To solve the lil’ problem of life, you’d need an ol’ key. I’ll give you my sageous advice - Soliloquy.

Amelia was dreaming of waltzing alongside a chocolate river, in the gentle arms of the Caramel Bun Prince of Desert Kingdom. The sugary sweet kiss and the multicoloured candy-flowers were truly a paradise to behold.

But out of nowhere, something foreign crept in. The molten chocolate flooded the banks, drowning her in the viscuous and somehow-cold liquid. The arms that gently held her grew scales and claws, slowly crushing her into death’s embrace.

Splash!

Their sleeping mats and thin blankets didn’t provide the best hearthy warmth, and they certainly can’t protect them against the cold water attacking their body and soul. Each of them woke up screaming before dawn.

Then, they were forced to run. An apprentice they’ve never met before led them on a journey into the unknown. They were simply ordered to keep up with the person in front, else risk losing their day’s worth of meals. The mystery leader kept the average speed just below sprinting, at times accelerating to a full on dash but never slowing to anything below a jog.

They ran around the perimeter of the camp twice, then zigzagged within the camp through different paths and shortcuts. If the trio was any slower, they’d have lost their guide during the series of twists and turns. Their endurance was put onto the test for three whole hours.

Needless to say, they failed miserably. After around half an hour, when their breathing became haggered and irregular, Amelia was the first to collapse. Kelvin, aided by his physical enhancement Power and Hazel, aided by her fire propulsion, had an easier time than the electricity-based Amelia.

Unlike common tropes, just because you manipulated electricity, doesn’t mean you could gain its’ properties or become it. At least, not without intensive training.

Those who fell were attacked. The ground beneath them grew giant hands that threw them forwards, batting at their heels and pinching at their thighs. They were given no chance to rest. Any time they tried, they were pushed to continue. It was a gruelsome, pain-inducing morning run. They felt their own muscles tearing in real time when they were finally released from this horrid hell.

Lunch consisted of a balanced, nutritious and easily digestable food, all of which were compressed into bite-sized cubes. It was a pragmatic product, specially made to be tasteless as to not conflict with the consumer’s sense of taste, or distract them in whatever way.

It also made lunch a chore, a task where you’d have to chew on some slimely cube and swallow with no savoury rewards. At least, it wasn’t revolting or anything.

However, it was also an oasis to their training day, because what came after lunch was combat practice. It was becoming more and more… physical.

Marvin no longer spoke as much. He simply beat them down where they stood, then ordered them to stand again. Injuries were rare at the start, but broken bones became more frequent as the days went by.

They were conflicted. At least, whilst traversing through the woods and learning basic survival skills, they had the freedom to do what they wanted. Now, they were ordered to suffer, mocked for their obedience, ignored at their pleas and actively encouraged for them to quit.

What do they gain from this experience, other than humiliation? It’s clear they’re being rejected, that they don’t belong with these cold-hearted maniacs. Even the master who recruited them abandoned them in the middle of nowhere.

They were being treated worse than an animal. They were unwanted, without potential.

As such, they ask themselves – why do they stay behind?

None of them voiced this complaint. They buried it deep in their hearts as they meandered miserably through this mess. Surely, the repetitive grind and action would give some sense of accomplishment or achievement at the end that would justify all the effort they’ve put in so far?

Of course, that was the case. They were rare seedlings worth enough of a value for me to personally pick out. The story’ll be rather unfulfilling if it ended with “they quit and died a normal life”.

I threw the written report into the fireplace and reached for my drink. The cider was sweet and refreshing, perfect to cleanse my state of mind.

Today was the day Operation Infernal would begin. There shouldn’t be any unexpected hiccups, so it should end pretty soon too. The final confrontation would happen within 24 hours, and it’d be a pity if those kids missed it.

They responded well to the initiation trial. Honestly, I just blindly poured an extra dosage of suffering into their training. If they aren’t able to handle injustice and humiliation, then they’ll be useless to me.

They need to learn how to think for themselves, but before that, they need to learn how to think like us. That way, when they begin to think for themselves… they’ll be doing what we want anyways.

A win-win.

All of this meant that I had to get this shitshow done with in the elf kingdom.

Let me give you a bit of an update. All around Khondour, an evacuation notice for JanZe employees and their close relatives were sent. They were given 14 days to retrieve their essentials and migrate to a new life far far away. Today was the third day.

Taku stumbled his way back to the JanZe branch on that particular evening. Needless to say he wasn’t exactly pleased with my actions. I was though, and I mattered more than him, so I’d say the elf house visit went well. Anyway, he threw a hissy fit for a couple of days, until I bribed him with a drop of a JanZe’s blood.

We spent the time between then and now dealing with the majority of issues that cropped up when one tried to move thousands of people all at once. Registry of migration had a lot of paperwork involved, many of which required my signature to approve, even though it was a perfunctory requirement. I simply let others do all the hard work and thinking, and shouldered any responsibilities in the process.

I wouldn’t recommend doing this at home.

“I thought you hated alcohol.”

Perfect timing, it seemed Taku woke up too. He entered the lobby with a towel around his neck, his hair looking like a wet dog, and the morning breath smelling like one too.

“I do, but cider’s alright. It’s nice and sweet.”

“Perfect for a man-child like you, right?”

“Well then, why don’t you grab some whiskey, mister drinker?”

“You do realise it’s, like, seven in the morning?”

“It’s for work. We’re meeting the warlord and his puppet soon.”

“Hey Taku, recite the customs and shit. We’re meeting royalties!”

“Yeah well, I did say we might end up abandoning all that.”

“I’m not a degenerate like you, drinking this early in the day.”

“…”

“… Yeah, can’t fool anyone with that, huh?”

“You failed miserably as soon as you claimed anyone can be as degenerative as you.”

“Suck one.”

“JP, fine choice… but at least pour it into a glass.”

“You know nothing about drinking, First.”

“Said by the barbarian gulping it from the bottle.”

“Ahhhh! It’s the primal joy that highlights the drink. So, whats the plan for the day? Why are we meeting the elves now?”

Taku plopped himself down on the sofa opposite of mine, placing his feet on the stool close to the fireplace.

“To speed things up a bit. If we stayed passive, it might take an extra few decades before anything happened.”

“Thanks for the nonanswer.”

“Khondour is going into total war.”

“It’s always been in one, though?”

“Against monsters, yes.”

“Wait… no way, us? Hey! Stop sippng your damn cider and start fucking explaining!”

“Do you remember some of the factors that led to World War I on Earth?”

“An assassination leading to a bunch of allied countries declaring war on one another.”

“Yes, but there’s a lot more to it than that. The rising sense of nationalism, the imperialism and the technological advancements. There’s a lot of big terminologies used to over-generalise the myriad of issues, but at the most fundamental level, you could simply sum it all up as two things.

“Overpopulation and ideology.”

“Speaking of overgeneralisation…”

“Most of the war profits, the territorial disputes and political warfare are conducted in order to control the issue of overpopulation. You need reputation, power and wealth to make the sea of people submit. The more people in this world, the more consolidated your power must be. It just all boils down to this.

“Use money to entice the population into your control. Use strength to force the population into your control. Use intelligence to manipulate people into your control.

“But what happens when there’s simply too many people?”

“They’ll try to gain control.”

“Precisely.”

“Then why did you separate ideology as its own factor?”

“Because that’s how you keep people in control. Propaganda that turns into nationalism, which in time makes tradition and finally, culture. Given enough time, with this… selective breeding, you’ll be able to suppress the entire human race the same way as pets or cattle.”

“That’s ridiculous! There’s no way anyone can take advantage of something tha…“

“The strongest Khondourian can live upwards to five millenia. Of course, there are those that ignore the concept of life expectancy.”

“… You four.”

“No, us five.”

“I’m just unaging, I’m not immortal. I'm not like you!”

I took my time to finish off my glass. Taku realised his sudden movements spilt some drink onto the cosher coach and worked to control himself. The tension was finally released after I poured myself another glassful and reseated.

“So you’re working towards world domination?”

“I’d prefer it if you don’t jump to conclusions. We were controlling the massive population for the sake of everyone.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Because if we’re not in control, someone else will, or at the very least they’ll try to be. Do you want someone else to take control in your power?”

“Isn’t that the case right now? I’m a JanZe apprentice, right? You’re in control of my strength.”

“Yes… and no. Once you’re a JanZe, you’re free to do whatever you want until you’re edict.”

“That’s just a bloody courtesy!”

“It means much more than that, and until you accept what edict truly is, you’ll never leave the apprenticeship.”

“So what, you don’t want someone else to control your power, so you’re controlling everyone else?”

“Hmm… we had to pay a certain price to gain the power and status that we possess right now. That is what we call our qualifications. Let’s say we end up devoting all of it to a different person… how well could they wield our strength? If you think we’re crazy enough, wait until you add unknown factors and third parties in the equation.”

“Maybe someone else would have a better perspective onto the world than you sob-back-story characters. You do realise you guys cause a lot of damage, right?”

“Keyword there is maybe. One little bit of corruption, and a whole kingdom might just disappear.”

“You don’t know that.”

“You assume we don’t know that. You speak as if you do, but maybe get off your backseat and come sit here with me, the driver.

“What do you know of the forgotten history?”

“That was real?”

“Very much so. It lasted almost nine hundred thousand years. If that isn’t enough experience on my CV to justify controlling our own powers instead of giving it away, then I’d like to know what qualifications you have to judge our extensive list?”

“What the hell happened?”

“Naturally, we were at war.”

“Who’s we!? What war?”

“The four of us, under different nations of the human race, ironically fought each other for peace.”

“… Who won?”

“We did. The four nations fell to ruins, its people massacred. We suffered deaths, we revived just to do it again, and again, and again. In the end, only the four of us were left.

“We were growing back then. We’re not naturally talented in combat, or some genius with overwhelming strength in the beginning. We were simply bottomless cups with a small opening. So long as water’s slowly dripping in, we’ll hold the entire ocean one day.

“That’s why we were the greatest weapons. National Protectors, they called us.

“Prisoners to their games.

“It took us almost a million years to finally break free from their ideological control, after killing hundreds of billions of lives.”

“It took you that long…?”

“We’re not talking about some chains or shackles. We abandoned our identities in order to break free. We lost the majority of our power back then. We lost our humanity, our entire way of thinking, everything we had.

“It’s like finally realising that the monsters who are only capable of destruction were actually peaceful races.”

“That’s not possible.”

“You dismiss it immediately. Instinctively and intuitively. You use humour, past experiences or predictions to come up of all sorts of way of denying it because this line of thinking strikes into the core of your being. You’ve killed so many of them by now that you can’t go back.”

“But that’s literally not possible, right?”

“Monsters exist for the sake of destruction. We’ve tested enough to be confident in that answer, but the four of us are willing to abandon that notion if the truth was otherwise. That's what we had to do, erasing the idea that we were in the right. Coming into terms of our weaknesses and mistakes, that everything we stood for was the very thing destroying the things we cherished. Are you capable of that? You can say you are, you can think you are, but you’re not. This goes beyond words, but don’t worry, you’ll have a chance to feel it soon.”

“Wait, what-”

“You are not the fifth.”

“?”

“The fifth person ignoring the rules of death. At least, we’re not certain about you yet.”

“Then who’s the fifth?”

“… One of our experiments, perhaps our most guilt-ridden one. He was the only survivor out of countless others. He was perfected.”

“No fucking pronoun games!”

“We named him Inquisitor, and set him free. Ultimately, he created an organisation under that name.”

“Wait, isn’t Richard Dirkshiv the leader of the Inquisitors?”

“He’s the strongest combatant there, but not the leader. Anyway, that isn’t important right now. The world’s ready to erupt into war not because of the Inquisitors, but because of us the JanZe.”

“Because they’re rebelling against your control?”

“Because we’re relinquishing our control.”

“I don’t understand.”

“We controlled everything, Taku. We are the reason why everyone spoke English. We unified the languages! Which language did you speak on Earth?”

“German and English.”

“Do you remember what happened when you tried speaking German to the Khondourians? That was our doing.

“Humans, or actually, all intelligent lifeforms are confined by their ability to express and digest thoughts. The vast majority of them uses language as a medium to achieve such things, but it’s not a perfect solution. Your understanding of a word limits how much comprehension you can get, even if the thought originated from yourself.

“Why do you think nations had advanced agricultural systems? Waste and sewage systems, understanding of hygiene and politics… yet it doesn’t have a steam or combustion engine? Hell, some form of mana-based rotary piston could allow those without the correct Power to achieve something great. But Khondour had none of that until the last couple decades, even though countless ‘Heroes’ with modern knowledge went by.”

“You kept that information from others, just like how you made atomic theory forbidden to the masses.”

“Partly right. There’s more to that, but you’re not ready for this information yet. Plus, our understanding of science would seriously add to the power creep of this world.”

“So what control are you relinquishing now? Do we finally have Japanese-speaking catgirls available?”

“Nyaa~t yet.”

“Oh fuck you.”

“We’ve stopped suppressing the ideological aspect of control some ten-thousand years ago. We established the JanZe at around the same time, and worked to take care of everything. That's also one of the reason why you're rather special amongst other JanZe, even those under the four of us. You are somewhat similar to the Inquisitor, but we didn’t do to you, what we did to him. No – before you ask, I’m not willing to tell you. You should just be happy to feel indignant at being a JanZe apprentice. If you think we’re controlling you now, wait until you meet him yourself.

“More importantly – we stopped limiting the population cap.”

“Hold up… limiting?”

“Do you remember what year you came from?”

“Uhh, 21st Century. I can’t remember the exact date.”

“There was around seven, eight billion people at the time, right? During that time, global tensions led to two total wars, a cold war based on intelligence, then a financial war based on wealth. It’s true that actual battles lessened due to the lack of benefits it had in a modern society, but that didn’t mean the war stopped. It just morphed into something else – drugs, laws, cyber, money.”

“With mana, Khondour’s capacity wouldn’t be the same as Earth, especially since there’s a lot of things we can do here that we couldn’t back there. Do you know what the estimated population of Khondour right now?”

“Uhh, more than Earths?”

“We’re closing in on 6.9.”

“Oh, so that’s close to Earth’s. You’re taking precautions no-“

“Taku. Wrong number place. Six point nine… trillion.”