The light, airy feeling of the red flowers made the soles beneath his magnificent boot feel right. As the stale wind blew, Neptune struggled to acclimate himself to the rotting flesh’s stench. As his mind remained fixed upon the future where he would eventually become memorialised as a god amongst men, he turned off his dopamine receptors from anything deemed lesser. To achieve greatness, he had to surpass the limitations of a lesser being.
All that remained was a final farewell to his former allies, the discarded pawns in his giant game, before their remains, as insignificant as they were in life, would exist as unmarked graves for eternity. A few meters from where he stood, his batchmates remained as a heap of corpses awaiting their eventual cremation into dust. He could still recognise their faces even after death, which slightly bothered him. He wondered without a hint of emotion, how great it would be if they had their faces removed.
…And to render them as part of the Faceless forever.
No sound apart from his slow beating pulse filled his ears. He wondered if inner peace or the assurance of his decision enabled him to achieve this zen-like state of mind. The sound of his lone heartbeat caused him to chuckle a little in this setting. How fitting that for one to emerge victorious, he had to sacrifice everyone to set his homeland on the path forward.
Neptune started cackling loudly against the backdrop of his fallen allies, enacting a scene of a conqueror standing above a mountain of corpses from visuals he fantasised about since his youth. To experience it first-hand rather than through the recount of another through prose felt like pure, absolute bliss.
He gave a fleeting glance at the soon-to-be fresh corpse waiting to join the ranks of the fallen. This man resting on the fields had done the unthinkable earlier, an act that shocked him considering their mutual disdain for each other, jumping in the Ascended’s line of sight to take the blow meant for him.
“I would like to thank you, but that’s not…possible.”
The overwhelming malice from his black heart overpowered his emotions despite his commander’s selfless sacrifice. Of the sea of dead that remained in the bloodied grass fields, Neptune had to face the man responsible for turning his entire batch against him. By sheer luck, the lightning wielder, an Ascended he and his mentor desperately wanted to establish contact with, was the same person who inflicted bodily harm upon Captain Graves beyond what one would describe as utter, pure savagery.
It made him wonder why a Temporean would get involved with the meagre affairs of their livestock. Like a jigsaw puzzle missing the final piece, he erupted with unfettered madness upon completing the puzzle. His laughter bordered at the edge of insanity, echoing throughout the stadium.
“No wonder…”
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
For years, he had wondered why the Federation refused to acknowledge the New Atlantis Project. The truth hidden in his innocent eyes came undone, unveiling the bitter truth.
“President Janus Nicola and King Siarnaq Drazen.”
He bitterly muttered the names of the leaders who ruled their respective domains and held the highest rank and authority above their citizens and subjects. Neptune visualised the chess board where the President and King occupied their sides on the multi-dimensional board. The Federation and Empire might go to war against each other, but the one controlling the board state was the son of the man they had forgotten about.
“...Ugh.”
A whimper from a man Neptune thought had left this realm was faintly audible.
“Such incredible resolve.”
Like a cockroach that survived the meteor strike a million years ago, he saw his commander’s body twitch momentarily. Despite the white lightning spear impaling him through the back of his shoulder, that man had controlled his breathing, controlling the pain from within until help from the Medical Corps arrived–a true testament to the “rat-like” survival instinct that saved him years ago.
“Sir, you and I know you aren’t leaving this alive.”
He knew his commander wanted to speak, but no voice could surface from his inflamed throat. His exposure to the Ascended’s intense lightning had seared his vocal cords to the point beyond recovery.
Neptune squatted down to face his commander before reaching into his pockets. If he had allowed him to live, the Smith name would have forever retained a black mark in history. And for that, he cannot let that ever happen. Not after what he had discovered in the dark walls of the research institute…
A clink-like sound.
The unmistakable ping sound of a gold coin, a collectable Neptune had held onto since his father taught him the importance of the “only true store of value”. His entire life’s goal since donning the uniform of death had shifted from becoming livestock to a hero worth immortalising in a gold coin’s mint.
“Can you see this right here?”
He grabbed his commander’s head by a fistful of hair, forcefully shoving the head close to the coin he held in his other hand. He placed the coin onto the bloodied grass before slamming his commander’s motionless head onto it. “You know my father, Professor Jordan Smith…You know him, right?” Neptune sneered, for the imaginary shackles on his hands had fallen off.
“You dislike me because I remind you of my father, you filthy little piece of–”
Neptune grabbed his OC’s head and slammed it onto the nearby debris, disfiguring him intentionally to the point nobody could ever recognise him. His commander’s head bounced like a basketball onto the concrete, ricocheting for an eternity until Hades came to claim his soul.
“Why did all of you pin the blame on my father? It wasn’t his fault!”
Unleashing the pent-up anger while controlling it like a monk who had endured countless years of training, Neptune destroyed his commander’s face to an utterly indistinguishable state.
“Troy Graves, this world does not need to remember you. Do you want to know why? Because there is no way that I will allow anyone to tarnish my father’s reputation! I am the hero of this story! Nobody else would claim that credit away from me! Nobody!”
