Truth had never expected life to be fair. The concept had never occurred to him. It did, however, seem noticeably unfair that he kept finding himself running through the countryside in search of pants. Not that he was hung up on nudity, exactly. He had come to understand that his weirdness with Etenesh was more a first-girlfriend thing and less a body image thing.

It’s just that, growing up, people wore clothes. Even the people who took off their clothes professionally kept them on almost all the time. It was just common sense. If you were leaving your house, you did so wearing clothes.

Not much of his current life conformed to “common sense.” Still, it stung a little that “routinely wears clothes” was one of those deviations.

Truth had come to have opinions about long-distance nude runs. He had a lot of experience with them. His opinion was that they kind of sucked. They could be decent for a short period in specific circumstances. Running through the woods or the scrub desert, rejoicing in the strength of your body, and feeling at one with the universe. That was good.

Regardless of the spiritual beauty and glorious physicality of the experience, one had to acknowledge the flop/bounce factor. At every step, things shifted about. It was, at best, distracting. Generally, it was uncomfortable. He did not feel anyone would need a diagram to understand why. It really detracted from the whole experience. It perfectly complemented running down a crummy road traveled by big hauler wagons and mining rigs stark naked, however. That constant jostling of the undercarriage highlighted the precariousness of their situation.

The way the wagon wheels flicked up rocks and pebbles did not enhance his calm. Not that they could hurt him, really, just that the instinct to flinch or dodge was hard to overcome. He set some new personal bests for long-distance running speed getting to the next town.

He had never been so happy to see a mega-mart in his whole life. He didn’t break stride until he reached the doors. Once in, he just stood there, basking in the frigid air conditioning and the lack of sixteen-wheelers showering his bits with road grit. Once he had enjoyed the moment, he made his way over to the menswear section.

This led to the next indignity- the people. While the Level Zeros and Ones seemed to be only slightly more real than the roadside shrubs, they were people. And people generally don’t want random naked men popping up in the middle of their shopping experience. The drain on his cosmic energy was negligible, but every little drag reminded him that he was using a divine blessing and the personal spell of one of the most powerful beings in the universe to not cause an outrage.

He quickly threw on a bathrobe and then took his time shopping. First stop- a large backpack. In to it went sealed packages of underwear, socks, shirts, shorts, trousers, two pairs of shoes, one pair of hiking boots, and as many toiletries as he thought he might need. Toilet paper was non-negotiable, naturally. How long had it been since he had last eaten? A long while. He topped off the rest of the bag with groceries.

Truth decided that, end of the world be damned, he wasn’t going to remove all the inventory control spells individually. One short burst of Obliteration later, and he was jogging off to find a hotel. Then he doubled back and grabbed a towel, just in case. He was still in the bathrobe. Like Hell he was getting his nice new clothes all dirty.

There weren’t any hotels. There was a motel of dubious character. There were stains on the floor, which was… fine… but there were stains on the walls and ceiling too. Stains that looked like something organic had slapped into that spot. Things their owners probably didn’t want to part with.

The bathroom came with a tub. It wasn’t quite long enough to hold an entire adult human. The shower curtains were heavy-duty clear plastic. Easily cleaned. There was a strong smell of bleach. This was truly the best (and only) motel in town. If he were paying for this, he would be really upset.

The shower was glorious. The hot springs had removed a shocking amount of the deep tension in him, but the feeling of the dirt washing away was convulsively pleasurable. He was tempted to go roll around in the dirt just to do it again. The increasingly alarming smell coming from the carpet persuaded him not to. He washed, dried (no water expulsion talisman here), and at long last, dressed.

Then he collapsed on the bed. He wasn’t even sleepy, he just wanted to be lying down on something that wasn’t dirt or rocks for a while. He gave a happy little wriggle. This was nice. Very nice. As mattresses went, it was horrible, damp-smelling, and lumpy. He was prepared to treasure it.

He looked up at the rotting popcorn ceiling and smiled. Civilization. Comfort. Safety. Well, not safety. He sighed regretfully. He’d have to contact Merkovah. Too much had happened. There weren’t many dead drop locations in the North either. There was a decent little city on the coast not too far from here. There was a drop there. He would signal they needed to talk. How that would work, exactly, Truth didn’t know. The last “untraceable” call got traced pretty damn fast. And they would be searching hard.

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He… blew up a village. Unintentionally, sure, filled with Starbrite drones (literally drones, in some cases), but still. Practically and morally, he blew up a peaceful mountain village and destroyed one of the most remarkable magical achievements of the present era. So remarkable he didn’t really understand how it worked or what its ultimate goal was.

He blew it up regardless. Killed all those people. Because he decided that whatever it was, he couldn’t tolerate it. It would distract Starbrite, draw off their forces, all that, but “Hell no to all this” was a major driving thought, and he was too distrustful and paranoid to try and find a solution that involved working with other people.

Presumably, there were other choices he could have made. Other routes to the same end. He didn’t know what they were just now, but they must exist. Still. Whatever the maybe’s may be, he blew up a village. A direct consequence of him casually saying “Okay” to killing a single researcher. He would have to live with that thought a while. It didn’t feel good.

Truth drew a deep breath, held it, and explosively exhaled. He knew the deal going in. It’s exactly what he told Merkovah. You can lie to yourself and pretend you are the hero saving the day, but really, you are a terrorist. Those people you kill? Not a single one of those people will ever be persuaded their death was necessary. Those lives you ruin? Not a single person will believe their destruction was necessary for the “greater good.”

You could sit them down, show them the evidence, calmly explain all your reasoning, and at the end, they would look at you and say “Wasn’t there any other way? Because this doesn't seem worth my suffering.”

There would always be another way. Truth just didn’t know what it was or how to make it happen. This, he understood. This he could make happen. And the Sibs were counting on him. Etenesh was counting on him. They didn’t know it, but they were. So it would happen. It wasn’t right. It was fucked up. And he was… kind of okay with it. Which was fucked up. And he’d do it again.

He sat up. The fun had gone out of the relaxation. Now it was just a horrible mattress in a worse motel. Time to grab his bag and hit the road again. Next stop- Conjin.

He took a look around outside the motel, hoping to find something worth stealing. There was not. It was like a parking lot of the damned. He tightened up his shoelaces, cinched down his backpack, heaved a long suffering sigh, and set off. That’s the thing they never tell you about being a lone wolf operative. All the cardio.

He grinned a little as he jogged past the town limits at an easy sixty kilometers an hour. Between the constant cross-country running, the fighting, flying, and just generally everything, he was putting a real high polish on his physique. The phrase “more shredded than a bag of cheese” leapt to mind. He had always been a lot more comfortable running his hands over Etenesh than vice versa, but he really didn’t know if he could keep her off him the next time they met.

He let himself drift into a happy daydream as he ran through the bleak gray mountains of Northern Jeon. Bright blue spring sky, delicate white wisps of clouds, and tiny villages that looked half sick and half dead. Virtually all denizens.

Word had gone out about the changeover. There had probably been some fighting, but… what could they do? Level Ones and Zeros, all used to working in the factories, quarries, and mines. All used to taking orders. And even if they rebelled, so what?

Like kittens mewling in a box. Like the raging of a goldfish. Their future, their food, was not in their control and never would be.

So long as there was cultivation, anyone could rise… in theory. In practice, you had to work if you wanted to eat. That cut down on cultivation time. Elixirs made cultivation much, much faster. But there were far from enough for everyone, and the very best were literal treasures. How could everyone get an even share? And once someone got ahead, so long as they didn’t slack off, they would remain ahead. Cultivation meant that anyone could rise… but there would never be equality. Some would always be above others.

The thought didn’t pull Truth out of his happy daydream. He extended the idea into imagining his “better” world. The collapse would eventually wipe away the differences caused by cultivation. No one on this planet was truly immortal, and without the cosmic rays sustaining them, even the ancient monsters would die. Would that produce a fair, equitable world? Truth didn’t believe it. There would still be money and power, even if it wasn’t connected to cultivation. There would always be unfairness. Always be sacrifice.

He’d just have to make sure his better world was unfair in his favor, then. Same logic as today. It wasn’t actually any better than the systems that exist now. But he couldn’t crack the problem. Couldn’t imagine a world without rich and poor, buying and selling, the powerful commanding the powerless. All he could imagine was being the one holding the whip. And in some vague, undefined way, being the one to drop the whip and break out of the Slum. He didn’t know how. He’d have to keep climbing until he could see it.

The kilometers sped past quickly. The road ran parallel to a river as it wound through the mountains and down to the sea. Fast-moving river too. This part of Jeon was more vertical than horizontal, and the country just wasn’t that big horizontally. He got over a foothill and looked down into Conjin. It sure was… a place.

From up here, he could see that there were no roadblocks, so that was something. It was a grimy, light industrial city built around transport. There was a rail station, a sizable port, and he could see that one of the rivers running into the city had been dredged and turned into a canal.

It was a city more in name than practice. It was roughly triangular, with a wide, curved base along the ocean’s edge, tapering into a point as it followed the river up into the mountains. A leech, Truth concluded. It looked like a leech, the wide mouth biting into the belly of the sea and sucking in all it could.

“Sometimes you just know it’s not going to go well.”