Strongest Demigod System-Chapter 69: The Nature of Monsters

What did it mean to be a monster?

Was a human a monster for trying to survive?

Azrael was cursed by Necrosis. And as long as he was cursed, he wouldn't be able to live long if he didn't take the lives of other demigods. So could anyone blame him for the things that he did when it was the only way for him to gain power?

Was this not the same thing that happened in nature?

Creatures struggled and suffered to make sure that they could live.

It didn't matter what form of suffering they brought to the lives of other creatures. It didn't even matter what they killed in order to preserve their own lives.

Would you call these creatures monsters?

Updat𝓮d fr𝙤m ƒгeeweɓn૦vel.com.

Could anyone fault him for the things he had done? If his life was placed on paper and someone studied it, would they not say that the things he did were necessary?

Azrael did not know the answer to these questions. And depending on who you ask, there will always be those who argue that he was either right or wrong.

But this was not a game.

Azrael's life was on the line, and he refused to lose it because of something as malleable as morality.

Morality was a chain that held down the weak and docile. It was thrown around by those who tried to make others feel guilty and then tossed aside when it no longer suited the narrative of those same people.

Wouldn't you say that cheating on your partner was immoral?

And yet it was done by nearly everyone these days.

Wouldn't you say that lying or stealing was immoral?

And yet people did these same things every day and then covered up their crimes by claiming that they weren't that harmful to anyone.

A white lie here and a small case of 'borrowing' there.

Morality is cast aside for the sake of human greed.

Azrael was not trying to justify the things that he had done.

He was simply stating that the term morality was too twisted in the modern world.

People didn't understand what it meant to be morally upright anymore, so there was no point in using an argument like that against him.

Azrael was simply a survivor.

…

The bell for lunch rang a few minutes after Azrael started meditating, and this time, Azrael had set up a timer on his phone to alert him when the bell rang. The loud sound pulled Azrael out of his meditation, and he turned to the system at the side.

…

[Lithany of Ascension]

Progress in the Mantra: 0.8%

Progress Required to Rank Up: 2%

…

That was a lot more progress than what Azrael gained before.

Azrael was surprised by how much more he progressed in the mantra. He meditated for close to eight hours the previous day and only gained 0.4%, but after only meditating for thirty minutes today, he gained the same 0.4%.

Does that mean he was going in the right direction?

That had to be it.

Azrael thought back to the things that he meditated on, and he realized that the concept of morality and his own core principles were what the Lithany wanted him to focus on more. It wanted Azrael to figure out what it was that made him who he was as a person by contemplating the truth behind the choices he made and the actions he took.

Azrael frowned as he wondered if there was more that he was missing.

The fact that the Lithany didn't go all the way to two percent meant that there was still more than Azrael hadn't figured out yet.

He would have to keep meditating on these things until he found out what he was missing.

That was the only time when he was going to rank up.

Azrael packed up his things and headed out from the gym to get back to class. He was going to continue meditating once he got back to the dorm, but first, he needed to figure out who he was going to kill next.

…

For the rest of the school day, Azrael didn't have any encounters with Maddison. Part of the reason was that he was avoiding having a conversation with her after everything that happened between them, but other than that, Azrael was just busy looking through the internet to find out if there was any demigod with an ability like what he needed.

There were a few of them that popped up from the Divine Enforcers website, but they were all members of the Divine Enforcers, so they were working at the veil borders.

There was no way Azrael would be able to make it all the way over there just to take a God Aspect from one of them.

Azrael continued to look for anyone who matched what he wanted, and after a while, he saw a news report about a boy who was blessed by Apollo, the God of Prophecy. The news report was old, and there weren't any mentions of the boy's current whereabouts, but it just spoke about how the boy had the blessing of Apollo that allowed him to grasp information from the inner system of any demigod, including their God Aspect.

There was a picture of the young boy smiling at the camera while holding the hand of a woman – probably his mother. And under the picture was the name Harold Javier.

This was exactly what Azrael had been looking for, but he couldn't do anything with the limited information that he got from the internet.

The article talking about the kid was dated about twenty years ago, so Azrael guessed that the man would still be alive. But whether or not the man was in the Divine Enforcers was what would determine what he could do with this information.

The name Harold Javier stuck with Azrael for a long time as he continued scrolling through various web pages to try and find anything on the mysterious child of Apollo.

Azrael was sitting in his bed that night when all the other boys had gone to sleep, and he tuned out the echo of their unified snores while trying to focus on what he was doing.

There weren't any other articles talking about Harold Javier, and every time Azrael thought he found something about him, it always seemed to lead to a locked website or an article that had been taken down a long time ago.

Was someone actively trying to make sure that Harold Javier vanished?

This thought ran through Azrael's mind, and Azrael frowned as he decided to stop trying for now and get in some training.

Azrael had been reciting the Hymn to the Immortal Soul all this while, and he didn't see any improvement in his Lithany, so he was sure that he had to be in a state of meditation without any outside distractions for it to work.

Azrael dropped his phone, closed his eyes, and concentrated on the Lithany.

What if Harold was already dead?

Azrael did not know why, but this was the first thought that came to his mind once he was deep in his meditation. The thought of all his effort being in vain and the man being dead hit him harder than he thought it would.