บท 2: Family Name

One of the three kingdoms, Heaven in Earth kingdom.

The night was bustling with activity, many people are still awake. Brothels, bars, restaurants, or guild houses they are as lively as always.

But it's different in the inner layer of the kingdom, there stayed the highest echelons of the kingdom. Right there live the Families.

A family domain was in clamor. One of the family's higher echelons was emotionlessly observing a woman in arduous labor.

Every childbirth in a family domain has a family's higher echelons observing. The rule of the family's higher echelon was to use a magical technology to identify the grade of the child's talent and fate.

This is the deciding factor of the child staying or leaving the family's domain.

Once the child doesn't reach the required grade, that child will not have the right to stay in a family domain.

Cold? Emotionless? Human rights have long lost its power.

After that event, humanity suffered for 100 years. Millions of lives were gone, only those who have enough fate live the safest lives than those who do not.

And there are those who have more than enough fate. They are fated to grow faster than their peers and rule the new era of earth.

Bloodline family structures are slowly crumbling, because not all inside a family is fated to live the new era. There are 1 or 3 people in a family that survive that calamity and if Fate is on their side there will be more than the latter that survive.

As time pass, humanity got weaker. The population was dropping at an alarming rate.

But there was still a solution, and that was the bloodline was not too pure.

Humanity's bloodline of the latter era was sullied by a bloodline devoid of fate. Slowly, those bloodlines went to a decline.

Now that fate matters in order to live the current era, the three kingdoms made a regulation. A regulation that not a single person has the power to reject. And that was the family name.

Sounds simple but it is not.

The regulation was the following.

1. A person that did not reach the required grade of fate or talent is not allowed to have a family name.

2. If a person reaches a required stage of cultivation may apply to a family as a mason.

3. Each kingdom must only have 10 family names.

4. To be fair to every citizen, each and every child that came from a family must be tested.

5. There will be 3 ranks in a family: the mason, wellborn, and regal.

This five regulation was created by the consensus of the three kingdoms. Even those children born into a family with the last name have a possibility not to inherit the last name and will be ruthlessly be kicked from the family's domain.

"The fated was the only one who deserves familial love." This may sound cold but this is now the reality that the humanity was facing of the current era.

After the woman finished her laboring, the higher echelon went near the woman holding a box looking device.

The man holds the baby's little hand and pressed it to a box-like device.

Numbers slowly appearing inside the box, when a tic sounded off the test was done.

The man looked at the numbers while shocking his head.

The woman looked coldly towards the baby, there is a slight disgust on her face. Her pride can't take it. Giving birth to a talentless and fateless child was very shameful. After all, she was also part of the family's higher echelon.

The man waves his hands, implying to take the child away.

That's it, not a single word was spoken. Not even naming the child, they just dispose of it away from their family's domain.

The servants carried the crying child, riding in a carriage heading outside the walls of the inner layer of the kingdom. The servants went to an orphanage, knocking on the door and placing the basket with the child in it before heading off.

The orphanage seems to not hear the baby's mourning. After the doors were knocked by the servants they hurriedly place a sound barrier. The servants didn't mind what the orphanage did, as long as they placed the child in an orphanage, then they had obeyed the given command.

Dark clouds slowly covered the moon's light. Thunders rumbled, and it started raining.

The baby's cries grows louder than the latter. The baby's body weakly shock, it can't handle the cold brought by the world.

The baby's face was wet, it might be cause by the rain or it might be because of its tears.

An hour went by, the baby's cries can no longer be heard. You might thought that somebody helped it, but nobody did or maybe someone did. This cries were normal in this kingdom and every person seems to have adapted to the crying sounds. No one have the ability to take care of a child because right outside the inner layers of the kingdom was colder and crueler.

Self-centered, that is the words that you may described this people. Nobody here wanted to take care of another burden, so they act like a deaf and passed-by. Some even were twisted and went raping a firstborn child and disposed it to a river or trash bins. And in the morning those dead bodies will be burned next to the trashes, not a single soul cared.

The child next to the orphanage was still there. But you can see that it stopped breathing. There is no pulse or just a weak heartbeat. The child was dead.

Rain still continued to pour down. The mood was gloomy. A hooded figure was walking the road next to the orphanage. The hooded figure turns his head sensing an aura of death nearby. When he came right next to the child's corpse, he shocked his head.

"Poor child." The hooded figure said while carrying the basket.

He pointed his bony finger on the baby's forehead while he chanted, "Curse: Life!!"

The cold body of the child started warming-up. Its pale body becoming red. And its cries returned.

The hooded figure carried the child. Not a single drop of rain has fallen to both of them, the child stopped crying. It has fallen asleep, and for the first time, the child felt what warmth is.