I didn’t have many redeeming qualities when I lived on Earth, but I did have some. One was that I was among the rare few people who truly enjoyed doing chores—physical ones, at least.

It was for a simple reason—they didn’t require much thought. Thus, while they kept my body occupied, my mind was free to ponder.

I walked out into Martin’s backyard. It wasn’t huge, but it was certainly spacious. Surrounded by roughly two-meter-tall walls on all sides, a 10-by-10 meter space of primarily empty land with some weeds growing along the edges was located behind the guard’s house. There was a small shed and a pile of half-processed wood, with four half-logs that hadn’t yet been sawed into smaller partitions and a small pile of wooden pieces that needed to be split.

As for how thin they needed to be split, I consulted the pile that was already chopped.

There was a thick, large stump beside the pile of wood, and without much thinking, I picked up the hefty axe, positioned the piece I was going to chop, and went at it.

Despite holding back quite considerably, I had no trouble chopping the wood.

Past the walls were, as far as I could tell, other backyards, so while I didn’t do it sluggishly, I went slow and steady enough that nobody would get curious at the sound of rapid-fire wood-chopping.

Now, then, it was time to start thinking.

The first I needed was information. I would do my best to find a library or whatever other source of knowledge this town could offer, but until then, I only had one way to learn new things. I consulted my blessing.

As far as the knowledge it could give me was concerned, its purview seemed to be in the area of good and evil. But if I asked the right questions, I could learn many things tangential to these concepts.

The act of “asking the blessing questions” was… strange. I directed raw thoughts and curiosities, and in return, information was beamed straight into my mind, directly providing me with the understanding I sought. The more I used it, the more I realized how incredible it was. If a blessing like this was directed at providing someone the information on, let’s say, swordsmanship, it would be easy enough to rapidly grow in proficiency.

In fact, I speculated that that might very well be the primary function of blessings and that my version had simply been reappropriated to teach me how not to be evil instead.

The way good and evil worked in this world mostly made sense, but it was a bit confusing sometimes. Eventually, I got an idea—why not simply ask the blessing to tell me the difference between good and evil? Rather than trying to piece it together from small snippets of understanding, I asked for the entire course.

Immediately, a flood of comprehension washed over me, enough to make me freeze for several minutes as my mind sifted through the information.

Suddenly, a lot of things were made clear.

I seemed to have had a fundamental misunderstanding about this world’s morality. In hindsight, it should have been obvious. I was an evil entity, yet my alignment was good. That only made sense in one case—there were two different types of both good and evil.

The first was directly tied to energy. In essence, good and evil energy was generated by either committing good or evil deeds. In turn, their presence skewed the environment, people, items, and magic itself into something that would better serve to propagate the ultimate goal of heaven—the pinnacle of good, and hell—the depth of evil.

This was the other type, which could very well be called the core of morality of this entire world. It was separated by a straightforward premise—evil sought to destroy souls while good sought to protect them.

Truly evil creatures couldn’t be forgiven. And this wasn’t just because the world was strict like that. No, there was a good reason for this. Those who were evil-aligned were thus because they had, either directly or indirectly, consciously contributed to the destruction of another soul.

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This was what branded them with the [Evil] tag forever.

From what I could tell, I was branded with my initial evil alignment by what appeared to be a unique anomaly. Thus, when I was brought to judgment before heaven, it spotted this and fixed the error by manually readjusting my alignment. I had never consciously committed an act of true evil; thus, my brand wasn’t valid.

Technically, I had destroyed a soul when I was brought to this world. I had annihilated many in the demonic ritual that transformed me into a devilich. But I had never held any intent to do this. It wasn’t my fault; it was forced on me. Intent, the conscious decision to aid the goal of evil, was the key to committing an unforgivable [Sin].

This led to another revelation. I now knew the exact reason why I was forced to deal with the kidnappings—it was all because of the stupid evil energy. Without realizing it, with my inaction, I had been actively trying to spread harm; thus, had I gone through with it, it would have generated evil energy within my body.

Every sin, even the tiniest, contributed to the destruction of souls. Most people were neutral and not straight-up evil because the pettier sins weren’t committed with the intent to directly aid hell.

Take petty theft, for example. It was an act that spawned anger and suffering, a desire for revenge, and bitterness. Destructive emotions created the urge to hurt others, generating evil energy within people. This didn’t make people evil by default, but it opened them up to doing worse and worse things, gradually leading them down a slippery slope.

The sin itself wasn’t committed because the perpetrator was trying to destroy a soul—it was usually out of desperation or, in some cases, greed. But evil spread like a virus. Resentment and desperation proliferated, spreading evil energy and, eventually, accumulating enough for someone to step down an unforgivable path.

For me, things were slightly different. My body held so much evil energy that my urge to inflict pain directly upon souls was at the level of a physical need. After trapping Bruno’s soul within the soul prison, I was “sated,” so to speak, so I could think clearly now.

My problem was that, effectively, I was at the very bottom of this slippery slope, hanging on by a thread just strong enough to stop me from falling into the abyss. If I committed any sins, I was screwed.

Now that I saw things more clearly, I discovered something surprising. All I really needed to do to set myself free was change my intent. I had to consciously elect a different reason to leave the town, and voila, I was free to go.

Except… there was one teeny, tiny little problem.

The main reason I landed myself in this situation was that I had been… to put it bluntly… down bad. I had been starving.

The Dark Goddess had mentioned these… urges. However, they weren’t just an inclination; for a devilich, they were a physical need. I needed to bring suffering to enlightened individuals. I craved their torment, their despair.

If I escaped into the forest, deep, far from any enlightened beings, how long would I last? Would my desires grow worse and worse until I entirely lost myself, transforming into little more than a raving beast?

According to the blessing, the concepts of evil and good only pertained to the “enlightened races,” or, to put it more simply, creatures with true souls.

Monsters, plants, and animals had spirits, which were kind of like souls but not really. They were inferior, lesser constructs. I had used [Resurrect] on a wolf once, and I keenly remembered the difference between using it on a wild animal versus trying it out on Bruno. It was vastly different.

I had absolutely no interest in spirits. I couldn’t even call them a snack. In fact, I couldn’t even trap them within the soul prison. Evil spirits weren’t like evil souls. They could be forgiven, or rather, purified of malevolent energy. Spirits belonged to creatures that weren’t conscious of concepts of good and evil. Thus, they could never commit an unforgivable sin.

Awareness of good and evil was where the whole “enlightened” part came in.

So yeah. Technically, nothing was truly stopping me from leaving the town. But the longer I went without sating my urges, the worse they would get. At the moment, I was pretty lucid. I was present. But I already felt a light frustration gnawing at the back of my mind.

Currently, it was comparable to not having had my morning coffee. But it would get worse. And worse.

Unless I got more.

And wouldn’t you know it, there just happened to be a convenient ring of evildoers waiting to be devoured.

I was distracted by the sound of the doors opening inside Martin’s house. For a long moment, I thought someone was trying to break into the house.

But then I heard Martin’s voice. “Please wait here,” he told someone, “I’m going to talk to him first.”

The next moment, he opened the door to the backyard, revealing several guards standing behind him.