[D'sP] Melonie Loud - Chapter 330 (Patreon)

Down in the dungeon, Doyle watches these big moves and worries. Not about the cultists or even those agents. Rather, he worried because of what it revealed of Ace, the Barrais, and the people who support them. See, the cultists hadn’t actually done anything against the rules yet.

Of course, that is mostly coming from the fact there aren’t that many laws to begin with. Still, such a massive action against people who had only been planning without any prep? People say stupid things all the time, so trying to police them based on that isn’t a good direction to go.

This isn’t why it worries Doyle. Rather, he is worried because of what it is revealing of Ace and how he acts. The Barrais? Doyle expects things like this from them, but the plan to clear Wolf’s Rest went through Ace as well. It showed a ruthlessness and a certain amount of belief that the ends justify the means.

Doyle had never liked that sentiment. Not that he was against doing what was needed to get things done. Rather, the idea behind using the end results themselves to justify what you did to get there is what he loathed. After all, you don’t know if you will reach the end result you want, so you better have a reason for doing it when you are doing it.

Besides, that assumes that the means you use doesn’t influence the end result you get. What good is going through hell, if hell taints the destination?

And therein lies the reason this worries Doyle. Ace justified this using only future results that might come from it. Sure, doing this means that the cult of the system won’t have a chance to overthrow him, but what about the next group? Or the one after that? How deep down this rabbit hole will Ace go, because at some point it leads to some nasty knock-on effects for Doyle.

Ally isn’t quite as worried, though she has seen more than enough beings with similar morals. It seems to be a bit of a common feature of people and religions that don’t want to admit their own failings. That try to believe they and their deities are flawless bastions of good. This is even more annoying when most of the time, the deity isn’t even involved and they’re just working off old teachings, imperfectly passed down through the ages.

In the end though, Ally just accepts this is the kind of thing you end up with when dealing with sapients. People don’t like personally taking responsibility and so will push it off on circumstances, others, and even nebulous things like “the common good” or “the ends”. Not to say there aren’t valid reasons for stuff either. Just as many people try to reduce the reasons someone explains down to excuses. Life tends to be nowhere near that cut and dry.

So while Ally did promise to keep an eye on things, she warned Doyle not to go down the same route. As it currently stands, Ace had done less than those cultists did and so going off half-cocked wouldn’t be good. Besides, whatever happens here, she believes in Doyle’s ability to figure out a solution.

And speaking of solutions, back up-river, Melonie is having a hard time finding the solution to which name she should pick. There are a few boring options, mostly based around said river. Though there is no way she is going to name her town “river town”. Not just because she hopes to one day develop it into a city, but because going by how humans used to make places, such a name will be the exact opposite of unique.

On the other hand, some people seemed to have figured out how to keyboard smash even without a keyboard. Like, seriously? “Snatgll”, “ropallul”, and the classic “towny mctownface” are not even in the running. She isn’t going to make the classic brand mistake of letting the public suggest names for stuff and vote on said names.

That still left a bunch of more reasonable names as she didn’t think of limiting how many suggestions people could make. A frustrating problem, but since she has the final say, not the worst one. Though it certainly helped that she had the secretaries rewrite all the suggestions without any names attached. It would be an even worse nightmare if she had to consider the politics of which name to pick based on who suggested it. That would have really been an endless quagmire.

In the end, she narrowed it down to three names. Her selfish pick of “Bennett” and yes someone besides her had suggested naming the town after her last name. Besides, “Bennett town” had a nice ring to it.

In fact, as she glanced at the other two names, she didn’t even bother reading them again. This was her town and her last name sounded nice. If anyone has a complaint about it, they can take it up with the system for letting her name the town in the first place. At least she didn’t use her first name. Last names have more pedigree to them and tend to represent a powerful family being in control.

While Melonie is currently single, she does plan to eventually have a family. In fact, if not for the system apocalypse, she had plans of being a stay at home mom type. Sure, she also planned to take martial arts lessons, but her family wasn’t in a position that doing so would burden them at all.

Now that isn’t exactly an option, but if anything it makes her early life focus on exercise and combat sports more than just a quirky hobby. While she certainly wasn’t from an old money family or some kind of noble line, her life choices hadn’t made her all that popular with other kids at her private school. Not that she cared and it just made her laugh when supposedly faithful boyfriends would try and ask her out on the sly.

She never took such offers, though. While she didn’t mind dating someone, they needed to be clear with any ex’s or partners what was happening. Melonie wasn’t some hidden side piece or another piece in a collection.

Decision made, she goes to sleep. It had gotten a bit late by the time people stopped suggesting names and so things would have to continue the next day. And better to face the inevitable complaints after a good night’s sleep.

Though not all things are peaceful as the night passes. Around the jail, more than a few would-be jail breakers can be found tied up. The Barrais weren’t going to let things go with the cultists just escaping. However, the ones just trying to break out the vandals are kept separate and would be released early in the morning. As for those that did aim for the cultists? Well, they get to leave with them since they’re apparently so attached.

So, when Melonie wakes up the next morning, she is once again greeted with an increase to her workload. At least in this case, they already made the decisions around it. All that was left was the social part of telling people what happened. Not the easiest thing, but at least that was already figured out.

Besides, soon enough, everyone has gathered again for this day’s events. If anything, the crowd is even bigger, as people who missed it yesterday have made it. That and the market was closed for the morning so all the merchants could watch as well.

This, of course, meant it took Melonie even longer to get the crowd to settle down, but that’s life sometimes. At least she wasn’t trying to get them to move somewhere. That would make the “herding cats” comparison a little too real.

Once the crowd grows silent, Melonie clears her throat and begins. “Welp, we have a new batch of idiots. Don’t worry, if someone just went after the vandals, we have already released them.”

One man interrupts her to yell, “Well, my girlfriend hasn’t come back yet!”

Melonie laughs, “Then she didn’t go to release the vandals. Also, you admit to knowing she intended to illegally break someone out of jail?”

That shut the man up, though someone else spoke up. “So what happened to that guy’s girl then? Because apparently this idiot knew where she was going last night and now claims he hasn’t seen her.”

Melonie shrugs, “Well, there is always the chance she skipped town after being released. However, the more likely answer is that she was one of the seven trying to break out the cultists. Those seven got their wish to rejoin with the captured cultists. Except it was on my terms and not theirs. Those seven will be exiled as well. Though we won’t be tattooing them.”

Some people in the crowd try to speak up at this point. Though too many of them are shouting for any one person to be heard over another. That is, all except Melonie.

With a tired shake of her head, she begins to talk, her voice overpowering the crowd easily. “Anyway, something like that should really be expected. Now, onto the other matter or I guess it would be the first matter as the other one can’t be completed until after.”

Melonie holds her hand out and with no one noticing, Susan arrives beside her and hands off the system anchor. Then, without a moment of hesitation, Melonie activates it and declares, “From this day forth, our settlement will be known as Bennett town!”

This does not make the crowd calm down at all. In fact, this riles them up even more.

Melonie ignores the chaos and continues to speak over them. “Now, since we’re a system recognized town it is time to take care of some trash. Susan here kindly already took care of tattooing them, so we can skip to the fun part.

“Bring them out!”

From the jail, a group of the town’s security personnel guide out the cultists. The ones that had tried to break the others out were obvious in the lack of a magical tattoo. And yes, one of them was a lady and likely the previous idiots girlfriend.

Melonie nods, “Now just so everything is clear, you all are not being exiled for worshiping the system. We might not be as permissive as Wolf’s Rest, but it isn’t like you’re worshiping some being that requires human sacrifice.

“No, what you are being exiled for is the purposeful destruction of property with the intent to threaten the town. In fact, I had personally requested that newly built buildings be left to their owners to be decorated. I didn’t even tell you to stop messing with the older buildings, I just wanted the new ones to remain whole.

“So, of course, you not only came and messed with the building. All of you went and destroyed it! Cut wholes in every wall, destroyed the roof, and there were even supports inside the house cut through just enough that once more than a kid tried enter, it would collapse under them.”

The crowd goes quiet.

Melonie nods, “That’s right, they didn’t just destroy the building. They set it up to hurt or even kill anyone that went in to check on things. The only reason we didn’t have it collapse already is because my people aren’t stupid. We used spells to reduce our weight and a few other security features. Now, does anyone have something else to say about this?”

One guy out in the crowd shouts, “They meant to hurt us? I used to be a building inspector and something like that would have killed me!”

Melonie shrugs, “They don’t care if you live or die. All they care about is increasing their skill levels. If that meant draining you of blood to paint with, they would do it.”

With that bitter truth, the rest of the gathering goes smoothly. Melonie exiled the cultists and hammered home once more that it wasn’t their religion, but their actions.

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