The arrival of the guards sparked total chaos. People screamed over one another, testimonies overlapping. My enhanced perception did wonders at allowing me to tell individual voices apart. A few were trying to take the bald man’s side, citing my annoying provocations as a justification for his actions, but the majority seemed to have only noticed the commotion after the man had started beating me.

As the three guards gradually shifted their attention and hostility at the kidnapper, the man turned around and tried to escape. For a moment, I was worried that he would manage to get away, but my worry was misplaced.

With the preternatural velocity of a [Leap] or a skill similar to it, one of the guards flew at the man, grabbed him by his left arm, spun him around, slamming the giant figure’s body into a wall before dropping him to the ground and locking both of the man’s arms behind his back, which he proceeded to swiftly tie together with a rope he pulled out of his inventory.

Jesus Christ… I marveled. These guards don’t fuck around, do they?

An unknown figure suddenly invaded my view. It was a woman—a teenage girl on the older side, maybe 18 or 19, as far as I could tell—who proceeded to place a hand on my chest. Her hair was a shade of gold, glimmering and shining as sunlight peered through her locks. Her face was clear. Most people here had scarred faces littered with pockmarks, but her skin was free of such blemishes.

Her palm lit up with a soothing light, and a strange energy invaded my body. I could tell that it was trying to heal me, but… there wasn’t any real damage to undo. Thankfully, it didn’t hurt me, but her actions were about as pleasant as waking up in the streets in the middle of the night to discover someone taking a piss on my head. While I was immune to holy magic, “good energy” was still pretty much poison to me.

I did my best to tolerate it, and soon enough, my [Shapeshifting] kicked in. The wound slowly reversed itself, mimicking the process of receiving a heal. Thankfully, the skill did all the work, and it didn’t require me to know what being healed looked or felt like.

She heaved a sigh of relief as she leaned back. “Are you okay?” she asked me.

I nodded.

She was wearing ordinary civilian clothing, likely meaning that she wasn’t an official. In either case, I didn’t really care about her. My attention shifted back to the scene of the man being dragged away by two guards. The third guard was hearing someone out.

The person giving the testimony pointed at me and gestured, imitating my provocations, and the guard looked at me angrily.

Looks like I’m not avoiding trouble after all.

***

I was dragged away to the guard post. It was a simple, unadorned building made of pure stone. And I did mean pure—the walls were as if they had been cast in concrete, but the texture was that of polished rock.

The guard and I walked into the entrance hallway. Immediately, I heard angry shouting coming from a room on the other side, where the other two officers were interrogating the bald man.

Before I could catch any details, the angry guard dragged me into a small room, forcefully seating me down on a wooden chair. “Don’t you dare move, kid!” he warned me. “I have to go swap shifts, so someone else will come to talk to you.” And with that, he turned around, slamming the metal doors shut and locking them.

The room was small and very dungeon-ey. There was a wooden table with two chairs, one on each side, and a small, barred window in the upper corner of the wall opposite where I was sitting.

The minutes passed, and I simply waited, contemplating what had happened.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

This was bad. This was seriously bad.

I wasn’t allowed to stay neutral when encountering evil. At first, I wondered what kind of logic applied here. Wasn’t staying neutral the literal definition of a [Neutral] act? Well, no. Not really. Not according to the blessing. Not always.

It would be a different story if it were a situation where I was powerless. I wasn't obligated to act if the evil was being perpetrated by an overwhelmingly mighty force that I stood no chance against. Thank fuck. But, unforunately, if I could, within reason, take care of the evil entity, letting them go wasn’t a choice.

It was a case of enabling evil through inaction.

If I wanted to ignore an evildoer, I needed one of two things: I had to be powerless to stop them or have an excellent reason not to act.

Hiding my freaky powerset wasn’t a good justification for inaction. My thought process was that if I revealed what I could do, it could result in a thorough examination of who I was. Then, when whoever tried investigating me realized that I came out of thin air, it was possible they would try to imprison me or torture me, believing that I was a spy. If that happened, it was possible that they could figure out that I was a devilich, and if that happened—

Yeah. But perhaps I was wrong to think this way. Maybe people would hail me as a hero or even the chosen one.

Perhaps playing that role wouldn’t be the worst choice. And, technically speaking, wasn’t I exactly that? I mean, I was being literally forced to root out evil. I didn’t even have a choice not to do it.

While that would perhaps be a great disguise, I was no hero.

I was a devilich.

The thought of going around and saving people like some sort of saint was disgusting on a fundamental level. It disturbed me just how repulsed I was by the idea of just being good and doing good things.

Before my depressing train of thought could spiral too far out of control, I heard the sound of a key turning a lock. The metal doors swung open, and a guard walked inside. His steps halted as he looked at me, and a nervous smile flashed on my face as I recognized him.

It was the dude who welcomed me to this town not even two hours ago.

He crossed his arms and frowned. “Seriously?” he asked. “It took you two hours to get yourself into trouble?”

I shrugged. “I wasn’t the one who started it.”

“That’s not what I heard,” he said, closing the door while shaking his head. He walked over to the other chair and sat down. He unlocked a drawer and pulled a quill and parchment, dipping the writing tool into ink as he looked up at me. “Let me hear it—from the start, don’t omit any details or lie to me.”

For a fraction of a moment, the thought that lying would count as a sin passed through my mind, and I feared having to spill my entire story to the man, but my fears were thankfully unfounded. Apparently, lying wasn’t a sin at all. Well, it was if one tried committing harm with a lie.

I told the man a story with many [REDACTED] details, trying to sound as honest and naive as possible.

The guard stared at me in pure disbelief, then closed his eyes, slowly breathed out, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Young man… You’re…” He looked up, swinging his arm in a confused gesture as he scowled at me. “What were you thinking?” he asked, angrily scratching the back of his head.

“What!?” I yelled defensively. “Was I supposed to simply take it when he shoved me like that?”

“Are you seriously trying to argue here?” the man shouted. “You nearly got yourself killed!”

I scoffed, turning around like a petulant child.

“What about the rock?” the man asked me.

“What rock?” I asked innocently.

“The one you threw?” the man said, frowning. He stared at me for a long moment, scrutinizing my facial expression for any sign of a lie. He found none. “Never mind,” he said, getting off the chair. “You get 5 hours in the cell to cool off.”

“What did I do to deserve that!?” I asked.

“You have 5 hours to think about it.” He grasped me by the arm and dragged me to a small cell, where he proceeded to shove me in and lock the door behind me.

I glared at him through the barred hole for half a second, and when he walked away, I dropped the facade.

I hoped my act would spare me from punishment, but no such luck. Still, 5 hours was way better than I expected. By all means, I was the one who attacked Bruno first, so it wouldn’t have been surprising if I had received harsher punishment.

Now that I had 5 hours at my disposal, I would use them to consult my blessing.

Very quickly, one thing became crystal clear.

Now that I knew of the kidnapper ring, I wasn’t allowed to leave this town until I did something about them.