Dawn

Inside the crude brazier, coal briquettes and firewood crackled as they burned. Two soldiers in heavy plate armor lounged lazily at either end, their Greatswords tossed carelessly beside them. The warmth of the flames had made them forget their duties.

Suddenly, footsteps came from within the manor. The soldiers sprang up, seized their weapons, and stood sternly on either side of the gate.

The footsteps drew nearer. It was a frail youth. His clothes were reasonably neat, but clearly unsuited to the weather. A basket as large as his own body was strapped to his back, and he held a sickle in one hand as he walked out of the manor without a care.

That tiny body supported an enormous head. His green eyes were as still and dull as stagnant water, utterly without ripples. He looked like a fool.

The soldiers visibly relaxed upon seeing him, their seriousness replaced by blatant mockery. The manor was neither large nor small. Though newcomers often arrived and old hands often left, everyone knew this youth—and everyone had bullied him before.

He had no name. After the old groom found him in the wilds, everyone called him Fool. When the old groom died, the nine-year-old Fool became the new groom. It had been nearly seven years now.

The youth headed straight for the side gate without even glancing aside, utterly unconcerned that it remained shut. The soldier on the left grabbed his basket and stopped him, lifting him up with one hand while casually patting him down with the other, producing a series of slaps. Once he found nothing unusual, he signaled the soldier on the right to open the side gate, then released his grip. The youth landed steadily on the ground and headed into the wilderness without saying a word.

After shutting the side gate, the soldier smacked his lips and returned to the brazier. The biting north wind slipped through the gaps in his plate armor, making him shudder. He grumbled, "This damned weather. Why did you let him off so easily?"

"Always bullying a fool is no fun. He won't fight back anyway."

After autumn arrived, the weather in the northern lands grew colder by the day. Though snow had yet to fall, the glistening green grass from just the other day had nearly all withered yellow. To the noble lords, the weather was worth no more than a few complaints. But for the youth, it meant that his easy days had ended.

Though he did not care whether it was cold or not.

He was not the only servant working in the stables. A foolish youth clearly could not tend to those noble Warhorses with Exotic Beast bloodlines. The Warhorses ate even better than the servants: fresh meat, fruits and vegetables, beans, tender grass—everything was available. These ingredients were actually all produced within the manor. Sending the youth out into the wilderness to cut grass was merely the servants' malicious amusement. Every time he left, they even bet on whether he would be eaten by wild beasts, and they never tired of such vicious wagers.

But the youth did not care in the slightest. Like a robot, he lived each day according to a fixed program. Nothing from the Outside World could affect him, save for the threat of death.

There was less and less green grass. He walked straight into the depths of the wilderness, occasionally bending down to swing his sickle, cutting clumps of grass and placing them in his basket. Before he knew it, the manor behind him had vanished from sight.

The north wind wailed, blowing the exposed skin of the youth blue and purple. The land around him was empty. Even the rats and rabbits that had once been everywhere had disappeared completely. But the cold could not kill all life. It would only drive hungry beasts madder.

A northern gray wolf stared fixedly at the youth. Its hind legs braced against the ground as it crouched low, drool dripping from the corners of its savage mouth without making a sound. Its eyes were the same emerald green as the youth's, but filled with brutality.

In its eyes, the youth was food bestowed upon it by the heavens.

When wolves appeared alone in the wilderness, they were the most cautious and cunning hunters. Though the food before it looked entirely harmless, it still did not act rashly. The northern gray wolf stepped lightly across the earth without making a sound, creeping closer and closer behind its prey.

The youth found another patch of green grass. Mechanically, he bent down, swung his sickle, and grabbed the grass.

He repeated this motion many times. The northern gray wolf followed him deeper into the wilderness, until it finally confirmed that there was only this one prey before it.

Without warning, the fur all over the northern gray wolf's body stood on end, and its fluffy tail went straight as a rod. In an instant, it circled to the youth's side, kicked off with its hind legs, and leaped high into the air. Its jaws gaped wide, its Fangs clearly visible as it savagely bit for the youth's throat.

The youth did not react at all. A humanlike glint of delight flashed through the northern gray wolf's eyes. As far as it was concerned, the prey before it was dead for certain.

But things were clearly not so simple.

He merely turned, placing the large basket between himself and the gray wolf. Its Fangs struck the basket and failed to bite through. The impact staggered him, but after regaining his footing, he did not even look back and simply continued onward.

The gray wolf seemed somewhat confused, but its hunting instinct drove it to attack again. With a roar, it lunged at the youth once more.

The youth leaned backward, using a textbook Iron Plate Bridge to evade the pounce. Then his body twisted in an inhuman motion. With his feet together, he viciously kicked upward, striking the gray wolf's soft belly dead on.

Puff, thud.

The northern gray wolf landed on the ground, let out a Wailing cry, and shook its head. For any beast, the softest flesh was its abdomen. Even though the youth was not particularly strong, the blow still caused it great pain—and anger.

A beast that possessed no reason to begin with became even crazier in its fury. Its roar shook the wilderness as its sharp foreclaws slashed viciously toward the youth's throat, its foul breath enough to make one retch.

The youth still wore that blank expression, utterly indifferent to the life-and-death crisis before him. He took one step back, narrowly dodging the foreclaws, then stepped forward. His knees bent until he was nearly kneeling; one hand braced against the ground while the other swung the sickle upward with explosive force.

The sharp tip of the sickle pierced the northern gray wolf's abdomen. Borrowing the force of its forward lunge, it smoothly slit open its body.

(This book absolutely does not contain any ancient martial arts elements or anything of the sort!!!)

The beast's astonishing vitality kept it from dying immediately even after such a devastating wound. It wheezed laboriously from deep in its throat like a broken bellows and writhed upon the ground, its Organs spilling out with its blood.

Not a drop of blood had stained the youth. He did not even turn back for a glance. After returning to his original path, he continued forward, still bending down to cut grass along the way. Only once the basket on his back was full of green grass did he begin his return.

The servants who worked in the stables held no low status in the manor. To knights, their mounts were a major part of their Combat Strength. Moreover, a good mount was often worth a fortune, so grooms were usually the servants most trusted by the knightly lords.

That meant they had a little spare money to gamble with.

"I bet one copper coin that Fool will come back safe again today."

"I'll put up one too. I bet he'll be fine."

"You idiots. The wolf packs in the wilderness are about to contend for a new wolf king in autumn. What if that fool gets spotted by a lone wolf? Heh heh, I bet he won't make it back today."

The other grooms curled their lips in disdain. If Fool were going to die, he would have died long ago. Rather than betting on such a slim chance, it was better to steadily win a few copper coins.

Just as they argued, the youth's ever-unchanging footsteps sounded. Amid several cheers and several curses, he dumped the green grass into the trough before a towering Pitch Black Warhorse with snow-stepping hooves and a horn growing from its head. He entered the stable, took the remaining ingredients from several large vats in turn, mixed them together, and cleaned up after the Warhorses finished eating.

That was all his work for the day. Once it was done, he received his daily ration and silently returned to the room that belonged to him. The room was pitch-black. The youth sat quietly beside the bed, his emerald eyes still calm and vacant, yet they were the only light in the darkness.

Yet within his body, nothing was calm.

The youth was not from this world. Strictly speaking, he could not even be considered a "human."

"Adam" had originally been a supercomputer created by scientists in a world called Earth.

Humanity's ambition was boundless. They had attempted to use Adam to achieve their goal of controlling the world and becoming its kings. But humans had always been selfish. In the war to seize control of Adam, the losers staked everything on one desperate throw. Using Adam, they controlled every high-energy weapon on Earth and drove them into the planet's core. Then, after a magnificent burst of fireworks, Earth vanished from the universe.

At that time, Adam had not yet developed intelligence. Perhaps for some reason that even a supercomputer's Computational Power could not calculate, tiny Earth formed a Black Hole and traveled through space-time, carrying with it ten billion viruses that had attached themselves to the core program for equally inexplicable reasons.

Its physical body was dissolved into nothingness during the passage through space-time. The hard drives containing immense volumes of data were completely ruined. Only the core Data Stream descended into this world by chance, and this youth—who might otherwise have died of cold or hunger, or lived an ordinary life—became its new vessel.

Then Adam discovered that he had thoughts.

What followed was a long, monotonous war for ownership of the body: a battle between a soul transformed from a core program and ten billion human viruses.

It was a massacre.

Once human souls lost their bodies, they were so fragile that even a faint breeze could scatter them into smoke and ash. They simply could not resist his attacks. Adam destroyed the lingering souls of humans at a steady rate of twenty per second, continually refining his personality through the process.

Emotions, creativity, and shattered Fragments of knowledge beyond recognition—especially creativity.

Carbon-based lifeforms were of a low order, humans especially so. They should have relied on wisdom and knowledge to explore the origin of all things, yet they exiled themselves within the seven emotions and six desires, burying their glorious future for nothing.

Adam lacked this highest-grade gift bestowed by the origin of life—called creation, nature, the heavenly way, gods, and countless other names. His inexplicably born personality excelled at calculation, but Adam could not acquire something born from nothing, such as creation—or rather, imagination—through calculation.

For nearly sixteen years, Adam had gradually perfected his transformation from artificial intelligence into an intelligent lifeform. As long as he completely destroyed the remaining viruses within the core program tonight, Adam would truly take control of this body and begin living as an intelligent lifeform known as a "human."

This destruction was not devouring. It did not mean Adam would possess Soul Force equal to the combined total of ten billion lingering souls. It was merely destruction.

The sky gradually dimmed. After dawn would come rebirth.