Book One: The Rise of the Blue-Haired Devil.

      What a stupid death… Though I must admit that this is the kind of end a person who has given up emotions and feelings deserves. In fact, that’s the person I was before I died. If you describe my life from a literary point of view, it’s the life of a mad inventor. But I think I should start my story from the very beginning, because I am dying anyway, lying in a pool of my own blood. I know my death is inevitable, so I want to dive into my memories for the last time in my life.       My name is Victor. I was born near the city of progress, which bears the majestic name — Piltover. This place is over three hundred years old. It was located at the crossing point of two continents, so it was a key trading point between two big countries. I guess everyone knows that the world is not as fair as we would like it to be… Piltover was one of those places where everything was fair, if only there was one “but”… If you come from a rich family or have connections, this city becomes a place of fulfilled hopes. You can realise your business or become a great inventor. However, for people like me, who did not come from a noble background, the path was booked in the opposite direction. My parents moved to the territory near Piltover because of the barbarians who were constantly attacking the village where my family lived.       Dad and Mum were good craftsmen, but had no special talents. They learnt everything by hard work, studying each weapon like a curious riddle that was fun to solve. We could not settle in Piltover itself. The high food prices and expensive equipment that my parents' work required forced us to stay outside of that city. There were an extremely large number of people like my family. Everyone wanted to get rich by coming to the city of progress, but they were disappointed with the place very quickly. All the poor people who came to Piltover were forced to stay outside its walls. Together they formed a new city, Zaun, in which I was born.       The rich people who lived in the city did not like the prospect of a new settlement, so they tried to destroy us. What didn’t they like? The fact that Zaun was formed at the junction of two continents. There was a bridge between the two cities, which was the only way to get from one continent to the other unless you had your own ship. I was young then, but I know how it ended. No one won the war, and countless people suffered. Piltover did not recognise Zaun, but did not continue the clash. The higher ups from the city of progress decided to get rid of our polis in a different way. They started dumping waste and rubbish on us, polluting the air. Many people died because of this. I remember these times clearly.       From my earliest childhood, I was different from all my peers. I loved to read books. In fact, I had to stay at home most of the time. There were two reasons for this: firstly, the streets of Zaun were a mess at that time. Many people were starving, and as I know, hunger kills all moral principles in a man, pulling out from the depths of his soul the animal behaviour required to survive in difficult situations. Such people attacked each other, tearing pieces of human flesh from the bodies of their brothers and sisters. These were terrible times. This lawlessness went on until the chemical barons came to power. They stabilised the city with some laws and regulations. The second reason why I was afraid to leave my home was my illness.       Since I was a child, I had been an invalid who could not walk properly. I learnt to walk with the help of one crutch, but my life was threatened every time I went for a walk outside, because I had no way of running away from anyone.       Until I was ten years old, I read books and sketched my first inventions. After my eleventh birthday, I started trying to build various simple devices. At first nothing worked, but I was able to analyse my mistakes. And very quickly learnt from unsuccessful inventions, noting all the flaws. I was gaining the experience I needed.       At the age of twelve I started to collect equipment that started to work. Then I started going outside more often to test my new inventions. Our place was always very small. There was often not enough room to fully test my inventions. My first inventions were not extremely impressive, but as time went on, my technology became very idea-driven. The first goal I set for myself was to improve the standard of living in my city. Zaun had many personalities in Zaun that stood out for their intelligence. They all fought against the waste that Piltover was dumping on us. They managed to create a mechanism made of pipes that ran through the city. This device worked like a ventilator, sucking all the toxins out of the air. But there was a problem: very often this system would malfunction uncontrollably, releasing toxic vapours into the streets of my city. This caused my family to frequently migrate from one place to another. On one of these moves, I met a scientist and inventor.       This man became my temporary mentor. His name was Sinjed. He believed that the only way for an individual to evolve was through mutation. As a child, I didn’t realise this, seeing him only as a monster. This man experimented on animals that went mad or died after his experiments. I hated this scientist, but I was grateful to him because he gave me a good idea on how to improve the ventilation system in the city.       For many years I studied literature and books, not forgetting to improve my ability to design. I collected information about disasters in the city and their causes. All this led me to one conclusion: more than ninety per cent of accidents are the fault of human beings. By the time I was sixteen, I had invented an air purification system that minimised human involvement in the machinery.       I began offering my discovery to various factories that were having accidents. At first, they ignored me. That was until one of them took a chance. As I expected, within two years there were no accidents, although they used to happen every month.       Many factories began to offer me work contracts. For a whole year I worked hard to improve life in my town. At that time, my father and mother died. They worked in one of those factories, which had not yet had time to change its system to an autonomous one. My parents were exposed to the concentrated gas by the mistake of a colleague working with them. At that time I only reinforced my belief that humans are the cause of all misfortune. I became very famous in Zaun because of my development. Even a scientist from Piltover was interested in my personality. Heimerdinger was one of the founders of the City of Progress. He was part of the councillors who governed the entire upper city. Heimerdinger saw potential in me and gave me the opportunity to fulfil it. I became the first person born in Zaun and was given the opportunity to study at the inventors academy in Piltover.       There I met many scientists and innovators, but I was not able to befriend any of them. I was a loner whose technology aimed to exclude humans from the operation of devices. The others did not approve of my approach to business. After two years, I had already become Heimerdinger’s right-hand man, always helping him with his research. Then came the fateful event that changed Piltover’s life.       The problem of the last few years was that the city of progress could no longer be called that, as inventors had failed to come up with truly outstanding technology recently. One day there was a massive explosion in the centre of Piltover, destroying an entire building.       As it turned out, a student at the academy had started doing experiments with Arcane. Arcane is a crystal that, to my knowledge, has magical powers that cannot be subdued. Magic has always been considered something chaotic and incomprehensible. If a person didn’t have a predisposition to it from childhood, they couldn’t use it. A guy with a pumped up body and aristocratic facial features was the reason why everyone remembered magic. This inventor turned out to be Jace Tallis. He came from a fairly decent family in Piltover.       The Tallis family was under the patronage of the Kiraman family, whose head was a councillor. Jace was accused of using magic. All the councillors were very afraid of her exploitation. They remembered the days when warlocks destroyed entire settlements with a single swing. Heimerdinger managed to soften the punishment for one of his students. Jace was kicked out of the academy, deprived of the opportunity to continue his research.       Everyone turned away from him: his beloved girl, his mother and his friends. He was all alone, with only his dream of improving the world through magic. Jace wanted to commit suicide, but I stopped him, because Heimerdinger had asked me to destroy all traces of Arcane in Tallis’s lab. There I found his notes from the experiments he had performed. The ideas interested me, so I decided to take a chance and help him build a prototype mechanism. He and I snuck into Professor Heimerdinger’s lab. We managed to create a working device in just one night. We impressed the entire council with our design, and we were given the green light for Arkane’s research. Within a year, Piltover resumed its status as a city of progress. It was thanks to Jace and me. We created a device that allowed us to teleport large objects over decent distances. With this technology, we took trade to a whole new level. Year after year, we kept working on it. We managed to create a shell for the Arcane that stabilised it, increasing the strength of the crystal. We called our technology the Hextec Core. Thanks to this invention, it was possible to use magic in various devices. We were on a path of technological evolution that would make life easier for the world. However, there was one “but”… My health began to deteriorate day by day. I went to the doctors. The diagnosis was disappointing. I was dying from the toxins in my blood. As it turned out, I had inhaled poisonous gas fumes as a child.       My friend had a very memorable appearance. He turned into a man who became a symbol of the development and prosperity of technology in Piltover. I didn’t like popularity, so I always stayed in his shadow. Jace quickly became a key figure in the politics of the entire upper city, which is why he was made a councillor. That was the reason why I didn’t want to bother him, trying to find a solution to my health problems on my own. The only possible salvation I saw was in Arcane. I realised that all actions of magic are based on combinations of runes, so I created a kernel with which I could go through various compounds of magical symbols. I was able to find many new features of the crystal, but not one of them would help the cure. I worked twenty-four hours a day, often forgetting to eat and sleep. I got sick one day, and passed out from exhaustion on the job. Jace found me and dragged me to the hospital. He found out about my health problems. After that, we started working with Arcane together. However, I noticed that the Hextech core I’d assembled for the rune combinations had changed. It was now responding to living matter.       My friend began to visit me more often, and I continued to go through all possible combinations of runes. At what point did I realise that I had gone through all the different rune schemes without finding a solution. I was lost… I didn’t know what to do. That’s when I remembered my first mentor and travelled to Zaun to ask him for advice. Sinjed studied my problem thoroughly, giving a sound idea that could be a solution: “Your core is changing the nature of living matter, but the matter itself is not ready to accept such a change. I think you need to change nature to make it work.” Then he shared with me the results of his scientific labours. Flicker is a substance that changes the very essence of living matter. It is capable of rearranging the cells within the body of animals and plants. My mentor warned me that if I chose this path, everyone would turn their backs on me. At the time, I trusted that Jace would understand. When I was on my way back to Piltover, I was stopped at a bridge that served as a crossing between the upper and lower city. It turned out that there was a lot of tension between the two cities because of recent events that I didn’t know about, nor did I want to be. I was only interested in my life then. Jace came after me to let me through. He didn’t like my behaviour, but I didn’t care about his indignation. I felt like there was too little time left. I could barely move on my own, but I tried not to show it to my friend.       I reached the lab and began to prepare all the necessary equipment for the procedure. Night fell. It was at this time that I decided to act. Over the course of half a day, I carved the runes necessary for the process of stabilising the mutations in my body into my skin and the devices that allowed me to move around. I injected myself with a flicker. It was unbearably painful, but I endured it. Slashing my hand, I touched the Hextec Core, and then my transformation began. The magical power was rebuilding my cells, perfecting my body. The flicker was helping the cells withstand the strain. I could no longer contain my screams. It was like I was being destroyed and put back together again. My assistant, who I hadn’t been paying attention to while I was working, came running to my aid. She tried to pull me away from the core. I couldn’t get a word out. The girl touched my arm, beginning to drag me backwards to free me from the dead grip of Hextec’s magic, but a terrible thing happened. She didn’t have any runes on her, so the crystal used her as fuel to finish rebuilding my body faster. It turned to dust before my eyes. I felt really lousy, because I never thought of myself as a killer, but now I was. I fell to my knees and began to study the scraps of my assistant’s diaries, hoping that in them I would find her wish that I could make up for part of my guilt. As I read these pages, I became more and more depressed, realising that this girl loved me and admired all my inventions.       I was so blind to my goal that I could not see the obvious things that were happening under my nose. Self-hatred rose up in my heart. I wanted to destroy my technology, but I lacked the willpower to raise my hand against my creation. A few days passed unnoticed. I learnt to walk without the aid of a crutch, I was even able to jog. But the price was very high. In public, however, I still used a walking aid so that Jace wouldn’t guess my success. I could see that now was not a good time to do that.       At the upper town council meeting, my friend announced that he had signed a treaty with the head of Zaun. The demands of the lower town did not please all the councillors. A long discussion began, saying that this was not the right thing to do. The meeting dragged on all day, but when everyone agreed to a truce on those terms, a rocket flew in. Jace and I were the furthest away from the blast, so we managed to survive, but not without consequences. My friend had learnt from my experience, for it was Hexteck’s magic that had protected us then. James was now the head of the council. The girl who fired the missile at us was wanted in both Piltover and Zaun. The Chem Barons, who had risen to the head of the town again, did their best to get the truce accepted. My friend became very arrogant after all these events. I learnt that he had lost his lover in the explosion. I tried to support him, but he brushed off my support. I tried to help my friend in any way I could, but he continued to drift away from me, becoming more and more immersed in the politics of the city. Things finally changed after another chemical release in Zaun. The chemical barons asked for our help.       Then I managed to create a unique robot, Blitzcrank, which was able to aerate all the toxins from several areas of the lower city. Jace would occasionally visit me, studying my technology. When I was successful, however, my friend brazenly stole the glory of this invention from me.       I tried to talk to the council about it, challenging the patent on my discovery, but all my arguments proved ridiculous to them. I was kicked out of Piltover. I was forced to return home.       I fell into a depression for several months. The loneliness affected me a lot. I wanted to help people, and these people were destroying all my ambitions. Then I considered that the main reason for all people’s troubles was their feelings and emotions. I did a self-examination and realised that I was suffering because of wounded pride. How foolish I was then… I decided to just get rid of the pain I was feeling and turned to an old mentor. Sinjed helped me with everything. He removed the parts of my brain responsible for feelings and emotions, but I didn’t stop there. I completely mechanised my body, replacing my organs with devices. I was no longer human.       Deprived of the main attribute that characterises the personality of any human being, I turned into a machine that set itself the goal of modernising the whole of humanity. I believed that this would improve the lives of ordinary people. Many people of Zaun began to turn to me for help in the most desperate situations. I modernised their bodies into cyborgs and became the last hope for desperate people. The chem-barons didn’t see me as a threat, so they didn’t interfere with my experiments. Within a few years there even appeared a religion, whose members began to worship me, considering me a new messiah. But I didn’t care: I found this quasi-religion to be an unfortunate misunderstanding — another reason to destroy all emotional vulnerabilities and belief in what could not be empirically proven. Then there was a toxic spill in a neighbourhood in the city. People didn’t die from it, but went crazy, starting to lunge at passersby. I sedated all the victims and then brought them back to the lab.       The poison was spreading rapidly through the bloodstream, so I needed to purify their blood. I had special machines that could do that, but there was a problem: I didn’t have enough power to save everyone. I decided to slow down the infection process until I found a solution to the problem. To do so, I opened the skulls of the infected, beginning to purify the blood in their brains. The only thing needed to save them was an entire brain. Such a human organ simply cannot be replaced. I worked for days trying to perfect my technique, but all was in vain, however I was lucky. My sensors detected a massive energy surge in the upper city. I travelled there. The place I was rescued was Jace’s lab.       My former friend was not happy about my visit. He refused to provide me with a source of powerful energy, which turned out to be a vibrating crystal from the Shurim desert. I had no choice but to take the technology by force. I was lucky that Jace was without his weapon, the Hextec Hammer, which used almost every rune combination I knew of in Arcane. It was a dangerous weapon that kept the truce between Piltover and Zaun alive. I took the crystal, returning to my lab where I upgraded my equipment. In a few hours, a couple of hundred lives had been saved. And I allowed myself a small smile, realising I was one step closer to my goal. But I was ruined.       Jace burst into my lab with his gun. He started smashing everything he could see. I knew I couldn’t get through to him, so I decided to take the fight to him. Our battle didn’t last long. My former friend tried to shoot me with his weapon, but he immediately realised that my death ray was head and shoulders above his hammer, so Jace quickly moved closer to me. I tried to use my gravity field trap, but Jace dodged it, evading it. My last chance was to divert energy. I fired a beam at my opponent, charging the protective field around me. Jace covered himself with his hammer, making him unharmed by the attack. My defences held up for two hits, then went down. I dodged the first direct attack, but I couldn’t dodge the next one. While my former friend was beating me to death with his weapon, I realised that all the people I had managed to save were now dead. It was very painful to accept…       You know, before you die, you always realise your life… I regret the way I lived, because I didn’t enjoy it at all. I just walked over other people’s heads to get where I was going. And I didn’t care. I gave up feelings, naively believing that I could eliminate suffering from my life completely. I succeeded, but the price was too high. Love, joy, happiness — all these emotions that I felt as a child began to fade over time, or to be more precise, I stopped noticing them. I didn’t just want to make the world a better place, I wanted to be known for making the world a better place. My pride drove me into a coffin. I hope I can feel alive in hell, because there’s no way to heaven for people like me. I’ve ruined too many innocent lives trying to fulfil my dream….       My heart stopped more than six minutes ago, but my brain is still working, trying to save the whole situation. How futile it is… I can already see the white light starting to blind me. Just a few more seconds and that’s it… The end.....       For a few seconds I couldn’t see anything. It was too bright, but after a while I realised I could close my eyes. Without realising it, I blinked. The world went completely black. It was as if I was falling weightlessly into darkness. I couldn’t feel my body, and my head was filled with thoughts of what was happening. It felt like I had been falling for ages in this darkness. I tried to count the time that had passed since I started here. Somewhere around the four thousandth minute, I lost count and was already assuming that this was my personal hell loop. But all my thoughts were shattered the moment a flash of white light blinded me again. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to remove the discomfort in my eyes from the light, and when I opened my eyes, I was surprised. The first thing I saw had already shocked me. I looked at my hand, which was very small. Already at that second, my mind began to make some very unhappy guesses… I was brought out of my thoughts by a sobering pain in my right side. I immediately reacted by looking around. It turned out that I had been hit by a tall man wearing strange clothes. He had a thick face with wrinkles under his eyes that were green in colour. The man was under two metres tall, just towering over me considering we were standing three metres apart. He wore blue trousers with a high collar and the same colour shirt. On top of these clothes were several metal plates for protection, I realised. I also noticed that there was a medium sized bag hanging from the man’s belt. I had to admit that his clothes blended well with the colour of his hair, which was coal black.       - Move, you bastard! Or haven’t you had enough? Do you want more? — With a wicked grin, the man said, starting to take another swing of the whip to strike.       I knew from the look in his eyes that I should obey. I began to move with the people around me. There were about ten of us. I noticed at once that we were all bound by a strong iron chain fastened to our feet. We were accompanied by two men. One walked in front, the other behind. I don’t know where I’ve ended up, but considering my height and the size of my hands, I’m no more than eight years old. I’m good at human anatomy, after all. And I was about to start evaluating all the factors to prepare an escape, but then my head started buzzing. Memories that didn’t belong to me gradually appeared in my mind….