"It escaped!!!"
"Hunt them down!"The roar came from behind a futuristic ballistic mask. A squad of black-armored soldiers stormed through the ruined facility, chasing runaway test subjects back to the research center.
Among the escapees was something different—an entity who couldn't trust anyone enough to escape with them. If he ran with others, betrayal was only a matter of time.
Run.Run.Run.
He ran until his path ended in front of a small square-shaped house with a thatched roof.
This was the home of Otto Julius Bismarck—a man who had raised this strange being from the race known to humans as monsters, or more accurately, fiends. This fiend had been forged in a lab by an evil organization, yet Otto had raised him as though he were one of the civilized races.
"Ah~ I didn't raise you for nothing. You've got the strength, the skills—everything it takes to be a hero like us!""Thank you… father.""Whoa, no, no, no! Don't call me 'father.' Call me… your friend instead!""Really? …Alright… thank you, friend."
But the world had no intention of letting a fiend live in peace. Wherever he went, disgust followed.
"Go die, monster!""Aaaaahhh! The demon can talk!""A beast! They've evolved!""Trying to trick us, huh?!"
Even when he saved a young girl, the response was the same—fear and stones hurled at his head.
He remembered Otto's advice:"Humans can be terrifying. If you see a bunch of them acting like complete assholes, maybe go help the elves or the dwarves instead. They might give you something in return."
...
"Die, you demon!""Die!""Die!"
Even elves and dwarves reacted no differently. Hatred piled inside him, replacing sorrow or disappointment.
When people learned that this fiend—Adolf Caesar Wilhelm, true name Endless Nightmare Fiend Hero—wouldn't fight back, they escalated from avoidance to cruel humiliation. He became a laughingstock.
Otto defended him with all his heart:
"Listen, you pieces of shit! I raised this fiend with my own hands! He's no beast anymore—he's a civilized man, a thousand times better than your ugly faces combined! Got it?!"
Stones answered in place of words.
Even Otto's closest comrade, the Sky Marshal, had enough.
"Honestly, this is the dumbest thing you've ever done. Look what's happened—this walking disaster is ruining our lives. You're still keeping him?""You raised him too!""Raised him? Don't flatter yourself. I never agreed to it. I only tolerated him because you're my friend. But I'm done. If you don't send him away… we're through."
The words cut deep.
Caesar didn't want to be the reason Otto lost his friends. He sought ways to "become human," eventually encountering others of his kind—fiends who could possess humans to deceive them.
Fiends had no culture, no language, nothing like the civilized races. Their words were nothing but illusions—phantoms in the victim's mind.
"Take it…"Who are you?"The handsome man who's replacing you."
Caesar attacked the real body of this so-called leader, shocking the cult that worshipped him. In their eyes, two talking fiends now stood before them.
Without hesitation, Caesar stole the man's body and killed the original without remorse—there was nothing left in this world for him to mourn. Otto's face upon seeing him wasn't much different from the Sky Marshal's, but Otto still took him in.
That only deepened Caesar's spiral. Born from an experiment, he was unlike any other fiend. He couldn't feel fear or cry. Even when faced with despair, his mind leapt to strategy, not sorrow. He could mimic rage or menace on instinct, but never truly feel them.
That was why he could never be human.
Every attempt to "fake it" felt hollow, like a parody of real emotion. Friends he made while disguised drifted away. Inside, he felt nothing. Even when struck by someone he called a friend, he couldn't cry. At funerals, there were no tears—only the same empty calm.
And so, Caesar was alone again.
When fate forced him to fight alongside the Sky Marshal, the man still hated him—until one day, trapped together in the trenches, the Marshal finally spoke without venom:
"Let me guess—you help people… because your father told you to, right?""…Yes.""That face… it looks sad, even if I can't tell for sure. But tell me—after all this, why do you still help people?""Because… my father said that helping one person can make the whole world pure."Pfft. "Here's the thing—if something's impossible, stop doing it. The world doesn't work in absolutes. Even in this war between Light and Darkness, our side can't be perfectly good. Your logic is fine, but one day it might destroy you. Look at Galriel, the Spearbearer of the War Goddess—after the Erados Empire fell, she still tried to help people in a rotten world. Got betrayed, snapped, became a tyrant, killed millions. Then your father cut her head off after she found out her lover had moved on. Nobody's touched that divine weapon since."
"So here's my point—it's not about whether you help or don't help. It's about how you apply it. Otherwise, you'll just end up like her—blaming fate, waiting for someone to kill you or for your own mind to shatter. That's all I can tell you. Oh—and tell Otto I'm fine. Alright?"
Caesar said nothing. The mission began and ended in a blood-soaked no-man's-land.
When he returned home, he went straight to Otto.
"Father.""Hm?""I've decided… I'll be myself. The kind of self who doesn't pick fights or hurt anyone. Whatever that is, I'll be it. And if someone hates me for existing, that's their problem, not mine. The Sky Marshal told me to tell you he's fine. And… I won't become like that woman you killed. Thank you."
Otto couldn't find words, only warmth in his chest.
"…Thank you, Caesar."
They embraced.
…
Years later, Otto was gone—fallen in the line of duty. Only Caesar, the maid Henzard, and the Sky Marshal remained to see him buried.
Otto now rested beneath the earth, far from the cruelty of the world.
FIN.