even speak up to him. 

"Excuse me what?" Ryu asked baffled as to what Pride was saying. How could a spear possibly eat literal humans? Leaving that matter aside, he also didn't think it was a very nice idea.

< I can devour things, if I can devour them, then I can absorb them and make them part of my strength. Did you forget? I am pride, I seek perfection, so the ability to take the best traits of that which I eat is of course needed.> Pride explained. 

To him, it made perfect sense. To be able to absorb and use whatever best trait any prey had, meant that it would be one step closer to perfection and then using that newly found strength, it could further grow and develop.

"But is that even right? Morally speaking," Ryu asked although the answer was clear as day.

<Of course it isn't.> Pride replied immediately, < Since when could eating people dead or alive be considered morally correct? But from what I can see, this is no different to eating a normal meal to me.> 

The standards of Pride eating humans were just that low to him. After all, in Pride's opinion, taking a step toward perfection, towards its purpose of existence was a very natural and normal thing to do. Almost like a red mage researches flame magic to reach their peak, Pride was trying to do the same.

Ryu thought about it for a second and with a heavy heart, he sighed. 

"Devour, Pride." He said with regret in his voice. Of course, he too knew that for some reason, the fact that there were dead people in front of him didn't bother him much. Or at least, as much as it did roughly 10 mins ago. Whatever the reason being, it still didn't help that it went against his own morals and beliefs.

'I can't let myself maintain the views that were accepted in my old society, this is a different place. A different world. I must adapt, and gain strength. After that, I can live however I want.' Ryu told himself. 

After the bodies were disposed of, he took out a water bottle and a clean rag from his storage ring. Using the items there, he cleaned himself up and got rid of any excess blood, so that he does not scare anyone else.

Coincidentally, as he was done cleaning himself, the women that were being held captive also walked out. Although all of them seemed to be afraid or scared to come forward to talk to him. Ryu shrugged at this, he would simply go back onto his path anyways, so after bowing to them briefly he decided to resume walking on his old path.

But as he was passing them a voice called out to him,

"Um, excuse me." the feminine voice made him stop in his tracks. He turned back to look at the crowd of girls. 

Typically it would be very difficult to tell who was the one calling out to him, since all of them were staring at that same girl, it wasn't very difficult to pinpoint who it was.

The person in question was a dark-skinned woman, most likely of amazonian descent. Her raven black hair flowed freely, and as per what Ryu was used to in his old world, she was indeed very curvaceous. To add to that she wore very revealing clothing, that seemingly left nothing to the imagination.

Ryu realised it would very rude of him to stare in such a dirty manner, so he quickly averted his gaze upwards to her face. Little did he know, that this was also a very fruitless attempt. If her body had a sensual attraction, her facial features were simply described as 'beautiful'. She had fluttering eyelashes, and deep navy blue coloured eyes, that seemed to have no limit to their depth.

Her face was the epitome of cute yet also she had a look of hunger in her eyes as she looked at him.  

Ryu, as much as he wanted to brush it off, found it somehow very difficult to do so. She was visually very attractive, so instead of trying to contain himself, he opted to finish the conversation as quickly as possible.

"Yes?" Ryu responded.

" Thank you. For saving us. Where are the men that were keeping us captive?" the girl asked. Ryu got the faint trace of anger in her voice, but she seemed to subdue it a lot. 

Fortunately, Ryu had already disposed of them. "They are in hell hopefully." Ryu replied with a calm expression, "Don't worry, I'm Ryu, just a guy trying to become an adventurer heading towards Levine, I have no intention to harm any of you." 

The girl raises an eyebrow as if to have questioning thoughts, but she doesn't voice them. "Ayla, I am also headed towards Levine." She replied as she extended her hand, "well at least I was heading towards it before those cowards ambushed me with some sort of drug in my sleep and then here I was." 

Ryu shook her hand, thankfully he was wearing gloves so he had no way of knowing that her hands were incredibly soft too.

"Well, I'll be on my way then." Ryu tried to bid goodbye once more but then was stopped again.

"You're going to leave us by ourselves?" Ayla asked with a surprised tone, " The same people who were defenseless and kidnapped by vile bastard, you're going to leave these vulnerable people to fend for themselves?" she asked with more emotion in her voice.

'Seems that she knows how to play around with words very well,' Ryu realised as he clicked his tongue in his mind, "I'm not going to take every single person home individually, it's not my duty and also that takes a lot of time, which frankly I don't have." Ryu replied looking at them.

Ayla, seemingly realising her attacks with words had failed, tried to use a set of puppy eyes to look at Ryu, who took a step back as he stared into her eyes that seemed to express how endangered they were.

"You do not have to take us all home individually," one of the women in the group suddenly spoke up, gaining both Ayla's and Ryu's attention, "if you simply accompany us to Levine, I'm sure we can contact our families or friends from there," she suggested.

Ayla quickly gave a thumbs up to the young girl, before turning back to Ryu and resuming her previous action of staring at him with puppy eyes. 

Seconds passed by, but it felt like hours for some before Ryu sighed, "Fine. Only until Levine though, after that we part ways." 

Ayla seemed on board with that, quite literally as well, since she had already gotten onto the horse-drawn carriage. Ryu felt his eyebrows twitch at how quickly the girl was changing her demeanour and as a prophet, felt a premonition make itself present in his mind,

'This girl is going to be a huge pain in the butt isn't she?'