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I jumped up and the claws of both hands hissed through the air, splinters of wood flew away in an explosion and I looked around for the attackers.

"Tsk..." Came a loud snap across my tongue, annoyed that I had carelessly turned one of the few chairs in my new home into sawdust. And why? All because of a stupid, human nightmare! Fucking shit once again.

I had dreamed about the murder of my human body from my last life, apparently another side effect of the human genes I had absorbed. And instead of just having stupid and useless emotions, I have to give myself nightmares? Pffff... Annoying.

50% human emotions still seem to be too much of a good thing, then just 30%. No desire for something as pointless as nightmares. Dreams? Okay, if they are beautiful. Pleasant. But everything else is a waste of time, especially if I destroy everything around me when I wake up!

If I had woken up near something alive, I would have killed it instantly. Or if I have to spend the night in a city sometime? Should I then devastate the hotel room as well?!

Who the bloody hell needs nightmares, and what are they good for? Especially over several lifetimes! Ridiculous. Simply ridiculous.

But before I get any more upset, I'd better start thinking about what I could devour today! Laughing and immediately in a good mood, I went to the wild boars, to look at how the enclosure was built to be able to build more of them and to catch more different animals for my breeding!

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With shaky legs, I swung down from my white horse and almost fell over when I landed with both feet on the path, so wobbly did I feel at that moment.

A scene such as I had rarely seen in my career as a soldier unfolded before me. We were sent in search of the long overdue merchant who usually came by once a month at the sunny time of the year, bringing new goods from the capital of the kingdom to our remote little town. The man was extremely punctual, and for the past year had always brought along his daughter, whom the mayor's boy had been keeping an eye on.

When the mayor had sent us off, just because his son had yelled and screamed, who, by the way, everyone in the small town hates with a passion, as spoiled and brutal as he is, no one thought of finding something like this.

And no matter what had happened here, what was left behind testified to a brutality and a simultaneous clarity about the remaining of the victims that could only make you dizzy. Blood, spread over a radius of almost ten meters, had been sinking into the earthy soil of the forest path for at least a day, and only the wagon had remained. Nothing that testified to the bodies of the people or even the horses could be seen far and wide. Drag marks of any kind were also missing, and whatever had raged here after the raid, for a raid it had been at first quite clear when you saw the arrows and the fallen tree trunk, had completely consumed all flesh.

Only the blood sunk into the ground and the flies attracted by the smell in small swarms, were still to be seen. Questions were raised, and the soft whispers of the fighters who had accompanied the soldiers echoed over the silence. The fabrics, the furs and many of the other valuable things and everyday items were still to be found in the overturned wagon, while all jewelry and any currency except a few scraps in some trouser pockets were completely missing!

Almost as if the beast had grabbed the valuable stuff after its gigantic and bloody meal and disappeared without a trace. Without a trace, because none of the other veterans, soldier or hunter, found any trace of the beast. Only a few odd, small claws pressed out at extremely irregular intervals could be seen here and there in all the blood. Some of my colleagues suspected a harpy, or some other extremely large bird creature, had attacked the bandits in flight when they were finished, and then eaten them all.

That would explain the irregular imprints. But what monster could do such a thing? And feast on the whole lot of them! And what monster in the bloody hell would also take all the glitter and valuable?!

Shaking my head and keeping my stomach in check, in contrast to two of the newcomers in our troop who were currently throwing up noisily at the edge of the forest, i looked for eye contact with my longtime friend, the forest hunter Tran.

He also looked over at me at that very moment, and judging by his green face, he had a lot more trouble not throwing up than I did.

I walked over to him, careful not to step in any puddles of blood, and patted him gently on the shoulder in an encouraging and compassionate way. "Don't worry about it..." I whispered to him as I got a little closer and tried to talk to him unnoticed. "Whatever did this has been gone for a while.... And even I almost vomit at the sight of it.... So." I left the unsaid at the end unspoken so.

He shook his head with a facial expression that expressed remorse, disgust and compassion, the latter the death of many good people in our kingdom, and stared at me. "Do you know... I wouldn't even be surprised if this was NOT a fucking monster, but another one of the macabre games of the nobles or some other son of a whore who gets pleasure from mutilating and slaughtering others..." A short pause for breath, a quick glance at the scraps of clothing and dismembered leather armor that lay everywhere. "But Ian, I'm not sure anyone from Triell would have the balls for that. Not even all these bastards together would be able to... And whoever or whatever did this would teach even all these human abominations the fear of their lives. THAT'S what I believe." And his gaze lingered on me, sad eyes that had seen too much shit in life themselves staring directly into my own.

"I know what you mean, old friend..." I muttered, looking down at my bloody hands, which had inevitably come into contact with the red substance while searching the remains of the wagon. "Let's check again for traces, and then pack up and report to the mayor.... And back in Triell, send a quick messenger to the king."

Turning around, I whispered something else, more to myself, but I knew Tran could hear me just fine. "But at least the merchant's daughter doesn't have to end up in the dirty hands of the boy as well..." And more images, a whole series of images, came to my mind. Of all the victims and screaming children, the mutilations and games that the mayor's sick son had played with his victims until we found them.

No one could prosecute the boy, since he could only be charged by the royal family itself due to his father's contacts and his status as a nobleman, but they did nothing in such remote areas or dismissed it as rumors.

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One last look back at the forest hunter who was shaking his head. "Tran, I think we need to put this quest out for B level adventurers or even A."

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I knew I was unwanted.

I knew I was ballast.

I knew that my family would be much better off without me.

And I knew that I had been an accident. Something that should never have seen the light of day in this dirty and unfair world.

And yet my parents had gotten me. In a quickie, they had always said disparagingly. My older siblings, an older and nicely dressed sister and two older brutal brothers, had treated me accordingly.

My mother had beaten me, said I was responsible for the fact that she was no longer so pretty.

My father sometimes drank and dragged me through the mud to make me work everywhere in the small town. In inns where I was supposed to wait tables, wash dishes, make beds, clean and scrub. At the butcher's I had to clean the waste, the intestines and the shit. At the furrier bring urine and wipe. Drinking from the animal trough until I almost burst, and then letting myself pee in a bucket in front of the other children at the furrier. A urine whore, they called me, laughed at me, spat at me.

Only some of the soldiers, who did not look at me lustfully, showed pity. But one of the nice soldiers said to me one day that they could not do anything, because my parents had all the rights to do with me what they wanted. So according to the law of the mayor.

And the mayor himself always appeared friendly and sincere in public, but I knew about the fear in the streets, the children without parents, the homeless, as they whispered.

The mayor's son was a real monster, and his father let him do whatever he wanted. He even supported him monetarily and protected him again and again.

Children of different ages disappeared. Not only homeless and living on the street, but also from families.

Some were found, often mutilated, with a void in their eyes or out of their minds. Insane or even more than just dead inside. Or only corpses remained, which was most common.

And me? I didn't even have a name... Only the one that the people gave me. Urine dispenser, urine whore, filth, useless piece, worthless garbage. And so much more, which I no longer perceived.

And today? Today my family had realized that I cost more than I brought in. The food waste and leftovers that I was given were dirtier and moldier than what pigs got, that much I had seen. I was only allowed to wash outside in the rain, which did not happen very often in this area.

And all this had led to the fact that I was sold after 9 years of my dirty life.

Sold to an organization. A community, which was represented in the whole kingdom, as far as I had picked it up somewhere. Feared, but always on the lookout for test objects, so they said. Unlike the mayor's son, however, they paid in advance for the children they took in.

But unlike the boy's victims, none of them ever came back from the clutches of this organization.

Assassins, the black hand. Their name was whispered in the streets behind closed doors.

And one of these black-clad assassins, definitely a woman in stature if you observed her gait, was carelessly dragging me by the hand behind her.

Her hand like a vice around my bony wrist, a force I only dreamed of, in my emaciated body that drifted closer to death than to life.

A blow, faster than lightning, or at least without me seeing it coming, hit me with a force on the cheek, and I crashed head first into the muddy puddle at our feet.

My jaw, which until now had miraculously never been broken as one of the few bones in my body, cracked and I felt searing pain force silent tears into my eyes.

Road dirt, rain and tears mingled and ran down my cheeks as my cheek and underlying jaw sent waves of familiar pain through my fragile body.

I looked up, too powerless and dizzy to do more. Two angry eyes stared me down, and I couldn't even flinch or flinch, so empty did I feel.

I was almost dead, and I was a slave. A slave all my life, only now officially sold and bartered away.

"What are you staring at, you little bitch?!" Came an angry voice from under the black cloth that covered most of my current tormentor's face.

I continued to stare, void, powerless, into that angry twinkle of a pair of eyes. She had brown eyes. Standard, like myself, if the rain puddles hadn't lied to me.

The vice of a hand reached down and within a second I was dangling in the air, my feet no longer even touching the ground, only the two eyes in front of me, which kept turning away as my body twisted uncontrollably left and right. Like a wet sack, if I noticed the comparison correctly.

A second vice, oh no, hands, shot out and grabbed me by the chin until I looked the angry woman directly in the eyes and my body no longer turned away. Why was she so angry? Had someone stolen something from her? Or hurt her? Had someone wronged her?

I didn't understand, couldn't understand what she wanted from me, or why she was so furious.

Was one angry at an object? Was that even possible? I didn't know, because I had never owned anything myself. Even the two clothes on my body, a pair of rough woven pants and a much too large dirty shirt, belonged to my parents. Or stop, now my new owner...

Was she my new owner? But then why was she so angry? I did not understand.

"...Are you even listening to me, you little cunt???" The woman hissed at me now, and I looked at her confused.

The strong grip on my chin loosened, and suddenly the hand flew up again, only to stop right in front of my face.

"Calm down... Calm down... It's worthless, and you're just supposed to deliver it. Nothing more. Anything else will only lead to a punishment. So, take a deep breath and exhale. And do what you were told to do..." The woman whispered to herself, and I was even more confused.

Was she also a victim of the mayor's boy? These were, if at all, only insane and no longer master of their senses.

I was put back down on the floor, more friendly than before, but immediately she felt herself being dragged behind again, exactly as before.

I did not understand. But soon it was over. If no one returned from this place where I had been taken, then soon I could finally close my eyes, and hopefully I would be allowed to die....

Because I had never been allowed to die either. A waste for all that had been done for me, my family had always told me. I should be grateful to be so spoiled, they preached to me.

But now? A glimmer of hope! Could I finally let go? To drift off into nothingness... the black nothingness that I had seen so many times before, but that had always been taken away from me just before I reached it.

I knew it was death. The peaceful death, the only thing I longed for, what I still wanted. What I ever wanted. Because that was all I was allowed, and everything was taken away from me as soon as I possessed it.

Only the murmur of the angry woman in front of me with her hand crushing my wrist brought me out of my thoughts.

"Novice games... initiation... ritual... hunt... Prey, first kill..."Was all I understood from the low murmur, but the last shred spoken filled me with childlike joy! Joy, that it was really soon so far.

Finally... Salvation...

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