Dawn arrived.
Alex's mind was still going wild, even though several hours had already passed.
Alex didn't come from this world.
He came from Earth.
On Earth, murder was not something common. Sure, the news constantly reported about murder, but how many people had actually met someone that knew someone that had been murdered?
Alex was currently fighting with himself in his mind.
The bandits hadn't stopped, even after Alex had already cut off someone's arm.
Was he supposed to just watch?
And then what?
All his money would be taken away.
He had to kill them!
They wouldn't stop otherwise!
But that created another issue.
Alex had killed more people than necessary to stop them.
Why?
So that the other bandits wouldn't think of him as a pushover.
However, he hadn't killed all of them, which made the previous deaths unnecessary in his mind.
It was a complex maze of morality.
When the first light of the day hit Alex's face, he absentmindedly jumped down from the sled wagon and looked at his surroundings.
The corpses were still there.
They had been frozen due to the cold, and nothing had moved in the last couple of hours.
It was like no time had passed.
However, the change from darkness to light made it appear like a nightmare that had become reality.
It was all real.
Alex didn't feel much when he saw all the corpses.
He wasn't sure what he should feel.
He just did whatever he had to do.
Alex gathered the remaining Ice Wood in the surroundings and absentmindedly repaired the cage as well as he could.
It took him some minutes, but he managed to repair the cage somewhat. Alex knew how to make robes and how to create basic structures due to his long time in the wild.
Eventually, Alex grabbed the sled wagon and pulled it back to the street.
A bit of snow had fallen in the night, but the temperature had already climbed above freezing again.
The snow would vanish in the next couple of hours.
Without thinking anything, Alex simply pulled the sled wagon forward.
All of Alex's actions just happened automatically.
A couple hours later, the first carriages passed by Alex again.
Nearly all of them had seen the clearing of corpses. Alex hadn't pulled the sled wagon far when he had camped for the night, which meant that the corpses could be seen from the streets as long as someone inspected their surroundings carefully.
When the carriages reached Alex, they immediately knew that it had been him.
Why?
Because, at the speed at which he was pulling his sled wagon, he couldn't have gone that far in only one day.
This meant that he had either started in the middle of the night, or he had started yesterday and camped for the night.
So, how did the owners react when they saw the perpetrator of the massacre?
"Hahaha! Good job, kid! Every dead bandit is one bandit less for us to worry about! Here, take this as a thank you!"
The owner of the carriage had shouted these words while slowing down. Then, he took out ten silver coins and threw them towards Alex.
Alex only looked at the coins in the dirt with an absent mind.
The merchant continued on his way after saying goodbye.
Alex looked at the ten silver coins lying before him in the dirt.
It was a reward for killing the bandits.
For a while, Alex only looked at the coins.
He wasn't sure what he should think about this reward.
He had killed several normal humans that hadn't even been armed.
They hadn't even attacked him.
They had only gone after his sled wagon to get some Ice Wood they could sell.
Many people on earth would think of Alex as being a coldhearted and greedy murderer. He had put a bit of his money above several human lives.
In a way, Alex knew why those people would think like that.
From an outsider's perspective, one could really say that Alex had gone too far.
Yet, Alex had been in the middle of it.
He had done what he had believed to be right.
Alex only looked at the coins.
In his mind, the coins were associated with the actions he had done.
He had killed several unarmed humans, and he was being rewarded for doing that.
The dirty silver coins didn't feel very appealing.
Something inside Alex told him that he shouldn't take that money.
Alex would never accept this money.
Alex had a certain sense of morale.
However, Alex had died on Earth.
Alex wouldn't accept the money…
But what about Shang?
Alex remembered the time he had gone out to hunt his first Pest Cat.
Back then, Alex had felt like he was leaving his old world behind.
He didn't remember the faces of his family anymore.
He didn't remember the voices of his family anymore.
He wasn't even sure how they would act or what they would think if they could see him right now.
It had been so long.
After so long of staying alone, he felt like he truly was alone.
Did he even have a family?
Why did it feel like Alex's family was a stranger's family?
It was like they weren't real.
Even more, Alex wasn't even sure about his own name anymore.
After several times of splitting headaches when Alex tried to remember his own name, he had started to feel aversion towards his old name.
Every time he thought about the fact that he still had an old name, he felt frustrated.
Every time his old name was about to appear, he would feel pain.
Alex knew that the God was the actual reason for all of this, but feelings often didn't follow logic. Even though Alex knew that there was no reason to dislike his old name, his emotions still felt a strong feeling of dislike towards it.
One could liken this situation to an abused dog.
The owner of the dog would pay someone to abuse the dog every couple of days to train the dog to be wary of certain kinds of people.
The owner was the reason for the dog's pain.
Yet, the person that had been paid would be the full focus of the dog's anger.
Of course, humans were more intelligent and more complex than dogs, but to a certain degree, emotions still followed these principles.
Alex knew that there was nothing wrong with his name, but he disliked it because he associated it with agony.
He didn't want to feel agony.
Together with the disconnected feeling towards his old family, Alex felt like there was nothing connecting him to his previous life anymore.
He had no family.
pᴀɴdᴀ nᴏveʟ He had no friends.
He didn't even like Earth.
Everyone just worked day-in and day-out.
For what?
To become old?
And when they were old, what then?
They would only do what they wanted until they eventually died.
And then?
Then, they would be slowly forgotten.
Over the course of time, no one would remember them.
They were born, did their work, had their children, and died.
What's the point of all of this?
However, in this world, Alex could reach true power.
Even though Alex had gone through more pain in this world than in the other world, he still preferred this world over Earth.
After some minutes, Alex slowly stepped forward.
And then, Shang scooped up the coins.
It was money, and he needed money.
Shang wanted to become more powerful, and money would help him.
After pocketing the money, Shang continued pulling the sled wagon down the road.
For some reason, the sled wagon felt lighter than before.