Reasons of Evil

by Dennis Jode

  In the distance, countless monsters could be seen, both in the air and on the land. They all had the same bloodthirsty look, which reminded Grimmere of how the people looked when they murdered the king.

  He started feeling sick once again, but he suppressed it, as he was about to fight another battle.

  He waved his hand and started choosing a spell.

  “I’ve never used this before, since this takes a while to cast, but this should do it.” he mumbled to himself.

  As soon as he chose the spell, he charged towards the sea of monsters.

  CHAPTER 4

  The feeling of his body preparing to cast a large-scale spell while he was fighting with his sword felt quite surreal.

  Monsters surrounded him. He continued swinging his sword, bringing down one monster at a time. He knew that he only had to buy time until the spell he chose would finish channeling, which was in about ten more minutes.

  He was struggling to keep his ground, since, unlike humans, there were multiple types of monsters, all of different species. Some were big, some were small. Some of them had the ability to fly. There were also those that could do some dangerous things, such as throw acid spit or inflict poison.

  Normally, Grimmere would have no trouble fighting these monsters in a smaller group since he wouldn’t have to resort to using a large-scale spell, but since there were too many, he had to use a large scale spell, and he can’t cast other spells while channeling one.

  ‘Humans are definitely easier opponents’, Grimmere thought to himself as the monsters’ attacks came from all angles. He could not dodge every attack without the help of spells, and so, he moved in a way that mitigated the damage that he takes.Whenever he was about to receive a blow or a cut, he would move slightly backwards to decrease the damage.

  It didn’t take long for his body to feel worn out. After all, even though he only received little bits of damage, it still accumulated over time. His body was full of cuts and bruises. He didn’t know whether he was poisoned or not, but his body felt fine, so it probably wasn’t.

  He was quickly running out of stamina. He couldn’t use the spell that refreshes his fatigue, so he was slowly being backed into a corner, both physically and mentally.

  He could still feel his body channeling the spell he chose earlier, and it was close to completion.

  As the damage that accumulated started to grow more and more, he started to fight recklessly. He didn’t have enough stamina to plan out his next move, and he decided to leave it all to his instincts.

  He continued swinging his sword. The sword slowly started losing durability. Cracks appeared all over the blade, and its sharp edge had slowly turned blunt.

  The wounds he received turned from small cuts to big ones. He even used his other hand to stop a flying monster’s stinger from stabbing his torso, which resulted in a large, gaping hole in his hand.

  He was running out of time, but the spell was close to completion. If he could just survive the next few seconds, he could make it.

  As he used the last of his strength to deflect an attack from one of the monsters, he lost his balance and fell to the ground.

  At that moment, what he recalled the death of the King of Gallohall. The situation he was in was oddly similar. But unlike the king, he had power.

  A monster had impaled him with its horn, making a hole in his stomach. After receiving so much damage, he couldn’t even feel the pain anymore, and so he still swung his sword towards the monster that impaled him, but the sword had lost all of its sharpness and the swing simply pushed the monster back instead of slicing straight through him.

  Once again he fell to the ground. He could see a pool of blood coming out from his body. His vision turned blurry.

  But he had succeeded in buying time.

  A familiar feeling flowed through his body.

  The spell he chose was about to be released.

  Black smoke started moving up from the ground beneath the army of monsters. As the smoke touched the monsters, their bodies started decaying immediately. As the black smoke enveloped the entire area, the entire army of monsters, even the ones on the sky, fell to the ground, completely lifeless.

  Grimmere looked at the scene unfold before him. Even though the monsters were wiped out, the black smoke still hasn’t dissipated. He forced his hand to move and open the Arcane Spellbook to choose a spell that could heal him.

  The black smoke slowly started to spread, and the area around Grimmere slowly turned dark.

  He needed to control the spell, but he didn’t have the strength to do so.

  The black smoke started touching Grimmere’s body. He felt like he was burning alive, but he was still able to choose a healing spell.

  At that moment, Grimmere’s body started regenerating. The wounds he had earlier slowly started to close. He planned to cancel the spell as soon as his wounds healed, but he didn’t expect the black smoke to spread so fast.

  As his body continued healing, the smoke continued eating away at his body. The pain he felt was excruciating. He couldn’t help but scream out of pain. As soon as the smoke continued eating away at his body, the healing magic he chose earlier continued to heal him, as it didn’t stop until the body was fully recovered.

  The vicious cycle of the black smoke ripping him apart and his body regenerating continued for many hours. The pain he felt completely stopped his brain and body to function. All he could do was scream in pain and suffer as he was continuously healed and eaten by the black smoke.

  All that he could see was darkness. And despite feeling the excruciating pain, his heart felt calm. It reminded him of the darkness found in ‘The End of the World’, where he found the book.

  He could hear multiple voices whispering.

  “This is where you belong.”

  “Nothing can hurt you here.”

  “This is the only place where you could find peace.”

  Hearing this, his mind fully accepted the darkness that enveloped him, and the excruciating pain he felt slowly numbed down.

  This continued for almost half a day.

  After that, the black smoke still remained in the area. The skin on his body no longer regenerated, and all that could be seen was red flesh.

  His face was no longer recognizable as well. The damage done to his face also stopped regenerating. His skull could clearly be seen. It was only covered by a thin layer of flesh.

  Grimmere stood in the middle of the area which was still covered by black smoke. The smoke which was eating away at him earlier seemed to be moving around his body.

  He waved his hand and tried to cast the same healing spell he used earlier, but nothing happened. He tried other healing spells as well, but his body remained the same, and so he gave up on trying to restore his body.

  The black smoke still ran rampant around the area. The trees that the black smoke enveloped all withered. The corpses of all the monsters seemed to have been fully eaten by the smoke as well.

  He tried to revoke the spell that summoned the black smoke, but what happened was completely out of his expectations.

  The black smoke came from the ground, so it should seep back to the ground when the spell was revoked, but instead of doing that, the black smoke started compressing and swirling around his body.

  The billows of smoke looked like a cloak while it covered his body. As he moved, the smoke moved with him. It felt as if it was part of his body.

  He looked around, wanting to see how the area looked after the smoke was gone. It looked just like a desolate wasteland.

  It seems like the Kingdom of Gallohall was not spared by the black smoke as well. The walls looked like they had aged considerably, as well as the buildings inside the walls.

  Grimmere went inside the kingdom and saw that the damage wasn’t limited to the kingdom’s gates. The smoke had spread all throughout the kingdom.

  There were no signs of life anywhere.

  Grimmere went into the castle, but he couldn’t find anyon
e.

  The smoke completely devoured the entire kingdom, along with its population.

  Strangely, he didn’t feel any regret. He had just wiped out an entire kingdom, including the innocent ones. Even the children didn’t get spared.

  The only thing he felt inside him was a strange, cold feeling. It made him feel relaxed, despite the heavy crime that he had just committed.

  “What… what happened to me…?” he asked himself.

  Silence filled the entire area. No one was there to answer him.

  As he continued walking, the only sound he could hear was his own footsteps. Even his thoughts remained silent.

  After a while, he had fully walked around the entire kingdom. There really were no survivors that remained.

  The kingdom wasn’t in ruins or anything. The place looked like all the people that lived in it simply left and never came back.

  All of the buildings were intact. No signs of conflict could be seen, except for the castle grounds. The kingdom became a ghost town.

  Grimmere knew that he was the cause of all this. When he looked at the black smoke swirling around his body, he thought he saw people’s faces.

  He closely examined the black smoke, and then he realized that it wasn’t just his imagination.

  “W-who are these people?”, he couldn’t help but say his thoughts out loud.

  The smoke formed thousands of different faces, all moving around as the black smoke swirled. He continued examining the faces, trying to think of who they belonged to.

  After closely examining the faces for a while, he finally saw one that he recognized.

  One of the knights that he threatened to let out the king’s crimes was etched in the smoke. His eyes were closed, and he had a peaceful expression on his face, just like all of the other faces.

  He continued looking for more faces that he could recognize, and the more he examined, the more he realized what the faces meant.

  All of them were the faces of the people who lived in Gallohall. The faces in the smoke were the people that were eaten by the black smoke.

  As soon as he realized this, he tried to disperse the black smoke.

  The smoke spread out, but showed no signs of disappearing. Instead, the faces that was etched on the smoke while it was swirling around Grimmere’s body floated in the air, slowly forming bodies from the surrounding black smoke.

  Moments after, the kingdom was filled with thousands of black, smoky figures. They were all the citizens of Gallohall.

  Grimmere still had a bit of black smoke covering his body. When he tried to make it disperse, nothing happened. It looked like it was a part of him.

  “I thought that spell only eats up things… I didn’t know it could keep what it eats.” Grimmere mumbled to himself.

  “We were created to serve you.”

  A voice came from one of the figures. Even though the figure’s face remained still, its voice continued coming from its closed mouth.

  “You are our king.”, the figure continued speaking as it knelt down.

  As if to follow the example of the figure who spoke, the other smoky figures started kneeling down towards Grimmere as well.

  The entire kingdom of Gallohall’s citizens all knelt down towards him, making him look like he was the new king.

  Grimmere felt conflicted. These were the people whose lives were taken by him, albeit accidentally. Now, they were all before him. He couldn’t feel any hostility coming from them.

  “Why do you serve me?”, Grimmere asked the figure who spoke.

  “We have found true peace when the darkness devoured us.”, it immediately responded.

  “Do all of you think the same?”, Grimmere continued asking.

  “Yes.”, it responded.

  “Are you all aware that I am the one who killed you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why are you all willing to serve me?”

  “Because the darkness told us to.”

  The figure’s face remained expressionless. Grimmere was confused.

  “What do you mean by the darkness?”, he curiously asked.

  The figure didn’t respond. Instead, it raised its hand and pointed towards Grimmere.

  He did not understand what the figure meant. He tried his best to think of what the figure meant by ‘darkness’, but he couldn’t come up with any answers.

  After thinking for a while, he felt tired.

  Without rest, he had raided Gallohall’s castle, killed many knights, and fought an army of monsters. Even though he waived most of the physical fatigue he felt with the use of a spell, but the mental fatigue finally caught up to him.

  As if the figures knew what he felt, they immediately started scrambling around the kingdom. They transported random things from the houses in the kingdom and started bringing it into the castle.

  One of the figures came up to him and bowed towards Grimmere.

  “My king, follow me.” it said as it started walking towards the castle.

  Grimmere followed the figure. Around him, the figures were arranging things inside the castle. There were a lot of cracks and bloodstains all over the interior of the castle, but the figures started cleaning the area. After a while, the castle interior became clean.

  The figure led him to the bedroom which used to be the king’s bedchamber. The furniture looked as if it was from a commoner’s household. More figures continued bringing random furniture inside the room, and it slowly got filled up.

  “Please rest.”, the figure said.

  “Thank you.”, Grimmere was grateful. He thought of staying in the outskirts of the kingdom again, but after seeing the room prepared for him, he felt the need to rest as soon as possible.

  As Grimmere got on the bed, the smoky figure made its way outside the room.

  “Wait.” Grimmere suddenly asked the figure to stop. It turned around and faced him.

  The room was silent. Grimmere expected a response from the black figure, but it remained silent. “What’s your name?”, Grimmere asked the figure.

  “I have no name.”, the figure responded.

  “Don’t you remember your name from when you were alive?”

  “The darkness requires us to forget our past in order to be at peace.”

  “Then how should I call you?”

  “When you need us, we will come.”

  The figure bowed and made its way outside the room. Grimmere thought about what the figure had just said.

  All of their memories were wiped clean. They were now living their lives serving

  Grimmere, even though they knew that he was the one who killed them.

  Despite being servants, they gave off the feeling that they were doing so out of their own will. He remembered something about the darkness giving them orders and making them feel at peace. Just what did they mean by the darkness?

  As these thoughts ran in Grimmere’s head, his eyes started feeling heavy. Moments later, he fell asleep.

  …

  “Quickly! We must make our way towards Gallohall!”

  A small army made its way towards Gallohall. They received news of the large group of monsters that were about to attack Gallohall, and so the neighboring kingdoms assembled a group to aid Gallohall. They all feared that if Gallohall fell, the monsters would continue its onslaught and move towards other kingdoms.

  The small army was hurriedly formed, and they were all from different kingdoms, so there were many internal conflicts, which slowed the journey down.

  They all knew they were about to engage in a fight where they could lose their lives, and it made them all feel at edge.

  When they saw the walls of Gallohall, what they saw was completely different from their expectations.

  Gallohall was supposed to be infested by monsters. The walls should have been damaged, or there should have been flying monsters around the area.

  Instead, what they saw was an undamaged wall. It looked like it had poor maintenance, but other than that, it didn’t s
eem to sustain any damage. It was as if an attack had never happened at all.

  “Scout the area around the kingdom. It could be a trap.”, a tall bearded man commanded a small group, which split up and started cautiously making its way around the kingdom walls.

  After a few hours, the search team had come back.

  “There is absolutely no signs of any attack whatsoever, but the place is completely silent.”, one of the knights reported.