377 One bomb after the other
“That’s quite the…” Beatrice gulped her saliva down. “A bomb for you to drop.”
Her hands dropped. Beatrice’s entire face melted down as she started to gradually acknowledge the implications behind this message.
“Doesn’t that mean we can just give it to…”
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Mathew closed his eyes over his chest and gave the woman a long look.
“We could save many more human lives!” Beatrice mumbled through her lips, giving Mathew a look of a teacher disappointed in just how incompetent their students are. “Imagine if half of the population had a system back when this apocalypse started!”
“That’s exactly what I’m talking about.” Mathew countered right away. “I cannot really imagine our society developing peacefully if some people could randomly get so much stronger!”
History proved that too much power in the hands of the public stood against the very idea of public order. Without the laws and force to put them in place, one’s personal power could only lead to a disaster.
And in a world where all forms of power were now gone, ground to dust, recklessly spreading the seeds of the system would lead to this exact scenario.
“Right now, we lack a proper means of controlling those who we could bestow with a system,” Mathew pointed out. He then rested his hands on his hips and looked at the woman directly in her agitated face. “Right now systems are kept to a narrow number of people, creating a clear hierarchy. But what will happen when every other person will get a system on their own?”
Mathew didn’t even need to start the topic to imagine what this situation would look like. And it wasn’t a pretty sight at all.
“I’m not saying we are going to hide this possibility.” Mathew shook his head. “Bestowing systems upon others is too much of an opportunity for us to waste,” he said before stopping his head and taking a look around, giving all of his companions a serious look. “But I also implore that we do not use it recklessly!”
“He’s making sense,” Daria quickly agreed, nodding her head with understanding.
“I still want to know how effective those systems will be,” Leila pointed out another potentially conflicting part of the topic. “It’s not like the good ones will be cheap, right?” The girl leaned her head to the side as she pointed out. “So we will need to factor this cost into our plans as well.”
‘She’s really seeing through the crux of the matter,’ Mathew turned his eyes to the girl, giving her a short glance filled with praise.
Then, his feelings quickly turned sour when he recalled how he basically stood her up on her night.
‘I wonder how our situation will change in that regard, given how my wives’ system is now gone,’ Mathew thought.
Just a few short moments ago, this thought alone was enough to put him on the edge of a mental break. Now, however, it was just a simple notion filled with maybe a tiny bit of curiosity.
Now that they no longer needed to keep up the appearances of the husband and his wives for the sake of the system, how would Mathew’s relationship with the girls change?
‘Only time can tell, I guess,’ Mathew took a deeper breath as he thought.
The topic of his wives inadvertently lead his thoughts to the one major point that he had yet to pick up.
“Right, girls, there is one more matter to discuss,” Mathew spoke out, ready to turn his thoughts into actions. “And it’s not only huge but also pretty damn urgent,” he added to shake the girls out of their daze.
This entire talk consisted of nothing but topics that were extremely hard to summarise and even harder to quickly talk through. As such, it was only natural that the girls would rather have some time to slowly digest the news they were receiving at every step.
Sadly, there was no time for it. Or rather…
‘I don’t know if there is a time limit on this mission or not, so it’s better if I don’t take any chances,’ Mathew thought, reinforcing his idea for how he wanted to proceed.
“First thing first, back when I visited the merchant to establish the settlement, I’ve got a strange vision,” Mathew revealed, finally getting to the details that exceeded anything that they experienced or talked about so far. “It was a glimpse of what you would call a world in a fantasy setting. All I know for sure is that magic is common there….” Mathew took a short pause to let the tension build up a little, “and races other than just the humans that we have here, on earth,” he then added.
Mathew twitched.
A weird sense of nostalgia and pride filled his head as he realized a small tidbit.
‘Did I just use human race… in a context that’s actually scientifically appropriate, ever since the very conception of this word?’ Mathew asked.
Calling people of different skin color or other genetic traits as different races was the inherent drawback of humanity’s simplistic and brutal past. It was also the result possible only in a world where no other race contested the right to call themselves humans in the first place.
Only with the appearance of a fantasy world that was a home to human-like sentients whose biological traits differed from those of people on earth, did humanity gain the right to use a race as a differentiating factor in the first place!
“Before you ask any questions,” Mathew raised his hands.
The time that he wasted falling into a daze the girls made use of to analyze his words and prepare their replies. Yet, rather than waiting for them to ask for more details, Mathew opted to offer them willingly.
“There is most likely a chance that we could obtain means to traveling to that foreign world,” the young man pointed out. His lips then started to tremble, with his soul unsure of what feeling to settle on.
Should Mathew be wary of all the challenges that this opportunity would invite down the line? Or should he be enthusiastic about what next could this changing world offer them?
“The one caveat that I want to stress out, though,” Mathew then added, taking some time to prepare before he could rain down on everyone’s various parades. “There is most likely a time limit to how quickly we need to get to that other world if we want to really keep the option to travel there.”