Delta awoke groggily in his room, the morning light striking his eyes as his hands clutching his head as his mind cycled through a dream he had just had.
He had seen a man he had watched die. A man that raised him throughout his life, and had been the one to guide and teach him in life.
Delta reminisced about the moments he had spent in the orphanage, many years before he became a mercenary.
He didn't remember when he had been born, nor who his parents were, but he remembered the day he was taken in by an old couple in the slums.
They had taken care of him, feeding him and raising him like he was their own son. On his 6th birthday, they used a large cut of their savings to send him to school, buying him a uniform and giving him the opportunity to make something of himself.
Delta, or Nozumu at the time, hadn't taken this lightly, promising himself that he would pay them back everything and more as he studied twice as hard as even the smartest of students.
He had naturally been several times stronger, faster and more intelligent than the children around him, and had worked his way up quickly, skipping many years and gaining acceptance to a prestigious high school by the time he was 12.
He was viewed by the older generation of scholars as a genius, however other students of richer backgrounds hated him for this, bullying him and attacking him on his way to and from school when nobody was looking. They attacked him in groups of at least 5, bringing people nearly double his age.
Even then, however, Nozumu decided against bringing it to the attention of any of his teachers or his adoptive parents, as he didn't want to drag them into his mess.
Thinking back, part of Nozumu wondered if this was the right idea. Perhaps if he had let someone know in advance, things wouldn't have happened the way they did. Maybe the old couple would still be alive…
The students, realising that their actions did not affect, decided to strike where it would hurt.
After begging their influential parents, they hired contract killers and ordered them to kill Nozumu and the old couple, leaving no traces behind, and the next day, the killers acted upon their orders.
In the middle of the night, they surrounded the small home in the slums, hiding amongst the criminals and other shady characters that populated the alleyways late at night.
They came in through every entrance. The door, windows and even weaker parts of the walls were destroyed as they came in carrying knives and guns, swarming the house like a pack of hyenas.
Nozumu, at the time, had snuck out of the house to go for a walk, heading down to the underground fighting arena where he fought to earn extra money for his parents, trying to pay them back for what they had done for him.
Little did he know, that night had been the last time they had ever held him in their arms.
The murderers made quick work of the elderly couple, brutally slaughtering them before slicing their faces off to make it harder to identify the body.
Realising that the boy had been absent, they scoured the area quickly, checking every nook and cranny for the boy, but they had come out unsuccessfully, for the arena was a secret known only to a select few.
The murderers realised that they would be hunted down if they failed to achieve their ordered kills, so they mutilated the face of another young boy they found in an alleyway before leaving his body by the elderly couple and setting fire to the building, taking off as the house was reduced to mere embers.
In reality, they had incredibly little care for the people who had hired them, deciding that they would rather take the money and run than stick around as a witness to the employer's crimes. Chances were that, if they had stayed, they'd be killed too.
Many nearby citizens tried to put out the flames, but they were unsuccessful, and the home that had taken care of Nozumu for years was now a pile of rubble that scorched the earth beneath it.
Nozumu had returned later that night at 3 AM, his hands in his pockets playing with the large amount of money he had acquired from winning the underdog fighting matches he often took part in.
He remembered turning the last corner incredibly vividly. The smoke polluting his nostrils as his eyes watered, his mind slowly shattering as he saw the embers the building had been reduced to.
He ran over to the building, screaming his lungs out as he called for the few people that had ever taken care of him.
Without a single care for himself, he lifted smouldering rubble from the ground with his bare hands, throwing it to the side as he searched for the couple, but there wasn't a single sign of life.
After searching for half an hour, Nozumu found a pile of human remains, a morbid smell entering his nose as he looked at the burnt bodies of the couple.
And then? Nozumu did something he had never done before. He cried. Emptied all the sorrows and grief that had built up inside of him as he held the bodies close to him, his tears causing hisses as they collided with the burning scraps.
It was then that Nozumu noticed that there were three bodies, not two.
That meant they had come to kill him too but hadn't been able to find him.
Nozumu was accustomed to the lack of morals of the hired killers in the slums because they weren't a rare sight in the slums.
But why? Why would anyone want to kill an elderly couple with practically nothing to their name?
There was only one possibility. The murderers hadn't been hired to kill the couple. No, they had been hired to kill him, the academy's genius.
So it had been his fault…
He was the reason they had died, and the reason why they didn't even have a legacy to pass on…
Nozumu lifted their bodies, carrying them over to what used to be their little garden, and buried them beside each other, making a separate grave for the smaller body.
He spent the next few hours making a tombstone, using a sharp rock to engrave his message into a stone he had broken into shape, writing
'Here Lies Charles Robinson and Regina Robinson'
'Your innocent smiles and kindness will be missed.'
The gravestone was rather scruffy, but Nozumu was satisfied considering how makeshift it was.
He also buried the smaller body, leaving a small, slightly less heartfelt gravestone before swearing to himself to make them something grander later on.
And then?
He ran. He ran as far and fast as he could, taking the small fortune he had made in the arena and getting as far away as he could.
Nozumu had no idea how far he had gone, but adrenaline and grief carried him forwards, guiding him blindly through the abyss of pain and turmoil he felt inside.
After an unknown amount of time, Nozumu collapsed to his knees, banging the ground as he cried out in pain, the idea of losing his parents setting in again.
He was alone. Alone again.
As if crying with him, it began to rain, starting a drizzle before becoming heavier and heavier, drenching him in water as tears flowed down his cheeks.
Suddenly, the rain stopped. Nozumu looked up, only to find an umbrella, and a man carrying it that later became one of the only people to ever understand him.
His next words were something young Nozumu would never forget.
"Wipe your tears child, what you are lamenting isn't the loss of those dear to you, but rather your inability to protect them. The rules set in place by those in power are meant to keep everyone below them in line. What is ensuring those rules are obeyed, however? The answer is strength, be it your own strength or the ability to command the strength of others. The highest power in the world is the strength to decide the life and death of others. Instead of crying over your lack of strength, grow stronger, strong enough to ensure that nobody can take away your freedom, to ensure that nobody can kill those you treasure ever again."
He lifted Nozumu onto his shoulder and carried him, turning towards the rising sun's dews as he whistled a song that Nozumu later knew to be from the play 'Hyacinth Secrets' he'd seen as a child.
Those words stuck with Nozumu for the rest of his life, and he became a man who lived with a lust for power and heart for those from a similar background as him.
That man had been the same man who raised him for the rest of his life, taking Delta to an orphanage he worked at and raising him like his own son, paying for his studies, feeding him, letting him see the world and training him in the martial arts he loved so much.
Nozumu enrolled into one of the world's greatest universities, legally changing his name to Delta to signify him leaving his old life behind. The name Nozumu represented his past, his upbringing, but mostly his failure. He believed that it was his fault that his adopted parents had died, and he had never forgiven himself for it.
By the time he was 19, Delta had graduated with a PhD in Chemical Engineering, was fluent in 12 different languages and was a master of martial arts that rivalled many masters of the world.
This was all due to his practically photographic and muscle memory, along with his unnatural level of strength, making Delta thank his parents, whoever they were, for their incredible genes.
Upon his 20th birthday, Delta was given citizenship for the main city, allowing him to live and work outside of the slums, and to join one of the larger companies that could use his skills.
He was offered many jobs immediately, and after much deliberation, he chose to join Caligula's Initiative, a multinational corporation that worked in medications and health, along with a myriad of other smaller investments, including theatre and a restaurant chain called "Apollo's Sanctuary".
Little did he know that it would be the greatest regret of his life.
The company offered him an overwhelming number of benefits, giving him a mansion in the city to which he moved the orphanage over, as well as an incredible pay that meant he was never in the need of more money.
In the beginning, Delta was asked to develop new medicines, working mostly on diseases like Leukemia, and after spending 4 years working on it, Delta finally discovered the cure to the horrible disease, saving millions of lives and winning a Nobel prize.
Seeing this, Caligula rose Delta's position in the company quickly, working him up to the board of directors within 3 years, making him the youngest director in the company's history at the age of 27.
One day, however, Delta's life was flipped around completely,
Whilst looking through company files, Delta found something sketchy. A large amount of money was being imported into the company every month by an offshore account, and after some further digging, Delta found that there was no backstory for the money he was looking at. No official source, the name of the account wasn't something he recognised, and the tax on it was far too minimal to come from a legal source.
The legal documents did not have the official stamp of Caligula, which was required for documents more than 100 million dollars in value, so Delta approached Caligula quietly and asked him about it, expecting it to be investigated promptly, however, what Caligula said changed the course of his life forever.
"This is not a mistake, my loyal subject. I am going to introduce you to something your mortal eyes have never even imagined. The world… of the underground."
From that day, Caligula gave Delta more questionable tasks, getting progressively worse until it became outright murder.
Delta had considered leaving many times, however, Caligula's offers of wealth made Delta think about all of the people he had left behind in the slums, and how the money he was making could help them and change their lives.
That was where the true nightmare began…