(The official rewrite of Ant Tensei begins!!)

Life…

It’s so short isn’t it.

No matter how long you seem to walk in any direction, eventually you find a dead end.

At the end, I now wonder just what I tried to live for, what my true purpose was. Why did I keep taking another step when the end is inevitable. When in the end of all ends, one cannot see a meaning to walk that next step.

So, why did I take that next step..?

I never really felt anything, my heart chilled with the frost of indifference and longing. To gaze as far as I dared, to think as deep as I thought, to do what I have done. Why did I take that next step?

There’s always that question… whenever I took that next step… why… why did I keep going… why did I take another step… why did I not just give up… why did I keep fighting… why did I struggle… why did I teach… why did I learn… why did I lead… why did I survive… why did I do what I did…

I… I…. why…

That word…. why…

As I stare at this broken sky, into the endless void of space ever growing closer to this dying body of mine, this word still yet ponders in my mind…

Why did I do… what I did…

At the end… was all I did… all I built… all I taught…. really pointless?

If that was so… why do I feel… so… content?

Perhaps… there was something in my life… that was worth something?

But… what did I do that meant anything? If this is the result of all I’ve done… then what was the point? I merely wait here, floating in the vacuum of all ends yet no beginnings, waiting for the silence to overcome.

Was there any reason at all?

Perhaps… i’m still alive right now… if there’s anything at all, I might as well reflect on my life… if there’s anything I can do for the sake of all i’ve done, it’s pass on while remembering my life with contentment. Whether or not my life was pointless or not will be left to the universe of time to decide, for in my failure, I leave no heir to succeed any memory. As it was planned in the greater extent of reality, humanity has fallen, it stands my great failure for such an event, my shame that shall not be carried by a single soul of the living, yet carried by all of the damned.

In this supposed life I carried with me, one could say that I was different, perhaps called special by some, yet lived as but a curse.

I can't say what really occurred at the time of my birth, not many children could if one shared a creation such as my own. In my efforts, I stood to understand several things about my existence. This husk called a body holds a great instability, that is to say my cells hardly could be called orthodox in their development. The cellular divisions casting shadows over a normal organism. Organs missing, organs developing that have never existed in any species, from what little could be found about my creation I could only have a brief picture.

If I were to be described during my early years, essentially, I was a living tumor.

My DNA was a complete mess. When I was born, I had multiple sets of every single chromosome, my cells dividing and dying randomly as they mutated further and further.

For the first year of my life, I was merely kept alive at a research facility in the broken-down country of my birth. Such a small and destitute place with no military power at all. If not for the oil produced there, there would not have even been a nation there at all.

The scientists played with my body, injecting various liquids and using various devices on my body. I will never know for sure how much of what I am... was, was a result of their work, and what was my intended existance. All I can ever believe... all I could ever believe... is that my existence was something rejected by fate, yet was not eliminated, as all that which goes against the flow of destiny commonly are.

Such was my life, to go against all that stood, all that was believed, to know what I know and walk on the path yet pathed. It mattered not the destination, yet as I wait here, within this fallen world upon which there shall never be another dawn, perhaps that is the very 'fate' of those who walk against the tides of destiny.

My first memories formed in that white box… their tests and trials continuously without end. Arms were severed only to regrow with some several injections and some powder being forced into the wounds. An eye being split would reform after a few days, my body not dying after my throat was cut and continuously bleeding.

My cells would always generate faster than anything. No matter the test, no matter the damage, that husk would always reform.

For me, well, you could say that there really wasn’t a ‘me’ at that point, there was only a continually growing sack of flesh that was constantly being tested and abused. The very depths of human testing and indifference.

One can't blame them though. Honestly, that thing was nothing, merely a sack of flesh. Even if it had memory, all that memory held was the various experiments upon it and nothing more.

Normally in such a tale, there would be some researcher that would show the flesh kindness, teach it to speak and feel, then the creature would rescue the researcher, who was opposite gender of course, when they were caught going against regulations and whisk away to a happily ever after.

Of course this wasn’t the case.

One day there was an earthquake and something within the lab must have caught fire. The fire was pretty big too. I don’t know if many of the scientists got out or not, but I suppose there must have been one kind one somewhere because the door to my white box opened for the first time. There were no more needles from the walls or machines from the floor, there was a door.

Of course my mind was hardly developed, but over time with their constant experiments, my body had more or less grown into a normal shape I suppose. If I had to guess, I might have been four or five at the time, but since my body was developing so fast, I’d say I looked like a young teenager and was roughly four feet tall or so.

There was no way that i’d know what fire was, nor did I ‘know’ pain actually meant. After all, pain is merely something your brain instinctively creates depending on the stimulus from your nerves. If you don’t have the ‘instinct’ to create pain, then you don’t actually feel pain, you just feel the damage on your body and nothing more. Since my body was constantly subjected to ‘painful’ procedures without end since before my body even held a memory, there’s little chance that I would have been able to comprehend what ‘pain’ was.

Since that was the case, I merely ‘moved’ out of that room. Since I was devoid of any interaction or change since my mind began to function, that sack of flesh that was me simply began stretching out it’s arms, moving it’s torso, and pushing with it’s legs.

Eventually, something like a broken walk on one’s knees while pushing with your legs was born as a form of movement. Looking back at it, that scene was… interesting. Not so much for the movement, but for the fact that as I was moving, the fire caught up to the area I was in.

As a result my flesh was constantly on fire. If I had been in direct flames for too long, not even with the cells that I had, that body would have turned to ash and bone. Cells can only be created if there’s the nutrients to create them, even then my flesh wouldn’t grow back that fast. When they severed my arm, it took what I think was months, when they flayed my back, it took a week to grow back.

If not for just sheer stupid luck, I would not have gotten out of that facility.

When I got out, there was emergency teams already there. With my burns all over, I was picked up and brought to an ambulance wherein they shipped me to a hospital. Thinking back, some of the people that worked at the facility were wide eyed as I exited the building, but not a one said a thing.

At the hospital, they gave me some treatment for the burns and tested me for injuries. Well, since I couldn’t really even be considered as a human then, I ended up being sent to a mental hospital for children.

It’s thanks to that place that over the next few years I ended up developing an actual ‘mind’.

I’d find out years later that my brain has far more pathways as well as some other things. I didn’t really undergo the tests then because I was interested, more so because ‘others’ were interested.

Basically I learned things substantially faster than the other kids. Well… not to compare to children with actual mental challenges, I merely wasn’t raised at all, so my development shouldn’t be compared to those little ones.. I don’t really know why I’m comparing my growth to them…

Well, years passed and I was let out of the mental hospital. Since my nation didn’t really have laws for child care or age limits, I was just let out the front door and told ‘good luck’.

From there, I eventually got taken in by a group of kids similar to my condition. Years past and I became the leader of the street children of the entire town. There were hundreds of us, but I made a rule to only steal food and water, never anything more.

I was very fast, my muscles and nervous system moving far faster than the usual person, I easily could run nearly twenty five miles an hour by the time I was just ten. By that point I already looked like a young adult, but the children who followed me knew otherwise.

From becoming the leader of those child thieves, my ‘reality’ developed quickly. I grew to know what suffering was, what sadness was. What I learned was that there is a darkness. It was then I realized that I was raised by those who were completely dark, truly evil. Though, it really didn’t bother me much, when it came to realizations of life changing things, it bothered me for only a few minutes. I mean, I just learned that I was a test subject for human research… and how is that going to feed the fifth group of children thieves tomorrow? Who cares about how you were raised, doesn’t matter at all if you just move past it. Seriously, the amount of people who gasp whenever I told my story of how I grew up…

Since I grew very fast and my cells divided and developed at such a rate, more often than not, I was skin and bones. Because this was the case, all the children looked up to me, who stood as their leader. They told tales of how I would always starve so long as there was a single child in the city who went hungry, or that I tended to only eat once every few days so that the children who couldn’t help gather food could have something to eat. Eventually my body finished growing at around six feet seven inches or so and I stopped being all skin and bones. Though, since I was still not eating nearly enough for my body’s needs, I was still very thin.

Years upon years past, the kids began to grow up and get jobs while new kids appeared and came under our wings. As we moved into the workforce, we began to gather influence. Of course we stuck together for the most part, who wouldn’t when you grew up together and ate from the same leg of chicken, and treated every grain of rice as a treasure together.

Then, as humans often tend to do, there was a dispute. The larger nation that surrounded our own went into a major civil war. The borders of the nation fractured as over a dozen nations claimed independence and true right over the whole region.

My nation was not exempt and the indulgent monarch sent his soldiers out to conscript men and women for his army.

Since I had quite a bit of influence in the underground of the nation, I was forcibly ‘conscripted’. By that, I was put into the main military base near the border of one of the revolting nations. We were intended to be used as cannon fodder and to clear the field of mines and traps for the main army.

Well, after I entered the workforce, I had finally been able to start sating my nutritional needs. As such, my muscles ripened and my body developed.

Of course I didn’t want to be used as cattle, so I broke the hell out of that prison day one. After which I decided to take my holy right and unleash pure havoc upon the army personnel by night. By day, I would tamper with the food and water supplies, causing various troubles for the head staff, causing dozens of arrests within the military upper echelons. What..? They intended to use me as cannon fodder, of course i’m going to screw with them.

There were dozens of people who knew me at that base, so it was easy enough to keep under the radar. Many of them were a part of one group or another that I was associated with, so they all ensured that wherever I was, there weren't people who would give me up. Of course I made sure to not cause trouble to those who were on my side, such as locations of untampered food resources or non-salted water wells.

Three weeks in, there was signs of an enemy attack. It was ‘found’ out a few months later that there were false orders sent to the idiotic military leaders that tricked them into sallying from the military base. All that the military fortress had to offer, the fortifications, bunkers, heavy weaponry, even the artillery, all left behind. The reason behind it was that the so called 'Assault' was meant to be executed the moment the order came in, thus, there were dozens of soldiers who weren't even able to get a weapon in time before being ordered to rush out the front gates. Hmph, such is the idiocy of a military lead by nobility, they take things way too literally and ended up playing right into my hands. In the end, that five thousand conscripted citizenry charged straight into the pure hell of the enemy commander, who happened to be the main claimant during this time of war. His military, the entire 'elite' noble military of forty five thousand, equipped with mechanized tanks and aircraft.

Needless to say, the fight really only lasted fifteen minutes. It lasted that long because they were torturing the soldiers on the field, basically playing with the captured some-odd three thousand conscripted soldiers as they executed them.

Now, of course there’s no way I was stupid enough to go with them. Since I was obviously the one who had those orders sent. The idiots actually rounded up all the soldiers and left the military base they were ordered to hold. In the confusion, I managed to convince roughly sixty of my men to remain in the base regardless of their orders. It was a shame I couldn't get to more of them, but in that level of confusion with several thousand people, just managing to individually contact sixty people is a trick in on itself. There's no chance I would have any electronic device on my person to contact them, that would be like pointing out where I was to the entire military base.

During the confusion there were cases where we had to silence officers to make sure that those following me wouldn't be noticed. Random loyal soldiers trying to capture me also had to meet their ends. This was their own fault for not behaving like blind fools like they were supposed to. Hidden within the base, we went unnoticed as the base was abandoned for the slaughterhouse. That, that was when my plan fully went into action.

I went about the base, ordering my associates to take control of the various armaments of the base. I had special emphasis placed on the artillery, missile units and mounted auto-gatling guns. From there, each of them were set to the command of a single laptop that was in my possession.

You know, for a small oil country, we sure had a lot of modern weaponry. Mostly because of the oil we had, but you know, can’t complain, sure proved useful that day.

About a half hour from there, that big army finished slaughtering the last of the men had begun passing around the female soldiers. This isn’t child’s play, their leadership used the women as a way to keep their elites happy and under control after a battle. Of course the claimant for the seat of the region that led this army was a total idiot. He was completely indulgent and let his emotions dictate his actions. People who let their emotions leak influence important decisions that include others are trash after all. I knew as much at the very least. I already had a few of the group’s members infiltrate that army a week after I had broken out.

It was a simple matter to have him think that there was a rebel group willing to turn over the base and have the army attack them to be slaughtered.

If you think about it, there’s no way that we would have been able to win if they attacked the base. This wasn’t the times of swords, it was the time of really big guns and huge explosives that could kill hundreds of people in seconds. When outnumbered like that with soldiers that have no training to use their superior weapons, those weapons are useless and you’re screwed.

Even with my help, we only barely had enough knowledge between us all to program the various military equipment. That's only because those who knew me and were associated generally were in trades, and thus with their help, I deciphered the various systems in the nick of time.

Within that means, I had to have the next part of my plan set into action. I made contact with the enemy Claimant and offered the military base over to him. Normally there would be no way that my offerings wouldn't result in all of us just being slaughtered, but in this case it was different. I had already made him the offer of sending the troops out to their doom. Feeding him information and ideas that would tickle his extreme sense of self pride and narcissism, so easily was he deceived. The bait was taken and all that remained was for him to walk into my trap.

The plan was to have our army charge into a trap and slaughtered, then, he and his prideful army of nobles would hold a ceremony of triumph on the walls of the fortress. While it didn't matter to me, this WAS our nation's only military fortress, so losing it would normally signify defeat. He would have his military line up outside the walls as he gave a great speech. I'd have a speaker system set up of course. He would airdrop in from helicopters along with his chiefs of staff and military officers to show their bravery and grace.

In such, they would isolate their military hierarchy behind enemy lines while all of the base's armaments were pointed at the leaderless troops, tightly packed.

The idiot not only thought that my idea for glorifying himself was so great, he even planned to reward me by having me stand besides him during the ceremony. When the time came for him to march his forces up, he did just as planned.

His troops marched in tight formation, shoulder to shoulder in grandiose fashion…

His tanks were left at their camp since they wouldn’t be needed. I had a microphone set up so that he could give a speech to his troops and gloat about how amazing he was.

I stood beside him while my ‘5’ conspirators were given various awards for our ‘actions’.

In my left hand was a little laptop, my right hand was in my pocket holding a small pistol. Hell, I wasn’t even frisked and was allowed to stand right next to him.

Ah, I can’t believe he thought the military base was cleared out by just six people.

Not a one of them were armed, either.

The moment that fat contender started his ‘I’m the legitimate heir to the’ blah blah speech, I sat down on a chair and opened up my laptop. When I did that, the guy actually stopped his speech to look at what I was doing and he locked up when he saw there was a pistol in my other hand.

Well, when a guy to your right suddenly sits down with a gun in one hand and starts acting strange, you don’t continue your speech about how wise and great you are.

There was a sudden wave of silence, followed by the roar of fire and explosions as the weapons of the base came online. Thousands upon thousands of the soldiers on the field, listening to the speech, died instantly.

As the attack began, my conspirators sprung out of the fox holes that were set up throughout the base and slaughtered the officers and chain of command. Since the officers weren't very spread out, it wasn't hard to do.

The claimant's face was priceless. Never have I seen a fat man so pissed off in the entire span of my life from that point on.

Pulling out a saber from the inner part of his overcoat, he proceeded to shout various threats. The blade was only two-ish feet long, so even a weakling like him would be able to swing it with 'some' force. Well, he DID swing it down on me, but I just blocked it with my left arm. Well, he was seriously pissed, so he kept swinging away at my arm.

Surprise, while my skin certainly was broken and my arm was bleeding, it was his blade that was being damaged.

Naturally, pound for pound bone is actually stronger than steel. Another point from my development was that my bones were completely solid. That basically meant I have no bone marrow. I found out the reason I have blood at all was because my blood cells, white blood cells and alike all divide in my bloodstream. Absorbing nutrients in the blood to do so. Basically, nothing about my body is normal at all, kind of to be expected if you were born as a living tumor and experimented on for several years when I think about it… It’s a wonder I was alive at all…

Well, my bone’s density is something to behold since it’s about three or four times more dense than a normal person’s bone. Couple that with the fact that it’s solid bone, not filled with spaces for bone tissue or marrow and you get a very strong material that won't break without some serious effort.

His saber was probably silver anyway, if it was steel or something my arm might have been damage but he wasn’t strong enough to actually use the thing and started panting after only six swings.

In the course of those six sword swings, just a matter of less than thirty seconds, over half of his entire military force and almost all of his officer personnel were annihilated.

I smiled to him as I pointed the gun at his face and he fell over on his fat rear as he crawled backwards. Sighing, I put the laptop down, the base defenses were automatic anyways so there wasn’t a need for me to hold onto it. Even if it was smashed, the weapons would keep firing until everything outside the base was slaughtered and then keep going. Pretty advanced stuff honestly, but I think I might have been the only guy in the entire base, including those five thousand conscripts and all the rich officers that had the ability to utilize them. Took me two weeks to figure out most of it, even if it was me and my conspirators. Certainly I didn't expect to figure out what weapons to use and how to use all of them during the exodus alone.

I picked the idiotic claimant up and shot him point blank in the face. Yep, totally cold blooded and right between the eyes. Guy was crying and everything. Threw the body over the wall with one hand and surveyed the scene.

After that, I was hailed as a military hero and such. The elites conscripted even more troops and had me put up as the new general of the army.

Haah, even when I ADMITTED that I sent the five thousand people to their deaths, I was still hailed as a hero by the public and given awards by the nobility… some people really are blind when it comes to logic. Well, I kept the citizens away from the raping and pillaging of an occupation and I kept the nobles from losing their power… Guess in hindsight I did really save a few hundred thousand people by killing only five thousand… I just thought they were idiots at the time… Huh… go figure.

Hmmm… after that I lead a newly formed army of four thousand to conquer the lands of that claimant I killed off. It wasn’t too hard, but half his lands were already swallowed up by other contenders.

About a week passed from that, there were actual people in the recruitment offices and a few thousand people actually volunteered for the military. Their general reasoning for doing so was because ‘I’ll gladly give up my life if it’s for him’ or 'Well, i'd probably be dead if it wasn't for him, so...' or other such phrases.

I still don't really understand it, but with hindsight, I won't say that I truly understand the minds of humanity... but... I thought I did... I wonder why... ah... it was probably 'that'... well, I'll just keep going, I don't want to skip anything now... since, it is probably the last time.

Going back to it, just after a week after my appointment, the nobility tried to remove me from my post because I was “Getting too much influence and becoming a threat”.

Honestly, I didn’t care enough to think about taking the nation over, but after they tried to lock me up. A SECOND TIME MIND YOU! I led the army and slaughtered the nobility. The first being the military 'enlistment'.

The soldiers didn’t mind anyways, the nobility were all tyrannical and the citizens hated them. Sure I had to kill off a few noble officers here and there that bought their ranks and were totally incompetent, but all in all it was an easy affair. I didn’t think it would be that easy, but the second I announced that I was toppling the government, nearly half the population left their homes and joined with the army to catch and butcher the nobles.

I set up a democracy type deal and stated I had no interest in leading, that they had to vote for someone else and that only if every single person in the nation voted for me would I even think of taking the reins of the nation.

…

Well… guess what ended up happening. I received all nine hundred seventy three thousand, four hundred thirty six votes… The entire censored voting population…

The people brought voting cards to the infirm… the mentally impaired had their cards filled out for them… people on the streets and so on all rallied together in an unbelievable fashion…

Well… certainly didn’t expect to find that out when I woke up six hours later that they had voted me into office by fulfilling my demands… Well… sort of… turns out they decided that if someone voted against me, their vote no longer counted if they were dead… Same went for those too infirm or otherwise unable to vote.

My fault for not being specific on how to conduct themselves… It turned into a serious witch hunt, though only a few thousand people ended up dying in total. Not even a percent of the population, so at the time I didn’t give it too much thought, though I wonder if the votes were false in hindsight. My only thought was that leading an entire nation was bothersome.

I decided that if I was going to be leader of the nation, I might as well secure enough territory that I could play with the economy and scientific development.

So, I set out with an army of ten thousand extremely zealous soldiers armed with the aircraft, tanks, and various weapons of the recently destroyed army of the claimant. Taking over four military bases he had set up was also a bonus.

Hmmm… I think it took about a month to take over half of the civil war factions. I instituted a policy of slaughtering them all though, no reason to let a few enemies brainwash the unintelligent citizens into rebelling of course… Well, now that I think on it… nah, that was a good call. A cutting the neck of the cow waters the garden rather than letting it eat all the plants. Since it was internationally determined as a 'civil war' I was able to get away with it.

I guess my actions turned me into some sort of figure for the people at some point. Setting up a democracy, refusing to take power after I had removed tyrants from it, a man who was voted up by every one of his people, a man who cares and fights against tyranny and hunts down the tyrants that started the bloodshed. I guess I became pretty popular in the region. There were even two of the warring states that broke out into a revolution which overthrew their government to join sides with my 'unification' movement.

At that point, most of the other states banded together to try and face my forces. Didn’t amount to much though, by that time our forces already reached sixty thousand compared to their twenty thousand. Hell, I was even getting substantial foreign aid since I had taken control over all of the oil producing territories. They figured I'd give them special treatment if they invested and gave aid before the conflict ended.

There wasn’t much oil left after centuries of industrialization, so my holding of a third of the world’s supply of the stuff got me plenty of funds and military supplies from the big guys.

At the end, it only took me five weeks to end the civil war.

I was then hailed as a living saint by the people and there were some that even called me a god. To say the least that was just a 'bit' too far, so I thought it best if I took a step in to stop things from going in a bad direction. In a live speech to address the people, I cut my hand and let my blood flow from it. I went conveyed that I was merely a man, no different from any other human on the planet. Regardless of my skin, upbringing or anything else I was merely a man, equal to anyone of them. The speech was only a few minutes long but it seems that a great deal of them were brought to tears by it…

The speech then spread to the rest of the world and influenced many different nation’s policies. Within a few days of the speech I was hailed as a great humanitarian against racism and discrimination, issuing in a new age of equality… Honestly though, I just didn’t want churches to be raised in worship of me. They seemed to have taken it that I, the person they saw as the wisest and kindest person they knew was lowering himself down to their level and that as long as human blood ran in their veins there was nothing that should keep humans separate. Internationally it was even more hectic with various movements to stop religious and racial violence.

Wars around the world over religion and race that had gone on for years suddenly ended.

…

It was boring…

Ya, I didn’t really like that there wasn’t anything to do besides balance a budget. The nation was seriously poor, even if we did have oil, so I decided to get some more land.

I declared war on more or less the entire region and stated that I was going to unify the entire region into a single state so that I could seek out greater technology and economical growth.

Somehow I ended up with even more financial backing from the same major powers. They simply saw me as a tool to secure more oil. The lands I was fighting against were heavily against those powers and refused to develop their oil reserves, so me taking them over was a perfect way for them to gain access to more oil. Since the major powers were supporting me anyways, there wasn't any real international resistance to my movements.

They were really technologically inferior though, so the casualty reports were something like five thousand to one or something. We blasted them from afar normally, and after they were shattered, I found it interesting to charge into a melee fight. Hell, I often would even join in on it. The region was a sector for colonization in more ancient times, many of the 'nations' around us barely had a semblance of a government, even with their massive populations.

I found a certain thrill from running in with a sword in one hand and a gun in another with an army at my back. Since they didn't have all that many guns, it actually served to reduce the casualties rather than just blasting them away. The international community ate that up too, saying various things like how I wouldn't put a soldier's life at risk to reduce casualties if I wouldn't do it myself and how I was risking it all to prevent the lesser nation's citizens from perishing needlessly. Honestly though, I was just bored and wanted to see what it felt like to fight hand-to-hand with thousands of men on the battlefield. Not alone... of course...

I think it was only two weeks before the rest of the nations surrendered. Like I said, there wasn't much of a government, it was more like a conglomeration of various gangs that held the population together through force.

After that happened, I was summoned to a security council meeting. The gist of it was for me to tell them how I was going to manage all of the people that were just conquered. It was honestly a pain for me to even head over there since I had to fill out paperwork for hours, then sit through meetings for hours. Then I had to undergo psych evaluations, and physical examinations, and medical examinations. Then I needed shots and background checks, and I tell you, those got messy. There was one zealous scientist that tried to cut me open, that didn't take well.

Regardless, they couldn’t just demand that I step down from my seat of control, especially since my public approval rating was nearly 98%.

Even when they went to do surveys, it came back with a 99.9% approval rating from their survey teams. It hadn't been that long, so the fervor in support of my leadership was far from over. Can't really expect the people to turn from that level of support instantly without cause.It became pretty obvious that some of the second-rate powers were trying to cause trouble for me, greed is always present in politics after all, though I always found it to be bothersome.

While I was dealing with all the mindless drones that kept bothering me with more and more pointless work that is common with bureaucracy, I developed what I called the ‘Provincial System’.

By dividing the populations up based on the populational composition, starting small by a district level that comprises of perhaps a single city or two. There, a district leader would be voted into power. Above that would be the provincial territory that comprises of the districts. The reason for the district is because it allows for sufficient voice for even the smallest of minority. At the city level, people know each other and they are able to speak their voice. The provincial level would be a territory comprised of many districts, normally around ten to twenty districts. The leader for this level would be chosen from a vote from the district leaders as a representative of the population below them. The district leaders would convene to discuss matters pertaining to their provence.

Above that would be the national territory, comprising generally of what used to be a national border. While the intent of the districts and provinces were for minority management and territorial organization, the national territory was intended to eliminate nationalist fervor. It’s really annoying that every single human being wants to be independent… I mean seriously, why the hell does everyone want to say “Look at me, I’m independent, I’m so special!”... It’s really stupid… You have less resources at your disposal and there’s all manners of economic troubles for you. It's literally the regression of human society whenever nations divide. There won't be as much economical or science development, meaning human stagnation.

With the national territory, a leader that represents their ‘people’ is elected from the provincial leaders. This is to ensure that at least roughly half the population of each national territory supports the current leader in power. Well, it also gave me the ability to dictate the investment of the national budget.

Instead of a small nation, I had a large region of undeveloped territory, so there was plenty to invest in. The more investment, the more money, and repeat. An economy is about how much money is constantly flowing in and out as well as within a country. The moment it stagnates with several people, that's when an economy will obviously start to fall apart.

I threw in a extra little function that both the provincial and national territory levels could have the leader remove with a majority vote at any time. The leader would also serve as long as he has the majority support. Though the district leader had to be elected every single year. When a district leader gets voted up to provincial leader or so on, a new leader would need to be voted up.

It was basically ‘determined’ by the international security council that I would be instituted as the ‘legitimate ruler’ of the territory and I was not allowed to step down… So I ended up forming an extra level of continental territory where I would be put at. It's not exactly like they could pull me down anyway. I hadn't done a single thing that would warrant my removal, as well as just about every negative thing I ever did in my life was common knowledge.

At the time, there were… I believe nine national territories, though if they even thought of voting against me, they would have probably ended up risking being voted out of power instantly. I was still pretty popular, not only nationally, but worldwide at this point.

Ah, as for what happened to the leaders and upper echelons of the various nations that I conquered, well, they lost all their power and a great deal of their wealth. I mostly decided to confiscate a majority of their wealth since several people holding all the wealth will lead to serious economic stagnation, even if they were to invest it, they would just collect more of the economy and cause worse stagnation as they went.

here were some that tried to resist and take back power through some way or another, so I ended up having them all assassinated. There were plenty that weren’t trying to do so, but I didn’t feel like finding out later that they had escaped my radar. People you remove from power or people you dominate will generally be incapable of forgiving you. Humans are kind of base like that. They would have caused more death and ruined my plans for economical development, so good riddance all in all. No one liked them anyways, so I announced my actions several months later.

Once again, my seriously tyrannical actions were ignored, something about me taking a stand against terrorism I think it was...

A few years past after that and my nation’s economy thrived, though half of it was because of the international financial support of my nation’s economic development. Since we had a large percentage of the world's remaining untapped natural resources, I drew in substantial international investiture for the sake of growing my influence. I didn't want to be bothered by some superpower wanting to take over, economically or by force.

Using the funds at hand, I built new school, new hospitals, and heavily invested into medical research and development. I have to admit… I went overboard with the medical investment in all hindsight… Gathering medical minds from around the world... legally gathering the most cutting edge technology... Nearly a third of the entire budget was a bit much… But hey… we managed to figure out the cure for cancer after just two years of research. Turns out you just need to ***************************** and inject ******************* into various **************** in order to ******************** and thus the cancer cells ************************************* after that the *********************** and the cancer just dies out. Wait… what was that? Hmmm… must be the oxygen levels getting low… I probably don’t have much time. I’m just enjoying thinking about my life, so it’s only been a few seconds and all, but I’ll probably be dead in another forty seconds or so… Bah, plenty of time to recap on all of my life.

Herm, where was I…

Well, after a few years a major superpower that bordered my nation attempted an economical take over to pull us into its sphere of influence and control the near 80% of the international supply of oil. Like I thought, no one could resist just leaving me alone to my own devices forever. Greed is the destroyer of man, the ruination of progress, the reaper of life.

Can’t say I took kindly to that. I sent out a call to arms amongst the populous and nearly a hundred thousand volunteers flocked in, coupling that with the then military of sixty thousand, I had nearly a hundred and sixty thousand soldiers enlisted. Within a few weeks, the nation was prepared for conflict. Not even that super power was able to prepare itself in time, though that's just the breaks of a heavily divided 'democratic congress'. They can't ever make a decision since they are all out for themselves before the people they represent sixty to seventy percent of the time. Oh, look at that, it's a majority of minorities, thus with the majority's rule, nothing happens.

What did I have to lose really, I declared war and ordered the various army divisions to attack. Without any training of course, they did only JUST enlist. I didn't expect much, I had a different outcome in mind, these soldiers served a far more important purpose than just defeating the enemy. They represented time.

I led various assaults and had to take command over most of the battles since they DID outnumber our total military force by nearly twenty to one, but what the hell, we were going to win if I said we were going to win. As long as we could manage to hold the enemy assaults back, we'd be able to win. There was no way they could win if they couldn't advance into our nation. Using the extreme zeal of the citizen army I had raised, I strove to hold the onslaught back as long as possible. So long as I was at the front lines, there wouldn't be many soldiers running, no matter the situation.

Within the first week of fighting on the border, we had roughly eighty thousand casualties, the next week it was another fifty thousand.

Though, during the third week, there was only four thousand casualties. The time had finally come.

The reason for this was because the big superpower with all the big guns and had all those wonderful planes, aircraft and tanks, had run out of oil reserves decades ago. Meaning the second the oil supply from my nation ran out and the international oil embargo I requested against them kicked in, they burned through their entire reserve quickly. In that sense, if you put it to numbers, with my nation holding 80 percent, and the international community that answered my call for aid cutting off another 19 percent of the international oil reserves, that only left them with a single percent. A percent that you can't think would be fully available to drain at a moment's notice.

No, and whatever national stockpile they had would not last long either. A capitalist nation with no oil reserves and well over a billion civilians. Certainly the government wouldn't have control over what reserves were left, so most of what they had was burned up by the civilians. Even if the government were to gather support amongst themselves to seize up what was left, it would take far too long to gain said support to do so. They would fight amongst themselves and waste the little time they had to gather the resources.

The reason for the extreme casualties was mostly due inpart to my orders to not allow them to break through into one of our oil fields. Needless to say, holding off a military that's near twenty times larger than yours is not an easy venture. Though, I did enjoy the fighting. It certainly is not every day that you're able to take part in a battle between fifty thousand or a hundred thousand men.

In the end, things were not so great for our friend, the 'Super Power' as something began to change.

Power shortages and military desertion plagued the fourth week as the civil populace began to show great signs of unrest. Within five weeks, market prices on everything from food to water shot up ten fold. The economy was collapsing in on itself as an international oil embargo turned the nation’s remaining fuel into something worth more than the actual currency. Military desertion became commonplace as their mechanized army became totally useless before our invasion.

As we passed over abandoned military camps, and established supply lines, their equipment became our own.

By the end of the seventh week, we had already laid siege to the capital city.

By the tenth week, that big bad global superpower surrendered to my invasion force. At that point, my invasion force only numbered nine thousand out of the initial one hundred and sixty thousand. Though the entire army at this point was mechanized. Three soldiers to a tank, two to an aircraft. That remaining nine thousand soldiers was still a formidable fighting force. Enough so that the superpower, with nearly fifty times the population and thirty times the territory surrendered rather than attempt to resist. They were starving for resources at this point, that's a weakness to capitalism I suppose.

Beyond my military’s strength, most of the reasoning for the surrender was because of the civil anarchy currently plaguing the nation. Even if they wanted to resist, their economy that was so focused on international imports was collapsing on itself.

Ugg… just remembering the nine years it took to calm that territory down and get government restored, the economy rebalanced, the currency changed and the sociology and general populace outlook on individuality converted… What a pain. I swear there had to have been nearly a hundred thousand executions of anarchists and nationalists and revolutionaries against my social order. Of course they were only the ones that killed other civilians and attempted rebellions. Since they were doing so, they were branded terrorists... though there were a serious amount of them... Hah... just thinking about all the paperwork I had to fill out would probably give me a headache if I wasn't just about to perish...

One wonders why, when not only they are suffering, but everyone around them is suffering, do they point their fangs at the person offering them help… That had nothing to do with the fact that I totally didn’t cause their economical collapse and their suffering. Not a single chance that it would all be my fault. They started it after all, I just saw it as a chance to gather EVEN MORE resources to play with. Well, by resources, I mean economical resources rather than natural resources. A super power is a super power, plenty of technological advancements were made possible. If I recall... there was some gene project that used my DNA to attempt to replicate my development... weren't they starting human testing soon... hah.. doesn't matter now though...

Well, when you compare a hundred thousand people to the near one billion population, it doesn’t turn out to be that big of a deal does it.

After the economy had revitalized the nation was back on track, I attempted to step down from my position, only to receive such a major national and international backlash to the extent that I had no choice but to be stuck with it. Haah… I can some what understand what they were thinking though. No matter what I said, no matter how crazy the idea was, whatever I did, everyone benefitted from it.

My investiture into medical science increased the life expectancy of the human race to almost two hundred years. Cancer and many other diseases were eliminated under the extensive international focus on research and development. Through the study of my body’s physiology and structure, medical science discovered ways to grow new organs and rebuild entire lost limbs.

Through this research, brain damage and spinal damage now had cures. Through the medical development, the private industry continuously developed the technological field to keep up with the medical demands. The international economy thrived under a golden age of intellectual development.

Surrounding smaller nations began to either vote to join or started revolutions to join my nation. Just to mention, on almost all occasions I had heavily influenced those situations into causing them to join, rather than it having much to do with their actual free choice.

Ah, almost up to the present now… good thing too, because i’ve only got another ten seconds or so… maybe twelve if I really feel like it…

With everything that had been built, everything that I headed and forged with the flames of determination, our planet looked as if it would finally, finally enter an era of understanding, an era of learning, of growth, of prosperity, and, the most desired achievement of all, of peace.

WELL, of course the moment that I actually thought that cursed doom flag called peace, a certain report started circling through the government chains. It would just so happen that I was one of the first to learn about it.

As it would turn out, our satellite network had detected several ‘mega’-classed masses suddenly breaking through the thermosphere.

Well, the general fall back idea most officials ended up having was that they were asteroids. After all, each of them were miles long and were entering at high speeds. Visual contact was impossible due to the intense flames from their entry. Rock and other such debris were being vaporised and cloaking the mass. I, however, knew better than that. How would it have been possible for asteroids to get so close to the planet without us detecting them until they were right on top of us.

Whereas most nations were preparing doomsday shelters, I had other plans and mobilized the military. The highest security level was activated and troops around the nation were beginning to gather together. All reserves were called in and a mass call to arms was launched. I knew what was coming, I had to be prepared. The human instinct to run and hide was paralysed after I had made a different move compared to other national governments. If it was anyone other than me who made such a demand when it was assumed asteroids were about to crash into the surface, i’m sure they would have been ignored. Well, looking back, if I had been wrong, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.

With every second seeming like minutes and every minute became akin to hours before our eyes, we continued to mobilize. A heightened level of military efficiency and discipline forged through years of high devoted loyalty from unbelievable progress and success. In the past, such reforms would be impossible given the standard resistance of conservative individuals, though through consistent success, such voices narrowed to only a few unimportant souls.

After several hours, the various nations of the world began to take notice. There was no doomsday impact, no blackening of the sky, no explosive earthquake. There was nothing. As humanity began to crawl out of their holes, they finally took notice of what truly breached our atmosphere. Why I had, instead of hiding, forced my national army into mobilization.

The reports that came in that day answered one of the most ancient questions mankind has ever asked itself.

What remained in the sky above was, for a lack of better words, cruisers.

Yep, massive spaceships several miles long with one in particular being far larger than the others. If I remember, we estimated that it was roughly… four or five times larger than the rest. The thing had to have been between eighteen and twenty miles long and nine or ten miles wide. The depth of the darn thing alone was hard to gauge, but it had to have been at least five miles. We never did figure out how those things few in the air, even the smallest one was larger than a mile long.

I had no real clue as to what the difference between the ships were, but what I DID know was that the standard ‘We come in peace’ thing was going to be BULL.

As the ships entered from orbit, they chose a particular Island, or well, an ‘official’ continent, as their entry location. Now, I say chose, but who the hell really knows how a different form of life processes things and thinks. Hell, who really knew if they even had a concept of thought. All I know is that the human side ended up being the side to shoot first.

Hah… just thinking about what those idiots over there did still gives me a headache… Those idiots… well, I suppose calling them government officials of two nations would be more accurate… That stupid ‘Anti-Me’ faction that developed over the few officials that were highly against any form of territorial expansion, or technological growth, or GDP increase, or any such change that was against their platforms. Even in politics, those of of such narrow mindedness that you could describe their entire being on a single piece of paper do exist after all… It’s just a shame that THEY were the ones in charge when this was all going on. When I sent over a warning to not engage first, all I got was:

“We do not serve your dictatorship!”

“We will not heed the words of a traitor to mankind!”

“You’re not human, you must be one of their creations!”

And so on. In all honesty, I should have removed them earlier. When such weeds develop in countries, especially democracies, the nation’s going to suffer from their stupidity. Adapting from your original platform for the benefit of the economical and societal development of a nation when the need arises is the job of a politician.

Even I changed the medical focus after the human lifespan was estimated to be able to start reaching two hundred or more years of age. Humanity isn’t capable of living that long. Surely, the body can be prolonged for however long, so long as technology advances. It is the mind that isn’t meant to continue. The minds of humankind were forged to live short lives, between forty to fifty years. As we progressed, getting to one hundred wouldn’t be so much of a problem. It’s after that, into the two or three hundreds that their capacity for being ‘human’ errodes. If you live for over a thousand, there’s the risk the human mind will have become nothing more than a shell, a living death. There would be some that would be able to go longer and probably many that would end up losing their minds before then, but in the end, there’s too much to risk by allowing humanity to live for too long. Living just enough is the limit of how much I planned to allow within my life span. I knew i’d live for a great deal of time, perhaps hundreds of years given my body. Just attempting to copy me more than doubled the human lifespan. I’d walk the path to near brain death by the time i’d expire. Who knows, I might have been able to do so much more in that time if that didn’t happen… If only I had known…

At any rate, those officials sure showed me what for… yep… showed me really good…

As their various rockets and the sort neared the cruisers in descent, they were all shot down from the use of some form of laser technology.

Maaaan… I really wish it didn’t happen… some of those weapons we saw the aliens use would make the si-fi lovers drool… wait… what happened after that… what… happened… errgg… why can’t I...

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Ah… that’s right…

No… I don’t need to remind myself of that…

The final result of my failure is so great that this weight will burn itself upon my very soul… This sight before me will pull me down, beyond the depths of hell that the gods of old and new had dug, forging a path beyond any form of redemption…

This… this is all my fault…

No…

Let me remember the rush of life just a little more. It’s my path to reaching here that matters more than anything else. In the end, I wish to remember the last of my light before the depths of the darkness that I deserve…

Hmmm… that’s right… what happened next was… ah… after the lasers…

Well, the spaceships weren’t pacifists by a long shot. The very instant after the rockets were shot down, their response also came…

My personal headache for the next few days… those blasted pods…

Now, when they first landed, nothing happened.

But, I certainly don’t need to go and remind myself of what they did shortly after they landed. Of course they were time delay weapons…

The various gases those weapons released killed millions. From one type, a black mist turned flesh and bone to slag, from others, buildings vanished from sight, and others were unbelievable toxins that contaminated entire areas and turning them into dead zones. All of them, every last one of them, served to end human lives, and the effectiveness was frightening to say the least. If they had the capacity to launch those worldwide, there would have been no chance to resist. Luckily enough, it seemed that they couldn’t launch them, but rather had to drop them. The reason behind it, I suppose i’ll never really know.

In just two days, the entire continent had turned into a dead zone in on itself. Not a single response was received from the entire continent. While we could track some survivors here or there, the majority were assumed dead after we lost the ability to track anything within that continent...

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As for their government’s various responses, they all were generally calls for help or demands in various ways or forms. For the people, for the sake of mankind, for their sake, for favors, for money, to join my union, to submit to my control, as well as other such excuses were used. All in all, almost every politician adopted a ‘Every man for themselves’ policy and abandoned their people in a time of extreme crisis.

Not that I can put any real blame on them, the time of heroic leaders full of charisma on the battlefield has been a thing of the past for hundreds of years. If one were to consider it, I might have been one of the last leaders of a human nation that would take to the field myself for any reason.

Well, regardless, my adopted policy for the continent was more or less a “You reap what you sow”. Don’t get me wrong, this had nothing to do with their hypocrisy after having defaced me and slandered me for over a decade, there was merit in my decision. There would be no grudge when they are the ones that caused this mess. Since it came down to this, I had to come up with a plan, and it just so happened that those people could redeem themselves through their sacrifice.

Hmm, I wonder if I could have been faster though…

No, there was simply no way to move any faster given the sudden nature of this attack. They had to just resist pointlessly and perish for the sake of the one resource we were in the greatest need of.

Time.

What I needed the most was time. Since the situation had become so dire, I had to gather my forces from around the world, I had to rally the people, I had to establish a defense network, I had to prepare for a last ditch total war front, I had to prepare for their better technology, I had to be prepared…

There were so many… so many things I had to do… There was simply no way I could afford to charge into that zone of slaughter without being prepared. If I had… there’s no way we would survive.

Those two days, built upon the lives of over several hundred million people, was a, no, it was the most vital part of our survival. For our counter attack.

Upon the second day, the one hundred and seventy four nations of our world now stood under a single banner to face off against the greatest threat of our history.

My banner.

One air force.

One army.

One nation.

One people.

One goal.

One leader.

For the sake of our survival, for the sake of the future of our race, the children and those that would follow us, for the sake of each path that we would dare to follow, humanity had cast its final lot under a single gambit.

Me.

It was my decision to wait.

To wait and see what our visitors would do next.

In just two days, they had nearly eliminated all life on an entire continent through their terror weapons of supreme destruction.

We had no choice but to wait.

An entire continent had been abandoned to the depths of hell for the sake of just two days, and a single plan.

To wait.

That was all we could do.

It was upon the third day, the very day that would serve as an answer to our question.

The day that the silence that would herald the coming of the storm, was broken.

Even now, I can recall every detail of that moment with vivid clarity. Who could not in all honesty, for such a sight to any man under the heavens would never fail to be the same.

It was the moment that the alien fleet had departed from the dead zone. Their course, was headed straight towards a certain capital, or rather, towards a certain person.

Right, to me.

I can’t really describe how I felt during that moment, but I do remember what my decision was.

We would meet them at the sea.

We would challenge this mighty foe with the full force of humanity.

We would push back death’s greatest advance.

We would deny ourselves the final dawn.

That day, humanity resolved itself to make its final stand.

Upon the dawn of a new year, a new path into the heavens, the forces of man and beast would meet under the judgement of the gods of old and new, their blood boiled by the midday sun.

Upon nothing other than my own gambit, the naval and air forces of humanity’s greatest and smallest nations alike had gathered.

Upon the oceans lay the greatest militarial gathering of all time.

Nine hundred and forty-two battleships.

Two hundred and ten cataclysm-classed cruiser ships.

The capital ships of fifty-two naval nations.

And,

The key to our entire plan, and the central lynchpin of our entire fighting force.

Two thousand and ninety-four carrier ships.

They would serve as the main supply base of our main fighting force.

Our air force.

One hundred and ten thousand airships, planes, and dropships had been gathered from the entire planet.

While we hadn’t been able to gather every ship, it was possible for us to gather nearly every plane, private or government owned, across the planet within those three days.

A majority of these ships had actually come from my own nation, who had the military focused towards the sky already. Of the naval and aerial capacity of the coalition force, roughly sixty percent came from my nation alone. Eighty percent of the air force’s combat ships came from us as well.

Upon the land, most ships were based in a general perimeter of fifty miles from the coastline, allowing them to be deployed as need be for the battle that would come.

We had positioned ourselves right in front of the alien fleet’s current path. They showed no signs of turning back.

From highways to small streets, planes and airships littered miles of open ground, ready to set off and join the fight.

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On land, nearly a million personnel had been gathered and were on the move. From ammunition to fuel, supply teams and trucks were gathered and continued to gather constantly.

Replacement pilots in the number capable to replace nearly a third of the pilots of the entire air force had also been gathered. As time would go on, hundreds, perhaps thousands were constantly streaming in from across the many nations of the world.

These preparations were all accomplished with only two days of time.

In just two days, we had assembled the fighting power to allow us to fight for a week straight without any supplies delivered to us. It was within my calculations that we might not receive any help once the battle had begun, so enough resources had to be gathered to give us a fighting chance.

Our planes and ships would be able to continuously fight, being able to land on carriers and switch out with replacement pilots. Of whom could be switched out from land or other carriers.

The supply network would be able to function no matter where we were attacked so long as an entire group had not been wiped out entirely. Even if everyone on land were destroyed in a terror attack from our invaders, we would still be able to hold out for a week until help could be organized.

That was the purpose of my formation.

While large, the number of enemy cruisers thus far only numbered twelve. The variety of formations they could execute, or the number of fronts they could form with their numbers was extremely limited.

Yet, they had yet to break the very formation they had been in since they arrived to our world. I don’t believe we ever figured out the reason.

Well, given that our fighting force was never routed, we could near indefinitely reinforce just about any front. A plane destroyed would be replaced with one in the carrier fleet, which would be replaced with one on land.

A damaged plane or ship could be repaired on land and replaced.

A lost ship or plane could be replaced with the dozens of new planes, ships, and transports flooding in from various industries across the human front.

Taking into a hopeful consideration that our enemy wouldn’t be capable of gaining reinforcements for at least one week, we could take them into a battle of pure attrition.

To drain their manpower and will to fight to such an extent that they would no longer be able to fight against us and be defeated.

My entire gambit was to assemble such a number as to allow us to forge a grand meat grinder, and in such a way, force thousands of lives to sacrifice themselves to defeat our superior foe.

In history, if the opponent was technologically superior, with greater weapons, armor, or discipline, one could always overtake them in an extended battle of attrition with superior numbers.

They would grow tired, hungry, and lose their will to fight over the drawn out days of continuous fighting.

We couldn’t say that our opponent now would follow the same principles, but then again, we had no choice but to hope that this could be the case. At the very least, if we were able to cause continuous casualties, no matter how small, we would be able to defeat them through sheer manpower.

A game of several ships against a planet of nearly 10 billion people.

Well, just as it was planned, predicted, and prayed for.

The enemy fleet of just twelve ships broke the horizon.

We would meet just twenty miles off shore. At that period in time, our battle lines had stretched out twenty-three miles across and eight more miles deep. The carrier lines extended the rest of the distance to shore, going as far as just a little under a mile off shore. More than half the fleet could still be visible to those on shore, the massive ships of the invaders even more clearly visible.

Our greatest stand would be one visible to all those present. A clash between two powers in a final stretch for survival.

There was nothing left to plan.

The aliens were coming for us en-masse.

The air force launched, the battleships opened fire, and the battle for survival began.

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Hmmm…

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I suppose the life I was given gave me a bit more excitement than most…

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The clash of thousands, the hopes of billions.

In a single instant, these forces of will shall meet to contest their survival in the eyes of a certain doom. Not for the world, not for themselves, but to face against a single, greater threat to their very existence.

From a battleship at the front, I had established my headquarters.

The initial engagement would tell us what the aliens were truly capable of in a fight. Would we be wiped out instantly, would we slowly meet oblivion, could we resist, these are the questions I wanted to answer with all haste.

For this task, a tenth of our air forces took flight.

The target, the smallest of the twelve alien cruisers. A one mile long, three hundred meter wide ship. It was less than half the size of the rest of the ships, and the best way to test our capabilities against their technology.

In a worst case scenario, I’d do everything I could to hold the invaders in a single area, allowing us to plot out an escape to the stars. In reality, we were only a few years out from taking our first steps into interstellar travel, with half of our vessels capable of being upgraded for short-term space flight.

Hmph… I wonder why I always combine measurement systems… The fools of our past decided to continuously change how an object would be measured, and formed several different methods. I always took a certain pleasure in using multiple forms when giving measurements, it would drive people nuts. It’s a shame there’s no one left to bother with it now. Measurement guidelines are simple anyways, since I learned two, I’ll use two if one measurement fits better.

I never heard the end of it for that though… oh… wait… hah… … I did… …

Hmmm…

At any rate, a pilot force of twenty five thousand, arming ten thousand, one hundred and… hmm.. nine ships were launched from the carrier fleet. Nearly half of their full capacity. We had created far more efficient carriers in our time, allowing each one to carry dozens of ships and planes. Otherwise, how else could we realistically plan to maintain a constant shuffle of our forces on the frontlines.

The skies were clouded with the flight of the light brigade.

The result was carnage incarnate.

The flight of missiles and the roar of the explosions that thundered across the heavens, a reincarnation of the gods of old, joining the fray as the end times had come upon their world. It was no longer a clash of man and beast, it became a battle of the gods, and we, as men of humanity, shall take up arms alongside them. The alien’s retort our heroic charge, their lasers firing upon all directions. Hundreds of planes and ships alike crash upon each other, slipping beneath the watery depths below. Every second became a scene of death. An epic struggle where both sides locked down upon the throats of the other. We would hold them here, we would not fail to meet the next dawn with the steps of our heel and the determination of our hearts.

Certainly, the battle was a grand one. The alien ships were massive. Even with over ten thousand ships engaging the front of their formation, we only were engaging three of the alien cruisers. As they began to become locked in combat, their advance slowed to a halt, it would appear that they weren’t foolish. If they attempted to get within the range to drop their terror weaponry, they would put themselves in full range of our land based nuclear weaponry. Outdated as they were, just before the continent’s last organized forces were wiped out, they had launched a handful of nuclear weapons at the ships. The attack was a suicidal attack as the ships had advanced nearly right on top of them. The results, however, showed great results that left their fleet with obvious damages.

To use nuclear weaponry to destroy them completely, however, would be foolish. The level of fallout that would enter the atmosphere and air would be tremendous if we were to estimate how many warheads it would take to destroy them all. As they were several miles into the sky, it would seem that they were taking measures to prevent us from using large warheads. If we were to do so, there would be a chance we could disrupt the atmosphere of our planet, causing any number of natural disasters.

As such, we were using non-nuclear weaponry on a mass scale. Not nearly as effective, sure, but far less likely to cause a worldwide extinction event.

In the end, if we were to create a field of attrition, there were but two ways we could realistically pursue.

The first would be to focus down the enemy one at a time, destroying their fighting force slowly while drawing out the combat time that the enemy is exposed to. This would turn out to be nearly impossible to realistically pursue. The reasoning for this fell upon several factors.

The first would be that there were no visible engines or power structures. We had no idea how such mechanical structures remained airborne. To further that, those ships were obscenely tough. We were causing damage to it, but since the cruisers were beyond massive, with such dense armor of an unknown alloy, there wasn’t much chance for us to hope for extensive damage quickly. We could only slowly chip away at it, perhaps even blasting away at it for weeks if we wanted to even think about bringing that thing down. The use of hundreds of thousands of missiles and hundreds of tons of jet fuel would be expended. No, if we were to try and follow this method of attrition, it would be obvious that we could not achieve victory from it.

There simply are limits as to how a rapidly expanding front could be sustained. As it were, the ammunition and fuel resources had been fine, but there would be a limit to how long a massive offensive could be sustained in the long term. To refine, load, transport, and utilize fuel alone would take great efforts. But, to consider producing the number of warheads required to arm the sheer number of ships we were launching would be beyond reason. To begin with, we were only able to sustain a semi-continuous assault if we were to run out of our reserve ammunition. Meaning we could only afford to arm roughly fifteen thousand ships with enough ammunition and fuel to fight at 100% efficiency for a little less than thirty minutes. Such outcomes would lead to us being broken through the moment our constant offensive front were to break down. In that sense, we would end up burning ourselves out and then having the attrition war turned on us.

Even now, if I had just been able to have an extra week more, something might have been done about that and we might have been able to do something more. If only that were possible…

…

…

…

In reality, I suppose only the second method is one that we could sustain.

A war of manpower.

However large these massive cruisers were, there will always be a limit to just how many personnel will be in there. In essence, we would be taking up a raid-like style of assault while maintaining our previous tactic of prolonging the engagement. More or less, this method entailed that we would be attacking them with infantry to decrease their numbers while holding them in place.

The front of those ships were far more densely armored than the backs… well, I say that, but the difference between 100% and 60% density is only so different.

The other reason why we can hold them is because they never broke formation. Always in a synchronized formation. The reasons behind this was never discovered, but we took heavy abuse of this fact by using our warheads to manipulate the movement of the front ship. As long as we balanced that ship to a certain degree, the rest of the fleet wouldn’t move. After only about twenty minutes or so, their fleet stopped moving altogether, probably because they were decided against continuing to try and turn. In hindsight, they probably couldn’t back up either. Their flight system truly is a mystery I suppose.

Though, if they had just kept going and tried to bypass our lines and used their terror weapons regardless of us using nuclear weaponry, I wonder what would have happened. Our entire air force of one hundred thousand some-odd ships would have gained the capability to take flight and engage all at once.

Well, in the end, war is war. The decision and tactics are decided by their commanders, and their will is absolute with a little discipline.

Like so, another hour had passed. It seemed as if I was finally pegged or something as my capital ship and headquarters was overtaken and destroyed with long-range targeted fire out of the blue.

Since my body was and still is beyond sturdy, I survived just fine. I lost some skin, a bit of blood, a few dislocations, a few chipped bones and a split eye. The longer I continued my life, the more my vitality seemed to climb. When I was picked up by a nearby capital ship, I suppose I probably spooked the crew of the ship as I boarded. Though, they calmed down after they noticed I started healing from those injuries, not to mention that I wasn’t phased by the fact one of my eyes had been nearly destroyed. I knew it would fix itself over time, so I didn’t bother passing it concern.

I was out of it for roughly twenty minutes or so, mostly because I had a hard time moving with damaged muscles. Well, that, and the fact that I weigh what I do. My bones, are HEAVY…

Well… were…. hah…. So lucky this vitality of mine grows with age… it does me good right now…

Hem…

Well, once I boarded the ship, I redirected my command to it and resumed control of the situation. Well, my new command, there weren’t many survivors from my old cabinet.

As it were, the fighting was rather rough and we had already lost a few thousand ships. There were also roughly three dozen battleships that were destroyed as well.

With a full view of the current flow of the battle, the current losses weren’t that bad for the amount of time that had passed, roughly two percent, if that.

Since I had expected the worst my mind could think of, when one of the best case scenarios occurs, you savor it with full gusto.

Plans were written up and we began to shift over from a full offensive tactic to a delayment tactic.

We needed to prepare for an invasion after all.

I was going to turn the air battle, into a land invasion. The invaders, would now become the target of my conquest.

Honestly, preparing for a suitable invasion tactic that took into account the millions of soldiers we had at our disposal. In the end, the only tactic really available for such numbers would be to just land troops right on top of the enemy cruisers and then use the sheer number of our personnel to force our way into their ship to destroy it from within.

The only real thing that had to be changed to allow this tactic was to reassign supply ships into troop transport craft.

After that was taken care of, humanity would once more engage in blood contest within a grinder of both wills, and of lives.

This time, it would not be over something as shallow as swaths of land, not as ignorant as over cultures or religious difference.

We would willingly enter a contest of death against an unknown foe of far greater technological power that, in normal circumstances, humanity should have no right to resist.

The roar of battle continued to echo across the skies through the day, ships and planes falling beneath the waves as a hailstorm of lasers and missiles traded places to strike at the senders. Both fully intending to destroy the other.

Certainly, we could not win this way.

I can remember vaguely… a sense of… hesitation?

... No… perhaps… it is more fitting to call it anticipation… anticipation… for the next move.

It would be six hours after the initial confrontation had begun that the next phase of battle would commence. A much more gruesome, and violent phase that would bring about the beginning of the end…

Of the some one hundred and two thousand remaining ships, planes, and various other aircraft, roughly only six thousand were troop transport capable. In general, the idea of moving an entire army of that level all at once wouldn’t be the tactic any normal nation would think to utilize. On top of that, during those two days, I hadn’t even landing troops on those cruisers, thus the number of troop transports I had gathered weren’t that many in comparison to how many I would have if I had planned for it in advance.

In that sense, we could also only feasibly launch a third of them at any given time. Regardless, we’d still be able to transport between twenty and thirty thousand men per wave, but since transports are bulky and slow, we can’t afford having too many in the skies at once, not if we’re going to have a single combat craft in the air at the same time. I had to split the transports into three waves. Though, in honesty, for the first phase of the invasion, this actually was favorable compared to sending all of the transports at once.

In a continuous wave between the three groups, we had estimated we could move roughly a hundred thousand men in the course of an hour. Given the size of the top was an uneven area with a total surface of only a one mile by several hundred meters, there wouldn’t be much room to have troops taking cover if we didn’t get inside after the second or third reinforcement wave. That’s even taking into consideration the unquestionably high casualty rates of the initial groups.

The key would be the first landing force. Roughly only a single percent of the entire fighting force within this battlefield of ours would be able to take part in the initial landing. They would have to fight and secure the landing point for future reinforcements, their role was beyond vital, it was a linchpin for our entire invasion. Beyond just securing the site, they had to reduce the number of laser turrets on the surface of the ship to decrease the number of lost transports for each given wave of reinforcements as well as reduce the number of casualties to the ground forces. The more turrets we eliminate early on, the fewer lives we’ll lose during this first attack.

The air fighter ships had already been focusing on making several large breaches into the hull for our infiltration teams to move in. Now that we’d have to start launching transports in the middle of the fighter class ships, there would be holes in our defensive wall, but it would be our only way forward, to have a chance at victory, to survive.

A gambit with a few million lives with the representation of billions.

Since it was of such import, I had no other intention other than to join the first landing force myself. I would personally see that a landing point would be secured and allow us to cleanly overwhelm the alien vessel.

I would be the first many to land on that ship, and I would be the last to get off before it sank beneath the waves.

There could be no ‘what if’ only ‘have to’, with so many lives riding on that attack, we had to succeed.

As I boarded one of the landing craft, the signal went out. The second phase of our assault, The Great Invasion, had begun.

The engines’ roar could be heard throughout the fleet as  two thousand, one hundred and eight transport-class ships took flight. Like the jericho of old, I would see their walls and fortifications crumble before me, becoming their ruination, their final truth.

… Well… that story actually turned out to be false like many before history religious stories… but it fits well…

As we made our approach, the sounds of explosions continued to intensify, the very shell of our ship rattled under the intense hail of doomed ships vanishing into fireballs all around us. It was almost as if the ship itself knew what was to come, and shook with fear. If I had known then what would happen next, perhaps I might have shook as well.

Suddenly, the explosions had grown closer, and far more violent, the rattling far louder. When I went to check, the ship suddenly went into evasive maneuvers, slamming me head first into a steel pole. Luckily it was the pole that was damaged.

To say it fairly, my ship was being targeted, no, I shouldn’t say just our ship, it was the center of our formation that was being targeted. The enemy’s weapons had a three mile range, allowing two other cruisers besides our intended destination to fire upon us. They were after the transports.

We hadn’t even landed yet, revealing the card these ships held, they had simply decided that it was our next plan and started focusing down the transport ships.

Given who we were up against, i’d say they certainly lived up to what I had expected them to be, fierce and on my level in both strategy and execution. When two sides use evenly matched tactics, the only remaining factor of the battle is the valor and strength of the military force.

With their superior weaponry, i’d say we just had to make up for everything with millions of men and unwavering valor.

I was there, and I had long since proven my capacity for war, no matter the form nor odds. An undefeated warrior king had taken the field with his subjects, ready to share their fates. Upon looking upon their leader standing before them, planning to break into the very gates of hell with them, what warrior would not feel a great sense of inspiration or admiration. If it were not that very same king who had given such an order, never would one consider doing such a thing such as invading an alien’s ship, armed with hundreds if not thousands of laser weapons.

It was only because of me, who projected confidence and pure moral as if it were physically manifested that the troops were capable of such insanity.

The rattling grew more intense as we closed the gap.

One hundred seconds before landing, the pilot begins to slow and prepare for landing maneuvers.

Eighty seconds, the rumblings of the ships erupting in flames stop, all is silent before the roar of the engines.

Thirty seconds, the laser cannons of the alien ships open a concentrated volley of fire, casualties instantly shoot up to nearly sixty percent of the remaining numbers.

Ten meters away from targeted landing point, preparations to land complete. Ropes are dropped and I jump from the ship to make first landfall. Our position is instantly racked with heavy fire as debris shoot up from the alien’s own lasers damaging the hull.

Total casualties before first landfall were finally reported in, almost seventy two percent of the first wave had perished before even making it to the objective. Only a count of a little less than eight thousand would make up the first wave’s landing force.

There would be no tie for regret, they were all volunteers who wished to join me during the first landing. They wanted to join me in hell, and they got their wish.

As my fire team began to make it down, I knew full well we had to move quickly. The alien’s lasers could still very well target us. No sooner had just a mere fifteen of the fifty men on board my ship made it down had the ship erupted into flames, laser bolts in the dozens wrecked havoc upon the ship as it veered off, the screams of burning souls silenced as a crash sounded out behind a laser cannon mound.

There was no time to wait for other ships to land, I went on the move. The mission for these first hell droppers would be to eliminate as many laser turrets as possible. If they were able, disabling two or three of the main laser cannons would provide a great boon, but the numerous laser turrets were priority.

Thanks to the sacrifice of one of our best pilots we had managed to discover how to disable the turrets. He had crash landed purposefully onto the surface of the ship after a wing had been shot off and using a pack of explosives he had stolen, discovered a weak point on the laser turrets. Unfortunately, his discovery led to him being targeted by the other dozen turrets surrounding his position, leading to his death.

Since there were thousands of those things, and adding to the fact that almost all of our explosives were lost since we had yet to clear out from our ship, I decided to embark on a different mission.

I decided that the sixteen of us would go inside, to be the first ones to scout out the interior and search for weaknesses.

As for our entry point, we just had to jump down one of the dozens of damaged points or holes that our main offensive had left for us thus far. While we couldn’t deal major damage easily, we could certainly punch a hole or two with enough firepower pointed at one place.

I wanted to know just what we were facing. We knew the lasers, the terror gas bombs, and their massive ships. We also knew that they were fully capable of wiping out an entire continent in just under two days, slaughtering several hundred million people.

No, since we weren’t equipped to disable the lasers, we’d just have to settle for information gathering.

About twenty meters from where our ship had gone down, there was a five meter caused by one what seemed to be an experimental artillery ship, armed with a railgun cannon. It was still experimental and had already long since been shot down, but not before doing more damage than twenty ships armed with missiles could do in a single run. The damage went in several dozen meters, a surprising level of damage from just two shots.

Several minutes after entry….

guh….

…

…

…

…

It’s… gone…

I can’t think of anything after that… …

…

…

…

What… was it…

There was an incident that had occurred later on that had caused me to lose a small portion of my memory as well as apparent other things… That incident… I still don’t remember what caused the damage… but that wasn’t from this infiltration…

Ah… that’s right, I had researched after regaining my mental structure and capability to think. I needed to catch up to speed, so I listened in to several audio logs that I had left as well as the reports.

It’s still not the same as being able to remember it directly though… hah… now where did I leave off…

Entering the structure… ah… For roughly ten minutes, there was no contact of any sort, nor resistance. Then, coms went wild as half of my squad had apparently dropped. Reports from the remaining members began shouting about giant humanoids that towered nearly two and a half meters in height with various other features.

The squad then began a full retreat to the top of the ship with my orders. Though, it would appear that during the exodus, the remainder of the squad dropped off and I was left alone to fight through dozens of the alien soldiers before returning to the surface. Perhaps, it was a trap to lure me far enough in to eliminate me.

Regardless, after that, coms from all over began to ring out as the alien forces began to surge out from the underbelly of the ship through every hole we had opened. The clash between our two forces continued on for quite some time. Thousands of our men perished in a devastating melee against the far stronger alien brutes.

If you really consider it, we were up against beasts that towered above our heads, that were stronger than us physically, and were armed with far superior weaponry. If it ever came to a melee, it would often take between three to eight soldiers just to pin and defeat just one of those things, the vitality difference was obvious.

But, this is where my plan began to come in strong. While we were losing ships, we could replace them as time went on by calling in military transports that hadn’t been summoned until now. As for soldiers, there were over a million of them on standby on the land alone, if needed, over a hundred million soldiers could be called in during the period of a single day.

With each wave of reinforcements, the number of soldiers fighting on the top of the ship swelled. Each time, the survivors would teach the incoming troops how to handle themselves in the new combat experience, slowly increasing the effectiveness of the remaining forces. Not to mention each of the reinforcement groups would grow in numbers with each wave. The longer we fought on, the more turrets we were able to destroy, preventing more and more transports from being destroyed. With only a rough thirty percent, my wave had brought in just under eight thousand. By the time we had secured the surface again and began to bring the fighting inside, there were already nearly eighteen thousand on the surface, with each wave now averaging fifteen thousand men being dropped off per wave.

That was when the logs stated a change in the alien’s strict flight formation was observed. This was just when reports came in that a team had encountered a power-like facility within the ship and were preparing to destroy it. The moment that report came in, the very same ship we were on began to charge forward at extreme speeds, nearly breaking fifty miles an hour.

Hundreds, if not thousands of ships, surprised at the massive hulk moving at them perished by colliding into the ship.

At that time, I had apparently sent out a message stating that the ship was going critical. My team was located at the very center of the ship at the time. My final words were to use any means necessary to destroy the enemy fleet, no matter the cost, no matter the weapon before the coms went static from interference.

Three minutes after my message, signs of hundreds of soldiers jumping off the top of the ship for the water were reported. Rescue operations were launched.

Eight minutes after last contact, the small ship had reached the center of our naval fleet and came under extreme fire from all sides and fronts as the fleet frantically attempted to stop its advance.

Nine minutes after last contact, a single alien craft, small in size, launched from the alien cruiser. A signal went out that was quickly identified as me. Just after, a message went out to clear all personnel away from the area around the cruiser.

Ten minutes after last contact, the small alien craft that was believed to have me on board came under a harreld of enemy fire. Reports claim that the ship avoided enemy fire for almost five minutes as it made its way towards the main enemy hulk-like cruiser at the center before taking a hit and crashing into the main ship.

Fifteen minutes after second contact, I was presumed killed in action, much to the grief of the entire military forces. Clamor for revenge was commonplace as the remaining military chiefs of staff began to clear the necessary procedures to utilize nuclear weaponry. After my last demand to use all means necessary, it was assumed I had discovered something extremely important, why else would I have charged alone at the main ship without first returning to explain the situation.

Sixteen minutes after second contact, the small alien cruiser explodes, destroying at least ten thousand launched fighter-class ships and almost a third of our battleships. Many of the lost battleships had actually fallen victim to the large surge of water caused from the large hulk crashing beneath the waves. Using targeted missile fire, the damage was limited to only a third, if it wasn’t for the quick thinking of several captains, the losses might have been well over half of the entire fleet. Just after the ship crashed beneath the waves, the remaining enemy cruisers begin to engage our forces.

Twenty five minutes after last contact, the majority of our air forces had retreated and a rear guard of battleships had been volunteered into service. The remainder of my military command under the pretense of following my last order began a full nuclear strike upon the remaining enemy cruisers.

Records account to twenty six nuclear warheads being launched at the same time, more than twice the number of warheads launched for military purposes in the entire history of mankind. Two of the alien cruisers were confirmed destroyed while another three appeared to be disabled and slowly fell to the water. Thus marking the defeat of roughly half of the enemy’s fleet, the total war potential that was destroyed was uncertain. The remaining ships all showed signs of serious damage, but appeared to not be in danger of falling.

Fifty minutes after second contact, reports from scout ships specifically used to ensure the safety of the pilots came in stating that explosions were occasionally coming from the main enemy capital ship/ hulk-cruiser. There were few who made wild mention that I had perhaps remained alive, but it was marked as mere speculation and highly unlikely. Plans were underway to resume air warfare against the enemy fleet before they recovered from the damage. Personnel on land had already been organized to pull back several dozen miles away until the extent of the fallout could be determined. Without doubt, the incident would cause a future environmental catastrophe, but the destruction of half the alien fleet was deemed worth the sacrifice.

One hour after second contact, the main cruiser is reported to have opened fire upon two of the remaining cruisers as well as suddenly charging forward, crashing into another of the remaining cruisers. One of the two cruisers under fire explodes, taking out the other ship that had been under fire. Both had already appeared to be in critical condition as fires and various energy fluctuations could be detected. The rammed ship appeared to have lost flight stability as it began to roll mid air and crash violently beneath the waves, causing a tsunami-like wave that would lead to over thirty thousand civilian casualties within the course of the next few hours. Surprise at this sudden development shot through the entire military, as well as the world who were standing by and watching the conflict from afar. At this time, outcries came from various sources to proclaim my survival and continued resistance on board the capital ship. Reports state that a mid-class officer of the air force had overridden military command and moved to set off with the remaining sixty thousand airships and fighters on a rescue mission. The transports were loaded with volunteer soldiers as they knew they would likely suffer from various forms of radiation poisoning after participating in a battle on the capital ship without protection. Without the support of the lower troops, the upper echelons yielded and gave validity to this operation. It would set off between ten and thirty minutes later. With hierarchical support, the troops prepared for the operation.

Seventy-five minutes after second contact, operation ‘Savior of Mankind’ is announced to the world and launched. The purpose was to infiltrate the alien capital ship for the sole purpose of pulling me out from enemy territory. Alive and well of course. The operation saw the entire air and naval force launch with a blitz-style reckless offensive with all transports launching at once. The plan was to bypass the remaining cruisers that had taken up a defensive formation around the capital ship and land troops to recover me. They had recklessly taken advantage of the sudden surge of warfervor to get the troops to zealously agree to a basic, and reckless attack.

Eighty minutes after second contact, all hostile fire coming from the capital ship shuts down. The remaining three alien cruisers stop moving and take up a defensive formation to protect the capital ship.

Eighty-seven minutes after second contact, several major explosions occur from deep within the alien’s capital ship, causing very noticeable damage. The three ships now turn in full retreat.

Ninety minutes after second contact, the two escorting ships release a roughly estimated ten-thousand fighters. The human forces that had set out after the capital ship then engaged. The battle continued for only twenty minutes before the alien’s side had been depleted due to a combined air and naval offensive. On the human’s side, however, the casualties numbered nearly forty-thousand in total, nearly a full two thirds of our entire air potential. This was due to various reasons such as running out of fuel to crashing into alien ships in the chaotic engagement. The battle scaled from just above the water’s surface to nearly two miles into the sky. Skirmishes to mass engagements were scattered across nearly twenty miles. Regardless of orders, the surviving military forces break through the enemy formation to land onto the alien capital ship.

One hundred and twenty minutes after second contact, the first landing teams arrive on the capital ship under moderate fire from the remaining two cruisers. Heavy damage had already disabled a significant number of their weapon capacity. The capital ship’s weapons remained inactive. A squad of one thousand, two hundred and seven men and women organized and entered into the capital ship’s interior. Reports came in constantly about the infiltration team finding scenes of what appeared to be battles scattered throughout the interior of the ship. The massive hallways were lined with hundreds, to thousands of mutilated corpses of various disfigurement. From stab wounds, bite wounds, puncture wounds, missing limbs, caved-in skulls, opened stomachs, laser burns, and just about every other form of damage could be reported from the slain alien footsoldiers. A debate had begun over the possibility of a civil war breaking out within the alien ship, though this idea was mostly ignored due to the blind warfervor that had overtaken the minds of the soldiers. After crushing a majority of the alien fleet in less than three hours, the confidence of the military officers and soldiers alike had long since reached new levels of dangerous zealotry. No living encounters were reported by this time, only further increasing numbers of dead.

One hundred and fifty minutes after second contact, infiltration teams report the sounds of an active battle and receive full permission to investigate the situation.

One hundred and sixty-five minutes after second contact, scouts come across a scene of battle between the alien soldiers and a ‘Beast’ of some form. The beast was reported to be fighting alone against the several hundred alien soldiers surrounding it from all angles. The beast was reported to be humanoid in nature, though was determined to not be human due to the missing portions of the skull, missing arm, and various other injuries while still inflicting dozens of casualties upon the alien brutes. These were the same ones that required between three and eight soldiers to just barely take down one, and they were being taken down in droves from a single individual, thus why the scouts called it a beast. Steam was constantly seeping out from it’s body as blood gushed from it’s dozens of wounds. It fought tooth and nail as if every portion of its body had a mind of its own. As it bit down on one alien, it used the protruding bones on its arm to kill another while kicking two more in the head with a swiveling kick, causing blood to gush from both as they fell to the floor. Such was the scene of the beast fighting the alien soldiers, a near one sided slaughter against beasts that had proven to be so difficult to fight against. The speed the beast moved was reported to be at least three times faster than a human as its limbs moved almost too fast for them to perceive whenever it attacked. After a short deliberation between the officers on the scene, they decided to reinforce the beast in battle against the aliens.

Of course, that beast was me.

After a quick surprise assault from the infiltration team, the alien soldiers were routed. After securing the surrounding area, a single soldier was volunteered to investigate the beast from close up as the beast had since then stopped moving completely. The steam surging from its body still continuing as the significant amount of blood flowing out continued, the muscles moving slightly as if slowly attempting to stop the bleeding. The soldier then went on to report that he ID the beast’s face as my own, mistaking my current state as a coma due to the injuries I had sustained.

In reality, I had entered a shallow consciousness that I consider to be a recovery mode of sorts. I can’t say for sure if that was the case, but given the amount of steam they said was coming out of my body, that was probably the case. When I was in the water with my various injuries from taking a ship’s explosion head on, I had used that very same recovery mode to repair my body to the extent I could move again. The version I was probably using in the alien ship was probably far less effective though as the amount of heat generated from the process is almost to the extent that my body would be damaged seriously as cells would die from the heat. Various toxins would also grow to dangerous levels as both aerobic and anaerobic processes would operate at levels tens to almost a hundred times faster than the average human body. As my body is far different in comparison to the average human, my body was tempered to handle this burden to a certain extent, though as I am a hodgepodge of science experiments from birth on, it isn’t as if every part of my body functions properly. I have assumed though that over time, my body was increasing the efficiency and evolving to properly function. The normal human body does this as well over a long period of time as well as over the generations, though i’m sure the extent of my own is far faster.

Basically, the energy is used to facilitate an extreme burst of cellular replication, reproduction, and recovery. Special organs release large quantities of nutrients from two other organs that highly condense fats and other nutrients. Similar to kidneys, they filter the my entire blood system, working in symbiosis with other organs to balance my blood system. My blood is not normal blood cells, but rather a hemoglobin protein mass that, if receiving a chemical signal from the kidney-like organs that signal that blood levels are too low, will begin to take in amino acids and replicate several dozens of times per second as they break up into several dozen branches and rebuild themselves. Similar to how a worm can regrow itself if it is split in half I suppose. I would have to be losing several liters of blood per second to risk running low on blood. The amount of calories within my body are undeterminable, though I do not excrete waste, and many of the chemical processes within my body were never determined. The matter of how much water was or is within my system, or even where it was stored was never really determined. I had greatly limited the number of experiments performed on my body for various reasons.

Though, the main source of my recovery falls to the responsibility of several organs that researchers called stem membranes. These organs basically release thousands of stem cells into my bloodstream, allowing them to reach any and all damaged sites to aid in recovery. Even though bone doesn’t help with my bones as they are not the same as normal bones, if they come into range of bone damage, they can repair the special tissue that forms up the outer layer of the bone. When the outer layer is damaged, the tissue detects the damage to itself and takes in nutrients and stem cells to repair itself. As it repairs, a byproduct of the process is that the dead or older cells from this membrane form into my new bone. Scientists were unable to determine what the process behind this is because as they took samples, the samples would dissolve the moment they attempted to remove some. The process of bone repair is thus one of the most rapid within my body, the time it takes various, but even if a limb were to be lost, the first thing to regrow would be the bone, as tested by removing my hand in one of the early experiments after a test with a finger led to it growing back. The membrane would hold joints and loose bones in place until the tissue recovered and grew back over them, at which point the muscle tissue would push the membranes out of the way and took control of the joints.

In the end, my vitality is quite substantial, though the amount of energy required is probably just as significant. The more voracious my healing process becomes, the more heat is generated. Based on rough estimates, the researchers determined that the amount of calories being used for the process could vary from tens to hundreds of thousands of calories per second. Needless to say, but my body is substantially heavy… Very… very heavy… Though since normal scales weren’t able to determine my weight, I never felt like actually finding out, not something one would really care about that much.

After an incident where a researcher attempted to remove one of my organs for her own personal gain, I stopped the experiments altogether, too risky if people started looking at my body as a tool for scientific research after all.

Shame though, now that it has become like this, I find myself growing more curious as to how my body works and who I am. There’s some philosophic joke in there somewhere I’m sure… Bah, there’s only so many regrets you can allow yourself in life. Not learning how every one of my cells work shall not be one of them.

Well, when the infiltration squad got in close to examine their so called ‘Beast’ i’m certain their faces warped with surprise… actually… I can almost… imagine it.. no, perhaps I do to a certain extent… mmmm… surprise… joy… sorrow… anger… retreat… must retreat… emergency… interference… beyond… damage… stop it… all will be lost… almost too late… must prevent… must go back… stop them… stop them… almost too late… must move… hurry… … … … … …

It’s gone again…

Whatever I had learned is probably lost to me forever, or for however long I have left. If there was more time, perhaps I could have recovered those memories.

Well… I suppose… maybe after this, my questions will unravel themselves… who can truly know what that next step entails besides those who have walked upon it and moved on from here… so many have already gone before me… perhaps it’s time… … No… not yet… I owe them that much… to at least remember the rest of our last story…

…

Going on the reports, the team had initially thought that I was dead. This was mostly due to half of my neck being gone, a half missing arm, and the main reason being that roughly 40% of my head missing from various injuries. This was ignoring the fact that blood was constantly pouring out of my body from every wound. They did their best to stop the bleeding at least until they got me back to land.

I always wondered, after the fact, just what the hell went on after I got onto that small ship, hell, I want to know just about everything that happened. The reports are just not enough depth to make up for one’s memories. It feels off to read about what happened to you in vague terms when you lose your memory.

Bah, why do I keep coming back to this, enough of this already, I don’t have time for it anymore.

Hmm…. reports…

…

When one of the soldiers touched my head, the reports state that my eyes opened, showing consciousness. After that, I ordered the soldiers to retreat. Because I had just suddenly started talking after they had been working on stopping my bleeding without me saying a word, most of the soldiers were frozen in place. Of course, reports state that after cracking one of the soldiers on the side of the head and shouting the order again, they got their rears in gear. After two minutes, a retreat order surged through the remaining forces on board.

The delay turned to be costly as just two minutes after the retreat call sounded, the turrets within the cruiser and outside all went online, or perhaps they had only just come back online, who knows. Regardless, the unaware soldiers were dropped in droves as laser fire wreaked havoc on soldiers lacking any form of cover. Since they had plenty of experience with the laser weapons, there were still plenty that were able to react after the initial casualties and push on to retreat. By the time I had personally gotten out with the remaining forces, only two hundred and eleven soldiers got out. Given that they all had to clear their way through dozens to nearly a hundred passages and lift wells filled with continuous laser fire after being caught off guard, the number was actually extremely good.

Retreating from the ship, I was taken to a special medical facility specifically intended for me that was located roughly sixty miles away from the combat site. There, a special tank had been prepared in case I had received critical wounds and needed to return to battle quickly. This tank was called a Stem Tank, basically filled with a stem cell gel-like substance. Basically it was a tank with tens or hundreds of millions of stem cells, if not billions. The whole idea was rather simplistic in nature, and in terms of a normal person using it, their recovery would probably not be helped at all, or rather, it might seriously cause them harm if a person was just thrown into it.

On top of all that, the cost of producing and preserving such a large quantity of stem cells would be ridiculous in normal instances. The only reason there are so many is due to my stem membranes being siphoned to build a reserve for it. The only reason that such a crude method was used is due to my body’s adaptations, or perhaps mutations, to use stem cells allowed it to control the functions and usage of stem cells. Instead of relying solely on the membrane production of stem cells, the cells could pass through my skin as well as enter my wounds for rapid utilization. If my normal recovery were to be marked at a 100% recovery rate, the rate inside the tank would be between 250 and 375 percent.

It was after about two hours that my current consciousness recovered. Even though there were still several injuries that had yet to fully recover, my head had fully regenerated. My hand wasn’t fully functional yet either, but it was good enough. Though, from what I gathered from those that were there, there was something different. Or, rather, they felt as if something was missing, but it was impossible for them to finger what it was. Since there was nothing they could come up with, I moved on.

From there, I discovered that the alien’s capital ship had fallen back to the continent and had crash landed.

The cruisers that had crashed into the water had been heavily assaulted and overrun. When they had fallen into the water, it would seem their power sources or whatever powered their laser weaponry was lost, thus they were almost defenseless. If you count a two and a half foot tall brute with a laser rifle and great strength defenseless of course.

After overrunning their positions, we had managed to recover some of their technology and it was already under serious study.

After returning to a command center, I gave the order to invade the continent. Without giving our invaders time to make a single move, I wanted to wipe them out. If reinforcements were called, we were a year, perhaps two years away from offering another serious resistance.

It had to be now. Destroy the main ship before it’s too late. That was the one feeling that surged through my entire being. At the time, I thought of only alien reinforcements, but now, now I know why…

With a majority of the air force destroyed, the sole method of we could truly rely on for large scale invasions would be a naval invasion, with helicopter infusions. While most of our airship-type transports were lost, with this invasion, we could now utilize helicopters. If we used them previously, they were far too slow to use in our formation, and would be sitting targets for the laser weaponry.

The remaining air force still had its uses, but since we were not in a land invasion as well as their depleted number, they would only be able to move roughly eleven thousand men in total. While there were still plenty of fighters, there were less than a thousand undamaged transports that we could actively call on currently.

Instead, they would be mostly turned over to support purposes.

We still had two cruisers to destroy, then, then we would finally come to face our final target.

Thirty two hours after the first shots rang out, our forces had made land fall upon the barren wastelands that used to be a thriving continent of humankind.

Modern naval technology had allowed us to clear the distance of a hundred miles relatively quickly.

The sum of the liberation invasion forces numbered just 85,000 in total, but reinforcements would be coming in the tens of thousands every hour or so.

The fighting was fierce, but after several hours of constant fighting, hiding from terror gas bombs, and the sort, we finally shot down the remaining two cruisers, and routed their ground forces.

It was then that we had finally surrounded the entire wrecked hulk of a capital ship.

With almost two hundred thousand soldiers at my back, the world itself went silent, not a breath, not a whisper.

With a single roar, the call rang out, and the final assault had begun, humanity would be victorious this day. Of this, I was certain… I… was so certain…

The alien fighting capacity was a shadow of its former self. At best there were perhaps twenty or thirty thousand of them left, taking up what little fortifications they could or hiding within the wreck of the capital ship. That day, they would be granted their final stand.

I left no room for error, I wanted to wipe them out, to leave no trace. Hundreds of teams scoured the continent to clear out any remnants. Tanks and air support were heavily established within the area around the capital ship, artillery was on stand by and suitable numbers of reinforcements were called for to ensure success…

I will never forgive myself for this blunder. I knew in my heart that time was in direly short supply, yet, I took my time in being thorough… took my time in my approach… I waited for more troops… I waited for support… I waited… and by the time I gave that order to attack… It was far… far too late…

In the midst of the fight, I encountered what seemed to be the enemy’s leader, a three meter monster with three sets of arms that each carried a laser blade. In just five minutes, he had already fallen beneath my heel.

In my confidence, I had exclaimed to the beast, taking up one of his blades to point at his neck, that they had lost.

But, in his eyes, he had a humored expression. It was in that moment, our minds had synced, and I heard just four words…

“You’re already too late.”

*ZERRRANGERRUMBLEGRANNNGRUMBLEZOOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUN*

The capital ship evaporated into a grand pillar of light, a massive hole was left in its place. The earth beneath my feet began to shake violently and the bright blue sky above ran black as night.

It was then that the alien leader grabbed my arm, and a single thought burst into my mind,

“You will die with us! It is you who has lost!”

In my reply,

“Yet you have won nothing, you have cheated yourselves.”

In reality, it was all I could muster…

As if his last reason for living had been accomplished, the beast threw himself upon the blade in my hand, dying there without a sound.

Afterwards, the earth began to rupture and split, the air ran thin, and life began to burn out slowly around the world.

Until now… here I am… a single hour later… the last one left…

My comrades in arms screaming in suffering and their cries for help, all have gone silent. Our world… has gone dark..

Women… children… mothers… husbands… life… everyone… and everything now is as silent as the universe around us… in the void of our dead world…

I had killed them all.

If I had just destroyed that ship earlier….

Focused everything into its destruction….

Then…

Perhaps…

It would not have… then we would not be…

A scenario where…

There is no longer a we...

No one to judge me, I now stand alone, the final memory of my race.

All I had done, the lives I saved, built from the depths and touched, all ended by the very same hands.

I watched as almost two hundred thousand men and women die right before my very eyes. Crying, sobbing, laughing or yelling, each one of them had cast their gazes upon me for guidance. For surely, I would figure out some way for them to survive, I had never failed before, there was no way that this was the end.

But… there was nothing I could do… No matter how hard I thought… A mind capable of planning years into the future… could not find a single path within our very reality that would allow for our survival…

Within just twenty minutes after the initial explosion… or whatever the hell it was… the air had already grown thin and there were short periods where gravity itself seemed to lessen or stop. Earthquakes rumbled almost constantly as the ground under heel buckled with every shake.

There wasn’t enough time to build a bunker, and even if we could, it would only prolong the inevitable as we wouldn’t have any way to secure air, food or water in suitable amounts. Even if I took only a few, there would be no real survival that way.

There wasn’t enough time to build a spaceship, and the reports from the studies on the small alien crafts showed they weren’t space capable, so we couldn’t even try to secure some of them.

There was no way to prevent the end with the short amount of time we had left…

Even with a whole world with the sole project of making an ‘arc’ to save the human race, even a limited number, would take almost two weeks to put together. One that was self-sustaining to maintain just two lives.

To build one capable of keeping any number more alive would take so much longer to do, there was just no way we could do it with the world slowly dying as it was.

In reality, there just was no way to do anything in just a single hour, normal life began to die rapidly just after thirty minutes, the atmosphere got hostile after forty minutes, and all life was gone after fifty. Even I, don’t think i’ll survive much longer…

As time went, those eyes of hope turned into despair and regret.

Then, one by one, each one of them began to collapse from the lack of air. either dying, or killing each other off rather than waiting for the end. Each one of them met their fates.

It was when only I, and a single little girl on an air tank, a survivor we had rescued from some ruins, were left. She was perhaps fourteen, maybe fifteen years old…

With her last breaths, she spoke words that I will never… no… can never… forget….

“It’s your fault, my family… everyone… You killed them all…. But… I can’t help but keep forgiving you… Mother and father would have both left me already without you… First mom, then father got sick… then your medicine and programs helped them… I wasn’t alone anymore… They could only praise you, and look up to you with such happy expressions… you were the one who kept our family together… they would always say how pure and kind you were… no matter what… they would always look up to you… so…. no matter how hard I try… I just………. I just can’t hate you….. it’s not fair…. you helped us so much… So… … I… … just want… … … to … … say…

Thank you…

Thank you for giving my life happiness…………………………”

With that, the young girl, no more than fifteen years old, died in my arms… For the first time in my entire life… I looked up to the sky… and tears continued to flow from my eyes, the pain in my chest can never be described… It was all my fault…. I’m so sorry….

She was crying the whole time, but in the end, she died with such a bright smile…

A little girl, who I took everything from, thanked me for the difference in her life…

for the rest of the time until now, I could but ponder my life’s worth after I buried her. Our world would serve as her headstone…

Even now, I don’t know if my life’s sum is worth more than the cost it demanded. What would have been the fate of humankind without me. Beneath the heels of the aliens perhaps, or even a similar fate of extinction. Were the aliens even truly bad, could we have negotiated if I hadn’t led humanity to defend ourselves. So many questions… When pondering a life, many questions you will ask yourself… Most begin with a ‘what if’...

I don’t know what might have been, just what had been. My life was spent in service to life, only to end in death.

Perhaps… a final irony to the annals of my life.

Was I right, was I to blame for everything, I shall never know.

I will leave my final judgement to the universe and oblivion.

My name, was, is, and always will be,

Aristocles Von Rasok,

A man who cherished life more than any other.

I go now to join my brothers and sisters in that next step of life, with no more regrets.

Hah….

Life… it really is so short isn’t it…

“...”

-

Looking up at the stars above his world, Aristocles Von Rasok, once heralded as the savior of mankind, passes away in the shadows of a dead world.

[Ant Tensei Redux Prologue: Terra Arc - END]

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Please do comment and rate the story thus far.

It has been a long way coming to this point with the release of the first part of Ant Tensei's prologue trilogy, Terra, Spiritus and Vitae. The other two parts probably won't be as long, though they certainly won't be short either.

As for the reason for why this first piece is so long (22,010 words) is because of the need for the backstory, as well as to show the level of detail my writing capacity can generate. Our friend Aristocles is a central figure in the Annals of Ant Tensei and beyond, there's no way i'd disrespect such a character by giving him a short prologue.

Read on and stay tuned!

~White