CH. 0

For as long as he could remember, there was always bright lights coming from those windows. Sometimes, some pleasant smell of good cooking escapes and he wanders off following that scent.

In a large city, the towering buildings were always oppressive. The people in them too were no different. Inside those houses and buildings, were families that always smile and spent happy times together.

For as long as he could remember, the stench of the sewers running under a bridge was home. The squeaking mice were his pets and the smelly garbage was his bed.

In a sense, he would have lived far more better if he had a family.

The dark unwashed, ruffled black colored hair and his sunken black colored eyes looked more dreary than the cemetery on the other side of the city. His thin arms could carry sacks of garbage of other people and his scrawny little body was always covered in dirt rags.

There was no saving him from this life. After all, he was left on a pile of garbage when he was born. He was only taken care off by the dogs that passed by. For a while, he thought of them as family...

But the looks of those people's eyes were horrible. They were condemning and harsh. It was like he was just a dirty little sewer rat that crawled out in the streets.

Then came one day, he strawled upon a place where kids gathers and watch grown ups draw something on a board.

At first, he was curious. There were children there after all. But as he continued to come back again and again, he grew to realized, he was learning.

Slowly, he became able to read and write. Then with words, he was now able to speak. 

Without anyone seeing him or anyone noticing nor even paying attention to him, he would quietly watch the teacher on the other side of that window.

However, such luxury didn't last long. The children slowly dwindled in numbers until the class became empty. Snow was slowly falling from the grey sky and the chilly breeze was making his scrawny body shiver.

He didn't realized, winter has come..

It was the most dreadful time for a sewer rat like him. He had no close to keep him warm nor warm food to fill his belly.

Like that, he returned to the place he called home and made use of the things he learned in that place. With dried wood and leaves he collected, he started a fire. With the food he took from those garbage bins, he warmed his meager meal.

As for his clothes, there some clothing he on someone else's clotheslines. They were enough for him.

Then when spring comes, he would return to that place to see if the children returned. It was sad but, they didn't come back at all.

As he grew up, he began stealing food from food stalls and bakeries. Although he would return with some payment after he collects money fallen from the sewers, sometimes he would get chased of instead.

He was 8 years old when he thought of a name for himself Vain. Like the inevitability of his life, he called himself Vain.

Vain was still scrawny but perhaps thanks to the amount of garbage he has eaten, he was already immune to sickness.

So when he wanders around the city some more, he found himself in place were large men in suit of arms swinging sticks. Some were rough looking and some looked decent. Some were faces he recognized that would sometimes come to the slums and kidnap young girls.

Vain didn't have the guts to come near them so he merely watched them from afar. He would mimic their swings and sometimes their exercise. It went for a long time then he left the place and came back to his little home. The place under a bridge where small cottage of piled up would and dirty clothing, was his home.

Two years after, a book came into his hands. Because he was fond of reading himself, he took it with him and read it until he knows it like the back of his hands.

It was a story book about a Knight that fought for his king but was sentenced to death upon his defeat from an enemy. It was a sad story but Vain easily got over it. His words that stumbled when he spoke before straightened up and he was now capable of making conversations.

The city he grew up in, it was ever changing. People come and go and some never comes back. Others die and others were born. The city he knew was the city named Eris. 

Eris was a city that laid between two perilous mountains. It homed many people and many things. The large magic armors that paraded the streets as well as the mages that showed off their magic. All of them lived in this city.....

As for Vain, he could only watch then in a place where no one sees.

Then when he was 12, an event came in the city. It was a small group of people recruiting kids to join their military. They hosted a small tournament for warriors and a magic aptitude testing for mages.

Vain entered there for the sake of improving his lifestyle. If he would get accepted, he would be able to eat better food and wear better clothes.

That's why, when he finally came into that place to see if he was qualified, he came to learn of his aptitude.

Out of all the participants, his aptitude for White magic and Black magic was high. His magic power was so-so but he was very qualified.

Like that, he was recruited.

But such thing didn't last. After changing cities, where he found himself wasn't heaven, but hell. It was battlefield of people with collars getting whipped and kids getting kicked around.

However, the hellish place of all was the place he was taken. Because he had magic power, he was used as a human battery. He and other poor saps were chained and had their magic power sucked away into a magic core that powers a magic armor.

Vain cursed his luck. Because he was born garbage, he was treated like one. Because he had something that could be taken, it was stolen.

Because he was weak, he was eaten.

Then came four years after, he had escaped from that horrible facility. Knights raided the place killed everyone of the workers there. 

But when the they were getting gathered up, Vain didn't stay there. He took a sword from some fallen knight and ran away. He didn't want to be tricked again so he ran.He ran as fast as he could until he finally came to realize where he was......

That night, the egde of the place where he thought was large, was unbelievably small. For underneath that edge was a vast ocean and other floating islands hovering around. Large ships in the skies fly across the moonlit sky and like the pleasant waves below, the clouds underneath those ships dispersed into bits.....

———

Inside a lively tavern, people who drank merrily gathered. Some came after their work and some merely wanted to drink.

"It looks like the another abyss gate opened. They said that place where the gate opened was sunk by monsters"

"Heh, that's unfortunate. Even though the Kingdom promised to close the first one that appeared 300 years ago, they failed to stop another one from happening again"

Two men were gossiping about an event that caused havoc in some part of the world. The one who talked first, drank down the bitter beer in his mug in one gulp. He then burped and sighed deeply because of the sad news.

"Haaaaah.....It would have been unavoidable if they did it right this time. It's because of those stupid poser nobles that the abyss gate hasn't closed yet.If it weren't for their 'I'm a noble so lick my shoe!!' shit, we would have been monsterless by now"

"Although I agree with what you say, it's best to keep those words to yourself. Who knows what might happen if there's a knight around"

"Peh! Let them come then!" The man spat as his emotions were riled up by the alcohol....

"If they were Knights, they should at least do their job right?"

"Yeah, you're right..... Because of what's happening right now, there are flock of monsters appearing in various islands. It seems like there's some that snuck in. I've heard that a neighboring island was attacked recently"

The friend of the grumbling man sighed as he apologize to the other customers for the. ruckus. The waitresses looked worried but it seems that they didn't thought too much of the two and just continued their work.

"It's probably a bonanza there for mercenaries huh?"

"Yeah, there's this guy though. Rumor has it, he steals weapons and armies from dead mercenaries, leaving only their clothes"

"What's with that, that guy got no respect for the dead"

The two got their mugs and drank a handful of beer before resuming their talk.

"Yeah. I've heard he was just a young man though. But some says he got guts to even face bigger games like flying behemoths"

"Oi.... those things can wreck cities right? Are you sure that guy is sane?"

The grumbling man laughs as though he heard a funny joke. But his friends shakes his head and sounded more serious as he continued.

"There were witnesses that he can even take down Wyverns and a whole flock too"

"That's just bullshit! There's no way a guy like that exist! Either that guy is superhuman or just plain demon"

The grumbling man dismissed the story as a fairytale. If such person of great strength exist, then he'd be a hero now. He would be on an airship, riding a magic armor and was headed to the Abyss Gate just to close it.

However, such person doesn't exist.

"Well in any case, that's what I've heard"

"Hmph, let's just drink. Those stories are probably just made up"

"Yeah you're right...."

The resumed their merry drink after their talk. After ordering some new bottles of beer and appetizers, they failed go notice a young man walking right behind them then left the tavern....