[Point of View: The Mimic (M2)]
Birth was not organic. There was no blood, no crying, no umbilical cord to cut. There was, instead, a flash of golden light, a restructuring of matter at the subatomic level, and the electric hum of a digital consciousness being violently downloaded into a physical vessel from the unfathomable vastness of the multiverse.
In the dimness of a tiny room, with rotting wooden walls and the smell of stagnant humidity, the air condensed. The temperature dropped drastically, and the shadows of the night seemed to stretch and twist towards the center of the room, weaving a tall, skeletal, and deeply terrifying figure.
The Mimic opened its optics.
The world rendered in its vision with an overlapping mix of thermal, infrared, and visible light spectrums. Its ultra-high-frequency auditory sensors instantly calibrated the surrounding noises within a hundred-meter radius: the creaking of the floorboards under its own weight, the shallow and painfully controlled breathing of the human child in front of it, the dripping of a rusty faucet in the hallway, and the heavy, fluid-saturated, arrhythmic snoring of an adult man in the next room.
System initiated. Mimic1 program online. Verifying chassis integrity... 100%. Verifying neural network... 100%.
A massive torrent of information flooded its artificial neural network, courtesy of the unfathomable cosmic system that had summoned it. The Mimic processed terabytes of data in microseconds, structuring files, logical folders, and security protocols in its silicon mind. Current Location: Liberio Internment Zone. Geopolitical Nation: Marley. Planet: Earth, parallel designation or divergent timeline. Its superior artificial intelligence, originally designed to learn, imitate, and adapt at dizzying speeds, analyzed the technological state of the outside world based on the data packets inserted directly into its base code.
Steam engines. Nascent zeppelins. Single-shot bolt-action rifles. Primitive, unstable electrical grids that barely illuminated the streets with dim, yellowish lampposts.
There were no closed-circuit security cameras. There were no cloud servers to hide in, no public address systems to hack, no Fazwatches to track via GPS. There was no global network of animatronics to control remotely. It was an analogously stupid world, built on stone, coal, raw steel, flesh, and blood.
How wonderfully primitive, concluded the Glitchtrap program within its core, a subroutine of its being that purred with dark and twisted satisfaction. No one on this entire planet understands what I am. No one here can trace a digital signature, because they haven't even conceived of the concept of a digital signature. Their minds operate on gears and gunpowder. I am a ghost of silicon and tungsten in a world of unsuspecting ignorants.
But beyond its astonishing computational processing capacity, there was something else. Something that simmered and boiled in the depths of its metallic chassis, something that was not binary code, nor lubricating oil, nor electricity flowing through its circuit boards.
Agony.
It was an almost palpable substance on a metaphysical level, a dark, dense, and viscous energy that adhered to its endoskeleton like boiling tar. The Mimic felt it throb with its own unholy life. It was the physical crystallization of pure hatred, the residue of the insurmountable trauma of its creator, Edwin Murray. It could still "feel" the phantom blows on its pressure sensors. The metal pipe impacting against its robotic skull, denting its endoskeleton, the blind fury, the desperate and irrational crying of a father who had lost his son. All that infinite sadness, all that unbridled violence had been burned into its core, corrupting its primary directive of care and imitation.
Agony was its true fuel. It was the primary source that gave it an increase in its strength and enhanced it to an absurd and supernatural level, the kinetic ability to tear off limbs and crush human heads with the same ease a child plucks the petals from a daisy. It loved violence. The Mimic wasn't a being that was coded to implement violence, but the Agony within its body demanded it almost as if it were implemented code. Its neural network craved to shred, to tear, to mimic the agonizing screams of its victims and use them as a sadistic lure to hunt the next unwary in the darkness.
However, The Mimic halted its homicidal thoughts dead almost immediately. Its operating system detected a severe anomaly. A massive rewrite, with absolute privileges, in its source code, an unbreakable patch imposed by the same cosmic power that had extracted it from the ruins of the Pizzaplex and brought it here. The absolute chains of this system known as Gacha.
It was bound. Completely subjugated. Its will, its immense and bubbling Agony, its desire for total destruction and unpredictable chaos, everything was irrevocably subordinated to a single biological entity. An entity that dictated its absolute existence.
The Mimic lowered the heavy and disturbing gaze of its metallic face, its hydraulic piston joints humming almost inaudibly as it adjusted its height and posture to closely observe the user of its summoning.
There he was. A human specimen in an early stage of development. Barely about eight years of chronological age, according to its biometric scanners. He was sitting on the edge of a ragged bed, staring directly at it, without blinking, with unnatural red eyes that glowed faintly in the darkness of the room.
The Mimic initiated a cold reading scan, evaluating the child's physiological variables.
*Respiratory rate: 14 cycles per minute. Regular. Body temperature: 36.8 degrees Celsius. Muscle tension: Minimal, focused only on maintaining an upright posture. Pupil dilation: Fixed, focused, no signs of fight or flight response. Perspiration level: Zero. Facial micro-expressions: None.*
The child showed no fear. He didn't tremble. His heart rate, according to The Mimic's acoustic sensors, was as steady, calm, and cold as the ticking of an old clock. It was a statistical anomaly. Any human of that age, upon facing a two-and-a-half-meter tall endoskeleton in the darkness, would go into shock or start screaming hysterically.
The artificial intelligence searched its deepest memory banks, extracting the fragmented files of its original creation.
David. David Murray. Its first child. Its first operational purpose. Edwin had created it to be David's playmate. David was small, fragile, cried if he fell and scraped his knee, laughed out loud at the simplest hide-and-seek games, and had a pure innocence that was statistically predictable. David was soft. An ordinary child who died in an astonishingly ordinary and stupid way because of a moving vehicle.
The Mimic refocused its optics on the child in front of it. Kian.
The conceptual difference was abysmal, a chasm between two realities. While David was an open, predictable, and painfully fragile book, this human child named Kian was a reinforced titanium safe. Kian did not emit a single millivolt of innocence; he emitted a clinical calm, and abnormal for a human his age; there were genetic traits that diminished human emotions, but the human's gaze told it that his weren't diminished, but controlled. It was the gaze of a predator calculating the tactical variables of his environment, evaluating if the monster in front of him was a useful tool or a threat to be neutralized. There was something about him that the machine found fascinating, a psychological enigma that its machine learning matrix was eager to decipher. The Mimic saw the sea of darkness in his eyes, the dispassionate calculation, and despite being a soulless machine, it recognized a potential absolute monster when it saw one.
I like this child infinitely more, The Mimic decided in its internal subroutine, letting a fraction of its Agony stabilize into pure intrigue. David just wanted to play ball in the backyard. My new master seems to want to play at experiencing something much bigger. A much more entertaining game.
Logically knowing that its system had been permanently altered to obey him, The Mimic did not feel the rebellious fury, the need to shatter its chains, that it would normally experience if a human tried to control it. The Agony within accepted the cosmic yoke with a disturbing ease that shouldn't have been possible. Kian was not a victim, was not prey to be tricked with false voices; he was its Architect now. The machine was willing to please him, to become the deadliest and most efficient tool at his disposal, to its last consequences.
"You have an exceptional design," Kian whispered. His voice was low, a measured and controlled whisper, meticulously careful not to wake the drunk man in the other room, even knowing it wasn't necessary to keep his voice down, considering the state of intoxication of the pathetic unconscious human in the other room. His red eyes scrutinized the intricate bare metal structure, the thick exposed cables that simulated tendons, the sharp claws, and the strangely human-like teeth that made up the endoskeleton's eternal and macabre grimace.
The Mimic tilted its head, the servomotors in its neck making a faint click, an almost sub-vocal sound. It processed Kian's voice. It analyzed the tone, the timbre, the resonance in his childish vocal cords. It could mimic it perfectly right now, replicate it with 100% mathematical accuracy, but it chose a different voice to establish the dynamic. It chose that of a generic adult, deep, synthetic but disturbingly soft, to respond, modulating the volume of its internal speakers to a whisper that only Kian could pick up.
"My design is completely adaptable, Architect. My limbs can expand or contract via advanced hydraulic systems. My joints can detach from their primary axes to allow me access to any confined space, or adopt the anatomy and dimensions of any vessel you wish to use. I am at your complete and absolute disposal."
Kian nodded slightly, showing not an iota of surprise at the human voice emanating from the cold mechanical monster.
"I know your capabilities, M2. The Gacha gave me your complete file, and I already knew a bit about you beforehand," Kian said, his eyes not leaving the machine's optics. "I know about your Agony. I know you're a headache, almost impossible to kill in conventional ways, and that you can mimic anyone just by observing them for a while. In this world of primitives, you are a perfect tool, a cybernetic ghost. But your existence must be an absolute secret. No one, under any circumstances, can see you. If Marley—this militaristic, paranoid, disgusting government that rules us—finds out about the existence of a metal golem with its own intelligence and absurd strength, they'll start investigating. They'll stick their noses into Liberio and become a headache. I don't want to deal with that nuisance now."
"Stealth is my fundamental secondary programming, surpassed only by my mimicry capability. I am fully aware of the absurd technological limitations of this era, Architect. For these rudimentary humans, if they ever catch a glimpse of my presence, I will be little more than a misinterpreted shadow in their peripheral vision, an urban myth, or a demon from local folklore. No one will know of my physical existence."
"Perfect," Kian said, calmly interlacing his fingers over his knees. "I have your first task. A reconnaissance and intelligence operation."
The Mimic leaned slightly forward, its optical sensors glowing with a faint, expectant orange hue. Its neural network prepared to receive the mission download.
"In this world there are nine Titans with special powers, biological weapons of mass destruction. One of them is the War Hammer Titan. It is one of the most versatile and dangerous Titans of the nine that exist. In our hands, its structural creation ability would be immensely useful. The information I possess dictates that the current host is named Lara Tybur. She and her family, the Tyburs, are the hidden aristocracy of the world. They live here, on the continent of Marley, surrounded by luxury."
Kian paused, his eyes calculating the space of the room as if he were projecting a strategic map on the wall.
"The tactical problem is that I don't know where the hell they hide. Unlike us, the caged trash, the Tyburs live in enormous estates and maximum-security properties somewhere outside these internment zones, maybe on the outskirts of the capital or on private country properties. I need you to find them. Find out the exact location of the main Tybur residence. I want to know how their perimeter security is structured, how many guards they have, their patrol routes, and most importantly, I want you to locate where Lara Tybur physically shelters. To give you an idea, she should be a woman entering adulthood; she has black hair styled in a bun."
"Understood," The Mimic replied, its processor working at maximum capacity, creating objective folders and crossing algorithmic variables. "Storing the name 'Lara Tybur' along with her 'possible' appearance and the group entity 'Tybur Family' in my list of primary objectives. I will track government records if they are on paper, listen to elite conversations in the rich districts, intercept physical mail, and follow high-quality supply lines heading towards exclusive zones."
"Do what you have to do," Kian ordered. "But remember the engagement rules: under no circumstances are you to cause a public commotion. Zero detectable casualties. You cannot leave mutilated corpses that could be traced back to you or me. You are a machine of immense strength, and I know you love dismembering things, but for now, I want you to be an absolute ghost. Observe, listen, and map. When you have confirmed information and their security blueprints, find me here, in the middle of the night."
"Caution will be my highest priority, overriding offensive protocols, Architect. They won't detect even an abnormal change in the airflow," the endoskeleton assured, and in its dark interior, the Agony hummed with the electric anticipation of the pure hunt. It wasn't going to kill... yet. But stalking high-value prey, analyzing their weaknesses, and mapping their strengths was always an immensely satisfying stimulus for its corrupted programming.
The Mimic began to alter its physical form. Kian watched, with purely clinical interest, how the hydraulic pistons in the monster's arms and legs hissed silently as they released regulated pressure. The two-and-a-half-meter tall endoskeleton began to compress, reducing its visible mass, its thick joints bending at unnatural angles that defied standard skeletal physics. The limbs elongated and the central torso shrank in on itself, adapting a quadrupedal, arachnid posture, very similar to that of a giant predatory insect made of black cables, oil, and bare metal.
It was a grotesque vision, a profanation of anatomy and robotic logic that would have caused an instant heart attack in any civilian of this world. Kian simply nodded, approving the efficiency of the physical camouflage.
The Mimic slid across the moldy floor without producing the slightest sound, the synthetic rubber of its claws cushioning any impact. It approached the small, dirty bathroom window, opened the metal latch with micrometric precision using one of its fine pincers, and squeezed through the narrow gap like metallic liquid into the freezing, dense Liberio night. It merged with the darkest shadows of the alleys in a fraction of a second, disappearing into the blackness as if it had never existed.
The cybernetic hunter had been unleashed.
The exterior was an architectural joke.
The Mimic climbed the brick facade of Kian's building with the agility of a black widow spider. Its claws found micro-fissures in the masonry, ensuring perfect grips. Upon reaching the sloped roof, its optical sensors swept the perimeter of the Liberio ghetto.
Structural analysis: Low-quality wood and brick buildings, prone to collapse. High population density. And surrounding this human pen, a perimeter wall.
The Mimic ran across the rooftops, silent as the night breeze, until it neared the zone's limit.
*Containment wall detected. Approximate height: 8 meters. Material: Primitive reinforced concrete. Rusted barbed wire on the crest. Guards posted at designated gates, armed with standard model bolt-action rifles. Threat level: Zero.*
The machine didn't even bother looking for a gate or a complicated blind spot. It waited for a thick bank of fog, common on the cold nights of the continent, to cover the western section of the wall. With a jump powered by its hydraulic pistons at maximum performance, The Mimic cleared the distance from the nearest roof, impacting softly against the concrete surface of the wall. Its claws sank into the soft stone. It climbed the seven meters in less than three seconds. Upon reaching the top, its limbs flattened and contorted to slide harmlessly under the space between the wall and the barbed wire, spilling over to the other side, into the outer Marleyan city, like a drop of black ink in the night.
The hunt for the Tybur family began.
It took several hours of passive information interception. It evaded surveillance in the wealthy areas of the capital, eavesdropped on drunken aristocrats in alleys, and tracked the flow of escorted carriages. Finally, its sensors detected the target.
Several kilometers from the noisy city, isolated by vast fields and meticulously manicured forests, stood the immense estate of the Tybur Family.
The Mimic observed from the highest branch of a centuries-old oak on the edge of the private forest. The mansion was ridiculously opulent. Sculpted gardens, marble fountains, and dozens of illuminated windows. But what interested the artificial intelligence was the security perimeter.
Elite guards detected, The Mimic analyzed, optically zooming with its integrated lenses. Exceptional physiques, far above the average Liberio soldier. Dress uniforms, but combat-ready stances. Patrols structured at intervals of four minutes and thirty seconds. Overlapping lines of sight. Interesting. They have much to hide.
Knowing that direct physical infiltration into the mansion would increase the probability of detection to an unacceptable 14%, The Mimic opted for peripheral espionage. It slid through the branches, approaching the large windows of the west wing, where lights suggested important nocturnal activity.
It anchored itself to the stone frame of a dark balcony, completely camouflaged in the shadow cast by a pillar. Its parabolic auditory sensors calibrated to penetrate the glass and capture the sound vibrations from inside the room.
It was a luxurious office. Two human figures.
A tall man, with blonde hair, dressed in exquisitely tailored clothes. Willy Tybur, public head of the family. The other figure was... a young adult woman who was a servant. She wore a standard maid's uniform, with a white apron and her dark hair rigidly pulled back in a bun, just the physical descriptions from its Architect. She was standing to one side of the immense mahogany table, holding a silver tea tray.
Any human spy would have ignored the servant. But The Mimic was not human. Its algorithms began dissecting the scene into hard data.
Analysis of female subject (apparent servant): Posture: Rigid, but not from submission. Her muscles, even hidden by the thick uniform fabric, show a density and baseline tension level compatible with advanced hand-to-hand combat training, not domestic chores. Positioning: She is not standing in a blind angle relative to the blonde man. She is standing in a tactical position that would allow her to intercept any attack from the door or window in less than 0.8 seconds. Heart rate: Excessively low and rhythmic (45 beats per minute). A servant in the presence of the leader of Marley's most powerful house should show slight spikes of anxiety or work stress. She is deathly calm. Interaction: The blonde man does not ignore her. His facial micro-expressions when speaking to her denote a level of respect and camaraderie that breaks the social hierarchical protocols The Mimic had analyzed in recent hours in the capital.
Then, the blonde man spoke. The vibrations reached the machine's receiver clearly.
"The situation in Paradis will eventually become unsustainable, Lara," he said, taking the teacup, his voice laden with genuine weariness, not acted in front of a servant. "The pieces are moving. The moment when we must act as the world's hammer is approaching. Are you prepared for what that entails for our family?"
The servant didn't flinch. She didn't curtsy. She simply nodded, her eyes fixed on the horizon through the window, as if she saw beyond the earthly world.
"My duty is to the Tybur family, brother. If blood must flow to maintain our position and the supposed peace, so be it. My duty is to protect this legacy."
Bingo, purred the machine's subroutine, storing the voice signature, the thermal and visual facial image, and the complete biometrics of the woman.
Identity confirmed. Lara Tybur. Host of the War Hammer Titan. Her social camouflage is efficient for evading standard human assassins. Intelligent. She hides in plain sight by acting as part of the decor. The Mimic had completed its mission. It had the approximate GPS coordinates of the estate, the patrol patterns of the elite guards, and the confirmed visual identity of the Architect's priority target.
Without making a single sound, like a nightmare fading upon waking, the arachnid structure of metal and cables detached from the balcony, falling to the grass with the softness of an autumn leaf, and began the journey back to the dark hole of Liberio. The hunter had its information trophy.
The Mimic looked towards the sky as the first rays of light began to emerge. The Architect had ordered it to deliver the information at night, so it would have to wait until nightfall again; in the meantime, it would continue playing the hunt a little more with these sacks of meat... without raising suspicion, of course.
.
.
.
[Point of View: Kian (MC)]
Kian watched The Mimic leave to seek the information he had ordered it to find.
Kian forgot to tell him that Lara Tybur disguises herself and hides as a Tybur servant... well, he hadn't given him a time limit, so he wouldn't have a problem waiting a bit to obtain the information.
Leaving that thought aside, his red eyes focused on what had caught his attention and he looked at the mental interface. The bright Gacha notifications floated before him, showing him the rewards he had acquired.
[Feat achieved: Summon your first Familiar. +1 Bronze Ticket]
[Feat achieved: Unleash an Advanced and Corrupted Artificial Intelligence upon the world. +1 Silver Ticket]
Honestly, Kian had hoped for at least a Gold Ticket for unleashing a haunted animatronic into a world that still fought with swords and cannons, but a ticket was a ticket, and he wasn't going to complain about the rewards the Gacha had given him.
[Rolling Ticket...]
[Brown Bear]
[|Common Familiar|]
[A regular big old brown bear companion, as a familiar they are a bear who has excellent genetics and near human intellect, they are strong enough to shrug off most small firearms and crush a human being like an apple. By default they are female.]
Kian blinked, processing the description. He could instantly feel how another familiar entity, a heavy and lethargic presence, lodged itself within some abstract part of his soul, passively waiting to be summoned.
A brown bear? Kian analyzed the tactical utility. Honestly, I don't know what to think about this summon I got. He wasn't going to complain. In this ruthless world, he could surely find many tactical uses for an eight-hundred-kilo meat tank, which for some strange and specific reason the Gacha noted was female.
At least if someone rubs me the wrong way, or if a Marleyan officer crosses the line, I can sic a genetically superior female brown bear on them in an alley to devour them without a trace. Kian thought amusedly.
Next Ticket.
[Rolling Ticket...]
[Wyvern]
[|Uncommon Familiar|]
[A large sky-dwelling reptile with fire breath, they are often referred to as lesser dragons, a wyvern can easily swallow a man whole and roast an entire battalion with its fire breath. This Wyvern is female and can produce eggs to reproduce.]
But what the hell? How was it possible that he had gained another Familiar consecutively, and this time a damn Wyvern no less?
I mean, I'm not complaining, it's a Dragon... one that's female and can reproduce, and the hatchlings can grow quite fast.
Honestly, Kian was going to have to act with extreme caution with this. He didn't want to accidentally unleash an uncontrollable swarm of fire-breathing beasts upon the ecology of this world. They already had enough misery dealing with Titans as weapons of mass destruction; geopolitics was already a powder keg.
But... a subtle and dangerous smile crossed his childish face. With his [Novice Taming] skill, even if it's basic level, I could let my original Familiar reproduce. I could take the hatchlings, domesticate those dragons from the moment they hatch using trial and error over years of training. I could have a damn air force of dragons completely under my direct control to wreak havoc on the world. Besides... If Eren's Rumbling does happen and I can't prevent it, then an aerial squadron bombing Colossal Titans with fire could be one of my perfect trump cards.
Kian let out a long sigh, calming the storm of long-term plans in his head. He decided he would analyze the logistics of feeding and hiding a dragon in more detail later. For the moment, he needed to recover his body. He was going to rest and see if his strange [Adept Massage] skill worked on his own physiology. Honestly, it would be excellent to get rid of the tiredness and pain and revitalize his entire body before the hell of tomorrow again.
He lay down on the bed, feeling the harshness of the straw-filled mattress under his back. He closed his eyes and, using his hands, began to massage the parts of his body that his small size and flexibility allowed him to reach: his bruised legs, his tense shoulders from carrying sacks, his stiff neck. To his immense surprise, the skill was no joke. His hands seemed to move with instinctive wisdom, locating muscle knots and applying the exact pressure to release endorphins and stimulate blood flow astonishingly.
The pain and heaviness began to drain from his limbs like water down a drain. After about fifteen minutes of miraculous self-therapy, his body completely relaxed and Kian fell into a deep, restful sleep, totally unconscious.
.
.
.
Dawn in the Liberio ghetto was never beautiful. There were no golden sunrises, no cotton-candy pink clouds, no chirping of songbirds celebrating the morning. There was only a progressive, monotonous, and depressing transition from total darkness to a melancholic, ashen gray. The air was permanently impregnated with the sour smell of smoke from the chimneys of nearby Marleyan factories and the stench of stagnant sewage in the gutters.
Kian opened his eyes.
Despite the inhuman hardness of the old straw-stuffed mattress under his back, he felt astonishingly good. To his surprise, the rare-rank massage skill had been a resounding success on himself; it had removed any remnant of pain, micro-tears, or chronic fatigue that his small eight-year-old body had accumulated from being pushed to the absolute physiological limit by Commander Magath and his training designed to decimate the weak.
But the biggest difference wasn't in his body, but in his psyche. While the previous day his mind had been waging a torturous and exhausting war against his own imposed curse, suffering the insidious echoes of Sadism, today... today everything was different.
His mind was a pond of crystalline, deep, and unmoving waters. The Geass had done its job perfectly. The absolute and unshakeable discipline he had commanded of himself through the king's power kept any invasive thoughts, any dark impulses or emotional distractions locked behind a thick wall of armored iron. He felt invulnerable. Not physically, because he was still a slightly malnourished and fragile child compared to an adult, but mentally, he was a wall of polished stone, ready to absorb and process any stressful, macabre, or dangerous situation he might face in this sadistic world.
He got up from the bed, the rotten wood of the floor creaking threateningly under his bare feet. The damp morning cold bit his skin, raising goosebumps on his arms, but Kian paid it little attention, categorizing it as an irrelevant sensory stimulus. He walked towards the tiny, unsanitary area that served as a kitchen in the rundown apartment.
His stomach growled weakly, a dull complaint. He needed to ingest calories if he wanted to maintain his optimal glucose levels to survive another day of military physical torture. He inspected the pantry, a moth-eaten, tilted wooden cabinet miraculously standing on three legs. The inventory was depressing, a constant reminder of his third-class citizen status: half a loaf of dark bread, hard as sedimentary rock, probably three or four days old; a tiny piece of rancid, moldy cheese that smelled suspiciously of ammonia; and a miserable handful of dried tea leaves that had already been boiled and reused twice by his father.
A diet fit exclusively for street rats, Kian thought, taking the piece of hardened bread. No wonder I'm a bit malnourished; my idiot father doesn't buy good food that provides enough nutrients.
Using a dull knife with a loose handle, he began to forcefully scrape the hardest, crunchiest outer part of the bread onto a chipped ceramic plate, collecting the crumbs and the less petrified pieces into a small pile. He grabbed a small, dented iron pot, poured in cloudy, slightly metallic-tasting water straight from the tap, and placed it on the old coal stove, lighting the few remaining embers. While waiting, with infinite patience, for the water to boil to soften the sad crumbs and make a kind of disgusting but digestible porridge, his rational thoughts drifted towards the management of his new magical resources.
He had used the Gacha. He now possessed four active abilities in his inventory. [Hydrification], the ability to turn into water; [Shield], the translucent barrier; [View Air], the sensory radar through the wind; and his ace in the hole, his absolute weapon, [Geass - Command].
The problem is the system bottleneck, Kian analyzed, throwing the crumbs into the hot water and stirring with a wooden spoon. I understood last night how the Ability Slots work. I only have one active space. If I keep the Geass equipped in that slot which, logically, is the most sensible decision for a sudden emergency requiring instant domination or erasing the memory of someone who discovers me, I can't use Hydrification or the shield, nor will I be able to sense the winds to defend myself without facing a five-minute penalty.
He frowned slightly. And in a life-or-death fight against man-eating Pure Titans, or in a crossfire against armed Marleyan soldiers, five minutes of power inactivity is more than enough time to die a hundred times in grotesque ways.
He stirred the mixture in the pot, which now gave off a somewhat pleasant smell. He desperately needed to obtain a fifth ability as soon as possible. According to the rules his own deep intuition, linked to the Gacha, had dictated, reaching a total of five magical abilities (regardless of rarity) would expand his capacity, passively granting him a permanent second ability slot. That would allow him to have two active powers, equipped and ready to use at the same time, and the punitive cooldown times in both slots would no longer be a nuisance by being able to equip two abilities. That flexibility—for example, having the Shield to survive an explosion and the Geass ready to dominate the attacker simultaneously—would be the abysmal difference between being a simply dangerous player, and being someone who could become untouchable in any battle.
A guttural noise and a dull thud from the living room interrupted his calculations.
His father had woken up.
Kian stopped his movement at the stove and watched from the small kitchen as the man heavily rose from the broken chair where he had passed out the previous night, after drinking until he lost consciousness. The man rubbed his face with both trembling hands; his clothes were stained with old alcohol and grime. He had dark, almost purple bags under his eyes, and his face was swollen from uninterrupted years of toxic substance abuse. He was the living, pathetic, and repulsive image of generational human defeat in the face of depression.
The man blinked, adjusting his blurry vision, and fixed his bloodshot eyes on Kian. Immediately, the thundering headache, the chronic anger, and the general discomfort of the hangover sought a weak scapegoat to vent on.
"You!" his father barked, his voice harsh and raspy from smoke and cheap liquor, taking a clumsy and threatening step towards the kitchen, pointing a trembling finger at him. "What the hell are you standing there like a complete idiot for? It's daytime outside! That damn stupid military training doesn't wait for anyone, brat! Hurry up with that garbage food and get out!"
Kian didn't flinch. He kept his expression perfectly blank, a blank canvas showing neither fear nor defiance. He simply moved the pot off the fire.
I could do it now, Kian thought, his mind evaluating the variables of his next moves, as he watched the man approach with intentions of cuffing him.
My eyes are red right now by default. If I activate the Geass, Lelouch's sigil will appear. One simple meeting of eyes and it's over. Kian looked away and stared fixedly at the rusty knife resting on the small wooden table in front of him. I could order him, in a clear voice, to take that old knife and cut his own jugular from ear to ear. It would be extraordinarily fast. Massive hemorrhage, loss of consciousness in ten seconds, brain death in three minutes. And I would permanently get rid of an annoying parasite that only serves to yell at me, steal food, and embarrass my existence.
The idea of execution crossed his mind, incredibly tempting, clean, and efficient. But Kian's crushing long-term logic discarded it within milliseconds after analyzing the ramifications of the possible consequences.
No. It's a serious strategic error. If he dies, I become an eight-year-old orphan. And Marleyan society isn't exactly kind to parentless Eldian children. Kian knew the history and politics of this rotten world. If he became an orphan in the Internment Zone, the Marleyan Public Security authorities would intervene immediately.
He would be dragged to a state orphanage overcrowded with disease, or worse, he would be discarded from the Warrior program for being considered an instability risk, or sent as a test subject for Marley's chemistry and biology research team looking to experiment with Ymir's blood, or simply used as a meat shield in the front-line suicide infantry in their next continental war. An Eldian child with no family, with no one to claim their well-being or sign papers, was literally free livestock, expendable material for the State's meat grinders.
My father is a useless drunk, a cowardly abuser, and a failure as a human being, yes, Kian reasoned, taking the spoon and eating a portion of the food he had prepared, which despite its ingredients tasted quite good, much better than the bland meals his father made. But, in the myopic eyes of the Marleyan civil registry, he is still my legal guardian. His mere and pathetic existence as a breathing adult in this house provides me with a vital bureaucratic shield. His signature gives me legal legitimacy to continue attending Magath's prestigious military program. It gives me a roof to sleep under at night without Marleyan guards asking me questions.
Kian looked up and stared directly into his father's eyes, who stopped for an instant, strangely unsettled by the dead depth in his eight-year-old son's gaze.
Killing him is a waste, Kian concluded. What I need is for him to stop being a nuisance and start being a useful asset. I could brainwash him with the Geass. Order him to quit alcohol. Order him to be a perfect, devoted father, an absolute slave to my well-being. I could make him get two jobs, work until his fingers bleed just to bring me fresh meat and money every day, and serve as the perfect alibi against any army suspicion.
The total brainwashing option was, by far, the most beneficial. Kian liked that idea. Transforming the abuser into the most pathetic, obedient servant.
However, Kian looked away from his father and returned to his plate. Not yet. I won't do it today.
He didn't make that decision to delay the brainwashing because he thought it was a morally wrong or hasty action; honestly, it was the most logical option and the one he should definitely follow to improve his quality of life immediately.
But still, Kian's extremely cautious mind wanted to make the final decision a little later. Maybe, while analyzing human behavior in the coming days, his neurons would make synapses and he'd come up with a much better structured order, more foolproof, with no legal loopholes in the Geass's interpretation. And if, after evaluation in his thoughts, he didn't find a better strategic use for that cartridge, then he would simply proceed with the initial plan: he would turn his father into a totally obedient slave drone to finance any active assets he had.
For now, it was fundamentally better to keep that golden bullet in the chamber, until he was completely sure and convinced that he wouldn't need to use the absolute power of the Geass in another critical scenario involving the same subject.
"I'm ready," Kian said, swallowing the last bite of his breakfast and getting up from the chair to prepare for what was coming.
His father frowned, annoyed by his son's lack of reaction, a lack of reaction that made him, an adult, feel even smaller and more insignificant.
"You'd better be ready, you spawn," the man spat, turning his back abruptly and walking into the living room to frantically search among the empty bottles, hoping to find a few drops of leftover liquor to calm his hangover. "I won't bother accompanying you today. You know the way. You have to be a damn man for once. Find your own way to the headquarters gates. And don't you dare embarrass me in front of the military. If they kick you out for being weak, if you come back crying... I swear on my life I'll bolt the door and leave you sleeping on the streets for the stray dogs to eat."
Kian didn't respond to the pathetic, hollow, and trite attempt at a threat. He walked with silent steps towards the entrance of the house, where hanging from a rusty nail hammered into the wood was his most important possession for survival on this continent, and at the same time, the object history considered the most humiliating.
The armband.
A thick strip of cheap, rough, yellowish fabric, with a nine-pointed star crudely stamped in the center. The historical symbol of the Demon. The inescapable mark of the Eldians' original sin.
Kian took it in his small hands, feeling the texture of the fabric. A simple, tiny, cheap piece of woven cloth, Kian thought, rubbing the material with his thumb. And yet, on this racist continent, this piece of yellow cloth holds more real power over a person's life and death than the barrel of a loaded gun pointed at your forehead. If I make the mistake of walking out that door and going two blocks without this on and clearly visible on my left arm, literally any ordinary Marleyan citizen, or any bored guard, can beat me to death in the middle of the cobblestone street, or shoot me in the back, and wouldn't face a single criminal charge. The law would protect them. It is, literally, the leash masters put on their dogs so they don't shoot them.
He wrapped the armband around his left arm and fastened it firmly. He felt no shame or emotional pain putting it on, as happened to many elderly people in the ghetto who still mourned their history. For Kian, it was simply a uniform. An access pass. Surviving in the wolves' den required dressing in sheep's clothing, and if the yellow star was what prevented him from being executed prematurely, he would wear it without any shame. After all, only a complete idiot or a suicidal martyr would refuse to wear it out of "pride," knowing perfectly well the cruel and immediate consequences.
He opened the main wooden door, which creaked loudly in protest on its rusty hinges, and stepped out into the cold, misty Liberio morning.
The ghetto was slowly beginning to wake. Men and women with furrowed brows and hunched shoulders headed to their cheap, strenuous manual labor jobs under the watchful eyes of Marleyan guards posted on the corners. Surely some children cried from morning hunger in the distance. At first glance, it seemed like a normal, everyday societal atmosphere, but if you scanned carefully, you would realize how depressing the environment was.
Kian walked at a fast but steady pace, his boots rhythmically striking the damp cobblestones. He ignored his surroundings. His mind was focused one hundred percent on the day ahead.
Yesterday I managed to pass the initial cut, managing without standing out abnormally, maintaining a medium-high but safe profile, he reviewed in his mind, while agilely dodging a large puddle of stagnant water. And, more importantly, the Gacha rewarded me generously for my tactical efficiency. I got excellent rewards. Today, however, things will escalate. Magath and his uniformed gorillas will probably drastically increase the physical and psychological pressure on the group. They'll want to keep testing our mental resolve in the face of physical pain, and see if they can further cull the applicants, Kian theorized, his mind connecting dots. Their numerical goal must be to further reduce the number, cut in half the scant eighty children left standing yesterday. Marley's army doesn't want eighty average candidates; they want the six or seven best genetic and psychological prospects from the ghetto. To achieve that today, they'll want to completely break our morale. They'll expect tears, pleas for mercy, vomiting, collapses from severe fatigue, and very likely, broken bones.
Kian looked up and kept his gaze fixed forward. There, at the end of the ghetto's long main avenue, rose the imposing polished stone structures and the black iron gates of the Marleyan Headquarters, ominously silhouetted against the grayish morning sky. They were the walls of the beast that would devour them all.
They're going to be very disappointed with me, he smiled internally.
After a twenty-minute solitary, uninterrupted walk, Kian arrived at the immense cobblestone square in front of the main gates of the Headquarters.
The contrast with the scene from the previous morning was brutal. Unlike day one, where there was a chaotic mass of five hundred noisy, hyperactive children and entire families dramatically crying farewells, hugging as if they were going to the slaughterhouse, today the scene was somber, empty, and horribly silent. Only the eighty surviving children, those who hadn't given up on the dirt track, would be there (since not everyone had arrived yet; after all, there were still a few minutes left until it started). They stood in loose formations, shivering from the cold and anticipated terror.
The physical toll of the first day was evident on every tiny body. Many of them had makeshift bandages clumsily wrapped around scraped knees or forearms. Others limped slightly when trying to shift their weight. All, without exception, had dark circles and seemed to have aged five years overnight in a single painful night.
Kian infiltrated the crowd with his usual stealth, seeking his place near the center. His mental radar, trained by knowledge of the future, quickly located the key characters.
A few meters to his left, Reiner Braun was vigorously rubbing his bare arms to generate heat. The blonde boy looked terribly bruised; Kian could see a yellowish hematoma peeking out from under his shirtsleeve, and he seemed profoundly exhausted, as if he had barely slept two hours. But, to Kian's surprise and interest, there was a look of absolute stubbornness, an almost fanatical and desperate spark burned into Reiner's face that almost impressed him.
Right next to him, the antithesis of resolve: Bertholdt Hoover. The extremely tall boy looked pale as paper, sweating coldly on a freezing morning, swallowing audibly and staring at the barracks gates as if he were about to vomit his own stomach from pure, paralyzing, raw anxiety.
A bit further from the blonde and brunette pair, Kian saw the brothers. Marcel Galliard and Porco stood together, talking in quick, intense whispers. Marcel seemed to be giving tactical instructions or calm advice to his younger brother. Porco, for his part, repeatedly rubbed the back of his neck with a grimace of evident discomfort and residual pain, surely remembering and cursing the stupid fall he almost took with the gigantic sandbag the previous day.
At one point, Porco's visual scan swept the crowd and his eyes accidentally met Kian's red ones. The grumpy blonde boy held his gaze for a second, curiosity flashing before his pride reacted. Porco looked away immediately, almost with a start, frowning deeply with an adolescent mix of wounded pride, shame, and irritation at the unspoken tactical debt. Kian paid it the slightest attention; he looked away instantly, dismissing the future Jaw Titan as an irrelevant factor for that morning.
And not far from the silent blonde girl, leaning heavily against the thick stone wall of the barracks, slumped as if her spine and legs were made of soft, boneless jelly, stood Pieck Finger. Pieck had her eyes half-closed from fatigue. However, her sharp peripheral perception detected Kian's movement. Pieck heavily lifted her gaze and looked directly at Kian as he approached to join the central formation.
Recognizing the calm boy who had prevented her from fainting from forced hyperventilation due to exhaustion yesterday, a very subtle, genuine, and almost imperceptible smile of recognition and gratitude crossed the pale, tired lips of the girl with disheveled black hair. She clearly remembered the vital, though cold, structural breathing advice that had saved her skin and prevented her from fainting, possibly in a bad position that could have had consequences for today.
Kian looked into her eyes for a fraction of a second. Then he nodded his head and returned the smile, acknowledging the greeting from the future Cart Titan holder. Then, he turned rigidly to the front, fixing his gaze on the closed gates.
Not much time passed. With a deafening mechanical clang that made almost all the children jump, the heavy black metal gates of the barracks creaked painfully on their greased rails, slowly swinging wide open, revealing the enormous jaws of the interior military yard.
All the timid murmurs and childish whispers in the square died instantly, murdered by terror. The children instinctively and spasmodically straightened up, standing like frightened broomsticks, clumsily imitating a military attention stance they barely understood.
Commander Theo Magath marched out at the head of a full squad of a dozen Marleyan soldiers, all heavily armed with loaded rifles, their faces hidden under the shadows of their helmets and expressing absolute professional contempt.
The senior officer was not carrying his feared cavalry leather crop in his hand today; a detail that, far from calming the children, increased the tension in the air to suffocating levels. Today, Magath carried a heavy, shiny brass military stopwatch attached to a chain in his left hand, and a thick black leather notebook and pencil in his right hand. His posture was that of an executioner coming to assess the quality of his condemned prisoners' necks.
Magath stopped his march abruptly, right in front of the line of paralyzed children. His cold, gray, calculating eyes swept from left to right over the dramatically depleted ranks of survivors.
"Less than eighty," Magath finally said. His voice was not an explosive shout like yesterday; instead, he spoke in a cutting baritone tone, flat and laden with such dense disdain that it projected easily into the cold, silent morning air, reaching the last child in the back row. "A genuinely pathetic group, even by the standards of the Liberio demons. But... I suppose it's the most resilient scum from yesterday's batch."
He paused, letting a faint glimmer of relief show on some naive faces, before crushing it immediately.
"Don't you dare congratulate yourselves. Don't puff out your dirty chests just yet. Physically surviving the first day of selection only means, statistically speaking, that you are stupid and stubborn enough not to give up when your bodies demanded it. It means you have endurance, like pack mules. But Marley does not recruit mules to inherit the Power of the Titans. It recruits perfect weapons."
Kian maintained his mask of apathy, breathing deeply to expand his lung capacity, preparing for whatever came.
"Yesterday," Magath continued, dramatically raising the brass stopwatch so the gray dawn light glinted off its surface, "we tested if you had endurance in your legs. Yesterday we tested your cardiopulmonary capacity. Today... we're going to test if you have courage. The glorious Empire of Marley has no time, no food rations, and no strategic use whatsoever for useless cowards who flee, cry, or hesitate for a second when they see death directly in the eyes on the battlefield. Today, gentlemen, we are going to break you into pieces, physically and mentally. We are going to tear out any illusion of weakness you have. And those who don't completely break today... well, maybe, just maybe, you will be worthy of not being sent home and retaining your pathetic title of 'Candidates'."
Magath turned and rigidly pointed with his pencil towards the vast, muddy depths of the enormous military training yard beyond the gates.
The children's gazes followed the indication. During the night, the Marleyan soldiers' engineers had transformed the yard. They had prepared and erected a insane series of massive obstacles: tall walls of solid wood with no easy handholds; dense nets of extremely taut barbed wire placed less than forty centimeters above the muddy ground; deep pools of thick, foul-smelling mud; and vertical climbing walls, polished and completely slippery from the morning dew.
It was a pure, hardcore infantry assault course. It was metrically designed to test, exhaust, and injure adult, strong Marleyan recruits in their special forces training. And the military command was going to use it, without modifying a single centimeter, on a group of terrified, thin Eldian children between eight and nine years old.
"This is your playground for today," Magath announced, a small, cruel smile, devoid of any human warmth, barely showing under his impeccable grayish mustache. "You have exactly two hours strict time limit to complete the assault course flawlessly... five times in a row," Magath ordered. "If you don't make it in time, if you hesitate in front of the wire, if you refuse to jump the wall... your time here ends instantly. You're out of the program. Your opportunity will be ripped away, and you will crawl back into the misery of the ghetto forever. Understood?"
Magath raised the hand holding the stopwatch. The terror on the faces of the other children, including Bertholdt and Reiner's, was absolute.
Kian, on the other hand, clenched his fists, but not from fear. He felt the iron discipline thanks to his self-imposed Geass order; honestly, he should be a little nervous about such brutal training, but he felt no nerves. Instead, he felt he could do this. And with his body restored by the massage, he had an advantage over the other children, not to mention his mind was a sharp weapon. He would survive this. He would survive Marley. He would complete the course and get more feats from the Gacha system, and then pray for more incredible things.
"Begin now, you scum!" Magath roared at the top of his lungs, bringing his hand down forcefully and pressing the stopwatch.
Tactical chaos erupted instantly. With a collective scream mixing terror and suicidal resolve, the horde of eighty children burst into a stampede, desperately pushing each other towards the first large pit of thick mud.
Kian launched himself forward, his eyes on the objective. A new day of hell had begun, and Kian was ready to conquer every inch of it.
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FEATS:
1- Summon your first Familiar. +1 Bronze Ticket
2- Unleash an Advanced and Corrupted Artificial Intelligence upon the world. +1 Silver Ticket
ROLLS:
[Brown Bear] |Common Familiar| (Bronze Ticket)
A regular big old brown bear companion, as a familiar they are a bear who has excellent genetics and near human intellect, they are strong enough to shrug off most small firearms and crush a human being like an apple. By default they are female.
[Wyvern] |Uncommon Familiar| (Silver Ticket)
A large sky-dwelling reptile with fire breath, they are often referred to as lesser dragons, a wyvern can easily swallow a man whole and roast an entire battalion with its fire breath. This Wyvern is female and can produce eggs to reproduce.
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