Ultimate Gamer System: Factory Must Grow!-Chapter 107: Just a contingency plan (part 2)

"There was no other way, you say…?"

Callane’s voice trembled as she repeated Theo’s words back to him.

"No other way, my ass!"

With a surge of emotion-rooted power, Callane moved her hands up to Theo’s chest only to then violently push him away, refusing to stay in his hug any longer.

"There were countless other ways! You could’ve waited for the reinforcements to dilute the responsibility! You could’ve waited for the judicators to come and see what was going on yourself, you could’ve…!"

"No, I could not," Theo countered in a calm, slightly silent voice, shaking his head just like he did when listening to what Callane cried out. "As simplistic as it sounds, you weren’t there to see it. And," Theo squinted his eyes, "I know telling you what was going on there would be pointless. So instead?"

Theo shook his head before raising his hand and… snapping his fingers.

"Allow me to show you."

Five words.

That’s all it took for Theo’s weirdly melodic voice to whisk away Callane’s consciousness from her flesh only to imprison her within an illusory domain he just established.

Normally, this would be one of Theo’s go-to combat spells, allowing him to trap most of his opponents’ consciousness away either to save himself the trouble of fighting altogether or to, at the very least, decrease the number of enemies he had to face at once.

This time, however, rather than trapping Callane in some sort of hellish nightmare, he brought her back to the day when his impatience spilled over.

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Or, in other words, a place no better than the hellish landscape of the nightmares he usually used, if not actually worse.

The whole place was scorched down, with nothing more than some blackened pieces of what used to be houses, shops, and taverns now remaining in the sea of ash that the whole village was turned into.

This once-bustling community of nearly a thousand farmers that provided the Evilbane estate with a steady flow of both food and fair taxation had now become a thing of the past.

The always-smiling Bart, who threw away his merchant father’s fortune to open up artisan schools for the kids and homes for the orphans.

The ever-kind priest known to refuse the construction of a temple, claiming he could use any hill for a cathedral, a tree stump for an altar, and but a single pair of ears to conduct his rites.

Jobl, the diligent farmer.

Kathia, the proud mother of eleven siblings.

John.

Bracus.

Timothy.

And countless others.

Faces and names Theodore knew personally thanks to the many, many times he came to visit this village, often putting it as an example to the other settlements on how hard work, honesty, and simple-minded loyalty would be rewarded.

Now, they were all gone with not even their bones remaining, all consumed by the inferno of summoned fires.

"Why did you do it?!" Screaming out through the tears streaming down his face, Theodore confronted the culprit and perpetrator of this great slaughter — his very own younger brother.

"They refused to let me enter this house," the young man strapped in full armor coldly responded, pointing his hand out at yet another scorched ruin as if merely reporting the most natural thing in the world. "And after I’ve already given them the mercy of arriving here personally to collect the taxes!"

The voice of Theo’s brother was filled with exasperation, as if he couldn’t wrap his mind around someone having the audacity not only to try to order him around, not only to refuse him entry to a place he wanted to check out… but even to refuse to pay their dues.

"That’s because it was a sick bay, you damn moron!" Theodore screamed out from the very bottom of his soul, his soul so agitated that sparks of fire crackled within the air he exhaled with every word. "And Lord Father already freed them from this year’s taxes due to the plague taking a heavy toll on this place!"

This plague was no joke. It was the actual reason why Theodore left the family lands for over two months, searching far and wide for the cure that could save his people.

Upon his return, he learned that a whopping eleven villages ended up wiped out, with hardly a single survivor.

A tragic news back then has now turned into a creeping suspicion as he stared at his brother’s back, trying to wrestle with his emotions to hold them down as he tried to make even the most remote sense of the situation.

"Oh, they were all sick?" Slightly surprised, Theo’s brother jumped a bit, turning in the process only to reveal what his bulky suit of armor obscured from Theo’s view before.

A massacred, bloody corpse of Margareth, the cheerful beauty of the village, a youthful, bright girl who still had the guts to chastise Theodore himself when she heard some stupid rumors that his parents were thinking about taking her in as Theo’s concubine.

While nothing more than a stupid rumor spread by a guy she rejected from the neighboring village, it allowed Theo to glance at the fierce character she harbored, something that could carry her way beyond the limits of just this village.

Now, though?

She turned into nothing but a mutilated corpse, held by its throat in the armed man’s gloved hand.

"Tsk," Theo’s brother spat down on the ground only to reach to the back before throwing the corpse into the smoldering ashes of the nearby house.

Judging by the position, Margaret’s very own abode where she used to take care of her aging, sickly father.

"I guess it’s a good thing I burned it all down," Theo’s brother announced with a prideful look on his face before resting his hands down on his hips. "Seeds of plague should be curbed like that before the sickness could spread!"

Poof.

The illusion broke, throwing both Theo and Callane back to the strange reality — a reality that made little to no sense for the girl and wasn’t even reality for the current Theo.

"That corpse in his hand, she was called Margaret. When some rumors spread that I supposedly was to take her as a concubine, it was only by a lot of luck that I managed to dissolve the misunderstanding before she kicked my ass," Theo stated, showing no shame as he admitted to this less-than-pleasant memory.

As a mage, a genius one at that, he could turn the whole ducal domain into smoldering embers with a single spell if he so desired. But when confronted with a furious mortal of a woman…? And one that was more than used to receiving all sorts of looks and attention from men?

Theo shook his head.

"What not many knew, it wouldn’t be even three months before she would return, this time begging me to bed her in exchange for some expensive medicine her ailing father needed," Theo shook his head again, the wound caused by the recent events still too fresh for him to touch it without feeling the sting in return.

"Two days before what you saw happened, her father finally overcame the sickness that kept him bedridden for the last three years, rewarding all of Margareth’s endless efforts to help him. And while we’ve never ultimately slept together, her determination convinced me to use my personal funds to get her the medicine she needed. Wanna guess what’s the absolute worst part?"

Taking a step forward, Theo kept up the pressure on the girl while holding back the sense of guilt caused by doing so.

"It was because of that visit of hers that led to this rotting bastard first catching a glimpse of her. And what you saw in that vision?" Theo shook his head. "It wasn’t even anything that you’ve heard that piece of shit talk about. It was all because she rejected him, now finally free to pursue romance with the poor little shopkeeper she was crushing on all this time."

Hearing all of this, Callane gulped her saliva.

The fires in Theo’s eyes made it clear how he still felt about those relatively recent events.

It would take only one day from when those events transpired to when his blade separated his brother’s head from his neck. Two more days, and he would find himself in the prison carriage with the sentence of death by exile already bearing down over his shoulders.

Three days before he activated the spell upon leaving the populated areas of the land, starting the proper part of his gambit that now led a part of his consciousness to visit what clearly was the future.

"By the time I caught him, he was about to massacre yet another village, this time under the pretense that the fruits they volunteered gave him a stomach ache. It was only then that I finally realized that this strange, crimson aura of his…"

Theo started to speak, only to then purse his lips as he cut his sentence short, opting not to even start this topic up.

"If I waited for even a few more minutes, even more people would lose their lives at the hands of that lunatic. And with even those few deaths, he could grow too strong for me to handle him. So, when I say I had no other choice, trust me."

Theo locked eyes with Callane, his stare burning with determined frenzy.

"I’m speaking the truth."

For a moment, the two of them simply stared at each other. Ultimately, just a few moments later, Theo finally lowered his eyes and took a step back.

’Why did I even go so hard on her?’ he thought, silently thanking himself for not bringing up the whole other angle of the situation — one related to the discovery of his brother’s aura that finally allowed him to confirm his brother was no hero but a potential incarnation of the demon lord itself.

Now that the bastard was dead, it was no longer an issue anyone needed to concern themselves with. And especially not Callane, already burdened with more weight to carry on her petite shoulders than most people.

"With that said, I’m not going to claim I’m not at fault," Theo suddenly added, flipping the whole script of their former conversation as his voice grew softer, his expression meeker.

"I can only hope it won’t be the same for you, but…"

Slightly biting his lips, Theo reached out with his hand and placed it down on Callane’s cheek, caressing it gently as the girl froze in shock.

"But if there’s one regret I have, it’s that I’ve never properly told you I’ve always loved you. And even though I’m clearly going to return," Theo said as he looked around, at all the machines he couldn’t even make the first sense of.

"I don’t have the confidence to say that upon my return, I will still be the same."