Chapter 1

There is a quote from the American general William Tecumseh Sherman that the vast majority of soldiers, refugees and victims of war all agree on, "war is hell". Some who experience war will live in fear everyday of their lives, some isolate themselves after feeling that they no longer belong in a peaceful environment, some will even take their own lives in order to escape from the atrocities that they witnessed.

I'm not one of those men, physically I'm not even a full grown man yet. I am one of the few who, instead of rejecting reality or isolating myself, embrace and instigate war. War is not an atrocity to me, neither is it a hell. War is a way of life, it is how I was raised and taught by my no good parents. My lullabies were distant gunfire and explosions, running across battlefields and kill zones was my playground, and a weapons cache was my toy box. So to me the quote should be "war is heaven".

My parents are not your ordinary man and woman, my mother and father are mercenaries. They take any job that is handed to them regardless the risk (To me and them). The earliest memories that I have are filled with death and conflict because of my "glorious" parent's decisions. Practically since the day I could walk they taught me how to fight, destroy, and kill. By the time I was 7 years old they had even sent me on missions with and without their guidance.

I had always wondered where my parents got their assignments from and I always wanted to give their client a piece of my mind (or at least a bullet to a knee) for making us move all around the world at the drop of a hat.

One day the former happened, I was preforming maintenance on my equipment when my parent's communicator went off. At that moment my parents were probably in the middle of trying to give me a younger sibling so I answered it. On the screen a man in his middle to late thirties he had a stern look on his face as well as multiple scars from years of abuse. He told me where to go, when to go, and what to do all the way down to why.

The mission was to rig an American embassy building with enough explosives to level twelve blocks. I did as I was instructed and was met with, surprisingly, little to no resistance. I was then instructed to bring the detonator and all other provided equipment to the client. When I arrived he was giving some of the other contractors that worked with my parents, he was talking about how war is what made the world's economy keep working and how the more war we cause the better off the world would be.

Now I don't really care about the world economy or the people in it I just care about the excitement that I feel in battle. I'm only alive when I am shaking death's hand, otherwise I'm just some stoic teenager.

Which brings me to the situation at hand, due to many complaints and witnesses of my involvement in that event I'm being sent to live with my uncle in some little shit-stain of a town in the Japanese countryside. I don't really know my uncle and I doubt that he knows anything about me, so I'll make this as painless as it can be. I'll just act like any normal person my age and whenever he asks about me and my parents I'll either dodge the question or make up some lame excuse, it's not like he'll be able to find anything out even if he suspects something.

Okay, enough reminiscing let's focus! At the moment I'm still sitting on the train taking me to the town, I think it's called Inaba or something like that. Let's see if all my things are accounted for… can't risk my cover if by dumb luck some "fragile valuable" has fallen onto the floor of the train car… I open up my bag to see my clothes, hygiene products, medicine, and my phone charger laying innocently in my bag. I then lift those up and take a peek at the cache underneath, all of my essential equipment and tools are accounted for. I've gotta thank Dad when I get the chance… and see if he could send some more if the time calls for it…

As soon as the train enters a tunnel my vision goes black, Am I dead?! There is no freaking way I would die after all this time from some heart attack! Did I get shot in the head or something?! As I start to freak out my vision blurs back into comprehension, what I'm met with is not a train car or anything of the sort, Am I in a limo? I can't be I was just in a train! I look around and see two people facing me, one a beautiful blonde woman in her middle to late twenties and a… Holy fucking shit a goblin! It's official I'm dead and apparently hell exists!

The goblin tilts his head up giving me a crooked grin before spreading cards out on the short table in front of him and saying, "Welcome to the Velvet Room".