“I guess it’d be pathetic, to someone like you.” The words still sound sharp and biting, but there’s an exhaustion to it that he can’t shake away. Ruler can’t shake the emotion out, even beaten and with a bruise from the very man he talks to growing tender on his cheek. “Doing such a thing. I’d assume you’d understand, but you have something of your own, even with a lord you speak for.”
The singularity is being resolved nicely. Ruler’s efforts failed. Despite everything, despite remaking himself, reshaping himself... it wasn’t enough.
It was never enough. It was never going to be enough.
But where else does he have to go? Who else did he deign to talk to besides Chaldea’s Master (and he hates the idea of it, of calling anyone else his lord, but they spared him and didn’t let him die) and the very demon he planned on using to change the world, when it all was crashing down around him?
Okada Izou probably is livid, but where else is there to go, in this misbegotten shape, with these lost ambitions that were so openly deemed pathetic by everyone else in the world, despite their own loves and people they’d flip the board for.
Ranmaru Mori has nobody else to speak to. Especially not the one he did this all for, the one he cannot even face nor name.
“At least you can kill. I fucking tried my best, and you’re still alive.” It isn’t even that he’s upset at him. It’s just...
(He would have been lost to becoming a monster if he wasn’t cut away from it, wouldn’t he have? (Would that have been so bad, if he could be by [XXXXXXXX]’s side again? (...)))
...frustration. An idle aching in his teeth. If Okada Izou chops his head off, he doesn’t need to deal with this fallout.
“Hhhffph. You said before that you’re just a manslayer, didn’t you? But that’s at least something you are before you’re their manslayer, isn’t it?”
@originlist - whoops! it’s devotion not loyalty i’m a fucking donkey
