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"It was hell, my lord. I was just a young boy when it happened. On his way back, the master was almost murdered by the demon."

Vincent, continued to desperately grip my pants, as if it was his lifeline, his words began to slur from how unhinged he had become.

" Th-That, that thing was nothing I had ever seen before. No matter what my family threw at it, nothing worked. Humans were so powerless in the face of such a creature. A monster masquerading as a human."

Then he stopped shaking, as if he remembered that his memory was in the past. Vincent gripped my leg tighter as he clenched his jaw.

"But then the young miss, a teenager barely twenty, pushed the demon back with her abilities. I was beside myself. How could someone so small wield so much power? Then I learned she was a descendant. A weapon born of the Reapers.

"My Lord, I lost my family that day, my father, my brothers, my sisters, all for nothing. Despite the power of the master and his daughter, the demon escaped. And life went on. My uncles tried to keep the family together, but they too were used as demon fodder.

"No matter how much we begged, we were not allowed to join the reapers. My master cowered in his mansion due to the frequent attempts on his life. He lived a life of debauchery devoid of purpose. He paid the Hellsgate Tax with the wealth he made from his businesses."

\'This was it. This was the missing piece. The reason the reapers are few is not because they all died. But because they all began to hide in the face of death,\' I finally understood.

The Reapers had it hard. However, from the ranks of the Phantoms, one could choose not to go to Hellsgate. This meant once past the Wraith rank, every reaper now had a choice. This meant their strength was the result of their own efforts or lack thereof.

Unlike Wraiths and Phantoms, who only defended, Specters attacked enemy territory. As such, the stakes would naturally be different.

Assassins trying to take out Specters on their home turf would be effective not only physically, but psychologically as well. After all, how could anyone fight in peace knowing that their own household was in danger?

If the tax was the only thing keeping a Reaper from being thrown off the battlefront, then it was only a matter of having enough funds. Rather than risk your life while fighting, just earn souls through capitalism and live like a king.

A Specter in the human world would be the equivalent of a deity. This option made the most sense when the immediate danger of dying to the undead disappeared.

\'Would there even be any reason for a Specter to continue fighting?\'

"The Reapers do not have the luxury of choosing to go to war. We are already outgunned and outnumbered. What would you call powerful people who deliberately hide behind the front lines?"

Once again, Zach\'s words echoed in my head. Being of the same rank, the Nightmare probably could not force his fellow Specters to assault Hellsgate. That must be why he insisted that Phantoms evolve into Specters instead.

It was much easier to convince newbies than it was to get jaded Specters to move again. After all, even in the militaries of the world, regret and guilt were a thing.

Survivors of massacres or catastrophic failures tended to lose their will to fight.

If this could happen to humans, what more to the Specters who fought demons and armies of the dead without any support?

The mental burden of carrying on after losing those you hold dear must be immense.

Even anime and manga depicted the result of defeat for adventurers and heroes. It takes a special kind of bastard to carry on even after your people have been killed or you have failed.

Man was always looking for his purpose. However, if said purpose was a lie, that would be tough. If after all your hardships and sacrifices it came to nothing, most men would break from such a fact.

After all, as long as humans existed, the undead would do so as well.

"..."

"My lord! My family has no need for such cowards! Please grant us your blood and turn us into reapers! We will unite under your banner and fight the undead! If your claims of exterminating them and closing Hellsgate are true, then let us fight with you!"

It was amusing, here you had Specters who had lost their will and humans desperately trying to find a way to survive. Such opposing extremes, and yet there was a right or wrong answer among them.

Humans reacted differently to their circumstances. The same boiling water that hardened an egg softened a potato. It was less about what was happening to you and more about what you were made of.

\'Now, how should I go about this?\'

The longer shit went on, the more complicated it usually became. Should I give my blood to a gangster family? What if they use it to commit crimes? But do I have the option to be selective to begin with?

It was true that I needed men, but would getting them from gangsters solve anything? I didn\'t think that one\'s profession was everything to them, but it certainly influenced them a bit.

Nevertheless, a bullet fired by a soldier or a gangster was the same. All that mattered was who was on the other end.

"Bullets have no morals," I muttered in passing.

Vincent, noticing my condition, let go of my leg and pressed his forehead to the ground again. Trying to save his family was noble and all, but what would happen to Raymond Gertrude?

I already had a beef with Xander Rutherford.

Was I going to pick a fight with another Specter? Besides, for all his loyalty, he was essentially betraying his former master. How valuable were the oaths of a traitor?

Still, it was not that I could not understand him. The main problem was that Raymond didn\'t allow Vincent\'s family to become reapers, yet the lunatic kept throwing them to demons.