I’m in a field surrounded by hundreds of children. There are a bunch of flags in front of us and a few barracks behind.

It’s hard to tell how old the kids are, when most of them are incredibly malnourished, they might be older than me but you can’t tell when they are just skin and bones.

There are some kids who like me, are better fed and seem to be well cared for. But we are the minority, less then 10%. Most of the kids look a little feral and like they’ve never had a descent meal.

Some are crying and others look very confused, but the majority seem resigned about their future. Or more precisely what little future they have, the only thing that I managed to find out about this school is that most of the students die during training and the ones that survive are condemn to be cannon fodder after graduation.

The logic is simple, why send freeman to dangerous mission when there is a bunch of slaves to fight and die? I won’t deny if I was a freeman, I would like the idea to have some slaves to die for me.

But as a slave I have to strongly disagree with the concept of sending slaves to die in battle. Not that anyone asked my opinion about the matter.

The boy on my right is shaking and crying while holding my tunic with both hands. The poor bastard was bought on the island that I used to live. We don’t speak the same language so I have no idea if he knows what waits for him.

But since he refused to stop crying since he was bought, I think someone told him what is about to happen. His crying really irritated some of the crew member of the Sea Glory during the trip to Argos and they tried to make him stop, by beating him.

Not sure why but I stooped them. It was pretty easy too, all that I needed to do was stand in front of the kid and say “Fuck Off” and the two idiots that wanted to beat him just left while mumbling under their breath.

I thought that I was about to get my ass kicked and the fact that they actually backed off was quiet the surprise. Later that day I asked the Brute why they didn’t beat me and the kid.

I’m a very expensive slave, but nobody would punished they for beating me for not knowing my place, as long they didn’t broke any of my bones or gave me a internal bleeding.

For once he didn’t laugh when answering something unrelated to sports and the Gods and told me with a very serious face that I looked like a man who had nothing to lose and was about to do something stupid out of spit.

First, I thought he was joking, but after thinking for a moment I realized he was right. After seen the pyramid and discovering that all the villagers died because of me. Something broke inside me, I don’t know what broke, but I feel dead inside.

I didn’t care about some slave that I didn’t know getting beat, to tell the truth I was already thinking about beating him myself to make him stop crying. The reason that I put my foot down was because I wanted them to fight me even knowing it was impossible to win.

I just wanted something to happen so I could stop thinking about all the misery and death that I caused. I know it wasn’t my fault, just like every depressed teenager told their parents at least once, I didn’t ask to be born or in my cause to be reincarnated.

It’s the Corgi Gods fault, but I still feel guilt about the result. If I had committed suicide as soon as I was reincarnate the islanders would be alive and well, living their crap life’s without knowing that they live like animals, somethings ignorance is a bless.

But since I was too much of a coward and was scared that the if I didn’t meet the Corgi Gods expectations they would punish, I decided to continue living. And thanks to that decision a lot of innocent people died.

They died so I could become a slave and be sent here to be trained to be a soldier. Where there is a big chance that I will die without accomplishing nothing with my life. I suppose I should think that now I need to live and prosper for the people that died thanks to me so I can avenge them in the future.

But that’s not my nature. They are dead and nothing is going to bring they back. Besides, what is the point of avenging them? What killing more people will do? Nothing, so why should I do? Besides, a whole city-state participated in the slaughtered, I need to kill them all? Even if I had the stomach for that, which I don’t have, how would I do that in the first place?

There is no point in considering avenging them, but that brings another question, should I even bother to try to survive this? All that I need to do is piss off some people here and they would kill me, that wouldn’t be suicide, so the Corgi Gods wouldn’t have no reason to punish me, right?

Or just like a job review they will grade my performance and give me a bonus or punishment, depending of what I did? It really piss me off that they didn’t give a proper contract with all my rights and duties. If someone is powerful a enough to take the form of talking corgis they should have the means to hire a lawyer to make a proper contract. Is that too much to ask?

I feel like I’m playing a game without knowing the rules. A game that my life is in the line or perhaps I should say my soul? In a philosophic perspective I used to think that life and soul are the same thing.

But I have changed my mind here, life could be see as connect to my physical body if I die my life is over, but my soul would still exist. In other words, if you believe in some sort of after life, soul and life are a separated thing, but if you don’t, they are the same thing.

Since I have been reincarnated I know for a fact that souls and Gods exist, it’s hard to keep talking of being a atheist and how religious people are suckers when you have meet a God, I should have asked if the Christian God was real when I had the opportunity.

“ WELCOME GARBAGE!!”

A group of 11 men appear near the flags, ten are armed like Greek hoplites and thanks to the armor and weapons they look like bronze statues. The one speaking is a old man who is wearing a red tunic and looks like the human definition of a drill sergeant.

Actually, he looks like the twin brother of the drill sergeant from the movie Full Metal Jacket. He dosen’t have a single weapon or piece of armor, yet, he looks more intimidate than any of the soldiers around him.

He is bald and is in his early forties, but he looks more fit than the Brute who spends most of his time exercising. He even managed to make the little boy close to me to stop crying and look at him in awe.

Which is amazing, since he is speaking in a language that the boy dosen’t understand. Must be the tone of the voice, I suppose that to be heard in the battlefield you need to speak like that or nobody will hear you with all the noise.

“I BET EVERYONE HAVE HEARD SOME TERRIBLE STORIES ABOUT HERE. LET ME MAKE SOMETHING CLEAR! COMPARED WITH WHAT YOU HEARED, HERE IT IS MUCH WORSE!!”

I know that he is trying to scary us to make us easier to train later. But it’s hard to not to feel intimated and scary. I’m already scary about the situation then a guy starts yelling that I’m good as dead dosen’t make me feel better.

A kid right in front of the speaker breaks down and starts crying like there is no tomorrow. The speaker just points the kid and one of the soldiers uses his spear to stab the kid in the heart.

“LET ME MAKE SOMETHING CLEAR, IF I DON’T GIVE THE ORDER TO CRY, YOU FUCKERS BETTER NOT START CRYING! YOU ONLY DO SOMETHING, WHEN I SAY YOU HAVE THE PERMISSION TO DO!!”

In can’t take my eyes from the dead kid. The bastard just murdered a kid because he cried without permission! What the fuck?! I thought here would be tough, but I didn’t expect this kind of indiscriminate killing.

This is bullshit, we are kids if no formal training, he could at least have informed us about the rules before doing something like this. Some seconds pass where every single boy stare at the dead kid.

The world seems to stop for a while when I hear someone crying. I take my eyes from the dead kid and start to search for the moron who didn’t understand the rules and see a kid a few dozen meters from me in a fetal position crying.

After seeing who is crying, I look in the soldier’s direction and see one of them going in the direction of the crying baby. Like a dam breaking, when the others realized what the soldier is doing, more kids began to cry.

Clearly the other soldiers were expecting this and move in the direction of anyone crying and start killing them.Nobody tries to run from the soldiers, even the crying kids stay in place waiting for their deaths.

Not that I blame them for not trying to run. My legs are stuck in the ground as my eyes keep watching harmless kids being kill for crying. I see a soldier stabbing a kid a few meters from me and turning his body in my direction.

My heart stops and I look to the kid holding me and see that he is crying and yelling like crazy, without thinking I grab the kid with both hands and throw him in the soldier direction. Luck for me the kid is so malnourished that he is incredible light so I don’t need to use a lot of force.

As the crying baby is flying away from me, he turn his head in my direction and I can see first despair and than sadness in his eyes. He hits the ground close to the soldier who just stab him in the throat and then looks at me.

He is wearing a Corinthian helmet but I can see his eyes that are staring at me. Just by looking at his eyes I can see that he is telling me “you are one cold motherfucker”, before turning to look for another victim.

Tired of all this and not wanting to see the corpse of the kid that I betrayed, I close my eyes and try my best to go to my happy place and escape this madness. Which I fail miserable, hard to go to you happy place when there is a bunch of dying kids screaming or soon to be dead kids crying and yelling, but I keep my eyes close anyway.

“MAGGOSTS, TODAY WE HAVE CUT THE WEAKESTS OF THE WEAKESTS OF YOU GUYS. BUT DON’T THINK THAT NOW YOU ARE WORTHY SOMETHING!.”

I open my eyes and see a lot of bodies in the ground. I’m too scary to count how many kids are dead or look in the direction of the kid that I send to his death.

Fuck, why did I throw the kid away? It was instinctive, I didn’t think for a second what the consequences of my action were.

I never thought that I was a person capable of something like that, what have I become? Just a few moments ago I was complaining that I was the indirect reason for a lot of innocent’s deaths and I go and do something like that?

Maybe I’m part of some evil cult, my actions show that I’m no saint. A slave comes close to me and uses a brush to paint my face,

“Go to number 5.”

I look to the flags in front of the field and see the one with the number 5, since I don’t have any choice, I decide to just go to the flag, if they wanted to kill me I would be already dead.

Others walk with me and by their expression I can see that I’m not the only one scary out of my mind. I don’t think I was this scary even when I was captured, back then death as possibility, but I didn’t see people die in front of me like cattle.

I finally arrive in on of the flag number 5 along with a couple of dozen other kids, nobody tries to start a conversation and I thank small favors. The last thing that I want do to is small talk about the weather or about our current situation.

I look back to the field and I can see that many people were painted but didn’t move, I wonder why. Most of the kids in my flag have the same paint in their faces, blue, but there is a couple with different colors.

Time passes and more and more kids come to the flags. The majority continues to be painted blue, but there is a big minority with different colors, weird. When all the survive kids are painted, a lot of them didn’t move from the field to the flags.

Soon a couple of guards show where I’m and they immediately kill all the people who are not painted blue and move to the other flag to repeat the process. My mind is to tired and scary to think and analyze the situation. I just want for this all to end so I can go to sleep for few years.