Chapter 39
Yekaterina got straight to the point.
“You had an interesting interview.”
“Yes.”
“May I ask why?”
“Because it’s the truth.”
“Not all truths need to be revealed. It would have been more convenient to hide it, for your own sake, Mason…”
“Yes, that’s right. But I…”
Mason looked at Yekaterina.
“…I wanted to be hope.”
“For humanity? Or… for us?”
Mason smiled bitterly at Yekaterina’s words.
A strategist like Yekaterina couldn’t possibly misunderstand Mason’s intentions.
“Both.”
Mason’s declaration. His superhuman declaration was aimed in two directions.
To the people, it was a declaration that beings beyond human existed.
It was a declaration that there was someone who would be their hope.
However, at that moment, Mason was also looking in another direction.
For those who were not allowed to be human, the pseudo-humans.
For those who hid beyond history, fearing humans, Mason declared:
That there are beings who are not human, here as well.
Yekaterina understood his intention.
“It will be a difficult path.”
It was Mason’s own choice.
To be the vanguard, standing at the forefront of humanity against monsters.
And to stand at the forefront of the struggle of pseudo-humans, who must walk the thorny path of human prejudice.
“Didn’t you know? I’m strong.”
Yekaterina’s face was not filled with her usual dignity, but with fatigue. A characteristic weariness of someone who has lived a difficult life, and failed for most of it.
She sank into the sofa.
“I’ve lived quite a long life. And… the people I believed in always disappointed or betrayed me. Experience and history have only taught me that you shouldn’t believe in goodwill. So, I don’t trust people. I only believe in mutual interests.”
She looked at Mason.
“And that included you, Mason. My plan… was to make you the king of pseudo-humans. To make them your people, to create your own kingdom, where it would be in your interest to protect them and their nation.”
“Not anymore?”
“No.”
Yekaterina said, with a strangely sad expression.
“Because I realized… that you are not someone who can be moved that way, Mason.”
“You mean you believe me now?”
“I realized that I have no other choice. But… no matter how much I consider it, I realized that I don’t have the courage to trust anyone else.”
“Kacha, trust me.”
“I know. You acted out of goodwill, Mason. You’re pure, passionate, and you have the talent to lead people. But you know what? So was the last person I believed in.”
“Who was it?”
Yekaterina was silent for a moment. She spoke with difficulty, as if squeezing out the words.
“Hitler. Adolf Hitler.”
“…!”
The name of the monster who had driven his own country into the abyss of war and attempted to erase entire races still remained in the 28th century.
The scientific power of the 28th century, capable of turning any dream into reality.
That scientific power had a safety device called the Council of Sages.
The reason they examined people’s dreams was to prevent the nightmares of such monsters from becoming reality.
“The monster of the Holocaust…”
The long, yet short history of mankind was also a history of war.
There were countless slaughters and massacres.
“I saw potential in him. The potential to become the savior of us, pseudo-humans. And because of that, I overlooked…”
“What?”
“The potential for the opposite.”
However, the Holocaust was a horrific act that could not be compared to any previous massacre.
It was not a massacre driven by emotions like religion, hatred, or greed, but a massacre carried out with reason and rationality.
This was because it showed what would happen if modern science and administrative power were abused.
Administrative power was used to formulate plans, police power to track down Jews and Gypsies, and transportation networks like railroads to transport them to concentration camps.
In the camps, their labor was exploited, and the final destination for those who collapsed from exhaustion was the gas chamber, a product of chemistry.
Countless individuals involved in this process were simply doing their ‘everyday work’, with no room to feel guilty about the massacre.
It proved that it could all happen with the decisions of a few people, those who held the power to decide.
That all the morals and conscience that modern people hold could be crushed with just the decisions of a few.
However, there was also something that people questioned.
Why?
Why did Hitler go to such lengths to carry out the massacre?
To some extent, it was understandable.
He needed propaganda to seize power, and propaganda needed madness.
Jews, the foreigners sucking up the nation’s wealth, were a suitable target for hatred, and the impoverished Gypsies, who wandered around without conforming to the state system, were a suitable target for disgust.
Massacring them could have been a rational decision. As a means to seize power, it had a rational side.
Then why, why on earth, did he not stop the Holocaust even as the war intensified and defeat approached?
Why on earth did he do such an irrational thing?
The simplest answer was that Hitler, along with the N*zi leadership, had gone mad.
In the final stages of the war, the cornered Nazis wasted their national power on magic and sorcery.
It was truly the act of a madman.
There was no point in seeking rationality from a madman.
Thus, everyone stopped looking for a reason behind Hitler’s actions.
But the truth was…
“He knew exactly what he was doing. From the beginning. And until the very end…”
Comparison requires a subject.
For someone to be a superior race, someone had to be an inferior race.
“Was he… killing pseudo-humans?”
“Yes.”
Every time she uttered a word, Yekaterina struggled even to breathe. What she was recalling was a horrific memory, a nightmare that still haunted her.
“As modernized nations began to emerge, administrative power began to spread throughout the land, reaching even remote villages. Pseudo-humans who resembled humans in appearance could manage to hold on, but those who couldn’t… had to leave their homes and wander around.”
“Gypsies…”
Yekaterina nodded.
“Or… they had to have the wealth and connections to live without revealing themselves to people.”
“…Jews.”
Yekaterina nodded heavily.
“We also had enemies. There were those who knew our identity, and those who hunted us down and killed us. But… Hitler changed the world. With the potential I had hoped for, he changed the rules of the game in the opposite direction of what I had anticipated. Instead of searching for pseudo-humans hidden among Jews and Gypsies, he tried to exterminate Jews and Gypsies as a whole. No matter how much innocent blood was shed…”
Mason staggered.
His legs wouldn’t support him. It was hard to breathe.
Facing a rational and systematic form of evil, Mason felt pain and fear as if he was being eaten alive.
“…”
Mason collapsed onto the bed.
“Blood calls for blood, hatred calls for hatred.”
Yekaterina said in a whisper.
“The reason my people claim to be pseudo-humans… is because they don’t want to belong to humanity. They’d rather choose to be called by a derogatory term than be grouped together with humans as the same race.”
Mason closed his eyes tightly.
A memory mixed with nostalgia flashed before his eyes.
It was a conversation he had with the wisest man he knew, long ago.
<...I hope it doesn't come to that.>
Robert Park, the G*d-King of the 28th century, gave him a spaceship capable of traveling to the ends of the universe and a body that could withstand extreme environments.
But… even he couldn’t open the heart of someone who refused to open it…
“Well, that’s all I can tell you.”
Yekaterina smiled faintly.
“I’m not ready to trust anyone, and my people aren’t ready to stand with humanity. So…”
“…Are you telling me to give up?”
Yekaterina shook her head.
“So… please understand. Our fears, mine and my people’s. And understand that we need time.”
“Okay.”
Mason nodded with a calm expression.
“I never intended to force it from the beginning.”
If Mason had intended to pressure the pseudo-humans, he would have revealed their existence at the same time he announced he was superhuman.
However, Mason chose the opposite.
“Watch my back. Watch the path I walk.”
“I will.”
“That’s enough.”
Yekaterina smiled bitterly.
“Well then… it seems like the mysterious queen act is over.”
“Yes, it seems so.”
She smiled.
“Are you disappointed in me?”
“No.”
“That’s good.”
Yekaterina closed her eyes gently.
“Because I’m always disappointing myself.”
Mason, involuntarily, reached out to Yekaterina.
She was trembling like a wounded bird. Out of compassion, not l*st, Mason embraced her.
“Kacha.”
As expected, it was going to be a long night.
A night that would never be spent alone.
๑ஓ๑๑ஓ๑๑ஓ๑๑ஓ๑๑ஓ๑๑ஓ๑
Fire was not scary.
What was scary was what lay beyond the flames.
After the ‘Superhuman Declaration’. The world had changed a lot more than expected, and a lot less than expected.
The emergence of ‘superhumans’ shook the player community.
Players were essentially enhanced infantry, and the main means of enhancing players so far had been leveling up and equipment.
This meant that conventional scientific methods, such as doping and training, were relatively neglected.
But Mason showed them.
The possibility of an enhanced human beyond the Player System.
It was a new turning point in the research on enhanced humans, which had been focused solely on the Player System.
And the entertainment industry was no exception.
Despite his massive size, Mason had well-balanced body proportions.
Apart from his size and imposing presence, he had decent and exotic looks.
His power and the buzz surrounding him made it inevitable for the entertainment industry to have their eyes on Mason.
The most shocked were the sports world, especially sports scientists.
Mason’s body itself was something similar to a human skeleton, and the arrangement of muscles covering that skeleton was the best that humans could imagine.
Moreover, the quality of those muscles was beyond imagination.
Amazing muscles that harmonized durability, strength, and agility at the extreme.
Just one of his visible trapezius muscles was enough to write dozens of sports papers.
However, the reality was…
‘…There hasn’t been much political change.’
What Mason wanted most was a change in public perception and politics.
Not the recognition that there are beings beyond human, but the recognition itself that there could be beings other than humans.
An experience that breaks the frame of common sense and broadens one’s worldview. He had hoped that the recognition, often called ‘sense of wonder’, would spread among people.
But… people ended up accepting Mason as a variant of a Player.
They accepted him as gossip, as research material, even as hope… but they didn’t let him into their worldview.
