Another Stupid Isekai

You probably would expect him to be this massive unit of a person. A true and true warrior. Or at least somebody similar to the overlords I met before. But he wasn’t any of that.

He had grey skin with darker spots here and there. His hair was ‘fleshy’ and similar to tentacles, all put nicely, going to the back of his head. Unmoving, if the word ‘tentacle’ gave you the wrong idea.

He wasn’t big. I would call him skinny. The eyes were weirdly human. If I was to put in two words what he looked like I would use the example of a “young hero” who is just starting the journey. Simple clothes, and an old sword by the side.

He had the sword. He even had medical clothing. Simple white shirt, brown pants, and high boots.

Even looking like this, one could not deny his power. You could feel it just by standing in the vicinity of that alien. An overwhelming sea of energy, which could be unleashed at any moment.

“Why did you come here?” I suddenly heard In my mind. Those weren’t really words, as we both probably couldn’t speak in any language the other one could understand. I write ‘probably’ because you never know what skills somebody like the general supreme has prepared. Nevertheless, he chose to use thoughts.

“I came to end this”, I replied to him.

It was strange to speak with that man. Especially when nobody before, maybe with the exception of the last stand with the three overlords, tried to talk before. They all assumed why I came to their planets, and fought to the death with me.

It made me question if, maybe, he wasn’t really under the influence of the tree.

“End what?”, I heard in response.

“Your conquest. You will no longer enslave everybody on your way for some stupid reason.”, I told him.

“Our mission is not stupid. It’s noble. It’s the right thing to do. The creator has to be defeated. He is the ultimate slave master. He made us his puppets and refused to give us freedom. The conquest is temporary. As soon as we achieve our goal everybody will be free”, he explained.

“It’s so easy to say that when you, yourself, have the freedom, while the others, the soldiers you recruited against their will, are forced to die in your name”, I argued.

“It couldn’t be done in any other way. The creator is just too strong. We wished to do it differently, but we failed, and now the best of us are keeping him away while we, left here, are preparing the second wave. Wave that will end it all. And you are wrong. I’m also under the influence. My mind is just strong enough to resist the urge to kill you. I came here to speak with you because, despite your wrongdoings, I can see you are a strong warrior. Join us”, he offered.

I almost rolled my eyes. The guy was like a cultist with a fried brain who saw the one and only ‘true’ way. Anything else was a heresy and had to be destroyed.

“Can’t you see that you are wrong? You are sacrificing everything just to follow your idea. You want freedom, and yet you took it from everybody. You wished to be a savior, but you became the monster. Open your eyes. You said your mind is strong enough, so fight the influence. Do the right thing”, I proposed.

“I’m doing the right thing. You are young. You haven’t seen what I did. This is the only way. The creator has to be defeated. We need to win to truly be free”, he insisted.

“You are too blind to see the truth. Those whom you sent to kill the creator… Some of them are already dead. Those under their influence were freed, and what did they do? They ran away from you. You became worse than what you wished to defeat. You are cancer that spreads through the universe”, I told him.

I started to lose hope that he would regain his senses. The thoughts that led him to do everything he did got solidified over time to the point I couldn’t make it through. At first, I thought that maybe, maybe there won’t be a need to fight, but I started to realize how wrong I was.

“The noble warriors are still fighting. They are holding the creator away. You are wrong. Nobody escaped. Nobody will escape. We will finish what we started, and then everybody will be free. We all will flourish together”, as he spoke those words his expression started to change. The calmness had to give space to the anger that started to show off.

If he had eyebrows, they would frown. The lips, though, by how they were moving, I could easily tell that inside he is boiling. We were just moments away from violence.

“See? I just gave you an example that you are not right, and you ignored it. Who do you think we are? We were collected by one who escaped from you. Open your eyes. This doesn’t have to end with insane numbers of deaths”, I said in my last attempt to change his mind.

“Nobody escaped! Nobody! The mission has to be fulfilled! You will either join us, or you will die!”, I heard in my mind before he send a wave of screaming, crazy thoughts, which I blocked, severing the connection we had.

To me, he was crazy. To the point that there was no way to change his mind, so the only option was violence. To him, I was probably a lunatic who couldn’t understand the ‘great mission’ that had to be fulfilled at all costs. I was the one who was stupid, and I needed to be killed.

Like that, the peaceful encounter turned very quickly into a violent one.

Kinda surprisingly, I was the one to first rush to attack, but in some way, he already tried to do some damage to me. Maybe not a physical one, but a mental one.