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It was an important part of being human, he’d come to believe. Those rare few who couldn’t feel it were missing out.

There was a popular sentiment that those who know pain are less inclined to inflict it upon others. And in Morgunov’s experience, that was true.

But it was also true that such experiences granted one the knowledge of where things hurt most. And from there, malicious intent could truly run rampant.

Knowledge was a funny thing. So many people throughout history liked to espouse the enormous benefits of education, of a learned populace, of knowledge in all its many forms dispelling ignorance around the world. And yet, Morgunov had increasingly come to believe that knowledge was also a prerequisite for evil to exist.

You could not intentionally hurt someone if you didn’t know where to strike.

And perhaps, in a similar vein, evil was a prerequisite for the advancement of knowledge. Because ultimately, more knowledge would bring about more evil.

That was all very reductionistic, of course, but it was fun to think in simplified terms, from time to time. And necessary, too. He’d seen many intelligent people get so lost in their own sophisticated ideas that they began to overlook the obvious. He didn’t want to be like that.

Which was why this attack from this so-called Primordial was interesting to him. Such a simplistic approach. Inflicting pain. No doubt, it was meant to be a test. She wanted to see how well he could take it. And once she’d gathered that knowledge, she would likely try something more advanced.

Unfortunately for her, she’d chosen her first attempt poorly. While Morgunov wasn’t entirely certain that his next trick was going to work on her in the same way that it had worked on numerous powerful psychics, he had a pretty strong feeling that she wasn’t going to be having a very fun time, here in a second.

He just wanted to enjoy the pain for a moment longer, first. Mmm.

Okay, that was enough.

He concentrated.

As with many things in this world, it was mind over matter. Honed control over many years of meditation. Naturally, he’d gotten quite bored of the typical meditations that reapers were always asking of their servants, so when he’d started looking into various ways that he could spice things up, he’d been quite the happy camper for many decades thereafter.