Sometimes I question... What is my purpose in life? What am I doing out in the wilderness collecting potions? Where are my parents and why am I here? Should I just... Die?
Auto contemplated standing on top of a 500 meter-tall tree.
**Auto ("Potion Master" class, Gold Rank)**
I've been living in the mountains for the longest time, no memories about my past or my parents. Quickly, I learnt I had a knack for crafting potions but despite all that, I'm still a socially isolated outcast.
At first I didn't know what those words meant, but I found out the hard way... I searched far and wide for shelter when I overheard what they call a "family" having a time by the lake. I got curious and they chased me off calling me a hideous monster. It didn't hurt me that much back then but I keep running into these folk called "people".
That's where I learnt what social classes are about.
I don't know for what reason but no one seems to accept me, they called me a monster ever since I was a child. I don't know how old I am, so sometimes I go to the village and lurk around the bushes eavesdropping on their conversations. I decided I was 13 judging by how the other kids looked.
I did try approaching them but they threw pebbles at me and called me ugly, but whenever I look at my reflection in the water I looked just the same as them. What makes me ugly when you look the exact same?
I enjoy potion crafting, but... My heart aches, seeing the kids have fun and stuff... It really makes me want to feel the same thing. Maybe... Maybe if I show them my cool potions they will understand.
I brought my potions to the kids in the village but they all ran away just as I approached them, aw c'mon I didn't even get to show them any! Then one of their nannies came running and chased me off, cut me some slack! What did I do?
But then again it's just like any other ordinary day... I'm tired and battered... I'm heading back to my shed, it's good to have an imaginary friend around. I know you're just a hallucination but thanks for sticking around with me Aira.
**I'll always be with you till my last breath Auto.** Aira replied happily
"Thank you Aira."
Huh, I must look crazy to some people...
Though...
It feels lonely in the woods here, it's cold even when I'm this close to the camp fire... Maybe I can just sleep here. I feel dizzy... My head hurts... I wanna cry... My heart aches... And I'm contemplating drinking poison, but maybe if I throw a fiery stick to this tree. I can go to sleep and die.
Auto threw the stick into the tree and smiled, a smile so worn out it could die before the fire even had a chance to kill him.
"I deserve this, I should die. I'm a monster like they said." He said out loud this time.
The fire is pretty, let me go to sleep.
As Auto began to drift to sleep a healing bottled was slightly nocked over covering him in a protective liquid while the fire burned, a few hours later Auto woke up to the sound of screaming and distressful panic. amongst the village folk.
This alerted Auto who woke up from a cold sweat, "Eh? What happened? Where am I? Wait aren't I-"
He looked down on his hands before thinking again.
"I'm alive? I thought I was commiting suicide." He looked towards the left where he saw an empty bottle, from the scent alone he could tell it was a "healing potion, I got healed while I was asleep."
**Goddamn it!** He scorned
Why couldn't have I just died?! My vision is getting hazy, but I've had enough. I can't die like this, something in me tells me not to... Something in me... Tells me to run to the village.
Quickly he surged through the fire slipping through gaps while avoiding the burning logs and branches.
He ran the fastest he ever could to reach the village, traversed better than he had ever climbed or jumped before. When he finally arrived to the village, everyone was in desperation and madness.
Turns out they were searching for Auto to use him as a sacrifice, blaming all of their suffering to him.
"LOOK EVERYONE! IT'S THE CHILD THAT CAUSED THIS! IT'S THE MONSTER WE MUST OFFER HIM AS SACRIFICE TO SATISFY THE GODS AND SAVE US FROM THIS DILEMMA!" A priest shouted.
The townsfolk gathered up with pitchforks, shovels, hammers, torches, buckets, any weapon they could find and hunted him down with nothing but spite in their eyes. Fueled with anger and pure hatred.
Auto ran into a dead end where he saw a 6-year old child, with hesitation he contemplated. **My vision is heavy, I can't even argue with them. It's all my fault, but it's also their fault! Yes it's their fault IT'S THEIR FAULT HAHA! IF THEY HAD NOT TREATED ME SO BADLY THIS WOULDN'T ALL HAVE HAPPENED. YOU DESERVE THIS YOU DICKHEADS!**
He took the child by the neck, and grabbed pulled its hair strongly asserting that he will harm the child if he has to. The village folk halted on their track.
"See everyone?! He's a monster! He's holding a child hostage! What a hideous beast!" The village chief exclaimed to the crowd's agreement.
"We lost many of our men hunting you down, it's time for you to pay it all back with you life. So drop the child and surrender."
Hah! Maybe you're right, I am a monster. A monster that you made, also this child isn't hostage.
"Screw you Prick." Auto cleanly slit the child's neck making it rain a fountain of blood, with the contaminating poison of the knife, it made an infectious wound around the child skin, slowly it started peeling away all his skin at the same time shutting down all of his organs one by one, clumping up all his body supply to the bowels and causing all of his arteries to explode.
The villagers hesitated to attack him from this terrifying display of violence, some even vomiting out of disgust.
Auto dropped the hostage and slowly approached the villagers, "Maybe I am a monster. Maybe you were right, I don't know what made you hate me so much, I don't know why you all treated me that way, but maybe it isn't me that should die, it's all of you."
The villagers too stunned to speak and didn't have the courage to raise a finger on the boy.
"I see then... You all are very weak souls."
Auto used a jump and levitation potion and rained all the harmful potions in his inventory.
**Potion disperse**
-Poison potion-
-Fire potion-
-Acid potion-
-paralysis potion-
-Viper's venom potion-
He rained down over a hundred potions with his potion disperse ability, destroying the entire town and killing all the villagers with none left to survive...
The ones that weren't wiped out from the potions were personally executed by Auto with a knife.
There a stood, with a bloodied knife on his hand, in the middle of a thousand corpses. There stood, the outcast and massacre of the gold. Auto of the unknown.
Crying as he killed the final villager, he screamed as the fire slowed down, his clothes torn and stained with blood, venom, and ashes. His hands forever guilty of taking whole town's life. He buried the sorrow, telling himself it wasn't his fault, that it was for the better. They hurt him first, he told himself he isn't a monster. He says that while crying from anguish.
"All I wanted was to befriend people, I don't even know if this is my fault. I keep telling myself it isn't but the guilty won't go away, why am I even guilty! I just wanted... I JUST WANTED ONE THING FROM THIS WORLD MAN! Why? Why did they..."
Auto's cries began to muffle and he hiccups, wheezes, coughs, and trembles.
"My vision feels blurry, my eyes are bleeding. And I am tired." Out of exhaustion... At last he tired, he fell to his knees and collapsed.