Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:MvM Chapter5 (section)

===Part 10===

A wildfire took everything from him.

Including his wife and his young son.

But the wall of fire that approached with terrifying speed wasn’t the only thing that took lives that day.

Humans killed elves, elves killed humans, and so many of the corpses were too disfigured to say which side was responsible. It had been a maelstrom and storm of violence. Valhalla was protected by its thick wall, so even with the forest blazing outside, no one should have died as long as everyone inside the city worked together to evacuate.

But one young man screamed that they would be cooked alive inside the city, threw open the thick gate, and ran out into the crimson conflagration.

The fire had entered through the open gate like it was alive and the panic had inspired further panic.

At that point, there was no stopping it.

Some tried to stockpile food and water so they could survive, some used the chaos as a chance to loot, some ran around searching for the ‘culprits’ despite no evidence the wildfire was a case of arson, leading to hatred, grudges, and so much meaningless death.

While the fire burned for three days and three nights, the shabby little man realized something.

When disaster struck, it was already too late to start determining the priority of lives. A hierarchy had to be worked out in advance to ensure a swift recovery.

He refused to let the harm grow uncontrollably like this.

As the lord left in charge of all these people, it was up to him to come up with that hierarchy.

Even if it felt heartless.

To save as many lives as possible, he needed to be familiarize himself with the pain of letting some die.

But who had he prioritized in his hierarchy?

''Oh,'' thought the lord.

If only he had been able to see what truly mattered and prioritized that. At the time, the all-encompassing sense of loss and emptiness he felt after losing his wife and son had left him unable to feel a connection to anyone – human, elf, or other monster – but what if he had found the courage to cautiously take someone else’s hand again?

He realized now that was when he had taken a wrong turn.

“Why…?” he muttered, staring down at the shattered remains of his ultimate equipment.

Why did he even want all that power?

What good was it when he couldn’t overcome the sorrow of his loss or find the courage to protect the weak?

“Why was I so fixated on this?”