67 Years Ago

Snowfall High Court

“Malador II then announced to the court in an imposing voice, ‘I do not wish for history to repeat itself. Thus, I issue a decree. From now on, Snowfall’s militia shall be divided into four quadrants of south, east, west, and north. This way, one man does not hold total control over our armies. And in the case a quadrant reneges, the other quadrants will rise to swiftly cull the rebels.”

A Written Account of the Day After the Rebellion

Scholar, Frost D. Schwartz

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Six men, a wooden table, cigar smoke, and thick, oily kebabs.

The room—usually reserved for important meetings and things alike—was now fashioned into a club house. The noble and ornately crafted table, formerly covered from corner-to-corner in a parchment detailing an intimate layout of the southern quadrant, was now a glorified foot stool. The men’s military outfits were unbuttoned, their hairy chests laid bare, and collars popped up. A few of them held cigars with singed ends, thin lines of smoke trailing into the air.

Currently present were the five captains of the southern quadrant, and the ringleader of this entire gathering, Magnus. Magnus was a large man of sheer size and presence. Just the slightest gesture; the turn of his head, a change in expression, the start of a smile, drew other people in. His beard was black and coarse, his cheeks round and plump, and his eyes wide and hooded.

And along his mark-less forearms were taut cords of dense muscle and networks of bulging, blue veins. But no matter how intimidating he looked, Magnus’ smile was broader than his own face at times, and it was infectious.

“Cheers for the scrawny lad that showed Wagner up yeste’!” Magnus cheered as he raised a glass of brandy into the air.

Wagner, the man in question, turned even redder than he already was, staying out of it when everyone else clinked their glasses together.

Drinks sloshed and laughter reverberated through the air. They fought to pull the final layer of sticky kebabs off their metal trays. And so, with full, round bellies, they passed around and lit their second cigars of the night. It warmed their lungs and relaxed tensed muscles. A vanilla scent spread through the room in full strength.

Bringing the cigar to his lips, Wagner heard it crackle and heat up as he breathed in. Puffing out a billowing cloud of smoke, he mentioned in a light-hearted tone, “Just before I came here, Stanley, a three-marked young lad said to me that a literal six-year-old-boy was asking on his behalf to join cadet training. Obviously, I said no.”

Everyone burst into laughter and looked in Magnus’ direction.

Wagner then added, “He even had a damn note from the lady at the orphanage. I thought it was cute.”

For some reason, Wagner’s words caused Magnus to suddenly have a sharp look in his eye. He looked to Captain Briggs’, whom gave him a similar, suspect look in turn.

Flipping his hand over, Magnus asked Wagner, “What was his name?”

“Jack Druss.”

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Magnus was frozen still when he heard this name.

But then he smiled. A big smile.

***

After Jack was discovered in the snow that night, he was escorted back to the city. Stanley was the one in charge of holding the baby for the entirety of the trip, and because he still had to sweep the floors, when they got there, it was Briggs who took him to the orphanage. But as Briggs and Mother Teresa were refitting the baby into a new set of clothes, they noticed something so shocking that neither could process it. The baby was marked.

Upon its back was an ivory, upward-pointing triangle, bisected by a horizontal line. As soon as this was discovered, Briggs, assured by Mother Teresa that she would keep quiet, rushed through the city and found Magnus, the freshly promoted Commander of the Southern Garrison, in the practice yard, stretching shirtless in the freezing cold. When Briggs showed him the baby and told him about everything, Magnus left to directly report the matter to Lord Malador himself.

People who were born marked would most likely—if nothing went wrong—go on to become a Deca-marked. A person could have up to seventeen marks, but even fifteen marks alone was considered legend. The vast majority of the population had between three and five marks. Those who were six-marked were considered high status. Seven-marked were distinguished. Eight-marked were on the same level as nobility. Nine marks and above was exceedingly rare. You could count on two hands how many people in Snowfall were nine-marked, and on one-hand, those ten-marked and above.

Everyone who had at least eight marks was in direct servitude to Lord Malador. An eight-marked [Tailor] made his clothes. An eight-marked [Chef] cooked his food. A nine-marked [Scholar] tutored his children. Firmly cementing Lord Malador’s rule and rendering him virtually invincible was the thirteen-marked man that followed behind Lord Malador like his own shadow. More than anything else, they were assets; valuable pawns that Lord Malador would not hesitate to spend to cultivate.

But when Magnus came back and told Briggs that the child was in fact the newborn son of the Malador’s third wife, Lady Iredell, and that the person Stanley had sighted with his [Foresight] was the person who kidnapped him, Briggs couldn’t have been any more shocked.

So what did Lord Malador order them to do?

Act as if Jack was really found in the snow, and to put him in the orphanage. From time to time, Mother Teresa was to send back reports to Lord Malador as to how he was developing. Apart from that, he was to grow up as a normal “orphan”.

But he had a reason for this certain arrangement.

The person that Koby had colluded with to carry out the kidnapping wasn’t just an ordinary rogue for hire.

They were reversed.

***

A pair of footsteps echoed throughout the hall as Stanley led Jack to the back.

“Just so you know, Instructor Magnus can be very harsh. So if—what am I saying? —he wouldn’t do that to you. I mean, come on. You’re only six.”

Stanley was just finished telling him a horror story from his cadet years, in an attempt to persuade him not to do this. This, however, only made Jack more excited. He wanted to work hard and go through excruciating pain. He wanted to be put through whatever grueling training this potentially sadistic, masochistic, and psychotic ‘Instructor Magnus’ had in store for him.

His previous two lives had taught him one thing more than anything else: power rules supreme.

If he had power in the form of connections, or in terms of the physical, enough to take down the entire mafia with his own hands, he wouldn’t have had to suffer as a slave. If he had the levels and abilities to single-handedly take on the inquisitors that massacred all of Kirkstead, his family would still be alive. He wouldn’t have died prematurely. He wouldn’t have been stuck with such a mediocre choice of classes when he turned ten.

He wasn’t thinking clearly at that time.

Back then, all Greg had ever wanted was to live a normal life. In his life on Earth, he…

He had nothing.

What he yearned for more than anything else was to contribute to society like a normal person, speak to others like a normal person, fall in love and start a family like a normal person, and live like a normal person.

He did that in his second life. And it made him genuinely happy.

But this isn’t the end of his journey.

He can reincarnate into other worlds endlessly, and forever.

When he last died and returned to the void, Greg imagined having thought to himself, “…and now what?”

He thought of it like this: life was a very large onion with many layers.

Each layer was something you chased in life. First, you complete school and grow up; that’s one layer. Second, you find a good job; that’s another layer. Third, you fall in love and start a family; that’s three.

That was a broad generalization, but Greg thought it applied to anything else in life. Hobbies, sports, personal goals, accomplishments, accolades, trophies—anything that you had to work hard to accomplish.

But an onion is an onion. It isn’t infinite. There had to be an end to it somewhere. You peel back a layer and there is nothing underneath it. A core, maybe? Greg didn’t know what was at the center of the onion, but he could see, with his own eyes, feel with his soul, what the outermost layer of the onion currently was.

And it was power.

Jack refused to be weak anymore. Power was the same anywhere you went, and the system, the thing that gave him the [Perks] in the ‘void in between’—as he liked to call it—its main purpose was to give him power. So all Jack did was connect the dots. What did the system also want? It wanted him to become more powerful. It offered it to him in exchange for doing great things and leading extraordinary lives.

It also made sense to him. Down the line, say he wanted to become a librarian for a while.

Then why not be an extremely powerful librarian that can kill anyone that dares steal his precious books? Why not a soldier that could single-handedly change the tide of the battle, if he so pleased? Why not a king that was the undisputed greatest?

Why not be powerful?

There was no reason not to.