Grand Magus: Reincarnated with the Engineer Element

Author note: The actual story starts at chapter 1, when he is reincarnated. As of now this is a prologue explaining his backstory, so you may skip it if you want, though I advise otherwise. Happy Reading ^^

***

Whichever way someone could look at it, Bruno Desiren's life wasn't the happiest, in fact, one might say it was built on tragedy. A man who came from the bottom, and crawled his way up, he left one hell hole for the next, constantly relying on powdered euphoria to make it through the day.

The story begins from when he was just a little boy, barely old enough to count to ten. It seemed as if he had already lost the game called life at the parent selection screen.

His mother was an escort - a woman who offered her body in exchange for money-, that's to say, she had no idea who his father was. Nonetheless, Bruno still loved her somewhat.

Although she could never afford to buy him anything for his birthdays, or sometimes neglected to feed him, the fact was, she hadn't dropped him off at a shelter. So to Bruno, her being around was enough.

Bruno was vaguely aware of what his mother did to get money, however as a kid who grew up in such an environment, he didn't really find it odd.

She would go to work in the evenings, just as the sunset, leaving Bruno alone in an old decrepit shack in the shanty districts.

This happening as often as it did, Bruno had learned to take care of himself from a young age. He learned how to avoid danger, and how to work with what he was given. He didn't have many friends and the few that he did have were from a bad crowd. But they were essential to Bruno's survival, they taught him how to pickpocket to get some money for food and hold his own in streetfights -which was a common occurrence in his rough neighborhood.

When he was about 10 he was introduced to the drug business by the older residents of his neighborhood. Since he was fast and expendable they used him as a street plug, he would do drug exchanges and hand in the money at the end of the day. It was quite lucrative, and at the end of the week -taking into account the extra money he got from stealing from the drug dealers themselves- he made a reasonable amount.

His mother noticed the sudden abundance of food in the house, but refused to ask anything about where the money was coming from. 'It looks like he's old enough to carry his own weight' she would proudly think before kissing him goodbye and heading for work.

Although they still lived in a crappy shack, and hardly had what one could call a 'fulfilling' diet, Bruno could already imagine themselves moving to a better house once he saved up some more. And perhaps things would've turned out as he imagined... if life did not have other plans for him.

It happened on one of those days he was following one of his acquaintances on a drug exchange, he caught a glimpse of his mother hanging around the group of men who were purchasing the drugs. Seeing as she was too distracted laughing at some unfunny joke told by one of the men, Bruno simply pulled down his hoody and carried on with the exchange.

"How strong is this stuff?" asked one of the clients, a sly grin on his face.

"You guys asked for the strongest stuff we had, didn't you? It's pretty strong, strong enough to get the job done," said the drug dealer, eyeing the group of escorts behind the client.

"Take this and get lost," said the client, before shoving a wad of cash and the drug dealer and shoving him off.

"Kukk, bastard," commented the dealer, before walking off, Bruno following close behind after taking one last glance at his mother.

"What did you mean enough to get the job done?" asked Bruno as he followed the older man.

"Ahh, this is the reason we didn't let you take care of this drug deal. Those men are part of a local gang, they probably bought those drugs to traffic the escorts they were walking with. I heard brothels make quite a bit of money, until the police find out that is..." the man kept mumbling on, but Bruno's mind was elsewhere.

Hearing that his mother would probably be trafficked, his heart sank. He wanted so bad to run in and warn her, but there was no way those gang members would just let him get away with that.

"I-I have to do something, you can take my share," whispered Bruno before running back to the building where the drug exchange was done. As he strolled around the building he thought of different ways to warn his mother, he thought of sending someone in but no one was willing to listen to a street kid. After a while he got fed up and tried running in himself, however, the security guards would not allow entrance, and even if they did, he had no idea which room they were in.

As he sat in front of the building, tears beginning to collect at the rim of his eyelids, he saw a police car pass by the building.

"The police!" The idea came like lightning, and instantly he got to his feet and began looking around before locking his eyes on a man reading a newspaper on a nearby bench. He walked slowly towards the man before sitting beside him on the bench. The man gave him a side glance before continuing with his newspaper.

Bruno slowly inched his way closer to the man until their legs were touching. The man realised what he was trying to do and stood up with an angry look on his face, throwing inaudible insults as he rolled up his newspaper. However, it was already too late, the moment the man moved his legs to stand, Bruno used two of his fingers to pinch the man's phone. As he stood up the phone slipped out, before Bruno quickly hid it in his hoody.

{Was it 911?} wondered Bruno has he typed in the digits.

"911, what's your emergency?"

"Uhm, there's someone threatening my mother with a gun, I-I don't know what to do," cried Bruno. Although he was lying, the tears were genuine, he really was scared.

"Okay, please calm down and tell me your location."

"I-I don't know, Triago Motel? M-Montreal street, b-but I don't know the room number," stuttered Bruno, looking around to see the name of the building and the street sign.