*In an operation room *

A man in a suit was tapping on the armrest of commander seat. On a desk in front of him, there were three profiles with the pictures of three girls: Mashima Hinami, Kurosawa Yuuko, and Tachibana Makoto. Story of their heroic acts was not only a hot topic in the mass media, but also among many secret and high level organizations, including his. The special power they had was something that could only exist in the realm of human imagination, yet a real fact in this world. It was not on the border of science fiction, but the work of magic. Creating weapons out of thin air? Anyone who studied the law of conservative mass knew that such thing was impossible. It could not be even explained with pseudo-science or logic.

However, the man who had been sitting here, as well as those who were this room, did not bother to argue the mechanism behind that power. Because they already understood one thing: anything was possible with “Animium”, the power to manifest the imagination of one mind into reality. In the man’s view, it could be considered as the power of god due to its omnipotence.

Nothing was known about its origin or property. Many thing about it was shrouded in mystery. However, there was one thing the man can confidently guess. Its appearance was just only recent, not throughout the history.

It was one year ago when he first had a special ability. While rereading one of his favorite stories, he silently thought that if the antagonist inside had been real. Suddenly, the book started burnt with a black flame in his hand and dropped on the ground. From the burning ash of the book, a man with impressive circle beard in noble outfit appeared in front of him.

“Jerome Garret, waiting for your order, Master.” The man bowed down before him.

That was his first meeting with his “summoning”. From that day onward, the man found out it was due to his ability that Jerome Garret , the antagonist in the story, became a reality. This was the conclusion after “summoning” several other characters from different stories. On top of that, regardless of the setting and personality of the characters, they all considered him as master.

Driven by curiosity, he performed many experiments to test the limit of his newfound ability , and the result was astounding. There was no limit to his "summoning" skill. He could "summon" any creature: be it a ghost with different back stories and abilities, terrorists with extensive warfare experience, ancient monsters existing only in mythologies, demons mentioned in literature. Beside those existing in literature, he could even "call" them from the story he wrote himself, "summon" those only existed in his fantasy. It was then he understood his ability true nature: he could create any creature from his imagination. The stories were just blue prints for his though to be more concise.

However, saying that there was no limit to his ability was an exaggerated way of saying. After all, there were some rules that he had to follow. First, any creation required energy to materialize in this world. The stronger and more complex the being was, the more energy was required. Jerome Barrote only had a few abilities but it still took him a whole day to recover from the exhaustion. With a manticore, he had to rest a whole week on bed without doing anything. Secondly, each creature needed to have a certain amount of details to be considered as complete. For example, when he only thought of a ghost with fighting ability and created it, the result was a jumble of parts of all the ghosts he can associate with. Random pieces of flesh sticked together with weapons through whitely transparent anchors. The ghost could not hold itself together and bursted into black flame five seconds after his birth. In other words, he had to clearly imagine his creation with as much details as possible for it to exist properly. In addition, the stronger the creation was, the more details it needed. Thus, writing was an important mean for him as it was the simplest way to construct his "work".

After months of working as "writer", he had built himself a personal army that could be considered the strongest of the world. The army did not only have strong fighting power, but could also perform many more functions: construction, technology development, information gathering, spying, infiltration, and so on. It was an army that consisted of only demons and evil beings in fantasy world, yet it was as advanced as any modern army in the world. He believed that with this army, he could conquer the whole world.

However, he was not so ignorant to think he was the only one in the world that had this power. Using his personal connection and information network, he found that the world had started moving in a strange direction during his immersion in building the army. It was not a visible change with reports of superman detected or strange phenomenon, but the activeness and breakthrough of technology in the weapon industry.

In the public, the only available information was the rise in stock for the weapon companies and news of new projects being conducted. However, using the infiltration unit, he discovered a major threat that could bring his ambition to naught. An arm race that could trigger a new cold war had already started. Many companies had been developing new types of weapons with concepts that were deemed impossible or stagnant before with incredible progresses: powerful combat suits, enhanced super humans, instant wound recovery drug, firearms with mass destructive firepower, and more importantly humanoid robots with the height of over 20 meters. The experimental data was mind blowing enough that he could not even help but doubt whether all of these technologies were works of alien. More coincidentally, all of these projects began around the same time when he first used his ability.

However, that was not the conclusive evidence indicating that he believed this could trigger another cold war. It was the report of “Animium” that made him think so. “Animium” was the special type of energy that suddenly appeared out of thin air. Nothing was known about its origin or first appearance. Its first official discovery was reported by a material scientist in Boston University in January 18th 2014, who “accidentally” created a new material that breaks the current understanding of molecular bonds. The report submitted on science journal was deleted after a week of publishing, and the scientist along his research team were transfered out of the university.

The term ”Animium” was given to the energy that caused the special phenomenon. The reason for that is because it is surprisingly very related to human mind and imagination. Using “Animium”, the users were able to create materials out of thin air just from imagination. It was not changing the property of molecules to create a new substance, like changing lead into gold in alchemy, but materialization of human thought into reality. Not limiting to currently existing atoms, the researchers were able to develop a completely new system of atoms that is separated from the current system. Some even commented that this is the energy used by god to create the world.

Investigation about Animium property was conducted but not going on so well. No matter which method was used, they could not figure out its nature. If analyzed with the hypothesis that it had wave property, it would react as a wave with any wavelength thought by the researcher. If analyzed as light, it would have light property. In the end, the data was nothing but fallacy as the experiments recorded the property of creations by the Animium, not the Animium itself. A hypothesis suggested that it belonged to a different dimension other than the four we had known.

Luckily, its primary form in our dimensions was more than enough to satisfy the researchers’ curiosity and those in power’s ambition. The white flame and black flame were considered the purest and primary forms of Animium before they began any transformation, as they always appeared before the materialization process. Research showed that they were associated with positive feelings and negative feelings perspectively, but a more fundamental aspect probably lied behind the distinction between two. Both flames were believed to have the same potential and properties as they reproduced the same result with every creation experiment. However, despite the similarity, they showed oppositions toward each other. If two types of flame or their creations were near each other, they would try to negate each other intensely, like good and evil fighting each other.

Regrettably, that was all he could find. The record he found was only basic and summarized information distributed in many research facility. Due to the importance of the topic, security was tight for anything related to it. The access to the report was tightly monitored, and his infiltration spy squad was immediately discovered and subjugated after sending him this report. Following the incident, security had become much tighter than ever with the inclusion of new developed weapons and security system, causing his attempt to steal information fail many times. It was not only America, but also other major powerful countries. It appeared that there were others who had done the same thing as him.

All of these made him realize that the world was moving in a completely new direction that no one could have predicted. New powerful factions were forming, while the already strong factions had become stronger day by day. Would his ambition remain unfulfilled just when he already had power at hand? He thought hard how to stand up high in this soon chaotic world.

A plan formed in his mind as he assessed the current state of Japan. Strangely, Japan also noticed the movement of weapon industry, yet there was no outstanding progress on the development of weapon. His secret units even managed to infiltrate the weapon development facilities very easily, and noticed that the government did not even have knowledge about Animium. After investigating throughout this matter, he confidently believed that he was the only Animium user in Japan. This meant that his first step, taking over Japan, would not meet so much resistance as he thought.

Thus, the project “Japan Empire transformation” took place. With the self developed cloning technology, the core idea was to control or replace all government higher ups and officers, as well as people in the upper class with their clones who followed his order secretly. The change must remain secretive for others to notice, so it needed to be done gradually with few people in different departments replaced at one time. Starting from that, the clones would investigate the rest of the department and the higher ups to prepare for perfect clones that could replace the originals perfectly without a gap in memory, personality and knowledge. He estimated that by the end of next year February, he would replace all the staffs in the government as well as the upper class.

While replacement was taking place, strengthening his army was also an important part. Aside upgrading his army with modern arms and technologies, he also needed to create stronger units than those he currently had. He became extremely concerned after seeing the combat armors and the robots, since those weapon could eliminate his infiltration troops so easily. Stronger unit meant more energy required. Although his energy capacity had expanded after “working” for so long, he was not allowed to spend time leisurely to rest and recover after exhaustion. He needed a more efficient method to have energy. Thus, the project “Despair” came into being.