The Beginning (IV)

Lord walked through a hall filled with blue on both sides, he looked around to see where his room number was.

Squeak~ squeak~

Squeak~

The sound of squeaking rang as Lord walked with his boots, the floor was wet and the air had a feeling of hot steam to it.

'Water, how many people kill each other daily for a drop of it? But here, it's as common as dirt' Lord had thoughts running through his head.

Water was a precious commodity, to the normal individual that is, for the elites who control all the trade and supply, they had enough water to make a small ocean. But would they be so kind to share? Not at all.

In the apocalypse, if you had something good, you would keep it to yourself, morals and values like 'sharing is caring' were long gone as almost nobody had time to care about another's life when their own wasn't assured.

Of course exceptions existed to everything, there were still a few kind souls who were selfless.

Lord's idea of wanting to contribute to humanity was not through sharing or providing comfort, he himself had said, he was selfish, but his contribution would be to help protect or if he was truly lucky to have enough power, even save humanity and bring down the apocalypse.

Lord's idea of what he wanted to do sometimes clashed with his emotions as a human, he knew that his motivations wanted to contribute and protect humanity, but his desires and a few of his emotions made him feel conflicted.

A mature adult may have been able to resolve this conflict if it had been them in this situation, but Lord was still a sixteen year old boy conflicted and impulsive with his desires, emotions, and motivations no matter how much the apocalypse forged him.

Pat!

'Bah! I should stop thinking about these kinds of things, I need to Awaken first before any of my motivations and plans can ever begin!' Lord slapped himself red on the cheek, he didn't want to get his head so stuffed up with things that might not even happen if he didn't awaken.

Lord needed to focus, being so distracted with inner conflicts would only increase his anxiety and fatigue, and today was not the day he wanted to have fatigue or worries.

Squeak~

Squeak~

Thud!

As Lord walked through the hall, he finally saw his room number [246]. Lord entered the room as it had been unlocked.

Entering, Lord observed the room, it had glass walls with a shower head in the middle and a sink near the lower left side corner of the room.

The room itself was a bit big, it was a rectangular room of 7 meters in length, 4 meters in width and and 5 meters in height, the total volume of 140 cubic meters.

Lord walked forward and came in front of a small retractable bench and started undressing.

Taking off the heavy vest and all of his equipment, Lord sighed in comfort, rare moments where he was without any clothes or protective gear on him, gave Lord a unique side of the emotion called comfort.

Without any clothes, Lord's chiseled body was revealed with nothing to hide. Lord's body structure was lean and tall, he had broad handsome shoulders that weren't too buff but not normal looking either. He had a strong torso with a 6 six pack and a few small scars scattered around his body showing stab wounds, cuts, and the heavy thrashings he had suffered in the harsh wastelands.

Lord looked at his body and had a moment of dazed reminiscence about his life and the difficulties he had.

Getting out of the daze, Lord remembered that he only had a limited amount of time being here and couldn't waste it.

Getting back on track, Lord walked to the shower head which had a palm sized handle right under.

Grabbing that handle, Lord cranked it to the far right.

Pssssst~

Hot, comfortable water fell down from the shower head as the sound of water drops falling on the floor could be heard resounding through the room like thunder.

Lord moved his body in a circle, as he let all of his limbs and body parts be soaked with water.

Gurrrrggggglllle~

The sound of a drain could be heard as pieces of dirt, dried blood, and all sorts of things that had built up and accumulated on Lord's body were falling in.

Lord closed his eyes as the only sound he heard was the water, after 5 minutes, Lord opened his eyes and looked towards the small blue container that wasn't too far away from him.

Lord walked up to the box and opened it, revealing all sorts of hygiene products such as shampoo's, toothpaste, hair jell, razors.

Lord picked up a razor with a bottle of cream-like substance as he walked towards the sink.

Coming up to the sink, Lord opened the bottle and put on the cream around his chin and lower face.

After rubbing it onto his face, Lord looked straight at his foamed face as he picked up the razor.

Lord put the razor onto his face as he slowly and gently slid it across his face, showing his inexperience with the razor as he was being extremely careful.

Ssst!

"Tch." Lord had accidentally cut himself, touching the bloodied spot as he looked at the mirror, Lord felt annoyed at himself.

He knew that he had no experience with using a razor but had tried it as he realized his once pre-pubescent clean face was no longer going to exist if he waited any longer, Lord already felt that he was growing a beard.

Lord believed that his face wasn't suited for a beard, someone may have been born with a face made for a beard, but Lord wasn't that someone.

Lord's sharp jawline with perfect oval-like face bone structure and his mixed-race facial features gave him a handsome devilish look.

However, it was a pity that because of the harsh wastelands, Lord couldn't even go out showing his face, much less flaunt.

The wasteland had not only beasts but also the exiled, the rogues, bandits, camps of marauders and all sorts of malicious human forces that lived in the hellish plains. These forces had more than enough crooked people who loved to target other humans like Lord who were easy prey in their eyes.

Lord had the unfortunate luck of witnessing the aftermath of people who fell into these crooked beast's hands when he had found an abandoned camp, those poor corpses hung up in torture dungeons as their flesh was mangled and eaten by insects as their bodies were torn and desecrated beyond any possible chance of repair.

Lord felt pity and sympathy for the fate of those people who had suffered, but that had made him even more determined to be unnoticeable.

Standing out in the apocalypse can result in only two things, a fate worse than death or becoming an influence in the apocalypse. The fates worse than death were for those who didn't have power to fight against their circumstances while becoming an influence was for those who stood out from the rest but had the power to keep their lives.

Lord held no power to fight against desperate circumstances, so unless by some godly miracle he gained immense power, Lord would keep to himself and not show off what he couldn't protect.

...…....

Lord, after 15 minutes of trying with many cuts and bruises, finished his first shaving experience.

Putting down the razor, Lord looked at the mirror and noted the difference with him not having chin or jaw hair.

Lord then turned his eyes to the toothbrush and toothpaste. Normally Lord would only wash his mouth with dirty water like everybody else, nobody in his area had the luxury of using proper hygiene tools such as a toothbrush.

Lord had a few teeth cavities because of poor hygiene, it hurt a lot eating but Lord had already experienced being stabbed, cut, and thrashed around, so the tiny bit of pain from his teeth were directly ignored.

Grabbing the toothbrush, Lord picked up what he assumed to be toothpaste that he had heard about, the packet was small, only containing enough paste for one person to use and two people at max, the packet had the word 'Toothpaste' with a small image of a person brushing their teeth.

"Tooth ... .paste….. this should be it" Lord said to himself in a quiet voice. If one paid attention to how he had said toothpaste, they would be able to tell he had tried reading the words and could barely say it.

Lord was close to illiterate, just like everyone else was. The apocalypse had taken many things when it came down, human morality, social hierarchy, and even literacy.

Until sixty years ago or so, almost everyone was illiterate with only a handful of intelligent humans who still had the ability to read and understand advanced writing. Even among Awakeners, only a fraction were literate.

Understanding that having so much of the population unable to write or understand writing was an absurdly large problem for the social human race, the handful of people who were literate had done their best to teach and train others so that they in turn would teach others and increase the literate population.

This worked effectively, for the first fifteen or so years at least, human greed of monopolizing power and resources once again kicked in.

Those who had become literate and employed soon realized that if they controlled the population of fully literate humans, then they could keep their jobs from lowering in value, and that if they only taught their descendants or distant relatives to be literate, they would be able to hold a monopoly while effectively keeping a sizeable portion of the illiterate or not so proficient literates in check, and fulfilling their promises of teaching humanity as their families counted as part of 'teaching humanity'. It was like killing three birds with only one stone.

Thus with such intentions and plans, the literate elites had come together and made the smoke bomb for their plans and intentions of monopoly, this smoke bomb would be later called the "World Literacy Agreement Meeting" where elites of the language field came to together to discuss how the world's human population would and should be educated.

This 'meeting' had successfully disguised the monopolistic intentions of elites with 2 items, the sugary proclamatory quote of "Every human deserves to be educated!" and the meeting where the elites had "agreed" upon giving "Basic literacy to all!".

If a person during those times had enough understanding of language and had high-literacy, they would understand some deep problems with the words in that meeting, such as "basic literacy" which only stated basic, not describing what level of basic. Preschool basic? Kindergarten basic? Elementary basic? High-school basics? The vagueness of those words left much to be interpreted and manipulated.

Because of such manipulations and machinations, most of humanity only knew about Kindergarten to Elementary grade school level of literacy.

Lord was also unfortunately part of the 'basic literary' group, meaning besides from reciting the alphabet and occasionally being able to make the sounds of written letters, he wasn't able to read.

He was only able to know what 'Trading Center' meant after asking Gorman about it. Gorman, being a Trader, was proficient in literacy.

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Author's Note:

Hello, Author here! This chapter was made with the main character in mind because I wanted you guys to know more about my mc Lord Wan, his motivations and the inner conflicts he has as a normal human being with his own selfish wishes and emotions.

I hope you're enjoying world building! The pace will fasten up after the Awakening part where world building will temporarily be lowered as story takes priority, that is not to say that world building will be gone! I hope you guys enjoy seeing my story develop alongside me as I'm an author with 1 WEEK of writing experience! I'm working SUPER hard to improve, so if you wanna see me more motivated to continue working hard, please drop a comment, a review, a criticism, or even a power stone, IT HELPS ME BE MOTIVATED! (Sorry for the rant!)