Chapter 157 – Benefiting Yourself and Others

Chapter 157 – Benefiting Yourself and Others

“Moira, you were human in your past life, weren’t you? Even if you weren’t human, you must have been a race with weak individual strength, and your people surely had hierarchies and leaders. Am I right?” Carmela said with certainty.

Mo Lan nodded. “That’s right.”

“The memories from your past life are both a treasure and a shackle to you. You must learn to distinguish between the two carefully.

I’ve been to many different worlds. Generally, only races with weak individual strength worship unity and preach collective interests.

Because only by banding together and borrowing the power of the collective can they survive.

It’s like how ants always move in swarms, but dragons always fight alone.

In the face of absolute power, numbers have negligible impact. When an individual is strong enough, none of that is needed anymore.

To maintain order within a collective, leaders and superiors must be established.

In most races, leaders and superiors are determined by strength — power equals status, and wisdom is merely one component of power.

But humans are different.

Humans are born with more active psychic power than other races. Their exceptional intelligence and superior learning ability are humanity’s advantages.

Through the rules and frameworks they create with nothing but their clever minds, they can bind others and secure their own positions of leadership, turning everyone else into their followers.

Collective interests, selfless devotion, nobility and commoners, loyalty to king and country, the continuation of the race… these are all tools created by those in power to shackle those beneath them.

A mature human society always has collective interests carved into its very bones, which is why humans are always so eager to conform, so desperate to fit in.

We witches served as tribal shamans during the Primordial Era, protecting the ordinary people of our tribes. But the moment the Divine Descent Era arrived and angels and demons invaded, we were instantly branded as the source of evil and misfortune — all because we didn’t conform.

The weak need to conform. The strong need only strength!

All those altruistic teachings you received as a human in your past life — you can throw them all away.

Humans love to glorify altruists because altruism benefits the collective the most. And who benefits from the collective’s gains? Besides the collective itself, it’s the leaders and those in power.

When someone receives something for nothing, it means someone else has lost their own interests.

How many humans keep the continuation of their race and the legacy of their family on their lips, toiling generation after generation, only for so many of them to end up with no control over their own lives?

We witches don’t play that game.

Are the interests of the collective and the continuation of the race really more important than the interests and freedom of the individual?

We witches only wish for every companion to live for herself, to freely choose and pursue what she wants.

If every witch alive today has achieved freedom and happiness, then what does it matter whether our race continues or not?

We witches have no leaders, no superiors. Though we are of the same race, we don’t depend on one another. Even a Sorceress has no right to command any witch.

Independence and freedom are our eternal pursuit.

Every witch and Sorceress should be responsible for herself and have absolute authority over her own possessions.

Don’t feel uneasy about acting in your own self-interest — it’s not as if you’re harming anyone else!

I know that kindness is in a witch’s nature, and no witch has ever been ungrateful.

But even if you want to do something for witchkind, that’s not something you youngsters who haven’t even come of age need to worry about.

You don’t even have anything yet!

Plenty of witches whose long lives are nearing their end are willing to entrust their lifetime’s accumulated knowledge and wealth to the Witch Council to support young witches.

These predecessors deserve gratitude. You can learn from them — when you no longer need your things, you can offer your legacy to help newly born witches have an easier time. But please don’t start learning to sacrifice when you’re still penniless yourself!

There’s no need for that, and the witch you’re sacrificing for won’t feel happy about it either!

Forget all that stuff about sacrifice and altruism you learned in your past life! You can act in your own self-interest, and you can also help others when it aligns with your interests or costs you nothing. But never sacrifice yourself for others, and never harm others for your own gain!

Learn to distinguish between what you truly want to do and what you feel compelled to do because of those moral concepts!”

Terrified that this child would be trapped by the rules and frameworks of her past life, Carmela spoke at great length with heartfelt sincerity.

Mo Lan lowered her head. She truly had been deeply influenced by her past life.

Especially since humans were the only intelligent race on Earth, and the Earth memories she carried were overwhelmingly dominated by human memories.

Her memory was so exceptional that everything about humanity, everything from her past life, felt as vivid as if it had happened just yesterday.

These mere thirteen years of experience as a witch were truly insignificant compared to the weight of human memory.

So much so that she always seemed more like a human than a witch.

But she knew that Lady Carmela was right.

She possessed every memory of Earth’s humanity, from their origins to their extinction. The human customs and moral concepts she followed hadn’t appeared out of thin air — they had been created by people.

For the sake of social order. For the consolidation of power.

There were benefits, and there were drawbacks.

They had suited the needs of human development at the time, but they didn’t suit Valen, and they certainly didn’t suit witches and Sorceresses, each of whom possessed magical talent and could survive independently.

Mo Lan committed every word Lady Carmela had just spoken to memory, turning them over and over in her mind.

What did she truly want to do?

And what was she being compelled to do by the values of her past life?

Giving up methods that could more quickly strengthen herself in order to benefit others while she was still weak — that certainly didn’t come from her true heart.

Since her rebirth, the one thing she had always wanted to do — “strengthen herself and save Earth” — did that come from her true heart?

Mo Lan thought: yes, it did.

Although Earth’s consciousness had said that it had poured the world’s remaining power into sending them away, not so they could toil for their homeland and waste their lives.

Mo Lan still felt that, stripped of all worldly conventions, this was something she wanted to do.

She couldn’t bear to watch Earth die forever, just like that.

Nor did she want to be as helpless as in her past life, powerless in the face of the world’s sudden upheaval, only able to wait for death.

Growing stronger was both to repay Earth and to live more freely and fully for herself.

For herself, for Earth, she should press forward on the path to power — but she shouldn’t live like an ascetic monk either, ignoring the scenery along the way.

Living well was the only way to honor the opportunity for rebirth that Earth had given them by expending its very last strength.

This must be what Lady Carmela meant by benefiting yourself and others!

Having sorted through her thoughts, Mo Lan felt much lighter. She looked up at Lady Carmela. “Thank you. I understand now!”

“Good, as long as you understand!”

Carmela was relieved. Goodness beyond one’s means was far too dangerous for a young Sorceress — the slightest sprout of it had to be nipped in the bud.

“Now then, let’s talk about the card channel business! How exactly do you want to set it up? Can my Contract Magic be used?”