Prologue
Happiness, sadness, love, hate, anger, fear. Emotions. Feelings that influence one’s actions and decisions. Take those feelings away and what you have left is a highly efficient person, though they can hardly be called human anymore. Without those emotions, decisions one makes and actions one takes are based solely on experience and logic. No sympathy or pity, but no rage or grief either. Train those emotionless beings in the arts of war and battle from childhood and you get the perfect soldiers. No conscience to hinder them in their job, no fear of getting hurt or killed, no grief for fallen comrades, only soldiers who are the perfect killing machines in war.
But what happens once the war is over? The soldiers have lost their purpose once the killing ends. They have no place in the government and are feared due to their incredible combat potential, so the only rational options would be disposal or containment to prepare for the next war. The Rovaerus Kingdom currently stood before such a decision.
King Brath Rovaerus, king of the Rovaerus Kingdom, watched his ministers intently, while they were discussing about the matter of their country’s so called ‘Heavenly Soldiers’. After the war with the neighboring kingdom ended in an overwhelming victory, thanks to those soldiers, the populace and his minsters got cold feet due to the incredible power possessed by the Heavenly Soldiers. The people demanded the disposal of the war machines, despite the knowledge of their contribution to the kingdom. No, maybe because of that knowledge, they wanted them gone. If those soldiers would have kept their emotions after the magic ritual, they would’ve been seen as war heroes. But alas, the common people feared them and some of his ministers saw that as means to increase their social prestige by siding with them.
Good grief, he thought. Can’t they see the enormous pressure we can exact on our neighbors? We would be safe for centuries. They had created the Heavenly Soldiers for exactly that purpose with the help of six archmages, who they invited from all over the continent with a tremendous amount of gold and treasures and now the ministers simply wanted to destroy the result of that gold? However, it wasn’t just the ministers, even the merchants and leaders of other countries demanded their destruction. Until that was confirmed, they suspended all trade and support for the Rovaerus Kingdom.
With a sigh, Brath stood up and slammed his right palm onto the table they were sitting at.
“Enough! The Heavenly Soldiers are our lifeline to peace and prosperity, so there is no immediate need to destroy them!”
The ministers quieted down immediately, until one of them got up from his seat as well.
“Your majesty, we are clear about their potential, however the general public is not. They are afraid and fear a rebellion of the Heavenly Soldiers. We shouldn’t risk the loss of trust from the citizens over an increase in our war potential. Others and I are of the opinion that they must be killed.”
Barth nodded and looked towards the opposite side of the table.
“What is your opinion on this matter?”
The ministers’ representative also got up and bowed
“We are of the opinion that they should indeed be contained but not killed, however should this matter become public, the uproar from the people will be even greater than if we don’t do anything about it.”
Barth nodded again raised his arms.
“You may leave. Expect my decision by tomorrow.”
Once the ministers had left, Barth sunk back down in his chair and held his head. Damn, this is giving me a headache. In the end he had to decide the future of his country. Either the loss of respect and trust from the people, or the loss of security against invasions. In the end, after hours of doing nothing but thinking of the arguments of both sides, he chose the latter option. Disposal.
*
Centum trained even in his cell. With each swing of the wooden sword they had allowed him to keep, one could feel the power behind it. His by now long brown hair was waving as though a wind appeared each time he brought his sword down. He understood that he didn’t have much longer to live and yet he was training for another fight, maybe because that was what he was made for, but probably because he didn’t care either way. He had no emotions after all. Even his name showed his worth for the world. Centum, it supposedly meant one hundred in an ancient language. That’s all he was, a number, a soldier with no soul and the brand with the number 100 on his chest made that perfectly clear. So when the officials came to the barrack him and the other numbers, or rather Heavenly Soldiers, inhabited, he could already guess that their time of service was about to end. Yet he couldn’t help but be indifferent about it.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
With his containment, he found himself with a problem for the first time of his existence. A lack of orders. So he kept himself busy by training for a battle to never come. He was a tall, muscular guy with a sharp face that seemed to constantly frown. A body and face made to send a chill down anyone’s spine if he so much as looked at them, although his body was barely older than 17 years. Still, all that was something he wasn’t able to care about.
Even now, a few days after he was thrown in this prison cell, he kept training without another thought. He did wonder though, how they would dispose of him since him and the other numbers had magically enhanced bodies and abilities to ward off any attacks. His most likely guess was that they would be ordered to kill each other, but on the other hand he didn’t know much except their training facility, their barrack and the battlefield, so there might be ways he didn’t know about. He had listened to the servants in the training facility sometimes and knew that there were other people than them with extraordinary power. Some were mages, like the ones that drained him of his emotions. Others were simple fighters who, like him, never did anything else but train their whole life. He had even fought against some of these people and number 53 even died to an especially powerful mage, who was killed by Centum shortly after.
While thinking about his end, he heard the door unlock and stopped his movements to watch the door. A slightly obese soldier, a prison guard, opened the door and led a few soldiers in complete armament into the cell.
“Heavenly Soldier number 100, Centum. You will now follow us to the execution grounds!”
“… Understood.”
Although his confirmation wasn’t necessary, he still viewed the words said as an order and offered his hands to be cuffed by handcuffs made of Escil, a metal that even he found almost impossible to destroy without specially made tools. The prison guard quickly took the wooden sword and one of the heavily armed soldiers put the handcuffs on him. The prison guard looked at him with a mix of pity and fear, but all he received in response was an indifferent look, as if he would be going to bed instead of going towards his death.
“D-Do you want to keep the sword at your side?”
Centum looked at him and tilted his head a little to the side.
“I don’t need a weapon where I am going though?”
“R-Right…”
With a flustered look, he stepped to the side as the other soldiers took Centum in the middle and left the cell, where a few mages where also waiting to escort him to the execution grounds.
“Centum, he is the last one, right?”
A soldier nodded.
“Affirmative, there were only a hundred after all.”
After the short conversation, they walked in silence through the dark tunnels of the prison, until they reached a small yard.
Centum immediately noticed a few Mages with robes, presumably his executioners, who were standing around a magic circle. At the side, several important looking people were seated, including the one he knew as his king, who nodded towards the soldiers to signal the start of the execution.
“Heavenly Soldier Centum, stand in the middle of the magical circle!”
Centum bowed to the king and followed his last order. He felt a strange sense of fatigue as soon as he entered the circle and guessed that it was some kind of weakening magic to make him vulnerable. His guess was proven true, when a mage took out a small dagger to cut his thumb, which should be invulnerable to a wound of such a small degree.
“Preparations complete, response normal, subject is vulnerable. Commence Execution!”
With those words, the mage with the dagger stepped back from Centum and started to chant incantations in unison with the others. The magic circle immediately started to glow and he could see a transparent barrier around himself. When the barrier got less translucent, the chant slowly changed into a darker tune and the barrier turned dark red.
Centum could feel his strength slowly leaving his body, but still stood in the middle with a straight back and clear eyes, as he couldn’t feel fear or panic. Then came the pain. It was so intense, that even he wasn’t able to completely stifle a groan. Arcs of red lightning appeared between him and the barrier and constantly hit him, causing his body to spasm each time and slowly reduce his vitality. Without his enhanced body he would’ve died already, but due to his training for 15 years every day, all day, he had to endure to fulfil his last order, to die.
His vision slowly blurred and when he was about to close his eyes he heard himself speak a word he couldn’t understand. Then he let himself go.
*
Brath stared at the magic circle. The other Heavenly Soldiers were disposed of without any problems, until the last one was supposed to die. Right when the lightings were the most intense and he seemed about to be turned into ashes, Heavenly Soldier 100 yelled a word of unknown meaning and disappeared in a flash. Brath was confused, as he didn’t know if the Heavenly Soldier was dead or somehow teleported out of the barrier.
“What happened? Did he die?” He asked the mages, but they seemingly ignored him and talked to each other in hushed voices. He waited for a while, but the mages kept talking to each other and it sounded as if they were arguing. Just as Brath was about to lose his temper, one of the mages finally turned to the king and explained.
“He apparently possessed some sort of magical energy, which was released as he was about to die and opened a gate to teleport him somewhere.”
Brath paled when he heard the ominous news.
“So… the Heavenly Soldier is still alive somewhere on the continent? Where is he? Can you track him?”
“… That proves to be difficult as we have no idea how he escaped in the first place. For now you can only search for him.” The mage answered with an apologetic look.
The king took a deep breath to calm his nerves, before talking to the ministers and soldiers at his side.
“Find him no matter the cost. Send emissaries to the neighboring countries and explain the situation. Remind them that he must be killed on sight as he is very dangerous and has no conscience!”
With those words, he rushed back to his chamber, where he sat down in his chair and took another few deep breaths.
“I screwed up…”
The Heavenly Soldier he created, the warrior with incredible power was currently at large without any supervision in some unknown location. Who knew what he would do. If I’m lucky… he will just succumb to the wounds of the magic ritual. But Brath knew that it probably wouldn’t be that easy. After he calmed himself down, he quickly wrote a few letters to his officials, in which he gave the orders to search for the escaped Heavenly Soldier on a large scale. He still had some hope that he maybe didn’t escape far away, but again he had a feeling that it probably wasn’t as easy as he hoped.
The letters always had the same words at the end:
Heavenly Soldier Centum, currently weakened, kill on sight.