Zelos and Ado stared, speechless, at the violent destruction that Dark Judgment had wrought upon the landscape.
Rationally, they knew using a wide-area annihilation spell had been necessary. But even if their brains accepted that truth, the same wasn’t true for their hearts. This devastation had been a justifiable means of stopping the Hell’s Legion, but they couldn’t shake the guilt off their backs.
Regret, doubt, remorse, and frustration were human nature, and those feelings hit twice as hard when people had to contend with the things they’d done of their own volition.
Imagine, for example, a country on the verge of losing a war. Its leader decides to drop nuclear bombs to save its people. Perhaps that decision would save the country’s own civilians, but it would also cause the deaths of countless completely innocent civilians in the enemy nation.
Depending on the situation, that could be a reasonable option. But regardless, whoever pushed the button would be racked with guilt. And they would, almost certainly, be criticized for their decision in the future.
As much as that leader might have been prepared for those consequences, they would still have to bear that burden on their conscience.
Although force was sometimes necessary, the person pulling the proverbial trigger would always have to balance the guilt gnawing away at them and their duty toward the lives under their own protection.
These are the things Zelos and Ado grappled with as they stared at the fallout of their spell. Still, the fact that they were feeling so tormented showed that they were still human.
“This is horrible...” Ado mumbled. “I think I understand now how it must’ve felt to be a president who decided to push the button and drop nukes...”
“Me too,” Zelos said. “The guilt’s eating away at me. I feel like throwing up, to be honest with you...”
The spell’s gravitational collapse had caused a tempest of destruction that still hadn’t abated. Dark Judgment wouldn’t stop until every trace of its target had been obliterated. It was more thorough than nuclear weapons.
Even if this attack did end up saving many human lives, these two would never forget the scene before them, the scarred landscape a permanent reminder of their transgressions. No one in that situation could escape the weight of such a heavy cross to bear.
“Y’know, I cast Gluttonous Void a while back, and I wasn’t even able to swallow my food for a while after that...” Ado said. “I knew what was gonna happen, but once I actually did it, I couldn’t bear the thought of what I’d done.”
“We need to remember how it feels to pull the trigger, though. The sin. The weight of the lives we took. If we forget, we won’t be human. And whether it were planned or a spur-of-the-moment decision, I think it’d be just as painful...”
Zelos carried a cigarette to his mouth with shaking hands before lighting it with the Torch spell.
Even if he’d only used Dark Judgment on monsters, watching the outcome had forced him to confront the fact that he’d underestimated the weight on his shoulders. Magic provided convenient firepower to its wielder, but it also forced every mage to feel the responsibility of holding a deadly weapon twenty-four seven.
“When I used Dark Judgment back in the Far-Flung Green Depths,” Zelos said, “I was so focused on running for my life that I didn’t even have time to dwell on what I’d done. But now that I know the carnage I caused, my heart’s just killing me...”
“Yeah. And this wasn’t something we had to do for our own personal survival. It was just a one-sided slaughter. Makes me realize I need more resolve for this kind of thing than I’d thought.”
“Having this kind of power at all is dangerous. That said, devoting myself to being some nation’s tool wouldn’t be any more responsible. Since, well, I’d rather not spend my life being treated like a living weapon.”
Mages as far beyond the pale as these two bore a responsibility to make the right decisions and properly handle their destructive magic. If they became state mages to foist that responsibility onto someone else, they could trigger a war. After all, their very existence would make them irresistible forbidden fruits to those in power.
Rulers from all over would constantly scheme to make the pair’s might their own.
Time and time again, Zelos and Ado forgot just how off-the-charts they were, only to be brought back to reality by a situation like this.
“Uh... Is the world gonna start seeing us as a threat? This is bad, right?” Ado said.
“The path of a Sage is a lonely one,” Zelos replied. “All the more reason we have to walk our own path. If it gets too tough, I say we just run away.”
“Zelos? You’re not just ‘a Sage.’ You’re a Great Sage. Why’re you trying to downplay yourself?”
“I just don’t want to admit it. I don’t want to think about how potent my own magic is. How scary it is. Oooooo!”
“Uh... I hope you aren’t expecting some witty comeback.”
Zelos had hoped to ward off the difficult topic by turning it into a joke, but reality wasn’t so kind.
They were at a safe range, but explosions sporadically sent a cockroach body part flying past them. It made their minds conjure images of how the scene would’ve looked if they’d used the spell against humans—and those images were no laughing matter.
“Hey, Zelos... Do you think that was enough to take down the great givleon?”
“Who knows. That thing’s an anomaly, remember? Thirty meters long. It’s probably got insanely high defense—plus, it was just about to turn into a demon lord. So if it has survived...”
“If it survived, we’ll have to fight a givlord, huh? You think just the two of us could beat one?”
Attack of the Great Givleon, also nicknamed “the Revolting Roach,” had been a raid event from Swords & Sorceries that inspired a huge reaction among the playerbase—and not in a good way. Since so few players had participated, the event had spiraled into an infamous tragedy, with city after city falling to the attack. And the biggest factor in that tragedy had been the givlord.
The givlord’s magic attacks had sent many players—including some of the top-ranked heavy knights in legendary gear—to the graveyard. It had been so insanely fast that it had had some of the game’s best players, including the Destroyers, at its mercy.
Most fearsome of all, though, had been its impermeable defense. People had desperately made gear using extra-rare materials, but even that had only been enough to scratch the givlord. It’d been so completely, utterly unbalanced that the playerbase considered it bugged, and it had become infamous as calamity incarnate.
In fact, the monster had earned itself a unique honor: It was the only raid event that even all of the Destroyers, working together, never managed to defeat. It earned itself a reputation as the strongest enemy of all, the monster above all other monsters.
If a monster that strong appeared in reality, not a game, Zelos and the others had no hope of stopping it as things stood.