Prologue
A fantasy book based on fantasy itself. Every mythological and fictional creature that I have come by, all experience from reading, seeing and hearing about such beings on games, cartoon, shows, movies, books, internet and other forms of media; all this experience comes together to create a fantasy universe with its own parallel laws of reality in which it goes beyond than just ‘the good’ and ‘the evil’. The book tries to pass the idea that the world – real or fantasy – goes much farther than that; that one should not have immutable concepts over things and to always be open to change. This book follows the journey in which Alison explores and is a part of such new and wonderful universe. The story is told in first person on a popular and easy-to-understand language; although, as might already perceived, the syntax used on the work is unique and uncommon as I favour ancient literature over nowadays’ style. It is not a book of just drama, romance, humour or any specific characteristic; it is a book which tries to pass something more real, all these characteristics in a balanced way, like on our day-by-day. Many characters are based on real people, my friends, and as such those characters have the same personality as the person they were based on, creating then a more realistic experience on a world of fantasy.
Kaiho is a book of heroes and monsters; mighty armies and epic deeds. We shall watch as such deeds by the gods and men change the wholly world we knew.
Enjoy the strange tale of the Azure Hunter.
Prologue I
It was another normal day on the Earth we know; the humankind making progress, dreams of a stable future and the majority striving to achieve a better financial condition and status on society.
Like the most important changes in humankind; this one also came suddenly and unexpectedly – the so-called ‘Kaihos’ (解放).
The Kaihos were described as an ‘abnormal power’; the world was sceptical regarding such, but within little time, months, great part of the population already had their Kaihos.
Sci-fi movies always talked about the possibility of something like this happening and of the chaos it would bring, however these new powers were warmly accepted.
Remembering the cruel history the world have been going through by the way different people fight each other they decided to give a chance to the ‘Kaihojins’ (解放人); how are called those who possess a Kaiho.
Betimes life was getting used to the Kaihos. School’s subjects were created for that; many search fields about why such thing happened and why there are rare Kaihos and common Kaihos, what, how, why and so on. It was something completely mysterious which the world was very excited to know more about.
It was also noted more reports about supernatural beings as vampires, werewolves, elves, orcs and of similar content.
In the beginning they were ignored like it has mostly been in the ‘modern times’ – all attention was focused on the new powers the humans had and how such transcended logic and reason –, never-the-less it quickly became something alarming.
People were being found dead without identifiable causes; many travellers who were never seen again and not only some isolated cases for it was happening on a global scale. After long investigations about it all they found out was more and more strange things; smells yet unknown, waste of never-seen substances and signs of what ought to be only legends. All the signs pointed that all taken as folk-tale was actually real, not all of course, but the best well-known, with thousands of versions, and was living side-by-side with humans.
It was incredible for the humankind to have accepted the Kaihojins so easily, how-so-ever what happened now was too much. The government took immediate action about it and it was decreed the extermination of all vampires, werewolves, necrophagous, ghosts, chimeras, mermen, centaur, orcs, elves, griffons and so on. It was decreed the extermination of all creatures who ‘do not belong in this world’ – needless to say, it was a failure.
Firearms, medieval weapons or all else they tried failed miserably against most of the creatures – there was no manner for the government to strike back against the menace as the enemies attacked and fled; there was never a chance for the army to face them. But on the horizon the dawn of a new age rises: The Kaihojin Age!
By luck the humans had accepted the Kaihos and what had only arrived around three months ago now seemed to be the last hope of humankind. “Face the unknown with the unknown” – this was the hopeful thinking of the time.
Many Kaihos were unfitting for combat, then others seemed as if had been ‘given’ for that – with this is born the “GUFMC — Governmental Unit For Mythical Combat” – the government selected from the military all those who already had Kaihos to train to use them for combat and so contain the growing approaching danger of the arrival of the creatures.
Many isolated villages, farms, small cities, mysterious cases on metropolises, strange creatures in the forests, rivers, mountains, oceans and at times even on the skies; the world was too full of problems for the government to solve it all by itself. From that many Kaiho users fitted for combat started to act. Those Kaihojins were hired to deal with problems involving the supernatural while the government could not deal with them all – such contracts solved quickly the problem of those who paid for them. Sadly these powers were not used only for ‘good’; some hired Kaihojins for other jobs like murder, bank robbery, to help break out of prison and all illicit activities which became easy using the new ‘superpowers’ – this threw the world into a state of chaos. Now the government had to deal not only with the innumerable cases appearing every second around the world, but also with the ones who used their Kaihos to do ‘evil’.
With that the government began to collapse one after the other under the pressure and soon the greatest governments left in the world – US, Russia, Japan, Germany and France – unified and created a new government to rule over the planet. The five world leaders achieved such position for being seen as war heroes; they have a high level of control over their Kaiho in battle and try to end the chaos with strength.
The planet was on a totalitarian regime of almost despotism; every and all Kaihojins must present themselves to the government and be implanted with a chip by which they would be watched – all use of Kaiho became illegal and the punishment was severe. All this chaos inside the very own humankind allowed for the creatures to organize, fight between themselves and find their own territories in our world; they were no longer wild animals who lived by killing humans and creating chaos without thinking about the consequences. Many chose the high mountains, deep caves or thick forests. Many had human form in which they are almost undistinguishable from the humankind and with that some like vampires and werewolves started living together with humans. Some really were peaceful and tried to live quietly; then others saw the humans like nothings else but prey and food. There was constant wars against the ‘Kaiho Underworld’ where the Kaihojins still opposed the government and kept doing work against the mythical creatures and all kinds of illicit jobs using Kaiho.
Even when things seemed to be ‘calming down’ it was always needed someone here and there, there always was a zombie invasion out of nowhere, tormented spirits at that place or one supernatural serial murder who would eat its victims. To resort to the GUFMC was not the fastest nor simplest alternative; they asked for large formularies, proof of the problem and the bureaucracy of always. The usage of the Kaiho Underworld on the field became very common and grew every day. Medieval weapons like swords, axes and spears now could be used better than firearms. Combining the usage of Kaiho with that of these weapons have a grandiose result and it started the development of weapons to be used as such; even weapons to use the user’s Kaiho as energy supply or extension of the user’s power. The technology also advanced in the manner of not being offensive to nature since there were Kaihos which enchanted intelligence and thought. Without creating a mess with pollution it was much easier to stay hidden from the government.
And this is the state of the world at 10/27/2017, or should I say, year 001 day 300. Yes; the years started to be counted after the emergence of Kaiho on the world.
Even with the government trying to end the Kaiho Underworld people firmly backed the freely usage of Kaiho to fight the ‘monsters’. The government is unable to deal with all problems thence accepts the system where ‘quests’ could be posted with a reward for those with Kaiho who could fight the creatures. With that many Kaiho users who dwelt at the Kaiho Underworld could surface and become legal, however the ‘quests’ were still simple; the government tried to hide big massacres and creatures which have never been even imagined – such quests were done by the highest class on the government, or the highest class on the Kaiho Underworld, done by the ‘Guardians’, the Kaihojin elite at the government, and the ‘Freelers’, the Kaihojin elite on the Underworld who fights against the government and the mythical creatures alike.
The humankind still fought amongst themselves and never tried to understand the new species which arrived on the planet; many which were intelligent beings and that for some absurd reason are Anglophones besides their native language. With all the chaos and unification of the nations it was decided that English would be the idiom used world-widely. This happened within the timespan of one and a half year, it seems little, even so it is impressive how life can change wholly on one single week.
About Kaiho it is important to keep in mind it is not one all-powerful art; many do not know they have Kaiho because the ability usually comes at an extremely low undistinguishable level. It is something which must be trained and perfected to be used and only a few little appear with fantastic powers out of nowhere, but it is important to remember two things: like on a marathon the user do not use all his power at once as that would exhaust him and he would not go very far. Like on the marathon he uses his Kaiho on his own level, however at some moment he will still get tired and have to rest for the Kaiho to be replenished. Kaiho is somewhat like stamina. 1 – If tried to use too much at once one simply will lose control and his own Kaiho will be unusable for a time. 2 – Even if used consciously there will be a moment where there will be no energy left to use and so he will be able to use it again only after fully regenerating the energy.
