Chapter 118 - 118. Ash Tree (1/2)
A little below the clouds, the overseer of the trial slowly floated as if invisible wings made him go forward in the air while subtly swinging up and down from time to time.
His eyes, looking to the horizon, now could see a river that cut the land from right to left and was surrounded by majestic purple trees with white flowers at the top, a few birds passed by him singing a beautiful melody while he descended to a small hill not far from the river.
While descending his gaze changed from the beautiful view in the horizon to what was below him, a mountain of corpses.
He wished that was a figurative description of what he saw, but unfortunately, it was literally a mountain of corpses, or in better words, a hill covered in corpses.
Hundreds of bodies charred, cut in half, decapitated or with a hole in the center of their chest, head, or with missing limps or even completely and utterly unrecognizable meat pastes, that once were human beings.
The scene didn't made the overseer flinch, but only made him remember of his own past battles.
He gave a long sigh and descended at the top of the hill, where a single man stood alone laying his back against the base of an ash tree while slowly smoking a cigarette.
The man's right hand was tinkering with an essence pistol as if he was already used to one, while his left hand moved to his mouth to take another drag at the cigarette.
The man raised his gaze and saw the overseer descending and as if it was something that was not of his concern, he moved his gaze to the side to enjoy the beautiful view that surrounded them.
The trees top and the river could be fully seen from the top of the hill where he stood.
”Beautiful isn't?”
Said the man, still not moving his gaze, and puffing out the smoke from his lungs.
The overseer too didn't move his gaze from the man as he already knew what he was talking about, and indeed in his opinion, was a beautiful view, but his focus was on other matters now, and not sparing the time to answer what was obvious to everyone who had eyes, he asked ”You really had to kill them all?”
Hearing the question, Mack, put the pistol down, closed his eyes briefly as if remembering the events or if trying to figure a answer and said, ”They had three opportunities to be alive now, and you know too...”
Mack opened his eyes, took a drag of the cigarette and continued, ”The first time, I was trying to make all of them forfeit the trial by not entering, I tried to scare them at the beach, but they still went forward.”
Mack took a pause, and remembered the second time, everyone thought he was dead by the combined assault of a dozen of people, then when he came out of the smog they could have just turned their backs and entered the beach again and leave the trial.