> Perspective: Omniscient — The Decaying Foundation
> Date: 2005 (13 Years Ago)
> Location: Deep Underground — Sub-Level 9 Containment Chamber
Let's rewind the clock to 2005.
Long before the world ever feared the name "the Specter," and long before a lazy guy in Sylvaris started arguing with his own brain over breakfast, there was just Subject 000981.
At the bottom of the Decaying Foundation's deepest bunker stood a giant glass cylinder filled to the top with swirling green liquid.
Floating inside that green tank was a small boy who was barely turning 5 years old.
He had messy black hair, pale skin, and a heavy oxygen mask strapped tightly over his tiny face. His eyes were shut, and dozens of thick black cables were wired straight into his spine, his neck, and his skull—pumping gallons of sedatives into his blood every single minute just to make sure he never woke up.
Around the glass tube, 40 exhausted scientists in white coats were glued to their monitors, watching every single twitch of the boy's brainwaves like their lives depended on it.
Because they did.
At the front console stood Director Vance, rubbing his bloodshot eyes as his chief assistant handed him a thick red folder.
"Director Vance, the Imperial Treasury just questioned our new budget request," the assistant said, his voice shaking slightly as he glanced up at the 5-year-old boy floating in the green liquid.
"They're asking why a single 5-year-old child with 0 mana requires 40 full-time scientists and a military-grade lockdown."
"Tell the Asura Empire to double our funding by tonight, or they won't have an empire left to tax," Vance replied flatly, not taking his eyes off the glass cylinder.
"Call the engineering corps right now. The 58 reinforced custom traps and walls around this bunker aren't enough anymore—I want 112 walls built around this chamber before the end of the month. If Subject 000981 ever reaches full consciousness and decides to walk out of this room, 58 walls won't slow him down for 10 minutes."
"112 walls?!" the assistant gasped. "Sir, he's not even 5 years old! And his body can't even use magic!"
"You're still looking at his body instead of his brain," Vance said coldly, tapping the glowing screen where the boy's neural activity was running at an impossible speed even in his sleep.
"Look at the files. For centuries, the Demons, the Elves, and the Dragons have dominated humanity because they were born with superior bodies and stronger mana. The Asura Empire created this facility because humanity desperately needed a super-weapon to survive... except what we created inside that tank is far too dangerous to ever let out."
The assistant swallowed hard, looking up at the wires in the boy's spine.
"He already finished the entire Level 20 curriculum, didn't he?" the assistant whispered.
"Finished it? He devoured it," Vance said, a chill running through his voice.
"We literally have nothing left to teach him. Every martial art, every magic formula from every race, every military strategy, every branch of chemistry, physics, and biology—he mastered all of it before turning 5. If you gave him a rusty nail and a lab, he could reverse-engineer anti-magic weapons, airborne plagues, and mass-extinction bombs in a matter of hours."
"Then... why can't we use him to protect humanity, Director?" a younger scientist asked from the next desk.
"Because to protect humanity, you need a human heart," Vance said quietly, turning to face the room.
"Every normal living creature is guided by the 7 Deadly Sins—pride, vanity, lust, greed, wrath, envy, or sloth. You can control a proud man by flattering his ego. You can buy a greedy man with gold. You can threaten a fearful man's life. Subject 000981 possesses 0 sins. He has 0 ego, 0 vanity, 0 desires, 0 ethics, and 0 morality."
The entire lab went dead silent except for the bubbling of the green tank.
"Can't we just... teach him, sir?" the younger scientist whispered, clutching his tablet tightly against his lab coat.
"If he has 0 desires, can't we show him love? Can't we raise him with love and kindness so he understands what it feels like to protect a life?"
"You're a brilliant researcher, Dr. Aris, but you understand 0 about human neurology," Vance replied, his tone chillingly flat.
"A 5-year-old brain is biologically incapable of comprehending morality. The neural architecture required to process empathy, remorse, and genuine love does not finish forming until a human reaches full adulthood in their 20s. Right now, his prefrontal cortex operates on 1 thing alone: pure survival."
Vance tapped the glass console with a scarred knuckle.
"If you smile at him and tell him you love him, his brain won't feel love—he will mathematically analyze your pulse, your pupil dilation, and your vocal frequency to deduce what advantage you want from him. No amount of kindness, no amount of affection, and no amount of love can ever heal what this facility carved into his mind."
"You cannot teach a child to protect a life when he has never been allowed to feel that his own life has value."
"To that child in there, 100 million human lives and 100 million demon lives are nothing more than numbers on a chalkboard," Vance continued, his hand tightening on the railing.
"He will never side with humanity out of morals, because he doesn't have a heart to manipulate. The only reason we've survived this long is his carnivorous amnesia—every time his brain resets its memories, we can put him back under and feel safe. And if he ever wakes up with his full consciousness intact? He will remember that his adopted mother, Cartethyia, is dead. Even if we got down on our knees and begged him then, 'too late' is enough for him to end the entire world."
"So what do we do with him, sir?" the assistant asked, wiping cold sweat from his forehead.
"We keep him asleep in that tube for the next 15 to 20 years," Vance ordered grimly.
"We drug him, we rewire his brainwaves millimeter by millimeter, and we artificially force human morality into his mind until we can safely talk to him. Until then, nobody unplugs a single wire from him."
"He truly is... Humanity's Last Answer."
Right at that exact second—thousands of miles away across the sea in the Demon Continent—an 8-year-old human girl with a noose around her neck screamed her dying wish into the sky:
`If anyone up there is hearing me—please, open your eyes!`
BEEP—BEEP—BEEP—BEEP!
Every single monitor in Sub-Level 9 screamed in red alarm at the exact same time.
"Director! His heart rate just spiked from 40 to 190!"
"The sedatives aren't working! His amnesia lock just shattered—his consciousness is fully awake and holding onto its memories!"
Inside the giant glass cylinder, the swirling green liquid suddenly began to boil.
Behind the clear plastic of the oxygen mask, the 5-year-old boy's head tilted up—and his cold, bottomless sapphire-blue eyes snapped wide open.
...Someone is screaming.
Why is it so loud?
"PUMP THE EMERGENCY ANESTHETIC NOW!" Vance roared, lunging for the master switch.
"DO NOT LET HIM—"
BOOOOOOOOOOM!
The glass cylinder—and the entire underground laboratory around it—exploded into a blinding storm of shattered steel and fire.
*
> Perspective:Kaiser (Age 7)
> Date: 2007 (11 Years Ago)
> Location: The Orphanage Courtyard — Beneath the Great Oak Tree
2 years later, I was 7 years old, sitting in the shade under the big oak tree behind the orphanage with a thick leather book open in my lap.
A few feet in front of my boots, a small blue bird fell out of the branches and hit the dirt with a wet thud.
1 of its wings had been torn clean off by a hawk or a hunter's arrow. Bright red blood soaked its feathers as it twitched in the dirt, letting out weak, high-pitched cries of pain.
I closed my book, stood up, and looked down at the bleeding bird without a single expression on my face.
Its left wing is gone, and its ribs are crushed.
Even if someone wasted medicine on it, it will never fly again. Keeping a broken animal alive wastes time and energy, whereas killing it right now is faster and lets its body rot into fertilizer for the tree and the other animals.
0 purpose in keeping it alive.
I raised my right boot over the crying bird's head, ready to stomp it flat and go back to reading my book.
"Nooo! Stop, Kai!"
Before my boot could come down, a tiny girl in a frilly pink dress came sprinting across the grass and threw both of her small hands against my arm, pushing me back with all her might!
It was Elfie—her long pink hair bouncing around her shoulders, her big pink eyes wide as she puffed both of her cheeks out in a giant, adorable pout.
"Don't step on Mr. Birdie, Kai!" Elfie huffed, stomping her little shoe in the grass as she glared up at me with her puffed-out cheeks.
"That's so mean! Look at him, he's crying!"
She immediately dropped to her knees in the dirt—not caring at all that she was getting mud on her pretty pink dress—and gently scooped the bleeding bird into her tiny hands, cradling it against her chest while warm, soft pink healing light glowed from her fingers.
"Come on, Kai, we have to take him to the medical ward inside the orphanage right now so we can bandage his wing!" Elfie said, looking up at me with a bright, innocent smile.
I stared down at her muddy hands, genuinely confused.
"Put it down, Elfie," I said flatly.
"It's weak, and half its wing is torn off. Even if you close the wound, it might never fly right again. There's 0 point in wasting your energy on something that can't survive on its own."
Elfie puffed her cheeks right back out, shaking her head stubbornly.
"It still has a life, Kai!" Elfie argued back cutely, holding the little bird closer.
"Just because somebody is weak or hurt doesn't mean we throw them away! When something is weak and crying in front of us, we have a responsibility to protect it!"
"A hawk did that to it, not us," I replied, tilting my head.
"Logically speaking, it isn't your responsibility."
"Well, I want it to be my responsibility!" Elfie declared, beaming up at me like that settled the whole math equation.
"I want to see Mr. Birdie fly in the sky again! We don't take responsibility because somebody forces us to, Kai—we take responsibility because we want to protect the things we care about!"
She stood up with the bird cradled safely in her left palm and pointed 1 tiny pink finger right at my nose.
"And if you don't help me heal Mr. Birdie right now," Elfie threatened with a serious little pout,
"I'm gonna peck you!"
I blinked once.
"...Peck me how?" I asked.
"You don't have a beak."
Elfie glanced left, glanced right to make sure none of the other kids were watching, and then stood up high on her tiptoes.
Chu.
She pressed her soft little lips right against my left cheek like a bird pecking a seed.
I froze solid, my brain completely stalling for 2 full seconds.
"...What was that?"
Elfie's cheeks turned bright pink, her little pout returning as she went right back up on her tiptoes.
Chu! Chu! Chu!
She pecked my cheek 3 more times in a row—left cheek, right cheek, left cheek—before dropping back down onto her heels with a triumphant grin.
...Why is she pecking my face?
I've read 40,000 books in the Foundation's database, and I still don't understand a single thing this girl does.
"Hehe, there! You got pecked 4 times!" Elfie giggled, reaching out with her free right hand and grabbing my fingers tightly.
"Now you have to come with me to the medical ward, okay, Kai?"
I slowly raised my free hand and touched my cheek where her warm lips had just pressed against my skin.
As she started pulling me across the grass with the little bird in her other hand, I looked at the back of her pink head.
"Elfie," I asked quietly. "Are you mad at me for trying to kill it just now?"
Elfie stopped, turned her head back toward me, and gave me the warmest, brightest smile in the world.
"No, silly! I could never be mad at you, Kai!" Elfie said happily, swinging our joined hands between us.
"I'm your bestie, remember?"
...
Inside my chest, something warm and strange twitched.
I don't care about the bird, and I don't care about the rest of this world.
I just want to cherish that smile on her face—and never let it wither.
For the 1st time since I opened my eyes in that test tube, the corners of my mouth slowly curved upward into a real smile as I let her drag me toward the medical ward.
An hour later, after Elfie finished wrapping the bird's wing and infusing it with her magic by the window, she opened her palms—and the little blue bird actually chirped twice, flapped its healed wings, and flew straight up into the clear blue sky.
"Yay! Look, Kai, look! He's flying!" Elfie cheered, bouncing up and down by the window sill, her pink ribbon fluttering in the breeze.
I didn't even look at the bird flying away.
There was still 0 logical reason to keep a dying bird alive.
I've read 40,000 books in the Foundation's database. I know the exact mathematical equations of gravity, the atomic weight of every element, and the tactical casualty ratios of every major war in human history.
Yet when I look at this girl, all of that data turns completely useless.
Why is she so special to me?
Why does seeing her smile make something tight and aching in my chest loosen up, like I can finally breathe?
Instead of looking at the sky, I just stood there staring straight at Elfie's cute, glowing face—at her bright pink hair catching the afternoon sunlight and her shining pink eyes crinkling with pure joy.
After a few seconds, Elfie noticed I wasn't looking at the window. She turned her head, blinking her big pink eyes at me in surprise before touching both of her soft cheeks with her fingertips.
"Huh? What are you staring at, Kai?" Elfie asked, tilting her head with an adorable, curious blink.
"Do I have dirt on my face from the garden?"
I shook my head slowly, my voice quiet and plain.
"No," I said honestly.
"I just like looking at you."
Elfie's cheeks instantly flushed a lovely, bright strawberry pink. A radiant smile stretched across her lips—brighter than all the sunlight streaming through the glass.
"Really?!" Elfie beamed, stepping right into my space and hugging my arm snugly against her chest.
"Hehe, that makes me super-duper happy that you like looking at me, Kai!"
She let go of my arm, stepped directly in front of me, and looked up into my eyes. Her cheeks were still flushed with heat, her eyelashes fluttering as she leaned in close.
Before I could ask what she was doing, she stood up high on her tiptoes.
Chu.
A soft, warm, sweet peck landed right in the center of my left cheek.
I blinked down at her, raising 2 fingers to touch the warm spot on my skin.
"Elfie," I asked, genuinely trying to understand the logic behind her actions.
"Why do you give me so many pecks?"
Elfie puffed her cheeks out into a tiny, flustered pout, her pink eyes sparkling as she swayed on her heels.
"Because I like it!" Elfie declared with absolute confidence, crossing her arms proudly.
"Pecks mean you're the most special person in the whole universe to me! Besties get pecks so they always know they're loved!"
I looked at her proud little stance, considering her words carefully.
"What if I peck you?" I asked calmly.
Elfie froze.
Her eyes went completely round like 2 pink dinner plates, and in less than 1 second, a furious, burning crimson blush exploded from her collarbone all the way to the tips of her ears!
"H-H-HUH?!" Elfie squeaked, her voice cracking into a high-pitched, panicked squeal as her hands flew up to cup her own burning cheeks.
"P-P-Peck me?! Y-You wanna peck me, Kai?!"
"I was just asking," I replied, tilting my head.
"Y-Y-You can't just ask that with a straight face!!" Elfie stammered, flailing her little hands around in total chaos, stumbling backward half a step like her brain had just suffered a catastrophic system reboot.
"I-I mean—w-wait, where would you peck me?! On the cheek?! O-Or—or somewhere else?! W-Wahhh, my heart is beating so fast it feels like it's gonna burst right out of my ribs!! You're so unfair, Kai!! You're supposed to be the quiet 1, not the 1 making my face all mushy washy!!"
She buried her bright red face right into the crook of my elbow, groaning in pure embarrassment while her small hands gripped the fabric of my sleeve like a lifeline.
Looking down at the messy puff of pink hair hiding against my arm, a quiet, gentle sensation washed over my chest.
As the years passed by her side, I couldn't help feeling like something deep inside me had permanently changed.
Why did I like looking at her so much back then?Why was she the only thing in this whole world that felt real to me?
It took me a whole war—and a broken heart—to finally figure out the answer.
*
> Perspective: Demon Lord Malphas (Memory of the 2013 War)
> Date: February 6, 2018 (Recalling the Final Battle of 2013)
> Location: The Obsidian Throne of Pandemonium → The Burning Border of Asura
Sitting alone atop the Obsidian Throne while the empty amphitheater echoed with his children's cheers for war, Demon Lord Malphas slowly closed his glowing red eyes.
His mind drifted back 5 years—to the final, apocalyptic day on the burning border between the Demon Continent and the Asura Empire.
Back then, the sky wasn't blue.
Raging walls of black and crimson fire towered 1,000 feet into the air, and as far as the eye could see, mountains of corpses from every race—Demons, Humans, Elves, Beastkin, and Dragons—choked the scorched earth in rivers of boiling blood.
Malphas stood at the center of that burning hell in his jagged, midnight-black sovereign war-armor, his chest heaving as blood dripped from his cracked horns.
`[H.A.D.E.S. ROOT SYSTEM — ANALYSIS: THE SPECTER'S VITAL SIGNS ARE AT 1.4%. ORGAN FAILURE COMPLETE. HE IS NEARING DEATH... YET HE STILL STANDS.]`
20 feet in front of Malphas stood the Specter.
Or what was left of him.
His black coat was burned to rags, and the white porcelain mask on his face was shattered cleanly in half—exposing the lower left side of a young man's face where his jaw was split open and his broken teeth dripped dark blood.
His entire left arm had been ripped and cut clean off at the elbow, the stump cauterized by black fire. His left shoulder was visibly broken and dislocated, hanging limp, and a massive chunk of the left side of his stomach had been torn open so badly that blood poured down his boots with every breath he took.
Even on his remaining right hand, his pinky and ring finger were completely missing—yet his 3 remaining bloody fingers were still clamped like iron around the hilt of a broken sword wrapped in snapped black chains, using the broken blade as a cane just to stay upright on his feet.
Malphas walked slowly through the fire toward the dying human.
The Demon Lord knew he had won the duel—1 more strike and the human's heart would stop forever. Yet as Malphas looked at the mangled corpse refusing to fall in front of him, a chill deeper than death crept down the Demon Lord's spine.
"Why?" Malphas's voice rumbled over the roar of the flames.
The Specter didn't fall. He just breathed raggedly through his shattered jaw.
"You have 0 magic in your body, human," Malphas said, staring into the single exposed sapphire-blue eye behind the broken mask.
"Your left arm is gone. Your stomach is torn open. Your organs are ash, and you are literally dying on your feet with every breath you take. Yet even now, on your final breath, you still stand in my path defending Asura."
"Tell me, Specter... what on earth is driving a mortal like you to go this far?!"
For a second, only the crackle of the fire answered.
Then, through his broken jaw and bloody teeth, the Specter let out a low, raspy, broken laugh.
"Haha... h-hahaha..."
Kaiser coughed up a mouthful of dark blood onto the ash, yet behind the shattered half of his mask, his split lips slowly curved upward into a quiet, genuine smile.
"I... I wanted to know the answer to that question too... ever since I was a kid," Kaiser rasped, his voice barely a whisper as his 3 bloody fingers tightened on the broken sword.
"Now... I finally know. It's not for Asura... and it's not for the world. It's all worth it... just to see her safe, protected, and happy."
Malphas froze in his tracks.
Because right before the Demon Lord's eyes, from the corner of the Specter's piercing sapphire-blue eye, tears of pure crimson blood spilled over his lashes and rolled down his scarred cheek—his body pushed so far beyond the limits of mortal agony that even his tear ducts were bleeding, yet his smile never wavered once.
"As long as Elfie is happy... even if it's from far away where she never sees me again..." Kaiser whispered, a tear of blood dripping off his chin as he looked past Malphas toward the distant sky.
"That makes me happy... As long as her smile is protected... I'll die standing right here as many times as it takes."
`[H.A.D.E.S. ROOT SYSTEM — BRAINWAVE SCAN COMPLETE: 0 FEAR DETECTED. SUBJECT HAS FULLY ACCEPTED HIS OWN DEATH. HIS SOLE CONDITION FOR DYING IS THAT HIS DEATH BRINGS PEACE TO PROTECT A SINGLE INDIVIDUAL.]`
Staring at the 1-armed, half-masked human crying tears of blood while smiling for a girl miles away, Demon Lord Malphas felt his breath catch in his throat as his red eyes widened in stunned silence.
In 7,000 years of war, conquest, and slaughter, the Sovereign of Pandemonium had never seen a creature like this.
"So that is it..." Malphas whispered into the burning wind, lowering his hand in quiet, haunting awe.
"That is why you are the peak of humanity."
*
> Perspective: Kaiser Everhart
> Date: February 6, 2018 — 10:15 AM
> Location: Sylvaris — The Central Fountain Plaza
...Huh.
I blinked twice in the warm morning sunlight, sitting on the stone edge of the central fountain in Sylvaris with a small paper bag of fresh red cherries in my lap.
Why was I spacing out like that in the middle of the street?
I rolled 1 sweet red cherry between my thumb and index finger, popped it into my mouth, and chewed with a quiet shrug.
Must still be sleepy from this morning.
"Papa! Papa, stop daydreaming!"
A tiny hand tugged hard on the sleeve of my coat.
I looked down to see little Lily—the cute demon girl I adopted—beaming up at me in her clean new dress, while right beside her stood Amy and Bibi, the 2 other little troublemakers from our house, holding hands and bouncing on their heels.
"Come on, Papa!" Lily cheered, tugging my arm with both hands.
"You promised us 2 days ago! Today is the day we go find us a Mommy!"
I nearly choked on my cherry pit, coughing into my fist before looking down at the 3 little girls staring up at me with sparkling eyes.
"Wait, Lily, you're still on that 'finding a Mommy' mission?!" I laughed, shaking my head.
"Can't we just go buy ice cream like normal people?"
"Nooo! You promised 2 days ago, Papa! No take-backs!" Lily pouted, puffing her cheeks out.
"Alright, alright, a promise is a promise," I chuckled, reaching down to give Lily a gentle pat on the top of her head.
"Let's go find you girls a Mommy, then."
Lily's cheeks flushed bright pink with happiness as she giggled and hugged my hand tightly.
"Yay! Okay, Papa, Amy and I will scout the right side of the plaza!" Bibi announced like a tiny general, grabbing Amy's hand and pointing down the east street.
"We'll go this way toward the right and look for the prettiest candidate!"
"Alright, good luck, scouts," I grinned, giving Amy and Bibi a thumbs-up.
"Don't go past the bakery on the corner."
"Papa, come on, this way!" Lily said happily, holding onto my hand and pulling me toward the left path past the sparkling water of the fountain.
As Lily's tiny hand tugged me along the cobblestone street while she hummed a little song under her breath, I tilted my head back and looked up at the clear, bright blue sky above Sylvaris.
A warm, gentle breeze brushed past my cheek, and a quiet smile settled on my lips.
Somehow... I have a feeling today is going to be a really wonderful day.