A Dragon Idol's Reincarnation Tale

“… Maybe, but you are powerless in this mental space,” those voices of the elementals finally answered me, now sounding more fused than before. “You may display your abilities as much as you want, but they are nothing more than petty forms of intimidation. You will stay here, demonkin, and you will serve your purpose until you are drained of all the ‘sins’ your bloodline has created in this world. Do not believe this is all.”

I scoffed. “Oh, you will lose this war! I, former Warbringer Vifi’Yok, declare it with absolute certainty! Tasianna will break out of this stupor, I can assure you, and you imprisoning me here will only be the catalyst for that. Your time is limited, be aware of this.”

“Your life could have ended in bliss with your father and those fading memories you dearly wish were still true. I can sense your emotions through the mana flowing through you, demonkin. You wish for this.”

“So, I will reject it then! I am a good soldier, and I will continue listening to my orders. I will keep on fighting for my general and the optimistic dream I created after meeting her. I am a tool of war—whether for Bole’Taria or Aurora—and I shall know no comfort until the war is over.”

“Ah, yes, for your people, correct? I can see your memories—of how you believed this dragon princess would free your people of their bloodline curse. Those emotions were created due to your kinship to the archdemon of wrath; those shackles that put your people under severe scrutiny, to the point even children are treated like looming threats. Very honorable… but in the end, completely naive,” the elementals stated. “Her voice may reach some, like you, but others will never be graced by her presence or words. She is no goddess or demi-goddess. She is but one small dragoness with a dream far too grand. Even if she succeeds in your plans, the fact of the matter is that it is impossible for her to uphold her promise to you, less she gives everything up to do so. Even her otherworldly technology will not bridge this gap.”

“The issues will be tackled when we reach that point. To consider the conclusion of a war—a war over 650 years of age—is nothing but foolishness. To plan for such an uncertainty is the stuff we ‘rats’ keep dreaming about without a real solution or path towards it. It’s all thinking and worrying, all while time continues with nothing changed ‘cause we aren’t willing to take the first step,” I argued, holding steadfast to my adoptive father’s words. This was what made us Warbringers—for conflict was a catalyst for change.

“Such bravado, such arrogance, such… fae-like wishfulness,” the voice echoed throughout this “dream.” “I had hoped those thoughts of yours would make it easy if I showed you your father—the one to reach his hand out to help you—but it seemed that wasn’t enough. Fine. If you do not want to accept bliss and live in this dream, then I will remind you why it is better to accept happiness than pain.”

The space around me twisted and changed, but the overall gloominess hadn’t. The dry-looking mountains, the cracking soil, and the biting cold even as the sun glared at us. I could smell the homesickness before the scenery fully manifested… and I could already feel my stomach churning as sun-burned fish, skin-burning gunk, and the buzzing flies floating above our slapped-together “tube” houses flashed before my eyes. Moments later, all of that came true.

Urgh… I wanted to vomit.

This… this was where I was born and lived for most of my life until I volunteered for the army.

This is my “home” city, Eins’Kown.

Eins’Kown was a harbor city in the northwest of Bole’Taria on the Numerus continent, located just on the habitable edge of the “Twin-Elemental Lake” zone. Meaning, our city was the closest civilization to that reminder of the first divine taboo, yet, funnily enough, the city was founded after the dungeon explosion and Plesia’s wrath descended. Ha… if the area wasn’t used to train both sailors and soldiers, I would have questioned why anybody even wanted to make a settlement in such a dangerous area.

Yet, why did any race make dungeon cities, when the chance of a dungeon break could lead to so many people dying? Resources, of course. Just like cities like Inkoran-Tazul, Eins’Kown was one of these frontier cities responsible for the acquisition of certain materials while serving as a place to train.

Yet, due to this fact, I was made an orphan.

I didn’t know my parents, being abandoned in the slums after both of them died for some reason. They could’ve been sailors, soldiers, or even thieves like me, but what was important was that they were no-names. My fellow urchins, those who took me in and raised me, told me my parents were most likely fortune seekers—adventurers, to us demonkin—who got together in one of the many community houses. They got together, my father died somewhere, my mother tried to keep me fed apparently, but failed and died. With me orphaned, I was literally thrown out of the community house and into one of the many urchin homes.

That was my background, the same one I told everybody in Aurora. Pff, yet here I was, having to relive all this crap again.

Just look at these streets… I let out a defeated sigh as I saw the trash, insects, and piss water-like puddles everywhere, staining the stone-laid streets as the sun was grilling everything up. Although the memory shouldn’t cause any smells, the visuals gave off such a stench that I was getting a bit embarrassed of my own birthplace. Merely looking at it made me appreciate how much people valued cleanliness on this side of the world.

Not to mention the abundance of space. Humans didn’t know how fortunate they were to have so much farming area that they didn’t have to worry about possibly building homes over them. Even the claustrophobic nature of a dwarven hold still felt liberating and free with their usage of their minecart transportation system and how they could just dig deeper into a mountain to make more room for people.

Envy was the perfect term to describe how I felt when I witnessed my first northern city in Estralia’s Gleisvale. They could afford to design their homes in an aesthetically pleasing manner while making sure it could accommodate people; such luxury they didn’t really appreciate.

Meanwhile, space was scarce. Those “cuboid” houses, designed like long rectangles that stretched as far up as possible, were made like apartments to house multiple families in small, barely liveable “boxes.” Habitable spaces were limited in Bole’Tarian cities and towns, to the point you even had barracks for the truly downtrodden, like my “orphanage,” if you could even call it so. So many people were packed inside these barracks that privacy was a foreign word, even in our bathrooms. It was like a prison.

To us demonkin, who were forced to live on mountainous terrains and infertile land while being tormented by terrible natural disasters caused by the damn cold and high mana concentration everywhere, areas you could use for agriculture and husbandry were even more valuable than our noble’s lives. Due to our kingdom’s decree of serving the war effort, procreation was heavily enforced on all families. Even the lust demonkin acting as prostitutes were encouraged to bear children, as they did whatever they could to alleviate the emotional anguish most of us would be in. That demanded food.

Our culture was forced into a hunter and gathering system with heavy raids on Folschreckian land, as we couldn’t support our ever-increasing population from land itself. Even our land acquisition from the war was done primarily for bountiful farmland, which led to many fleeing human armies or villages to resort to burning down their fields to cripple us. The one stable food industry we had, though, was fishing, and with all the mana concentration, our focus on seafood was the main reason why we haven’t collapsed yet as a society.

Yet, I couldn’t bear the smell at all. Seafood, merfiend, anything that reeked of the salty sea disgusted me. Having to live in this putrid harbor with stalls full of dead fish being grilled from the sun even until the afternoon would make even the most desperate rats hesitant to eat fish again. I forced myself, though, for the sake of surviving, and now that I didn’t have to, I willingly abstained from it. Even in Iceskale, where seafood was more abundant than mutton.

I enjoyed this luxury. The luxury of eating delicious pastries every day. Haaa, the gift from the land that my people would never be able to imagine.

“And this gift will remain elusive even if you manage to fulfill your goals. Such indulgences will require centuries of work,” the elementals stated while I reminisced. “You were one of the fortunate, but not because you received such gifts, you escaped from your torment. You ran.”

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“Like a rat,” I added as the view changed, switching to my “orphanage” in one of the corners of the wrath section of the city. A “quarantine” area, honestly, since wrathies were known to go berserk.

Like many other buildings, my home was a vertical cuboid made from bricks with a metal sheet as a roof cover, making the rainy season a sound pollution problem. Although, most of us got used to it. The shrill, metallic thudding caused by raindrops landing on the metal sheet honestly made me feel safe. It meant that our home didn’t need any repairs, as that only meant we had to pay our homeowner even more money.

As mentioned beforehand, I was one of many urchins abandoned in this “orphanage,” taken care of by the older members as the only real adult was our homeowner—a kingdom official responsible for orphan management. They, as the homeowner kept changing every other month, barely interacted with us, only there to speak when they had to gather up the rent of the many orphanages they were managing.

Honestly, considering living space was a luxury to us demonkin, it was fair, even if we kids were forced to work before we could even speak properly. We technically had a roof over our heads secured as long as we remained underage and could pay the rent, and due to this, everybody inside had to work, lest they would be kicked out by our own members. Work to be fed, was the idea.

Yet, since we had to work even from a young age, the choice of work we would do varied, leading many to criminal activities to maintain the quota. Fortunately, these street gangs were led by former orphans who grew up and were forced out of the orphanages. Essentially, we protected each other even if we couldn’t trust one another. Every orphan here was raised by a neighbourhood of urchins.

Even if we didn’t share blood or even the same sin race—these orphanages accepted any subrace, even if we were in the wrathie section—we took care of each other like a big fucked up family of rats, ready to help another but also willing to bite each other’s tails to get food. It wasn’t done out of love or affection, but for survival.

Ahh, I can’t even remember any of you… I frowned as the faces running past me were obscured by shadows. Like a big rat family, most of us probably didn’t remember each other anyways. Why even do so, when it was likely most would die anyway.

We might have had the protection of the orphanage, but that didn’t mean we were safe.

“No, nyo, pwease—Urrghk!” a little girl who looked just like me screamed, pleading for her life, after she failed to steal a literal small chunk of fish meat that the fishmonger accidentally cut off.

I didn’t remember my fellow urchins, but I sure remembered my failures. This was my first of many lessons.

I swooped in like a hungry wolf when I saw that fish chunk fall onto the ground, touching the smelly fish blood and insect-ridden guts there, and ran as fast as I could. Sadly, when the fishmonger shouted at me, I jerked up and slipped on some of these guts, giving my pursuer the chance to catch me eventually in an alley.

The fishmonger, a healthy, muscular fisher—as many fishers and sailors were—slammed me against the wall and stomped on the meat chunk, smearing it on the ground until it was paste. He smacked me right in the face, causing me to nearly fall unconscious as he beat the shit out of me until I blacked out. Me, a young six-year-old who couldn’t even speak, nearly died there. I only survived it since one of my fellow orphans found me in time before I bled out, bringing me to one of the adult urchins for first-aid.

I stayed in a coma for two days, completely hungry all that time, and when I woke up, I learned that my savior had died the very next day. Their target was a merchant, and when they failed, the man had his guards drown my savior. That was a second lesson, and the reason why I never remembered any of my fellows.

My first lesson: feeling hungry was better than acting on desperation, as that would only lead to my death. The second lesson: living was all that mattered.

Every failure led to a new lesson or a new skill acquisition. I would level up by killing the random fish, vermin, and giant insects that came too close to our homes due to monster spawning. I would train my stats by traversing the rooftops and alleyways, utilizing the claustrophobic nature of it all to learn urban warfare from my seniors. As long as I got stronger, it was worth it all. My stunted height, from not eating enough, was a cost I was willing to pay for my survival.

And all while I did so, I was kept under scrutiny as a wrathie. M.E.P.—maximum emotional potential—was 100% in all three emotions, causing us to go berserk. The fact that we were ticking time bombs made it hard for anybody to treat us as anything but a walking monster. I was okay with it. Being a loner felt safer, anyway.

When the time finally came for me to choose my elemental alignment, as this was our bloodline gift from being wrathies, I chose the lightning element. These centers where we chose our element were equipped with manatech that helped us wrathies learn what our natural alignment was, and while we could choose something else, I didn’t. I knew lightning was the perfect choice for me, as somebody who always survived as scavenger and thief. Just like the storms flooding through our streets during the rainy season, I dreamed of being like thunder breaking through all the noise.

I might have thrown away my childlike naivety the day I nearly died for the first time, but dreaming was still something I did. It was the only way for me to keep my emotions in check. Hestia might have hit the nail on its head when she said that most of us urchins didn’t have the energy or hope to spare to be joyful. A part of me always held onto some wishful thinking to continue living.

Due to this, on the same day I acquired [Elemental Manifestation], I immediately enlisted. No hope could be found where I was born.

“It went well,” the elemental added as the scenery shifted, away from Eins’Kown, to a boot camp where I was trained as a wrath soldier. I would master [Elemental Meisterweapon] like all wrathies and also earn the discipline to keep my emotions in check to serve my kingdom and race in the human-demonkin war.

At that time, I was only nine, though. A child soldier, even with Bole’Taria’s warlike nature, but I was a wrathie. While it was frowned upon to enlist the children of the other sins at such an age, it was different to us wrathies due to our [Wrathful Emotions]. The kingdom actively wished for us wrathies to enlist early to gain the discipline and know-how to keep our emotions in check. We were their ideal soldiers—naturally gifted for combat and in need of new stimuli to keep up with L.E.P.

The first year in the army was tough. I was malnourished and lacked Job levels since I never got one until I enlisted, so my drill captains made sure me and my fellow wrath urchins were properly trained. We would be sent out with older wrathies to hunt, slowly gaining experience, training our fighting instincts, and learning from our seniors on discipline.

Unlike with my orphanage, it was here that I finally learned about kinship and camaraderie. Yes, we couldn’t trust each other since we all learned the same lessons when we were young, but trusting each other was better than trusting the other sin types. The army knew exactly how to keep us shackled like beasts and how to tame us like indoctrinated loyalists. Soldiers who fought with such reckless zeal, like my former apprentice Hee’Rlak, were the best for the army and the Prince of Wrath.

Unfortunately, I never developed those ideas. Whether it was due to how our rations were dried fish and always made me want to puke, or how I learned to worship Marsven from my fellow soldiers, I never felt such blind loyalty to the kingdom, even if I wanted it to flourish. I only developed this desire to change my circumstances. Haha, I might have saved myself from dying in Elyonda by being too selfish. Maybe I did have some lust inside my bloodline, for that sounded like such a hedonistic thing to do.

Regardless of this, two years passed pretty quickly until I was finally given a rank and was sent to serve the kingdom as a trained soldier. Though, that still didn’t mean my rations had changed much. Well, I was still at the bottom of the barrel, after all. That part of my life hadn’t changed, and I sure as heck didn’t want to stay here for the rest of my life.

“And that was when you heard her words. The tempting words that led you into that monster area that will change your life forever,” the elementals’ voice echoed through my mind. I could feel mental fatigue settling in, overburdened by having to remember all these memories. “She who helped you, the one even you would consider your first friend. Yet, your choices led to the both of you separating. You severed the bond.”

“She was not really my friend, the one who thought so was her. She alone made the bond; I did nothing,” I argued as a certain pink-head started to manifest in my head.

“Such lies. To yourself? You are willing to face your past and everything I showed you, but the one person you cannot even be truthful towards, not even in your own dream, is this demonkin of lust?” the elementals mocked me, their voices taunting me. “Ah, but why must you answer this question? I can simply extract everything from your mind. Here it is.”

“Lady Jumi’Yal!”

My body jerked up as if a lightning bolt had struck me. I turned around to see a parade as two lines of soldiers cheered and saluted as a carriage moved through the training camp. Lust soldiers with skeletal-flesh wings, similar to the ones Ellaine could create, flanked the carriage on the side, clearly enjoying the jubilation and cheers they were receiving, even if it wasn’t directed at them.

I could see my past self in the crowd of soon-to-graduate soldiers, as this was our last day here. I hadn’t changed much outside of gaining a bulkier build and more stoic expression as I stood there out of respect. We weren’t forbidden to cheer, but I had no need, even if the one to arrive was somebody of importance.

After all, us lowly foot soldiers would be graced by the presence of a sin heir—the sin heir of lust.

As the carriage parked, the door burst open, to reveal a young woman in her mid-twenties. Her pink hair, tied together in a side tail, fluttered like silk as she showed everybody a wide smile.

“Good day, all you brave soldiers! My name is Jumi, of the Yal family! Relative of the current Prince of Lust and also one of her sin heirs! May the Edjurl Gods and Marsven bless us, and even if they won’t, I will!”

Today was the day I would meet my future fellow sin heir.

“You mean, ‘today is the day I would meet my first friend,’” the elementals corrected.