"Happy birthday."
Looking at the small cake in front of him, a boy with short black hair that reached his nape and bangs that touched his brows leaned into the table, resting his head next to the cake.
The boy was alone, sitting in a cramped tight apartment.
The moonlight slipped through a window, acting as the only lighting in his room.
His red eyes were hollow. Though he wasn't exactly sad to the point of crying, he was disappointed.
His 17th birthday just happened. But he wasn't disappointed in the fact that he was celebrating his 17th birthday alone, no.
While that fact might be pathetic, what disappointed him was...
"System..."
Nothing came, no hologram, no pop up.
No mythical 'ding!' sound that a lot of people his age heard.
No euphoric warmth, akin to feeling high, spreading inside him from his torso.
'... Guess I'm just going to be one of those randoms that will only work himself to death with no one to remember me at the end.'
A self-deprecating chuckle left his mouth as he pushed his head up before standing up and walking to the balcony right behind him.
Leaning on the railing of the balcony, the boy looked at the distant high-rise buildings with red lights on the big roads, the bustling sound of activities could still be heard.
He heard that before the Great War and the appearance of Systems, people wouldn't be up and out at nighttime, their routines heavily differ.
Well, with the changes that happened, it would be weird if the routines stayed the same.
The boy looked at the big boards with lights and screens showing an advertisement of famous people with armors, powers, and weapons fighting against monsters.
Then, the ads end with a handsome man with white hair and round black glasses pointing to him.
"I want YOU! To join the Guardians Agency and stand against the Corrupted!"
The lines were shown with big texts on the screen, if he had to be honest? It looked like a crap advertisement.
Chuckling, he looked at the screen with disdain.
"Join it then what, become a meatshield?"
The advertisement seemed to be inconsiderate of the people that didn't have the System. If he could, he would report and sue the company that made the advertisement for hurting his feelings.
A buzzing noise startled him, he looked at the table with the cake on it and saw his phone buzzing and vibrating against the table.
Silently walking towards the table and sitting down, the boy picked up the phone and saw the notification — silenced but set to vibrate — telling him it's his birthday.
"..."
Looking at the buzzing phone in his hand, he didn't even bother turning it off, letting it vibrate.
His heart felt like it had been clenched, squeezing every nerve around it and igniting a burning pain that coursed throughout his whole body.
'Felt like a heart attack.'
He chuckled to himself before sighing and turning the alarm, finally putting the phone down and looking at the cake.
"Once again… happy 17th birthday, Veritas."
Realizing that he didn't even buy a candle along with the cake, Veritas let out a laugh, short but laced with disappointment.
Both in this world for its unfairness and himself, forgetting to buy a simple candle for his 17th birthday.
Veritas grabbed a knife and a small plate from the small kitchen sink and headed back to the table.
He sat down and started on munching the cake after cutting it in half, it wasn't wide enough to be cut to separate pieces.
Unless he wanted to eat a cake as thin as paper, then it would be possible.
Biting the cake in his mouth, his face cringed and twitched.
'Yuck...'
He didn't even like eating cake, it just felt appropriate to satisfy himself with a cake on his 17th birthday before he would be working himself to death as some random guy on the street or even construction worker.
Silently, he finished the cake despite the rich sensations spreading through his mouth. It tasted too strong.
Placing back the dirty plate to the sink, Veritas looked at a mirror hanging next to the kitchen sink.
He looked at the reflection of himself, lean but with faint muscles packing, wearing a black t-shirt that was a bit loose on him and black pants.
No, he wasn't one of those emo guys wearing all black, it was just that he thought it would be better to wear black so that he didn't have to clean his clothes too hard since stains wouldn't be too hard to cover or clean.
Unlike other coloured outfits.
Less stain to cover or clear, less water and detergents he needed to use, and less money to expend.
Cringing, he decided to walk towards the door of his apartment and slip in his shoes before walking out of the apartment.
Looking back to his room, he looked at the floor and a frown painted his face.
'Would be sweet if I had a dog waving or barking goodbyes at me.'
Chuckling, he closed the door behind him.
The boy went in the elevator and headed downward to the lobby before stepping outside his apartment.
The apartment, though not a run-down but not too fancy, was simple enough; and it didn't really cost much. It was barely enough for him to scrape by, just perfect.
While it may seem fancy having an elevator in an apartment, elevators were a privilege for everyone nowadays, even for the run-down apartments.
Veritas started walking towards an alleyway, it had been his routine to go jog at night whenever he could and if he wasn't tired.
It helped build his strength and stamina anyway, in case he got a System and could become a Guardian.
Better yet, if the power he got from his System was good enough to try out for the Academy, if he got in, he wouldn't need to worry about his life anymore.
It would be a perfect life.
Veritas started to jog by the alleyway, jogging lightly through the maze as he chuckled.
'Well, it would. No point imagining it.'
This was his life now, no more chances. His life would be a simple unattracting gray-film that wouldn't even show the viewers any life meaning.
Just another to fill the background.
After a few minutes... his steps slowed down, and before he knew it, he was leaning and kneeling down next to a floor.
His heart kept tugging at him, an invisible force clenching it tight.
His head hung low, and a liquid trace down his cheek before dripping towards his chin and down to the dirty ground.
"Fuck..."
Grasping at his shirt, he held it tightly in his hands before a shaky breath escaped his mouth.
"I wanted... to be a Guardian too... like others... damn it."
He wasn't even in the mood to scream his heart out, it just felt too heavy.
He thought he had cast aside any expectations... but, it seemed that he still had a sliver of expectation.
"This shit ain't fair man..."
He cursed silently, the choked sobs of a boy echoing in an empty alleyway...
But, a step snapped him out of his sobs, and he looked towards the owner of the step.
A dark figure appeared just a distance away, with moonlight cast behind its back. A long shadow spread, covering the alleyway.
The dark figure wore a tattered cloak, and weird red glitchy rectangulars and numbers of 0 and 1s seeped out of the figure, and most disturbingly...
It was faceless, only numbers running across its face with red matrixes marring it, as if the figure is a bunch of codes, a syntax that ran out of a program.
The ground beneath its feet, the walls of the alleyway started to turn, lines of red and white spreading slightly.
Veritas stared at the figure, his eyes wide open...
An Agent.
That was what the public, the Guardians called them.
They were entities that could corrupt everything, capable of bending anything to its will.
Either to use them as a slave... or to absorb their lifeforce, to corrupt and consume the information of a being.
They were what caused the damn world to twist itself, everything when things were normal and people weren't living on the edge.
The Harbingers of Apocalypse.
"Fu-"
Veritas couldn't even finish his sentence before the faceless figure reappeared in front of him, a wide palm grabbing onto his face.
information of the past up to the present drove into his brain, and into a colorless gray orb inside his body.
The orb slowly turned red with numbers appearing on it, 0 and 1s.
Veritas could slowly feel his consciousness slipping away, he could feel his soul leaving his body…
The sensation was weird, it felt like he was drifting off to sleep while being slowly hooked out of his body.
Needles pin into his brain, sending constant ringings that made his mouth open in a silent scream.
But, a raging fire spread from his heart, his mind churn, his eyes bloodshot as his jaw twitch.
'No...!'
'No...! No...! NO! NO!'
'NO FUCKING WAY!'
'I am NOT FUCKING DYING LIKE THIS!!!'
Veritas screamed inside his mind, but the numbers, the information, the glimpse of the past and present coming from infinite perspectives almost left him brain dead.
He looked at the faceless figure one last time before reaching out and touching the face weakly with both of his hands, as if trying to squeeze it.
"F...uck... you..."
He lost consciousness.
***
First, he was the air...
Then, he was the water...
Then, he was the ground.
Glimpses, scenes, pictures, voices, and thoughts.
They raced across his vision, leaving him perplexed.
His brain stopped working and he couldn't understand anything anymore, and so, he simply stared…
While the word 'live' incessantly repeated in his murky hazy mind.
Until he found himself looking back at him.
This time, his point of view was taller, and he was looking at a kneeling boy that was sobbing.
Then, he moved, grabbing the boy's face, red lines and glitches on the fabric of reality appearing all around.
After that, everything suddenly went dark...
***
Bzzt!
[Accessing...]
[Information Obtained.]
[### System greets its ####.]
[Error!]
[Error!]
[Error!]
It repeated, again, and again, and again.
Was he hallucinating? What was happening...?
His whole body felt weak, and his vision was dark.
Only a red floating bar with a text that showed 'Error!' repeating itself countless times floated in front of him.
But then, it stopped.
Ding!
A red pop up appeared in his line of vision, showing him lines of information.
[Name]: [Veritas]
[Core]: [Black]
[Sub-Core]: [Pawn]
[Artifacts]: —
[Paths]: [Agent of #####]
[Lines]: [Consume]
Another pop up materialized in front of his vision.
[Path Description]:
[Agent of #####]: [You are bestowed upon the authority of an Agent of information. A human, yet an Agent, an anomaly. The more information and truth you discover, the more you become stronger.]
[Line Description]:
[Consume]: [You can absorb the lifeforce of a being and grow stronger by doing so. If the being has a power, both the power and lifeforce will be absorbed.]
'...?'