Damon watched coldly as 'his people' were gunned down while screaming and panicking. Many had just been about to join their peers on the dance floor when they saw bullets rip through the bodies.

They themselves were not spared this fate, as they soon joined the growing pile of bodies that mounted. Many influencers who had been recording live were gunned down, their fans shocked and horrified behind their screens as they had witnessed what was going on.

Damon watched as the crowd was thinned down to a suitable number before he nodded to a man with a scar over his right eye. The man then grabbed him and tossed him over the side, making him crash into a table below.

He specifically chose an angle so that both the club's cameras and the cell phones of those still alive would be able to record that moment. Damon crawled out from the broken table, bleeding and seemingly in utter agony from his wounds.

Eventually, he reached out a hand to some corpses before him, as if he was unwilling to accept what had happened before 'fainting'. At this moment, the men with guns began shooting down all the cameras inside the club. Once done, they proceeded to walk down to the first floor, destroying all phones whether they had been recording or not, and double-tapping the corpses.

They searched the club thoroughly to make sure there would be no survivors. Once done, Damon covertly signaled to the scarred man, who in turn gave orders to raise the young master up and beat him bloody, adding bruises at pre-selected areas that would heal quickly without affecting the young man's physiology later on.

Eventually, more than 30 minutes later, the police arrived. After all, this was a Third World country, and the police force was not exactly known for their fast response time.

Damon was 'rescued' and taken to the hospital while the paramedics searched the corpses for any survivor. Three were found, two men severely injured from the bullets but somehow alive, and one woman who had hidden herself under a group of corpses.

She had managed to escape the fate of so many others thanks to her smallish stature of 5''3'. Up until that event, she had cursed her height, something the woman had been mocked for ever since she had been a teenager, yet it was what had allowed her to survive that horrible night.

Nevertheless, she was unable to make it out fully intact. When the mercenaries had double-tapped everyone, one of the bullets had hit her lower back, crippling her for life.

She had fainted from blood loss, though she had still been conscious enough to witness the first few minutes of Damon getting tortured, making her a testifier to the story of what had occurred.

The massacre shocked East Legon, and even the whole country, for it was raw violence on a scale that had never occurred, not even in the fringe regions where things were heavily tribalistic.

There had always been stories of brutal wars between ethnicities and clans in those fringe regions where development was poor, but no one usually cared as it did not affect their lives personally.

However, such devastation in the heart of the capital, right in one of the three richest cities, was enough to set off a storm.

The name Damon Arnan, formerly just another young up-and-coming politician, was now a household name all over the country.

From an obscure young master following the footsteps of his father, he became a name that even the illiterate would recognize.

And this was just the first step. Soon enough, Damon went on talk shows and interviews, sharing with the world what had happened as well as theorizing about the probable reason for this gruesome attack.

According to him, the moment he entered his VIP room, he found himself surrounded by burly men wielding guns who had threatened to kill him if he made a sound. When his secretary came to bring him a drink, he had tried to signal her about his predicament.

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Unfortunately, his attempt must have been not subtle enough, and one of the men must have caught it, leading them to open their fire.

The secretary had been the first casualty of the act - Damon had made sure of that - so all the public had to go on was the footage from the cameras, which he had generously released without editing them whatsoever.

Truth be told, the young master did not dare edit them even slightly, for there might even be laymen in the public who might have had an eye for edited footage. However, thanks to his careful acting and the testimony of the surviving woman, nobody questioned the validity of the footage.

The more people saw his face and heard his name, the more they got to know him, especially via his vlog, which he had started in tandem with his physical therapy. He was at times passionate, sorrowful, cold, or expressive during his various appearances depending on the mood.

This way, Damon managed to gather his own cult following of sympathizers, which peaked when he held an auction to sell his own car to gather funds for the funerals of the various deceased.

What most of the public seemed to have missed - or perhaps had chosen to blissfully ignore - was the fact that all his guests had come from rich families or had at least been rich enough to pay for their own funerals.

They believed he was a compassionate man who had been deeply scarred by the traumatic event. Naturally, his history had been dug out by those who either wanted to vilify him - as there would always be doubters - or exalt him.

His history was carefully tailored, too, thanks to the effort of his parents. Damon had been raised from the beginning to be a sensible and mature young man, with above-average grades throughout his life, a clean record, and a positive social life with his peers.

Most of them came out to say that yes, they had gone to school with Damon, and yes, he had always been a pretty nice guy who had never seemed to cause trouble. There had not even been the need to bribe them, those youths were all more than happy for the opportunity to ride the wave of fame Damon had attracted and get some likes on their social media platforms

With this, the young master had achieved the first step of his goal to immortalize himself, and he was filled with satisfaction from the fact. Truth be told, the deaths of those guys and gals who had been his 'friends' still bothered him a little.

Try as he might, Damon was not a machine that could ignore such things. He retained feelings of guilt, worry, self-reproach, and regret. However, apart from the occasional nightmare, it was all drowned by the roaring satisfaction of seeing the partial achievement of his life's goal.

Things were going well for Damon, and he predicted that he should have the mettle to step up from this event and push higher and farther. Ironically, he, like the rest of the world, could never have predicted that the world as they knew it would undergo a complete upheaval.

......…

Today was March 21st, 2025.

The world was in the midst of pseudo-peace, some places were fine, while others were in turmoil. Politics had deepened the divide between people even further, and it seemed as if not having a political stance made you a freak.

The world was split into two, the self-proclaimed 'good guys' and the outdated 'bad guys'. You were either one or the other, and if you thought you could avoid it, other people would forcibly put you into a category without your say-so.

While this kind of nonsensical social phenomenon was occurring all over the planet, a large spaceship made of a silvery-black alloy was slowly - relative to the average movement speed of such crafts - moving through the solar system.

It was a sleek model, looking like one meant for scouting rather than transportation or warfare. It had just passed by Mars and was about to come across Earth, when its radar pinged once it was three times the distance between Earth and the moon away.

A grunt wearing a black uniform with a headset was startled by this as he operated one of the stations within the ship's control center. He turned to the man in the central seat and loudly reported.

"Lord Ambrose, we have detected organic life ahead! According to our initial scans, chances are that this lifeform might have reached civilization level 1!"

This surprised all other workers who were either at various stations or were shuffling in and out of the control center, running their tasks and making sure the ship was functioning properly for their mission.

Yet, the being in the central seat seemed to only be slightly interested. "No need to be so dramatic, Cadet-225. Simply initiate the procedures for the discovery and assimilation of new species as you were taught."

The words had a bit of coldness in them, despite coming from a being donning a slight smile. Ambrose was a male humanoid creature, with short black hair that glowed with red light, two crimson pupils, a pale shade of skin, and aesthetic features that were pleasing to the eyes of humans and humanoids alike.

"Y-yes, Lord Ambrose!" Cadet-225 responded with fear, knowing that this esteemed lord of the Vampire species was the type to kill while smiling kindly.

He immediately punched the relevant buttons that sped up their ship until they were within range of Earth's satellites. From there, the grunt nodded to his co-workers as they all simultaneously pushed a switch.

"Mental broadcast enabled! My Lord, should we broadcast the automated message or would you like to make a manual one?" Cadet-225 asked Ambrose.

Ambrose pondered for a while before he tapped his temple. "I'm bored enough, so let me tease these newlings a bit."