POV: Randall.

  The boy was named Borond. An odd name and one we were only able to extract after we spent thirty minutes convincing that no, Mittens would not be slurping down his soul like chicken soup and yes, we really were friends of Charlie and we really were here to help.

  That last point became especially important as we went around the town. Going from house to house healing everyone we could.

  It was nice, easy work. For Mittens and Vince at least. They could just touch people and stop the flesh from falling off their bones like so much pudding falling off a plate.

  I was stuck with the freshly healed Borond. Trying to explain what was happening.

  “So you see, this isn’t magic.” I said for the umpteenth time.

  “But she touched him and the plague went away.” Borond protested again. “So if it’s not magic, then it has to be one of Saturn’s miracles. And, Charlie can do this too?”

  “I dunno about this Saturn. I mean, I know the planet and the a few of the old Roman myths. He was the one who killed his dad and then was cursed to be killed by his son. I think. Actually, scratch that. I have no idea if that was really him. But I know the planet. It’s the one with all the rings and it’s made mostly of gas and meteor stuff.”

  Borond turned to me.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Neither do I. But yeah. We are Charlie’s friends and we were kidnapped from other worlds and we are here to help save the people of the town.”

  Borond still looked stunned, but he was remarkably quick to adapt to the situation.

  “Right. Okay. Good for you. The others. I need you to go to the mines and free the others. People, the other miners. They’re all dead from the plague. People from the mines tend to die more often from Blacklung. So the sickness took them faster than the others. My brothers and sisters… they won’t make it. Even the miners who survive the Blacklung die from suffocating when the tunnels don’t get enough wind or from drowning when one of the mine shafts flood. My pa died like that and that’s how I got to the orphanage. None of them will make it.”

  Borond’s ragged shirt started vibrating lightly, despite being so baggy on his trembling torso.

  “None of them will make it. You have to help them. If it’s you… you beat up the press gangs. You could take them back.”

  “We will.” I assured him.

  “And you have to kill the bosses there.”

  “Uh no.” I interrupted. “I really don’t think I will do that. That sounds like a very smart idea, but Sully said no killing. And you’d have to be really stupid to go against Sully. That’s a really bad move on anyone’s part.”

  ‘Believe me.’ I thought. ‘I should know.’

  Granted, Sully wasn’t the kind of overlord to go around snapping necks whenever he felt like it; not human necks at least, but that didn’t mean going against him was a good idea.

  Moreover, it was very hard to justify such moves. Partly because Sully did choose the option that would maximize the good we spread all around the worlds we visited. It was hard to argue against him doing things that would allow children to live longer or the poor and starving to survive.

  Furthermore, there was the new information I’d just learned from Vince.

  ‘Sully. That Sully. The guy who freed an entire world from being dominated by a genocidal tyrant two days ago and who went right ahead and dismantled an AI-fueled intergalactic purge three days ago, being a victim. Someone desperate to lessen their pain, instead of someone going out and doing good on their own initiative.’

  It sounded ridiculous.

  Just like how Reggie, Sully’s dad, had sounded ridiculous when he’d asked his son to leave behind the psychic powers and try to live as a relatively normal person after the Tutorial ended.

  Dusty and Slab had actually laughed in his face and I’d come very close to joining them.

  “He just came back from saving humanity on another Earth.” Slab had said. “I’ve actually lost count of how many different peoples from different worlds he’s saved just now. It’d be a crime to live as a regular person.”

  “Not only that, but you’re putting your head in the sand father-in-law.” Dusty followed up. “If Sully were to stop getting stronger and saving people, then forget the people we come across on a daily basis; no one from your own Earth would survive the gnomes. You’re locking away your rifle because it’s dangerous, while also refusing to acknowledge the hungry wolves outside your door. Not getting stronger isn’t just dumb. It’s tantamount to sin. Because you know people will die left right and center and you’d be choosing to do nothing. Tell me, would you leave someone bleeding out on the streets of your world to die? Without calling for help or trying to stem the flow of blood? Would you really walk way and do nothing?”

  Her arguments made perfect sense and both Vince and Thunder Fist had backed them up. The former was looked at with pity and concern, as far as Sully’s parents were concerned. The latter though, did have some measure of influence with the two of them. Even though the same did not apply to their adopted daughter.

  And even she had been forced to concede that things would have ended very badly for all of them if Sully had not sent Mittens out to their Instance at the time that he did.

  In all the examples I saw, Sully was the secret weapon. The fulcrum for change. He was the one going out on his own initiative and choosing to let us all hit him in order to train. He was the one doing that weird thing with the doppelgangers at the hotel in order to improve himself. He was the one who always told us exactly what the options were in each Excursion and how he’d go about saving as many people as he could. Again, all on his own initiative.

  It was very hard to hate him, no matter how badly he’d brainwashed me. Or rather, the previous me.

  The more I saw him acting, the more I became convinced that the old me must have done something truly terrible to deserve his fate.

  Why else would Sully choose to brainwash me to this extent if the old me wasn’t beyond saving?

  I mean, he let those murderers go yesterday. After merely showering them with his [Presence] and giving them boosts. Right alongside the rest of that world’s population.

  Why would be stoop so low as to completely wipe my most recent memories unless it was the only way to change me for the better?

  ‘Too many questions.’ I cursed internally. ‘Too many questions and too little answers.’

  The last things I remembered from my old world were the tryouts when I was 13. Back when my powers had first manifested and started learning to fly for the first time. Slicing through the sky on wings of golden fire.

  That old me had sworn to be a hero, but wound up becoming the darkest kind of villain somewhere along the way.

  And I couldn’t even ruminate on when the change had happened. Or why.

  All I knew was that the Randall who came into the Labyrinth Tutorial had killed several people already and he would have kept killing if Sully hadn’t stopped him.

  ‘And now I’m supposed to believe that this Sully was a helpless victim, instead of the kind of guy who takes charge because he wants to help? What kind of sense does that make?’

  More importantly, why did Vince and Mittens think that the distinction was so important?

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  I mean, sure.

  I felt bad for the guy now.

  A little bit.

  But it was still hard to not respect him.

  In my eyes, the fact that he was in constant pain from his [Omniscience] made some kind of sense. After all, it wasn’t as if he was being overly empathetic or anything. He wasn’t imagining how losing a family member felt when he saw it happen to someone else. He was actually feeling what they felt. All of what they felt, and all of what every other human felt all the time.

  Him trying to make the pain and suffering stop was essentially him being selfish. Him wanting to make his own pain stop.

  ‘But that doesn’t change anything.’ I thought curiously.

  He could have stopped the connection and silenced the ability whenever he wanted. I knew he could do that because I now had a couple of Tier 10 abilities I could also shut off at will when they became too annoying to deal with.

  Sully didn’t do that because he’d still remember the outcomes that would play out without him taking an active role and because the guilt ate away at him.

  ‘But that’s the same for any person.’ I thought with some more confusion.

  Humans were social creatures by nature and we were compelled by our nature to help other humans in order to fit in with society. That was a bit of a reductionist view on things, but I didn’t think it was a wrong way of thinking.

  Human thoughts, to me at least, were all just a bunch of pre-programmed electrical impulses firing more or less chaotically and in semi-predictable manners at all times.

  I only believed in free-will because Sully said individual choices did have an effect on the outcomes of people’s actions. But if he hadn’t told me that, I’d still think we were all puppets to some degree, moving out due to chemical reactions in our brains and trying to keep the cells in our body from dying too quickly.

  That was life, in a nutshell.

  A human wouldn’t leave a bleeding person on the side of the road alone.

  Mostly because their brains would let out all kinds of funny signals that said: “Person feeling bad. You feel bad too to fit in. Save person because it will mean other persons will one day save you.”

  That was just how humans were.

  So, Sully acting like that wasn’t all that strange in the first place. Sure, he took it farther than most other people would have in his place, but that didn’t dimmish the goodness of his actions.

  On the contrary, him going above and beyond was a sign that he was very well adjusted.

  Him acting out because he felt the pain of others didn’t make him any less noble.

  The people were still given powers and the sick were still cured. The oppressed were still able to decide their own fates once again and the oppressors were made to see what their actions had done to others.

  The non-human entities that were trying to destroy humanity were they themselves destroyed and overall, petty wars and political squabbled diminished or faded away altogether.

  Rival nations and bitter enemies made peace wherever Sully passed and those who had crushed others beneath their heels changed their ways after seeing firsthand what the other guys went through.

  One could say that by sharing his unique super-powered empathy with others; Sully was steadily making all the worlds a better place. Free of crime and starvation and needless death due to greed.

  There were no gangs after Sully left a world. Nor were there extortion rackets or child-kidnapping rings or monsters eating people after coming through portals. The portals were still there, but the people were no longer helpless to stop them.

  If so, then how could anyone call Sully anything less than a hero?

  Because his motives weren’t 100% pure and selfless?

  That seemed stupid to me.

  If you saved someone’s life because you knew that person, you’d be doing a more selfish thing than if you saved a random person, but you would have still saved a person. The amount of objective moral good didn’t change.

  Sully could have been motivated by the seductive voice of a humanoid sea-turtle for all anyone cared, but his motivations didn’t matter in the slightest to the families whose children were spared from war or disease or famine.

  No one cared what their savior’s motivations were. They cared that they’d been saved.

  “Hey? Hey! Are you listening?” Borond started shouting in my ear.

  “Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. I got lost in my own thoughts.” I told him. “Back to the point. Sully said no killing so we won’t be doing any killing.”

  Borond looked panicked.

  “But the bosses of that place will send more men after us the second you leave!? You dumbarse! Or worse!”

  Borond sucked in a panicked breath.

  “You realize the mayor is in on it right? He gets a cut of all the minerals going out of town and the town relies on the iron exports to pay for a lot of stuff. I’m not stupid. I know about these things. Unlike Charlie who never listens to Sister Nina. There are tariffs and port dues for all the ships who come in and the mayor has been putting more people into the press gangs to make up for all the big men sent off to war. They’re even taking women!”

  His protests were turning into shouts now. Ones that carried far across the mostly-empty streets.

  “If we don’t kill the overseers, then they’ll know it was us who escaped and you guys who freed us. Hampering the flow of iron to the war effort is an act of treason. The mayor will have wanted posters on every building and post and the guards will have men looking for us everywhere. If that happens, then you may as well not save anybody because they’ll hang me and Sister Nina beside me. Even Charlie, dumb as he is, would never be dumb enough to do something like that!”

  To his credit, those all sounded like solid, well-reasoned arguments. And if it had been up to me, I may have simply flown over the mayor’s residence and reduced it all to a great big smoking crater in the ground. Alongside all the houses of all the overseers and gang members.

  I wasn’t a moral paragon, and I knew that about myself, but people who hurt children were different. They were worse than monsters as far as I was concerned.

  After all, monsters were just following their own dumb instincts when they ate people. But those who kidnapped and hurt children knew exactly what they were doing. Which only made it all the worse.

  They knew and they did it anyway.

  I didn’t know who exactly would miss men like that, but it certainly wouldn’t have been me.

  ‘But that’s probably the kind of thinking that got the old Randall mind-wiped to oblivion and back.’ I mused internally.

  The truth was, those men would still have families. People who loved them and would miss them. To some degree at least.

  I would have been fine killing them regardless after weighing all my options together and comparing the lives of the victims against the lives of the perpetrators, but then again, I couldn’t see the future. Nor could I feel what the dead people’s families might feel after their passing.

  Sully could though. And Sully would.

  Even when hard choices were involved, Sully could always be trusted to make the most out of a bad situation.

  ‘Which is objectively better in the long run.’ I observed. ‘For all I know, killing the mayor might lead to another, even more corrupt mayor coming over. Or it might lead to the guys who rule the country sending the army in to force all the regular civilians into the mines.’

  That last thought was probably not a likely one. But it still made the point stand out.

  Sully knew best and it didn’t matter what motivated him to help. So long as he helped.

  “Look.” I told Borond again. “I’m sure Sully knows what he’s doing. He won’t leave you guys out to dry.”

  I cut him off as he was about to reply.

  “And I’m sure Charlie won’t hang you out to dry either. He loves you. All of you. I know that much at least.”

  That seemed to placate Borond for a few moments.

  Then his eyes fell on Mittens as she giggled and gurgled her way to one of the nearby corpse-wagons. One that had been toppled over so all the bodies fell like ragdolls on the muck of the cobbled streets.

  Mittens threw two bodies aside and grabbed another two. Sending Psy through the latter as he laughed.

  “Mittens kneels. Mittens heals. Mittens is here.”

  Those two must have still been alive when they were thrown into the wagon.

  The two bodies, now visibly breathing once more and regaining some of their color, twitched as the power surged through them. Patches of rotted flesh mending and closing as the pus sloughed off of them like paint after a bath.

  ‘Soon the plague will seem like some feverish dream.’ I mused quietly.

  I was not sorry to be a Savant, as Sully was. There was much to be said for being so powerful that even the likes of Solomon Carter himself felt the need to become personally involved in your life and mind.

  Yet even I had to admit that Shifter powers were perhaps the most useful in everyday life.

  Plenty of people dreamt of teleporting and flying and moving mountains with their mind. But all of those would also want to keep their health as intact as possible. Health, after all, tended to be more important to humans than vanities like flying.

  ‘I should ask Sully to boost me again as soon as he is able.’ I thought to myself. ‘After all, if he can get Shifter for himself, why not me?’

  Looking over at Borond, I could tell he was thinking along those very same lines.

  “It’s a miracle.” He said softly. “Can Charlie do the same?”

  “In a way.” I answered. “He’s an Enhancer and a Projector and now a Shifter too. Though he isn’t as strong as Mittens over there.”

  Borond nodded.

  “Is he strong enough to take on the mining overseers by himself?”

  I laughed at that.

  “Oh most certainly.” I said with a jovial manner.

  Charlie might technically be amongst the weakest of the people on our current difficulty. But that did not make him weak by any means. It was only that way because he was among those that had cheated the System the least.

  Even then, Henry was on a higher Tier, but the bumbling fool could only win matches against Charlie through attrition. Even with all those combined abilities, the natural aptitude Charlie possessed, coupled with his combined abilities and the synergies between them, meant that the lackwit could never hit him.

  A normal human fighting Charlie would soon feel as though they were a toddler fighting a bodybuilder. One who had taken so many steroids that they would never see thirty.

  The lucky ones, would die quickly. The not so lucky ones, would be forced to wheeze helplessly on the floor after Charlie shattered all the bones in their bodies and left them for dead.

  In fact, I had a sneaking suspicion that, as bad as Mittens and Vince had been, those men we left behind may very well be thanking their queer god with tears in their eyes. Giving thanks and praise, that they did not run into Charlie instead.

  Borond nodded.

  “I…” He bit his lips. “How can I do that too?”

  “You can enter the Human City through a portal and try to do what we did, only outside of the Tutorial.” I explained. “Those portals… they’re like doors in reality. They should be opening up in a couple of months or so. After the Tutorial ends. They will lead you to where Charlie and the rest will be living.”

  I paused.

  “Or you could talk to Sully. He can give people powers.”

  Borond nodded more slowly this time.

  “I see. But he’ll demand I don’t kill anyone ever?”

  “Not quite.” I sighed. “Look, it’s a long story. I’m sure you’ll have plenty of time to talk it over with Charlie once you see him again.”