GREED: ALL FOR WHAT?



Back to the Present.

Salvin muttered to herself. "The ancient promise. For our future. For our children."

Her ancestor made that promise to his race that day and has fulfilled it many times over. The Virut plane is their's now. Battle sage monkeys control it. They don't have problems with food anymore. Their mortals are kept safe from the violence and suffering of the cultivation world. Those that want to fight can fight however they want. But the effect of the promise has not ended yet. 

Many people died that day just so that the first Sage could fulfill his promise of wiping out the vipers. If not for him calling them to die that day, they wouldn't have died. They would have had their lives. It might be a short-lived life full of suffering, but it will still be their life. 

The Sage asked for their lives, and in exchange, he would give their children a better future. He meant that promise, and he truly cared about his race. He fought for the liberation of his people against a superior race that oppressed them.

It is a wonder that he managed to achieve the liberation that they fought for. Some sacrifice along the way is to be expected. But the Sage still felt guilty. He fulfilled his promise and even did more for the race. His descendants were also forced to fulfill that promise and more even until today.

She sighed. She knew some of the Sage's bloodline descendants hate the bloodline, and they hate the Sage. It is difficult to care about something when it happened before you were born. It is doubly difficult to care about the promise when Vipers have disappeared. 

She herself didn't care about it at all. She didn't hate her bloodline, but she didn't adore it either. But that has changed now that she witnessed and experienced the events that brought about that promise.

Now she knows why she feels bad if she has a chance to do something that will benefit the plane but refuses to do it. Her bloodline never compelled her to make decisions, but she will still feel loss and anguish whenever she makes decisions that are detrimental to the plane. It used to bother her before that she felt uncontrollable emotions. But now it won't anymore. 

She now knows what it meant for the ocular monkeys to go to battle knowing that they would die, but they went either way just so that their kids won't go through what they went through. She knows how bad it hurts to lose lifelong friends that you grew up with. She knows what it feels like to send suffering men and women to their death for a dream of freedom and for vengeance. She knows all these and more.

She is now better informed about the situation of the ocular monkeys before the liberation of their race. Ocular monkeys were nomads when the Vipers ruled the plane. They couldn't stay in one place for long because the Vipers always raid them every year. 

That's apart from the occasional hunts that will happen whenever Vipers want to feast on them. There is a yearly cultural tradition of the Vipers to hunt them throughout the plane. It made life difficult for ocular monkeys.

Then there was the meat slavery. Ocular monkeys were enslaved but not for labor. They were reared for food. Vipers didn't think much about the monkeys. To them, ocular monkeys were soft and furry. They were weak, and their meat was delicious. The nomadic lifestyle of the monkeys made it difficult for them to sustain themselves, but there were better off than monkeys reared in captivity with lots of food so that they would be eaten.

Things were already bad, but they could have gotten worse. The paragons of the Vipers were considered gods and were worshipped as such. Sometimes they would sacrifice ocular monkeys to those paragons. 

The ocular monkeys had to fight back and liberate themselves at that point before it became too late. The Vipers already had an immortal emperor that they worshipped. Things would have become hopeless if Emperor Situ had become a god. Or worse, become a child of the plane.

Bloodlines are very powerful things. They are especially powerful if they come from an immortal. The hopes, dreams, aspirations, love, hatred, talent, instincts, and skills of the ancestor are contained within the bloodline. The bloodlines seek to recreate this ancestor. This impetus comes with both the good and the bad. But both the good and bad have a reason or more for them. 

Maybe Jarkon would stop being grumpy about the manipulation of his bloodline if he knew that his ancestor was raised as a pet to be eaten. Maybe he wouldn't consider the compelling need to enforce justice to be so bad if he experienced what it feels like to watch your father and mother killed, chopped up, cooked, and eaten. Maybe that experience will traumatize him as it did to his ancestor.

Maybe he will understand if he knows that his ancestor betrayed an ocular monkey that was planning to help all the captives escape in exchange for freedom. His ancestor became a warden for other ocular monkeys. He was afraid to die, so he snitched on his race. But then he had to watch other ocular monkeys die on a daily basis. 

The freedom he bought with blood paid dividends with more blood. That experience wore on the ancestor of the Lion of Justice. It changed Jarkon's ancestor to become an ocular monkey that couldn't bear to see injustice anymore in any form whatsoever.

Salvini shook her head in pity. "I was so ignorant. We were all so ignorant." She said.

She feels pity for herself and for every battle sage with a bloodline. They have enjoyed the work of their ancestors without the knowledge of what their ancestors went through to achieve them. No one that becomes an immortal walked through a bed of roses to achieve it. Sure, the descendants know that it was difficult. But they can not really envision just how difficult it was. 

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