I glance over at the raggedy men with some curiosity. After all of what happened, even though they attacked us unprovoked, Alice had used their own rope to tie them together, and now they were walking in a straight line, trying not to look at me.

[Why didn't we just kill them?]

Joule sounds interested too. [I think it's a human concept, a sort of 'honorable' thing to do. Something about unarmed combat.]

I'm not sure how to deal with the information. On one side, they attacked us first and should have figured out how powerful we were beforehand. It was their fault that they didn't know better than to run in headfirst, unless they thought just numbers would be enough. As an ant, I can empathize with the concept of quantity over quality, but in this case, it was a bit one-sided.

On the other side, they really do look miserable.

[Alice? What are you planning on doing with the humans?]

The cat-human looks at me with a strange expression, almost as if she's still mad at me. "We're going to take them with us to Xylphys and turn them in there. They should be taken care of there."

[Hmmm... Why don't we just leave them here?]

Baby cuts in as her ears lie flat on the back of her head. "Because that's not the right thing to do."

That's a straightforward answer, one I can get behind. [All right.]

We walk in silence for a few moments. I'm starting to miss the forest. It was a lot less complicated.

Dylan speaks up first. "Do you know what the word 'morals' means?"

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

[No. What is it?]

He looks at me as though he's trying to save me, which is ridiculous. I'm several times more powerful than he is. "Morals are a feeling, a concept that people use. Sometimes, the most advantageous or most efficient thing to do isn't always the right thing to do. Does that make sense?"

[Not really. Efficiency should always take priority, right?]

Baby starts talking slowly as if he gets what the skinny human is saying. "Take right now for an example. It really would be more efficient for us to leave the bandits behind, but it would be the moral thing to do to bring them to Xylphys to face the justice of the court."

[Are morals necessary?]

Alice cuts in, her ears still pinned backward. She sounds as though she's trying to avoid hissing. "Extremely. Morals are what separate good people from bad people, like these guys. They're bad guys because they tried to take advantage of us, but if we killed them in cold blood, we wouldn't be much better, any more than if we did it just for experience or skill levels."

[Morals are confusing. I heard a story about Noah and something about 'demons'. How do morals relate to that?]

The humans are silent for a moment, and it takes me a moment to realize that they're staring at me. Dylan is the first to start talking again, to no one's surprise. "Honestly? It's hard to say. That happened so long ago that we don't know much about the demons. They could have been the most moral species on the planet, but given that they're the only race Noah's ever outright destroyed, I don't think it's likely."

Baby agrees with him. "If they're called demons, I don't think they were exactly the most upstanding people on the planet, but Noah still obliterated the whole continent. It should have hypothetically been possible to find at least one of them that could be good."

Alice's eyes narrow. "It doesn't matter, in the end. The reason everyone remembers that story isn't because the demons were or weren't good people, everyone remembers it because he destroyed a major continent in one hit."

There's another awkward silence before Dylan speaks. "Null, how powerful is Noah?"

[I honestly don't know. I know he has some power over time, and he can lift things without touching them. His sister can apparently control time completely, because different Noahs kept showing up. I can't really tell you what was happening in detail, because I passed out from...]

They're staring at me slack-jawed.

[What is it?]

"Noah has siblings?"