1 Chapter - 0 - The <Erased> Past

{July 14th 2166,

Dear Diary,

It's me again, Jordan. The traitor Jordan.

I'm pretty sure you are already sick and tired of me calling myself that whenever I'm writing on you but... hey, there's a huge chance that this may be my last time talking to you, be understanding, will ya?

Hmmm... who would've thought writing would be this hard? I guess I had it easy since I always wrote about how my day went and stuff... well then, shall we start from that day? The day of the [7th Revolt Of The Proletariats].

For the past century, with the achievements and discoveries regarding new planets, human greed knew of no end. At first, the scientists were able to keep the upper-class people in check. However, it didn't take that long for all those efforts to be blown away because of a single person!

Chao Jing.

It was the name of the scientist who was actually born as a commoner in the northern slums of Lestra Empire's capital.

For those who drank the poison of oblivion, the Empire was a luxurious place where no other could even think about competing with! With its ore resources and virgin soil, the Lestra Empire was definitely one of the leading powerhouses in the continent. Adding to that, not only the technology used in the Empire was levels above what normal people could even dream of, it was the birthplace of many well-known figures of that time. Naturally, it was a place where everybody wanted to visit at least once! Unfortunately, as much as it was covetable, it was a complete hell for those at the rock-bottom.

While trying to make a living through all the heavy labour, heavy taxes and unfair treatment they received, the poor were kicked out of their own houses and their land, leaving them on a barren land that even the animals stayed away from. When they tried to retaliate to the absurd situation, all they received was looks of contempt and an even more unbelievable statement.

--{*]--

" Thanks to his highness, the crown prince's contribution in the last war and honorable achievement of saving the fourth princess of the Pallas Kingdom, the discussion of engagement is taking place between both countries right now."

Looking around to check if his words were understood, all the man could see was looks of confusion and disdain. Shaking his head in annoyance, he continued.

"Ha... here, let me explain it to you idiotic folks. The Pallas Kingdom is the only kingdom whose advancement in alchemy has already passed the level of an Empire. Considering that our Empire is quite lacking in the alchemy department, if the Lestra Empire were to have a political connection with the Pallas Kingdom, not only will that cause the Lestra Empire to have an even higher standing in the next <Round Table> between other Empires, it will also help his highness to solidify his position as the crown. So, do you guys understand it now?"

"B-But... wh-what does that have to do with o-our houses?"

The Capital Guard, the one who has been talking till now, turned his head to the source of the voice.

It was a skinny young man with dirty blond hair. His whole body was covered in bruises and dirt while his skin was dehydrated, making him look like a beggar of some sort.

Looking at the guy, the Capital Guard couldn't help but knit his brows. He waved the whip in his hand almost simultaneously.

"Arrghh....!!"

" I don't remember allowing you to talk. I was only explaining the situation you guys were in out of the kindness of my heart but I guess even that much is enough to make you guys forget your places, huh?"

The already skinny man was whipped until one could see his bones between his ripped flesh. The people around couldn't help but shudder at the bloody sight. Unconsciously, they took few steps back.

The guard, who finally stopped whipping the semi-conscious man covered in blood, threw the whip to the side and fixed his clothes.

Even though he threw away the only weapon he had with him, nobody in the crowd dared to confront him. Not because of the other guards behind him but rather because the shock from what they have seen had yet to subside.

Satisfied with his looks, the guard made a hand signal for other guards to come near. The other guards understood his intention without a need to talk. It was a signal to get rid of the young man.

One of the men took the initiative and lifted the drooping body and placed it on his shoulders like a potato sack, only to throw it to a corner a few buildings away.

"-Ahem! Anyways, as I was saying... ah, yes!"

The Capital Guard turned his face to the people who surrounded him again. Just like the young man from before, all of their bodies looked dehydrated and ragged with their clothes being ripped from here and there.

"The Crown Prince ordered us to make sure that the capital was in its best condition to receive its new empress which means-"

The Capital Guard pointed his index finger to the devastated land behind the people and smirked.

"-trash should also be gotten rid of, no? But don't you guys worry, our Crown Prince is quite the benevolent one so he gave you guys this land in exchange of your old houses."

The second the man finished speaking, sounds of gritting teeth and faces full of anger and could be seen everywhere. Unlike them, the guards were quite calm.

"If I didn't know any better I would have thought you guys were trying to rebel y'know..."

Even though the guard had said it in a playful tone, the place turned silent in an instant as if someone pressed on the mute button. Just hearing the word 'rebel' scared the people out of their wits.

[Revolts Of The Proletariat]

It was a name given to the biggest 6 rebellions that took place in the last century. Even though the lower class was close to winning on each of them, they were still considered as failures.

In the first 4 of the 6, the upper-class lost their patience and ordered a joint slaughter on the leading figures of the rebellion. Of course, people weren't dumb enough to try the same thing for four times so they have changed their methods each time. Regardless, the result was the same.

The 5th attempt that followed right after failed because of the shortage of supplies. The upper-class cut all the ways for the lower-class to secure some water and food, much less weapons and armors. In such a desperate situation, it turned out just as upper-class men planned other than one single fact. Unlike what they thought, the reason why the poor choose to bend their backs wasn't for their own survival. Rather than themselves, they were more scared of their loved ones dying than anything which resulted in them giving up on their own pride.

Even though they were ridiculed for it, standing up against such scary war weapons of the time was by no means something to be taken lightly.

And the last attempt's reason of failure was internal conflicts.

Learning a lesson from their old mistakes, the proletariats tried their utmost to win. They have even succeeded in stealing some of the war weapons from the military but unfortunately, when they thought that victory was finally within their reach, the people who they thought were on their side betrayed them at the last second. In the end, more than %60 of them were killed while the rest were turned in and used as slaves.

Recalling the faces of their loved ones who died right in front of them, some of the people lost their strength and fell. By the time the crowd regained their senses, the guards were long since gone, leaving the young man with dirty blond hair from before alone in the corner, crawling and groaning on the floor not so far away from them.

Without wasting any time, some of the women started to heal the guy while the men explored their 'new home' which was no different than an abandoned ruin.

"Cou-Cough..!"

The young man regained his consciousness and started to drink the water a girl handed to him like crazy. His eyes quickly scanning the people around him until they rested on a single place. The man's shaky eyes calmed down and he let out a sigh of relief.

"Little Chao."

As if waiting for the call, a small head appeared next to the girl who brought him the water. Just like the man, the kid also had dirty brown hair and black eyes.

Instead of getting close to him, the kid looked at the man from afar with shaky eyes.

The man couldn't help but chuckle at the sight. His carefree behaviour calmed the child as he ran to the man's arms.

"Father!"

Hugging the warm body tightly in his embrace, the man rested his head on the kid's shoulders.

"Chao... father has to rest for a bit now, okay?"

"Uhm!"

"...Be a good boy till I wake up, alright?"

"Uhm!"

Nodding his head vigorously at the man's words while trying his best to keep his tears in, the boy heard a coughing voice from his side. He tried to turn his head but was stopped by his father.

"Now, now... father has to borrow your shoulder for a bit..."

Even without turning his head, the kid could feel a sticky substance on his back but listening to his fathers words, he decided to not mind it. A second later, he could feel the body that was leaning on him getting heavier and colder as a thick, metallic scent hovered in the air.

"..Father?"

Unfortunately, there was no one to answer him from then on.

--{*}--

It may have been one of those daily occurrences for some, however, for the little kid, losing his only family member so simply like that came as a great shock. Unfortunately, the world didn't wait for him to digest his father's death. With no place to go, no one to depend on and no nutriment, his struggle for survival began.

He watched many people lose their lives in an even more absurd situations on daily.

If they were lacking even the smallest penny from their weekly taxes, they were taken by the guards only to be used as training dummies for the newbie guards for them to familiarize themselves with death.

If their bodies could no longer hold on, they were used as feed supplement for the animals they tamed to dine on.

If they were to get on a Capital Guard's bad side just for looking at them, they would be tortured for the guard to vent his/her frustration on.

...

It was really the worst, if I were to say.

Well then, you must have been confused. For why shall a kid from lower-class do something that would work against his favour?

To explain it shortly, he fell into a trap made by the upper-class.

When he was 22, Chao Jing was already someone one could describe as nothing short of a genius. By then, Pallas Kingdom's fourth princess, Amelia has became the 11th Empress of the Lestra Empire which resulted in Empire's alchemy standard shooting up by a bunch. Taking advantage of the situation, Chao Jing moved to the capital with his superior intellect, becoming a decent scientist. In his mid-twenties, he opened up a lab on his own name.

But the problem was that he was simply too young. So, he was bound to receive attention from people with or without him knowing about it. While he was completely engrossed in his research, people have already began scheming.

As luck would have it, just as he was near completion, his research was copied and changed slightly without him being aware of it. What came after that was a tragic end for Chao Jing and his employees. An explosion that was more than enough to destroy a few buildings nearby took place. Nearly destroying a quarter of the capital in a single night.

Upper-class people covered the accident by putting the blame on Chao Jing saying that his greed for knowledge got the best of him and they used his research to improve their men's faster in the shadows. They were already fallen victims for their greed.

Of course, as most of the people from slums knew Chao Jing since his childhood, they didn't believe such nonsense. Even after moving to the capital, Chao Jing never forgot about the people who supported him since his childhood and tried his best to help them by sending them food, clothes and clean water. How could they even think about believing those rumours?

Welp...

It has been 11 years since the 7th Revolt that was ignited by Chao Jing. With his death, people couldn't afford to hide and bow their heads anymore and took the initiative, even though it was another failure. Now, the 8th Revolt is about to take place.

People are dying.

Our food and water resources are not enough.

We are running out of other supplies too.

We have reached our limit.

That's why, we'll-

Ah, wait. Someone is calling me.

It seems like the time has arrived. Welp, just hope that this isn't my last time writing, all right? Otherwise you might get lonely out here, y'know...

Well... would you? No offense but you're an inanimate object...

...That was weird, I know. Anyways...

Even if we won't be able to win by the end and I'll be long dead, I don't think it would be too bad. Who knows, maybe I'll see my wife and my daughter's faces again. Their faces that I haven't been able to see for the last 13 years since the explosion.

Hmmm... I guess that's pretty much it, huh?

I don't really wish for anything else and things such as guilt and all...

...it's too late for things such as them, no?

-But I do have one regret.

A single regret for who I once was.

--I'll do my best to write again after our victory.

Former Capital Guard, Jordan Tuffin]

/------/

The man took his glasses off and wiped his wet eyes with a tender movement. He found an old, tattered book while exploring an ancient ruins they stumbled upon by luck.

The man threw his handkerchief that he just used to wipe his face away. From what he read, the place where he was standing right now was the barracks used by the rebels in the past.

Holding the book tightly, he started to walk in the direction the sun was setting. By the time the man reached his destination, the sun has long since set and the stars were lightening up the dark night with bright silver. In front of the man was a crater at the size of a city. What made the sight more horrific was the fact that there wasn't even a single speck of any colour other than the tones of gray. With the black sky that covered it like a blanket, it really looked like a photo from 1930s, when the cameras didn't have any colour due to its cost.

Looking at what remained from the crater and connecting the pieces from what he has just read with his prior knowledge about the incident, it didn't take the man long to understand what happened here.

"The life before the cataclysm... looking at it like this, I don't know if I should blame the gods or not."

For as far as the humankind remember, they were living in this world which was also the home of many other races. But after some in-depth researches, fortuitous discoveries and archeological evidences, they have became aware of something being wrong or to be more precise, something being different than what they initially thought. Not only did the zooarchaeologists discover that the animals' bone structure changed over time, paleontologists discovered that most of the fossils belonging to other races were a lot younger than those belonging to humans and animals.

Due to that, humans came up with a lot hypotheses such as other races invading their planet for its resources, a mutation induced by radiation during an epidemic, their ancestors experimenting on animals and more...

Unfortunately, all of their questions were left unanswered but if there was one thing to say for sure, because of the rumours, they all felt restless. Just hearing about the people they have lived together for years turning out to be a monster that can dine on themselves scared most out of their wits.

With the situation being as it is, other races also felt the unrest that was spreading upon the mankind, they were also intelligent beings after all.

No, it would be more accurate to say that they were intelligent beings rivaling humans with some of them even close to being omniscient compared to humans.

Thinking so, the man unconsciously tightened his grip on the tattered book. Suddenly, he heard a noise coming from his back but didn't even bother to look at the being that approached him.

"My lord."

When the man stole a glance at the soldier that was kneeling on the ground, the soldier took it as a sign to go on and opened his mouth again with slight tension.

"The Council expressed their willingness to cooperate with Your Grace with the condition of Your Grace attending the next meeting."

"And when is that next meeting?"

"..."

Seeing that the soldier found it hard to meet his eyes when he turned his way, he gestured him to answer.

"I'm listening."

"...I-It's two days later, Your Grace."

The man, Marquis Courtner, couldn't help but shake his head in a disapproving way.

"Since they are rushing this much, I'm guessing they have sent an [Artificial Portal]?"

"Yes, Your Grace."

The soldier quickly took a box out of his delivery bag and handed it to his lord without any delay. The Marquis, couldn't help but laugh after checking its contents.

"Are you sure they have sent it to the right person?"

Catching the sarcastic tone of his lord, the soldier couldn't help but gulp nervously.

'I'm sure they have sent an [Artificial Portal] but d-did they perhaps send a low-ranked one..? No way... That would be a slap on the face to Marquis. I don't think they will risk it after inviting him to the Council so many times...'

Thinking so, the soldier looked at the box nervously.

"Is something wrong with the portal, Your Grace?"

Without answering him, The Marquis raised the orb in his hand so the soldier would see it clearly. The orb had a foggy orange colour in it.

"U-uhm..."

Looking at the orb, the soldier didn't know what to say for a second.

As an item created by the mixture of technology and items found in <Dungeons>, the [Artificial Portal] was the item high-ranking people used for transportation nowadays. Of course, that didn't mean all the orbs were the same, based on the colour it had, [Artificial Portal]s had five grades.

[+] Yellow

[+] Green

[+] Orange

[+] Coral

[+] Wine Red

As the colour got darker, the effect area of the orb changed accordingly. Also, more transparent the colour was, the less execution time it had.

The one in Marquis Courtner's hand had a faint orange on it, signifying that it was a one time use item. But the problem was, how was he going to return from a place that he didn't even know where it was if he used his only chance to go there? Not only did the Council change their meeting places every time, they always made sure it was hidden from public eye.

Marquis Courtner sighed ruefully.

"So they are trying to pull a carrot and stick approach, huh? Well, I guess I'll have to listen to them as long as they give me the barrier needed to protect my people from future <Monster Waves>."

The soldier could clearly see that, even though his mouth said so, The Marquis' face was contorted with unwillingness. Looking at him like that, the soldier couldn't help but take a step back. Luckily, his lord has already lost interest in the topic and turned his head back to the crater.

"Make the necessary preparations."

"Yes, my lord!"

The soldier bowed his head respectfully and left to inform others about the situation. The Marquis, being left alone, gave a one last glance to the diary in his hands before throwing it away and burning it.

The light coming from the fire illuminated the dark surroundings.

"[Revolts Of The Proletariat]..."

Unlike the annoyed tone he used against the soldier few seconds ago, a gloomy voice continued as his eyes got darker. He looked at the crater for a few more seconds before turning away and heading to the direction the soldier went to.

"Don't worry. I'll remember your deaths. You guys should rest well now."

As his figure disappeared in the dark, suddenly, strong winds swirled and the earth around the fire shook for a second before the fire extinguished, leaving behind a pile of ashes. Surprisingly, the ashes started to take shape of an book with the colour of the sun. As if burning from its heat, the grass surrounding the book turned into a black smoke.

After a few more minutes of ashes swirling around what looked like a book, the ashes disintegrated into thin air when a book without a title fell to the ground. Instead of its prior colour that reminded someone of the sun from a bit ago, the book was covered in dark pale green which looked like it was moving around the book like a poisonous snake.

/-----/

<[In A Place Where Time Can't Reach]>

"Pf-Puhaha!! What a joke, really!"

Even though the person was laughing, his voice resounded in the area like a thunderous roar. Looking at the person, one could see that he looked like a viking with his gigantic and well-developed body covered in battle scars.

Even though there were countless 'beings' sitting around the circular table, he stood out quite a lot thanks to his long red hair that came down to his knees like a lava flow.

"It seems like the time for us to intervene has arrived already, don't you guys agree?"

This time, it was a seductive, honey-like voice belonging to a woman with snow-white skin with short azure hair and big caramel-coloured eyes.

With her statement, the eerily quite hall turned noisy in a second. In that mess, an ordinary old man who didn't chime in with the room full of weird-looking people at all, let out a fake cough to gather everyone's attention on him and he was successful as everybody turned to him instantaneously.

"Then what about a show of hands? I doubt anyone would disagree if we decide it by the majority. We can just choose between the two choices and act accordingly."

Seeing that there wasn't any voice of objection to his words, the old man smiled gently and continued.

"As you all know, we have already interfered with this planet once before as their ruling god, <God Of Creation>, has fallen asleep a long time ago. We have promised him that we'll keep on stabilizing this one planet until he wakes up but that doesn't mean we have to needlessly involve ourselves in the world's affairs as however we see fit. Not only will doing so arise objections from others, we will also need to pay a huge price to the <[Laws}>. I'm sure you guys get my point, right?"

His eyes surveyed the crowd as he opened his arms broadly with excessive movements. His gentle smile refusing to waver even for a second.

"Then, shall we begin voting now?"

Unlike his warm smile, his eyes were as cold as ice.