Chapter 440: Outsiders

A strange glint flashed in Kael’s eyes as he listened to Priya.

"But we subscribe to similar social constructs, don’t you know?" Kael asked. His face was calm, not showing any signs of distress.

The elevator had begun to ascend.

"Yes, but we lions don’t operate social constructs the same way these humans do. Besides our pride dynamics and the Lion System, we don’t attach importance to other things the way the humans do...," Priya said, not knowing that she was creating a paradoxical statement.

"...We don’t just live with social constructs and labels, we have created and destroyed them. YOU have created and destroyed them.

The specialized castes that you created at the start of the creation of our kingdom, the refined metal market, and the avian Intel. You were creating the foundations for an imperfect social construct and you were able to do so with the perspective of an outsider.

After so long, we have refined, destroyed, and restructured everything to be more and more perfect, eliminating as many flaws as possible.

Even our Lion System may not be perfect but we are AWARE.

Humans are not necessarily aware and they cannot consciously try to make their society better without significant trade-offs.

Like N’bayé said, most of them are going with the flow.

If a single individual takes a step back and detaches himself from everything, he would see the illusion he is surrounded by."

"But..." Kael said, knowing that there must be a catch. He was once a human after all and had lived in this social construct for a good part of his life. He knew it wasn’t as simple as Priya was making it out to be.

Priya nodded, "But there’s nothing that they can do about it. The choices have been presented to them from the moment they were born.

There is no known way for a human to escape the illusion of his society. The best he or she can do is to be aware and learn to manipulate the system. Escaping it is impossible as they cannot live without it.

There’s always going to be money, there’s always going to be religion, there’s always going to be poor people, there’s always going to be war, there’s always going to be broken dreams, there’s always going to be bias, there’s always going to be false news.

There is no escaping the system.

It’s sad and it’s true."

Kael was silent for some time, not knowing what to say yet.

*DING!*

The elevator door opened. For Kael, it was nice to once again be in an elevator that was powered by science not magic. Although not as efficient as magic-powered elevators, it was still nice.

Kael didn’t step out of the elevator immediately, he wanted to understand something to clear his mind.

"You said N’bayé finds humans too predictable, therefore, she’s gotten bored with them.

That is to assume she knows everything about them already?"

Priya nodded, "Yeah, she’s still doing some research on their history but besides that. She’s gotten tired of them already."

"Don’t you think there’s more to learn about them? About their daily lives?" Kael asked.

Priya nodded her head, "For me and most of everyone on this planet, yes. There’s still much more to learn from humanity as they call themselves.

But most of these things can only be learned by living amongst them and engaging in the same things they engage in.

And that’s the problem. We are outsiders, it will be difficult for us to understand the significance of anything humans find important.

Look at their political systems, democracy or otherwise.

Many of them get so heated about political ideologies to the point where it influences the way they interact with one another.

It’s so sad because they don’t realize that it really does matter. Their mistake is to assume those at the top actually care about this sorry excuse of a popularity contest.

Look at democracy for example. It looks like a way for the people to choose their leaders but really, democracy is just the sharing of power between those at the top.

We know this because we see things from the outside. Most of them don’t understand this because they are too caught up in the heat of the moment.

It’s like this for every other one of their activities. In order to truly extract all there is to learn from them, one has to be enmeshed in their society and conform.

Alas, that is to assume that anything you want to learn from humanity is worth the space it would take up in your mind.

Is it?"

Kael narrowed his eyes. N’bayé had truly stripped everything down to the barest details. She saw everything as it was and as it should be.

It was no wonder she got bored of human civilization very fast. It’s not that they were too predictable or anything, she was just too intelligent for them to hold her interest.

But it also didn’t mean what Priya said wasn’t true. In fact, it was the perfect definition of a ’bitter truth’.

Although Kael’s mind was now too strong and the bitterness was barely felt, he felt it nonetheless.

"N’bayé noticed traits of successful people?" Kael asked, remembering one intriguing thing Priya mentioned.

Both of them then stepped out of the elevator into a large double-level penthouse.

The scent of Eidel, Ruda, and Olivia wafted into his nose.

But there was also the scent of a few other creatures, like wolves and vultures.

The penthouse itself was fitting for a very wealthy guest, with a floor-to-ceiling window right before Kael’s eyes and a luxurious sitting area before it.

"Not that she noticed, she simply mapped out some traits that someone could have that would increase their probability of being better than the average human in the future.

She did this by comparing historical data of as many successful humans before they became successful and seeing the patterns."

"And one of the traits are?" Kael sat down on the white couch, dressing his robe as he relaxed his back. He was careful not to relax too much, lest the couch collapse under his immense weight.

Priya sat down beside him and rested her body on him. She placed her head on Kael’s chest and had her palm on his lap.

"Well, if a human cannot care about other humans’ opinions, this could generally cause them to be successful.

According to N’bayé though.

It makes sense if you think about it. A lot of successful humans got to where they were by taking actions others were not willing to take.

It’s like going against the crowd flow or taking a different path on a road that no one else takes.

Naturally, ’everybody’ who sees the human doing something that everyone is not doing will try to say something.

It’s not that ’everybody’ hates that human or doesn’t want to see him progress. They just have a desire to call out those who aren’t conforming to their path. Humans don’t like unpredictability, as ironic as it sounds.

It is then up to that human to choose whether he would listen to what ’everybody’ is saying or not.

Those who started like this did not listen to ’everybody’ nor did they care about their opinions.

From their standpoint, ’everybody’ is poor, so why should you listen to ’everybody’ when you are trying to be rich?

Of course, this isn’t enough reason to be successful. Someone may not care about others’ opinions and still end up worse than he or she started."

This conversation happened in lion language and was quite nice to have for Priya.

"Hmm," Kael closed his eyes. This one stung hard.

"And the pattern recognition?" Kael asked.

"That one is just common sense that apparently not all of them have.

Every year they keep on repeating the same mistakes for some reason despite hoping for their lives to get better.

If they could just recognize the patterns and see the mistakes that have been happening, they would know which problems to fix.

The first step in solving a problem is to identify the problem, many of them don’t even know that they are the problem. Always looking for who to blame.

Anyways, none of these things matter to us, we’re just outsiders and observers," Priya said.

"For now, these ’humans’ may not be so simple," Kael said, suspicion evident in his voice.

He opened his eyes as his spirit surged out of his mind and covered the whole penthouse.

"Bring him to me," Kael commanded telepathically.

His order instantly reached the minds of the concerned parties.

The atmosphere in the penthouse became more serious and the air particles seemed to still.

The sound of moving objects and heavy footsteps reached Kael’s sensitive ears. Priya continued resting her head in his chest and his eyes were still closed.

But both of them could ’see’ everything happening in the city all at once.

Soon, four humans walked into the sitting area. At least, they looked like humans.

They were Jocelyn, Ben, and Zion. The three wolves that had helped capture the Primordial Wolf.

And the fourth person was none other than the Primordial Wolf himself, Ralph.

Finally, Ralph got to gaze upon the mastermind of his current ordeal.