Free Will

Free Will

Sighing, Karyl drove his blade into someone's heart.

He did not care for the man's name, nor whether the latter felt pain. In fact, before the victim could even grunt and collapse to the floor, Karyl was already sprinting toward his next target.

He dashed, never forgetting to tilt his body to dodge the incoming bullets. They roared, angrily punching holes into the wall behind him. The moment the bullets entered the wall, kicking up dust, his blade entered a body of flesh.

Then he slashed—his left hand carving open a belly, his right hand slitting a throat. The human body was truly fragile; it was riddled with vital points from head to toe.

"It's that Wraith!" someone screamed in the darkness, their voice laced with raw terror. "That vengeful spirit!"

He must be trembling, Karyl thought. Noticing this made him want to laugh.

Yes, I am here.

And you lot.

Low, slow laughter echoed through the dim, pitch-black corridor.

For Karyl, the act of killing was simply too easy. He performed it with such dexterity and natural grace—easier than breathing, almost becoming an instinct.

To him, killing was like solving a simple math problem. Does one really need to use pen and paper to calculate that one plus one equals two?

Of course not.

But that did not mean he enjoyed it.

He did not kill for the sake of killing.

Five minutes later, Karyl finished off the last person in this long corridor by way of decapitation.

He stood still, looking back at the corpses and gore littering the floor, and took a few deep breaths. He tasted the blood-filled air and began to wait.

Upon sensing the tremors coming from the other end of the corridor, Karyl leaped without hesitation, using his blade to briefly anchor himself to the ceiling.

Gunfire erupted—automatic rifles, shotguns, machine guns—someone was even firing a laser gun. This made him narrow his eyes involuntarily and lick his lips.

Half a minute later, once the lethal rain of bullets had finished howling, he dropped back to the ground.

The sound of his landing was faint, yet he was still discovered. There was no helping it; he could not achieve the silence of a Wraith, and the gangs were sharp.

In fact, Karyl felt that for a bunch of lunatics who spent their days huffing hallucinogens or whatever else caused delusions, they were a bit too sharp for their own good.

Upon realizing he was still alive, someone immediately roared and threw a crudely made grenade his way. Karyl smiled and kicked it back, his movement as natural as if he were kicking a ball.

The gangs had sent him a gift, and Karyl considered himself a polite person; his return gift was a violent explosion and a flash of fire—and, of course, the intense chaos that followed.

This sudden explosion solved a dozen little troubles for Karyl that would have otherwise required blades and violence to resolve, but he did not consider it a good thing.

It was too loud.

Hmm. A mistake.

He thought this in the brief window while sprinting away from the scene.

There was no room to argue; his line of work was just like that—always capable of surprising people when they were caught off guard.

You never knew what these gangs might pull out to bombard you with.

Homemade grenades were considered on the lower end of the danger scale; such things were always better than rocket launchers capable of blowing down a building in one hit.

Taking a deep breath, Karyl tensed his leg muscles, intending to leave.

He could not stay long, not unless he wanted to experience a carnival like the Wraith did.

Half a second later, that frigid blue light ignited in Karyl's eyes once again.

Following that, he nimbly leaped out the window. The moment he landed, he bent his knees, muscles bulging, and with just a few bounds, he reached the top of a high-rise hundreds of meters away.

During this process, the wind roared in his ears and the freezing temperature nearly numbed his skin, yet he kept his eyes wide open.

The scenery of Quintus flashed beneath his gaze, and only after it had completely vanished did he finally smile.

The sensation of impact followed, meaning he had landed.

Taking another deep, slightly weary breath, Karyl slowly sat down against a wall. His spine felt uncomfortable and needed something to lean against for relief.

There were over a dozen air filters running quietly on the rooftop; they were in good condition, clearly having been maintained not long ago. The people living in this building must have had some connection to the nobility, otherwise, they could not have attained such a standard of living.

Keeping this in mind, Karyl began to focus on himself. However, whenever he did this, pain was inevitable.

It was the same every time.

After a meticulous assessment, Karyl noted that his leg muscles were aching severely and his bones were groaning.

Clearly, after the battle he had just endured and the run that defied normal human imagination, his body was protesting against him.

In other words, his constitution was dragging him down.

But that did not matter.

The rain had stopped.

Karyl shook his head, deciding to use his most hated sense of humor to tell himself a joke, just to soothe his current foul mood.

"Look on the bright side," he muttered to himself. "At least you returned those two motorcycles, didn't you? One must be polite and keep their word. If you borrow and return, it's easy to borrow again."

After finishing this joke, Karyl waited for three minutes.

He could not laugh; he never could.

My sense of humor is truly abysmal; I hate telling jokes, Karyl thought.

He sighed, then began to think. As he did so, he kept taking deep, steadying breaths.

The Great Purge would be here soon, he thought.

It happened every twenty years, a cruel law of nature—one from which the nobles profited. In truth, whether the Purge occurred or not, they always stood to gain.

This brutal affair was little more than a form of entertainment. What else could one say? On Nostramo, this was nothing unusual. At the very least, it was far more normal than sewing living people together to use as mattresses.

The former still yielded profit; the latter—had he not seen it with his own eyes, Karyl would have dismissed it as the product of a fevered mind.

Karyl smiled.

There were nearly seven hundred gangs within Quintus; he could not kill them all, not even if he killed until he died. As long as the oppression from the nobles persisted, more and more impoverished workers would choose to abandon their humanity.

This world had been changed, fundamentally altered. How could he, alone, set everything back on the right path?

He could not even establish a decent organization to recruit help. The mindset of the Nostramans had been completely twisted; there was no room for kindness in this world.

But killing to stop killing is not the answer, Karyl.

Yes, I know.

Karyl closed his eyes, casting aside all distracting thoughts, and began to sink into the depths of his mind, digging ever deeper. In a place like Nostramo, attempting to formulate a plan was difficult, but he had to try.

The gang whose leaders had all been killed by the Wraith was called the Sons of Union.

An inexplicable name.

Like all other gangs, these people loved to emulate the nobility.

Choosing such a bizarre and convoluted name was part of that. They thought that by doing so, they might one day join the ranks of the nobles, though only a few were clear-headed enough to realize that gangs were merely dogs kept by the aristocracy.

Sons of Union—Karyl began to search his memory for the name. He should not have had these memories, but that did not matter, did it?

Soon, he had his answer.

One of the leaders of the Sons of Union had joined Tremor-Tooth not long ago.

Very well.

Tremor-Tooth, and Skraivok.

These were two ancient, noble houses, and by now, they should have both taken notice of Quintus. A fine thing indeed; one wonders if I shall have the good fortune to meet those noble lords?

Karyl sneered.

House Skraivok had lost a coroner. Although they likely had hundreds of such people, the death of even one was no small matter.

The Skraivok family was much like all other high-ranking nobles, save for one thing that made them distinct.

They placed great value on "rules" and "honor."

Ironic, isn't it?

But it was true.

Those who served them could obtain many things; as long as they offered absolute loyalty, these people could get almost anything they desired before they died.

This meant that House Skraivok would certainly try to find out who had killed their coroner.

As for Tremor-Tooth, they were a pack of lunatics who delighted in feasts of flesh and craved sensory stimulation. They, too, would not let this opportunity to hunt in the lower hives with a legitimate excuse slip by.

Karyl opened his eyes and offered a faint smile.

He already knew what he had to do. If Tremor-Tooth and House Skraivok were going to join forces to host an early banquet in Quintus, then he had already secured an invitation before the hosts themselves.

Standing up once more, Karyl leaned against the cold wall and exhaled a long, trembling sigh.

The pain still made it impossible for him to stand steadily; after a brief moment of relief, a greater, relentless tide of agony surged through him. It was always like this—this power was truly terrible, yet incredibly useful.

There was a reason he had chosen to retrieve that broken chair from the trash heap.

First, no one wanted it, so he could take it. Second, he really needed a chair.

Nostramo had no day, only an eternal night. Standing at the edge of the building, gazing at the scenery below, Karyl thought this.

Every city on this planet was rotting, built from the very beginning with warped materials. He was just an ordinary man; he could not change them or the people within them.

He also knew that his behavior—letting the Wraith shoulder everything—was extremely selfish. But what other choice did he have?

"Only now do I realize that the saying is true."

Karyl smiled to himself. "Free will does not exist, unless you swallow a gun barrel, turn on the gas, or jump off the pier."

--

+He has refused again.+

+Is that so, my liege?+

+Yes. It seems he misunderstands me deeply.+

+You cannot expect someone on the other side of the galaxy to accept your call request for no reason, my liege.+

+Perhaps, but I shall try a few more times. The fate of Konrad Curze now rests in his hands.+

"Then, I wish you good luck, Your Majesty. Besides, I recall you saying just yesterday that the word 'fate' is utterly absurd."

"Indeed, my friend."

A giant clad in golden armor opened his eyes and spoke. "However, there are times when it truly exists."

I have no idea what happened, but I'll just leave a bowl here for now.

Begging for everything—comments included.

If I can't see everyone's comments, the author is going to die (sad).