Kyle felt pressure building around him as he listened to Manny's words.
All their communication up to now had most likely been compromised.
Most of the communication hadn't been sensitive. After all, Humanity knew about their Rites and their Formation Arrays. However, everything that Sebastian had shared was more than sensitive.
Sebastian was the only person who could actually interact with the Elemental Dimension, and he was their only way out of this mess.
Without him, even if they knew how to deal with the Formation Arrays, they couldn't physically get there.
At the same time, Kyle felt it difficult to connect what he had seen of Humanity with what Manny had said.
From Kyle's viewpoint, Humanity had been united.
He had seen thousands of sacrifices.
He had seen how desperately all the soldiers tried to save their home.
And yet, according to Manny, several of Humanity's leaders were essentially corrupt.
They were feeding information to the very beings that wanted to kill them.
"Why?" Kyle asked. "Why would they sabotage themselves like this? This doesn't make any sense to me. How do you even know all of these things? How do you know the secrets of the most elite members of Humanity? They're Ascendants!"
Kyle heard a sigh from Manny.
"It's not as strange as you might think. When humans are driven into a corner, they fight back with all of their power. They know they're going to die, and they will risk their lives to fight back with everything they've got."
"Yet, if they stay stuck in that corner without getting out and without dying, their powerlessness very quickly becomes clear to them. This is like taming a wild horse."
"The wild horse is terrified and angry, and it will do its best to throw the person riding it off. However, when enough time passes, and the horse loses all of its energy, it capitulates very quickly. The rider gives it some food and shows it that fighting back is not worth it."
"It's safer and easier to simply follow commands."
Manny sighed again.
"It's not like the leaders don't want to fix this mess. They still want to free Ayuvar. It's just that they are afraid of angering the Demons too much."
"They prioritize survival above freedom."
Kyle gritted his teeth.
"But that's stupid! The Demons are Humanity's enemies! They literally want to kill all of Humanity!"
"It's not that easy," Manny answered.
"According to intel, the number of Ascendant Demons is over 50 times higher than the number of Ascendants. If every single Advanced Spirit Lord became an Ascendant, we would have more Ascendants than there are Ascendant Demons, but that also wouldn't change anything."
"The strongest Ascendants we have are Two-Infused Ascendants, and we only have a handful. Meanwhile, there are several Advanced Ascendant Demons and even more Major Ascendant Demons."
"One single Advanced Ascendant Demon can kill all of our Ascendants on its own."
Kyle took a deep breath as Manny kept talking.
"Put yourself in the shoes of the most powerful leader of Humanity," Manny said.
"Your decisions shape all of Humanity. If you make a mistake, trillions of powerful Seekers might die. You are fighting against an enemy that you know for certain can't be defeated."
"One day, one of your enemies talks to you and threatens you. Killing all of your people would be easy for them. They could do so whenever they wanted. However, they will only do so if you try to resist."
"Additionally, if you refuse, they can just kill you and contact the next leader. If that one refuses as well, they can kill that one, and so on."
"Eventually, one of the leaders will cooperate, and your sacrifice will be meaningless. If you had just cooperated immediately, you would still be alive, and fewer people would have died."
"Think of a robbery with a hostage situation. The robbers want the passcode to the safe, and 100 of the 1,000 employees know the passcode."
"The robbers will execute one person after the other until somebody tells them the code. They don't even need to spare all of the ones who know the code."
"They just need one."
"When the gun points at you after it has killed 23 people, what will you think? You might be willing to sacrifice your life, but will the others? Do you believe that every single other employee will hold firm like you?"
"If even a single person cracks, all previous sacrifices will be worthless. Your death will be meaningless."
Manny took a deep breath.
"That's how your mind operates in such a situation. In order to alleviate the pressure on Humanity, some of their leaders will cooperate."
"So what if they give the Demons some useless leads? They can't break out anyway."
"At least, they can save countless lives while also making it easier for the majority of people."
Kyle felt a mix of anger, frustration, hatred, sadness, understanding, and pressure.
It was easy to tell someone else that sacrificing themselves for the greater good was the right thing to do, but if you were the one who had to sacrifice yourself, things were very different.
When someone sacrificed themselves, they essentially willingly embraced death.
One might also call this a suicide, but there was one critical thing that differentiated the two.
A selfless purpose.
A sacrifice had an altruistic purpose.
Saving someone else, trying to fight back against oppression, fighting for one's ideology...
There was always a purpose.
Yet, if there were no purpose, a sacrifice wasn't a sacrifice.
It was just suicide.
By taking the purpose out of a sacrifice, one could drastically lower the number of sacrifices.
By showing that sacrificing oneself wouldn't change anything, far fewer people would be willing to sacrifice themselves.
Kyle hated this kind of thinking, but he also understood it.
Also...
"I might just do the same," he thought.
"I might even find justifications as to why I shouldn't sacrifice myself. I'm more talented and powerful than everyone else, which is why I have to survive, for example. I could save more lives if I simply survived would be another example."
Eventually, Kyle just looked to the side with a lost and pained expression.
"It's pretty clear that the Demons do not want to eradicate all of Humanity. If they wanted to, they would have already done so."
"Theoretically, as long as every single person works together, we could force a compromise and make things easier. As long as no one gives in, this would work."
"But there are trillions, quadrillions, if not quintillions of Seekers."
"Would every single one hold firm?"
"How many mothers and fathers are willing to sacrifice themselves for a greater purpose when the enemy says that they would kill their children if the parents decided to sacrifice themselves for Humanity?"
"How many of them could look into the eyes of their children and say that they now have to die for a purpose they don't even understand?"
Kyle thought about the power dynamic between the Demons and Humanity.
If any human became an Ascendant, the Demons would find out and send more Ascendant Demons, forcing the new Ascendants to reveal themselves and battle.
The only way to circumvent that was to secretly advance, but how could one even do that in this world?
The Law Wells only existed in the Abyss.
No Law Well could be accessed without the Demons knowing about it.
On top of that, only Level Five Law Wells could be accessed.
Even with three Affinities, one could only become a One-Infused Ascendant in Ayuvar.
Kyle didn't even know how Humanity had managed to create Two-Infused Ascendants.
In order to make stronger Ascendants, Humanity needed access to Level Six Law Wells, but to gain access to them, Humanity needed stronger Ascendants.
Additionally, Humanity was broken.
Some of its leaders worked for the enemy.
Kyle sighed as he felt a dark pressure bearing down on him.
"I can see why no group before us has succeeded."
"I can't find a way out."
"It just seems impossible."
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