Leo might have never thought about who the ancestors of nobles were, but Michael had thought about this a long time ago.
He liked to think. Plus, he was lying around at home with free time reading all sorts of things, including a bit of history. Thinking a bit and he’d get the answer.
"Hmph, are you trying to say their ancestors were commoners? No way. How could nobles be commoners?"
His words clearly showed disbelief, but deep in Leo’s eyes there was a bit of hesitation. Yet he remained stubborn like that because there was no ’proof.’ To him, nobles were a bunch that came from ’nowhere’ to oppress commoners.
Michael naturally saw that and curled his lips into a satisfied smile. Now was the time for him to use his silver tongue to shatter Leo’s extreme thoughts.
"Hmph, you talk as if nobles fell from the sky or sprouted from the ground. I know your life has been through a lot. You must know that noble children are born no different from commoners.
Aside from having better living conditions, don’t they also grow up slowly? It’s not like a noble’s kid is born today and becomes an adult tomorrow."
Of course he had an agenda, so he couldn’t just directly say the conclusion. Michael understood clearly that the effect of an answer coming from him versus coming from Leo himself was very different.
If he could get Leo to admit that nobles weren’t much different from commoners, then he could make the crack in his thinking widen considerably.
Leo was extremely quiet right now, not even breathing heavily. Beneath that calm exterior, countless thoughts were like storms sweeping through his mind.
Ever since he could remember, he had seen nobles standing high above, always oppressing everyone. That thought was deeply embedded in his mind, making him believe nobles were a completely different existence.
The nobles who voluntarily joined the rebel army, in Leo’s eyes, were like those unlucky commoners who happened to be born as nobles.
From his thoughts to his actions, he was too extreme, too rigid. Maybe that’s why his superiors only assigned him combat duties and not management tasks.
If someone like Leo was put in charge, then forget about nobles. Even if a commoner acted like a noble, he’d kill them all. In his eyes, nobles weren’t just recognizable by appearance, they could also be identified by behavior.
Commoners with ’bad’ behavior were, in his eyes, ’evil’ nobles disguised as commoners. He didn’t care what the truth was because he trusted his eyes. If he saw it, he’d kill without mercy.
But he had also encountered countless nobles and had wiped out countless families. This period was long enough for him to admit that nobles weren’t invincible entities either.
Faced with greater power, they became as fragile as commoners... No, dealing with them was always harder than killing those ’fallen’ commoners.
He also knew what nobles usually did. The vast majority didn’t spend their days indulging and oppressing commoners, they studied. Young nobles kept studying, studying, and studying. They learned many things, and it wasn’t easy at all because Leo, during his work, had also been taught a bit.
"Nobles... you’re right, they’re not that different from ordinary people. They weren’t born knowing everything. They weren’t born incredibly strong either. I know they tried really hard..."
Each word was spoken by Leo with difficulty. Knowing it was one thing, but admitting the truth right now was somehow this hard.
The smile on Michael’s face was clear. He felt like his words were having some effect. But then the next sentence caught him off guard.
"But what does that have to do with their ancestors being commoners?"
At this point, Leo yelled louder instead of speaking softly and calmly. He felt there was nothing wrong with this because he had never heard of any noble whose ancestors were peasants.
???
What was this supposed to mean? Everything Michael had said earlier—did he not understand any of it? How could he be so confident talking about this stuff?
Michael felt this was the first time he was about to lose his mind from trying to explain a problem he himself didn’t fully understand to a stubborn idiot who understood even less than him.
"Don’t you f*cking know the theory of evolution? Where do you think humans came from? Why do you think the history you know is only a few thousand years?"
He fired off a series of questions that left Leo dumbfounded with confusion. He understood the individual words, but put together into those questions, they were extremely bizarre. He had lived over forty years and had never heard anyone ask these things.
"What the hell is the theory of evolution? Haven’t humans always just lived there? And why is history only a few thousand years? Obviously because that’s when people figured out how to record it."
Leo was just saying what came to mind. He himself didn’t know if it was right or wrong anymore. Especially the first question, he had no clue what the hell it meant.
Michael heard Leo’s counter-questions and was also stunned. He forgot that the two of them came from two different worlds, so the knowledge they had learned was probably not the same.
"The theory of evolution is what explains the origin of humanity. In the beginning, super tiny organisms that you can’t see with the naked eye appeared in the world. Over millions of years, those organisms reproduced and changed a tiny bit with each generation.
The ones that adapted well survived and reproduced more. From simple organisms, over many years they evolved into animals. Then over many more years, they evolved into monkey-like creatures. Many years after that, they evolved into humans."
The more Leo listened, the more baffled his face became. Not only was it hard to understand, he also felt an overwhelming urge to punch Michael.
This was the first time he had ever seen someone insult him by making up a theory like this. Was this calling him a monkey? Calling him an animal? And those super tiny organisms were definitely some kind of despicable, even lower thing.