[You've discovered the Secret Area within the Hidden Dungeon!]
Not only the cultists scattering and running away like cockroaches greeted us, but a wide dark hall filled with desks, tables, and blood and guts splattered over the floor.
There were all sorts of strange materials scattered inside many small pieces of furniture, the floor not only had blood and guts, but countless runes inscribed, creating a gigantic circle surrounding a huge, floating… thing.
It was inside a glass tube, and it seemed to hold no actual shape, amorphous and strange, it looked to be made of many pieces of several creatures, humans included.
But I could notice several black tentacles, red eyes, and fangs… Its appearance somehow reminding me of the true body of the Demon King of Miasma!
[The Origin of the Darkness greets you.]
["Please… end me… end my suffering… kill… me…"]
"Just what is that thing?!" I asked, seconds before Rita pointed into the distance.
"There… is that…?!" She muttered, suddenly feeling disgusted.
"No way…" Mark said, feeling disheartened.
"T-This is… wow…" Jenny muttered.
Lily didn't said a single word, resisting the urge to vomit, her cheerful eyes showing clear horror.
I looked into the left, hiding beneath the shadows, there were the corpses of… countless people. Some still had their clothes on, they seemed to be mostly commoners and citizens, there were elderly, and children too, even… babies.
Suddenly, I felt utter disgust as I felt the smell of the rotten corpses covered on flies and worms, the entire place was rotting with not only the smell of Miasma and Nether, but the smell of corpses they had been throwing in here!
"You monsters…!" I couldn't contain my fury any longer, glaring at the dozens of cultists we caught red-handed. "YOU BASTARDS!"
"Don't let them get to our test subject! Attack!"
Aside from a few ones escaping into the nearby corridors leading deeper into this maze, dozens of them pointed their wands and other magical weapons at us, harnessing their Mana and the powers they had acquired, and firing countless spells against us!
Hundreds of Black Fireballs, Poisonous Bullets, Miasmic Arrows, and Spears of Darkness reached us in mere seconds, as I quickly kicked the ground with all my might and generated several barriers made of Yggdrasil's wood!
"{Yggdrasil's Walls}!"
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The projectiles quickly started bombarding the barrier as a few cracks emerged, which I constantly regenerated using my Mana. I continued spreading my Domain like I had done beforehand, bringing it from the outside into this place, enhancing the power of the walls.
"Those bastards have been using innocent people for their experiments?!" Rita was still trying to process it. "Okay, that's enough, I'm going to blast a few holes through their damn brains!"
"This is terrible… These people are rotten to the core…" Lily cried. "We've been fighting monsters so far but this is… Ugh, and knowing this world is just as real as our own…"
"If you don't want to do it, I won't force you to." Mark said, suddenly beginning to walk around the barrier. "I'll make it quick."
"W-Wait…!" I tried to stop him. "What are you planning to do?!"
"I'll kill them." Mark's eyes flared with blazing flames. "What else is a fitting punishment for people like them? But… you don't have to do it. I won't let them put any weight into your conscience."
I couldn't really say a word. This was all too fast and out of nowhere but… He was kind of right, and Lily as well.
We've been fighting monsters so far, even the previous cultists ended turning into abominations, and the Undead were no longer people, but reanimated corpses controlled by their accursed souls.
To fight these cultists, that looked clearly human… and just kill them for it.
What would that make me?
Maybe in the past I would had hesitated more though, but right now, after everything I've gone through, and after I saw the atrocities they did.
And how they even killed children and babies for sacrifices to their abomination…
I just can't forgive them.
They don't seem like people anymore, someone capable of so much horror is no longer a person to me, they're just the same as the monsters we've been hunting so far.
I've changed more than I can even recognize myself sometimes.
But I know that doing the right thing is not always… what one truly wants.
Because to me, killing them is the right thing.
And the System itself has also detected them as enemies, not NPC that I cannot harm.
[The Cultists within this area have committed terrible atrocities against many innocent souls, you're allowed to slay them and make them pay for their crimes.]
[For felling these criminals, you will be rewarded greatly.]
It almost feels like it is trying to comfort me and make me think its what I should definitely do… And I guess to an extent, I agree.
Maybe I have not really changed as much, and I've simply become braver. Because for those I love, and for the innocent souls that were taken away so bitterly, I'm willing to do these things.
Just thinking that these children could have been the kids of many mothers, who can no longer meet them again.
Just thinking that one of these children… might have been my own daughter.
I gripped my fists tightly; I had already made my resolve.
There was no point in whining about it.
"A-Are you sure?!" Mark asked in surprise.
"Just thinking about how those children will never be able to see their mothers again fill me with anger, I have to do it, or I might not be able to sleep well tonight." I sighed, summoning Gram into my hands, and transforming Gaia-All-Purpose Tool into a long green and golden spear. "I won't hesitate!"
"Kill them! Keep firing the spells!"
"They're only a few, as long as we can destroy them with our magic, we can also sacrifice their souls!"
"Our Great Leader will-"
My spear pierced the man's throat before he could even say another word.