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Can one be considered truly a good individual if they have and will continue to kill countless individuals for their own selfish desire to survive and to not perish? even if those who have been killed were truly the worst kinds of scum, those who would not be missed.
Killing for self-defense of self or another, was that act evil? can it be excused as an act meant not to harm but to defend oneself? But what about accidentally killing someone due to an unknown allergy or running them down? Was one of those acts evil?.
What about if a plane crashed and landed on a mountain? To survive, its messengers had to resort to cannibalism. Were they monsters who should be exterminated?.
But it didn't truly matter with the fact that I was a monster and cannibal who preyed upon my own people, of course, such thoughts amongst my own peers would be looked down upon, even ridiculed as a ridiculous attempt to still think of myself as a human, even though I have lived over ten centuries.
Still, despite such ridiculousness, I didn't truly care for their opinions, perhaps it was because the vast majority of them were what could be called great evil, but I sometimes wonder, even if I was a lesser sort of evil compared to them, did I have the right to so callously call them out?.
Truly, I was the worst type of monster, one pretending to still be what I was not—a human desperately clinging to being human even as I devoured entire prisons worth of people, justifying myself all the way through.
A monster that performs predation upon other monsters still remains a monster, but now it is a cannibal.
Throughout the ocean, an unusual event was ongoing, or rather, was it an unusual thing? at speeds that exceed any human-made boat or ship, an object seemed to swim through the depths of the sea.
From above it would be difficult to see anything considering just what depth the object was moving at, but if one had somehow managed to see through the depths of the ocean enough, they would face another trouble: the fact that the object was exceeding the speed of the sound.
Much like a torpedo or a rocket, it soared through the area around it, in this case water, without stopping or seemingly facing any problems from the pressure or lack of light.
A mechanical ship could be explained, through advanced structure reinforced by metal and dealing with the problem of seeing in the depths through technology
And yet even the most advanced known or unknown military submarines were not that fast; another strange thing about the object was its size, now, if one had somehow managed to overcome all the obstacles and see the object,
A young man, perhaps in his late twenties, his appearance suggested that either he was from Europe or a descendant of Europeans; his facial features could be roughly approximated to that of northern European people.
was moving through the ocean; although he should have been crushed as well as drowned by laws of nature, he seemed to reject them, and rather than hinder him, it was almost like the very ocean itself was blessing him as well as guiding him towards his destination.
Although he had been traveling this way for a long time, he didn't have any problems that any ordinary creature should be suffering from, either being drowned or being crushed, and yet this man seemed to very much deny such things.
His expression could be compared to someone who was hiking through their favorite trail or simply enjoying biking instead of being terrified; their expression conveyed a sense of tranquility and that of peace.
Despite human ability to swim and move through the water, humans are very much not suited for water, and yet this individual seems to have been born to be in water, much like a shark or predatory fish, swimming through torrents without stopping or resistance, ready to strike.
which wasn't exactly incorrect; despite once being a human, he had by this time long since become something different—a predator, not in the vulgar human sense but in the sense of a majestic shark or a lion-like creature that preyed upon others for sustenance, not pleasure.
He, in his long life exceeding ten centuries, had lived through much and seen as much, from the greatest depths of human depravity to the most saint-like behavior.
But alongside long life came emptiness that made a hole through where his heart should have resided, nut an empty heart brought no relief from the contradiction of man.
Despite having existed, he had not been alive for many years—far too many; his heart still remained full of human doubt, and despite having his origin in times of betrayal, brutality, and war alongside intrigue, he preferred to not get involved in matters of similar scale amongst his own people.
His name was Eriel Wulf.
The land that he had traveled to from the northern hemisphere was far too noisy for his liking, not that any particular land was not noisy for his taste.
It had been more than three hours since he had departed from America to Japan, and now, as the night broke and the moon rose up into the skies, the coastal land of the island nation was becoming viewable even without the enchanted eyesight that he possessed.
Since the time he had been alive, the majority of land in his ancestral motherland had been sparsely dotted by cities, and even those cities were minuscule compared to even average towns of today.
was overjoyed, not in the manner of a predator whose favorite species on which it predated had vastly multiplied, becoming easier to consume, but rather as a former human Who witnessed the expansion of human civilization, the building of new cities, and the clearing of the land? truly, as one who had once been human, it was enjoyable, but another part of him.
which was the predator that preyed upon humanity, saw new modern cities as simply new land a concrete forests upon which predation was to be performed.
Despite the fact that along the road, if there was a road in the sea, he had hunted down some whales for sustenance, the desire for blood of from warm human bodies was still powerful, at the current rate at which he was burning through his reserves, if he didn't use any of his abilities or for recovery, he'd be in the clear for quite some time.
The city he had silently washed upon was no different from any other cities he had visited alongside Sum—progenitor, he had been able to stop himself from thinking of that particularly troublesome woman.
Originally he wouldn't have been going to this island nation, or at least not yet; he did have a desire to explore everything relating to water thoroughly, after all, but that had been after he had completed his great survey of the ocean.
But a rare meeting with an old friend had captivated him entirely upon learning of just what was hiding on the island nation, a device capable of performing miracles, the holy grail.
At that moment he had been skeptical; he had both acquired knowledge about the involvement of ancestors in the crusades as well as partaking in them himself, and yet he had never read any concrete information about it prior nor discovered the grail, eventually concluding that it didn't exist.
But a wish-granting device, even if it wasn't a true Holy Grail, would suffice for his purpose very well indeed, at first thought, he'd simply considered walking through the town and taking it by force; at his rank, it would not have been difficult.
If only it had been so simple, but the world had never been kind to him; of course, it would have to be complicated, a contract with ghost liners and defeating other contestants alongside their own ghost lines was necessary for the manifestation of the wish-granting device.
If any sane individual had heard of his thought about taking the wish-granting device by force, they'd have been shocked if they had been in the know, perhaps a mage or church associate.
The ritual participants would have their own familiars, and not just an ordinary familiar or even a non-ordinary beast, but rather heroic spirits—those who had embedded themselves in the consciousness of humanity as icons of humanity, their greatness forever echoing forwards to future generations.
an impossible threat against any normal individual, even the greatest of magi or churchmen, would have slim if any chance against them without a ghost liner of their own.
But he was neither a magi nor a churchman; rather, his existence was that of one of the dead apostles, one who was promised to inherit the ideal blood of his progenitor, an existence that had dwelt upon this world for an millennium.
One cannot tell a tale spanning millennia easily, but let us attempt to, in the era known as the Dark Ages, there was a prince or perhaps a young nobleman.
who had been his entire life sick with some sort of disease or affliction that no prayer from Pius nor help from the learned could alleviate, distraught by the condition his son suffered, the young nobleman's father ventured forth to find anyone who could potentially help save his son.
Despite the sickness, the youth was pure; he desired to simply enjoy the only thing that brought him joy: enjoying the beauty of the sea, which his home and castle were built near.
He simply wished that he had been able to enjoy the experience of swimming through crystal clear waters or exploring its depths, it was childish, but that was the truth: he'd give up his inheritance and happily live life as a normal peasant for the opportunity.
One day, alongside his retinue Despite much protest from his governess about how the terrible weather might bring him down, the boy had visited the spot from which he viewed the sea from afar, there sat along the oak tree a woman who seemed to not belong there, not because of her appearance but because of the feeling that she carried with her.
She seemed to have been drunk, seeing the terrible weather he boy, in an an act that no nobleman who had done who had not experienced such misfortune as him, had invited the woman as a guest to stay and recover inside of their castle.
The woman spent much time within the castle enjoying the hospitality provided to her, good food alongside excellent drink, while youth conversed with the woman, telling her his entire life story of how he felt about the disease that had been eating him away.
off his desires that had been the moment when his entire life had changed, even now he didn't know if the woman's decision was made because of how she felt, Had she been moved by the boy's experience, or had she been able to see the seed of a world? within the boy's soul.
Within a blink his hands were the color of blood; no, they were covered in blood, Oh, so much blood, again and again flickers of memories never flinching nor holding back, not questioning his actions if they were moral or not, no desire for any such emotions or thought's.
He had never felt so hungry, so thirsty, and an overwhelming desire to satiate himself, to fully take within himself , the age didn't matter—the old, the young, or the middle-aged— simply calculated in the corner of his head as to how vulnerable they'd be.
Nor had he stopped at humans; only animals or humans didn't matter, any existence that was not him was to be fed upon to take what was needed, without discrimination, entirely of caste had been slaughtered down to the last.
Even now, with so many years passing, the lives he had taken upon becoming what he now was had never stopped weighing upon him with a force that could have flattened a mountain.