Chapter 454. An Exciting Night with Two Girls Outside the City: The Alleged Haunted Castle. (4/7) 

We continued walking for about fifteen minutes and I stopped in place when I spotted Rosa a short distance away in front of us. Thanks to being able to see her soul, she stood out like a beacon in the dark and I’d actually seen exactly where she’d been the entire time. She was quite fast and was moving at a jogging pace from the moment we split up. Taking a closer look, her soul was flashing yellow signaling her happiness and excitement.

When I abruptly came to a stop, Dawn bumped into my back and asked, “Why’d yuh stop all of a sudden?”

“Rosa’s already in front of us. I think she found something.”

“Huh? She is?” Dawn looked over my shoulder before she followed up, “I don’t see her at all even with your flashlight on. Is she really there?”

“She is, but it looks like she doesn’t have her flashlight on right now.” Well, she was an assassin. With scarlet eyes hypersensitive to light, I wouldn’t be surprised if she could see just fine in the dark even without using her flashlight.

“She doesn’t? But yuh can still see her? How can yuh see her so well? Isn’t your vision too good at night? Actually, how can yuh even tell she found something?”

“My sight isn’t really that great. It’s average at best. As for why I think she found something, call it a hunch I guess.”

When Rosa noticed us, she called out to us excitedly, “What are you two standing around slacking off for? We can drop down without worry, there’s a collapsed wall after all.”

“Wow… she really was in front of us… and even found something like yuh said.”

“Lucky guess.”

Being able to see her soul really did have some rather unexpected use cases. Seeing her in the dark and being able to tell what she was feeling at a distance. I could receive information from her much quicker this way simply by knowing how she felt at a specific instant in time.

Meaning, it was entirely possible to use her emotions as a code to relay information. If Rosa freely controlled her emotions at will, she could communicate with me easily even if I couldn’t hear her voice or see her up close. As I could make out the color of her soul in the distance, that was more than enough.

I’d need to discuss this with her eventually. But there wasn’t much of a rush to do so.

The three of us jumped down from the wall one at a time before we made our way over to the stone castle together.

After a five-minute walk, we arrived at the entrance. The left door’s hinges had rusted with time and it’d fallen over allowing us entry inside.

Shining the flashlight on the exterior of the castle patches of green moss and mold were visible. When we stepped inside it was very dark and smelled musty. Both the castle and its walls had been surrounded by various trees and overrun by vegetation and tall grass so the humidity in the air was quite high. 

There were a few shattered windows. Broken glass, pebbles, and rocks were littered about the area so we had to be careful with where we stepped. There were areas in the wooden floorboards that had fractured and cracked resulting in patches with long strands of grass growing out of the ground.

With most of the moonlight from outside blocked out, inside the castle was much darker than outside. There were only a few spots where small beams of moonlight trickled through the cracks in the walls and broken windows.

The dirt road to get here when driving had been quite uneven, sunken-in in some areas, and was filled with holes; it’d been a bumpy ride overall and it was by no means easy to get to this castle. It wasn’t strange that this castle wasn’t on any maps. 

The atmosphere inside the castle was chilling. When no one talked or moved it was dead silent.

“It’s pretty spooky in here and really feels like a ghost could pop out at any moment,” Dawn spoke quietly as if afraid she’d rouse one from its slumber.

“Do you really believe in ghosts?” I couldn’t help but ask her.

“Do you really believe in ghosts? Do you really believe in ghosts? Do you really believe in ghosts?” As I hadn’t been quiet enough, my voice echoed back.

“I do. That echo is pretty creepy.”

“Oh? What about god?” This time I kept my voice down to avoid the echo.

“Of course. Don’t yuh?”

“I don’t.”

“Why not?”

I joked, “Haha. I’m a devil, devils don’t believe in gods.”

“Are yuh some sort of devil worshiper?”

“I don’t worship or believe in anyone.”

Dawn turned to Rosa and asked, “What about yuh, Rosa?” 

“Me? I don’t favor or care for any religion. Even if god or devils exist, I couldn’t care less. Them existing wouldn’t change the way I live my life. Religions are all pointless as far as I’m concerned. But people are free to believe what they want to, so long as they aren’t shoving that belief down my throat I’ve got no problems with it.”

“But if god and an afterlife really exist, won’t yuh be affected then?”

Rosa grinned devilishly, “So what? If an afterlife exists, I’d rather go to hell anyway. Heaven sounds like it’d be a really boring uninteresting place to be. If you go to Heaven, you may as well become a slave to someone you know nothing about who you can’t disobey for an eternity. The goody-two-shoes club just isn’t for me at all.”

Spoken like a true assassin.

“I don’t need some god telling me what I can or can’t do. I can decide for myself whether something’s right or wrong.”

“But Rosa... if yuh go to hell yuh’ll suffer for an eternity...”

“I’d rather be condemned to an eternity suffering in hell than bend to some narcissistic god’s authority. Expecting people to worship and revere you so they can get into your personal exclusive cool kids club, and if you don’t do that, you’re ostracized and sent to a time-out corner to be tortured forever? You’ve got to be a major narcissist to come up with that sort of system.”

“God isn’t a narcissist, he’s benevolent and all-forgiving.”

“That sort of god isn’t benevolent or all-forgiving at all, Dawn, he’s just a tyrant drunk on his own power and thinks he’s better than everyone else. A perfect existence? Hah! Don’t make me laugh, there’s no such thing as a perfect existence. The moment you think you’ve become perfect is the moment you become the most flawed existence of all.”

“No one needs some god’s forgiveness or acceptance. God won’t save you from your problems. God won't ever lift a finger. The only people who will ever help you in life are those important people who are closest to you and yourself. The one who needs forgiveness would be god. The people’s forgiveness for being such a useless piece of shit expecting to be worshiped while being unable to do anything for anyone. That is, of course, if god even exists.”

Dawn had a complicated expression on her face by the time Rosa was done.

“I sort of get what yuh’re saying… When my dad was struggling when I was young and I prayed to god… he didn’t exactly help my dad. My dad just kept diligently toiling away on the field day in and day out on his own until things finally started looking up for him. When I prayed to god every day for my mother... to come back… and be together with my dad… so he wouldn’t be lonely… she never did either…”

“Exactly, god’s not going to help anyone no matter how dutifully someone prays to him, so why worship him? Why worship someone who will never extend his hand out to help you? Why attribute a situation getting better on its own to him rather than to pure chance, coincidence, or an individual's own hard work? Why give him credit for anything when he’s sitting around watching on from the sidelines indifferently not saying or doing a thing? All he offers to people is cold indifference and silence.”

“Why should people love him? Because he brought you into the world? He didn’t bring jack shit into this world, your parents did. They suffered and gave birth to you all on their own with their own strength. Not some god.”

“Why should people look up to and show him respect? If he wants respect then he better damn well earn it by doing something that merits your respect. Respect is earned, not given.”

“You have a brain. You can think for yourself. There exists an entire world of its own inside your head. In that regard, everyone is the god of the world inside their head.”

“I’d trust a devil before I ever trust a god. At least a devil will lend you a hand when you’re down and in need. At least a devil will whisper sweet nothings in your ear when you want to hear them the most even if they’re a lie. God can’t even do something as simple as that.”