We have to admit that We found it a bit… off-putting, yet amusing at the same time how the people of your world so often considered concepts like death, darkness, and even chaos to be “evil”, Esperanza. You know well by now that We are what remained of this world’s deities, the ones that represented chaos to be specific.

“It’s just how people in my world think, I guess? Death and the dark is scary, so they instinctively placed them under the evil category and all that,” said Esperanza. After her earlier airing of grievances, Oldies admitted some interest about how life in general was in her previous world, so she obliged and told them what she remembered. “How do you view them? I imagine being deities of chaos yourself, your point of view ought to be quite different.”

Very simple, actually. Life and Death, Light and Darkness, Order and Chaos, Good and Evil… they are all merely two sides to the same coin. One could not exist without the other also coming into existence, and often one is defined by the complete absence of the other. Would you not agree then that they are all so intimately connected as to be merely different facets of the same thing?

“I… guess so? I’ve never thought of it that way, to be honest,” admitted Esperanza with some surprise. She had never been into that sort of philosophical thinking before, so the way Oldies simply stated their opinion so openly was a bit of a surprise to her. “I guess I could see it pictured that way, now that you mentioned it.”

Exactly, Esperanza. For what is darkness but the absence of light? In a world without light, both light and darkness would lose their meanings. Similarly, Life leads to inevitable death, that is a law of nature that all beings fall under, whereas in turn, death brought about new life in its own way. All too often people fear and even come to hate the idea of death, when it is just another step in the cycle of existence itself.

The same applies to concepts like Order and Chaos, or even Good and Evil. Your previous world, as far as We could tell from your retellings, seems to value “Order” and “Good” far above their alternatives, but that in itself might lead to an imbalance that would result in disaster in the future. Everything needs a counterpoint, at least in moderation. It would not be healthy for the world for one side to dominate far too much.

If you have too much order, to the point that everything in your life is structured, that everyone simply did what they were told to do, at the determined times, is that really living? How much better would that sort of life be than being mere cogs in a contraption, always moving along to the predetermined whims of others, never having the freedom to do anything or decide anything on your own?

Similarly, could you imagine a life where Good takes prevalence above all else, where people would not even say things that might invite the dislike of others because they were so fixated on their idea of goodness? Even if such a society could manage to exist without imploding upon itself after a while, there would be others who disagree with their point of view, and they would soon find that ideas often fail to survive the harsh reality of life itself.

“Heh, the last bit you said actually struck a bit close to home,” said Esperanza with a chuckle. “People were trying to accommodate everyone so much that they were afraid to offend anyone, it was fucking silly,” she continued. “I guess it started with good intentions, but when they kept widening the umbrella to include pendejos that preyed on children on the list of people we shouldn’t offend, I went all me cago en la leche on that mierda. Fuckers like those should be fucking offended, for all I care.”

Somehow, it did not surprise us, given what you have told us of the people in your world. Those who overvalue some things would tend to fall into a pit made out of those very things they worship, after all. That has happened here as well, on many occasions. We have seen it so many times that we lost count of the number of times that it happened. A society that was taken too far into any extreme would collapse unto itself given some time. A measure of balance was always needed for anything to last longer.

“I can see that, yeah,” noted Esperanza. “Too much of a good thing ends up being bad in the end and all that, but I guess that’s also part of the point you’re making, isn’t it? Things like good and bad are just as much social constructs as order and chaos, unlike the naturally occurring ones such as life and death, or light and darkness.”

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That would be correct, yes. All too often mortals make their own definitions of things and fixate on it too hard, even when it leads them into disaster in the end. We have seen it happen before, and we have seen others refuse to learn from history and repeat the mistakes their ancestors made in the past. It is something we have come to expect out of mortals.

“Guess I can’t blame you for that,” admitted Esperanza with a chuckle. “All too often people like us, who don’t live for all that long, can’t think of much beyond the immediate future. I’ve learned that myself in my previous world. In a way, kinda reassuring to know that people don't change that much, all considered, even though they’re from different worlds.”

The long chat she had with Oldies that night helped lift Esperanza’s mood quite a bit, and when she woke up the next day, she walked out of her room with a refreshed look on her features. Immediately, she began preparations for departure, since the group planned to depart from Zikeal within a week’s time at the latest, once their training was done.

Some of the group members were still finishing up their training or helping teach the method they use to the locals. Esperanza had the ones who had already finished their training and were free to help her in the preparation instead. Part of it was to procure supplies for the next leg of their trip, since once they left Zikeal they would only be able to rely on what they stole or hunted to supply themselves with.

When it came to food and rations, the group was still well-off, thanks to the demon supply camps they raided prior to their journey towards Zikeal. In fact, a good part of their emergency rations which they stocked up in Agur-Bas was still with them, so they mostly just added a bit more to their larder from what was available in Zikeal.

Instead, what they focused on in their procurement of supplies was clothing. Esperanza and the rest wore clothes that were tailored to the common style worn in Agur-Bas, which had a resemblance to the style usually worn in the Demon Territories. All of them had clothing of the same style, regardless of their race or heritage, and that was the problem.

Even if they wanted to infiltrate the villages and towns in the Human Kingdom, their human members didn’t have appropriate clothes to wear to do that.

As such, Esperanza asked some locals from Zikeal who made clothes to help measure the members of the group – with extra focus on the humans, since they were the ones who could infiltrate along with the volunteers – and make them several sets of clothing in the style commonly worn throughout this region of the Human Kingdom.

Since it was something that would take some time to get satisfactory results in, she tackled that issue first during the preparation. The clothes themselves would be finished within a few days, well before they planned to depart from Zikeal.

Of course, the addition of five new members to the group – the volunteers from the matron’s tribe – meant that they also had to keep them in mind. While none of the five were particularly combative in nature, Esperanza still saw to it that they had proper equipment, since they would likely end up needing to defend themselves from time to time when out in the world.

She and her group couldn’t always be there for them, after all.

As such, while some of the others were training the locals in the methods they used to emulate their hereditary skill, Esperanza and the ones with her were training the five volunteers on how to defend themselves as best they could. While the five had no real combative classes or skills, they still had the raw stats as befit their levels, and in Tiara’s case in particular she had high stats as her classes were a notch higher in rarity compared to the other four.

It wasn’t too hard to teach them how to make the most of their elevated stats to deal with weaker dangers like animals and the like. While the lack of combat-related skills would hamper their ability to fight, their stats alone would allow them to at least hold their own for a while against an enemy of similar power, hopefully long enough for one of the group to help them.

The older couple – Murad and Mora – were probably the worst at fighting amongst the group, while the younger three were more enthusiastic and had some skill at it. Then again, the old couple had probably gotten used to solving issues the non-violent way, which would explain why they were rusty at actually defending themselves.

Even in the short week that was left prior to their planned departure from Zikeal, Esperanza and several of her group – Val-Kas’j and Tiesya had volunteered to help train the five – got the five volunteers from the matron’s tribe to a point where their ability to defend themselves was at least passable. It was clear that for most of the volunteers, they would prefer to avoid violence if it was an option, though, as they learned all too well just how much they were outclassed by those with proper combat classes and skills during that training.

It was a sentiment that Esperanza and the rest could understand well.

The sole exception was Tiara, the matron’s granddaughter. Even when the younger siblings Kurt and Leo were demotivated by the gap between them and an actual combatant of their level, Tiara remained enthusiastic and interested in learning how to fight. As such, Val-Kas’j and Tiesya sort of took the girl – who amusingly enough, was actually older than them by nearly a decade, even if their appearances suggested otherwise – under their wing and kept training her in fighting techniques like she requested.

Time quickly flew by and before Esperanza knew it, the last week of their stay at Zikeal was almost over. The locals insisted on throwing them another feast on the night prior to their planned departure, which they were practically forced to agree to, though they didn’t really mind the feast either. They had just thought that the locals shouldn’t expend so much of their stores at their expense.

The morning of their departure, the local clergy supplied them with a detailed map of the local region, one annotated with notes from their people’s experience and effort, including espionage work by the matron’s tribe. It was another thing Esperanza expressed her gratitude for, despite how her arrival and mission meant that she was either taking some of their people out to die, or that everyone would die in the near future when the world ended.

It still felt somewhat unnerving to her to see the locals so at peace with the notion of the world coming to its – supposedly deserved and much-needed – end, even if she understood the logic behind it.