The Sinners' Queen

She led her sister inside a taxi and instructed the driver to drove them to the apartment. She had to make sure Steffy was sent back properly and safely first, then she"ll go back to Gio"s condo. She must console her sister as well. Witnessing so many vehicles getting caught in that bombing incident, with several people injured and killed, was very traumatizing. The cries of agony, loud pleas for help, all the blood, the fire, the wreckages of metals and gla.s.s shards everywhere... Considering how in Steffy"s memory, she just survived a landslide last last week, the trauma must have doubled.

The other worrisome thing was how Steffy"s injured leg worsened. When the explosion occurred, Steffy got so scared and startled that she tripped on the cold cemented ground. Fortunately, when people were madly fleeing from the scene, no one stomped or ran over her. Moreover, Sofony"s increased in strength proved useful in this situation when she piggy-backed her sister away there.

However, Steffy"s barely recovered leg actually still wrapped in bandages started bleeding again. That"s why Sofony had to bring her sister to the hospital. Fortunately, somebody from the crowd immediately alerted the police, some even called for an ambulance. A few officers accompanied them to the hospital to ask them what happened as one of the pa.s.sengers. They had to answer a few questions before they were left to their devices.

Sofony didn"t mention him to the police due to the fact that she had no evidence whatsoever and that the other party could be a suspicious bystander only. The person was a minor too so it would be more unconvincing. However, she couldn"t forget about him, and due to her intuition, she asked her system about her guess.

At this answer, she started shaking her head, disbelief crossing her slightly paler face. She could still remember that the system once told her that every host would be covering a certain area and that the chances of encountering each other were slim. It was already a dumb and unwelcomed coincidence to encounter Floyd.

Now, what"s with this situation?

How come she"s meeting another one, and in such a ridiculous way?

Sofony took a deep breath and balled her left hand into a fist so hard that her nails dug to her palm. The pain barely made it to her confused brain. Her mind was really in a mess, like a heavily unorganized room.

"After Floyd, I encountered, another. If this is how you define luck, I regret upgrading this stat."

She stared at the girl sitting beside her. Her face crumpled in anger when she thought how they narrowly missed the danger earlier. She began thinking, what if they didn"t leave their seats? What if the bus didn"t stop and had its engine broke down? What"s gonna happen to them? Fried inside? reduce into b.l.o.o.d.y corpses? If heaven mercifully let them survive, perhaps crippled or disfigured? At this train of thoughts, she unknowingly gritted her teeth. The songs playing on the driver"s radio didn"t help one bit to calm her nerves.

"I don"t get why I"m so "blessed" to meet a juvenile psycho like that, and lucky to be inside a bus implanted with a bomb!" She heavily stressed.

That statement didn"t make her happy, instead, it made her more disturbed. Her eyes turned dimmer than usual, her brows furrowed. She had to look down and let her straight long black hair to s.h.i.+eld her expression from potentially prying eyes as she knew that her current face must be distorted due to anger and insecurities. Tons of questions began to appear in her head and she couldn"t help but rant them out to the system.

"Tell me, system. What if I didn"t pull away from that place? What would happen? You see, those people who didn"t manage to run away died! Only a handful survived, and they"re all hospitalized due to severe burns and injuries! And all of those happened due to that bus which must have exploded because of that other host!"

When she closed her eyes, she seemed to hear again the voice of the female police officer she spoke with. That officer told her that according to her colleague still at the scene, more than twenty people died and a little more than thirty were injured, lightly or heavily. She said the victims were not only the original pa.s.sengers that hadn"t gotten away from the sidewalk, but also people in the nearby vehicles, especially the tourist van beside it. She remembered hearing from the police officer that if not for the bus suddenly cras.h.i.+ng down, then all pa.s.sengers would have not been able to survive. None of them would realize there"s a bomb there that came out of nowhere. Thinking of this, Sofony"s heart became heavier, especially she"s now perfectly aware all of this was single-handedly orchestrated by that underage host.

"Are you saying his level is higher because he"s already playing with other people"s life and death? That kind of immorality? Killing people just because?"

Sofony gritted her teeth, her eyes reddening in anger.

"Why else?! Those are lives! Dammit! And he"s merely 12 or 13, at most 14!"

"Shut up!" Sofony couldn"t stand it anymore so she roared in her mind. "I don"t want any of it! Just shut up! Shut up! SHUT UP!"

"I hate the system! I don"t care if there are kids like that! All I care is how a garbage thing like you encourages and pushes people, even kids like that, to commit crimes and murder! Shameless system! d.a.m.nable system! Hateful! Devil! You and your c.r.a.ppy main brain should go to h.e.l.l! Go to h.e.l.l!!!"

When Sofony arrived at Gio"s condo and got into the bedroom, she started crying profusely. Her emotions became uncontrollable. She didn"t know what to do, aside from crying. For the first time in her life, she greatly feared what the thing that got bound to her could do. She realized what its t.i.tle truly means.

Immoral.

Because it could make people do things not deem acceptable or moral by the others.

Adultery, premarital s.e.x, robbery, corruption, lying, killing... and the list goes on.

There were also times when it made her do nonsensical, unreasonable things like enrolling Steffy to HCA instead of bringing her away to another place.

It wanted people like her to break rules, reasons, and lives. Justifications and all things related to that was of no importance.

It wanted people like her to lose sanity and judgment... as well as the things that made them worthy of being called moral and human.

What does it gain from all of these?

When Monday came, Sofony received another nonsensical quest from the system. Their teacher in History quizzed them about the lesson tackled and as the one a.s.signed to collect the papers from her cla.s.smates, the system issued a task of secretly not including Wendy"s paper. She ignored it, of course. And the system was more than happy to let her taste a punishment.

On the next day, if not for Clea helping her shut people up, the common gossip would have been how Sofony Mendez mysteriously fell into a dirty water ca.n.a.l near the school gate yesterday afternoon. Naturally, that was the work of the system. Given Sofony"s improved physique, she was now athletic and quick to her responses so it was almost impossible for her to clumsily fall like that. At least, not without the machination of something like a certain b.a.s.t.a.r.d system.

Actually, that was not even the end of it. A few hours later, when she was waiting at the cafeteria and there was a pair of student couple nearby, it issued a "third-wheeler drama" task that she also didn"t hesitate to reject. As a consequence, when she was climbing down a flight of stairs from the third floor of their building, she once again fell down, rolling more than twenty-steps. Fortunately, there"s n.o.body close. She was also not that injured, only receiving few bruises and a cut on her elbow. A kind-hearted girl escorted her to the clinic where she found out that at least no bone got dislocated. The nurse asked her how she fell down, but she could only smile and say it was all due to her clumsiness. It was a poor excuse but thankfully no more question was asked.

Then times and days pa.s.sed that these kinds of events plagued her all around.

The system eventually grew bored with her deadpanned expression and decided to stop. It then began to talk things out with her. It was afternoon, she was resting her eyes as she leaned her upper body on the backrest of the bus seat.

When she replied, she didn"t open her eyes. "And? End of discussion. Kindly shut up again."

She didn"t comment. Her att.i.tude suggested that she didn"t want to entertain it.

"I"m sincerely amazed at how your damaged brain works. I"m sure that"s all you want to say so shut up."

Silence was the only answer it received after it waited for more than two minutes.

"...How many are we?" She couldn"t resist asking after a few seconds of deliberation.

"...Which is the latest batch?"

Sofony softly chuckled as she did her math. Fifth batch, in case there were a hundred people per batch, out there were five hundred people roaming freely on earth. If they had been distributed fairly to every country, empire, or nation, since there were more or less a hundred, it meant there were currently five immoral hosts in each country or state. She temporarily ignored the fact that there were still batches to be added in the future. All she wanted to focus on was how in her country, she already met two, and all of them appeared in Alina City.

What could this possibly mean?

As she pondered, regret and other indescribable emotions flooded her heart.

"And also get into the same bus as us. I get it."

She heard the loud and scratchy voice of the driver so she opened her eyes and checked her items before hurriedly getting off. Once her feet stepped on the pavement, she started walking towards the footbridge nearby. She had to cross that then walk a little further to the left to reach the Golden Residences. Midway, in the middle of the sea of people, she encountered a "talent scout" from a modeling agency that she politely brushed off. Then she rushed towards the condo building. All this while she couldn"t help but think about that fateful afternoon. The impatient voice of the system broke its silence though.

Sofony froze. She didn"t manage to enter the elevator in time and its closing door didn"t also wait for her. Probably only those inside were concerned why a female student in white and blue uniform strangely stopped a few steps from the elevator, even staring blankly at them until the silver door got them out of sight.

"...I"m scared?"

She blinked her eyes repeatedly at this realization.

In fact, it didn"t. All she could think of was how even a kid was made immoral by the system. The devil probably read what was running on her brain. It added,

It clicked its imaginary tongue then continued, ignoring its still bewildered host.

At these words, Sofony bit her lips. Her mind was greatly preoccupied so it was a miracle that she had safely entered the elevator without tripping or b.u.mping into anyone.

It started again.

Her heart chilled at what the system stated. Regretfully, her functioning brain didn"t allow her to refute it since it was the truth. She recognized that this might really be the case. No, it was precisely what happened.

She was Sofony Mendez. Immoral host 137. No matter how she hated the t.i.tle and its tasks, in the end, she was a host and everything she had done after that one night stand was immoral. Recently, she had been complacent because she thought it was okay to be content of what she"d already gotten. There was no more need to improve or hurry to do missions, that was how her mentality worked. Now, her system was blaming her almost unintended journey to the afterlife to her, and she was aware it was because she was so weak that she couldn"t even deflect misfortunate events like that.

If she had been more resourceful and creative in using the system and had completed more quests to stock up points, would things proceed in that manner?

Maybe.

As Sofony walked into the unit and pressed the switch for the lights and airconditioner, her expression was thoughtful yet at the same time, dark.

She silently agreed and nodded, her brain more inclined to speculate about the last sentence.

She really must not be complacent anymore. Not all things would go her way. Like what was usually said by people, what could go wrong, will go wrong. Not all hosts would be easy pickings. And actually, even fools could be scary if they were immoral enough to not think deeply about why they should or should not do evil.

Now she began thinking, how about her? Her dilemma was due to the fact that she"s weak, but if she wanted to become stronger, she had to be truly wicked.

This evening, she had neither the appet.i.te for food nor s.e.x. She spent the night thinking of what she should do from now on.