Ant Tensei Redux Prologue Terra Arc in segmented format for easier reading and viewer enjoyability.

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Terra Arc, Part 1 - The Champion Rises:

Life…

It’s so short isn’t it.

No matter how long you seem to walk in any direction, eventually you find a dead end.

At the end, I now wonder just what I tried to live for, what my true purpose was. Why did I keep taking another step when the end is inevitable. When in the end of all ends, one cannot see a meaning to walk that next step.

So, why did I take that next step..?

I never really felt anything, my heart chilled with the frost of indifference and longing. To gaze as far as I dared, to think as deep as I thought, to do what I have done. Why did I take that next step?

There’s always that question… whenever I took that next step… why… why did I keep going… why did I take another step… why did I not just give up… why did I keep fighting… why did I struggle… why did I teach… why did I learn… why did I lead… why did I survive… why did I do what I did…

I… I…. why…

That word…. why…

As I stare at this broken sky, into the endless void of space ever growing closer to this dying body of mine, this word still yet ponders in my mind…

Why did I do… what I did…

At the end… was all I did… all I built… all I taught…. really pointless?

If that was so… why do I feel… so… content?

Perhaps… there was something in my life… that was worth something?

But… what did I do that meant anything? If this is the result of all I’ve done… then what was the point? I merely wait here, floating in the vacuum of all ends yet no beginnings, waiting for the silence to overcome.

Was there any reason at all?

Perhaps… i’m still alive right now… if there’s anything at all, I might as well reflect on my life… if there’s anything I can do for the sake of all i’ve done, it’s pass on while remembering my life with contentment. Whether or not my life was pointless or not will be left to the universe of time to decide, for in my failure, I leave no heir to succeed any memory. As it was planned in the greater extent of reality, humanity has fallen, it stands my great failure for such an event, my shame that shall not be carried by a single soul of the living, yet carried by all of the damned.

In this supposed life I carried with me, one could say that I was different, perhaps called special by some, yet lived as but a curse.

I can't say what really occurred at the time of my birth, not many children could if one shared a creation such as my own. In my efforts, I stood to understand several things about my existence. This husk called a body holds a great instability, that is to say my cells hardly could be called orthodox in their development. The cellular divisions casting shadows over a normal organism. Organs missing, organs developing that have never existed in any species, from what little could be found about my creation I could only have a brief picture.

If I were to be described during my early years, essentially, I was a living tumor.

My DNA was a complete mess. When I was born, I had multiple sets of every single chromosome, my cells dividing and dying randomly as they mutated further and further.

For the first year of my life, I was merely kept alive at a research facility in the broken-down country of my birth. Such a small and destitute place with no military power at all. If not for the oil produced there, there would not have even been a nation there at all.

The scientists played with my body, injecting various liquids and using various devices on my body. I will never know for sure how much of what I am... was, was a result of their work, and what was my intended existance. All I can ever believe... all I could ever believe... is that my existence was something rejected by fate, yet was not eliminated, as all that which goes against the flow of destiny commonly are.

Such was my life, to go against all that stood, all that was believed, to know what I know and walk on the path yet pathed. It mattered not the destination, yet as I wait here, within this fallen world upon which there shall never be another dawn, perhaps that is the very 'fate' of those who walk against the tides of destiny.

My first memories formed in that white box… their tests and trials continuously without end. Arms were severed only to regrow with some several injections and some powder being forced into the wounds. An eye being split would reform after a few days, my body not dying after my throat was cut and continuously bleeding.

My cells would always generate faster than anything. No matter the test, no matter the damage, that husk would always reform.

For me, well, you could say that there really wasn’t a ‘me’ at that point, there was only a continually growing sack of flesh that was constantly being tested and abused. The very depths of human testing and indifference.

One can't blame them though. Honestly, that thing was nothing, merely a sack of flesh. Even if it had memory, all that memory held was the various experiments upon it and nothing more.

Normally in such a tale, there would be some researcher that would show the flesh kindness, teach it to speak and feel, then the creature would rescue the researcher, who was opposite gender of course, when they were caught going against regulations and whisk away to a happily ever after.

Of course this wasn’t the case.

One day there was an earthquake and something within the lab must have caught fire. The fire was pretty big too. I don’t know if many of the scientists got out or not, but I suppose there must have been one kind one somewhere because the door to my white box opened for the first time. There were no more needles from the walls or machines from the floor, there was a door.

Of course my mind was hardly developed, but over time with their constant experiments, my body had more or less grown into a normal shape I suppose. If I had to guess, I might have been four or five at the time, but since my body was developing so fast, I’d say I looked like a young teenager and was roughly four feet tall or so.

There was no way that i’d know what fire was, nor did I ‘know’ pain actually meant. After all, pain is merely something your brain instinctively creates depending on the stimulus from your nerves. If you don’t have the ‘instinct’ to create pain, then you don’t actually feel pain, you just feel the damage on your body and nothing more. Since my body was constantly subjected to ‘painful’ procedures without end since before my body even held a memory, there’s little chance that I would have been able to comprehend what ‘pain’ was.

Since that was the case, I merely ‘moved’ out of that room. Since I was devoid of any interaction or change since my mind began to function, that sack of flesh that was me simply began stretching out it’s arms, moving it’s torso, and pushing with it’s legs.

Eventually, something like a broken walk on one’s knees while pushing with your legs was born as a form of movement. Looking back at it, that scene was… interesting. Not so much for the movement, but for the fact that as I was moving, the fire caught up to the area I was in.

As a result my flesh was constantly on fire. If I had been in direct flames for too long, not even with the cells that I had, that body would have turned to ash and bone. Cells can only be created if there’s the nutrients to create them, even then my flesh wouldn’t grow back that fast. When they severed my arm, it took what I think was months, when they flayed my back, it took a week to grow back.

If not for just sheer stupid luck, I would not have gotten out of that facility.

When I got out, there was emergency teams already there. With my burns all over, I was picked up and brought to an ambulance wherein they shipped me to a hospital. Thinking back, some of the people that worked at the facility were wide eyed as I exited the building, but not a one said a thing.

At the hospital, they gave me some treatment for the burns and tested me for injuries. Well, since I couldn’t really even be considered as a human then, I ended up being sent to a mental hospital for children.

It’s thanks to that place that over the next few years I ended up developing an actual ‘mind’.

I’d find out years later that my brain has far more pathways as well as some other things. I didn’t really undergo the tests then because I was interested, more so because ‘others’ were interested.

Basically I learned things substantially faster than the other kids. Well… not to compare to children with actual mental challenges, I merely wasn’t raised at all, so my development shouldn’t be compared to those little ones.. I don’t really know why I’m comparing my growth to them…

Well, years passed and I was let out of the mental hospital. Since my nation didn’t really have laws for child care or age limits, I was just let out the front door and told ‘good luck’.

From there, I eventually got taken in by a group of kids similar to my condition. Years past and I became the leader of the street children of the entire town. There were hundreds of us, but I made a rule to only steal food and water, never anything more.

I was very fast, my muscles and nervous system moving far faster than the usual person, I easily could run nearly twenty five miles an hour by the time I was just ten. By that point I already looked like a young adult, but the children who followed me knew otherwise.

From becoming the leader of those child thieves, my ‘reality’ developed quickly. I grew to know what suffering was, what sadness was. What I learned was that there is a darkness. It was then I realized that I was raised by those who were completely dark, truly evil. Though, it really didn’t bother me much, when it came to realizations of life changing things, it bothered me for only a few minutes. I mean, I just learned that I was a test subject for human research… and how is that going to feed the fifth group of children thieves tomorrow? Who cares about how you were raised, doesn’t matter at all if you just move past it. Seriously, the amount of people who gasp whenever I told my story of how I grew up…

Since I grew very fast and my cells divided and developed at such a rate, more often than not, I was skin and bones. Because this was the case, all the children looked up to me, who stood as their leader. They told tales of how I would always starve so long as there was a single child in the city who went hungry, or that I tended to only eat once every few days so that the children who couldn’t help gather food could have something to eat. Eventually my body finished growing at around six feet seven inches or so and I stopped being all skin and bones. Though, since I was still not eating nearly enough for my body’s needs, I was still very thin.

Years upon years past, the kids began to grow up and get jobs while new kids appeared and came under our wings. As we moved into the workforce, we began to gather influence. Of course we stuck together for the most part, who wouldn’t when you grew up together and ate from the same leg of chicken, and treated every grain of rice as a treasure together.

Then, as humans often tend to do, there was a dispute. The larger nation that surrounded our own went into a major civil war. The borders of the nation fractured as over a dozen nations claimed independence and true right over the whole region.

My nation was not exempt and the indulgent monarch sent his soldiers out to conscript men and women for his army.

Since I had quite a bit of influence in the underground of the nation, I was forcibly ‘conscripted’. By that, I was put into the main military base near the border of one of the revolting nations. We were intended to be used as cannon fodder and to clear the field of mines and traps for the main army.

Well, after I entered the workforce, I had finally been able to start sating my nutritional needs. As such, my muscles ripened and my body developed.

Of course I didn’t want to be used as cattle, so I broke the hell out of that prison day one. After which I decided to take my holy right and unleash pure havoc upon the army personnel by night. By day, I would tamper with the food and water supplies, causing various troubles for the head staff, causing dozens of arrests within the military upper echelons. What..? They intended to use me as cannon fodder, of course i’m going to screw with them.

There were dozens of people who knew me at that base, so it was easy enough to keep under the radar. Many of them were a part of one group or another that I was associated with, so they all ensured that wherever I was, there weren't people who would give me up. Of course I made sure to not cause trouble to those who were on my side, such as locations of untampered food resources or non-salted water wells.

Three weeks in, there was signs of an enemy attack. It was ‘found’ out a few months later that there were false orders sent to the idiotic military leaders that tricked them into sallying from the military base. All that the military fortress had to offer, the fortifications, bunkers, heavy weaponry, even the artillery, all left behind. The reason behind it was that the so called 'Assault' was meant to be executed the moment the order came in, thus, there were dozens of soldiers who weren't even able to get a weapon in time before being ordered to rush out the front gates. Hmph, such is the idiocy of a military lead by nobility, they take things way too literally and ended up playing right into my hands. In the end, that five thousand conscripted citizenry charged straight into the pure hell of the enemy commander, who happened to be the main claimant during this time of war. His military, the entire 'elite' noble military of forty five thousand, equipped with mechanized tanks and aircraft.

Needless to say, the fight really only lasted fifteen minutes. It lasted that long because they were torturing the soldiers on the field, basically playing with the captured some-odd three thousand conscripted soldiers as they executed them.

Now, of course there’s no way I was stupid enough to go with them. Since I was obviously the one who had those orders sent. The idiots actually rounded up all the soldiers and left the military base they were ordered to hold. In the confusion, I managed to convince roughly sixty of my men to remain in the base regardless of their orders. It was a shame I couldn't get to more of them, but in that level of confusion with several thousand people, just managing to individually contact sixty people is a trick in on itself. There's no chance I would have any electronic device on my person to contact them, that would be like pointing out where I was to the entire military base.

During the confusion there were cases where we had to silence officers to make sure that those following me wouldn't be noticed. Random loyal soldiers trying to capture me also had to meet their ends. This was their own fault for not behaving like blind fools like they were supposed to. Hidden within the base, we went unnoticed as the base was abandoned for the slaughterhouse. That, that was when my plan fully went into action.

I went about the base, ordering my associates to take control of the various armaments of the base. I had special emphasis placed on the artillery, missile units and mounted auto-gatling guns. From there, each of them were set to the command of a single laptop that was in my possession.

You know, for a small oil country, we sure had a lot of modern weaponry. Mostly because of the oil we had, but you know, can’t complain, sure proved useful that day.

About a half hour from there, that big army finished slaughtering the last of the men had begun passing around the female soldiers. This isn’t child’s play, their leadership used the women as a way to keep their elites happy and under control after a battle. Of course the claimant for the seat of the region that led this army was a total idiot. He was completely indulgent and let his emotions dictate his actions. People who let their emotions leak influence important decisions that include others are trash after all. I knew as much at the very least. I already had a few of the group’s members infiltrate that army a week after I had broken out.

It was a simple matter to have him think that there was a rebel group willing to turn over the base and have the army attack them to be slaughtered.

If you think about it, there’s no way that we would have been able to win if they attacked the base. This wasn’t the times of swords, it was the time of really big guns and huge explosives that could kill hundreds of people in seconds. When outnumbered like that with soldiers that have no training to use their superior weapons, those weapons are useless and you’re screwed.

Even with my help, we only barely had enough knowledge between us all to program the various military equipment. That's only because those who knew me and were associated generally were in trades, and thus with their help, I deciphered the various systems in the nick of time.

Within that means, I had to have the next part of my plan set into action. I made contact with the enemy Claimant and offered the military base over to him. Normally there would be no way that my offerings wouldn't result in all of us just being slaughtered, but in this case it was different. I had already made him the offer of sending the troops out to their doom. Feeding him information and ideas that would tickle his extreme sense of self pride and narcissism, so easily was he deceived. The bait was taken and all that remained was for him to walk into my trap.

The plan was to have our army charge into a trap and slaughtered, then, he and his prideful army of nobles would hold a ceremony of triumph on the walls of the fortress. While it didn't matter to me, this WAS our nation's only military fortress, so losing it would normally signify defeat. He would have his military line up outside the walls as he gave a great speech. I'd have a speaker system set up of course. He would airdrop in from helicopters along with his chiefs of staff and military officers to show their bravery and grace.

In such, they would isolate their military hierarchy behind enemy lines while all of the base's armaments were pointed at the leaderless troops, tightly packed.

The idiot not only thought that my idea for glorifying himself was so great, he even planned to reward me by having me stand besides him during the ceremony. When the time came for him to march his forces up, he did just as planned.

His troops marched in tight formation, shoulder to shoulder in grandiose fashion…

His tanks were left at their camp since they wouldn’t be needed. I had a microphone set up so that he could give a speech to his troops and gloat about how amazing he was.

I stood beside him while my ‘5’ conspirators were given various awards for our ‘actions’.

In my left hand was a little laptop, my right hand was in my pocket holding a small pistol. Hell, I wasn’t even frisked and was allowed to stand right next to him.

Ah, I can’t believe he thought the military base was cleared out by just six people.

Not a one of them were armed, either.

The moment that fat contender started his ‘I’m the legitimate heir to the’ blah blah speech, I sat down on a chair and opened up my laptop. When I did that, the guy actually stopped his speech to look at what I was doing and he locked up when he saw there was a pistol in my other hand.

Well, when a guy to your right suddenly sits down with a gun in one hand and starts acting strange, you don’t continue your speech about how wise and great you are.

There was a sudden wave of silence, followed by the roar of fire and explosions as the weapons of the base came online. Thousands upon thousands of the soldiers on the field, listening to the speech, died instantly.

As the attack began, my conspirators sprung out of the fox holes that were set up throughout the base and slaughtered the officers and chain of command. Since the officers weren't very spread out, it wasn't hard to do.

The claimant's face was priceless. Never have I seen a fat man so pissed off in the entire span of my life from that point on.

Pulling out a saber from the inner part of his overcoat, he proceeded to shout various threats. The blade was only two-ish feet long, so even a weakling like him would be able to swing it with 'some' force. Well, he DID swing it down on me, but I just blocked it with my left arm. Well, he was seriously pissed, so he kept swinging away at my arm.

Surprise, while my skin certainly was broken and my arm was bleeding, it was his blade that was being damaged.

Naturally, pound for pound bone is actually stronger than steel. Another point from my development was that my bones were completely solid. That basically meant I have no bone marrow. I found out the reason I have blood at all was because my blood cells, white blood cells and alike all divide in my bloodstream. Absorbing nutrients in the blood to do so. Basically, nothing about my body is normal at all, kind of to be expected if you were born as a living tumor and experimented on for several years when I think about it… It’s a wonder I was alive at all…

Well, my bone’s density is something to behold since it’s about three or four times more dense than a normal person’s bone. Couple that with the fact that it’s solid bone, not filled with spaces for bone tissue or marrow and you get a very strong material that won't break without some serious effort.

His saber was probably silver anyway, if it was steel or something my arm might have been damage but he wasn’t strong enough to actually use the thing and started panting after only six swings.

In the course of those six sword swings, just a matter of less than thirty seconds, over half of his entire military force and almost all of his officer personnel were annihilated.

I smiled to him as I pointed the gun at his face and he fell over on his fat rear as he crawled backwards. Sighing, I put the laptop down, the base defenses were automatic anyways so there wasn’t a need for me to hold onto it. Even if it was smashed, the weapons would keep firing until everything outside the base was slaughtered and then keep going. Pretty advanced stuff honestly, but I think I might have been the only guy in the entire base, including those five thousand conscripts and all the rich officers that had the ability to utilize them. Took me two weeks to figure out most of it, even if it was me and my conspirators. Certainly I didn't expect to figure out what weapons to use and how to use all of them during the exodus alone.

I picked the idiotic claimant up and shot him point blank in the face. Yep, totally cold blooded and right between the eyes. Guy was crying and everything. Threw the body over the wall with one hand and surveyed the scene.

After that, I was hailed as a military hero and such. The elites conscripted even more troops and had me put up as the new general of the army.

Haah, even when I ADMITTED that I sent the five thousand people to their deaths, I was still hailed as a hero by the public and given awards by the nobility… some people really are blind when it comes to logic. Well, I kept the citizens away from the raping and pillaging of an occupation and I kept the nobles from losing their power… Guess in hindsight I did really save a few hundred thousand people by killing only five thousand… I just thought they were idiots at the time… Huh… go figure.

Hmmm… after that I lead a newly formed army of four thousand to conquer the lands of that claimant I killed off. It wasn’t too hard, but half his lands were already swallowed up by other contenders.

About a week passed from that, there were actual people in the recruitment offices and a few thousand people actually volunteered for the military. Their general reasoning for doing so was because ‘I’ll gladly give up my life if it’s for him’ or 'Well, i'd probably be dead if it wasn't for him, so...' or other such phrases.

I still don't really understand it, but with hindsight, I won't say that I truly understand the minds of humanity... but... I thought I did... I wonder why... ah... it was probably 'that'... well, I'll just keep going, I don't want to skip anything now... since, it is probably the last time.

Going back to it, just after a week after my appointment, the nobility tried to remove me from my post because I was “Getting too much influence and becoming a threat”.

Honestly, I didn’t care enough to think about taking the nation over, but after they tried to lock me up. A SECOND TIME MIND YOU! I led the army and slaughtered the nobility. The first being the military 'enlistment'.

The soldiers didn’t mind anyways, the nobility were all tyrannical and the citizens hated them. Sure I had to kill off a few noble officers here and there that bought their ranks and were totally incompetent, but all in all it was an easy affair. I didn’t think it would be that easy, but the second I announced that I was toppling the government, nearly half the population left their homes and joined with the army to catch and butcher the nobles.

I set up a democracy type deal and stated I had no interest in leading, that they had to vote for someone else and that only if every single person in the nation voted for me would I even think of taking the reins of the nation.

…

Well… guess what ended up happening. I received all nine hundred seventy three thousand, four hundred thirty six votes… The entire censored voting population…

The people brought voting cards to the infirm… the mentally impaired had their cards filled out for them… people on the streets and so on all rallied together in an unbelievable fashion…

Well… certainly didn’t expect to find that out when I woke up six hours later that they had voted me into office by fulfilling my demands… Well… sort of… turns out they decided that if someone voted against me, their vote no longer counted if they were dead… Same went for those too infirm or otherwise unable to vote.

My fault for not being specific on how to conduct themselves… It turned into a serious witch hunt, though only a few thousand people ended up dying in total. Not even a percent of the population, so at the time I didn’t give it too much thought, though I wonder if the votes were false in hindsight. My only thought was that leading an entire nation was bothersome.

[Part 1: The Champion Rises - END]