Chapter 43 - Rynold's Morality

Meanwhile...

Oliver and the rest of the group that had separated from Rynold were moving toward the radio building that Eileen, Jack, and Strider were resting in.

Apart from feeling like they had abandoned one of their friends in a moment of crisis, the group had decided to keep moving forward and to only hope that Rynold would turn out alright. After all, what else could they do?

The conversation that they had before stopped in a rather uncomfortable moment. The very declaration that Rynold's head was usually filled with thoughts of himself dying made it all the more guilty that they had abandoned him.

Regardless, they had to move on; there wasn't anything that they could do to help alleviate the situation especially that their skills were lacking.

Shyft urged Oliver to continue his sentiment. Ending the conversation that abruptly had made him worry more about his nephew. But, despite the constant badgering, Oliver kept his mouth shut.

He was worried that if he continued to explain what he meant, there would be dire consequences for the group as they could run to save Rynold. Oliver was the one who knew Rynold for far longer and better than anybody else; even his own parents didn't know this thing about him.

Oliver couldn't forget that one night when they were just resting in their dorm room. It was just the very day that Rynold and Elle, his most recent relationship, had ended.

To him, that day was still a normal one and nothing happened out of the ordinary until Rynold suddenly spoke.

"It's over," Rynold said solemnly.

Confused, Oliver raised an eyebrow and asked, "what is?"

"Me and Elle. It's over just like that," Rynold answered while laying back on the bed.

From Oliver's perspective, he could see his friend hurting in a way that he had never seen coming. Rynold's expression was perplexed and confused before letting out a sigh in his defeated state of mind.

"You okay?" Oliver asked once more. He wouldn't dare to look at his friend in the eye as he wasn't familiar with Rynold's style of comfort or empathy, not that he needed it anyway.

Rynold closed his eyes before responding, "You know what's funny? I saw this from a mile away and I still tried to push through with it. We're far too different people and at the time I had enough of people walking all over me. I thought that if this time I pushed myself that I wouldn't let go so easily, maybe things would turn out different. Well, how stupid can I be?"

Surprisingly enough, he wasn't in pain, or at least his voice didn't show it. In fact, his tone sported a sort of joking tone but his register was deep. His voice carried his emotions that overwhelmed the tone of how he said his sentence.

Then, he continued.

"I'm fine, actually. You live and you learn," Rynold said before sighing once more. "To be perfectly honest, I'm kind of mad at myself for being stubborn when it comes to these kinds of things but, eh, what can you do?"

Oliver was surprised when he saw Rynold when he looked across the room. The guy was smiling, in a devilish way of all things. It was like Rynold felt that he deserved what had happened to him.

"You sure, dude?" Oliver asked once more for confirmation. "We could get drunk or just walk around campus or something."

Rynold finally sat back up on the bed before laughing, in a way that made it seem like it was genuine.

"You crazy, man? It's like way past curfew and yet you wanna do something like that? Trust me, I'm fine. Things like this would never break me down."

In reality, Rynold was truly fine. It felt like he was satisfied with how things turned out. He viewed the whole relationship as helping someone in need. Even though she never really took his feelings into consideration or it looked like he was being used, he was satisfied with the outcome.

Rynold had helped a person live a better life. To him, it was that simple.

"I don't get it," Oliver pondered a while before asking once more, "how are you so okay with this? You could be screaming or punching the wall right now but here you are, just calm like the ocean. What gives?"

Rynold was silent and thought about how to best explain things to his best friend. He wasn't surprised in the slightest but rather more problematic on how to explain his way of thinking to other people. It was a first, after all.

"Hmm," Rynold finally uttered a simple sound. After which, he continued, "think of it this way, I base almost everything in the context of life or death. It's just that people do things based on how to react to situations, right? Some people get pissed when their friends ignore them or ask them what's wrong. For me, it's sort of different."

Rynold paused to let Oliver absorb what he said. It was a complicated concept after all and Rynold doubted he could explain all of it in one go.

"Basically," he continued, "I base my reactions to bad things on whether or not it will hurt someone. I think about it as if I were on my deathbed. Like 'is this something I want to remember on my deathbed' or something like that. Over the years, I've just realized that why would I contribute to the chaos in the world?

The world and the people around them are absolutely terrible and those that I want to help are usually hidden by other people who are selfish and think they're nice but they're really not. I dunno, I guess I just don't want to be one of those people, you know? That's why I've never had the thought of blocking someone or ignoring their messages since I wouldn't want that done to me."

Oliver was surprised at how deep and profound his best friend turned out to be. For a few moments, he was caught off guard before simply nodding at Rynold's statements and agreeing. Oliver, then, mockingly said, "Wow, look at you being all deep and stuff."

That was a long night for Oliver and an even longer one for Rynold.

"I guess he was right," Oliver muttered as he snapped back to reality.

Without even realizing it, they've reached an unknown part of town. Oliver was too busy reminiscing about the past to notice where they went as they merely followed Shyft's directions since he knew the town best.

"Uhh... where are we going?" Skye asked the older gentleman.

Shyft simply nodded and motioned them to continue following him, not knowing where they were headed.

The group continued down the unknown road and didn't bother noticing what was around since there were ghouls that populated this part of town too.

Oliver had gotten to work and immediately pulled his daggers but his state of mind wasn't in place for battle. It was noticeable, especially from Shyft's perspective, that Oliver wasn't in the mood for battle since he attacked with a lot more excess movements to deal with the low-leveled ghouls.

Despite the sloppy performance, Oliver didn't seem to care. His movements would make him a lot more tired but if he was simply killing low-leveled ghouls, it still got the job done.

As he was too busy dealing with the ghouls and thinking of other things, he didn't notice that something behind him was going down.

Skye had defended herself against a lot of different ghouls these past few hours since they got to the town but what she didn't expect was for something like this to happen.

All so suddenly, Shyft had managed to grab ahold of the Wind Acolyte's Grimoire and stole it from Skye's grasp. She was surprised and tried to take the grimoire back. Skye simply thought that it was a joke but it was far from it.

Shyft suddenly took action and threw Skye to the ground, instantly knocking her out. It was too fast for even Skye to register what had happened as her vision blurred and faded into black. Since she was built for a caster and her Attributes revolved around her combat style, she didn't have any resistance when it comes to physical attacks.

At that very moment, Oliver finally took out the last ghoul and turned back to look at why they didn't help with any of the ghouls. Well, not that he needed any help.

His eyes instantly widened in surprise and pointed one of his daggers at Shyft who was standing beside the unconscious Skye. Shyft had a shortsword pointed directly at her bare neck and stood there with a greedy, sinister smile to match.

Things had gone wrong for Oliver and Skye in a single moment where Oliver had let his guard down for even just a second, a mistake he swore he would never make again.

In a deep threatening voice, Oliver asked, "what the hell do you think you're doing?"