"You! You dare to harm me! You know who I fucking am? I'm a noble, a fucking noble, and you did what?" A man screamed at Reinhard, his face contorted with a fury born entirely from wounded pride.
He was enraged—absolutely beside himself—that a fucking nobody had dared to not only break into his mansion uninvited, but also had the audacity to lay hands on him. In his mind, this was an impossibility, something that simply did not happen to people of his station. Nobles were untouchable. That was the way of the world, and it had been for as long as anyone could remember.
Reinhard blankly looked at the noble, his expression carrying nothing—no anger, no disgust, no emotion of any kind that the noble could read or react to. Just a flat, empty stare that made the man feel like he was looking at something that didn't consider him worth the effort of an expression.
Then Reinhard shifted his attention away from the noble entirely, turning to look at the two-year-old girl lying in the bed. The sight of her, the state she was in, the evidence of what had been done to her laid bare for anyone with eyes to see—Reinhard took it all in without a word.
He looked back at the noble, whose face twisted even further at how Reinhard was treating him, at the sheer disrespect of being dismissed in his own home as though he were nothing more than furniture.
"I don't know if my level of disgust can be put into words," Reinhard said softly, his voice quiet and light in a way that was far more unsettling than any shout could have been. He walked over to the little girl and knelt beside the bed.
He asked the spirits in the area to heal her, and they responded immediately, rushing to the child without hesitation. In no time at all, the little girl was physically healed—her wounds closed, her bruises faded, her body restored to what it should have looked like.
Although the internal damage she had suffered, the kind that no spirit could reach and no magic could mend, was another matter entirely. That would take far longer to heal, if it ever could. Reinhard picked her up gently, cradling her small body against his chest without caring for the various liquids that covered her.
"Are you alright?" Reinhard asked softly, his voice shifting from the cold emptiness he had directed at the noble to something warm and careful—the voice of someone who understood that the child in his arms needed gentleness more than anything else in the world right now.
The little girl nodded, her small head bobbing against his chest. She tried not to cry, pressing her lips together and squeezing her eyes shut in a desperate effort to hold it in, but the dam broke almost immediately, and she ended up sobbing into his chest, her tiny hands gripping fistfuls of his coat as her body shook with the force of her crying. Reinhard said nothing more. He simply patted her head and walked out of the room, carrying her away from that place.
As he left, two orcs entered the room behind him, their massive frames filling the doorway as they stepped inside and began removing their clothing. The noble's screaming shifted from outrage to something else entirely—something much closer to the sounds that had been coming from the little girl not long ago.
"Since you enjoy forcing yourself on others, I will permit you to enjoy the next week of it," Reinhard said without looking back, his voice carrying no satisfaction, no vindictiveness—just the flat, matter-of-fact delivery of a sentence being carried out. He ignored the noble's screams completely, letting them fade behind him as he walked down the corridor and out of the mansion.
"You dare? I'm a noble; I will have your head. Stop! I'm a noble; I have connections to the royal family. You can't do this to me!" The noble screamed, his voice growing more desperate and more shrill with every word, the titles and connections he had used as shields his entire life suddenly proving worthless against someone who simply didn't care.
Reinhard never looked back, not once. He stepped out of the mansion's front entrance, and with a single powerful jump, he shot upward into the sky before arcing toward the center of the city, where the church stood tall above the surrounding rooftops—the tallest and most prominent structure in the entire settlement, as was always the case in cities that valued their gods above their people.
There, standing before the church's entrance with a sword drawn and held at the ready, the holy daughter of the church had positioned herself as a shield. She stood in a defensive stance, her weapon raised, protecting the people of this city alongside her sister, who stood just behind her in a similar posture. Around them, a crowd of citizens had gathered, huddling behind the two women as though their presence alone could stop what was coming.
"Stop this evil!" She cried, glaring at Reinhard with burning conviction as he landed before her. Reinhard ignored her entirely, looking past her as though she weren't there, and directed his gaze at the people she was protecting. He studied them for a moment.
"Why are you not killing her?" Reinhard asked calmly, directing the question not at the holy daughter, but at the people behind him. This was one of the last cities outside the barrier that Odin had erected.
The eighth-rank warriors and mages of the human domain had moved quickly when they realized what was happening, fleeing into the barrier's protective boundaries before Reinhard could reach them.
But Reinhard had acted just as quickly to prevent anyone below that rank from having the chance to follow. Even when some of them had managed to reach the other side of the barrier, Reinhard had flashed over and killed them before they could slip inside, cutting them down at the barrier's edge without mercy.
"She is… well, she is a good person." A black-haired woman said, awkwardly rubbing the back of her head as she struggled to articulate why they had let the holy daughter stand in their way rather than simply removing her.
On top of the holy daughter genuinely being a good person by the standards of those who knew her, she was also a combatant of the seventh rank—a formidable warrior by any measure—and she had not tried to flee when the chaos began. She had stayed behind to defend this city instead of running for the barrier like so many others had, and that act of courage had earned her a degree of respect that was difficult to ignore, even from those who had been victimized by the very system she represented.
"She isn't," Reinhard said calmly, his tone leaving no room for debate or discussion. He looked at the holy daughter, meeting her eyes with that same flat, unreadable stare, before pointing down at the little girl still cradled in his arms.
"This is a slave. Did she deserve what she went through?" Reinhard asked calmly, and seeing the child in his arms—seeing the tear-streaked face, the trembling body, the eyes that belonged to someone far older than two years—the holy daughter recognized immediately that this moment could determine the fate of everyone behind her. This was her chance to say the right thing, to choose her words carefully and save the people she had sworn to protect.
"What did she do to become a slave?" She asked, making Reinhard sigh. The question itself, the framing of it—as though a crime committed by a toddler could justify what had been done to her—told him everything he needed to know about how deeply this world's sickness had embedded itself even in the minds of those who considered themselves righteous.
"Does it matter? A 2-year-old does not become a sex toy." Reinhard said calmly, each word delivered with the precision of someone who was exercising enormous restraint.
"That is if the crime was well deserved." She said without a hint of hesitation, her voice carrying the absolute confidence of someone who believed she was speaking an unshakeable truth. For this was the truth in her eyes, the law of her world and her faith, and nothing could change that. The system existed because the gods willed it, and the gods did not make mistakes.
"How many people here were once sex slaves?" Reinhard called out, raising his voice so it carried across the entire crowd gathered behind him—the hundreds of freed slaves and citizens who had joined his cause throughout this campaign across the cities outside the barrier.
Instantly, the black-haired woman raised her hand, and alongside her, countless others behind Reinhard did the same. Hands went up in silence, one after another after another, until the sheer number of them painted a picture that no words could have conveyed as effectively. It was a sea of raised hands, each one representing a life that had been broken and used and discarded by the system the holy daughter was defending.
"What was your crime?" Reinhard asked calmly, directing the question at the black-haired woman who stood nearest to him.
"A noble wanted me, but I was married, so he forcefully took me, and raped me before my husband. After killing him, he kept me as a toy before I was sold to others." The black-haired woman said coldly, her voice flat and detached in a way.
"Was that deserved?" Reinhard asked calmly, turning the holy daughter's own logic back on her. The holy daughter hesitated, her mouth opening and closing without sound. She wanted to say something, but she had no words to say that could get her and everyone else out of here safe.
"I was born into slavery. I was 1 year old when I lost my virginity, and was taught from a very young age to pleasure others. Sex is all I knew for years. At times, hundreds of men would force themselves upon me." A middle-aged woman spoke up from within the crowd, her voice heavy with a hatred that had been fermenting for decades.
More spoke up after her, one voice after another, each one sharing a story worse than the last, each one adding another layer to the mountain of suffering that had been built by the system the holy daughter called just. And through it all, the holy daughter could say nothing. She stood there with her sword lowered, her lips pressed together, unable to offer a single defense for the world she had been raised to believe in.
"So, what god do you worship? By the looks of things, Athena… makes sense, worshipping the daughter of a rapist. Of course, you see no wrong in anything here." Reinhard said calmly. The holy daughter gritted her teeth so hard that her jaw ached, the accusation cutting through every defense she had left.
"You worship a goddess who punished a mortal for being raped by a god. A goddess who was so angry that she was defeated by a mortal, she turned that mortal into a spider and cursed…" Reinhard said coldly.
"The gods can do whatever they want with us mortals. Who are we to question the gods? There is a hierarchy to everything. Gods above mortals, royalty above nobles, nobles above commoners. And commoners above slaves." She said angrily, losing her control. After all, everything needs a hierarchy; leaders were needed, and those below those above should have no power over those above, or else the hierarchy shatters.
"So, in your words, if I turn you into a slave right now, you would accept your fate because of this hierarchy?" Reinhard asked, and the question hit her like a physical blow. She shut her mouth almost instantly, the retort she had been preparing dying on her tongue as the implications of her own logic were turned against her. If the hierarchy was absolute and just, then she had no grounds to object to anything that someone above her in that hierarchy decided to do with her. And Reinhard stood above everyone.
"Turn her into a slave. Since she wanted to defend that system so much, let her live it. You lived your whole life protected from the flaws of this system. Maybe seeing it all firsthand is what you need." Reinhard said coldly, his voice carrying the finality of a judgment that had already been rendered. There would be no appeal.
"I'm a holy daughter, you can't do this." She said, stumbling backward in fear as the people behind Reinhard began walking closer, their expressions carrying no sympathy, no hesitation, and no mercy for someone who had just argued that their suffering was deserved. She was scared—anyone could see it written plainly across her face,
"There is a hierarchy to everything, and right now you're a slave. You have no right to say anything before those who stand above you. Accept your fate, because this is the life you want," Reinhard said coldly, throwing her own words back at her one final time. She bit her lip hard enough to draw blood as tears began to build in her eyes, spilling over and running down her cheeks despite every effort she made to hold them back.
"It's only wrong when it's you facing the cruelty of this system, but when it's the other way around, it's well deserved… keep that energy, I want you to defend this system you love so much," Reinhard said while turning to leave, his back already to her before the last word left his mouth. But he paused mid-step, his attention caught by something in the crowd. One of his soldiers was walking toward a woman who was standing protectively in front of a three-year-old boy, shielding the child behind her body with the fierce, instinctive posture of a mother defending her young.
[A/N: I think I did a good job writing out the mindset of those from such an era, right? I also think I did a good job setting the standards of what a pure and truly good person of this world looks like.]