Chapter 48

Chapter 48 - Realization

A moment to contemplate for myself was quite rare, but that moment was then rudely interrupted by an outside monster. 

"How rude, to interrupt while I am thinking so much."

Although the monster did not understand my language, I could feel it tense up when I directed my voice to it. Even while not paying attention, my spatial perception was still active as I continued to check my surroundings for safety sake. 

Of course, I would not let myself get sneaked up upon while alone now. For the unsuspecting monster I must have seemed to be an easy target. 

"Hmm?"

Seeing the monster's reaction I noticed something a little off. Why has it been just watching me? 

Taking the opportunity to glance further, I then noticed the reason why. Turning my gaze behind the monster caused it to tense up as its bared its teeth against me.

"So that is how it is. This is to protect your children."

Me speaking seemed to have triggered it as the monster then leapt into action rushing over to bite my face. Seeing it and knowing what it was doing, I decided to ultimately go against it quite gently. 

Instead of creating hands wielding swords from my Void Hands, I simply created the hands and then trapped it in the air and played around with it by controlling the fingers of the void hand playfully. 

Watching the fierce monster struggle in my grasp, I finally took the time to appraise the monster and see what kind of race it was clearly. A Fierce Weasel huh. 

From its behavior it is most certainly a female and the mother of the babies hidden in that bush over there. It seems that I had wandered too close to this mother's hiding spot and had scared it into trying to threaten me away to no avail. 

As I was in a daze watching it, I then heard the voice of the weasel become louder and turned to see that the small babies had rushed over to bite me to let go of their mother. 

Even my clothes on my body were enough to prevent the bites from them and so I raised my hands to reach out to the little cubs. When I moved, the mother likely thought that I would move to kill those cubs, so it then tried to break through my void hands to bite at me at all costs.

Seeing it like this made me a little touched in my heart and I in a lapse of judgement loosened my void hand formation and accidentally let it out to reach over and bite my finger. 

Unfortunately for it, the skin of a demon is far more than the weak strength and resilience of a human so if it thought that I would lose a finger from a bite to deter me, it would be sorely mistaken. 

Likely knowing that it was useless, the mother then reached out to grab her children and tossed them away while I began to stare at the small wound in a daze. 

Maybe the answer was just that simple. I was simply overthinking things before. 

All of this talk about right and wrong is simply relative. Wasn't I just now the villain for that weasel because I was too close and potentially could threaten its children? I know that I am not in the wrong either. I was just wandering around and had no thoughts of going after them, bit it just resulted in that way. 

I never needed to care about right or wrong. If I did, I would have never gotten close to those guys. Luke, Mellie, Vanessa... Wendy. If I really cared about right and wrong, I would have never gotten close because I knew that Alice was correct. So they who would likely oppose her would thus be wrong right?

But that is impossible. After all, people are not just black and white. I have been told this and have seen people who exhibit both traits so it only makes sense that it would be like that. 

Once I realized that, everything simply fell into place. Turning to glance at the place that the mother weasel had left, I then showed a frown. Heading over in the direction it left, I soon opened up some bushes to find a vicious fight between the weasel and a snake. 

"Since you helped me realize something, I will give to you... a gift."

In an instant, a Void Hand of mine emerged with its sword and swiftly sliced the head of the snake. Although frightened, the monster eventually makes a run for it as I watched it leave freely. 

Taking a deep breath, I then start to look around in earnest. I have spent a bit long of a time searching for a place. Vanessa is probably starting to nag again so I quickly expanded my perception range and quickly dash away in a different direction. 

A while after I left, the weasel then popped out of the woods staring at the spot that I was at before in silence. 

Time quickly passed by and I eventually found a good place to stay for our group. It was a decent sized valley that split up into various regions. According to my perspective, the place was quite easy to defend should we come to be attacked and it is wide enough and tall enough to help us see any danger that could arise near the location. 

Other monsters currently inhabiting the location would simply be a temporary problem that we could deal with by simply arriving and working together. So I quickly headed back to where I remember the team was while using my mirror space to have a carriage prepared for moving. 

I could say that there was an abandoned carriage that I found discarded nearby so I brought it over to help take care of the young and elderly among the human group. 

When I saw the carriage that they had brought out, I quickly shook my head as the carriage was a sort of high tech noble carriage type which was not what I wanted from them. After reiterating my requirements, I finally got one that was relatively presentable. 

It was quite large and had some discarded supplies to disguise it and then I had someone hide it further by having blood and vines around to show how abandoned the cart was. 

This was mainly done by a magic clone taught used a type of plant magic to quickly search and kill some predatory beast in the vicinity and further covered the cart in vines. Even the wheels were caught a little which made it inconvenient to move, but far more believable to be abandoned here. 

When I returned with the carriage, I was seen pulling the carriage forward as the metaphorical carrier of the carriage and stopped exhausted at the group. 

Sitting tiredly on the ground, I took in some deep breaths as the others went to check the carriage. 

"Why didn't you simply use your Void Hands to push the carriage? As a magic caster, you should use your brain not your muscles!" Wiping the sweat off of my face, I showed an expression of surprise and remorse in my expression to which Vanessa showed a look of disgust as Mellie went to soothe my aches with her healing. 

Of course, I knew that I could do that. But I knew that taking so long was also quite suspicious so I painted the illusion that I forgot and simply did things in a muscle brained manner in order to give the illusion that the time I spent was kept by doing something stupidly. 

Seems that my act was rather successful as I seemed to have gone past their levels. That was until I quietly stood up and passed by Luke that I heard a message in a small tone.

"You don't need to act so much. We knew you wanted to have some time for yourself."

Stopping for a moment, I then calmly went forward with what I wanted as he chuckled and returned to helping the others with dealing with the obvious traces on the carriage as I rubbed my face in embarrassment on my own in the back. 

While I was wallowing in despair due to my presumed acting being so good, I felt a small tug on my back clothes and turned to see a small girl handing me a flower that seemed to be freshly pulled off of the ground. Fresh dirt smudged her face on her cheeks as she looked up to me.

"Thank you for saving us. My parents always said that giving anything you have when you have nothing is the greatest gift someone can give. Maybe it can help you cheer up?"

As the girl said that, a woman presumed to be her mother then came up and bowed to me and tried to pull her away from me.

"Darling, don't bother the lord mage. She may be busy."

"But mom-"

"Now now darling, don't take up so much of her time."

She then tried to pull her away and as she slowly lowered her arm holding the flower, I then reached out and took the flower from her hand.

"Oh your hand, I apologize for dirtying-"

"Thank you. This made me feel a little better."

Smiling at the little girl, I felt that my remaining resentment towards these people slowly disappear. Before she could respond, I then quickly turn and leave the area leaving the mother and child a little confused. After taking her daughter away, I then turned back to look at that small figure a distance away. 

"So this is how it feels to be thanked by someone else."

The most that I had was the applause from Alice cheering when I successfully learned something new. This however, was the first time I felt that my choice truly had meaning. 

That girl, must have been from that cultists ritual. If we were not there at that time, would that face be smiling so happily now? 

Hiding my thoughts, I headed back to the others as they finished checking the carriage that it was fully functional and calling the elderly and children over to ride in the carriage for the rest of the trip. 

None of the disagreed to this and they soon packed the carriage quite snugly as I was then called to be the coachmen to use my Void Hands to push the carriage forward until we could find a satisfactory mount to pull it along.

"Sorry to inconvenience you like this when you had just gotten back." Wendy said a little sorrowfully. I then told her that it was nothing to which she responded that I was truly smiling.

"Am I?"

"Yeah, normally you would keep a smiling expression more like a mask, but now it feels... real!"

Excitedly taking my hands and hopping around giddily, she spun me around so much the both of us got dizzy and tilted towards the ground.

"Woah!"

Collapsing on to the grass, we took the moment to recover and we both turned to each other and laughed. 

Seeing our frolicking, for once Vanessa did not step forward to ruin the mood. Mellie and Luke were quietly whispering to each other in the back as the joyful mood helped to calm the tension among the folk all around. 

The people all seeing this scene were able to see our team as more than simply a strong adventuring squad. In fact, we were all people. 

After enough playtime, I then tell the others of the valley I found and they all agree to head obverse there for now. When the trip was just me, it was far easier to travel around the place without worries. But the problem is that we were bringing a group of people and a carriage so the trip this time around was much longer. 

Thankfully we were able to reach the place by the late afternoon so we were able to disembark and have people split up into groups to prepare for our stay here. Some went to hunt and some to patrol as we prepared the valley for our living for the next period of time. 

Those monsters who were originally encamped here? 

Well they were a more gregarious species, but with magic and power we were able to scare away the group from the valley. It was mainly due to the group being a species that the team was rather familiar with known as the Howling Monkeys. 

They were in large groups, but they were rather timid as simply overpowering the loudest leader was enough to scare them off. After tossing the leader away, we went to search for less humanoid sources of meat for... rather obvious reasons. 

We had a feeling that those people we saved would not be so willing to eat such a humanoid monster. Let alone us. 

So we worked with the men of the group to quickly find other more palatable sources of meat as the women went to prepare the valley for safe living.