Cykopath- Birth

by Luca Braña

  “I should try to appeal to the director board again, maybe we can still save the company,” Mr. Whale whispered to himself as he walked towards the door that led out from the media room he was in, reaching out to open it.

  He blinked, as instead of the corridor that lead to other parts of the building, what awaited him on the other side was… Space. Stars floated past the doorway and an eternal nothingness seemed to stretch out before him.

  The businessman gulped, his stomach dropped to his feet, fear enveloping his heart. Slowly closing the door, he spun around, expecting to find someone.

  The room appeared empty…

  “You and I are going to have a few words, face to face…” an ominous voice sounded from all around him. He looked about. He recognized that voice…

  Then his knees turned into jelly as an overwhelming pressure enclosed around him, he could feel his heart beating dangerously fast, the adrenaline suddenly running through his body, making everything seem clearer than it was…

  Then, the force moved his gaze upwards… The ceiling had been replaced with a vast, white sky with rays of light coming through the clouds. If he wasn’t being held captive by the Creator, it would be an angelic scene. He could feel his body wanting to break down, wanting to die from the pressure, but something prevented that.

  A shadowed figure was descending from the eternal sky, but somehow, he could make out the distinct shape of their universe’s Creator.

  With enormous effort, the terrified and whimpering man turned around and ran.

  This was the end.

  4

  EIGHT YEARS LATER

  “We’ve just received an urgent news feed; it appears that the Neon Lunatics have struck again! Our reporters are arriving at the scene now!” the posh news anchor declared on-screen before it changed to show another location. A massive building in the military section of a Blue Faction country was on fire.

  “As you can see behind me, a fire rages at the military outpost at the edge of the city! Oh, Luni, there are dead bodies everywhere, which are being removed by the medical staff! Blue Faction soldiers and military members are among the dead! Police are at the scene and army reinforcement is here to increase security!” She paused as more information was given to her. Her eyes widened, and she looked at the camera incredulously before shaking her head.

  “We just received more information from the police investigators at the scene! It appears that a human trafficking ring had been underway in the destroyed building! Crime scene investigators reported that victims had been found in a nearby warehouse in a terrible state. The government is being—Hey, can I have a moment?” the reporter interrupted as she spotted a grim police officer emerging from the flaming outpost.

  “Good afternoon, officer. We just received word about the operation inside this building, do you have any other information?” The reporter put her microphone in front of the wary officer.

  “The situation is under control. Investigation on the exact nature of this incident is still underway, so at the moment, we have no comment,” the officer spoke in a formal tone, watching as the reporter nodded.

  “What about the supposed involvement of the Neon Lunatics? Do you believe they had anything to do with this?” the reporter pressed.

  “There is a possibility that the Neon Lunatics’ attack was a result of the trafficking ring, but we still can’t be sure. However, I would like to remind everyone that they, especially their leaders, are extremely dangerous. They have been involved in several deaths this year. Any information that leads to their capture will be rewarded.” The officer said with a hard voice. The reporter shakily nodded at the woman’s intense stare, before she stepped back to allow the policewoman to go back to her job.

  “As you can see, the situation is still under investigation, but the possibly of the two incidents being connected still hasn’t been disca—” The screen went black as it was turned off, the viewer letting out an audible click of annoyance at the report he had just watched.

  “Tsk, always like this. I get rid of the rotten part of their forces, they still treat me like scum,” the mocking voice of a teen said. He was wearing a simple white shirt, blue shorts, and a pout on his face from the news report. Would it hurt them to be a little more thankful?

  “Well, it’s not like we are exactly tree-hugging super heroes, dear friend,” the serene voice of Magy came out from behind him, causing the pouting boy to look at her. Magy had grown well those past few years, her hair in the same pig-tailed style but much longer now and healthier.

  “Hey, praising good deeds is not a crime,” he said, his pout deepening, causing his best friend to giggle at his childishness.

  “Too bad our reputation as criminals is much greater than ours as good doers, superheroes don’t go around invading mansions and killing almost everyone inside.” Magy made her way towards a bed, sitting herself next to him.

  “That’s exactly it! Almost everyone! We left plenty of innocent people alive!” He sighed.

  “Tomorrow… We should take a day off tomorrow. No investigations into possible targets, no assassinations, no jobs. Let us just… Take some time off,” Cyko whispered as he thought about what day it would be tomorrow.

  The anniversary of their freedom… and the eighth anniversary of Tela's death.

  “Yeah… We should do that…” Magy agreed, following behind him as he moved to look out of their hotel room's window.

  Cyko pulled out his smartphone, smiling at the background photo of him and his family at Starry’s birthday party last month. He flipped through some notifications before pausing at a message.

  “I think I know what we’re doing today.”

  5

  “There is a good reason I called you here today, Cyko,” the redhead in front of him declared, the seriousness in his voice tangible to everyone in the room.

  He placed a small glass sphere on the wooden table. The edges of the sphere seemed to be covered in darkness, filling Cyko with uneasiness.

  “This is a small magical construct I made; it represents our world. As you can see, some sort of corruption has made its way here.” Reddox flipped on the television.

  “Yesterday, all Neon Countries entered a state of war against each other after months of tension, breaking centuries of peace for the first time…” the reporter spoke robotically, “Several countries around the world, big and small, have either gone silent or began warring with their neighbors. Wild creatures have gone berserk. The estimated loss of life so far borders on hundreds of thousands, and future estimates put them in the millions if this continues,” she explained before dropping her head, no longer bothering to keep up professionalism.

  “… The end of the world is near, the end of the world is near… She will be the end of us all…” the journalist murmured, her words of despair loud enough for everyone to hear, yet the camera didn’t cut away.

  “The world will end, the apocalypse is here, everything will end…” she said in a monotone voice before bringing her head back up and glaring at the camera with wild, bloodshot eyes. A large, mad grin spread across her face as she brought her right hand up to reveal a purple handgun. She laughed madly as the sound of people screaming in the background became louder. She pointed the gun at the camera and fired, causing the stream to be interrupted.

  “Wow, things are really getting out of hand over there,” Cyko said in a concerned voice.

  “Wait, is this stream live? Can you go back and rewind it a bit, Magy?” Reddox asked with a slight hesitation in his voice.

  “Uh, sure. Did you see something strange?” Magy questioned as she played with the remote control for the television.

  “Maybe… okay pause it right…. NOW!” Reddox shouted.

  He stepped in front of the television set, pointing at the image of a boy in the background on the screen. “Look familiar?”

  “W-what do you mean? Who is that??” Magy asked.

  “Take a closer look, I think we might have ano
ther problem on our hands besides this corruption situation,” Reddox said warily to the others.

  Cyko gritted his teeth as he stared at the image of the boy on the television. He had blue hair, markings on his face, and was wearing the same exact uniform that they were given at their former place of confinement. There was no mistaking the person that was on the screen.

  Lifting his head, he looked at his friends, before grinning wildly.

  “We’ll find this clone and whoever is behind this… And kill them all!”

 

  AFTERWORD

  Hello, everyone! Thank you so much for reading Lunime’s first published light novel! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. To all of our devoted fans who picked up this story, we truly appreciate your support and this book would not be possible without you! For those of you who are just getting to know us, welcome to the world of Gacha games. My name is Lucas, but I am more widely known as Luni. I’ll talk more about myself later, but first we need to acknowledge the amazing individual that made this novel come to life.

  If you have been following Lunime from the beginning, you probably know the protagonist in this story, Cykopath, is one of the most popular characters in our games. Honestly, I am quite jealous of his fame; Creator Luni was supposed to be the most beloved blue-haired character! Anyway, as an avid manga reader, I wanted to publish a novel about the origin story of this famous, psychopathic killer. I took a few days off from coding games and brainstormed a brief plot of what I envisioned would happen in this story, and then I opened a blank document and settled in to type out a novel! But there was one small problem…

  As it turns out, writing a feature-length light novel is not as easy as I thought! It involves a great deal of time and effort, and while I wanted to make this dream of mine a reality, I just didn’t have enough devotion it needed to make it happen. I dragged Lunime’s first potential light novel into the Recycle Bin on my desktop and went back to coding games. A few days later, I received an e-mail from a fan telling us how much they enjoyed playing Gacha Memories, a visual novel app we had recently released. It was then that a marvelous idea popped into my head! Although it is stated in the credits section of the game, many people do not know the story in Gacha Memories was written by a fan from Brazil, known as Luca Braña!

  I had contacted Luca after reading his captivating fan fictions he posted on our website, and he was very excited to write the narrative behind our first visual novel. After reading the praise from this fan about his writing, it was obvious what I had to do! I reached out to Luca again and asked him if he would be interested in reviving my failed attempt at a light novel, and we are so lucky that he accepted! Nicknamed “The Insane Writer,” Luca worked tirelessly for months on this project, despite being a busy college student. I am forever grateful for all the effort he put forth into this endeavor, and in my opinion, he did an extraordinary job of capturing the essence of Cykopath and the story as a whole. Please extend your praise and gratitude towards him if you catch him around on our various social media communities!

  Taking a few steps back, let’s discuss how Lunime was created and what our plans for the future hold! During my years in college, I originally planned on becoming an animator and had no intention of designing games. After graduating, I found myself addicted to a bunch of popular mobile Gacha games, but to succeed at these apps, you had to spend a ridiculous amount of money! This was a major turn off for me, especially being a poor graduate who should have been saving money for more important necessities (like, a reliable car for example) rather than spending it on virtual items. As I hunted for animation jobs, I thought to myself, why don’t I create my own Gacha games, ones that don’t require you to pay to win? I had some previous game design knowledge, although it took a few years of studying to create the games we are releasing today.

  You might wonder how I came up with the name Lunime for my company, and it actually is just a combination of two words. The first part incorporates my first name, Lucas. The second half comes from the word ‘anime,’ because as many of you already know, the graphics from our games are based on the common designs found in Japanese animations, also referred to as anime. So I decided to just combine Lucas and anime to get Lunime!

  Let’s talk about the apps we have released and what you can expect in the future! The very first Gacha game we made was called Anime Gacha, and it was a simple game where you could collect hundreds of different units! After this, I added RPG elements and a storyline to my next Gacha game, and thus Gacha World was created. This was our first big hit, and I am so happy that our fans enjoyed it. We released many spin-off games based on the units from this game, including titles such as Gacha Resort, Gacha Memories, and Meme Gacha! Since there were so many outfits and character designs inside the game, I thought a few fans might enjoy a dress-up app where they could use the fashion within Gacha World to create their own characters. Soon Gacha Studio was created, and it turns out that a lot more people liked this than we anticipated! With over five million downloads, it is still our most popular game! I decided to make other types of dress-up games with different body templates, such as Pocket Chibi, Gacha Life, and Gachaverse—the sequel to Gacha World! It amazes me to see all the amazing videos, fan-art, and comics that our fans make using these games! While it might seem cliché, I firmly believe our fans are the best in the world!

  As for the future, there is no end in sight for Lunime and you can expect us to release many more games! While we have focused on RPG and Gacha-based apps, I have had the recent urge to delve into other genres, so maybe you will see a very different type of game in your app store one day!

  In regard to Cyko and his future—that all depends on you! We really enjoyed putting this light novel together and would love to release a sequel! With enough support, I am sure we will get to see what happens to Cyko and his friends next! I want to thank our fans around the world one last time, because without you, none of this would be possible! See you soon!

  —Luni

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