Lowly Ascent

Before Cain was a young man, his clothes were ragged and his face was frozen in shock. He stammered into the wall and stuttered, "H-Hello...W-Who m-may you be?"

Cain raised a brow. "I live here, who are you?"

The young man began to tear up as his eyes swelled, he got on his knees and slammed his head to the floor while begging for his life.

"L-Lord I didn't mean to! I-Its just with the monsters around the city, I-I needed to get new clothes, that's all I swear! I came to this area because It had fewer monsters! I do not rob homes! Please believe me!"

Cain looked at the man and a wicked smile crept across his face.

"I'm Cain, a grade 2 plague bea..doctor. I will spare you, but you're now my servant, we'll be leaving here, there are servant clothes downstairs, get ready to depart and prepare the horses and the carriage in the stables"

The young man's face lit up as if he found salvation and began to bow repeatedly. "Thank you Lord! Thank You! It will be done!"

Cain watched the enthusiastic man head downstairs. He got dressed and packed a suitcase, before heading to the owner's room and thoroughly searching it. There was nothing of importance, just clothes, and notes that were irrelevant.

The only other place was the basement, so he headed down, on the way, he handed the young man his suitcase.

The basement had a lab, there seemed to be an experiment going on it looked to be in the finishing stages. Cain found a note on the table, it was the recent lab notes and scribbles of the owner.

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I wonder what face Cain will make when I give this to him hehe. Though he will be quite thankful I'm doing so much for him even if I have to use force.

Through experiment after experiment, I finally made a serum that could help augmenters have children, the boost in conceiving a child is over 84%! If he doesn't give me the most respectful and appreciative response, I'll beat him to bits!

I can't wait to congratulate him and Luna ahead of time! Who knew my old experiment would become a father!

You always have to let go of the things you love. I hope he visits and has his children call me Grandpa...

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'Seems like whoever this was, he was close and seemingly a father figure. Also this 'Luna' must be a love interest? Girlfriend? Wife? Well doesn't matter now, I've lost my memories, and there's a reason for it.'

Cain had no use for the serum so he instead destroyed it and the rest of the basement to cover his traces.

Searching the rest of the building, Cain found the owner's wealth.

There were 2 chests of silver. Silver was the most valued currency, a single silver equaled 50 copper and a single copper equaled 20 bronze.

Cain was now a wealthy man.

But this might not be enough, with the end of Free City which was the hub of food production, there were going to be lots of deaths.

A loaf of bread was 3 bronze, it might go as high as a single silver in the future, the whole population will be in a decline and both the kingdom and empire will invade each other once again.

Many will die and the population will most likely go to the low millions if no one does anything.

This wasn't Cain's problem, he would like it if both powers were in turmoil.

He loaded up the chests into the carriage and sat beside his new servant who was holding the reins.

The young man was shorter than Cain, he had brown hair and brown eyes. For a young lad, he was well-built but on the skinnier side. With decent looks, a sharp jaw with a near-perfect nose, he could be said to border good-looking.

As they left, Cain gave the man directions on where to go. They headed to his current home, also in the core of the city.

During the trip, Cain decided to make conversation with the young man as he had to sit next to him in case anything came up. 

"So...what's your name and who are you?" Cain was blunt. 

The servant made no pause to spill everything, after all, he wanted to live.

"M-Me my lord? I'm Anders."

Cain sighed, "Not what I meant. How about you tell me how you ended up in that mansion."

Anders was in a daze for a second, his memories flooding back to him.

"Well... my mom and sister died in the undead attack when they broke through the outer walls, I was a servant for a noble...I...killed him during the invasion..."

Cain was surprised Anders was so forthcoming. His interest rose.

"Why did you kill him?"

"He would harass my sister and I think he would blackmail her to do...things. My sister would seem more and more lifeless every time I saw her. My master also began to sound crueler when talking to me and even sometimes talked about my sister though it was never directly."

Ander's face then began to allude to bloodlust.

"When the disaster happened, I killed him before heading home to where my sister killed herself. My mom was killed by the undead and became one of them...I...I had to kill her." Anders had tears running down his cheeks.

Cain looked forward and began to comfort him. 

"I also used to be weak, I was bullied and tormented by others...but all of that doesn't matter, over time you'll realize that what's happened has already passed and all you can do is focus on what you find important and what matters."

"Sniff Sniff Thank you Lord, you are kind to me even though I'm just a servant."

Cain smiled. "We should take after the world and treat everyone equally, even though you are now my servant you are still a person...just like containments."

Anders was a little shocked by Cain's words, it was embedded into the current culture that contaminants were slaves and as such, just play things that weren't human.

He thought for a moment, trying to look at it from how Cain described it, and then looked enlightened

"I think you are right, we might not know their origin but they look like us. They get treated worse than me and I'm just a servant. They also have feelings like a normal person, they bleed, cry, and feel pain. That's human, like us."

Though this response might've been said to preserve his life, Cain didn't care. He even began to like this new servant of his.

"Hahaha, I like you quite a lot, I'll teach you how to defend yourself how about that hahaha! If you have the talent to be a plague doctor then I'll train you, how about it hahaha!"

Anders lowered his head and began to thank Cain profusely.

...

The Carriage came up to a building and stopped. The home had a nice garden out front and had two stories, it looked like the perfect family home.

Cain got out of the carriage and gave Anders a protective rune carved on a stone.

As he headed inside, Cain felt like he returned home, and his heart underwent a strange feeling. He searched the house and found some of his research papers, he had such information stored in his head so he just destroyed them.

It appeared all his vials of pathogens were on his body so there was nothing of real value here.

He took his secret stash of money and looked around once last time, finding some money on the other side of the bed in the nightstand drawer where a handful of silvers and copper were.

Finding money, he did one more thorough sweep, searching closets and dressers.

There were lots of female clothes. 'These should belong to that Luna person...'

After searching the dressers thoroughly, he found a note at the bottom of one. It was a note for wedding vows.

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Cain, I love you. You are my best friend. Today I give myself to you in marriage. I promise to encourage and inspire you, to laugh with you, and to comfort you in times of sorrow and struggle.

I promise to love you in good times and in bad, when life seems easy and when it seems hard. And I promise to cherish you and to always hold you in the highest regard. These things I give to you today, and all the days left in our lives.

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Cain, for a moment, felt lost. Sadness overcame him, but he recollected himself.

'From my body's response, she must be dead or trapped somewhere....'

Cain didn't remember who she was, and so he felt nothing and summed everything up to no more than a bodily response. He had to move away from his humanity, he had to become something different or else he knew he could never be able to live with himself for what he would soon do.

Cain walked out of the house and sat back on the carriage "Alright go to the south main inner gate."

Anders jumped, "Sire!? That place is where the undead broke through, won't we bring too much attention to ourselves!"

"Just go there, I'll take care of the rest, don't worry," Cain reassured Anders and they headed towards the gate.

...

Cain directed Anders to stop right around the gate, he then began to scale the wall and headed up towards the lone tower still standing.

When he reached the top, he found his body, and another...

'Looks like I found Luna, I feel incredibly....depressed. Just by looking at her? Control yourself Cain!'

He began to control his breathing, walking up to his corpse and grabbing his old vials and some other items he kept on him included:

Zimo vial, Trachoma Vial, Osteomyelitis Vial, Endocarditis Vial, and the spy Jamie's Badge.

When Cain looted his body, he remembered that his augmentation only had Animum and Cravus, it was no longer Zimo-based as he lost all the bacteria. So a quick second later, he reanalyzed and renamed his current body.

'Went down to low-mid rank, doesn't matter.... let's call it the Evil Spirit Mind Body I suppose'.

He then looked towards Luna's body. Cain walked over and examined her corpse, she was already pale and a little dry.

She died from the destruction of her heart.

Cain sighed to himself.

He went through some of the supplies still on the wall and found oil, he then headed back up and covered Luna's body in it before lighting a torch and tossing it on the body.

'Farewell'

This is all Cain could do, and doing this much was overboard, the fire would attract others. 

Knowing this, he headed back to the carriage and told Anders to start heading through the gate.

"Sire, did you set that fire? Why! Now people will know where here!" Anders was sweating buckets, staining the white parts of his outfit.

"Just drive. You have nothing to worry about."

Just as Cain said that, a group of figures came from the other end of the gate, they were wearing armor made of leather, which meant they weren't wealthy but military.

"Stop! Who are you Identify yourselves!"

Cain looked at the group in disbelief, "Me? How about who are you? It's obvious I'm a noble leaving the city because of what's happened!"

The mysterious soldiers eased up and became kinder.

"Sir, we are help sent from the kingdom of Puffrid to help people evacuate. We have to check your carriage to make sure you're not holding any refugees"

Cain then revealed a face of anger "Bullshit! Check my carriage? Refugees? Why the hell would I have refugees? This is unwarranted!"

"On the contrary, all people of the Union are wanted for causing the outbreak, please comply." The troops began to move closer.

Cain gritted his teeth and pulled out a badge.

"I'm Cain of the intelligence bureau of the Puffrid kingdom, let me pass so I can complete my mission!"

"What?" Everyone had a bewildered look, even Anders.

"State your mission! We have no intel that there's someone supposed to be here!"

"That's why it's called spying, I have information on the status of the Union's vault so I must make it back to the capital!"

The leader of the group thought for a moment and spoke, "This is highly irregular, we should have been told...also why are you heading south and not east....just allow us to search your carriage then we can let you go."

Cain sighed before he bit his finger, the troops didn't notice and got closer, as they neared the back of the carriage a mist surrounded them and they were quickly dispatched turning into puddles of blood.

"L-Lord!?"

Cain didn't want to scare Anders but too late!

"Don't mind it, they were non-plague doctors so it was easy, if you're lucky you can do stuff like that too."

With the mention of such power in his hands, Anders turned excited and forgot about the sudden deaths that happened before him. 

Anders began to drive the carriage out of the city. As they exited, the sky became clearer and Cain directed Anders to go to Yoen.

Cain looked back at the city, he felt that he got all he could from it, now it was time for him to go elsewhere and continue strengthening himself.