She was gone, and he was alone, trapped in the whirlpool of the crowd. Compared to him, the men were too tall, like a sea of moving trees, and their shoes banged on the pavement with a deafening cacophony.

He turned to catch a glimpse of his mother's blue dress with flowers and white-rimmed sandals, but he couldn't see her. Tears streamed down his cheeks when he realized he was lost forever and could no longer feel her warmth, but he heard it, a voice calling his name.

"Jacob! Jacob, where are you?"

"Mom! I'm right here! He shouted at the top of his voice.

Suddenly, he heard the sound of someone running towards him, and he found himself in a crowd that began to disperse, when his mother came looking for him.

Just as he saw her white strappy sandals and bare legs in the tall crowd, Jacob felt the ground descend beneath his feet and saw the darkness gather around him, robbing the world of light.

He seemed to have fallen in the darkness for a long time. Gravity grew stronger, robbing him of the air in his lungs and nearly tearing him to shreds. If it weren't impossible, he would have cried a long time ago.

Jacob gasped in surprise as his feet found solid ground under their feet, his knees bent in fear of weakness.

His sight returned, awakened by the dim light coming in front of him. It stung his eyes, as if he had been in that all-engulfing darkness for days.

He scanned his surroundings blindfolded, and was immediately impressed by what he saw. The smell and stench of many pleasant and disgusting things came to my nose. There was little light illuminating his surroundings, and it seemed to emanate directly from the walls, like an invading fungus that festered in the cracks between the large stones that had built this room.

At his feet, his knees resting on the cold, rough stone, was a smooth, viscous black water that reflected the green, purple, and blue fluorescences of the fungus.

Then, his ears seemed to regain sensation, and he realized that he was not alone, for from a large shadow behind him came the sound of powerful, rhythmic breathing, and the rare snorting of something hidden in the darkness ahead. Too frightened to turn to face the barely visible shadow behind him, he tried to peer into the darkness beyond where he knelt.

It took him a moment to notice, but then he saw two large eyes reflecting the light of the fungus back into him, like a giant cat staring at his soul.

"Heskel." The voice said in a solemn tone. "Make sure this kid isn't like any other kid." The strange magnanimity of the pitch made Jacob stunned, though he did not understand the meaning of the sentence. This flurry of words also left a strange pain in his chest.

There was a grunt of approval from the shadow behind Jacob. Suddenly, two strong and careful hands lifted him from the ground and examined first his head, then his limbs and torso. When those two hands turned him around to examine him from the front, Jacob came face to face with his shadow.

A man's face stared at him, with closed eyes, a small nose, and an ancient smile on his face. It took a while for Jacob to realize that what he was seeing was a mask, which he had only noticed in the dim light because of the small holes in the eyes, nose, and mouth.

When he saw the look of the hand that grabbed him, a new fear welled up in his body. There are five fingers, but each finger is covered with long, spiral-shaped sutured scar tissue, which, although difficult to make out in the dark, is the color of a bruise. The arms are worse, from black to frost white, gray and rotten purple in the middle. Each piece of color on the arm looks like it's sewn onto the previous one, and although they're similarly proportioned, Jacob thinks they might look like they belong to many different people.

Hesquel's torso and shoulders are covered by something that resembles a sleeveless poncho, although it is made of leather material. The fabric, which is also sewn and comes in a variety of shades, seems to have been created using a similar method to his arm.

Oddly enough, to Jacob, he smelled like a field of flowers. It was a calming scent that slowed Jacob's beating heart and dispelled goosebumps in his body.

"Healthy." The masked monster giggled.

With an almost affectionate thoughtfulness, Jacob was gently lifted to his feet and turned to face the darkness and the cat's eyes.

"It's finally here." The voice spoke, exhaling in a puff, and the air was filled with particles.

A shriveled hand reached out of the darkness into the faint light of Jacob's body. It has seven fingers, two of which are thumbs, and appears to be completely devoid of flesh.

"Come here, my child, let me see you."

Jacob didn't understand the words, but he obeyed blindly, and he heard the splash of black water under his little shoes, and small droplets of water splashed onto his calves, where his shorts were cut off. The light of the fungus seemed to follow him with a faint light, and the pleasant floral fragrance left him.

When Jacob reached the big hand with many fingers, his nose was filled with the greasy and exciting smell of death and decay. When he sees the monster hiding in the darkness, vomit and bile gush up his throat. He screamed, and four mummy-like arms, each with seven fingers, grabbed him and lifted him closer.

As his frightened screams echoed across the walls of the room, the four-armed mummy monster said in a comforting but unpleasant voice, "You can call me grandpa."

The next seven years under my grandfather were cruel and hateful, and every new lesson under the butcher took away a little bit of Jacob's humanity.

Grandfather tells him that he was called from another world to be his apprentice so that his knowledge and laboratory would not be lost when he finally died. Since Heskeel had always been Jacob's shadow, Jacob had no choice in this matter, so from the age of seven he was taught how to perform his grandfather's carnal art to create specially created creatures for servitude, menial labor, and even combat.

Grandfather first taught him how to dissect a creature found in their private kingdom: the sewers of the metropolis known as the Garden of Helms. These creatures range from the smallest creatures like rats, to child-sized abominations that grandfathers had previously experimented with, and finally homeless and outcasts who have been driven out of the streets of the metropolis and forced to live at the top of complex and multi-layered sewer pipes.

Jacob's first successful creation was when he was 11 years old, when he was called "the rat king" by his grandfather. This is a mixture of three rats that have been specifically singled out for their cannibalistic tendencies, and their flesh combines to create a human with three independently functioning brains in an enlarged skull. It had four front legs and three tails, and quickly ate up the nearby lair, just outside the lowest level of the sewers where Grandpa's chamber and laboratory were located. However, the Rat King turns out to be very unstable and ferocious, and despite the grandfather's insistence that the relationship is perfect, they eventually let him roam the canals freely, as it escaped the fence twice and the grandfather wanted Jacob to do a new project.

Shortly after his first success, he was forced to try the roaming abominations, but each time he tried to create something new from them, it seemed to fail. Although the grandfather was upset, he said that there was little that could be accomplished from the contaminated samples.

Occasionally, he was also sent to hunt other creations and structures with White and some of his grandfather. Their targets are usually monsters that are too powerful to roam, but too unstable to control, but they have also been tasked with exterminating a subhuman species that their grandfather allowed to breed.

In addition to learning anatomy and how best to use a knife when dissecting or disassembling organic materials, Jacob also learned ancient magic, such as those that controlled blood and flesh, or those that summoned a drop of power from an external creature.

When he was thirteen years old, he met the first human in this new world. Heskeel captures a homeless man who lives in the upper sewers, and Grandpa supervises Jacob to vivisect the man. Despite the fact that he did every technique he taught perfectly, before the operation was completed, the homeless man died of traumatic shock.

Five other abandoned people died in a similar manner until Jacob succeeded in vivisecting a living person and reassembling a living one. Grandfather praised him once again and announced that Jacob was finally ready to start practicing in earnest.

Heskeel turned 14 a few months ago when he escorted him out of the sewers and into the slums of Helmsgaten. With no food, no tools, and not even money, the grandfather wanted Jacob to set up a laboratory in the metropolis with the goal of creating a creature like Heskel. To ensure Jacob's safety, the ship was also given to Jacob as his rescue pod.

Heskell was the closest Jacob knew to a partner and friend, and in a way, he even thought he was a bit like his father. His real parents, and the memory of them, were only a fog in his memory, for all his formative years had been spent under the observation of Heskeel, who was practicing his grandfather's fleshy skills.

White, despite his rough appearance, was one of his grandfather's greatest creations. He was created from the corpses of seven different people, with a docile temperament, superhuman strength, and quiet intelligence. Jacob had never seen what kind of face was beneath Heskel's serene mask, but his curiosity didn't compel him to discover it. Some things still don't know as well. However, from their long time together, he knew that White never ate, never slept, and was not tired. He is more of a robot than a person, although Jacob doesn't think so, and his grandfather doesn't think so, and he and White have more in common than his "grandson".

Jacob and Heskeel trudged out of a large outlet in the upper sewers and waded through knee-deep silt and sewage. The buildings around the Filthy River are four stories high, and although Jacob has lived secretly in the depths of the metropolis for seven years, the scene brings back memories of his childhood before he was summoned by his grandfather. However, in his adolescent mind, it became clear to him that the world was very different from the one he was born in.

Jacob emerges from the river of sewage with a tall White shadow, his skin-sewn pants free from everything that tries to stick to them. Heskel wore only a sleeveless leather poncho, so the dirt stuck to his legs, though the perpetual scent of flowers on his body masked the stench.

Around them, people weave through the streets and narrow alleys with a strange aimless wandering fetish. There are only a handful of people who don't look like they bathe in this filthy river very often. Even rarer are those who even seem to notice their own passing.

"Contaminated samples." Jacob muttered in disgust. It is almost impossible for these creatures to be elevated to higher life forms, as they do not seem to be alive enough to survive under his sword. He had learned this well as he had studied the vagabonds in the sewers, but he was astonished to find that the vagabonds seemed to be much stronger than those who lived above them.

Heskeil, probably noticing Jacob's frustration at having to deal with such a bad sample, snorted and said, "Slum: polluted." Upstream search. ”

One rare suggestion from Heskel caught Jacob off guard, and he hesitated for a moment before stepping onto a gloomy stone bridge that spanned the slum's squalid river. Following the river's path upstream, he saw a completely different metropolis in the distance. It's as vibrant as the slum of slums. Although he couldn't see the people here, it seemed certain that they would have more energetic souls.

Jacob breathed a sigh of relief because there was still hope for his start-up career.

"Thank you, Heskel. Let's find someone more worthy of my sword. ”

A few hours later, the sun had set, and Jacob came to a wide stretch of the river, where there was a bridge, and the men on the bridge, dressed in leather and chain mail, were armed with swords, blocking the access to the metropolis outside the ghetto.

His eyes had long since adapted to the darkness of the gutter, and he didn't need a flashlight to see his surroundings, but the guards didn't seem like him, as many of them gasped in surprise as soon as he appeared under their flashlights.

He didn't have enough self-knowledge to realize that it wasn't his sudden appearance that caused them to panic, but his bruised hooded apron, pants, boots, and gloves. Of course, the red incense cover that his grandfather had given him covered the lower part of his face, and two intake cylinders were inserted diagonally underneath it, and it did not help him to expel his condensed breath at the rhythm of his breathing.

"Stop. . ! One of them commanded uncertainly.

It took Jacob a second to memorize the different languages spoken by Grandpa and Heskeel, but he was well educated enough to grasp its limited complexity.

"Don't stop me," he replied.

The guards, five in all, exchanged glances, and the leader drew his sword from its sheath. The rest followed his example.

Jacob had already fought off several abominable monsters and vagabonds in the sewers, and while his enemies were better armed, he was no stranger to the situation. However, it doesn't matter.

“Heskel.”

The Daredevil emerged from the darkness, eliciting frightened gasps from the guards, who seemed to be unaware of his presence until then. To their credit, they summoned up their courage, raised their blades, and rushed towards the towering figure.

Compared to the guards, Huskel was a muscular giant, as he was almost two heads taller than them. He smashed the lead guard to pieces in the head with a single punch, and then blocked a knife with his left forearm, the blade not digging deep. He grabbed the attacker by the neck, simply twisted it, then removed the blade from his forearm and sliced the third and fourth with terrible force, cutting them into pieces.

"Destroy the last one, but let him live!" Jacob quickly ordered, and Heskel prevented himself from decapitating the remaining guards, instead lowering his sword, grabbing his arm, and crushing the bones with his hands. The guard let out a sobbing of pain, but Huskell wasn't done yet, grabbing the man's legs, knocking him upside down on the ground, and twisting his ankles so he couldn't escape. By this time, the guard had passed out in pain, and White knew that he could not escape, so he put him on the ground.

Jacob pointed to the two men who had been cut into pieces and said, "Throw these two into the river and we'll bring the rest."

Jakob made a stopper out of cloth owned by the guards and shoved it into the captive's mouth so that his screams would not attract too much attention.

It took a while for Heskel to take the two bodies and their captives to an abandoned shed in a residential area on the other side of the Slum Gate Bridge.

When the captured guards woke up, he whimpered in horror as Jacob carved on his dead friends, plucking their skin and organs.

"Don't be afraid," Jacob said in a man's language, "I'll make you well." ”