Chapter 2702

The ashes in the fireplace jumped heavier than usual. When the flames leaped, besides bringing light, they also brought constantly flowing shadows, making people feel warm, and also making the wind coming through the window cracks colder.

The silver needles held in the hand knitting the sweater seemed to be suturing some wounds that were about to be forgotten. Those days that could not be avoided had no room to burst open and bleed, leaving only black scabs as heavy as furnace ashes.

"... I don't know if you have heard of the position of detachment member. It sounds like a position in the Boy Scouts. In fact, it is also true. They are more willing to let children do this, watching them numbly drag the bodies out of the gas chamber and burn them without nostalgia."

When the light sound of the lighter being opened rang out, the red-haired woman had already put down the needles for knitting the sweater. The man who was talking turned his head, and his wife smiled at him and said, "I think I can take this opportunity to go upstairs and sleep for a while, right?"

"Okay, Magda." He said, "When you wake up, the freshly dried daisies will appear at your bedside. Have a good dream."

"That must be a terrible memory for you." Shiler took the cigarette from his hand and called his current name, "Magnus."

When the smoke drifted up, the young Magneto leaned back against the chair and said, "When this happens early enough, it's a life full of rules, not a disaster. Only when you leave that environment will you realize that you are bleeding."

"Is this your experience?"

"Yes, I don't think it's cruel. Walking into the gas chamber to carry bodies is a job for me to exchange for food. There is no evil meaning other than that. All cognition that defines this behavior as evil was only possessed after I left there."

"You don't think you are evil, and you don't intend to repent."

"I haven't even prayed."

"But you are still looking for a god, but you don't want him to save you from a certain situation." Shiler took a puff of the cigarette, tried to flatten the newspaper on the table, picked up the paper cutter, and cut out the useful parts.

"Is that what you think?" Magneto asked, "Spending three hours every day begging God to save you."

"Most believers are like this."

"This shows you aren't."

"What do you think I am like?" Shiler asked.

"You have an obvious 'God complex'." Magneto said, "Never waiting for help, but controlling everything."

"In that case, we are very similar."

"I'm not that extreme." Magneto exhaled smoke lightly, searching for his daughter's heartbeat from the noise of the magnetic field that always surrounded him. This wonderful music made him feel stable.

"You are a lunatic, without a doubt, because normal people wouldn't be like you, so firmly believing that they have the power to judge others."

"Just because I killed them?" Shiler raised his head and raised his eyebrows at Magneto and said, "Do you think those people chasing you shouldn't be killed?"

"I mean you like to turn others into lunatics." Magneto said, "You look for people with such potential, approach them, tell them you have a way to completely end their pain, and they will become crazier than anyone imagines."

"Very good." Shiler evaluated, "But you can't say this is evil, because if I myself am a huge bait, then I will only attract the same kind, just like you."

"Do you think I am special?"

"Of course." Shiler looked into Magneto's eyes and said, "A child who grew up in a concentration camp, your view of good and evil and right and wrong was twisted from the beginning. How does it feel to know that the things you witnessed are actually the most evil crimes in the world?"

"I am very sad."

"No, you aren't sad at all." Shiler said, "You aren't even afraid. You just feel fanatical, because those sinners who offended and bumped into God so much never received the punishment they deserved. Since that's the case, neither will you."

Magneto's Adam's apple moved, and then he opened his mouth with a dry voice, "I cannot deny this point. I prefer to call the moment I realized that what they did was a crime 'the death of God', because I have seen so many cruel things, and God has never appeared."

"That's why I said we are very similar." Shiler looked at the firelight in the fireplace with eyes that were far from as cold and solemn as his, and even gentle, and said, "When I had no basic concept of this world, I didn't think everything some people did to me and others was cruel. I only knew I lived like this."

"But when one day, I came to a completely different environment, everything here was different from what I experienced. Another group of people told me I had a pathetic past. Only then did I realize that some things could be called cruel."

"But I am not sad about this at all. I only feel excited, because they can treat me so cruelly without paying the price, then I can treat others the same way. Secular rules and laws are not worth mentioning to me. If there is no retribution at the metaphysical level, no one can stop me."

"Does cruelty make you happy?" Magneto asked.

"No, it only makes me feel free."

Magneto frowned, and a trace of pain finally appeared on his face, which was always full of seriousness and indifference.

"Freedom, yes, freedom. The environment of the concentration camp wouldn't make me awaken any other views. I would feel that the world is like this, everyone is the same, but there is always a voice telling me that I can not listen to them, I can do things outside the arrangement, which makes me feel heartfelt happiness. I don't know if this is my nature."

"What are the things outside the arrangement you want to do?" Shiler asked sharply, "Find a dagger and insert it into their chest, smash their heads, or dig out their livers..."

"No... I didn't want to do these things." Magneto said with some difficulty, "Because I didn't know what they did was cruel, so I didn't hate them, at least not then."

"That only proves you didn't want to do these things because of hatred, at least not entirely because of hatred."

"You sound too empathetic." Magneto keenly felt something was wrong. He looked at Shiler and said, "Have you also been in a concentration camp?"

He straightened his body, his fingers kept tapping on his knees, and said, "Since you saved us, you have never told us your story."

"Perhaps it's just a story. Who can guarantee to tell you the truth?"

"Perhaps what I said is just a story." Magneto said, "Perhaps everything in the concentration camp was fabricated by me, but if you are willing to spend time to make up a story for me, you can't say it's unfair."

"I am a bit special." Shiler said very concisely, "But not the kind of special you are. Some people realized I was powerful, and they thought I could become a good weapon."

"You know this kind of plan couldn't have just me, so if you must describe that place as a concentration camp, it's not impossible. In short, it's about the same as yours, but I entered there earlier."

"Meaning you had less cognition of the world." Magneto seemed to understand a little and said, "At least I had a happy time with my parents, although their death brought me too strong a shock, leading to some amnesia, but occasionally I can remember some fragments."

"I have almost no such experience." Shiler said, "From the moment I had consciousness, I grew up in an orphanage. If I have to say what fragments of memory I have, it's probably someone breaking in here one day, and then blood, screams, and gunshots."

"I am very sorry."

"You aren't sorry at all." Shiler still said very bluntly, "You lack the ability to empathize with such trauma, it's just that social common sense requires you to be polite."

Magneto didn't commit himself and didn't answer.

"But it's a pity that in the place where I was, special people were the minority, or it can be said that only I was truly special."

"Special in what way?"

"Born powerful."

Magneto hummed lightly, with some disdain, but it didn't seem to be directed at Shiler, but more like at them in his mouth.

"Power and controllability usually cannot be listed together." Magneto said, "Otherwise every country could use mutants as weapons, and there wouldn't be a need to spend so much effort researching atomic bombs."

"It wasn't that powerful either." Shiler said, "You can understand it as a society with only ordinary people, and I didn't have any special abilities, just stronger than ordinary people in all aspects."

"Sounds interesting." Magneto turned his head to look at Shiler and said, "Does such a place exist?"

"Of course." Shiler nodded, flicked the cigarette ash, and continued, "At that time, they also thought there were existences similar to mutants in the world, but in fact there weren't. However, they felt that if there really were, their actions could let them occupy the first opportunity."

"Why would they think so?"

"Probably because of me." Shiler said, "They didn't know I was an individual case, thinking I was the beginning of some phenomenon, and next there would be more and more people like me, but why they were so sure is still a mystery."

"They caught a lot of people?"

"All children. They thought that to become as powerful as me, they needed to stimulate potential, and I could also become unprecedentedly powerful through the way of stimulating potential, even stronger than atomic bombs, and more hidden."

"I can imagine." Magneto said, holding the cigarette in his hand, "Many people, like our current neighbors, these well-off Germans have very limited imagination for cruelty. In their view, Auschwitz is already hell, but in fact it's not."

"That place is more like a mass slaughter station. Not so many people have the leisure to torture prisoners, just driving them into the gas chamber in batches, turning on the switch, and then there is only a ground of corpses. Many times there won't even be screams because of pain, most are because of fear."

"This is a very efficient way. Everyone performs their duties in their positions, without any deliberate cruelty, numbly as if completing work. This may also be the main reason why other adults don't think they are guilty. This process is alienated like real labor."

"I will record what you said. I hope you don't mind." Shiler said, "As a reward, you can also record mine. Perhaps one day it will be useful."

Magneto revealed a cold smile.

In the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters, Charles looked through his mobile phone, his head far away from the mobile phone screen, and the expression on his face was also very complicated.

The noise coming from the mobile phone finally made Erik unable to bear it. With a bang, a book smashed Charles's mobile phone away. Although it was very clever and didn't hit Charles's hand, he still turned his head to look at Erik with slight dissatisfaction.

"If you don't let go of that noise machine, I will implant it into the latest version of the brainwave amplifier, so you can brush short videos all day long."

"Don't be like this, Erik." Charles complained in a low voice. He touched his bald head and said, "Have you watched the recent variety show? The students are all brushing it. Mrs. Viss told me that the probability of students staying up late has increased by more than two times, just because of this show."

"Stark's compilation of stupidity?"

"It's Stark's romantic wedding trip." Charles picked up the mobile phone and said, "Logan and the others are actually watching it too, and they keep asking me, as someone who is about the same age as Shiler, if there is any information about Shiler."

Erik frowned slightly, and that fleeting complex thought couldn't be hidden from the telepath at all.

Charles turned his head abruptly, looked at him with bright eyes, and said, "Don't tell me you have."