The Immortal realm is the highest and the largest piece of landmass that humanity has ever encountered. It's very large and even the mightiest emperors and Immortal Sovereigns have never been able to explore it entirely.
The history of the place also extends far into the unknown and mortals are only able to explore a fraction of their Empire their entire lives. Although a lot of civilizations rose and fell in the times long forgotten, this era is known as the "Human Glory Era" as the humans are at the peak of their power in the current time period.
The northern part of the continent is almost entirely dominated by humans and 2 huge Empires rule the boundless land. In the past 100 years, there have been no large scale wars between these two hegemons but small scale skirmishes never stopped as well.
Of course this so-called 'small-scale' is in the eyes of the higher-ups and nobles living in the capitals. For the people living at the borders, every day is full of cries of misery, rotting smell, and absolute despair.
Inside a dilapidated cathedral of Lord of Hope, a hunched back, white-haired, and tired looking priest was standing at a slight elevation, speaking slowly yet clearly to a child kneeling below him.
The child was 10-12 years old and was listening to the preaching old man with rapt attention.
"The sea is boundless. The sea is full of treasures. Our Cesaro Empire is surrounded by the sea on three fronts and therefore, only the southern part of the empire has to deal with the attacks from those brutes. This is also the reason that our Wind Province is the strongest of the five provinces in terms of individual battle strength and unity among the masses." The old man's eyes that were dark and sunken also shown with wisdom at this point. Continuing his teaching lesson to this overly-curious little boy, he said,
"We are the most miserable bunch of people to have ever lived. We need to fight those brutes on a daily basis without ever being able to fulfill our own dreams. We never to forget about our loved ones and hope for their well-being as it's the power of the Lord of Hope that empowers us in our darkest times and provides us the strength to move on"
The little boy silently listened to the old man's clever attempts of brainwashing him and kept nodding his head.
The 'skirmishes' at the border led to an ever-growing demand for soldiers at the border. Although their pay was good, the procedures to access the pension were lengthy and due to procedures themselves being unnecessary and unrealistic, many widows and homeless children plagued the area.
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The little boy listening to the priest was just one of the many. His name was Jack, an orphan taken in by a subsidiary organization of the Church of God of Hope. After 4 years of staying there doing small tasks, he was eventually noticed for his helpful mindset and kind nature.
It was this priest that offered him a job. The Priest's name was Father Utah. He had a rather poor life himself. His passion was cooking but in a place where some people even need to feed on the corpses to live another day, it wasn't actually a high-paying reputable job he imagined.
Finally, after spending almost half of his life cooking without any good results, he lost hope and joined the Church of Lord of Hope for a simple reason - better payment and secure future.
Anyways, all Jack had to do was clean the floor and help the acolytes distribute food and do other miscellaneous tasks that father Utah assigned him. For him, it was fine as long as he got to help more people out of their misery. Being brainwashed from a young age, the principles of the Church of Lord of Hope were ingrained in his memory.
"Um, Father... Aunt Loretta was crying today when she came to pray. She told me I must escape this place before the sadness reaches me and told me I was too bright for this world. Is the whole world just full of sadness?" The boy interjected between the old priest's lecture.
Without being angered or annoyed, the priest calmly replied, "Yes, the world is pretty dark my child but this darkness is amplified in the border cities like ours and it is only because we suffer that other cities of the Wind province are able to enjoy freedom, prosperity, peace, and happiness"
The priest glanced outside the window enjoying the view of the last few rays of the setting sun and continues in a slightly solemn tone, "We must have hope within our hearts. No matter how dangerous this darkness is. No matter how miserable our future seems to be. No matter how many sacrifices we need to make for a better future. We must have hope within our hearts, my child"
Jack's eyes stirred as he clenched his teeth and closed his fits with determination. Slowly as the sun completely set over the horizon he muttered, "All living things are equal and all living this must have hope. hope...hope"