I wonder how mom and dad are doing.
It's a weird thought I just had, when that woman said parents were supposed to get lots of love to their kids; I never got that, so it makes me wonder if that's why I turned out the way I did.
I think I always remembered them as good parents because they kept me alive, and they didn't treat me particularly badly--but is not doing anything bad inherently good? If I just had a normal childhood, with normal friends, with a normal life, would I have been happy?
What ifs are fun, but rarely realistic. What if you had to choose between one billion dollars or the life of a person you've never met? What if you could save the person you love, but you had to curse them with great pain for the rest of their life?
What if you were watching a man be stabbed by a trillion needles, pumped full of chemicals meant to enhance their pain, experiencing deep-rooted trauma over and over, as their pain tolerance never increase, as every bit of pain feel just as bad if not worse than the last?
And what if leaving them in that state was the right thing to do?
It's not a pretty sight, I can hear him scream his lungs out as bits of flesh are scraped out and fed to him by mechanical arms. He is shackled with electric, barbed wires, and his struggle only makes it worse. His body is now nothing but a jerking mess that only follows the most basic of survival instincts--all of it useless here. The room is bleak compared to the outside--black, rusty walls made of metal with the martyr's suffering presented proudly in the center.
Finding this place wasn't hard, I just had to follow the flow of negative emotions, and after that I just had to bash in the surprisingly unguarded front door of an underground vault. Now that I've found him, the question is--what do I do with him?
From a purely utilitarian standpoint, it's technically better to leave him there--sure, it's unfair, but taking him out would throw the world into chaos; this is still just one's person suffering for the benefit of billions.
On the other hand, I hate it when people's agencies are taken away. I think stripping that away from someone makes them no better than a rock on the side of the road, our ability to choose is what makes us unique and alive.
But this man here has no agency, no control. Sure, he may or may not have chosen to take on that burden, but no matter what your past choices are, the consequence should never be to take away your ability to change your future--only death can do that, and at that point you're no longer really 'you'.
I take a step towards the abomination presented before me, it's quite a mess. Not only is his body torn apart in every conceivable way, his soul is no better--he quite literally takes all the mental burden of everyone on this planet, he is filled with every negative emotion under the sun, and if he was capable of doing anything other than screaming, I'm sure he'd kill himself over the immense self-hatred created by those feelings.
His soul loves it, of course.
Souls are actually quite cruel, because negative emotions are easier to trigger, a soul would rather make your life hell to feed on those feelings rather than going through the trouble of making you happy. Making someone miserable is a piece of cake, kill a few loved ones, destroy a thing they hold dear, add some pain on top of that, easy as pie--happiness though?
Everyone has a different definition of happiness, it's something you constantly have to work towards, and it never lasts forever. People are naturally inclined towards negativity because it's what makes us survive, we pay more attention to what's wrong because it's what needs fixing. It's a lot easier to just make your host wallow in misery and never improve, blaming the world and themselves for everything and never doing anything about it.
Of course, just like a soul needs negative emotion, they also benefit from positive ones, so I can't say it's particularly healthy for his soul to only gorge itself on pain and suffering.
Hotel looks in horror at the man, his fists are clenched as tears start welling up in their eyes.
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Right, Hotel isn't really used to this. Even though they took a quick trip through my memories, seeing intense suffering in person is pretty disturbing if you're not used to it. I turn Hotel around so they face away from the martyr, and I pat them on the shoulder. They don't need to see this, no one should have to.
"I don't think we should free him," Hotel says. "It will make a lot of people unhappy."
Hotel isn't wrong, releasing this much unhappiness is bound to create a lot of chaos, but I'm sure they'll manage. You know why? Because no one deserves to suffer forever like this, and no one deserves eternal happiness. If everyone's already happy then there's no reason to improve or change, we're simply happy to let ourselves stagnate forever.
I approach the control panel in charge of the martyr's suffering. It is not guarded, because it seems no one on this planet would ever want to stop this, or maybe it already happened and whoever releases the old martyr becomes the new one--who knows?
I press a few buttons at random, and it only augments the degree of torture the martyr is going through. Maybe I should just blow the whole thing up, wait, wouldn't that kill him? Mhh, I'm not sure if I can just use any healing skill here...
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," a strangely soothing voice says. "But of course, I doubt you'll listen to me."
I turn to the voice, a woman leans back against a wall, she's frowning--something rather uncharacteristic of the people in this universe here.
"Why not? If someone didn't want me to release him, then maybe they should've put a few guards there."
She glares. "Who would need guards in a utopia? Besides, we both know no mortal would've been able to stop you."
Hotel hides behind me, clear fear in their eyes. I'm glad Hotel is getting so expressive, they certainly learned faster than me.
"I tolerated your presence for long enough. It is clear you are an agent of evil and chaos, and I must ask you to leave," The woman's voice cracks.
I smirk. "Or what?"
"Or I'll be forced to remove you permanently from this plane," she lies.
"I'm sure you're very, very strong, soooo much stronger than me but..." I point at the martyr. "A fight between the two of us would create a lot more chaos than just releasing that man, would it not? I mean, so much damage that you might have to start from scratch, and that's a loooot of work."
"Y-you...!" She grits her teeth, her eyes darting between me and the martyr. "You have no idea what that would- What do you want? I can give you anything just don't-"
I press the green button on the control panel. "Oops, was that the release button? Those things really need labels."
The woman's breathing gets heavier, her eyes widen as she sees the machinery retract from the martyr. I can see invisible strings forming themselves around the martyr, but I quickly cut them. "Really? Soul shackles? Cutting souls is my specialty, you know?"
She points at me accusingly. "I warned you, he was locked up here for a reason! Y-you know what? If you're so strong, then he's YOUR problem now!" The woman's shape distort and evaporate in a puff of blue smoke. The smoke expands and cover each and every wall until every surface is a light shade of blue.
Concentrated soul matter? Mhh, that might be hard to cut through, even for me.
The martyr falls limp on the ground, Hotel quickly rushes to his side, checking for any injuries--which he has a lot of. Actually, now that I take a better look at him...was his soul always this big? That's... you know, I often hide the actual size of my soul, but even then, perceptive people might still notice, so I'm not entirely sure how he managed to hide this much while he was contained.
...
It's getting bigger?
The martyr stands up, as if pulled up by an invisible string.
He opens his eyes wide, and his head snaps in my direction.
"It's been so long," he whispers. "It's been so long since I last ate." His voice is unnatural, and his mouth isn't moving. The body isn't in control, it's the soul speaking for him.
And it's a very hungry soul.
I knock on the blue walls a couple of times, but it makes no sound. If my guess is right, we've been trapped in a dimension far away from the original universe, so no matter what happens in here, it won't affect anything outside it.
Good.
I open the UM.
CURRENT MODE : REALITY KILLER
STAT MEASUREMENT : PERCENT STR: 10%
END: 30%
INT: 0.5%
CHA: 0.00000000000000000000000000000005%
PER: 100%
SPEED: 5%