John was disappointed when the first action he had to take back in the Iron Domain was to crack down on the population. It was a naïve misunderstanding that some people had that when an oppressive force was removed, the formerly oppressed would just get along. In reality, many may have loathed their oppressors, but a lot of people gained from them as well. Those groups were then further subdivided along a great many lines. No matter how oppressive a system, it did still give a certain stability that was replaced with the anarchic contest about who got to have the power afterwards.

The situation hadn’t degenerated up to this point yet. News that the Ironborn were dead was only at a rumour level right now, and even then people were aware enough of the existence of the greater Iron Domain to not start anything big. The enforcers still had a degree of authority, they just had no motivation to enforce anything. After all, beyond keeping the Ironborn’s property from the peasantry, there were no real laws.

What did happen, consequently, was that anywhere outside the guarded tower districts, anarchy rose and took the shape of small-scale gang wars over the newly created fruit supply. It was an entirely needless conflict, John had done the math and deliberately provided more food than even the highest estimation of the population number would require.

That being said, these people weren’t smart. Average intelligence in an impoverished, drug and pollution filled city like this was probably stuck around the level of an American middle schooler. Their capacity to plan with the future in mind was most certainly limited. Combining this with their lack of understanding what a food abundance even was, this outcome had been incredibly likely.

So, John was disappointed, but not surprised. When he had left them without any oversight, this had been expected. ‘The mistake was going home,’ John thought. The mechanics of Adventures meant that the individual party members could leave whenever they wanted, safe for the elementals, but when the Gamer left, everyone else left with him. ‘You want to sleep in your own bed and a few dozen people die because the hungry mob turns on itself.’

The Gamer scratched the back of his head, staring at the empty plants in the cave. A fair share of the leaves had been torn off, apparently people had attempted to eat them as well. Faulting them for that would have been idiotic. With a lack of understanding what fruits were, why wouldn’t they try to eat everything hanging from the trees? A few of the plants even had parts of their bark chopped off, but considerably fewer people had gone through that trouble. There were a few corpses scattered about, most of them trampled into a bloody pulp. Otherwise, the cave was devoid of activity.

‘Not quite sure how bad I should feel about this,’ John thought, inspecting one of the corpses. The majority of the harem was out and about, gathering information for him and making sure the situation didn’t escalate further. Only Gnome, Undine, and Metra stuck around, to regrow the plants and provide protection. ‘Obviously, I could have prevented this if I left the Artificial Spirits to guard the area while we slept. Then again, all I did was go sleep at home and live my normal life. Heroic would be to sacrifice my own wellbeing in favour of these people. Great power, great responsibility, and all of that. Not sure I want to let doing good dictate my entire day though.’

“The corpses will make good fertilizer,” Undine remarked, interrupting his contemplations.

Gnome let out a shocked yelp, before squealing out, “U-undine! You can’t say that.”

Metra poked one of the corpses with Rex Magnar. “She’s right through, grind these people up and they’ll be useful for something.”

“That’s a bit too much,” John said. He may not have had the proper heroic spirit, but he did have common decency. “We’ll bury them over there. Gnome, could you make a couple of holes?”

The season elemental did as he asked and the Gamer then helped her move the corpses into them. While doing that he had the time to further contemplate what was bothering him. ‘So, how bad should I feel about this?’ he asked himself. ‘I’m really not sure. De-facto I don’t owe these people anything, especially not that I babysit them. If I want to be a truly moral person, I’d have to act as if I owed them these things… this is the typical superhero conundrum.’

Anyone who had a great amount of power and didn’t use it for the good of the people was being immoral through inaction. That was an easily agreeable statement. When travelling through the city and meeting someone at the edge of starvation, sharing one’s food with them was the moral thing to do. Ignoring the pesky question of ‘and what then?’ for the moment and observing the isolated instance, one would likely come to the conclusion that walking away without sharing food was immoral.

Switching the perspective revealed another immorality. Being a starving person, taking the food that was offered was the understandable act, nothing wrong there. Begging for food was a bit questionable, working for it was always better, but in the described situation all other options were exhausted so this was also inoffensive. Expecting or demanding for food to be provided was another immoral action. It was fundamentally wrong to demand that others take care of one’s problems.

So, in the superhero conundrum, both the hero who did nothing and the person that expected the hero to come and save them were bad people. How bad they were depended on the situation at large. Nobody would have told Batman that he was a failure as a hero for not stopping the falling skyscraper. Superman, however, would be hit with that criticism.

Bringing it back to the starving man metaphor, there were various nuances that had to be taken into consideration. First was how much of the situation was the man’s fault. Saving someone at the brink of starving was not as pressing if they had gotten exiled from the village for murder. Next was the price and availability of food. That was the effective difference between the strength of Superman and Batman – everyone only had to face expectations within the range of their means. Third was one’s own situation. When one or one’s friends and family were only one day away from starvation, feeding someone unknown wasn’t a priority. Finally, at least as far as John thought about it, was the previously ignored, pesky question of ‘and what then?’ Feeding someone was not a sustainable course of action when there were underlying causes. In practice this was reflected in the old adage: ‘Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.’

John decided to apply those nuances to his current question.

How much of the situation was their fault? Fundamentally none. There was absolutely no way for these people to escape their current situation. There were no viable and available weapons to harm the Ironborn and their physical state wouldn’t have allowed them to flee anywhere else, if there even had been anywhere to flee to. When it came to the trampling of the fellow man, however, that was their fault. Food was plenty. Question was how much they could be blamed for not knowing any better. It wasn’t like John had left each of them a neatly packed ration.

What was the price for John to help them? To his credit, he had already provided the food, so he had acted morally on that front. When it came to preventing the nightly riot, however, he had decided to gamble on the low chance of it not happening to sleep where he was comfortable and to be with his loves. Sacrificing a single night wasn’t a big ask to save lives and teach these people a bit about society. The precedent that it set, that John had to forgo his luxury to ward people at all times, was a bit problematic, but this was an individual decision he could adjust for future instances. It was not a law.

What was John’s situation? That was answered for the most part by the previous question. There would be no harm to him from helping. It was just an inconvenience to his hygiene and general comfort.

And what if he had helped them? Then he would have been right where he was now, with sixteen less bodies in the ground.

‘In consequence: yeah, this was definitely the wrong call to make,’ the Gamer surmised. ‘The only way I could defend myself here is to insist I just didn’t want to set the precedent. Which I don’t and I think I can insist on not wanting to lose the life I built to make sure morons that have enough to eat don’t trample over each other.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Guess the reason why I even have to contemplate this is because it’s hard to feel sorry for idiots.’

‘Sorted this out?’ Stirwin entered his mind.

‘Well, the philosophical side, yeah,’ John responded. ‘Why didn’t you stop me yesterday?’

‘A mistake on my part, I anticipated the chance for this to be rather low.’

‘You make those?’ the Gamer asked his pride-watch.

‘Sometimes I like to believe too much in the good in people.’

‘That’s a valuable trait to have as my advisor.’ John rolled his neck and watched while Gnome and Undine put the finishing touches on regrowing the fruits. It would have gone quicker if they had just combined, but this was a new day and it wasn’t completely guaranteed that there were no new dangers in the city. They could have missed a messenger going out to warn the other Ironborn, after all.

So far it was quiet, aside from the questions their presence and the rumours about the dead Ironborn caused. No need to use a cooldown when they could do it slowly anyway. They were in no rush.

Once done with the food supply, they moved into the city. Seeing it without the smog showed the full extent of the squalor these people lived in. The houses had no windows and were generally shaped more like bunkers or capsules. City planning was basically non-existent, with the various homes scattered about randomly. This caused some unlucky formations that had funnelled the drifting pollution into certain places and caused build up that resembled pictures of a north Canadian backyard in the winder – just with poisonous waste rather than snow.

When John spotted an opening approximating a plaza, he moved there and made his preparations. The flyers of the group spread out through the city to demand people move there. The rest of them made sure the process went orderly. The Mandala Sphere served as a beacon of orientation for anyone confused.

In the end, practically the entire city was around the platform John had Gnome raise. The more people poured in, the more John realized that the rousing speech he had been wanting to give would be entirely useless. Completely broken by the hardships of this life, these people couldn’t be animated into anything after a day of moderate life improvement. They were so intellectually impaired, John wasn’t sure they could be cobbled into anything beyond a mob anyway.

‘They will follow orders though, so I guess I have to do that,’ he resigned himself. “People of Chelmea, I have killed the Ironborn that ruled you.” That caused moderate surprise, but no cheers or anything. Confusion was a more widespread feeling. ‘I guess if someone came to you and said that they just killed your immortal overlords, you would be confused.’ “I will take their place and offer you an alternative to your aching lungs and itching skin. A few rules for you: do not compete over food, enough will be provided. The pool of water over there.” John pointed at a basin Undine was currently filling. “Is for you to clean yourself, not to drink. Water to drink will be provided elsewhere. Each and every one of you is obligated to be checked by the dark blue slime woman at least once. Form an orderly row and wait for her to get to you. That is all.”

John was ready to get off the podium when a shout from the crowd came, “What about Mettle?”

‘Momo, you see that person? Make sure to filter them out,’ the Gamer instructed the fairy maid.

‘Got it,’ she responded.

John got off the podium without answering the question. Nothing he said there would be satisfying to the people and he didn’t want to agitate the crowd. Broken as they were, when the human panic response kicked in and spread, that would be incredibly hard to stop. Best to keep them wondering for now. Those smart enough to question the state of affairs would be taken aside. Even if the broad populace was useless, a select few individuals would remain sane even in this harsh world. The Ironborn bet on it and John had to as well.

For the next couple of hours, Undine would check everyone for their current ailments. That would hopefully let them find out about Mettle-associated health problems and let them check how strong the withdrawal effects were. In any emergencies, Beatrice had loaded a large batch of the drug into her inventory and would distribute it on a need-to-have basis. Measures to keep the true quantity they possessed a secret had been taken.

For his part, John had something else to do. All of this had been pulled ahead due to the events that had transpired while he was away. The actual Quest he had was something different.