readytorunbook Chapter 229 [Professor] Slater
Chapter 229 [Professor] Slater
In Beatrice, people are divided into three classes, each separated by an insurmountable chasm.
In layman's terms: unable to survive, able to live, and live well.
Those who cannot survive rob those who can, desperately clinging to their resources to survive. Meanwhile, those who can survive are squeezed between the robbery of the surviving and the exploitation of the well-off.
Comparatively speaking, life is actually the most tiring for those who are alive. Because the living fear the ruthless, and the ruthless fear the reckless. For those who can barely survive, the upper classes may have ways to deal with them, but for someone like young Slater, there are almost no solutions.
Like flies, you kill one batch, and another batch comes along. Making an example of them is completely useless against these desperate criminals. Slater knew this better than anyone, because he had once been one of them.
It's unknown how many desperate survival methods Slater used, or how much good fortune he accumulated over countless lifetimes, to finally reach the level where he could survive.
He thought he would no longer have to endure the hardships of life and worry about what to eat and where to sleep every day, but he found that there were even more things to worry about.
But one must learn to find a way to survive even in pessimism. After all, we've endured so much; if we can't hold on now, wouldn't all that hardship have been for nothing? The sunk costs are too great to bear.
Humans can be surprisingly strong at times; but at the same time, they can also be surprisingly fragile.
One day, Slater, exhausted from his arduous journey earning a living, returned home to devastating news that would change his life forever. His house had been ransacked and was engulfed in flames. May had been found dead in the bedroom, and by the time Slater returned, she had bled to death and was completely charred.
Such deaths were commonplace in Beatrice every day, but when it came to Slater, he was the one who couldn't accept it. He burned himself in the fire inside the house for hours, searching for so-called possible evidence, evidence that pointed to the murderer.
Unfortunately, all the evidence melted away in the fire.
Even today, Slater, a Class C Snow Guard, cannot find the murderer from back then.
Perhaps the murderer has already been eliminated in the back alley of Beatrice. For someone who can eat people like that, being eaten by someone else might be just a matter of time.
"The absurd thing is that since then, the more recklessly I've fought, the less likely I am to die," Slater said. "To have fought my way to my current position is nothing short of a joke played by fate."
He's been an assassin and a moral swindler. Caught between profit and seduction, Slater, with no worries about the future, keeps climbing the ladder. When someone is desperately seeking death, he's often the one who survives the most.
“You haven’t told me about Alice yet,” Jean interrupted. “I have no interest in your tragic past. If you want to complain, you’ve come to the wrong person.”
“Alice is my clone experiment subject. Her cells came from May, so naturally she is May’s child,” Slater said calmly. After May’s death, “resurrecting” her became one of Slater’s few wishes, but unfortunately, any magic related to life comes at a high price, and in the end, Slater could only use this half-baked method.
"You're such a jerk."
“Many people say this about me, but most of them are just like me, with their own selfish desires, many of which are shady,” Slater said. “However, I succeeded, and those who failed, or those who didn’t dare to do it, started to morally condemn me. And most of those people are now buried with grass three meters high on their graves.”
"Why did Alice end up like this?" You went through so much hardship, and your long-cherished wish came true, but what was the result? In the end, she met such a fate.
"She was ultimately just a substitute for Mei. Since that's the case, I have no time to care about what kind of life she leads. It wasn't me who killed her, it was this kingdom."
"You really don't want to share any responsibility at all. Don't you think you're one of the founders of this kingdom?"
“What are you saying? No one praises the contributions we Beatrice people have made. What? All the good things aren’t our responsibility, but all the bad things are our responsibility,” Slater laughed.
“We are born as poor wretches abandoned by God, banished to this hell to suffer. The outside world is full of sensual pleasures, but what about us? To be blunt, whatever I want to achieve and whatever I want to do is what I deserve.”
"Alright—let's continue to remember. I wish you could live on. After all, I'm a selfish person, and I still hope that my story can be known to the outside world. Even if I'm infamous for eternity, I can't accept being unknown. I hope my name, Slater, can appear in textbooks, not just in Beatrice's history book."
Slater walked slowly through the snow, leaving Jean alone.
His entire life was spent climbing the social ladder by any means necessary, just to avoid ending up like he did back then—when nothing could be salvaged. By the time he finally achieved his goal and could try to salvage anything, he was no longer the same person he once was. He had become a demon in human skin, driven by selfish desires, and climbing ever higher became his sole wish, a desire he himself didn't even understand why he was doing it.
He was destined to be despised by the world for the rest of his life; those who died because of him wished he could be condemned to the deepest hell forever. The blood he had shed was more than that of the soldiers on the battlefield.
His principles sounded so irrefutable that he would do anything for his own selfish desires.
But he actually did it, and those who wanted to do it but didn't dare to criticized him.
The truth is, it is precisely this "fear" that becomes the biggest difference between people. An upright person may not be immune to evil thoughts, and even a monk who has emptied his desires may dream of a world of debauchery. But what binds people is their own heart.
But in Beatrice, only someone like Slater can truly thrive.
The others are all buried in the cruel ice and snow. Perhaps the witch of fate who created this kingdom also had the idea of raising venomous insects to resist the rift.
But the opinions of the dead are no longer important.
“The dead have no right to speak, am I right, Teacher Alice?” Jean murmured. After tidying up the grave a few times, she slowly got up and returned home alone.
If you can't escape it, then don't try to escape it.
It's time to face it. Just like what Emnicia did back then, why not just get things done quickly and efficiently? Easy peasy.
Only by living can one have the right to continue speaking.