Chương 30

When I heard Alice starting to say that it was not her fault, I activated the Exclusive Recorder with a thought, and I immediately said, "Alice, don't say another word." Alice sniffed with her nose and looked up at me.

"Please," I said. I tried to get out of the box, but I got a System warning. Warning - You cannot leave the box while the confession has not finished.

"Goddammit," I muttered under my breath.

"Alice," I said, sitting back while my teammates watched me.

"It's very important that whatever comes out of your mouth is only your worst sin. You're gonna kill us all otherwise. I don't think—" I stopped myself short of saying, "I don't think you understand how bad this is," because I didn't wanna aggravate the situation. Alice was still crying. She was still all broken up about something, and at that point, I could tell that this was not the person that had been presented to us at the Holy City.

Alice clearly carried a lot of demons with her, and so I just said, "Look, it's the apocalypse. I don't care if you've done something bad. It really does not matter right now."

"I, I can't, John. I can't," Alice cried. I felt a surge of anger. I felt like shouting at her. I felt like telling her that she was a fool. She just had to say what she had done to save five damn lives, but that wasn't gonna help. I wished my parents had been gentler with me, that they had been sweeter, that I knew what to say. I turned to the others since I lacked better words. Hailey was about to stand up when Marcus, out of all of us, talked in a deep voice.

"Alice, you have a duty. Your job here is to save our lives. That is all you have to think about right now. Go and tell us your worst sin." That didn't sound to me like the best thing you could say, but I saw Alice suddenly seize, and she cleared her throat a few times. The silence that we left her in made her breathe more regularly. And as soon as the inhales and the exhales were back into a normal rhythm, she opened up.

"I did not fight for the Haven. The crafters spent hours together with some casters charging up my guns. They require a lot of mana. I could never charge them myself. They have no requirements, but each shot costs fifty mana points." My eyes widened at that. Fifty mana points at our level was an immense number. I only had eight mana points, so it would take me hours to just fill up one shot for Alice.

"My job was to kill the strongest undead. And all the women and children too — they poured the mana i-into my guns. But I was terrified. I've never fought anything in my life. I, I did the same thing that I've done in my entrance test. I just left everybody to die. I, um, I hid away and discharged the guns into the ground, because I was afraid they would see that I had not fired a single shot in the battle against the zombies." In the confessional, we all looked at each other.

Everybody had wide eyes, but this all made sense now. Alice was low level because she simply had not participated in the battle. And they probably didn't have a group to share experience, so she had been at level six up until she joined us. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. I was not sure what to say next. I even heard the confessional unlatch while Alice was still talking. I just saw Lucas look down at his stumped hand, angry. I put a hand on his shoulder.

He looked at me, frowning. I shook my head, hoping he would get my message. Then Tina got up and went out. She looked at Alice and said, "That's it?" Alice was confused.

"What do you mean? That was terrible. I…"

"You were afraid. It doesn't make what you have done better, but you should have just told them, 'I am afraid. Take my guns and go.' You can still do the same tonight and tomorrow and the day after. You don't have to keep those guns. They're very powerful though, so you should give them to someone. And if you want, I'm converting to a shooter from a caster. I love shooting guns." Alice frowned.

"But I…"

"Alice, it's a very simple choice," Tina shrugged.

"If you want to fight, nobody here is gonna stop you. In fact, if you need anything, even just like to be kicked a few times before you get going—""Sure. Fear? Fear can be overcome," Alice said.

"But we're talking more about being a coward, and a coward cannot stop being a coward."

"Can you suddenly stop feeling afraid? Of course not. But do you know that a lot of people get taught that despite you feeling something, you don't have to act like it. You feel frustrated at someone, you don't have to shout. You feel angry, you don't have to punch a wall. It's called self-regulation. Yeah, you're gonna feel afraid. These are fucking monsters. We feel afraid.

Actually, I think that in my brain right now, I'm at a point, like, past this belief, where the only thing that keeps me going is that I keep telling myself, 'If I die, it's gonna be pretty fast, so I might as well do this.' And every time I shoot at one of these things, far or up close, I feel my entire body fucking tense, Alice. I feel like I'm about to shit myself." I looked at Tina, the chief HR lady, talking like this, and I couldn't believe my ears.

"So I'll make it very simple for you. I'm taking your guns right now, or you grow up, still feel afraid, and help us with the motherfucking boss on the other side of this room." Tina pointed at a door that had just appeared. Alice looked down, and Tina said, "Alice, I need an answer right now. Can you do this? Can you shoot those guns even while you're afraid? If you got some guns like that, you must have some experience with them, right?"

"I, I was an Olympian," Alice suddenly said, and we all blinked several times.

"What?" Tina said.

"An Olympian?"

"Yeah, I, I've won several gold medals in two Olympics." That shocked us all.

"Wait, what were your disciplines?" Tina asked.

"Ten-meter air pistol, and twenty-five-meter pistol. I won both, twice. And, um, I shot rifle in junior biathlon, before I went all in on pistol." Lucas squinted at her and said, "Holy fuck. I, I'm not sure I'm right, but I think I actually saw you. You're Alice Moon?" She nodded.

"I'm, I'm surprised no one told you at the Haven. Everybody knows. That's part of why they were so eager to help me out," she said.

"So why are you so afraid of shooting the guns then?" I asked.

"It's not the guns," she snapped, and then said, "Sorry. Sorry. It's— I didn't even go hunting. I don't like shooting at people or creatures in general. I just liked shooting at targets. I have a good aim and good focus, but I don't have any killer instinct, or whatever that's called. I, I always sucked at any competition sport before picking up shooting, because I just… I don't know.

I had this friend, she was a very high-level tennis player, and she always said that you got to have this aggressiveness in you, this almost cruelty, in trying to crush the other player. And she said it's some sort of a way to make them both grow. So you always have to go at it as hard as you can, and you're going to improve, and they're going to improve, or whatever. I don't know what she meant by that, but I don't have that. I don't feel it. I just feel extremely relaxed when I'm shooting. I'm at peace.

I'm not thinking about anything but the targets. So that's it. I'm also good at skiing. Maybe another sport where you don't really have another person facing you." We all looked at each other, and I pulled Tina away and said, "Alice, I am not in good conscience taking away the guns from an Olympian myself. So you still have the choice to give your guns away, to Tina or whoever. But, I don't know. Can you try and be relaxed during the boss fight?"

"Yes. And… actually, John—" Alice sighed, and suddenly a rock appeared in her hand. Wait, what's— For some reason, I got a System notification the moment it appeared, and I was stunned speechless.