His own childhood had been drawn by a strange girl he had never seen before, and the moments depicted were deeply intimate times for him. Moreover, the girl held not just one, but multiple papers in her hands. He absolutely had to find out what else she had drawn.
With these thoughts in mind, Jashua pushed open the dilapidated door of the Garbage House. Despite the moonlight flooding into the structure from the side facing the valley, the environment was in semi-darkness. The people who had been talking cheerfully while eating around the cauldron set up a few days ago were gone; they had vanished without leaving a trace, just like Jashua's childhood.
Everything began to change from the moment Nafız shoved that blood-red lump into his mouth; the very next day, they emerged from the dungeon where they had been hiding for a long time. He remembered the moment the sunlight stung his eyes as if it had just happened; his lungs, inhaling the fresh air, had failed to adapt, causing him to cough himself to death.
They were settled into a house more beautiful than any he had ever seen; calling it a house wouldn't be right, it was practically a mansion. For the first week, he spent time with his family as he pleased, as if living in a dream too beautiful to be real.
Then that man came, the one named Milos with the stern gaze. He had two people with him; they examined him and put him through various tests for an entire day. Milos left at night, but the two who came with him stayed at the mansion with him; the training process for Jashua, a small child, was beginning.
Then came the training that lasted for long days, his tiny body pushed to its limits every day, and forced to break those new limits once more the next. His care was perfect; he was fed with the meat of wild creatures that neither he nor the people living in Nikonia had ever tasted, and no potion or medicine required for his development was withheld from him.
As days chased days, the training of the duo lost its challenge and turned into a routine, until Jashua met the new power beginning to awaken in his body. He felt every atom of the blood in his body circulating through his veins and, more interestingly, he could sense the circulation in the bodies of other people.
Blood Hunger followed this process; the new power trying to develop craved blood, and Jashua, who should have been living his childhood, tried to resist the situation. However, this was not possible; he could not cope with the power of the First Sheikh's remnant that had entered him. The two instructors found the solution by allowing him to kill the wild creatures he would eat himself.
He could still live with his family, but during the day, he had to kill wild creatures in a hidden cellar within the mansion's vast grounds. He was forced to do this to suppress the hunger within; otherwise, he wasn't sure he could protect other people, including his family, from himself.
At first, Jashua struggled greatly against the creatures that moved and instinctively protected themselves. He encountered situations where he might have lost his life if not for the duo beside him, but he did not give up; in less than three months, he could take down even semi-conscious creatures on his own.
His fights with wild creatures allowed him to remain calm for a year and focus on his development process. Of course, this was also temporary; when he completely dominated them and could no longer draw enough power from their blood, Blood Hunger returned twice as strong.
He could no longer stay in the same place as his family; at only ten years old, he began to live alone. His new opponents were criminals on the Orc Steppes and those purchased from foreign lands through merchants.
If they won, they were set free; if they lost, they served as stepping stones for Jashua's development with their blood. Beneath the structure that appeared from the outside to be a magnificent mansion where a small child lived and was educated, life-and-death struggles occurred many times every day.
His opponents were of every civilization, every gender, and every form. In the same day, he would fight a barbarian orc, an arrogant citizen of the Lands of Light, and a deadly wild creature. In the beginning, a single enemy was enough to satisfy him; there were even situations where it took several days for him to heal after a single fight.
With every change, Jashua had to experience the process anew; first, he took down and killed one opponent every day. When this no longer sufficed, the number of opponents was increased, but the child was progressing so fast that even this began to be insufficient.
The two instructors began to give back the weapons they had taken from the opponents' hands, and the process started over. Jashua experienced the same cycle countless times in different ways, and each time he broke them, becoming stronger.
While his life continued in the cycle of encounter hardship-develop-destroy-start again, unexpected news arrived; the person who bestowed the power he possessed had won the war he entered but had to pay a great price.
He and the two people he took with him retreated into seclusion in the Glacial Region. The date Nafız mentioned upon leaving pointed to two years later; until then, the people living on the Orc Steppes had to resist.
First, Jashua thought of the defense of Nikonia, the city where he and his family lived; he decided to stay here for a while. The city's former lord had fled before the Great War began, but since Gulag had been managing the city in his stead for a long time, his absence did not pose a problem.
The forces of the four civilizations moved onto the Orc Steppes; they all wanted a piece of the pie and were ready to bite the greasy meat standing in the middle. Nikonia was also one of the targets; except for the forces of the Machine Empire, they began to carry out their attacks. The engineers, not wanting to anger their potential customers, focused only on the orcs.
The enemy was determined, ruthless, and savage, but Gulag had not been idle all this time; he had strengthened the city's defense line by forming his own army. Perhaps this was one reason why the engineers did not attack the cities, because all three cities were equipped with the latest model weapons.
After a few attacks, the forces of the three civilizations gave up hope on Nikonia and took only the orcs as their targets. It was at this very moment that Jashua left the place where he was born and raised and arrived at the place that was Holy Land for the orcs, at the westernmost part of the Orc Steppes.
The Wind of Death and his brave soldiers welcomed him and embraced him; he was the person chosen by Nafız, no other attitude could be considered. Of course, some had doubts about this human child, but those vanished after Jashua's night battles.
This was how he began to be a figure whom the orcs saluted with respect wherever they saw him; the enemy they fought during the day dealt with Jashua's attacks at night.
As always, Jashua followed the process; first, he targeted small and weak supply groups. He killed the enemy regardless of civilization; he was no stranger to any of them, as he had spent the last year fighting them every day in the cellar beneath his mansion.
Then came teams with few members, medium-scaled formations, and after a while, Jashua became arrogant enough to raid camps directly. When the Two-Year Wars ended, the Blood Hunger also came to an end; Jashua had spilled more blood than someone else could fit into a lifetime and had wiped out enemy warriors numbering in the thousands from the face of the earth.
Throughout all this time, even if there were humans or orcs around him, he was actually alone; there was only the power growing inside him and himself.
One day the war ended, and he was told to go to a place he never knew and become the Count of people he had never seen before. Doing as he was told, Jashua was now the Count of the Bloody Moon Fiefdom, and he had truly grown accustomed to it.
Now, after all that time, someone whose face he couldn't even see could draw this dark past of his; perhaps for the first time, the Young Count was afraid. No one had ever seen him so plain and naked before; he could not prevent the anxiety growing within him.
"Jashua, are you coming to my side? Or do you plan on standing there until morning?"
Struggling with his thoughts in front of the door he opened, Jashua snapped out of it with the shrill voice he heard. The owner of the voice was Nafız, who was lost in the view of the valley bathed in moonlight.