5- (Spoiler in title) (2)

He took out his bow and instantly shot it at one of the leaders of the group.

*Plop* the person fell down, dead.

He had chosen to kill them all. This was because he finally realized what the words in the book meant. "Mercilessness is the only path to survival. Don't be fooled by innocence. Have clear eyes and a clear mind." This was the line.

Only by being merciless would he survive this situation, and he did not have time to be fooled by how innocent these people looked. After all, they were all trying to kill him, and he would not just let himself die because he thought another person might be innocent. His eyes became clear at this moment and his mind became still, like a agitated pond finally settling.

As he cleared his mind, he felt his vision become better in his right eye. Before, it was only twice as good as a normal eye, but now, it was ten times as good.

Using his eye, he shot out a volley of arrows.

Every arrow would hit a person in the group square in the face, killing them instantly. But there was just too many. Despite shooting extremely rapidly, there were still many people charging at him. And now, the distance between them had become one quarter of the original distance. Calculating the numbers, Su Tao realized that he might not have enough time to kill them all before they reached him. And he could not run away, so that would mean he would be forced to fight head on with an entire group.

Thinking about this, he shot arrows even faster. At this point, he had already killed over two hundred people, men women and children alike, but they were still charging at him without caring for their losses. If they had cared for their losses, they would have only lost at most a couple careless people. But they were all just charging at him without any method aside from numbers.

Shooting as fast as he could, Su Tao managed to kill almost all of them by the time they reached him.

At this point, there were only about ten of them left as compared to the several hundred before.

Finally, he shot one last one and tried to run to the village, only to find that he once again could not move.

"Damn it!" he yelled as he turned around and shot the final people. He hated killing, and he had just been forced to kill several hundred innocent people including men women and even children. He could not help but feel like he was a monster. But what is done is done, and it always will be, so he moved into the village.

The village was only a simple and small one, and it was now completely abandoned. Obviously, every single previous resident from the village had run out to try to kill him, so it was now as if every living thing had just vanished in the middle of everything they were doing. Food was sitting on stovetops, tea was boiling, clothes sat in basins full of soap, and fires raged in furnaces with no one managing them.

Su Tao searched the whole town, but he found nothing of value aside from food and containers of water, which he took with him. Then, he took another rest before leaving the ghost town behind. He could not bear to stay in a place which had been destroyed by him alone. He had destroyed families and children. The corpses of those families lay in the field in front of the village, and every single body had an arrow through the head. 'At least they had not suffered when they died,' he thought to himself.

Then, continuing on his journey, he found other villages, but the moment he tried to leave, even if the villagers hadn't seen him yet, he could not leave. He was forced to brutally murder every village that he saw. He could not help but hate himself for trying to find the way to complete this challenge. Because even though he figured that these might not be real people, he still hated to kill them nonetheless.

...

Three years later, Su Tao continued to walk through the endless grasslands, looking for the way to complete this challenge. He had murdered countless people, and destroyed countless villages. Through this seemingly endless slaughter, his mind had sharpened, and his eye had improved. He could now see one hundred times better than he could before. Never before had his vision been so clear.

He now felt no regret when he killed these people. He no longer saw them as families, men, women, or children. Instead, he simply saw them as people who were trying to kill him. People who had to be killed for him to survive.

At this moment, he came upon another village. Before he even walked close to the village, he instantly drew his bow. Now, he had been drawing this bow every day for three years, so he could obviously reach full draw.

As he released the arrow, it went flying through the air too fast for a normal eye to track, but Su Tao's right eye could easily see how it moved, as if it was in slow motion for his eye alone. He shot this arrow without any mercy visible, and the only thing that could be seen on his face was coldness and mercilessness.

Then, without even waiting for the arrow to hit its target, he took out more arrows and shot them as well. By the time the first arrow had hit its target, he had already fired more than ten arrows.

The moment the first arrow hit the villager, all the people in the village instantly turned to face Su Tao, who was still continuously firing arrows. Then, just like thousands of times before, they all charged at him, seeming to only care to kill him at no matter the cost.

But before they had even gotten within a mile of Su Tao, he had already managed to kill them all. Most of them had never even managed to make it out of the village.

As Su Tao walked into the village, he stepped past the hundreds of dead bodies. All of them had their faces destroyed by the pure power of the arrows, and you would not be able to tell that they were people were it not for their unharmed bodies that lay below the destroyed heads.

This was the first time that he had completely killed a village so mercilessly and viciously. Suddenly, the vision in his eye increased another ten times. Now, his eye could see a thousand times further than a normal eye and it could also see a thousand times clearer as well.

But he was not surprised by this. Every time that he got more merciless, and every time his mind got clearer while killing, his vision would improve. He had long ago stopped thinking of himself as a monster and started thinking of himself as someone that was just trying to survive.

However, at this moment, the same voice as before rang in his head. It was his own voice, cold and without emotion. Three years ago, when he had heard this voice, he had thought that he would never sound like that, but now, every time he spoke, it was in this cold and emotionless tone. Now, it simply sounded like his own voice as opposed to a different version of himself.

"Challenge complete."

Su Tao was astonished. What had he done to complete the challenge? He had so far not even figured out what the challenge was supposed to be, let alone how to complete it. Then, it all clicked.

The challenge was for him to become merciless and to clear his eyes and mind. Only through endless slaughter of innocent people could he do this.

He had observed these people before, and he knew that they were not fake people in the sense that they did not exist. He figured out that they had an instinct to instantly attack anyone that was not from this dimension, and to try to kill them at all costs. In other words, they were real people, but they only existed when this dimension wished them to.

Because they were real people, this would sharpen his mind even further and make him even more merciless when he killed them.

The next moment, the world around Su Tao once again changed and the village vanished along with all the corpses which had splattered the whole village with blood.

He was now standing in just the endless grassland like he had so many times before. In front of him floated the mysterious green book. He opened it, but there were no new words there.

"Learn the way of the abomination. Do not mistake holy for good. Do not mistake wickedness for evil. Do not mistake kindness for good. Do not mistake unkind for bad.

The path of the abomination is holy and wicked. Kind but merciless. A balance of all that there is in this world.

Mercilessness is the only path to survival. Don't be fooled by innocence. Have clear eyes and a clear mind."

But the next moments, the third line started to fade, leaving nothing in its place.

But then, another line took its place instead.

Now, there was only this left: "Learn the way of the abomination. Do not mistake righteousness for good. Do not mistake wickedness for evil. Do not mistake kindness for good. Do not mistake unkind for bad.

The path of the abomination is holy and wicked. Kind but merciless. A balance of all that there is in this world.

Do not be deceived by the temptations of this world."

Then, the book vanished along with the endless grasslands.

Su Tao was left floating in a void. He looked around confused, but there truly was nothing to be seen. He could not even see his body because of how dark it was here.

Then, in front of him, he saw a green spark. It was so small that if it was in the normal world, no one would be able to notice it, but here, it was a total void and this small green spark seemed to be bright in comparison.

Then, the spark started to grow. Suddenly, it seemed to morph into a tiny green bolt of lightning. But this bolt was extremely small and it seemed as if it could go out at any second. It then formed into the shape of a ball.

This ball of green lightning gave off a wicked feeling, and it was only the size of a marble. Su Tao felt an indescribable connection to it. It was as if the marble shaped bolt of lightning was a part of him.

Then, the same voice as before echoed in his head once again. "The dimension of your eyes hold your soul and all of your soul's power."

Then, the voice disappeared. But before Su Tao had a chance to wonder about the voice or what it said, a purple drop of water appeared. It glowed just like the lightning, but instead of being chaotic and violent like the lightning, it was calm and peaceful like the sea.

Then, this purple drop of water evolved into a small purple marble, just like the green marble. It seemed that this marble was the exact opposite of the green one. If the green lightning was said to be wicked and merciless, then this purple marble would be holy and kind.

The moment the purple marble appeared, Su Tao felt his vision increase in his left eye to the same level of his right eye. In other words, both eyes could now see a thousand times better than normal eyes.

He could not see it, but at this moment, his left eye turned into a beautiful and dazzling holy purple. It would easily be by far the most beautiful eye people had ever seen, and it seemed to contain all the hopes and dreams of everyone in the universe.

Then, all at once, before he had the chance to look at the two marbles any more, he was sucked out of this dimension.

He woke up in his bed with a start. His feet were still hanging over the edge, and they had not moved from the position which he was in when his consciousness got sucked into that weird dimension. This meant that not much time had passed in reality since then.

Instantly, he stood up and looked in the mirror, only to be astonished by what he saw. Not only was his right eye a wicked bright green, his left eye was now entirely a holy purple color. His whole aura had entirely changed by a shocking amount.

Title: Endless killing, Wicked and Holy