…
He never felt the meaning of life.
But, since he is still alive, he continues to live.
The instinct of living things to survive is nothing more than that.
The earliest memory is when he was very young, when he opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was a man in a white coat looking at him.
He was surrounded by instruments, and various data kept flashing on the light curtain next to him. The man was typing on the keyboard while watching him, as if he was recording something.
Still ignorant, he watched the man busy and didn't know what he was doing.
After watching the man busy for a while, he called to the side.
The man said, "This is fine, take it away."
At that time, he didn't understand anything.
Later he learned that the man said 'it', not 'he'.
Someone took the young him away and led him into a huge hall. In the hall, there were many children his own age, and some older children.
He was given a suit, with a metal frame engraved with a code fused into the flesh of the wrist.
As with all children, that code was his name.
At that time, no matter whether it was memory or emotion, it was a blank for him. He will do what those people teach.
Countless metal cubicles with a width of only one meter and a height of two meters were his rooms. He later guessed that according to his body size, he was about four or five years old at that time.
He has survived for more than a decade in this metal cubicle with nothing but a cold metal bed.
Like all other children, he followed a strict schedule, starting in the early morning with six hours of extreme physical training, taking nutrients, followed by five hours of continuous learning of various knowledge, and then followed by counting. Hours of extreme physical training, repeated in this way, increasing the training intensity day by day.
The high-intensity physical training caused many children to lose their muscles and bones and become disabled because they couldn't bear it. Those children were taken away and never appeared again.
High-intensity knowledge instillation never waits for others, and children who cannot keep up with the pace of schoolwork will also be taken away and lost.
No one asked why it was done.
For as long as they can remember, they've been programmed to do so.
Those children who were abolished because they couldn't do it will never appear again.
Later, when the remaining children grew up a bit, the training they received was not limited to extreme physical training, but began to increase various skills such as firearms, cold weapons... and the most painful mental training.
Forcibly increasing the terrifying intensity of mental oppression time and time again, many children couldn't bear it, and their mental breakdown became lunatics.
However, he survived the inhuman training time after time, and the limit he could bear time after time.
He didn't know why he had to survive, and he never felt that there was any point in living.
He just didn't want to disappear into this world quietly like everyone else, so he gritted his teeth and survived the endless hellish cruel training.
Although they ate and slept together and trained together for more than ten years, all the children are very strange to each other.
No one will say a word to others unless necessary. Because no one knows whether the people around them will disappear in front of their eyes the next day, even if they know each other, it is meaningless.
One day he read a book through the information light curtain, which said that if you smile at others, then others will return what you need.
He never knew what he needed, and he thought if he did this, would he know what he needed
At that time, he didn't know what he was thinking, and spent precious time carefully researching what a 'smile' is.
Later, he tried it in the mirror, and he thought it was ugly.
Later, for some reason, before returning to the room one night, he turned his head and tried to show what he thought was a 'smile' to the person next door.
At that time, the person next to him looked at him with indifferent eyes and expressionless face, just like he usually looked at him, just like he usually looked at others.
fake.
Then, he thought.
What the book he saw taught him was false.
Since then, he has never wasted his precious time looking at things that have nothing to do with improving combat power.
He was growing up, surrounded by fewer and fewer people, and the metal cubicles that had been overcrowded were emptied one by one.
One night when he returned to his narrow room, he suddenly found that the row of dozens of compartments had been empty, and only his footsteps echoed in the empty corridor.
With the growth of age, the common teaching and training have ceased, and everyone begins to choose their own learning and training direction with their own will, and they grow in different directions.
And the children who can survive to this stage—no—these adult youths, they have survived that hellish years, and they have lived to this day. Each of them has a body that is so powerful that it is terrifying, and, a certain Extremely excellent.
Any one of them is an elite who is rare among tens of thousands of people.
And those extreme training, high-intensity learning, and mental exercise that have killed many children, such as methods that make ordinary people look pale, are already understatement and not worth mentioning to them.
He used to think this was the end.
He was once at a loss, because he had gained great power and didn't know what he was going to do with it.
But later he realized that this was just the beginning.
They were banished into the forest—this was not the first time, since they were very young, they were thrown into the forest full of wild beasts again and again.
No food, no weapons, everything can only depend on themselves.
From the first ten days to the next year, if you can't survive this period of time, you will die, and you will be reduced to rotten flesh in the soil.
The rest of them have long been used to living in the forest with their own strength.
It has been more than five years since the last time he was asked to enter the forest. He didn't expect that in just five years, the forest he was so familiar with had changed beyond recognition.
When he watched another person being bitten to pieces by the sharp teeth on the huge scarlet tongue, he already recognized that it was something cultivated in the research institute.
Those people have cultivated countless terrifying monsters in more than ten years, and they all put them on this planet that they called the "proving ground".
Those monsters were bred by those people, and they like the taste of gnawing human flesh the most.
They were thrown into the 'trial field' and became the prey of those monsters.
If you don't want to be swallowed by monsters, you can only kill those monsters.
If he can survive for the specified time, even if he is dying, he can be found by those people and dragged back to the metal city.
When the body recovers well, he will be sent to the forest where those monsters are raging, fight those monsters, and try his best to keep himself alive.
…
Time and time again, he struggled to survive from the brink of death.
In life-and-death struggles again and again, he already knew the weaknesses of those monsters like the back of his hand.
Many people died and he was alive.
There are not many people still alive, only a few dozen.
One day, someone called them all together and told them that they had a final test.
If they can't pass, they can only die. If they pass, they will be free.
He didn't know what freedom was, and he didn't think about wanting anything like that, he just didn't want to die.
So he had to go through what the man said was the final test no matter what.
...
Unfortunately, he lost in the end.
Not just him, everyone else loses, so everyone dies.
Only one person passed the test and survived.
He lost, and he was dying to think that he would really die like this, but he unexpectedly survived.
Those people didn't seem to think that he would survive. When the whole body was soaked in the healing liquid, he was half awake and half asleep, and he vaguely heard someone arguing next to his ear.
Someone said to kill him.
Later, one person said that a spare was needed, just in case.
The man said that in case 'that' accidentally injures his vitals, he can directly transplant organs from spare parts.
And just like that, he was allowed to survive as a spare for the only one who passed the test.
The people in the research institute began to evacuate, and there were fewer and fewer people, and the metal city gradually became deserted. Even if he failed the test, he seemed to have obtained the promised 'freedom'.
No one would ask him to undergo high-intensity training and study, no one would ask him to go into the forest to fight those monsters, no one would ask him to do anything—but he was used to it, and these habits had been deeply rooted in the past few decades. In his bone marrow.
Later, all the old people in the institute left, and they were replaced by a group of soldiers from the secret army.
Those people became his subordinates, obeyed his orders, and at the same time, served as his monitors.
This planet became the place where the heinous prisoners of the empire were exiled, and he became the controller of this planet. It's just that this planet has a special magnetic field, it is extremely difficult to receive messages from the outside world, and it is almost isolated from the world.
And he is not interested in the news from the outside world.
He is still alive.
Living with inertia, even if he doesn't know the meaning of what he is doing now.
The metal code plate on his wrist had been taken out a long time ago, but he still remembered that the code was his name.
How much time passed, he didn't remember it because it was meaningless.
Then one day, suddenly someone came to him.
That person told him many things, including the reason for establishing this institute, the reason for forcibly training those children in the first place, and his real life experience.
The amount of information that he suddenly learned was too much, and he couldn't tell the truth from the fake, and he was not interested in it. He just asked why the person told him this.
Then, the person showed him a piece of information.
He saw everything that the young major general with the same face on the screen had experienced in the past few decades. He watched him start from scratch and rise in the universe with his own strength.
He saw that the major general named Troll had many things that he didn't.
The man asked him if he wanted to replace Troll.
To be honest, he was not interested, but at that time he remembered the sentence he had heard in a trance a long time ago.
[Let him be a spare, if necessary, you can directly transplant organs from him.]
Although he was not interested, he didn't want to die one day because of such inexplicable things.
If he replaces Troll, then there's no danger of being a backup.
For the first time, he left this planet and went to the universe.
The man told him that he replaced Troll, then Troll had to stay on the planet as his substitute, so he had to bring Troll back to that planet.
Therefore, he invaded the brain of the spaceship, forcibly controlled the spaceship, and stunned the other people on the ship through sound waves, and then forced the spaceship to jump from the cosmic vacuum to the atmosphere of that planet.
He originally planned to enter the crashed spaceship to bring Troll out, but unexpectedly, someone actually got Troll out through the rescue cabin first.
That was a very young child.
That child had pupils as dark and clear as the night of this planet.
When he saw that the child finally couldn't bear it and fell asleep leaning against the door of the rescue cabin, he thought he knew what he should do.
He can prove his identity as 'Major General Troll' through this child, and then successfully replace 'Troll'.
Therefore, he asked Major General Troll to go back to the underground research institute and lock him in a cell, and he took the sleeping child out and took him to the side.
Even though the appearance is the same, the difference in temperament between him and Troll is too great, and he is not very clear about what Troll has experienced.
So he chose the easiest way.
Amnesia.
Many people know that sonic attacks can cause brain damage and memory loss is common.
He lost his memory as a matter of course.
So, the difference in temperament and the inability to remember things from the past are well explained.
However, looking at the black-eyed boy nervously leaning over to look at him, he suddenly remembered the book he read a long time ago.
That book says that as long as you smile at people, you can get what you want.
The first time, it was in the mirror.
The second time, it was to the people around me, and there was nothing.
And the third time, just out of the blue, he smiled at the young child.
The child's expression as if he had seen a ghost made him wonder if his smiling face was as ugly as when he looked in the mirror for the first time.
The kid called him Tran, even though he knew that the kid was just a slip of the tongue, but he suddenly didn't want to accept the name Troll anymore.
He thought, let's call it Tran, and use this name in the future.
Not coded, not 'it', he was a man named Tran.
It was perhaps the first time he felt alone.
…
At that time, he didn't think too much. He felt that he was just using this child. He used this child to prove his identity as 'Major General Troll'.
He smiled at the child from time to time, because he thought it was very interesting that the child looked at him with a happy and tangled expression when he smiled.
Well, at least it's more interesting than watching exiled criminals being hunted down by monsters or killing each other.
Protecting that child is just to not lose this witness who proves that he is 'Major General Troll'.
He thought so.
But that day, when the child grabbed the hem of his clothes with trembling hands, and when the child looked at him with indescribable watery eyes, his heart trembled suddenly.
An indescribable feeling penetrated the deepest part of his chest.
He is needed.
Someone needs him, depends on him.
It was a feeling I had never felt before.
By the time he realized it, he had already held the child's hand.
The hand he held in his palm was very soft, very different from his hard hand, but it was very warm. The warmth of the skin seemed to be transmitted to his always cold hand.
That was the first time he knew the temperature that human bodies can feel when they touch each other.
Don't be afraid, I'm here.
With me here, nothing can hurt you.
At that time, he said so, he couldn't see the softness in his eyes that he had never seen before, but he knew that he didn't want to let go of the warmth of the hand he held.
After decades of living meaninglessly and without purpose, he finally had what he wanted.
Something he wanted no matter what.
[When you smile back, you will get what you want.]
...
It was like a sweet dream, and the dream was shattered when he saw the extremely familiar ruins.
He was Tran, not Troll.
But the person the child looked at and watched was always Troll.
It wasn't Tran that the kid was looking at.
…
"Tran?"
Someone was calling his name, he opened his eyes, and saw the boy kneeling beside him and calling his name.
The boy looked down at him, looking at him with a worried expression.
"Your complexion is not very good."
The boy looked at him and said.
"Um."
He gave a low hum, and stretched out his hand to caress Mutt's face.
The familiar temperature came from the cold fingertips. His fingers penetrated into the back of the boy's neck, and with a little force, he pressed Mute's upper body down.
The child was pressed down by him, lying on his chest, looking up at him in confusion.
The pitch-black hair was scattered on his neck, and a slight itchy feeling came through the skin.
He looked at the boy in his arms, his gaze was softer than anything else, but also deeper than anything else.
He's not Troll, he's Tran.
Troll will be reduced to bones in chains deep in his cell.
And the child in his arms, in the future, in the future, will only be integrated into his flesh and blood from now on, only his breath.