Chapter 146

  Great Questions (I)

  System is a prick; I decided on that much at least.

  The same way it can give me a reward that grants another person a unique freakin' physique, it could have given me a reward that does that to me. But it chose not to.

  Because it's a prick.

  Okay, maybe not. It's pretty much clear by now that the system's job, as far as I go, is just to 'maintain me'. It will help me here and there, but only so much that I can keep up with the disciples in terms of art making.

  Its first and foremost purpose is to give me tools to raise monsters--and then, somewhere down the line, it's to make me stronger. Though I've felt for a while that the only way I'd get strong is to, you know, literally do it myself, I still feel... peeved, at least a bit.

  It's sort of like child support, in a slightly selfish way, as Yas's sis, Erica, used to describe it: Of course, she'd say, the kids need the money, and they're my priority number one! But, and there was always a 'but' with these statements, you just know it. Why can't I take just a few bucks and buy myself something nice? If I'm happy, I take better care of the kids...

  Yas chewed her out so hard that day that the woman left our apartment in tears. And yes, she was getting alimony.

  Some people, though...

  Anyway, it's sort of like that, but not really. Rather than taking away from kids, I'd just wish the system gave me some nice stuff too.

  In fairness it actually did--that damn tortoise sitting in my robes has saved my ass, and it had even upgraded my cultivation by a minor realm. Not the tortoise, I mean, but the system.

  Haah. It's hard, you know? Before I know it, these kids will shoot past me, and, despite my very aged maturity, it'll... sting.

  "Give me."

  "AAAAH!!!" A ghost scared me a bit as I jumped; looking over, I saw Long Tao sighing, and I near flung my fist at his face... but stopped myself just at the last second. "Do you have to use the art?! Are you trying to kill me?!"

  "I'm practicing."

  "Practice elsewhere! The world is so big!"

  "It's most fun here." He was having fun; I just know it. And that's fine--great, even... just not that it's at my expense.

  "What do you want?" I groaned.

  "Give me the art you 'found' for her."

  "... why?"

  "I'm curious."

  "Wait--how'd you even know I cr--found her an art?!"

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  "Didn't you have me beat her black and blue to figure out what art she could use?"

  "..." yeah.

  I kind of want to kick his butt, to be honest.

  "You can't use it."

  "Even if I could, I wouldn't," he rolled his eyes. "I'm just curious."

  Whatever.

  Maybe he figures something out that I missed? I tossed over the tome and sat down, calming my ever-beating heart. Honestly, I regretted making him that cloaking art a bit; ever since he got it, he'd be there one moment and the next... not. It was like traveling with a literal ghost. He'd jump-scared all of us at least once.

  We remained sitting in silence for about an hour as he perused, his expression as indescribable as ever.

  But I was also beginning to understand a bit why he is the way he is--he's an old monster; an old monster. And I imagine he had seen practically all there is to see in life. However, there was I and my ever-growing library of arts left behind by my father. It was different. As were the arts I was handing out.

  Thus, he grew curious.

  "This is... your father certainly went to the strangest places," he said, finally breaking the silence and handing over the art, the look in his eyes a bit... strange.

  "The man did love traveling," I tossed out. "Almost as much as yours."

  "... it's perfect for her," he said. "In more ways than even you probably realize."

  "How come?" I asked, curious.

  "My mother once mentioned an affliction." Oh, great, we're back to this crap. Haah. "She called it Voidheart, though most others called it Heartless. It's a twisted form of apathy when one's heart spirals between two extremes--utter indifference and burning zealotry. That's why my mother called it Voidheart and not Heartless, though, according to my father, both names are wrong.

  "None of those extremes come from the heart, after all." My ears perked up a bit, attention drawn. While this world was quite advanced in many ways, there were still things that occasionally made me take a second look. As far as I could tell, there was a legitimate belief that emotions come from the heart and logic comes from the brain. "Voidheart is, innately, an expression of pain. And that art dulls it. Whereas for most everyone else, it would slowly chip away at the heart of humanity, for her, it will slowly regress her to the mean."

  "Oh."

  "Master," he turned toward me, tilting his head slightly. "Where do emotions come from?"

  "... what?"

  "My father and mother debated it often," he said. "She said that they come from the heart, and he said that they come from the stomach." He pointed at his chest and then abdomen as he spoke. "I always silently agreed with him. Do you?"

  "..." I fell silent for a moment, mulling. Why was he asking me this? Long Tao never did anything without reason--it's just that, most often, his reason became the recognition of hindsight. I could just lie and say I agree with the idea that emotions come from the heart or the gut, but he didn't ask me just to get back affirmation. No... perhaps he did ask me out of genuine curiosity. "I believe they come from the same place all else intangible comes--our brains."

  "Oh?"

  "When I was younger," I said. "I had a friend. He was quite kind and cheery; he loved playing, and he loved exploring. One day, while we were exploring a nearby forest, he stumbled over a jutting root, fell down, and hit his head on a rock. I managed to fetch my father quickly, and he carried the boy to the local do--to a local alchemist. His life, somehow, was saved, though there were fears he might never wake up.

  "But he did," I sighed--more so to myself at the distant memory I hadn't really thought about in a long time. "Or, well, that's what we all thought. But the person who woke up... was not the boy I knew. I mean, his voice was the same, his face was the same, and it was him, but it was as though... somebody else was wearing him as a mask. He'd become angry at the slightest thing; he would scream and rage if you so much as suggested he do something he didn't want to. One day, he got so angry that he tried stabbing his mother when she wouldn't buy him something."

  "..."

  "His change didn't come from the heart," I said, finishing the story. "It came from the head."

  He fell silent for a little while, seemingly mulling over the story before getting up.

  "... you are scarily observant, Master," he said. "Everyone I've ever known would have assumed the boy was possessed, and we would have killed him promptly." Eh? Wait, what? "Perhaps... that's why she did it. I didn't believe her."

  "W--" I wanted to ask, 'What do you mean?' but stopped myself. It was clear that his tongue slipped about something that happened in his past life, and, well, I'm fine not knowing. He sighed as he looked up, shaking his head and leaving.

  ... yeah.

  Even monsters, it seems, are in their hearts merely human.