Change the place, change the person. My foster father taught me that. Not just dress, skin color, or appearance, but the foods they ate, the customs they held, and even their ideas of right and wrong all changed based on where they lived.
I thought that was fairly obvious. Those living in poor, severe conditions would develop a set of values that matched their environment in order to survive. Those who lived in wealth and luxury had the freedom to develop more diverse ways of thinking. And those were all influenced by the culture and history of the people living there. For example, even though they were both humans, those living in the center of the continent felt like entirely different creatures than those who lived here in the West.
Their religion here taught that humans were supreme, and they viewed other races as good for nothing but slavery. However, I knew that there must have been something in their history that had led to those beliefs.
The beastfolk that I now lived with held a deep-seated hatred for humanity, but that was a feeling I couldn’t share. After all, when I was young, I traveled to all sorts of places and met all kinds of people. From elves to dwarves to humans, all of them had been so kind to me. I knew now that my foster father Acer had brought me to places like that on purpose, or worked hard to create those environments for me.
Could I do the same thing? Here, the humans and the other races—the beastfolk in particular—hated each other. As time went on, as the killing continued, that hatred grew stronger and stronger. I wanted to create a kind, loving place like Acer had.
Though my hands were now soaked in blood, that only strengthened my desire.
My first experience taking another’s life was shortly after I began my journey.
South of the Great Pulha Woodlands, there was a small stretch of open land before you reached the sea, connecting the eastern and western sides of the continent. It was called the Pulha Highway, though virtually no one traveled it. Monsters often emerged from the woodlands and prowled the highway. If there had been some nation there, their army would have built garrisons, or their cities would have hired adventurers to deal with the monsters. But the Pulha Highway had been claimed by no one, so there was no organized effort against the monsters emerging from the forest.
Of course, most of these monsters lived on the outskirts of the forest, and so were relatively weak as far as monsters went, but there were instances of more dangerous creatures appearing as well.
As dangerous as it was, those who chose to live there were either fleeing from civilized society or exiled from it. As impolite as it might be to say, they weren’t good people. For those who dared to travel the Pulha Highway, the threat of the people living there was as large as the threat of monsters.
The first time I had taken another person’s life was while traveling that highway. I had been attacked by a group of more than a dozen men, and killed half of them. I hadn’t wanted to hurt anyone, and against one or two opponents I could have resolved things without taking anyone’s lives. But I couldn’t afford to go easy on all of them, so I hadn’t even considered it. Though perhaps due to that lack of choice, I never had to wrestle with the decision either. I had no choice but to keep fighting until my opponents gave up and fled, and there had been no chance to reflect on my actions until the highway was already behind me. Before I could lament what I had done, I had grown used to it.
Long ago, Acer had taught me how to kill and process the animals we had hunted, so I was already used to seeing blood and had experience with death in general. In a sense, killing birds or beasts for food and killing others to protect yourself were both killing in the name of preserving your own life. They weren’t all that different.
No...no, they were definitely very different. But not different enough that I couldn’t turn a blind eye to it.
For a time after leaving the Pulha Highway, I hadn’t needed to kill anyone. Even so, the land west of the Great Pulha Woodlands wasn’t particularly peaceful. The main difference was that my experience traveling the Pulha Highway had taught me how to avoid getting myself into situations where the only way out was to fight.
Though the area I had reached was still technically the center of the continent, it was completely different from the eastern side of the woodlands. On the western side, the beliefs of the people on the eastern side warred with the beliefs of those in the Far West. For example, the western religion taught that humans were naturally superior to all other races, while the eastern religion taught all races were equal as children of the harvest god. Both fought tooth and nail to win as many believers to their cause as possible.
Many kingdoms adopted the western religion officially, suppressing all others within their borders, while their equally powerful neighbors adhered to the eastern religion, creating an environment where people in quite a restricted area held radically different beliefs. As those beliefs became entangled with the diplomatic and power struggles in the region, they made the political situation all but opaque to outsiders.
Conflict escalated into war between these nations. Those who ascribed to the western beliefs captured and enslaved other races. In fact, some were all too happy to enslave other humans who didn’t uphold the same religious beliefs.
When I first visited a nation that had adopted the western religion, I hadn’t even been able to make it into a city. The moment I approached the gate, guards surrounded and tried to capture me. I had learned how to take care of myself by then, though, and so was able to extract myself from the situation without killing anyone.
I managed to make it out of the west-central region of the continent without taking any further lives thanks to my skill in swordsmanship and the help of the spirits. Both were skills I had refined since childhood.
One event that led to the worsening of the situation in the West was the elves abandoning the small forests. As nations ascribing to the western religion grew in number, they began to attack the elven settlements in their forests. As a result, those in smaller forests fled to other settlements in larger ones, took up arms, and began to make war against the humans.
These larger forests were likely those that were capable of supporting a Spirit Tree, like the one Acer had shown me once. According to him, these enormous trees could erect a barrier to keep people out, thus protecting the elves that lived there.
Naturally, as the elves left the smaller forests unattended, they became breeding grounds for monsters that spilled out and threatened the lives of ordinary people. With the growing threat of monsters, the humans clung even harder to their religion as a mechanism to bind their society together.
But in this land, there were two primary belief systems: one that treated humans as superior to all other races, and one that worshipped the harvest god and strictly opposed such ideas. As their religious beliefs grew more entrenched, war breaking out between them became inevitable.
However, compared to the west-central region, the Far West was much worse off. There, all humans ascribed to that western religion and tried to exert their control over all other races. The number of people I had to kill on the Pulha Highway paled in comparison to what I did here.
As I knew my skill with a sword was insufficient, I had called on the spirits to take a huge number of lives in my stead. Not to defend myself, but because there was a beastfolk girl they had captured and were torturing to death, and I just couldn’t let that go.