Wyveria looked at Kyle with furrowed brows.
These options actually didn’t seem that bad.
Then, she glanced at Bonk, who just smiled at her.
“Fine,” she said. “I’m not going to kill him.”
Kyle just nodded.
“But I’m going to make his life hell,” she said before walking out of the cafeteria.
“What about the Ace Team?” one of the Fighters asked from a distance.
“Tell the Chief to get his lazy ass to work,” she shouted before closing the door behind her.
After Wyveria left, the mood in the cafeteria improved a bit.
At least they would get their revenge.
“How did you manage to convince Wyveria?” one of the Fighters asked with an impressed expression.
“You saw what happened,” Kyle answered. “I don’t think you need me to explain.”
The Fighter just thought about what Kyle had said.
Yeah, he had been logical and reasonable, but that rarely worked when Wyveria was angry.
She would just do whatever she wanted anyway.
The fact that Wyveria calmed down seemed almost unreal.
She was like a wild storm when she was angry.
There was no way to talk down a wild storm.
And yet, Kyle had done so.
After a bit, Kyle joined the others and sat down at the same table as Falk.
Falk avoided Kyle’s eyes the entire time.
“The valuables of the corpse will go to Tracy’s and Bormine’s loved ones,” he said.
Falk furrowed his brows as he looked at Kyle.
“Really?” he asked.
“Yep,” Kyle answered. “I already told the store to do it. It’s probably going to be something like 30 Ether Stones.”
Falk seemed positively surprised. “I thought you didn’t care about them.”
“I’ve never said that,” Kyle answered. “I said that risking our lives for dead people won’t change anything. I am not risking our lives by giving their living relatives money.”
“Also, it’s the right thing to do.”
“I repay my debts. Always.”
Falk looked with uncertainty at Kyle, but it was already clear that he had calmed down somewhat.
For a while, he remained silent.
“What is a team for you?” Falk asked.
“A team?” Kyle repeated before thinking about his answer for a while. “A group of people working together to achieve a common goal.”
“Not friends?” Falk asked with furrowed brows.
“A team can be made of friends,” Kyle said. “Our team was made of friends. We all risked our lives for each other. Bormine, you, and Horatio could have just run away since you were never the targets, but you risked your life to help me.”
“I would have done the same thing, and I have done so many times.”
Naturally, the Dwarves had been on almost a hundred missions together, and there had been very dangerous ones as well.
Just as Kyle said, he had often charged in, putting his life in the biggest danger.
Falk thought about Kyle’s answer for a while.
“Why did you show so little reaction when our friends died?” he asked.
“Because there’s no reason to,” Kyle answered. “What’s the point of feeling bad about something that happened? Feeling bad won’t change the situation.”
Falk looked at Kyle with skepticism. “That’s usually not how emotions work. They happen anyway.”
“I mean, yeah,” Kyle said. “I can get pretty heated and angry myself. You saw how I acted after the tournament fight.”
“Then,” Falk said, “why did you not get angry when something even worse happened?”
Kyle scratched the back of his head. “I think it has a lot to do with the enemy’s power.”
“The person who almost killed me was right before my eyes, and I had the power to kill them.”
“However, when I thought about the powerful coach, who was not present, I just didn’t feel as angry.”
“It’s like getting angry at an earthquake that destroyed your house. I don’t really feel like I want to kill that earthquake despite the damage it has caused me.”
“It’s kind of just a tragedy. An act by a higher power.”
“Nothing I can do. So, why bother?”
Kyle remembered his past.
He had come into contact with many such situations.
When he was a small child, his parents had effectively been a higher power, and they had constantly caused him pain, worry, and grief.
Then, when he finally got taken into foster care, his life improved, but it still wasn’t good.
Due to his dark past, he was used to making plenty of dark jokes, and primary school children were not very receptive to these jokes.
So, while he wasn’t bullied in school, he also wasn’t included in anything.
He was the weird one.
Naturally, he was angry at the unfairness of it all, but what did that change?
Nothing.
Eventually, Kyle’s foster parents moved, and he entered a new school.
This time, he actually tried to fit in.
And it worked!
He was part of the cool kids!
Sadly, while school life went nice, things at home became bad again.
His foster parents didn’t feel a strong connection with Kyle, and they accepted two other foster kids.
In the end, Kyle became an outsider in his own home.
So, he did whatever rebellious teens did.
He hung around the wrong crowd, rarely came home, and became rebellious.
Yet, his rebellious nature achieved the opposite effect.
His parents didn’t try to pull him back to the right path or show him boundaries.
Instead, they let him do whatever he wanted as long as he didn’t bother his foster siblings or damage the house.
When he turned 18, he was thrown out of the home.
He got a shit job while living with some veterans in a homeless camp.
Eventually, someone offered him a bunch of money for delivering drugs from place A to place B.
That’s how Kyle got involved with the wrong side, and that was also how he met his ex-wife.
The relationship was nice during the first two years, but after the third year, she started changing.
Kyle guessed it was her regular drug use that finally showed its effect on her mind.
They divorced, and the court forced him to pay unreasonably high alimonies.
All his life, Kyle had been oppressed by higher powers, and he had learned that getting angry at something that wasn’t in his power to change never produced any effect.
Of course, most people wouldn’t change in such a way.
But Kyle did.
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