He Who Fights with Monsters 10 (He Who Fights with Monsters, #10)

by Shirtaloon

A massive grin split Jason’s face. A few weeks of doing normal jobs with his team and helping out people in need had done more for his mood than all the brooding introspection in the world.

“I’ve got to stop saving the world,” he muttered. Although his words were snatched away on the wind, Shade heard them perfectly. “We both know that you won’t step away, Mr Asano. Perhaps you should simply enjoy the moment and leave tomorrow to tomorrow.” “You’re a wise man, Shade.”

“What Dominion likes in you is not the autocratic tendencies you consistently demonstrate,” she said. “It is the fact that you rarely regret them.”

“It’s hard to be penitent when you feel no need for penance. I fear I will never be in your lady’s good graces.”

“But is there anything you do that can’t be looked at that way? You need something to happen, or not happen, and you get your way, regardless of the people, entities or laws of nature pitted against you.”

“A bit,” Jason qualified. “He yearns a bit. It’s like when you have a hobby you’re really into. Knitting, for example. Sometimes life gets busy and you might go for a while without finding the time to sit down for a good knit. You yearn to do some knitting. It’s like that with Colin.”

Balance of power. Balance of terror? I shouldn’t worry about me when so many things are more powerful than I am and suck a lot more than I do.”

not the love kind but the meat kind.

“That was a weird sound,” Sophie said. “Yep,” Jason agreed. “It sounded exactly like when you hit a very fat man with a very large fish.”

“This is becoming insufferably smug,” she complained. “That’s tolerable when there’s only one of you, but this is too much.”

“No offence, bro, but your mum sounds kind of twisty.” “Yes,” Humphrey said with a weary sigh. “Yeah,” Jason said with a wistful sigh,

“You know that it’s alright to want to help people, right?” Clive asked her. “It’s not going to hurt your hard-as-a-rock street-thief reputation to admit you want to help people. We won’t think less of you for being nice or showing some basic compassion.” “We will probably make fun of you, though,” Neil admitted. “Just for a bit.”

Instincts are important, and your fate senses have allowed you to get this far. But without a critical mind to assess them, instincts can also lead you astray. As you know.”

“Yeah, my aura is retracted,” Jason said. “That’s just polite.

We need to remember that even when we put our lives on the line, we are privileged in a way that those we protect are not. We can’t always choose our own fate, but at least we get to fight for it.

There are great reasons to live in Greenstone, but when you’re an adventurer, it’s a place to be from, not a place to be.

So long as you actually do the adventuring, I’m happy for you. Just don’t rip off or hurt anyone that doesn’t have it coming.”

It was a certification from the Church of Death confirming four deaths for Jason Asano, current status: alive.

“You stood up when it mattered most,” Jason said finally. “We all have a chance to be better than where we come from. To be better than the mistakes of our past. I need to believe that for myself, so it’s not out of my way to believe it for you.”

There will always be someone to tell you that you don’t matter, but you do. To me, yes, but also, you just do. You matter.”

“I’m an adventurer,” Jason said. “Protecting people from bad things is what we do.”

“Passion is good. Just make sure you use it rather than it using you,

“How is it that the gods haven’t struck you down yet?” Carlos asked. “My working theory is that I’m too sexy.”

“We call it delusions of grandeur, back on Earth.” He frowned, looking down. “Are delusions of normalcy a thing?”

Why isn’t it fun anymore?” “Because it was only fun when you were an ordinary person surrounded by ridiculousness. Now you are the ridiculousness. Ordinary people now have crazy stories about the time they met Jason Asano.”

“What I can do is stop her from dying, even when something should definitely kill her. I can just turn off death long enough for someone who knows what they’re doing to heal her body.”

He had to resolve to not let himself become callous. To stop rushing ahead and letting others suffer the consequences. He needed to think before he acted, and heed the wisdom of the people around him. But he couldn’t allow being diligent and thoughtful to paralyse him either. He wouldn’t let his efforts to minimise damage prevent him from doing what good he was able.

“I know we’ll have gold- and diamond-rank backup, but I want the whole team on deck for this.” “You’re a silver-rank team going somewhere with gold-rankers and a diamond,” Vidal said to Humphrey. “And you think that they are your backup?”

“Jason told the Builder to pack up and leave this planet—and he did. If that’s where his kind of thinking gets us, that’s exactly where I want to be.”

I hope that we all deserve redemption, so long as we’re willing to work for it.”

“Because why not try to make things better, even if it seems impossible? Killing is necessary sometimes, but it doesn’t make anything better. At best, it stops something from getting worse. And if we’re being honest with ourselves, sometimes justice is a word we use to mask indulging in our anger. That doesn’t make anything better; it just makes us worse for having done it.”

But you’ll never accomplish the impossible if you aren’t willing to try, Allayeth, and I like the idea of an impossible act of forgiveness.

“Your name and the pointless noise coming out of your mouth stopped mattering the moment you accused me and my friends of being traitors.”

“And in Vitesse, the gold-rankers know that the respect rank commands is earned by living up to that power. That to be gold rank and act like a petty, greedy coward is to undermine the respect every gold-ranker worth the rank deserves.”

You’re not even saying anything and I can practically hear your raised eyebrow.”

“Gods, am I right?”

“Well, there’s this book with all the rules in it, but it seemed a bit sketchy to me. Mum used to make me read it, but then I’d ask questions until she hit me with a spoon.”

“You don’t give up on doing something that’s right, just because it’s hard.”

“Yes, but if we do things the diplomatic way before the Jason way, they can’t say they weren’t warned.”

“Wait, are you saying that all diamond-rankers self-resurrect?” “You didn’t know that?” “That would explain why the restrictions on my resurrection power lift after gold rank.”

“Otherwise, you might find me convinced that there is no salvation for you. Forgiveness is one thing, but mercy has its limits. Sometimes a beast has to be put down because it can’t be trusted not to hurt people.”

“Start by convincing me that your kind are even capable of compassion. If you can’t manage that much, then I don’t see any hope for you as a species. It would make your kind less a people than a thorny, poisonous weed. Avoided where possible and burned out to the roots when necessary.”

Adventure Society membership is not a birthright,

“Position in the Adventure Society is earned. Through service. The dangerous times, Lord Gallow, are extremely far from over.

“I was told to announce this change by finding the most worthless collection of self-aggrandizing, freeloading scum I could find bolstering their noxious reputations using our organisation and demonstrate in no uncertain terms that their kind are no longer welcome.

had been warned, in no uncertain terms, to never get in an outrageousness contest with Jason Asano. And when Danielle Geller gave out political advice, you listened.

The gods don’t keep visiting him in public because they’re bored. They’re warning us that Asano has something to do here, and we’d best get out of his way and let him.”

“Imagine if every time you brought forth major information you were disbelieved, distrusted and dismissed.”

There was a leonid working the grill wearing an apron with ‘adventuring is more fun when you eat the bad guy’ emblazoned upon it.

She’s loyal to the Adventure Society, but she’ll burn it to the ground if that’s what her son needs.”