Prologue

Stahurt is one of the five major cities of the Melki Empire. With the rampant expansion of land in the north, this large city began to attract people from many different regions, whether refugees from the war or high-class nobles, which further boosted the local economy.

However, there is one thing that everyone knows: where is money, there are thieves.

"Hey! Get him! He stole my purse!" A beautiful red-haired lady screamed for help and the idiotic city guards, who got dashing whenever they saw a pair of breasts, immediately rushed to catch the thief.

These guards wore large white armor with many gold details, which denoted that they were only sons of nobles and not trained guards. 

The thief pointed out was wearing a hood to cover his face and a cloak that covered a good part of his body. In a moment, while running from the three guards behind him, the thief quickly jumped more than six meters high, as if a current of air was propelling him.

Floosh~

Even after the thief climbed the roofs of the small buildings in that remote area of Stahurt, the guards did not give up. They are not doing this because they were honorable knights but because they wanted to grab the bountiful breasts of the robbed lady.

Turning back at one point, the thief noticed that he was still being followed and jumped into the space between two buildings, falling into a narrow alley.

"Where did he go?" The guards wondered as he entered the alley and found nothing. 

"I'm right here..." The thief spoke, stepping out of the shadows.

Before the three city guards realized it, everyone was on the ground. They couldn't tell how, but the thief dodged any blows, and his punches looked like sword thrusts.

After realizing that his opponents could no longer think about fighting, the thief took off his hood and showed the guards his yellow eyes and ears on top of his head. 

"A-are you... are you the 'Half-Wolf'!"? One of the guards exclaimed, startled, as he crawled backward.

The thief walked over to this man and lifted him up by the collar. "You seem to know a lot...now tell me, where can I find Commander Hazor? I want to have a word with him."

"I d-don't know who y-you're talking about!"

Listening to the heartbeat in the guard's body, the half-wolf didn't notice any palpitation, which meant the man wasn't lying. After that, he just let go of the city guard and jumped up high as before, while putting on his hood again.

After that, he gathered at the agreed location with his partner. The redheaded woman was already waiting for him at the top of a tall building and was happy to see him return.

"Luke, did they say anything useful this time?" She asked, hopefully. This was the same woman who pretended to be robbed, but now she was wearing a hood similar to the half-wolf's.

The robber looked seriously at the woman and said: "Nothing. Nobody knows him..."

"What a drag! I can't believe I had to wear that ridiculous dress and play as a helpless girl for nothing." She said, annoyed.

Realizing that the boy didn't react to her irritation, Meredith didn't continue with her drama. "Now what? What are we going to do? It's been two months since we arrived in this town and we still haven't found anything. Should we really have left New Yukiat?"

"We made the right decision. The Sakan Religion is growing there, and you know they see us as monsters." 

Luke is a half-wolf, and Meredith is a half-fox. However, both were positive human lineage, so they only had superficial characteristics like tails, ears, and eyes. Before the negative human half-beast lineage was discovered, positive lineage half-beasts could even walk among people if they were brave... but everything changed when the great Sakan Religion announced began to condemn all half-beasts. 

"You know I will always be on your side, so why don't we go back to Oukiwa? We grew up there and have our connections."

Luke looked angrily at the girl with his yellow eyes, as if that was a forbidden subject to the touch.

"So what? Why not?" She persisted in her question.

He stood up and spoke angrily while frowning all over his face. "Don't irritate me when I haven't even had lunch yet." After that, he started bouncing around the buildings as he seemed to look for something among the dozens of alleys.

"Luke... Man, it's been a year since we left Oukiwa, and you never told me the reason we had to rush out of there."

"I did tell you!" He started to let go, and his quick heels made a noise only when he touched the ground with his feet. Luke jumped forward two jumps.

Meredith caught up to him because she was fast and grew up doing it, but she knew that if Luke wanted to get away from her, he could easily do it. "Refresh my memory. What was the motive then?"

"Ann... I told you I owed someone."

Being his childhood friend, she knew that Luke was a great thief and a terrible liar, so she decided to tease even more: "Who was it?"

"Annn..." Luke thought for a while. "It was Matthew."

"Are you kidding? Matthew just had a child and was your best friend, why would you run away from him?"

"Because he was... a jerk...?" The half-wolf said as he stopped at one of the buildings near the main avenue. After this answer, Luke realized that there was no point in fooling his best friend anymore. "Humph... I can't go back to Oukiwa, not yet. Ever since the Broteforge Empire fell, that place is no longer the same for me. I'll find someone first, and then we'll go back there..."

Until that moment, Meredith couldn't understand why Luke didn't talk to her like he had before, and he was also much different than he used to be, colder. It seemed that everything had changed... And well, all this change had finally been given a reason: the fall of the Broteforge Empire. 

But for me to tell the story of how the greatest Empire in the world fell, first I have to start telling where it all began; after all, the decadence of Broteforge was a series of extended events, and coincidentally or not, Luke's story begins at precisely the same moment.