The first lesson Alister ever learned was this:
The world didn't give a shit about you.
He was only six when he truly understood this fact.
The slums of Solas was no place for a child his age. The streets reeked of rotting food and unwashed bodies, but yet, he had no option but to live here.
After all, he was an unwanted child. For the first five years of his life, after the nuns found him laying in a basket on their doorstep, he lived in an orphanage.
He always dreamt of getting adopted by one of those wealthy looking people that frequented the orphanage but luck was never on his side.
One looked at him and they would decide to adopt other children for reasons unknown to even him. He knew it wasn't his looks, since he looked as cute as, if not more than, the other kids at the orphanage.
This persisted for years, until he was branded as the unlucky child. While other kids were busy getting adopted, he was left behind, year after year.
There came a time when the headmistress and even the other nuns had started ignoring him. They had already labeled him as just an extra mouth to feed, a burden that didn't bring any type of gain to the orphanage.
The mistreatment started slowly. At first, it was just the caretakers ignoring his complaints about the bullies, brushing them off as childish exaggerations. But as time passed, it grew worse.
Meals became a privilege he was quietly denied. The cook would "forget" to serve him, always having some excuse—there wasn't enough food left, he should've come earlier, or that he must have already eaten. The first time, he thought it was just a mistake. The second time, a coincidence. But when it became routine, he understood:
They also didn't want him anymore.
Some nights he lay in bed, hunger gnawing at his stomach while he listened to the happy laughter of the other kids.
He wasn't sure what he had done to deserve this. Was it his fault for being unwanted? For not being chosen?
No one ever said it outright, but he knew. The unluckiest child in the orphanage wasn't wanted anymore.
That night, after the lights went out and the other children were asleep, Alister couldn't stand it any longer. He grabbed a tattered blanket and stuffed it into a bag.
His small hands shook as he picked up his shoes, the ones that were too big for him, and he slipped quietly out of the orphanage with no one realizing he was even gone.
Living in the streets for the past year, there were times when he contemplated returning to the orphanage but even he knew they'd never accept him back.
The slums had taught him that for someone like him, child with no parents, he only had two options: Learn to survive or die quietly.
Alister refused to die.
He had to survive at any cost.
He quickly learned that begging for you nothing but disgusted glares. Kindness was as rare as gold.
This made him turn to the only thing children in the slums used to survive — Stealing.
The first time he tried stealing? It was a disaster.
A single piece of bread, barely larger then his palm was just laying there on the merchant's cart, tempting him to take it.
No one was looking, his stomach was growling from the lack of food and his body trembled from hunger.
The devil on his shoulder convinced him to take it, after all, it was just one bread that barely looked attractive to the bypassers.
Looking around once more to make sure no one was looking, he snatched the bread from the cart.
He ran the moment he took it but he wasn't fast enough.
A hand grabbed the collar of his shirt, yanking him backwards which sent him crashing into the hard cobblestone.
"You rat" the baker spat, pulling him up by his shirt's collar again.
Alister tried in vain to escape but the man was stronger.
"You think you can just take something that doesn't belong to you?".
A hard punch was delivered, right on his empty stomach, causing him to reel in pain.
"This should teach you"
Before he could recover from the first punch, the second one soon arrivedwhich nearly knocked him unconscious.
By the third, he wasn't even sure if he was breathing anymore.
When the baker finally let him go, he crumpled to the ground with his vision blurring in and out of consciousness.
The passerbys didn't even spare him a glance, trying their hardest to avoid him.
At this point, the baker was back in his bakery since that bread was the last one on his cart.
An the bread which he beat Alister for? It lay a couple of inches away from the boy, trampled and covered in dirt.
The sheer amount of hunger he was experiencing made him crawl on his stomach and pick the bread up.
Somehow, he was able to move his body to one of the alley ways and forcefed himself the bread, almost vomiting it out due to the pain coming from his stomach.
Did he stop stealing after that day?
No, he got better, he became the best and that's why his alias Ace was known even by the gods.
_______
Alister's eyes snapped open, his mask no longer on his face. Before he could question the sudden memory of the past, a sharp wave of pain surged through him.
He clutched the hand in which the core was held as he felt the spot burning. The pain lasted for a while before it completely faded.
Alister slowly moved the hand to his eye level and instead of a burnt hand or one pierced with splinters of the core, he saw a green tattoo of interwoven snakes which quickly faded.
He wasn't too surprised, since he already had knowledge of what the tattoo was or why it formed.
But first, it was important to understand the origin of the gods.
About a two centuries ago, the gods were nothing but beings of myth. Some believed in their existence as beings to be worshipped while others believed them to be nothing but beings told of in bedtime stories and sang of by crazy priests and bards.
That is, until one day, when beings of unimaginable power descended from the heavens. Their powers and personalities matched the ones from the songs and stories.
They claimed to be the gods who created humanity and they see a future in which the human race destroyed itself, therefore, to save humans from this 'horrible fate', they decided to interfere.
The 'gods' declared their rule absolute, splitting the world into dominions(continents), each ruled by a different mythology as they called it.
Before these beings with unimaginable power, humans were nothing but ants they could crush with a wave of their hand.
Therefore, humanity had no choice but to submit.
To enforce their rules, the 'gods' chose special humans they named champions. These champions were granted a shard which contained the power of a god and the golden ichor which humanity never knew what it was made of.
While the shard granted them some of the power of the gods they were chosen by, the ichor bonded them to the gods like a slave being bonded to its master.
After drinking the ichor, the champions are unable to betray their masters unless they've been cast out by them.
After a shard is used, a tattoo that represents a symbol of the god whose power was granted will appear on the individual.
The tattoo which appeared on Alister's hand was from the god of mischief and trickery, Loki. He was one of the most popular gods in the entire dominions, not because he was loved, but because most gods from other mythologies hated him.
Now, Alister was curious about what type of ability he received so he did what every champion usually does and called out,
"Status"
A green translucent screen popped up in front of him which contained his details.
This was called the status screen, it was infused into every shard of power. It helped the champions easily identify the type of blessing they had gained and it's rank.
[STATUS SCREEN]
Name: Ace
Age: 20
Title: [The thief]
Rank: F (Newly Awakened)
Blessing: [Loki]
god(s) bounded to: [none]
Description: A thief who's real identity is unknown to even the gods who claim to control the fates of all mortals.
Attributes:
Strength: 5
Agility: 8
Endurance: 6
Intelligence: 12
Perception: 10
Luck: 8
Skills:
[Theft] (Active) → You can steal anything temporarily before it returns to its owner.
Shards of Power: [1/???] ]
Alister looked at the the screen in confusion, firstly was his name. He was confused as to why his name was just written as Ace instead of his real name.
He understood his rank, since that was what showed how strong a champion was, with F being the weakest and S the strongest.
The blessing referred to the god who had granted him his power, while the gods bounded to referred to those who had fed him the ichor, making him their slaves. In his case, however, there were none.
Attributes showed his physical and mental stats and although he didn't know what the average for an F-rank was, he knew he was a bit above average in perception, intelligence, agility and luck.
His skill [Theft] was the one he didn't understand. What was the point of stealing something if it just returned back to its owner after a while.
"Steal anything temporarily?" He repeated the description. He was sure there was something he was currently missing but that remained to be seen until he actually tested the ability.
About the amount of shards of power, he had never heard of a champion wielding multiple shards at a time.
But all that didn't matter. His ability right now didn't matter. All that mattered was that he gained an ability and stealing was about to become a lot easier..