“A long time ago there was a kingdom so beautiful that its beauty was compared to the heavens that lie far above,

That kingdom was filled with vast lakes, endless land and mountains that could touch the sky,

The name of the kingdom was Solareth, in that time called the land of gods,

That kingdom was a home to many magic beasts like griffins, wyverns but the species that lied above them were the dragon they used to rule the land until one day they started disappearing one by one, no one knows how and why it happened.

In that kingdom lived are predecessors they knew magic like us but….. unlike us they never used it to harm others,

They used magic for their betterment and to help others, they used to worship the magic bestowed upon them by the god, they were living a happy and peaceful life until……

In the year 560 there came an asteroid that hit Solareth, it caused a big crater on the land but the destruction was limited,

But when people gathered to check the crater caused by the asteroid, as people went near it they got an eerie felling fill the atmosphere more closer they got more denser the atmosphere got and as they went near the crater they saw someone standing in front of the asteroid, but on a closer look they found that the man had horns and his eyes were red as blood, he was wearing black clothes that represent nobility,

As they all thought they will come closer to ask some questions to the man but even before they moved a muscle, the man raised his arm in the air and chanted something as if giving an order and without a delay an army of monsters came out of the crater, those monsters were black in colour as if they were made form darkness itself they didn’t had any real physical shape they were able to change themselves, their eyes were bloody red and they all had horns and claws with a tail, some monsters were big some were small, some more creepy then the others, some had more killing intent then the others,

But one thing they all had in common was their will to kill they all were like killing machines, they started killing everyone that was standing there, they tore people into pieces spilling blood everywhere, people started running but they were slower compared to those monsters

No one there survived, but their destruction didn’t stop there they continued their massacre further into the kingdom,

People prayed to the gods they believed in with everything they got but all they herd was silence, their prayers were in all in vein, everything looked utterly hopeless until….

Until they saw a beacon of light there came forth the hero who fought the monsters with bravery,

He used the holy light magic to drive away the darkness,

His name was Luce, he was known as the hero of light

he carried a holy sword which could emit light using magic he named his sword the light bane,

He and his sword forced those monsters to into a corner he was the first person to ever use magic for a war, soon more and more people came forward and humans were able to stand their ground against the monsters,

Upon seeing this the lord of the monsters came forward for an agreement with the humans, his name was Diablo Oscuro, he told that he was a devil and he named the monsters as demons and told that they came from a faraway land to seek a place where they could stay and he proposed that his kind should be given a place in the kingdom,

The hero Luce agreed and then came the era of peace between humans and demons, but the use of magic for destruction made the desire in the humans for more strengthen, humans started attacking each other in order to take control of the kingdom and soon enough the kingdom got divided into 5 big kingdoms each representing each elemental, the biggest kingdom among them was kingdom fire,

Hero Luce tried everything to stop the kingdom from dividing, but he failed…..

After some time, hero Luce disappeared and was never seen again, his successors who could also use light magic became the Royality of kingdom fire.

This war didn’t only affected humans but also affected the other species like the beast people, the elfs, the dwarfs, the orcs and all others, they also got caught up in the war, but they were able to find a safe place as they started living in the Yami forest, which was a large forest situated between fire kingdom and the kingdom where the demons resided.

(Kingdom of demons was called the kingdom of darkness)

After sometime the world went back to being peaceful, but it was never the same as before, as the damages were already done.

The end”

Then a man becomes visible, who appears to have finished reading a book and is keeping it on the round table in front of him while sitting on a bean bag,

Then he askes something to the man who is standing in the corner,

“So why did you wanted me to read this book?”

The man answered with a smile on his face

“So, what are your thoughts on the book?”

“Changing the topic as usual I see, well anyways this story was from a human’s Perspective, right?”

“You are as sharp as ever I see,

yes, this story was from a human’s perspective”

“So, humans won.”

“Yes, thanks to hero Luce and his party of heroes they won the war”

“So, how much of the story is actually true?”

“Most of it is true.”

“So which part is a lie?”

“Who can say?”

“So, you will not give me much information I see, Lord Sozosha”

After this the man who was being referred to as Lord Shozosha looked a little shocked as he asked,

“You are using Lord are you being polite or sarcastic.”

“Who can say?”

Then Lord Sozosha smiled a little says

“You never change, do you?”

The man only smiled a little and then continued

“So why did you want me to read that book?”

“We are back to square one it seems.” then with a pause he continued “You will know that in due time.”

“My name is Kazuto Minamoto, I am 14year old, and today I will go on my first real mission since I joined this lab, I was somehow able to hide a listening device and now I am using it secretly to record this, I am a little worried about it……

The mission is still a mystery to me but they are saying that I all the details will be given when I sneak into the mansion,

I am a little nervous but hope I succeed,

(after a pause in a sad voice)

Hope you are listening this, brother.

Anyways have to hide this device before they find me, see ya”

Then he closed stopped the device and whispered to himself “hope he finds it.”

It all started 5 years ago when I was first bought to this place as the part of batch 2, I don’t remember much but as far as I remember before coming to the lab I used to live in an orphanage, they say my parents died in a car accident and I was the sole survivor of that accident, I didn’t had anyone who could have taken care of me so the police gave me to that orphanage, what else they could have done about a 4 years old.

My time in the orphanage was not good but was not bad either, the adults there were cold and they didn’t really care about us, but they still gave us food and a warm place to live.

But there was an older kid there named Ningyo, he was 6 years older than me.

He was warm, cheerful and kind person, he took care of us like our older brother, he was the oldest there so even adults gave their tasks to him, which he did without any complaint.

We were living a happy life until one day some people in white clothes came and took most of the older kids somewhere including brother Ningyo. I was 6 when it happened, for three years we didn’t hear anything about them, it was mystery to us. But after three years those people in white clothes came back but the only person who came back with them was brother Ningyo.

We tried to ask him questions like where he went? and where the others are? But he didn’t answer any questions but only gave a weak smile as I looked closer, I saw his eyes they lacked the glow they once had those eyes looked dead that image of him was embedded in my brain.

He disappeared the very next day without any traces.

It was all a mystery to me but only after a few days those people in white clothes came back but this time they were there for us, they took us to a laboratory it was a big building with white tiles covering everything we were like100 in number they called us batch 2.

After that my life became a mess, our schedule became a chaos.

For the next whole year we were educated and were trained, we learnt many languages and different strategies to assassinate and kill people the only thing they wanted from us was to make us trained killing machines that will work on their command.

During that year I was only able to see brother for a few times equipped with weapons and covered in blood, I tried to communicate with him a few times but I failed every time it was all too confusing,

But after the first year came the testing time and it changed everything for the worse, we were compared against one another and those who were lacking were killed without any mercy,

This created fear in us, the fear to loose.

This made me realize something it made me realize what happened to brother Ningyo and what happened to the others and why they never came back, they were part of batch 1 and they faced the same things that we are facing right now maybe even worse.

The things brother faced made him cold and distant, he was the sole survivor of the first batch and this time one of us will be who he is now….

This after the first few deaths the atmosphere around us changed and everyone looked at each other as if they were enemies, things even worse from there, assassination attempts started happening not from the people in white but from amongst ourself.

Our trust in each other disappeared instantly, I found myself drowning in despair deeper and deeper I started seeing changes in myself I was not myself anymore I was like a stranger to myself.

Two more years passed, these two years were the longest years of my life and at the end of two years only 41 of us were able to make it, others died due to mental pressure or were killed for not being useful.

This is around the time I found out about their analysis system they took the grades of the highest scores in all the tests both written and physical and divided them by half and those below that half were killed, but this was not working very well as the amount of people score below half were almost negligible from last five months no one was killed,

For them it was a bad thing as they wanted to select the best before the next three years, so they decided to make some changes.

This was not an issue in the previous batch as one was way higher than the others so by the end of third year only one was alive.

From what I heard, brother Ningyo was a genetically modified kid, he was a prodigy who was good at everything and by the end of the second year of him being in the lab only 10 were left,

But this time no one was there who was like him so it was getting harder and harder for them to thin our numbers so they made two changes,

First, they decided that fifty percent was not going to work so they did it to seventy five percent.

Second, they decided to worsen our training and started giving us less food along with sharp chopsticks, they made It obvious that they wanted us to trim our numbers ourself.

This was not surprising to us at this point this went on for the next two years and after then our numbers were still 23.

They were not at all happy with the pace things were happening so they decided to send us on unknown missions one after another and this was the time I was able to sneak in a listening device that could record at our will, with that device I was able to communicate with brother Ningyo,

He was panning to get us out of that place and asked me to stay in this hell a little longer this was the first hope I saw in a long time,

Then I was assigned to my first mission, I infiltrated a mansion of a rich person and was assigned to kill him, killing was something they taught us along the line one way or another so I was able to complete the mission without any problem.

But what happened next completely broke me the only hope I had was taken away from me we were informed that, brother Ningyo died on a mission.

They wanted us to place him but this was all too sudden, the despair on my solder grew heavier and heavier but then………

‘What does it mean to be alive?’, this is a mystery I was never able to solve,

‘Is someone who wishes to die every day is truly alive?’, ‘What about someone who is always putting up a mask to please the people around him, is he truly living?’, these questions were always a mystery to me.

I always envied those people who have the freedom to take the decisions of their life, I never got that chance, but I wish I could.

And today is my last mission, after which they will just kill me….

My name is Ningyo Minamoto, before I was even born, they modified my genes but they didn’t stop there after I was born, they put me in machines and once I was old enough to know about the world, they isolated me in a room where I was given food and educated me, I don’t remember how long I was there.

Then when I turned 8, they transported me into a facility disguised as orphanage, there I saw kids a little younger than me, they wanted me to socialize so that it could help then,

While I was there, they ordered me to act like a cheerful and happy person, I was no able to act like a person I was not so they punished me every time I failed.

So, after a few years I was able to act like a cheerful person it felt so real that when I see myself in the mirror, I was not able to recognize my own self.

While I was there, I understood something, all the kids there were way too different then me it was like the gap between me and them was not of one or two years it was like a decade.

There I found a kid named Kazuto, his parents died in a car accident. So I took care of him like the others, but he was different he started admiring me or the cheerful person I looked, he treated me like an older brother, I first time in my life felt a little happy but there was a shade of guilt in it, a guilt of not being the one he admired, the person he admired was a cheerful person not the real me, But I was still happy….

But it did not last very long, before I even knew it, they were back but this time they wanted others too along with me, this time they too 99 other kids with me, I thought they will be similar to me and will be trained but I was proven wrong.

They trained us for a while but got after that they tested us and our scores were evaluated I scored perfectly in everything, but others were different they were not able to score well because of their lack of experience so they failed,

But here in this facility failing was not accompanied by punishment, it was accompanied by death all those who failed were killed all those deaths were on me, I was the one who killed them by scoring good, others looked at me like I was a monster they kept there, distance from me,

The next time I tried to score just enough to pass so no one died so to teach me a lesson they just took the lowest scorer and gave us both knives and the rest was easy a deathmatch, the survivor lives.

As the deathmatch begun the difference in our skills was clear while he was trembling from nervousness, I stood there, calm. He attacked with full force but he left his neck open I dodged this attack and just slit his neck just enough to kill him.

I knew, if I wanted the others to live, I would have to not decrease my score by a drastic level I decreased it by very little just enough so that some people can survive if they tried hard, this way only 10 died in a year. At the end of the second year 10 of us were left.

So, they decided to give us assassination missions if we fail, we die.

This was around the time I found about myself and my parents, it turns out my father was associated with the experimentation of the lab a few years ago while the lab was still experimenting on plants and animals, he was a great scientist, he was the one who found how to manipulate the genes experimentally, he did it to save the kids who have genetic mutations since birth a noble cause, but the higher ups were not that noble they wanted that technique to make tools out of kids,

This was the time my father found out that my mother was pregnant he was overjoyed and started taking my mother to the lab for regular checkups due to the skilled doctors that were there.

While my father was overjoyed with happiness the higherups of the company were doing separate experiments on monkeys to make them smarter and stronger they were able to succeed due the techniques that my father introduced.

They somehow mixed the chemicals while the regular checkups and I was slowly mutating day by day, but one day my father heard the higherups about the experiments they were doing on me, he faced them but was silenced forever. They told my mother that father was on a trip because of some emergency so she should stay in the lab for safety, the trust my mother had on those people was a lot. So, she trusted them this made it easy for them to do their experiments and soon I was born, the chemicals were like toxins and were slowly killing my mother and caused her death a few days of my birth.

The one who told me all this was a scientist who was a friend of my father he respected my father a lot.

And he promised my father that he will stop these experiments no matter what and will watch over me. His gave me his name, Dr. Fuji.

I believed him and we started planning but it was very risky and will take a long time but we found a way, if we could use the plane that send us near the site of mission there were less people there on the plane and Dr. Fuji was one of them.

But while we were planning this the scientists were fed up from waiting so they decided that they will have another death match this time it was me versus all the other 5 who were alive at that time, they were skilled but I was able to kill them without hesitation, this filled me with guilt.

I just became the monster they wanted me to become, I was now able to kill people without any hesitation the people with whom I spent my childhood with were killed by my own hands.

After that they started sending me on assassination missions and I succeeded in all of them, the success of their experiment made them greedier, they wanted more tools like me,

So, they decided to run the experiment again.

They sent me back to the orphanage.

When I reached the orphanage the kids there were happy to see me and ‘were asking where I went?’ and ‘where the others were?’, they all looked at me with those bright eyes I was not able to answer any of them and then I looked at Kazuto he still had that look of admiration, this filled me with guilt, I could not bring myself to tell them the truth,

So, I just left them and did the missions secretly, I wanted them to be away from the things I faced but I couldn’t do anything against the organization.

They came to take these kids for the same experimentation I was not able to do anything I was powerless against them until I was their tool.

They faced the same things I faced.

A few years passed and things changed me and Dr. Fuji were able to derive a plan to bring the organization down, the plan was flawless but just needed time.

The organization was running their experiments on batch 2 but they faced an issue, this time the kids were all normal so the pace of the experiment was very slow this was a good thing as this way I would be able to save a large fraction.

This was around the time I found a recording device Dr Fuji sneaked the device into the facility. I secretly gave the device to Kazuto so that he could give me the info on what was happening, the things were going too smoothly.

After a few days I was sent to my final mission it was a very big mission, the success was like a must. They wanted me to kill a president,

The mission was a top secret only the most trusted scientist knew about it, that scientist was none other than Dr Fuji. He was the only person selected to accompany me on the mission.

Our plan was clear I will fake my death after completing my mission and as they wanted me dead anyway so they will have no problem so not much search will be done.

So, I with Dr fuji were sent to the site as close as possible without being detected, I sneaked in inside the building and hen I located the target I used the device that could shoot ice bullets at a very high velocity, after a while the bullet will melt and leave no traces behind, I shot the bullet in his head and just went out of the same went I came from, we used the escape tunnel to escape it took two whole days, I was just staying in the building without eating or drinking after two days I was able to get my chance to escape I went to Dr Fuji and we went inside the jet we came from but the first thing we did was to take out our trackers which were used by the organization to monitor us,

Dr Fuji, started the plane and in the mean while I fitted the tracker on to the fake bodies Dr Fuji prepared, and after that we just left those body in the plane while we just left with parachute,

The government was on high alert after the assassination so no plane was allowed to fly in that time,

So, as soon as they detected an unknown plane they decided they will make us land and use us to get to the culprit.

But as soon as the head saw that we could be caught he destroyed the tracker that made the poison inside them to instantly kill us,

That was the reason we left the trackers on the control center of the plane and one blast was able to make it uncontrollable and crash land,

They searched the remains but they only found 2 dead bodies in unidentifiable condition.

The thought that we were dead our plan succeeded.

The head of the organization was of the same party that won but because of the current president it was not possible.

So, he planned on killing him, now the blame will be given to the rival party and the one who will most probably become the new president will be him, but in the meanwhile the vise president took the duty till elections happens.

It was a very foggy day so us leaving the plane that was traveling on a very low altitude we were not even visible.

When I landed, I just laid there for a while as I laid and felt the breeze that was there, I for the first time in my life laughed sincerely, for the first time I felt free, I was not anyone’s pawn at that very moment,

What an irony it was, I had to die in the eye of others just to feel alive in my eyes.

But it was not over yet, we still had to close the experiment one and for all,

Till now things were going too smoothly but as we know things never go smoothly forever,

When Dr Fuji contacted his allies in the organization I found out that they organization took some intense measures to increase the pace of the experiment, they made them assassinate each other and now only 15 of them are alive, and Kazuto disappeared and no one knew where, I knew this had to be the plan of the organization but I was still powerless so we started the second phase of the plan.

The organization was planning on a largescale mission so every subject was to be transported, this was the only way time we could send them to safety.

When that fated day of transportation arrived, we hijacked the planes and the allies of Dr Fuji outnumbered the organization, like Dr Fuji his allies also hated the organization.

We succeeded in the hijacking and we helped them to go to the safe place Dr Fuji found a long time ago.

Then the phase three started this was the extermination phase, we found and killed everyone who was guilty in the organization. We killed all the scientist who were willingly working there, Dr Fuji was the one who made and confirmed the list.

We killed everyone except the head, his execution was my responsibility I used the same tactics used in the president elimination, it was a success.

Then at last, we just blasted off that underground facility to leave no trace behind.

After that it was all finally over or so I thought…..