'"Always remain rational, Jörmungandr. If you ever get swept away by your emotions needlessly... well, we all know what will happen then, right?"'
Staring down at a half eaten corpse, Jörmungandr blankly recalled Hel's parting words... and oddly enough, he found it difficult to care.
No, he didn't care, period.
About anything, anyone, even the little children who anxiously called his name, gasping with horror and stumbling away from the rotting remains as their Patron silently stood over the body, motionless.
It was odd—he'd thought he'd be overcome with emotion, broken to pieces and this foreign ache in his chest ripped to shreds; he'd though he'd have collapsed, emotions screaming and boiling through his veins while he hollered into the void.
He'd thought he'd suffer.
But no, he felt nothing, and it was infinitely worse, for in his apathy he could think clearly, see clearly; no tears clogged his vision, so nothing hid the offensive sight of a girl warmer than the sun turned stone cold, and a white aster in bloom.
It was only when he saw the blooming aster that he began to tremble slightly, the emotions finally bubbling to the surface of his sudden calm, disrupting him.
Instinctively, he crouched, his hand delicately touching the petals, and a sudden intake of breath came to him, a longing to see her alive and smiling overwhelming him. A quiet recording of her life ran through his mind, and he felt the ache in his chest burn as he saw her grow up.
A father who hated her, a dead mother the cause; a small girl curled up in an attic, desperate to hide from his screams of hatred; pain and scars blooming a rainbow of bruises down pale skin; quiet tears and pleas that were never answered properly.
And then... there was warmth.
A kindly older woman who smiled at her; the gentle cradle and croon of a foreign language chasing the nightmares away; a loving and concerned touch that always helped her tears and pains.
Of course, even with the kind woman, called "Grandmother", there was still sorrow.
Children laughing at a soaked form; excuses that hastily tumbled from trembling lips and a stuffy throat, in hopes to not cause trouble; new bruises, new pains, new bullies; words that were harsh in their naivety and truth, striking her heart and bringing her to tears.
A broken leg and arm from being pushed out a window.
While Jörmungandr contemplated the murder of these insipid children, Asta blamed herself for causing trouble, though this horrible incident became her salvation in the end.
A change in schools and environments; a peaceful and loving home; a terrible anxiety when forced to be around others; the comfort of home; graduation; college; placing a VR headset after saying an "I love you" and "Thank you" to Grandmother.
And then, in what could only be described as a cycle, the terror began again. The memories became clearer, sharper, stained with terror and trauma as they only got worse and worse.
A hill of midnight grass; a fall; blood on her hands; aching lungs and legs; tremors and vomit and tears, disgust for herself bubbling up from the bottom of her heart; starvation.
Then, a memory so vivid it took his breath away came to mind.
———
It had been raining, and Asta was weakened. She had not left the small cave since she'd harmed the man, as if her death by starvation was an atonement for her sin of hurting another.
'But... Grandmother... she's... waiting for me, right? Yeah... she loves me... and she'll blame herself... I need to... survive... find a way out of here... then... I'll be able to... be with her again...'
"Get... up," she'd weakly whispered, her thinner limbs and spinning head signs that she'd only had water to drink for the last two weeks, a trembling biting her body as cold wind blew right through her.
"Get... up..."
Panting softly, she slipped through the opening, and outside; it was wet from the rainfall, but she needed food and drink—she ran out of the water provided by the system, and she had never received any food from it. Even if she did, she wouldn't have been in the right mind to eat anything.
No one had been seen outside her shelter, so she'd felt relatively sure she'd be safe.
How unreasonable a thought that was during a rigged death game.
The man had been skinny, but fast, and armed with a knife. Asta had been tackled by the man after walking a few steps from her shelter, and like she had from a few days ago, she had shoved a rock she'd found into the guys eye after spitting in it.
It seemed she had a talent for instantaneous, double-combo ocular trauma, but while she went haywire from trying to escape, the man, instead of letting go, only began to scream and hit her, tears coming from his other eye.
"SHUT UP! I NEED THE EXP! If I can get the EXP... I'll get food! So please, please die!"
"Let me go! Let me go!"
He'd raised his arm to stab her, tears falling from his eye as he did not wish to kill another human being, but he needed to survive—only then could he return home.
He was so desperate, he'd never guessed that his painstaking conviction was his delusion; in this game where lives were at stake, a consolation prize such as "going home" by simply surviving was out of the question.
The System wasn't so kind as to do that for mere mortals.
But, neither the man nor Asta knew this, so they simply fought for survival, tussling in the dirt in a distressed frenzy, in a meager attempt to live one other day, and to reunite with those of value to them.
Eventually, strengthened by an unknown force, Asta had managed to kick him away, hitting him in the crotch and elbowing him in the chin fiercely. He groaned, and anguish filled his trembling brown eyes at the unspoken yet universally acknowledged ending to his useless tale.
He would never be remembered, nor would he even live on in memory—he'd simply disappear into obscurity and the void, and at the hands of a young girl at that.
However, empathy in this situation was something the broken and frenzied Asta could not be bothered to allow. Her survival instinct was wailing, and though her heart rebelled, her body did not hesitate to initiate the final blows.
While he stumbled and fell from the blows, she snatched the knife away, and with a shockingly miniscule amount of hesitation, thrust the blade into his throat; blood splattered her pale and weak face, and with the adrenaline and power within her fading, she collapsed next to the slowly bleeding out man, her breath a mist in the freezing rain.
The blood and the mud mixed, staining her cheek as the man's eyes went black and blank, and his body slowly stopped twitching.
She could not tell whether it was tears or rain that covered her and the mans faces, but as the *Briing of the system greeted her, and the rejuvenation of a level up hit her, a single thought came to mind:
'Ah... Am I no... longer human, anymore...?'
Was it tears or rain that covered her and the mans face?
To both, she knew the answer.
———
The last moments of her wretched hopelessness and isolation ran through Jörmungandr's mind, and then the emotions he'd expected arrived.
For the first time in his life, tears fell from the serpents eyes, and grief and hatred towards the very entirety of existence consumed his mind.
These terrible yet inexplicable emotions shook all nine of the servers, and each God and Monster who'd thought this a mere distraction stumbled, tremors of fear panging against their hearts and minds as an instinct never known to them was born:
There was a monster among monsters, and he was awakened in a most brutal manner.
The worlds that were once their playgrounds became dog eat dog realities within the space of a second due to the System's miscellaneous mistake, and it was only then did the System realize the calamity she'd brought forth due to a misplaced delusion of superiority.
The baleful yellow eyes that glowed while staring at her were a testament of this.
How fitting it was, that when the monster attacked due to the System's order, Jörmungandr quietly, with utmost savagery, responded in kind.