1 Recklessness

It was a seamlessly cold night in a chapel, the moonlight gazes upon the window, giving a white beautiful hue all over the place. There was a baby who slept, cried, giggled and yawned. That baby was once spotted by a priest who owns an orphanage. He was taken, and raised and was eventually given the name Aiden, meaning "little fire", in Irish mythology given that this little fire will grow stronger in time, and burn everything that it desires to.

It didn't take a few years for Aiden to know about the world he was living in, when he turned 4 he learned that, the world he lived in had creatures that were inhuman. They all had different names, and different ranks, the higher the rank, the greater the threat.

The rank goes:

Bronze

Silver

Gold

Platinum

Diamond

Red Star

Triton

Blue Star

Enceladus, being the highest rank.

Of course this also worked for humanity, given that these monsters were plenty strong, humans needed the power to fight back, and thus they were granted, these granted abilities were used to repel these monsters, they never doubted the giver of the abilities, they only felt admiration and deep appreciation for helping them repel the monsters.

But in reality, maybe they were only scared that if they even gave a hint of doubt this powers would be taken away. Every person there is had always wished for power and control over everything, they then followed a political system called monarchy where they follow one person who is known as the strongest human.

Right now at this era, the one who rules over them is Tsukoshiki Ishizami with attained the rank blue star, he was hailed a genius since the strongest ruler who ruled them had reached the rank Enceladus which was one rank away from Blue Star.

The current ruler has plans to reach the rank Enceladus, no to reach further than that and surpass everything. He wants to reach a rank more higher than Enceladus and had absolute authority in everything. He stated this the moment he became the ruler of the world, there were people who were hyped about it, and people who were given a bad taste, as for why? It was because if he did succeed, this would just give them a higher obstacle to surpass.

Aiden learned all this by tales the priest told, history books that were laid upon the floor, and such rumors that circulate faster than light. Knowing that this world had abilities he was excited as to what he may awaken upon him. He would often ask the priest when he will awaken. "In a few years or sooner, every child awakens their own abilities at the age of 7, if you awakened below 7 years old, you might have the talent to be a genius" The priest responded in a gentle soft tone

Upon hearing this Aiden was only shook in excitement, he started counting off the months, years and all until his day of awakening, not knowing that a tragedy will befall upon him. As he grew older he learned more, he currently lived in the region of Manas. There were other neighboring territories too such as the Region of Milkgud and Region of Bluet. This were the current neighboring countries beside Manas.

He was currently 5 years old and also learning how to fight with a sword using a branch he found laying beside the tree, although it wasn't a sword its length and weight still suffices. He would always swing it back and forth causing him to lose balance every time and then. Every time he would return to the orphanage, he would be covered with dirt and dust and sometimes with a bruise or two.

He would often get scolded telling him to always be careful, there were also times he wasn't allowed to go out for his own safety, nevertheless he would still find ways to escape and practice with the tree branch, it would take them about 30 minutes to find him and would get pinched in the ear while getting dragged to the orphanage. Despite all of this Aiden still deeply loves the family he grew with, he had a lot of fun times with the other kids he lived with, and the adults who raised him, if one would look at it, there would be a yellow light hue like the sun, it was filled with bright and innocent faces, untattered and kind.

As the night approached them, they had their messy buy clean dinner accompanied with lots of laughter and joy. They directly went to the bed to sleep, meanwhile Aiden had other plans, he decided to try to escape the orphanage and visit the forest. He was always over-confident of himself so he decided to be brave and visit it, he was thinking if he could hunt a few pigeons or anything that might be edible would lessen the burden on his orphanage. He couldn't do this in the morning because he would surely be stopped again and again concerning about his safety.

"43 minutes and 3 seconds, 44 minutes and 5 seconds, 44 minutes and 7 seconds..." Aiden keeps muttering, he told himself that once he reaches 60 minutes, 1 hour exactly, he would be sure that other people would already be sleeping and that's when he would do his move.

He reached his allotted time and decided to do his move. He opened the door sneakily.

*creak*

The door suddenly let out a creaking noise, Aiden suddenly went back to his bed with careful yet rapid steps, he quickly grabbed the blanket and covered his face trying to minimize the noise. He waited there for barely a minute and decided to peek if someone was there. When he noticed that no one was there, he decided to put up his plan again. Once he got out, he closed the door rapidly hoping that it won't make a noise, he stopped it the instant it got close to its nearing end. Strangely enough, it made less noise than the last one.

Aiden made sure to keep that in mind as he sneakily tip-toed at the near exit to go out, Once he reached outside, he realized that he was bare footed, he didn't want to risk himself getting caught so he just decided to walk carefully and focus his eyes on the road and direction he's going to. Before he knew it, he was already far away and lost out in the woods, since he only went straight and didn't go right or left. He figured that if he only looks back from where he came from, and feel the footsteps he left with his bare feet to know if he was going through the right direction.

He tracked his footsteps in a hurry, he realized how dark which scared him. He had no sense of sight, he was scared on the dangers that he would come across on, he then heard a faint sound of branches cracking. He stopped at his tracks so that he could avoid any minimal movements that may cause sound. But before he realized it, his breathing pattern was all over the place, he tried to grasp for air because of anxiety.

This made his breathing heavy, if one were to breath like this in a place without any kind of noise, people were most likely to hear it, this is the situation that Aiden was now, even if he wasn't moving, his gasping for air is making a lot of noises.

After a few seconds,,, A soft texture suddenly grazed his leg, he raised his leg in surprise, he identified it as a fox since the priest told me that there were a lot of foxes in the forest. The fox or something seemed to be in a hurry, he silently followed the fox when he suddenly heard a stampede at his back, without paying mind to the fox anymore, he ran as fast as he can to the orphanage he was in. Although Aiden was an overconfident brat, even he would be scared after hearing large and heavy footsteps.

As he reached the orphanage he saw the grown ups awake outside and some of the older kids too. "AIDENNNN!!!" The grownups shouted, when he reached the orphanage, he could still hear the large and heavy footsteps, the tree's were falling and the sound became more louder. The grownups suddenly made the kids go to the opposite side of the noise. Some grownups also used there telephone and they seemed to be calling someone while the others were in a rush.

Suddenly the footsteps became louder and faster at it seemed to be approaching them closer and closer. Everyone was nervous, everyone was scared at that time, a fog became then suddenly became visible to the naked eye. They suddenly saw some silhouettes of monsters, they were all short but what makes them scary is that they brought an entire army with them. They resembled the silhouette of a goblin-no, the one that was causing this stampede right now was a horde of goblins. If one was to look at it from above, they would have an estimation of over at least 2000 goblins approaching the orphanage right now.

If they were only 3 - 5 goblins, perhaps the orphanage could fend them of, but a reason why goblin dungeons were ranked high, was because in one dungeon there would be at least 2000-4000 goblins at once. So if you would see a goblin in the wild, its better to assume that there would be companions too.

While they were running, Aiden suddenly heard a high pitched scream, Aiden suddenly turned his head back as he was curious to whoever screamed like that. As he turned around, he saw one goblin that escaped from the pack that was currently harming a little girl.

Aiden instinctively grabbed a sharp stick laying on the ground about 2 meters in front of him, as he grabbed it, he sprinted all the way holding the stick javelin style. The goblin noticed this and as Aiden was about to stab the goblin in the back. The goblin then dodged as the scene happened.

Aiden was clinging to a stick and in shock for what he was witnessing, right now scarlet hued fluid was slithering through his wrist as he couldn't move a single nerve to do something. The goblin suddenly broke the silence in his mind with the goblin's singing and dancing and was brought back to reality.

He realized, as blood dripped from the sharp end of the stick, he had stabbed someone right at the heart resulting its death. The little girl was now dead with an expressionless face, tears stopped flowing from the eyes and remained stagnant.

Realizing this, he got scared, he looked at the goblin who was still dancing and talking gibberish in a robotic fashion, he shedded tears and was soon filled with resentment. Who does he resent you say? Himself, it doesn't take a professional fighter just to know that what he did was reckless. He looked back to the people and saw that some of them saw him kill a person. Before he realized it the goblin horde was already close to him, and people from the orphanage hasn't gone that far away. He was, some kind of relieved in a way. He was relieved that, the fact that he killed someone would be out to the world.

He looked at the bare sky full of stars, his tears was still flowing as he said "sorry" continuously without catching a breath. He closed his eyes and fell to the ground. still saying sorry and before he knew it, he passed out.

He opened his eyes, and saw an unfamiliar room, it had a white ceiling and white walls. He was in a bed with a patient monitor beside him. A flashback of what happened suddenly gone through his mind, and tears flowed out once again from his eyes.