"Continue this path… And you will see… You won't fear losing someone anymore," Rudeus said.
In his final moments, he realized something important, looking at Adam who cast away his fear to gain more power and surpassed his limits.
Adam walked toward Rudeus but then he stopped when Rudeus said these words as if he was giving him the time to speak.
"Fear to lose someone, huh…" Adam mumbled.
As Rudeus said, feeling fear was not always a bad thing, and more importantly, Adam would never be able to love someone if he didn't fear losing them.
After all, not even God could control people's feelings, so even if Adam became confident in everything he did, it didn't mean that the people he cared for wouldn't leave.
"In my life… The only time I felt like my life had meaning was when my wife and my daughter were still by my side. For them, I would have given my life… In the end, I couldn't even protect them… And here I am… I felt like I was manipulated, but I can't blame anyone," Rudeus continued.
If Rudeus didn't accept Existence's offer, he would have died. However, he was about to die again even after accepting the offer, he realized that his life was meaningless. He wasted his second chance, and in the end, he didn't even manage to see his wife and his daughter again.
"You are strong… But If you want to continue on this path, without the intention to throw away your strength and live a normal life, then cut off all of your ties with the people you love before regret it… This path only leads to loneliness that only those who are strong will understand… Cough!"
Rudeus talked as if he was giving Adam advice even though it was clearly not the right time for that. He was acting out of character again, making it seem like Adam was the villain who just killed a poor man who lost his wife and daughter and just wanted his family back.
Adam just stood there, looking down at Rudeus as he spoke these words. It was as if something was going on inside of his head, keeping him from blinking or opening his mouth.
'Fear to lose someone,' Adam thought.
It was the fear to lose Liu that pushed him to rush into the danger and fought against Rudeus, or so he told himself, but there was no guarantee that Liu would love him back even after he saved her. Thus, if she decided to treat Adam like she treated her friends, would he still accept such an outcome? If he didn't fear that Liu would reject him, could he say that he loved her, or was it, unconditional love? Adam was left confused.
In the end, a human without fear had already lost a part that made them a human so thinking like a human wouldn't answer their questions, and Rudeus was the perfect example of this.
Adam's condition was just temporary, but the feeling of not fearing anything was more addicting than any drug, and for Adam who experienced the effect of this unusual condition, trying to go back to his usual self would be like taking a step back, or so he thought.
"You had it rough, man. But no matter how much I think about it, I would never be able to live a peaceful life or protect someone important to me even with all of this power," Adam finally said something. "The problem is when you begin to doubt yourself, thinking that your choices are never good enough, these doubts will lead to failure, and failure leads to you doubting yourself even more. In the end, unless you can think about every possibility, every outcome, you would never be able to find the perfect answer. But then again, if you know the perfect answer to everything, and you never doubt yourself, and never fear anything, can we still say that we will live a happy life?" Adam said, as of he was talking to himself.
It was certainly not the right topic to discuss with a person who was about to die, but Adam began to feel like he underwent a radical change, and he was unable to fully explain what had changed about him.
"Cough!.... No one is born evil but if you are not lucky enough to die in peace, you will end up like me. Maybe it's even too late for you… All of these years,
I thought about it, but is the creation of a world without pain war suffering even possible without erasing people's desires and emotions? Even if monsters were to disappear, I never managed to imagine such a world…" Rudeus asked, as of he was trying to give his own point of view.
Still, Adam was acting as if he could do anything, because, although Liu was in a critical state, he was still taking his time talking to an enemy that he had just slain.
"Too bad that we didn't meet under different circumstances," Adam said, then moved next to Rudeus's upper body.
Thud!
Adam stabbed Rudeus's chest with his bare hand and then pulled out his heart who was still beating, and he did all of that without any hesitation.
His conditions might have been temporary, but it didn't mean that he would revert to normal after. With the corruption that stimulated his violent side and made him more cold-hearted, the probability of his character changing permanently was high, and there was no telling if it was a good or bad thing for himself and the people around him.
"Guh!" Blood spurted out from his mouth, and he smiled a bit as if he was finally freed.
"Don't end up… living a meaningless life…" These were his last words, and the man who was once known as a hero died.
Adam held Rudeus's beating heart in his hand and looked at it carefully.
The only way to retrieve a Tree fragment from a person was to kill them and retrieve the fragment from their body.
The heart is the power source for the whole body, so the tree fragment that fused with a person will crystallize inside of their heart which was also the source of their power which was their life force.
Adam crushed the heart with his hand and then a green glowing seed appeared from within, and as Adam did that, Rudeus's body turned into green particles, like what happened with Verte, which were absorbed by the seed, making it grow into a single tree branch.
*****
:::[Adam POV]:::
I felt a little bit sorry for the guy, but there was no one to blame for the choice that he made.
I knew that every action that I had undertaken came with consequences, but when I thought about what would have happened if I didn't do what I just did, I began to believe that there was actually no good decision at all. It was just about minimizing the damage, minimizing the bother that it might cause to other people, minimizing the time it would take for one action to bear fruits, minimizing everything… In the end, it was just about how to make my life easier, that was the reason why I wanted to make decisions. Then again, there was nothing wrong with that.
Indeed, if there was no pain, and if the people that I like would love me back, and if I worked smart and with less effort, and if I knew that I didn't even have to fight… Everything appeared to be easy.
All of that should be within my reach, so there was no reason for me to hesitate… I had no doubts that I would be able to do that with my power. But… "Why does it sounds so fake?"
The more I thought about it, the more I felt like I was not in control of what was happening to me.
I…
"Kuh!"
*****
:::[Third person POV]:::
Suddenly, Adam was feeling extremely anxious, as if the effect of his unusual condition began to wear off, and the more he thought about certain things, the more he got anxious and confused.
He felt like he became a human once again. He feared the unknown, the future, which made him doubt everything that he did. And when he began to feel fear again, his wild imagination was his worst enemy. It was unavoidable because it was similar to the two sides of the same coin.
"What the hell? This is not the time for hesitation," Adam said, trying to regain his composure.
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