This is the story of a magician and an elf girl.

Jack, who felt a warm feeling at the familiar voice, suddenly stopped in his inner world. The anger that had been accumulated in his heart also subsided. There should be no one else in front of his eyes except the phantom of the magician.

By the way, where exactly is this place and what am I doing?

"… Hatred, anger, dissatisfaction, grievance—you humans always express these emotions very honestly. Frankly speaking, I really don't understand. No matter how much you want to save everything, it will not work. You just want to plunder, plunder constantly, and take it back when you are robbed. You constantly justify your actions, recount your own preconceptions, hypnotize yourself, and indulge yourself—it's simply ugly."

"..."

“Swoosh, snap!”

The magician took a step towards Jack and swung the silver knife in his hand. Jack reflexively countered the attack by swinging his arms and swung his sharp claws at the same time, but the magician didn't even look at him, but just raised his long legs from the blind spot.

“Swoosh!”

With one kick, Jack was kicked five meters away.

"Guga?!"

"You can't stand your own weakness, your own losses, and your own inferiority complex. Your thinking is too superficial. So superficial that you can't even make good use of your own intelligence. You only fight for your own interests. Your evolution has actually stagnated thousands or tens of thousands of years ago."

"!"

The magician approaching him had already gained the upper hand before launching the attack. Jack tried to use his armor to block the silver knife, but saw that the magic power wrapped around the blade easily penetrated into his body, and the stinging cut was accompanied by waves of burning sensation.

“Swoosh, snap, snap!”

Jack did a side flip to dodge and swung his fist at the magician's head before he landed, but his punch was completely off target and he was hit unilaterally by the opponent's fist. Jack was too slow to fight back and lost to the magician's continuous combo before he could even launch an attack: "Guga?!"

"Life is a concept that evolves. No matter what era it is, life will definitely find a way to evolve in order to adapt to the environment. If it cannot evolve, it is not worthy of being a life form on this planet and will be eliminated immediately in that era. Your existence is at best redundant to this world. It's not that the environment cannot take your life, but that you are too selfish. You only want to survive and are willing to take the lives of various lives. You originally have intelligence and emotions, so you should be able to let other lives get more benefits. What's the result? You are not even as good as a blade of grass. You are not even as good as mutton in the mouth of a wolf. You can't produce anything independently. You can only plunder and rob other lives of the benefits you need. Don't you feel ashamed? Why can you plunder the interests of others, but others can't?"

“Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang!”

It's not that Jack couldn't understand what the magician who had been punching and kicking Jack continuously said. After all, it was the truth, and what he said was the truth. Apart from the facts, he couldn't think of any other answers that he could imagine, as if all his choices were denied.

But is this really the case?

Do you really think so?

Think back to what you are doing now.

"No... People... People are not as cruel as you say... People... are not as arrogant as you say... People... now..."

"I am still in delusion and fantasy, wanting to live in a beautiful and peaceful world, even though that is a future that will never come."

“Swoosh!”

Jack, who took the magician's punch with his bare hands, knew that it was just his imagination. If he was willing, if he was confident that he could beat him - the situation would naturally be different.

"It's not a question of whether it's impossible to get there or whether you can get there...but - you have to get there!!"

"..."

No matter how much injustice we suffer... no matter how much happiness others take away... we will..."

The magician who turned his wrist and grabbed Jack's forearm to fight back stabbed the dagger in his right hand into his eye socket. The bright red vision was covered by a burning sensation, but the painful part was where his heart was: "--Don't lie, you can't do it, trash, waste, you are just a waste who can't do anything, nothing else. Look, while you are asleep, the outside world has become like hell."

"!"

The background, with the magician's back as the focal point, reflected the scene in Jack's eyes, a scene that could not be described with any word other than hell. The battle was still going on, and the oversized hellhounds were constantly ravaging the remaining adventurers, crushing them as they were defenseless. In that bloody hell, there was no hope that Jack was pursuing.

"How do you feel? Do you still feel comfortable? Or do you still think there is still hope for tomorrow? Give up. The human spirit has no resistance to despair from the beginning."

"I……"

"You just want to deny reality and talk endless nonsense. If you think reality is so easy to deal with, then why are you so powerless? Why do these people have to die? Because you are not strong enough, a large number of people died. Everyone threw the responsibility on the shoulders of you, the survivor. In the face of such unreasonable behavior, will you still agree with people's actions and thoughts? Is it really necessary to continue to survive?"

"...Woo..."

"No, you can't do it. You know, humans are intelligent beings who don't understand human language. No matter how much you want to save them or persuade them, it's meaningless. There's no value, no rationality, no necessity, and no reason for existence. People can hurt others' feelings in order to protect their own feelings. After understanding this, they still hurt others as if nothing has happened. As long as they are not the parties involved, they can casually abandon empathy for others. Creatures like you, frankly speaking, I really can't understand why you are still alive in this world... Why do you still have the nerve to live in this world... Why do you selfish trash have to live, while people with empathy have to die..."

"..."

"You are only deceiving yourself, satisfying your own desire for protection. If there were no other people, there would be no way to justify your actions. From the beginning, you have no concept of self, and can only rely on the rules set by society to act until the end - you still fail to understand your own value and your own feelings."

"..."

"Hey, answer me - why did everyone else die, but you survived?"

Jack, who is confused by reality, despair, delusion, and emotions, will be liberated from the shackles that have bound his heart for a long time while losing to himself. That is the darkness in the human heart, the darkness of reality. Facing setbacks and uneasiness, he cannot deny the facts and will awaken the "monster".

“Pah!”

The screams of chains and shackles breaking were heard, and the darkness that invaded Jack's heart attacked him, and a burning sensation surged into his blood-stained eyes.