The Gamer Chapter 1595 – Chivalrous 4 – Of Vice and Virtue (Patreon)

The first thing John noted once outside was Ehtra. The First of Hatred had changed into a monkish robe. What somewhat defeated the purpose of the brown curtain of cloth was the additional sash she had tied under her boobs. There was no denying the allure of her figure when she pulled a rope tight enough to work as a corset.

John wondered about her change of wardrobe, but he had an order and that was to follow. He had not been permitted to speak and… he hated it. He had hoped that some part of him may have enjoyed the change of pace, but he really did not. ‘Obedience is not my strong suit… fucking contrarian,’ he ridiculed himself.

Keeping his eyes focused on the path ahead, John quietly followed Marcelia. The knightess guided him to the edge of the plateau the tower stood on – the opposite edge of where they had come from.

“I will ask you questions, squire, and you shall answer from your gut. Do not hesitate,” Marcelia ordered. “What do you think of this view?”

John’s thoughts raced. The split second it took for him to take in what he saw was enough for him to have the same level of contemplation as the average man had over the course of a minute pondering just a single issue. Answering from his gut was difficult with a mind like his.

Maybe it was a bit of cheating, but there was basically nothing he could do about it.

“I think it’s quite beautiful,” he answered, eyes drifting over the snow-tipped peaks of the mountain range and the valley between the sloping stone. “I enjoy nature.”

“Would you believe that it would be just for a city to be built there?”

“Yes,” John answered quickly.

“You would not consider it a violation of this view?”

“I believe that this gorgeous view may be undone by it, but I believe that there is more valley out there we can gaze at. If people require space to live, then it is better to have houses built than to have a gorgeous world that is roamed by the desperate homeless.”

“Do you think it would be for the best to cover all of the Earth in cities, every patch of forest and every grain of sand, to accommodate people.”

“In the absence of other options I… do not know,” John confessed. “I believe that could be the reasonable answer to a ludicrous degree of overpopulation. To sacrifice every such view feels like a sacrifice too great to not exhaust other options first. I’d rather aim for the stars.”

Marcelia nodded. It was a stiff, nondescript motion, betraying none of her own thoughts on the matter. She wasn’t disapproving, at least. Turning away from the drop, the knightess walked back towards the tower. John followed along, as did Ehtra, at a reasonable distance.

“Do you believe yourself a good man?”

“No,” John answered instantly, to the surprise of the knight and Ehtra. Both women stopped dead in their tracks.

“What makes you say that?”

“I’m a prideful, lustful, greedy and powerful man,” John stated plainly. She had asked a question he wrestled with on the regular. “I want to be a good man, but I am not. I bask in the accomplishments of my subordinates, even when I had little to no hand in them. I take many women because my desires know little bounds. I flaunt the excess of my wealth. I wield my power for my own goals, to bend the world into a shape that I want it to take.” He paused and allowed himself a look at his hand. “I’m too worldly to be a ‘good man’. I’m no buddha that can talk a mass murderer into redemption, I’m no saint that washes the feet of my enemies. I’m a conqueror, I’m a statesman, I’m a ruler – I cannot be a good man. I can only hope to be virtuous in my conduct.”

“You believe someone that is virtuous in his conduct is not a good man?”

“I believe being virtuous in one’s conduct is the prerequisite to being a good man. To live, each and every day, according to these virtues is what grants someone the right to call themselves that. I do not do so. I have chosen for myself a path that prevents me from doing so… and I have little interest in becoming a saint either. I’ll be remembered for the greatness of my actions, for the impacts I had on the world, not for being a moral idol.”

Marcelia slowly nodded this time, appearing contemplative of what he had said. John did not wish to insult the woman, but she was merely coaxing out of him thoughts he had been tested on by greater minds than her. Topics like this came up whenever he partook in one of Nightingale’s tea parties.

However, it was proper of her to probe him and it was prudent of him to assume he might still learn something new or iron out a kink in his thought processes. He doubted it. He seriously doubted it. Still, he was willing to pretend this was the case and stayed open to the possibility. That was as good as he could do.

“What do you think is justice?” Marcelia asked.

“A, sometimes paradoxical, combination of consistency, intuition, and virtue.”

“Why do you need consistency?”

“Because a decision that is just once may just be a fluke,” John stated, “and even if a decision that is not the best in a situation may be deemed as just as long as it is enforced equally. Today we deem cutting thieves’ hands off as barbaric, but it was seen as just at one point and the argument is made fairly easily that cutting the hand off is more just than doing nothing at all. A crime has been committed. A punishment needs to be administered.”

“But is that not just vengeance?” Marcelia continued her questions, her tone bereft of personal opinion.

“On its own, it might be. This is why justice is not a mere application of code. Justice is a human concept, developed through the layers of human evolution and tradition. It cannot be enacted consistently alone and that’s where virtue and intuition come in.”

“What are the differences between those two?”

“Intuition requires no previous knowledge. Intuition is what fuels what you want me to use in this conversation: my gut. Humans are evolved as social groups and sometimes gut intuition is the swiftest way to justice. Virtue, by contrast, is a set of carefully cultivated behaviours. To go on a walk every day is virtuous. To feed birds is virtuous. To provide for or work at a soup kitchen is virtuous. It is that which is either difficult or at least not what you want to do initially, but do because you know it is right. Once it has become second nature to you, that is a habit built that reflects virtue.”

“Can speech be virtuous?”

“I wouldn’t say so.”

“Why?”

“Because words without action are meaningless. Any declaration of wanting something changed without being part of that change is giving oneself the easy out of just identifying a bad thing. Identifying bad things is easy. If it is easy and everyone can do it, in fact does it all the time, it cannot be virtuous.” He smiled a wry smile. “One reason it is difficult for me to be virtuous. I can rearrange a landscape in a few hours, completely change it in a week. At that point, creating a fertile farm is not a difficult action. As a matter of fact, it is more difficult for me to stay my hand and let people suffer and grow on their own at times… but inaction can’t be virtuous either.”

“So, the best you can hope for is benevolent amorality?”

“That is how it would seem to me, yes,” John confirmed. “Depending on the circumstance, of course. There’s plenty of good I can do, I just think that the category of ‘good man’ is larger than ‘a man that does some good’. I believe it is ‘a man that is good’ and I cannot claim to do what I do out of the goodness of my heart alone.”

“Do you believe all good stems from selfishness?”

“No, I think that is, like many absolute declarations, ideological hogwash. Some people are genuinely good. Some people are thoroughly evil. Most people simply wish to exist and thus attach themselves to the dominant thoughts of the day. In many ways that sounds to their detriment but… what thought philosophers use on figuring out whether society is moving in a good direction, those people fill with their children’s future, the invention of new carpentry, and the general minutiae that keeps society moving.” John shook his head. “Much good stems from selfishness. All is too much.”

“Do the ends justify the means?”

“No. An evil tree will only ever bear evil fruit. That being said, we live in a fallen world and sometimes evil is the best you get.”

Marcelia hummed and they walked in silence. In the background, Ehtra clicked her tongue. Allowing himself a short glance over, he spotted the disdainful look on the grey angel’s face. She had something to say, but bit it back out of respect for the situation. A fact the knightess also noted. “Speak freely, honoured guest.”

Ehtra respectfully bowed her head in thanks, before asking John, “Isn’t all of that a long-winded way to say that you’re a cunt?”

“Yes,” John admitted with a chuckle. “Well, a dick, but it comes out about the same.”

Ehtra gave him that thoroughly confused look again. “How do you justify that you rule?”

“Somebody has to and I’m the best I’ve got,” John answered plainly. “I govern in a world of might makes right. I’m mighty. I get to do with this power as I please. I choose to do the best I can.”

That answer seemed good enough for Ehtra. Either the First of Hatred was starting to understand how he worked or this particular answer was expected enough. No matter when or where, the people that assigned to themselves the right to rule had always done so through might. Motivations for ruling differed, but not how one got in charge, by and large.

Marcelia assumed control over the situation again, guiding the Gamer and the grey angel to the tower. They stopped before its western entrance. “Unsurprisingly, you have the moral development to make our ethical teachings for you largely irrelevant. Still…” the knightess said in a casual tone, only to immediately switch back to the harsh words of a teacher. “Squire, you will be led down the corridor of the troubles. You will be presented with three choices that members of our order made. You’ll be expected to present your own answers on their situation.”

“Yes,” John affirmed, beating his chest once in the proper salute.

Into the building and then off to the side, they entered a corridor along the outside of the building. The air had that hallowed stagnancy to it, a lack of frequent visitors keeping the incense-rich aroma from escaping. Along the right wall were shrines, of some description. Each held an oil painting of a knight, surrounded by artefacts too broken to be repaired but still impressive enough to serve as showpieces. From the left, stained glass windows allowed tinged light to fall in. White and blue tones dominated, giving everything in the grey stone corridor a cold feeling, only interrupted by the wine-red carpet that they followed.

There were more than five of the shrines, albeit not a whole lot more. The Alpine Knights were an old order, but being a knightly order of the Abyss typically came with members that exceeded the mundane human lifespan two to three times. Between that and the selective nature of honours like these, not a whole lot of people had gathered.

Marcelia guided him to the first shrine. Unexpectedly, the face that John looked at in the painting was that of a black skinned woman, way too dark to hail from the relatively close north African territories of the empire.

“Agarda of the South,” the knightess with him explained. “She heard of the Alpine Knights after an expeditionary deployment of our order beyond the great desert. She travelled to our base and pledged to join us. She passed the trials and achieved knighthood.” A short pause, during which Marcelia lit some fresh incense. “When she next travelled to the south, she did so as one of our knights and came to blows with her former countrymen, who had taken to worshipping a demon curing their river blindness through blood sacrifice. Do you believe she did the right thing?”

“Yes,” John did not have to consider for long. “She chose a new people and her loyalty to the order superseded her origin. To be torn between loyalties can only lead to disaster.”

Marcelia nodded, then guided him to the next shrine. That one depicted what John expected to see: a tall, blonde, blue-eyed man of middle age, with thick beard and wise eyes. A broad sword resting on his shoulders sat in reality on a long strip of velvet, its blade shattered into stone shards.

“Aurubossa, the first follower,” Marcelia informed John of whom they were looking at. “First squire of our founder, first one to be elevated into knighthood by our customs, first new knight to sit at the table of the founding members. After one of his deployments, exhausted from battle, he rode back to these hallowed halls. On the way, he found a knight in the employ of a prince tyrannizing a set of travelling peasants. The knight was ready to make battle. Aurubossa chose not to intervene. Do you believe he did the wrong thing?”

“…No,” John answered, slowly. “I believe he did not do a thing. He did not help slaughter the peasants, which would be immoral, and neither did he intervene, which likely would have been moral – provided the peasants were innocent. To do nothing is amoral. There is no virtue in it.”

The third shrine was dedicated to a true giant of a man, exemplified both through the woman three heads shorter than him in the picture and the very real blade still towering at the side of the shrine, bigger than John was.

“Martin the Giant,” Marcelia recounted, her voice echoing with a sting of pain. “A great warrior, perhaps the greatest our order ever produced. He was gifted with an Innate Ability harmonizing with his path in life. The love of his life was killed when assassins tried to poison him. After thirty days of meditation, he emerged from the depths of this tower with forgiveness in his heart. He brought those responsible to justice, ultimately, through the proper ways and pleaded for their rehabilitation rather than death. Do you believe he did the right thing?”

“…I don’t know,” John answered. “I would rend the very realm if this happened to me.”

“Speak freely, honoured guest,” Marcelia said, addressing Ehtra again.

“So you acknowledge there is a line where your system fails?”

“Of course, there is. I made it. I am flawed. Therefore, the system is flawed and, more importantly, as I said earlier, justice is impossible to achieve through codes alone.” John was still studying the picture of the man, trying to put himself in the mindset that would allow him to cope with Rave’s death without tearing the world apart around him. He failed. “It seems to me that Martin the Giant was a good man… but he may have been too good. If the worst reprisal you have to offer is a chance at redemption, that’s not a great deterrent.” The Gamer turned around. “I change my answer. He did wrong. If he had the power to enact vengeance on those he knew were guilty, he should have.”

Marcelia’s face remained a stone mask. “Your answers have been heard, squire,” she stated. “You have passed the schooling of ethics.”

Which meant the most wordy part of the training was already behind him.