For as long as he can remember, Issac was alone since young, abandoned in an alley. As he lived the life of a thief and beggar, he had seen the worst atrocities of humanity.
Nevertheless, there is light in the sea of darkness. He was fortunately enough to meet a kind man and woman willing to take him in.
That was his first encounter with genuine kindness.
Issac has three foster siblings, a sister and two brothers, he is the oldest.
His time with the family taught him the values of humanity and true happiness. He realized the life he lived, feeding off the misery of others, was not one he wanted having experienced the worst himself. It was the wishes of his foster parents too and Issac would rather die than break it.
In a society gleaming with human desires, no one will honestly blame Issac for indulging, but his moral conscience defines his mind. It is a rare gem in a corrupted world.
To protect his family, he learned how to fight with a sword and worked various gigs to earn measly money.
In the end, he decided that joining the military was the best way to secure good pay for a lowly commoner. However, his skills with the blade were average as the result of mere self-learning and fighting on the streets.
Issac was a rock on a road. There were thousands of applicants that day.
He was rejected.
"Hah..." Issac sighed and left for home. On the way, he saw a man getting robbed and helped subdue the thief, albeit with some difficulty.
By the string of luck, a commander saw the act and permitted his entry to a rather..."special" squad in his unit.
Issac met three people in similar situations there, all of them had nothing special yet approved entry by the commander personally. Masoc needed money to support his bedridden sister and Kaden wanted to grow stronger and brave to protect someone. Aeon...well...he rarely speaks so Issac doesn't know his backstory.
As such, their squad was referred to as the "pity squad" and looked down on by many other teams.
...
But they have something other teams lack: Reason and conviction.
They try to improve every day.
They try their hardest...yet nothing seems to be improving. They start to feel the talent gap. They start to feel dejected.
In addition, the reality was forced on Issac when the commander's son, a champion of the Akatski Tournament, was assigned as their squad's captain.
"The Wall of Talent."
An insurmountable obstacle looms over his spirit, crushing it to pieces.
"What was the point of working so hard?" Issac thought to himself. "Am I fated to be weak forever? No matter what I do, I cannot match up to the monsters in my generation."
No talent, no resources, and no status. Issac was at the lowest point of his life.
When he stared at the village before leaving, he was looking at the battle scars created within a minute by the captain.
He gritted his teeth in anger.
"Damn it..." He thought and sighed.
"You look like you are going to die. We can visit here some other time." his captain suddenly says.
!
"..."
Issac could only nod, keeping his expression away from his captain.
YOU ARE READING
A Background Character's Fate
Fantasy"In war, commoners are the victims in victory or defeat." Struck by poverty amidst a long and devastating war, an ordinary mercenary dies among the countless corpses on a snowy battlefield. Yet by a stroke of luck, he regressed to his younger self...
