ALL NOVEL Chapter 412: For my 'Freedom'... Part-1.
Chapter 412: For my 'Freedom'... Part-1.
Several decades ago.
During the first decade of the fifty-year Orc War, there were many small towns near the border of the empire, and in one shabby house lived a poor kid with his drunkard father.
"Idiot!! I told you to steal more money! What is this!? Just some pocket change!? How will I buy anything from this you God d*mn piece of sh*t!"
The drunk father shouted at his useless son and kicked him heavily in the stomach as he gobbled down more wine from the bottle!
"Don't you know how great I am! I was a soldier before! I had fought in the army! If not for those d*mned Orcs! I wouldn't have lost my job!!"
Neo's father was a terrible man; he was an abusive father, a drunkard to boot, and a deserter from the army.
Although he seemed to show himself as a glorious person, he was nothing but utter garbage as a parent.
He ran away during the war and became a deserter. He got court martialled and ended up getting kicked out of the army with all his weapons and money stripped off!
That garbage person went ahead, borrowed money from random people, and had fun in a nightclub.
Neo was born from a random one-night stand; he was but an unwanted child whose mother ran away after giving birth to him and never came back to show her face.
His father, though he never cared about his kid, raised Neo for a few years with borrowed money, but then he lost interest and started to drink even more heavily than before.
The man had lost his wits; he succumbed to the embrace of alcohol and became a heavy drinker.
Borrowed money always comes to bite you back, and that's what happened to him too. Neo had to change houses every few months with his father as the two of them kept running from places to places to hide from the people they had borrowed money from.
Neo's life was chaos from the very start.
During the day, he would go to steal and work as a thief to steal money from people on the streets, and then during the night he would get beaten by his father and abused to the point of being nearly starved to death.
That was the kind of life Neo had known from the start.
'People are garbage... Money, power, and strength are everything...'
The five-year-old Neo already had figured out the truth of the cruel world! He had already figured out that only those with money and power can survive in this cruel world!
...
It was a winter night.
A dark night where the sky was empty; there were no stars or moons to be seen; it was pitch dark.
*puchi*
A young kid stabbed his father in the eyeball in the dead of the night and killed him in sleep. The child's face seemed immature, but his eyes already had enough wisdom in them. *BOOOM!*
A massive explosion sounded outside the shabby house just when the young kid had gotten rid of the biggest problem of his life.
*piiiiiiiiiii!*
Extremely loud sirens went off in the entire town; this was a signal of an attack from the enemy armies!
Upon hearing the explosions outside, the young Neo glanced out the window and observed hundreds of orcs marching inside the city, equipped with gigantic rocket launchers and various other weapons.
That day, Neo made his first plan.
A young, weak kid can't survive disasters of that level, and that day was supposed to be his death date, but Neo was no ordinary young kid. He had already figured out the truth of the world at this young age!
He was a genius at planning and strategy-making.
He had purposely mixed his father's alcohol with sleeping pills that he bought with the money stolen from others!
That wasn't a plan but a survival method for him; he murdered his father to survive; only those who have a strong will can survive; that's what Neo had learned from his father.
His father was utter garbage for a human being, but Neo was a genius; he found meaning in that and learned to use it to his advantage.
He used the knife to make more wounds on his father's corpse and then covered himself in his own father's blood.
He lied down on the ground and placed his own father's corpse above himself to hide.
*BOOM!*
A bomb smashed into the shabby house and broke its ceiling.
An adult orc is about 3 meters in size! The Orc that had attacked their house was even taller than their shabby house!
It smashed right through the walls easily and found the dead body buried under the rubble easily with his excellent sense of smell!
Neo, who had been a thief his all life, had already learned a few things from the chatter of the people on the streets; he already knew that an orc has good senses!
And this information worked in his favor!
The orc didn't find Neo buried right beside in the rubble and only found the corpse of the father because Neo was fully covered in the blood of his own father.
*Crunch!**Crunch!*
The orc chewed on the dead body and slowly walked away.
Neo, who was buried under the rubble nearby, heaved a sigh of relief and then fell unconscious as the tension finally loosened and fatigue took hold of him.
Although it was a close call, Neo felt thankful for that Orc attack.
If he had only murdered his own father, it would have been difficult to get rid of the dead
body, but now that the Orc has eaten it, there's no evidence against him.
No one can blame him even if they find out anything about this matter; that was Neo's first ever murder; that was the day when he first started his journey of being 'Free'.
Neo wanted freedom from his father's clutches, and he got it by getting rid of him; that's how Neo was from the start.
...
The next time Neo woke up, he was in a military shelter where military healers were treating
the refugees.
Neo wasn't injured, but they still tend to him with care.
Seeing those healers use mana to heal people in a matter of seconds, Neo's eyes widened in
shock.
In his curious eyes, magic appeared as a manifestation of a miracle; it was both beautiful and
fascinating.
As the old healer lady smiled at his face, Neo fell in love with magic at that moment.
He had decided he would become good at using magic; he had already earned his freedom
from his abusive father; now it was time to aim and become 'free' from society too!
It was a time of war; the military welcomed new recruits with open arms, no matter if they were kids or adults!
Neo chose to sign up for the military and learn about magic from there.
The military had massive funding at that time; they were in need of great young talent after all. They welcomed Neo with open arms, and he got free education and training in exchange for promising to work as a soldier in the future.
...
A week later.
Neo was picked up by a huge flying bus filled with people that had been selected as new recruits, and he was getting transported to a military base that day.
That was the day when he first met his lifelong enemy, although he hadn't realized it yet, but that was the day he met the person he would come to hate with his entire being.
It was a young boy in torn-apart clothes sitting near the corner and crying to himself.
The young boy was of similar age as him, but he was immature, weak, and pathetic.
His entire face was covered in his own tears and snot as he was crying and sobbing quietly in
the corner.
That day Neo made the biggest mistake of his life; he became curious and went over to talk to
that young kid.
"Hey, you... What's your name? Will you stop crying? You are seriously annoying me... If you don't stop crying, I will punch you!"
Neo stood in front of the crying kid; his voice carried a hint of irritation.
*sob* *sob*
That crying kid, that snot-covered brat-that was none other than Ashtel Rex, the future
strongest man on Earth.
"I-I am just sad..."
*Bam*
Neo punched the annoying guy in the face for irritating him with his crybaby face and pathetic
voice.
The young, red-haired kid cowered in fear and stopped himself from crying; his body
trembled all over, and he made distance from Neo to hide.
"Stop crying! Or I will hit you again!"
Just when Neo was about to hit Ashtel again, his hand was caught by an older boy who was just
a few years older than the two of them.
"Stop! We are all friends here now! We have been chosen to enter the military; don't fight
among each other!"
That kid was none other than Nicolas Arsene! The hero who would go on to sacrifice himself to
end the fifty-year-long Orc war at last by killing the Orc King and sacrificing himself in the
process.
On that fateful day, all three future SS-rankers of the human empire were gathered in the same place at the same time.
Perhaps it was just a mere coincidence, or perhaps it was something the strings of destiny had decided for them, but all three of them had already become acquaintances from the very start! It was all connected. The fate of them three was connected from the very start!