Markets and Multiverses (A Serial Transmigration LitRPG) Chapter 273: Hate and Mercy

That night, we set up camp quite a ways away from the Worldstrider camp. We didn't want to fight without my illusions and the ability to flee if able. When we returned the next day, we saw sothing unexpected.

Funerals.

The Worldstriders were taking the corpses of their dead, and lighting them on fire. Each pyre had a wooden carving of a creature I didn't recognized added to it. One by one, the worldstriders sent their dead off.

The worldstrider bodies didn’t burn with the fervor I had expected. Instead, they lted like ice cubes in the sun. As the voidstrider bodies burned, little bits of essence drifted out of their bodies and towards the sky. It was beautiful, in an alien sort of way.

The Worldstriders holding funerals for their dead made sense. It shouldn't have surprised.

And yet, it did.

It would be easy to start extinguishing more worldstriders. To just fall back into the sa pattern I had been trying to get into before. But it felt wrong to .

Seeing the worldstriders act so… human threw off. I hated them for what they had done to Sallia. She was like a hospital patient right now. She was stuck floating in the void, without the ability to live her own life.

Not to ntion, the worldstriders were invading the continent. While they claid they only wanted the mountains, they had already pushed far beyond them. They had murdered tens of thousands of Vernese troops, and seed bent on conquest.

But at the sa ti… was killing every Worldstrider we could get access to the right thing to do? Was every worldstrider deserving of death? It was easy to see them as a monolithic species, since I didn’t understand their society or culture. It was also obvious that each worldstrider was an individual. They didn't seem to be so sort of hive mind. Each Worldstrider had its own na and identity. Trying to remove their species from the planet felt wrong to .

I looked at the worldstriders again.

Many of the worldstriders in the camp behaved just like human soldiers. They patrolled the area, dug trenches around the camp, or assembled hunting groups to go kill the Vernese. But there were also so worldstriders doing other things.

Far away, I could see a small worldstrider weaving together flowers. Near the center of the camp, I could see a few worldstriders making wooden carvings. They seed to be the sa wooden carvings that the worldstriders were burning with their dead.

For the first ti, it struck how little I understood about the worldstriders and their culture. As much as I hated them… I didn't think ending their species was the right thing to do.

Anise hesitated. For a long ti, she stared at the camp, just like I was. Finally, she sighed.

she said. Anise frowned harder at the camp, before she shook her head.

I said. As I said it, I felt a tension I hadn't realized I felt start to disappear. Trying to avoid civilian casualties might be dumb. It might get us killed. It would make it harder to get Achievent.

But it felt right. Achievent wasn't everything. I didn't want to beco like the mbers of the Old Market. I had been horrified when I learned that so Market mbers had slaughtered worlds for Achievent. By having a code for who was okay to hurt, I felt... better.

I said.