Netori: Stealing The Hero's Party!

Chapter 764: A Peculiar Day

On her way back from the forest, Morgan told Mono what little he remembered of his world. Being in a crazed state long before he came here, names blurred together, and the landmarks felt like a distant mirage. Even so, the people, the terrain, as well as the culture of the wild lands, had been so ingrained in him that not even insanity could take those memories away. And so he told her everything he knew of the west, along with his misdeeds before ending up in this world.

"A world without magic, that sounds...kinda strange, yet interesting." She remembered uttering those words to him as her feet carried her through the corrupted forest once more. Wandering ahead of the army, Mono was looking for any signs of the killer.

’You better keep your promise...’ She thought to herself and kept exploring further and further ahead.

Fighting the worst of the horrors herself, utterly unaffected by their mental games thanks to her non-humanoid form, she waltzed through them easily, and given her versatility and Aperion’s constant learning, she defeated them by turning their own twisted abilities against them. Some she even captured in a subsection of her iron core to research later on.

’I thought these would be harder to deal with.’ Shooting pure unfiltered mana through her arm turned canon, all it took was one shot per horror, and even when she was being surrounded, the iron tentacles, as well as the kaleidoscope and aegis protocols, kept reflecting the damage and stealing the horror’s abilities.

At one point, it got so automated in her head that instead of focusing on the task at hand, she found herself thinking back to her last conversation with Morgan.

"I killed so many of them, I thought I was killing the people who raped my daughter..."

"Is that all you did? Or that’s all your mind is willing to accept?"

"What do you mean?"

"You said it yourself, you were a monster who acted on instinct. So, I’m gonna ask you again–one monster to another. Is killing them all you did, or were you driven by instincts other than violence, and if so, did you act on them? Because if you did, then maybe..."

"I deserve to die as did those who did those horrible things to her."

"Exactly."

The one man who’d brought her news from what used to be her ancestor’s home world turned out to be a monster. A monster not unlike herself–in a way at least, for there was a time when she’d done horrible things to others just because they wore a different skin. Perhaps if she had mortal flesh with the same cravings, she would’ve committed the same crimes as the man–and although she doubted that possibility, the rest of her past actions...felt just as unlikely for her to have done now.

A path not taken, who knows where it leads?

"I would’ve been killed by Raven and his group." She said to herself, not shying away from a dose of reality.

She was strong, stronger than most people and was on a constant path to evolution, but even she knew that her arrogance would’ve gotten her killed. Even now, getting careless, one of the horrors had managed to pull her into one of its mind games. Blankly walking in a circle with her shoulders dropped and her eyes all droopy, Mono continued to contemplate her own past.

Through the lens of scrutiny and hatred, she scorned her own image reflected in the mirror.

’Hideous.’ She thought, staring at the image of her former self. A young woman with promise, a woman sold and raised by another monster hiding in a human shell. ’No wonder you turned out this way. Grumpy and with a terrible fashion sense?’

Squinting her eyebrows at the latter part, Mono snapped out of the illusion the very next second. The horror had tried to impose onto her self-doubt. But what it failed to realize is that there was one thing that Mono knew for sure about herself.

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Lifting her head, she stared right at a patch of bark with a slimy ooze stuck under a branch. "You don’t even wear clothes, what the hell do you know about fashion!"

Moving just a little, the horror tried to get behind the tree trunk; however, the slightest movement activated Mono’s reflex actions and shot the horror clean off the tree. Burning half of its body with accelerated fumes of pure mana, she watched it fall on the ground and slowly burn away with a pretty blue flame.

"I’ll use that shade for my next model just to prove you wrong, you moron..." And with that, she was ready to head back and regroup with the army. Whether Morgan was prepared to do what he had to or not, her wandering aimlessly in this mess wasn’t going to help. Thus, leaving it on him to repent for his crime on his own, she began walking towards the smoke and the ruckus being made by the approaching army.

As for the deal between her and Morgan, it was quite simple. A chance at redemption, a chance to prove that he wasn’t a puppet to that gremlin riding on his shoulder. But how exactly? What could he do? He had a plan, and so did Mono, but for it to become reality, the army had to reach the nest first.

Until then, the only thing he could do was hide with his revolver gripped tight in his hand. And that one engraved bullet punched into the chamber. The bullet that would take his life but save the blood of even one innocent person from falling on this corrupted land.

In silence, he waits for his chances, spinning the chambers and putting the gun to his head and pulling the trigger to test his luck. Not once did he hit anything, for fate had other plans, and that bullet was never meant for him, but to cleanse the sins of his past.