Chapter 39: Sudden Betrayal

To you, what is humanity?

It has been a question that stumped scholars and philosophers all throughout history.

What makes a human, Human?

Is it their experiences in life? Their happiness, sadness, regret, pain? To be honest, nothing in this world can define what "Humanity" truly means. Nothing.

It goes to show that we, as human beings, still questions what makes us humans, its a very weird and oddly overlooked question to everyone that it seemed they have their own answers to what humanity is.

The term Humans, where do you think it came from? From the older generation if our civilization? From the more smarter and wise men?

Where do you truly think it came from? If you disregard the words that people seem to think of as truth.

On the topic of humanity, if even us Humans question ourselves what makes us humans, do you think apes, lions, tigers knows what makes them as such?

They do.

They know their roles, since they were born. Since their species were created, they knew what they were for and how the cycle of life treats them.

But us humans? We treat such animals as if they are a lower species than us, just because of the different level of intelligence and capabilities. What makes you think that we are not animals ourselves?

We eat, drink, sleep, play, we survive, kill, hunt, we give birth, care and protect. Just like what animals do, so when did our forefathers realize that we were different from the rest of the world?

When?

Though such topic was considered to be useless, it truly is a topic that needs to be talked and discussed upon.

Because knowing what makes you Human, can sometimes help you keep yourself together.

Rueben is lost, he has lost something that was important for him. His humanity.

He had realised it before he went inside this unending labyrinth. He does not know what to categorize himself with, is he still human? Or is he just a beast?

For his entire life, he had trained, fought, and killed countless beings. Tainting his hand with rivers of blood. It was a fate that all Hunters goes through.

Hunters were more associated with feelings of guilt, despair, anger, sadness, agony and such emotions.

Yet they remained stead fast in their ways and waited for their own moments of death.

Have i properly explained what a Hunter is?

I have not, have i?

Hunters...

They are one of the fearsome opponents to fight against, yet...

They are also the kost pitiful and drained people.

Rueben looked at the corpse of a beast he had just killed with his bare hands and licked the blood smeared on his lips.

The doll was tied to his waist as to not hinder his movements in the battlefield. He looked at another beast, which was shivering in the corner, whimpering.

Each step Rueben takes, the beast would yelp and whine, closing its eyes, even going as far as covering it with its beastly hands.

Rueben looked at the beast in the eyes and saw the traces of humanity within, something that he, a Hunter, had forgotten and abandoned long ago.

He crouched down and looked at the beast straight in the eyes, it covered its eyes and looked away, making Rueben look at it.

"Tell me, are you still there?"

He asked, the beast only yelped in surprise as its instincts were telling it to run yet its body was scared shitless to do so.

The beast shivered in fear, feeling death's hands gripping its neck.

Rueben softly sighed, "I guess not."

He then looked at his blood stained hands and chuckled, "I can't believe a beast have more emotions than i do. Can i still function as a human at this rate?"

He sighed and chuckled, countless thoughts ran across his head yet he could not catch a single one of them inside his crazy head.

He grabbed the beast's mouth, opened it wide, before tearing the beast in two.

The beast screeched and roared in pain as it felt its skin, muscles, its flesh tearing apart, it bones forcibly cut apart like some kind of butter.

The pain was like thousand needles all stabbing you at the same time, repeatedly. Over and over and over again.

The screeches and roars slowly died down, the beasts that heard it from across the halls shivered in fear as they felt a terrifying pressure from something that their instincts could not hope to comprehend.

Rueben walked around aimlessly, the beasts were scared and hid themselves from him.

Then Rueben came across a large pit.

***

"Saintess, the creation of the White Order is underway, it would take us time to build an army with such strength, never mind the resources."

A man said to a woman wearing a thin crown resembling pillars. She looked at him, then to the young men and women training under the balcony and nodded her head.

"Indeed it will take time, but we must have an invincible army and talented people in our arsenal. The religion of the Crimson Moon must grow, and to do that, we must scatter through the whole continent."

The man nodded his head, then bowed.

"Make sure that new Paladins can be created soon, our power diminished quite a lot after my ascension to the position of Holy Pontiff."

"It is so, dear Saintess."

The man then left quietly.

The woman looked underneath and saw the young ones training, their eyes shining with faith and trust for their god.

The saintess smiled as she stroked her wings silently, enjoying the moonlight that came from the heavens.

***

Arshavin looked at the mechanical arm that was created by the craftsmen. He clenched it and already saw the disadvantages it would give him in combat.

Not minding the energy needed to power it, just the weight alone could give him a large disadvantage.

That is not only it, the two second delay of his mind controlling the arm was also a problem, though he could see the potential of this prosthetic arm.

He looked at the craftsmen toiling away, working hard to help the entire Arkvem.

"We found through using steam that we can power this arm, we also created a chamber that can heat up water to create steam to power the arm, you only need to fill in water once every 3 hours and it would function just fine."

A man wearing a robe and a pair of goggles chuckled as he tried to wipe the dirt on his apron.

Arshavin nodded his head, "Yes, thank you."

The man chuckled and patted his shoulder, "Its good that you heeded my advice of not using God's Blood to heal yourself."

Arshavin sighed and looked at his prosthetic arm, "If i did, i would go mad. If i went mad, i won't be able to serve the King anymore, that itself is more frightening than going mad."

The man nodded his head and told Arshavin a few more things about the arm before leaving him alone to work on and improve the arm.

Arshavin stood up and put his clothes back on before leaving the facility. He grabbed his sword from the counter and left for the palace.

He began thinking about what to do.

'The Lady, The First Hunter, The Crow, as well as the Hunter of Hunters. That's quite a lot of people trying to stop the King from leading everyone.'

His eyes then shone red as he looked at the direction where the Crow was trapped in. A viscous look appeared on his calm face, he grabbed his sword.

Through the moonlight, a man entered a mansion with a sword on his hand.

'I'll kill anyone who thinks of disturbing my King.'

Conviction of a knight that served his King wholeheartedly.

***

Rueben looked at the pit and looked at the end of the pit and found that another hallway was there.

'How did a hole this big get here?'

The doll, Hershey, looked at the hole and opened her mouth, "Wonderful. You really got yourself lucky."

Rueben looked at her and asked, "Lucky?"

Hershey looked at him and rolled her eyes, "On the bottom of the pit lies a concentrated blood pool, we mostly use this holes to drain the blood of these beasts and use that blood to satiate mother's thirst."

She then untied herself from his waist and landed on the floor.

"Though, if you were to drink this whole thing, i wonder what would happen?"

Rueben looked at her, then changed his feet to dodge an incoming spear, before hurling a bone towards a door.

The door broke into pieces and a beast roared and pounced on him, Rueben tried to dodge but Hershey suddenly swung a plank into the back of his knee, making him fall from losing balance.

And because they were awfully close to the edge of the pit, Rueben fell down along with the beast.

Hershey looked at him falling before a little girl materialised beside her, looking at Rueben falling too.

The two of them waved their hands goodbye as Rueben's shoulder was bitten by the beast.

"Goddamnit!!!"

His voice echoed as he fell into the darkness.