As the coin flew toward Entismo, time seemed to move in slow-motion. If that thing hit him, it’d kill him for sure—I’d seen what those flames could do to people in previous timelines, and they were no joke.

I could already tell exactly what Index would say, if it had the time to say it: Arlan, by doing this, Jon has given up all credibility. He no longer has any argument that what he’s doing is moral, and allowing Entismo to die here will only prove your point more that he’s willing to kill someone just because he wants to.

My thought process got about as far as “I don’t agree” before I was forced into action. The coin was flying straight at him, and I needed to do something.

So, before I could even think of what that ‘something’ would be, I leapt forward, tackling Entismo to the ground and preemptively activating Regenerate. My body covered his, between him and Jon.

And then the copper piece struck right against my back.

Instantly, it lit aflame, the bonfire roaring alight around it and licking my skin.

You have been burned. 95 damage.

Due to Heat Resistance, damage has been reduced to 48.1.

Your Health is 551.

The coin fell to the ground and I hurriedly kicked it away, out into a street where it harmlessly rolled to a stop, melting the stones around it. But the flames on me continued to burn.

You have been burned. 57 damage.

Due to Heat Resistance, damage has been reduced to 28.8.

Your Health is 526.

I glanced back at Entismo, who had fallen to the ground. He was staring up at me in shock and horror, motionless. But he wasn’t burning; the fire hadn’t touched him.

You have been burned. 54 damage.

Due to Heat Resistance, damage has been reduced to 27.3.

Your Health is 503.

I could feel the flames eating at my skin, my Health preventing it from fully melting my flesh away, but not doing much for the pain. It was all I could do to not fall to the ground on the spot, screaming in agony. The intense sensation went beyond just being ‘hot’—it was pain incarnate. I wanted nothing more than to leap into a body of water and extinguish the flames, but this fire was magically-created, not mundane. It would be impossible to put out through normal means.

I would just have to wait it out.

You have been burned. 46 damage.

Due to Heat Resistance, damage has been reduced to 23.3.

Your Health is 484.

Regenerate was marginally helping to ease the damage, giving back just around 4 Health each second, but the real thing keeping me standing was the Heat Resistance I got from my Bond with Ainash.

“A-are you…will you be okay?” Entismo muttered, only barely loud enough that I could hear it over the roaring flames that covered my body.

My clothes were already burnt to a crisp below my magical armor, and I could feel the heat singing my flesh by now. Health steadily dropping, I turned to face Jon, who was standing in shock, staring at me. Everyone was.

“You want to know what I really think, Jon? What I care about?!” I screamed into the battlefield.

The fighting had stopped, the sounds of clashing steel replaced by the quiet crackle of the flames around me and my own echoing words.

“I don’t give a single shit about your calculations. Your fucking value propositions, saying it’s objectively correct to do this, or that, or whatever. I don’t give a shit that you’ve decided to murder someone. I don’t give a shit that you’re doing something immoral. You want to kill me? Sure, okay, that’s fine. I understand killing for a cause you believe in. The thing is, you don’t believe in the Demons’ cause. You couldn’t care less. You’re killing me because you’ve decided it’s optimal. It’s emotionless.”

“It’s correct! It’s the perfect decision!” he shouted back.

“Who fucking cares what’s perfect?! Let me tell you what I want.” Somehow, it felt like the flames around me began to burn brighter. “I want to wipe the entire face of the planet clean of these Demon jackasses! They come here, invade our homes, kill our people, and expect us to roll over and submit?! It’s long since gone past being about my life. It’s about punishing these scum fucks. Thinking they can push us around and demand what they want. You know what I saw, running from those soldiers in the kingdom? What I saw in the eyes of every one of them? Hopelessness. People who had learned to want nothing more than survival. Nothing more than what was technically optimal. That’s no way to live. If the Demons are gonna come here, gonna step all over us, gonna poke the sleeping bear…I say we show them just what Humanity is capable of!”

“Yeah!” Sylvie shouted, raising a fist in the air. There were a few more scattered shouts.

Jon grunted. “Surely you understand how unlikely—”

“It’s not about likelihoods. It’s not about probabilities, or expected values, or fucking formulas! Surely you understand what it’s like to be alive?! You understand that Humanity never prospered in the face of Dragons and Faerie Queenes and the hostility of nature by sitting down and making a fucking pros and cons list. We did it by saying ‘we’re going to persevere through that evil,’ and then doing it! Against all odds, because we don’t care about the odds.”

“That’s not—”

“Listen. I get it. I get the urge to mathematically figure it all out, only ever make the ‘right’ choice. In fact, most of the time, I’d say that’s the correct thing to do. Looking for a new job? Sure, take the one with the best pay. Trying to figure out what to say during some political conversation? Sure, examine the circumstances and figure out the perfect combination of words. But sometimes…” I shook my head, flames billowing off of my body. “Sometimes, it’s just non-negotiable. Sometimes, you have to make something happen. There’s no choice. You just wouldn’t be capable of living with yourself if you didn’t. And I’m telling you, right here, that there is something I have to make happen. I have to kill every single Demon that exists. Every single one that’s responsible for doing this. And you can say it’s unlikely, or even impossible, but I will still not rest for as long as there is even one more of those fuckers that still has its head attached to its body!”

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Another cheer by the crowd, this one stronger. Sylvie was still the loudest voice, full of mirth and laughter, but there was a determination in everyone who shouted in agreement. Even Entismo had gotten to his feet, tentatively shaking his fist in the air with a smile on his face.

You have been burned. 21 damage.

Due to Heat Resistance, damage has been reduced to 10.6.

Your Health is 249.

The flames that’d engulfed my body were in the process of finally petering out, which was good, considering how my Health was only barely able to protect me from long-term damage, at this point. The pain had mostly subsided—though I couldn’t tell if that was because it was genuinely getting more bearable or because I’d just gotten used to it, standing in the white-hot flames this whole time. Either way, I wanted to end this.

Jon, by now, seemed as though he had decided words were not his weapon of choice anymore. He was fighting harder than ever to break through the wall of soldiers keeping him back, but he wasn’t seeing much luck in that endeavor. This was mainly because most of the soldiers on his own side had stopped fighting. A large number were severely injured, but even a couple of the healthy-looking ones were standing around, unsure of what to do. It seemed like my words had influenced them, after all.

And with nobody else remaining to fight them, all of my allies were left with all their energy completely ready to face Jon with. The force of Melee-Types was one thing, but now he had to contend with all of the long-range fighters as well. Plus, by this point, enough time had passed that Cumulative Catastrophe was buffing my Spell effects by close to 80%, even though I’d mostly been focusing on dealing damage with Crippling Chill this whole time.

Suffice to say, Jon wasn’t getting very far in his attempt to kill me.

“Th-thank you for saving me, good sir,” Entismo said from behind. “Are you sure you’re…Y-you are still, er, enflamed, currently. Can I…do anything? A-assist in any task you require to be completed? With my life in your debt, I can assure you I intend to spend the rest of my days assisting you in whatever I can, however I am doubtful I will ever be given the opportunity to pay back all of what I owe you.”

I turned to face him, wincing as I got yet another damage ping from the fire. It wasn’t doing much anymore, just getting in the last of its pricks before dissipating naturally, but now that I wasn’t all pumped up by my speech against Jon, I was feeling it a little more. “Yeah, you can actually go ahead and pay the whole thing off right now. Can you just go over there and fucking kill Jon?”

“I, I will do my best to fight him.”

He instantly rushed off, sword drawn. Oh, shit, he might actually kill himself trying to fight someone as experienced as Jon. “Hey! Be careful, too!”

Sylvie looked over at me from across the battlefield, and shouted, “Are we killing him now?”

“We always were,” I responded. “The plan never changed.”

She mumbled something that was surely very witty and sarcastic, and turned, drawing her bow and trying to aim a good shot through one of the windows. Jon was nothing if not extremely tanky.

On my end, though, I just kept an eye on things, ensured Crippling Chill was always active on him, and stayed prepared to activate a pulse of Gravity Well in case it ever seemed like the close-range fighters needed help.

As I did this, Erani casually walked over to me. “Quite the speech.”

“Yeah, well, I was just saying what I thought.”

“I just don’t know how you’re able to put your thoughts into words so well.”

I chuckled. “Not sure it’s quite ‘so well,’ more like it was good enough for other people to understand my opinion. And I think I received quite a bit of help from the Demons being so obviously terrible. They deserve whatever comes to them in the future.”

“Even if what comes to them is us dying?”

“Okay, them winning would be the one thing they don’t deserve.”

“Sounds hypocritical.”

“Being a hypocrite is great. I get to believe all the good, helpful stuff, without ever having to also believe any of the bad stuff, uncomfortable stuff.”

“The whole ‘making your life into a mission of killing literally all Demons’ thing seems like a pretty uncomfortable thing to do. Honestly, I kind of think you’re a hypocrite in the opposite way you just said. You believe all the stuff about what you should do, without considering that if you have such harsh requirements on yourself, then you would necessarily have to require the same of everyone else.”

“What? I don’t think I’m too hard on myself. Or too easy on others, really.”

“It’s less about being hard on people, and more…Like, you said you would literally never be able to live with yourself if you didn’t put everything in you toward killing the Demons. But, when Ainash talks about her own similar convictions, you tell her that she should live more for herself, and try to focus on more achievable goals.”

“Well, maybe I think I’m the only one who can kill all the Demons.”

“Do you?”

“Not particularly.”

Erani frowned at me.

I shrugged. “Like I said, I’m a hypocrite. I’ll admit to that. I know myself better than I know anyone else in the world, so of course I’m gonna hold myself to different standards than I would another person. For someone else, I have to give advice based on assumptions. For me, I know for sure whether I’m motivated by the right thing, or whether my idealism is based on suicidality, or whether I would be harming myself by setting my life on a mission. Besides, I’m the only person I can be a little unfair to without it being technically immoral. So I’m gonna abuse the hells out of that little loophole.”

Erani grimaced. “That sounds like the sort of thing your Index thing would say about morality. There are no ‘loopholes.’”

“Well, anyway.” I gazed back to the fight raging in the building. It was almost peaceful, the way the chaos and noise had faded into the background. Or, maybe I was just feeling extra good because the fire had finally extinguished itself.

“Are you okay? No burns, right?”

“Nah. Well, yeah, of course I have burns, but my skin hasn't melted. You think Jon’ll go down before law enforcement arrives?”

“Do you want him to?”

“He certainly doesn’t seem like the type of guy we want around with life behind his eyes, so…yeah. Probably.”

“Should we ask Boy to move in and join the fight against him, too, then? I’d asked him to stay back in case one of the resting soldiers from Jon’s side suddenly got up and tried attacking.”

I looked over at her. “Wait, Boy’s here? I had no idea.”

“He ran up recently.”

“Aliss, too?”

“No, I have no idea where she is. I tried asking Boy, but…well, it was pretty hard to get anything other than ‘I know where she is, but I can’t tell you.’ She is safe, though, according to him.”

“Just not nearby? Damn, I kind of wanted to introduce the two of us, Arlan and Erani, to those four.”

As if on cue, I saw Boy lumbering over in our direction from behind some cover—a broken down wall that was just barely keeping itself from crumbling to rubble.

“Oh, there you are,” Erani said. “This is Arlan, my partner. He’s also a friend of Annor and Eita’s. We have to stay back because we’re vulnerable to a certain Spell that man has access to, but if you’re willing, could you go and help the others in the fight against him? He seems…difficult to take down, currently.”

He looked over at the fight between Jon and the crowd of people. Simultaneously, three people swung their weapons down at him. He ducked underneath one of their strikes aimed at his head, parried a blade straight off his arm—something that only seemed possible because of the many buff Spells he had active on himself—and then allowed the third blade to pierce his chest, using the moment of vulnerability to swing his fist at the man who stabbed him. His strike connected with the man’s face, but just as the man stumbled back, a woman stepped forward to take his place and fill the circle surrounding Jon and keeping him focused on defending himself.

After a few seconds of watching, Boy nodded and began walking over to the site of the battle.

“Wait, one moment before you go,” I called out.

He turned and looked at me.

“You do know where Aliss is, right?”

He nodded.

“Are you willing to tell us, if you were made able? Like, if I got you a paper, could you write it down? Because with what’s going on, it seems dangerous—”

He interrupted me with a shake of the head.

“Can you at least tell us when she’ll be seen again? We plan on leaving soon, so…”

He shook his head again, then turned away to keep walking toward Jon.

“Damn,” I said.

“Told you,” Erani replied. “He’s keeping some sort of secret. Though, whatever that secret is, or why he’s keeping it, who knows.”

“You think we can trust him?”

“Probably. I don’t think he’s killed her and stuffed her in a barrel, or anything, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“No, no, I doubt that too. More like…it just feels like Boy is covering something up for Aliss. Something big. I think I have a good enough read on the other three—Boy, Entismo, and Sylvie. I know their general goals and personalities. But Aliss was always weird.”

“So you’re wondering what she’s been doing with her alone time?”

“We haven’t seen her in several days now, right? What could she possibly need that much time alone—not just alone, but hidden—to do?”

Before Erani could answer, I heard a scream of rage coming from the fight between Jon and the soldiers. I instantly activated Gravity Well on Jon before even seeing what was going on, trying to ensure he didn’t escape, as I looked. Erani held up her hand in preparation to cast a Firebolt, as well.

Jon did seem obviously pushed down by my Spell, though no less angry because of it. He whipped his head around to look at the soldiers circling him and eyeing him cautiously. Boy was standing by the edge of the circle, seemingly not having gotten fully close to Jon yet so he could watch how he fought before engaging.

“You think you can kill me?!” Jon demanded. His normally collected voice had a hint of desperation to it now, like he’d been run ragged. “You think you can destroy all that I’ve worked for? The sacrifices I’ve made, all reduced to nothing? Fine. The world would be better off without you people in it, anyway.”

And then he dropped one last coin to the ground right by his feet, and it burst into the brightest inferno I’d seen.