1 Intelligence Created by Fear

A sixteen year old teenager is at a hospital crying at an elderly woman.

"Why did you decide to get rid of life support? Even though my job doesn't pay much, I can still find a way. I can definitely pay for it but I just need time."

This teenager is Logan and the woman who decided to remove her life support was his grandma Norma.

"Logan, don't lie to me. I know that every minute I'm on life support is every minute you are starving. This woman is old and dying while you are young and growing so don't spend your money on me. The doctors already told us that I have only a few days to live so I removed life support to ease my pain. It is too painful to stay alive and seeing you spend your money breaks my heart."

Grandma Norma started coughing harshly before telling him her last words

"Please stop crying because it hurts to see you cry. I am going to die soon but I do not want you to mourn me. I'm sad that I will not be able to see your future wife and kids but I know that you will be fine without me. After my death, I want you to have a stable life and not worry about the well-being of someone like me. Just be happy and that is enough to be a farewell gift from you. I'm glad that I was able to raise a smart boy like you and I hope that my efforts will not be in vain. Take care."

At this moment, the heart monitor stopped beeping indicating her death. Compared to others who feared death, she was in her deathbed with a smile.

Logan knees felt limp and tears fell endlessly. Logan only met a few people in his life that he cared about but grandma Norma was the second one he only cried for.

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Sixteen years ago

Logan was found on a door in front of an orphanage in Seeva City. The Bella Orphanage had a great reputation for raising talented children. The public viewed the orphanage as a symbol of compassion and success but the orphans thought otherwise.

Compared to other orphanages, the Bella Orphanage looked at orphans as property instead of children. To impress potential parents, every orphan was submitted to extreme training that focused on academics and the arts. Every orphan was forced to study because they would not receive their meal if they refused.

Even though children are meant to learn gradually to create a foundation for learning, the torture they face at the orphanage forced them to study their hardest. Even a child as young as three knew that food and water is necessary to survive.

Their sleeping hours weren't the best either.

Every orphan was forced to wake up at 5:00 AM and to sleep at 12:00 AM. Because their grades were dependent on their meals, some had to stay up longer to study. Outside studying, the harshest part of them all was disciplinary action.

To discipline the children, the best course they knew how is by using temperature and sound. Any child that misbehaves would be put into a room so cold that hypothermia will be felt at around thirty minutes. Even though no child ever reached hypothermia, the room was enough to put fear into their hearts.

The room of sound is different because its purpose is to prevent sleep. The room would be filled with only loud music that is guaranteed to prevent sleep. Their sleep schedules were never the best in the first place so sleep deprivation is not an option they wish to take.

The scariest part of the Bella Orphanage is not how they torture the children but how they dispose of them if they do not meet their criteria.

Every orphan the orphanage takes in are from parents that are missing and most importantly has no family members. If there are no parents or family members, the child can be disposed of discretely.

Only the employees and the orphans knew that the orphanage was as a graveyard. Also the orphans were forced to see every death to bring fear into their hearts.

The punishments are made to be embedded to their minds. This type is embeddedness is meant to prevent children from confessing to their new parents so the orphanage can keep its "caring" persona. Their methods were so effective that no child has ever complained even when they were adults. None of them would want to remember these traumatic memories so they always chose to move away and not go against the orphanage.

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Logan was forced to study starting at the age of three because this is the minimum age that a kindergarten would take child. However, compared to other kindergartens, the children are pushed to learn middle school level information instead of the basics.

The children left in the orphanage were smart, but Logan was their most prized possession. At the age of four, he already learnt high school level academics as well as full mastery of the arts.

Just finding a child talented enough to play an instrument at a young age is already considered to be a success but someone like Logan was like a gift from heaven.

To distinguish themselves from other orphanages, even though the prices were high, the Bella Orphanage's orphans were talented.

Their sales are also categorized based on the child's intelligence. A child known to be smart is already capable of reaching the prize of fifty thousand units. Because parents are able to choose which child they want, the would obviously choose the smartest one. This made the Bella Orphanage as the most favored orphanage in Seeva city.

Logan is very special because his intelligence was high enough to reach the minimum of one million units. Which parent would not want their child to be successful and popular? Logan is practically guaranteed to be famous person in society. His demand was so high that rich parents from different cities wish to buy him.

They would think that Logan would love to be a successful and famous person but he thought differently.