Law, original law, had behind it, in synonymous form with vengeance, the same original need—the need for violence.
City-states made pledges to their people, and used sumptuous lives and stable surroundings to appease them—
To let their lifespans serve one man-made purpose, to tame their innate will to subjugate, to teach them to be at ease, to lead them to be weak.
Our Majesty is sage, perceptive.
A great many city-states will treat strength as a crime, will take deficient courage as a virtue, will regard fear of death as progress. Our Majesty will tear their last semblances from them, make them reflect, make them search themselves.
We, as a human race, have always had a kind of thirst flowing through our blood vessels; a thirst to loose our own life force by our actions.
Fairness is not by nature. Fairness is dependent on having the wisdom, the force of will to create it.
Our Majesty intends to recover all they need, all this the cities took away, and give it back to them.
New purpose will be declared. Our Majesty will rebuild their thought worn flat by daily life and boredom, and rouse the sanguine courage within them bound by deadened ethics for too long.
Violence runs our bodies through and through. If we don't allow it to germinate within ourselves, we will become resentful, insignificant and numb, and thus will incur our own destruction.
Those who fear habitually are despicable.
If one wants to be alive, they ought to be immersed in the heart of violence, see clearly how so much of ethics is a sham, understand the barren of our present world.
Not punishment, not rule, not the weighing of values and the decorum of appeasement. We will use our fists and weapons to tell them that we are alive, and that we ought to be alive. The right to life is reserved for the living.
I do not blame Our Majesty the Emperor for the punishment handed down on me. I showed contempt, ignorant of the times, for how he spoke all on his benevolent mind to the masses, for he was loathe for his people to all too quickly suffer the pain of violent change.
Even so, I cannot cease to tell the candid truth. I must constantly, continually praise Our Majesty's most profound insight. I can only shout my honesty. I cannot be silent.
The reality is, we do not want whatever justice, nor do we expect peace.
Only the shortsighted, rushing about their own interests, can wallow in peace.
What we want is to put to use the violence that surges in our veins, the nature of us aroused by the dawn of our own civilization, the origin of our dauntless struggle and victory. We want to make use of violence.
Dress it up any way to make our needs seem sensible, but that is irrelevant.
Should we need, we should seek directly. Leave the dressing up to the historians and the champions of morals. They only need justification, while our survival is more justified than any theory.
We want to injure people, defeat people, destroy people, and if Ursus reckons this disaster, then we should bring disaster to others, to people beyond Ursus.
If they do not stand strong, they should be eliminated. Some are fitter to survive than others, and fitter to succeed.
Weakness is evil. Strength is sublime. Our laws should be founded on the needs of the city's soundest. Our country should not serve the maggots, let alone nurture the innumerous ill.
May those I despise, those narrow-minded leisure-seeking subjects, be tried and found forever in the lake of blood. May Our Majesty lead Ursus to eternal prosperity.
—The last sermon of a heretical sovereign preacher as he walked the gallows, sentenced by the Emperor of Ursus to hang.
They're right here! Tell everyone, they're right here!
Reunion Infected
Kill them, kill them! Hang them above the connecting floor, crush them against the top of Lungmen!
Rosmontis Squadmember
Let's retreat, Rosmontis. They've occupied the entire commercial plaza. This entire block's been sealed off by them now.
Rosmontis Squadmember
Rosmontis...!
Rosmontis
Let me do this. If we take a diversion, we'll be attacked by Reunion somewhere else.
Sarkaz Mercenary
——
Rosmontis
Sarkaz...
Sarkaz Mercenary
Hey, you! Eyes on that Caster... watch her! Don't let her try anything!
Sarkaz Mercenary
Kill them all already! Quick!
Reunion Infected
Right! Right! Kill 'em, kill 'em all!
Rosmontis
(Columbian-Victorian) You want to kill me?
Reunion Infected
You're all blind to it! You've all got Ursus chains on your necks!
Rosmontis Squadmember
Rosmontis, this isn't worth it! They've pretty much lost their minds! Let's move out of this block, find a different breach point!
Reunion Infected
Bowguns up! Bowguns up... blow it off! Blow her head off! You're like that bunny who was just here... you're like her!
Rosmontis
Amiya didn't go this way because she didn't want to do things like I do.
Reunion Infected
The hell are you all staring like that for? You're an Infected, you're an Infected! Why're you all staring at me like that? !
Reunion Infected
Collaborators? Trying to make it home? Like hell, hahah, like bleeding hell! Ursus can't defeat us! We've won! Won!
Reunion Infected
Fire! Fire at her, at her!
Rosmontis
No point.
Rosmontis
No point. I don't want you to hurt me, so there's nothing you can do.
Reunion Infected
What the hell... what the hell?! Keep firing! Keep firing! Blow the whole place out!
Reunion Infected
Is that a wall? What kind of Arts... what the hell kind of—! The bolts are all breaking against it! They're breaking!
Sarkaz Mercenary
Stop attacking those wall things, it's useless! Just looking at 'em tells you they won't budge! Call the Casters in!
Reunion Infected
The hell do you know?! We're attacking her face-on!
Reunion Infected
But before the arrows can reach her, and before the shrapnel can strike her face, they hit something! Some kind of invisible wall or something, whatever the hell! They just shatter! They can't get in!
Reunion Infected
Stupid goddamn Caster! We'll see how long you hold out... how much have you even got?! You can't keep this up for long, we'll see how long you hold out!
Reunion Infected
Why, why... can you not just hit her? She's not doing a damn thing! The hell are your ballistas, huh? The hell are your empowered crossbows?!
Reunion Infected
Bombard her, blow her to kingdom come! Blow her to smithereens! Blow her up like all those goddamned Ursus, and then make her tonight's stew!
Rosmontis Squadmember
This is the Rosmontis Squad, Amiya! We're through to you... talk her down! You need to talk her down!
Rosmontis Squadmember
Rosmontis, listen to the comms!
Reunion Infected
All you uniforms! Ahah! All you uniforms, we'll hang you, dry you on the power lines, let the rottenfeathers peck you apart!
Reunion Infected
We'll let you know! Know what you get for looking down on us!
Reunion Infected
Looking down on us, beating us, giving us those looks. Hahah—gack—we'll kill you all.
Reunion Infected
We'll throw you all into an engine, drr-dr-dr-dr-dr-dr-dr, and watch the minced meat come out, hahahahahah...!
Sarkaz Mercenary
What are you DOING? What are you prancing about for?! Don't expose your squad's position!
Reunion Infected
Don't waste your breath... goddamn devil! Hard-horned brute! What makes you think you can order ME?
Reunion Infected
You think you're Talulah? You think you're that undying goddamn beast? Whoopsie, he's already done for! Bang!
Reunion Infected
You'll all be done for! Us Ursus Infected'll... kill you! Kill the lot of you! You're all—
And the Sarkaz kicks the Infected straight out of the window.
The Infected howls, or perhaps it's more of a laugh, as he falls from the seventh floor to the ground, and is immediately obliterated by the ballistas.
Sarkaz Mercenary
*Spit*.
Sarkaz Mercenary
Do it. Bring out the big guns. Kill 'em dead.
Rosmontis
Amiya, can you hear me? We're taking the route we agreed. Out.
By our recon Operators' reports, the already-assembled guerrillas are currently in Central Main Street, openly attacking other Reunion guards.
Rhodes Island Operator
There's also a few small guerrilla squads opting to retreat instead, and they're scattering across every part of the city...
Amiya
...I see. The guerrillas still have other obligations.
Amiya
But our two teams are already too occupied to account for the situation anywhere else in the Core City.
Amiya
The longer it takes to break through the blockade, the less time we'll have left.
Amiya
If the other anti-guerrilla Infected are kept pinned down by the guerrillas, we'll be able to reach the command tower much faster. We can't waste this opportunity.
Amiya
I'll leave controlling the overall situation to Raidian and Mantra's judgment. As for controlling the battlefield...
Amiya
...I and Rosmontis both need more space to think.
Rhodes Island Operator
But. Rosmontis...
Amiya
After we rule out any ambush interference, we're still guaranteed other roundabout routes. But Rosmontis, I think, more or less can only choose to eliminate obstacles in front of her.
Amiya
More or less. That's how she's already done things.
Rhodes Island Operator
...Oh.
Rhodes Island Operator
Dr. Kal'tsit was on the mark. We're in one heck of a mess.
Rhodes Island Operator
Reunion has already fallen apart, seeing as their infighting is killing them faster than the guerrilla attacks are.
Rhodes Island Operator
They usually have enough friction of their own, but then Patriot died, and that news blew up, and now everything's gone haywire.
Rhodes Island Operator
With all the devastation the whole way here, I'm hard-pressed to say they're that united anymore.
Amiya
......
Amiya
Notify the other team members to assemble. Have the Casters bring the drones back in. We're going to converge with Rosmontis.
The evening before the core city Operation Team's departure from the ship
Kal'tsit
I won't allow it.
Amiya
Dr. Kal'tsit. This time, I'm going to have to do it this way.
Kal'tsit
We've gone over this question countless times before, Amiya.
Kal'tsit
Your Originium Arts expend your physical strength. This goes even as far as the physiological activity your metabolism requires.
Kal'tsit
Your life is... passing. You're not a machine, nor a ship's cannon. You cannot have your parts changed, nor can you be further processed.
Amiya
I know.
Kal'tsit
No. Maybe you still don't know.
Kal'tsit
...There'd be another memory from far too long ago. I'm not certain how much pressure it would bring about on your body.
Kal'tsit
Every simulation's result is leagues from anything ideal. I can rule out this choice.
Amiya
Then how about this, Dr. Kal'tsit. Let me put it this way.
Amiya
This time, I need to do things this way. I'll be taking off one more ring.
Kal'tsit
Amiya, we are going over a form of violence. You have said as much to me. If you didn't want me to stop you here and now, then you wouldn't have asked me to swear it to you.
Kal'tsit
The Chairman and I cast these rings together. It was so that no-one who came after would easily walk that path again.
Amiya
I'm using them, Dr. Kal'tsit. I won't argue for weapons, and I would never say that any kind is better for its ability to kill faster.
Amiya
However, what Miss Theresa left to me was not the same thing at all.
Amiya
Since the very beginning, perhaps they were never designed as weapons.
Amiya
They shouldn't be used to kill anyone... they never should. When they're used, what I think of is who I should save.
Amiya
This is the conclusion I've come to, after years of coexisting with them.
Kal'tsit
...Trusting a kind of weapon is not in any way a wise act.
Kal'tsit
If you wish to use them as a surgical tool and not as a lethal weapon, then you must be in control of their blade.
Kal'tsit
A blade is a blade to both the enemy and me, no matter how you use it. Its characteristics will not change.
Kal'tsit
Amiya... they will incise you.
Amiya
Dr. Kal'tsit, I'm not afraid.
Amiya
Wounds can heal.
Kal'tsit
But they can leave behind scars. Scars that nobody can bear to look at.
Amiya
...Mngh.
Amiya
But I... I won't give up.
Amiya
Originium has already changed my body in ways you know. Any further wounds... they'd be one or two wounds, and nothing more.
Amiya
I am not a weapon.
Kal'tsit
Do you need me to bring up another hurtful example?
Amiya
—What case?
Kal'tsit
Who can prove that you and I are not a kind of weapon?
Kal'tsit
Who can come to define whether or not we are a kind of weapon?
Kal'tsit
Can weapons think? Are weapons that can think all the more fearsome? Are weapons with self-awareness automatically no longer a kind of weapon?
