Disqualified from Humanity (1)
In the end, humanity was fucked. Not the humans back on Earth, but the humans of this world I reincarnated into. At least, according to one side’s extremely biased, self-serving narrative that painted them as nothing but victims.
“Those furry bastards abused the wisdom we humans graciously shared with them and slaughtered us without mercy. My parents were devoured alive by werewolves, and my little sister was snatched by the avian tribe, then dropped from the sky to her death.”
The man who called himself my father described in gruesome detail how his family had been murdered. It was an unimaginably brutal and shocking end for humanity, but even in my four-year-old body, my mind was that of a full-grown adult. I could easily piece together the real history the grown-ups were trying to hide.
So that’s how it is. Just a bunch of hypocritical bullshit.
Humanity had been nothing but trash. There wasn’t a shred of human decency to be found. They had treated the beastmen like literal beasts, livestock, and slaves until the Bremen Revolution finally bit them in the ass.
The deaths of the family my so-called father mourned? The beastmen had simply returned the favor on a racial scale. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth—only this time it was entire species paying the price.
Roughly a hundred years had passed since the first Bremen Revolution—or what humans called a “rebellion.” In that time, humanity had been completely overwhelmed. They lost the entire continent to the beastmen.
The surviving humans had barely managed to carve out a existence on a tiny island, living in conditions barely above the Stone Age. There were probably other human settlements elsewhere, but I had no way of knowing. I was born in a backwater tribal village where even paper was so rare that writing a proper letter was impossible.
“Wake up, Neon! You must become strong! Strong enough to fight the tigers! Strong enough to defeat bears with your bare fists!”
I wanted to scream, What kind of insane bullshit is that? But after a hundred years of getting their asses handed to them by the beastmen, these people had turned revenge into their entire reason for living.
Reclaim the continent. Restore civilization. Take back humanity’s stolen glory.
The adults beat that mantra into us with both words and fists. I had no choice but to participate in their brutal training.
In a world ruled by beastmen, I wondered if there was something like mana here. Maybe that could give humans a fighting chance?
“Awaken your mana, Neon! If you’re truly my son, you can definitely do it!”
“Mother. Don’t the beastmen have mana?”
“Those wicked beastmen received mana directly from the apex of all beasts—the Dragon!”
“Ah.”
“They use mana by embedding magic stones into their bodies! But we humans cannot do that. We must accumulate mana in our hearts and defeat them with the power of nature itself!”
“Mom.”
“Yes?”
“Never mind.”
No wonder humanity got absolutely wrecked. The Dragon had taken the beastmen’s side, and the humans of a hundred years ago never stood a chance. The fact that a few stubborn survivors had managed to eke out an existence on this tiny island with barely a hundred people felt like a miracle in itself.
“Children, when I was your age…”
The old people who looked like they could drop dead any second spoke dreamily of humanity’s past glory—brick houses instead of huts, thick castle walls, and advanced civilization.
“Get up! If we can’t even win here, how do you expect to defeat the beasts?! If you don’t become strong, humanity will go extinct!”
The adults, blinded by their racial mission, forced the children into endless combat training except for the few hours they were allowed to sleep.
“I will become humanity’s savior! Neon, no matter how much of a warrior’s son you are, you’ll never beat me!”
“Why don’t you just become the hero yourself, Hector?”
“What?! You—how can someone like you, one of the last five heroes destined to save humanity, say something so treacherous?! That’s betrayal of the entire human race!”
The children around my physical age had “beast-slaying spirit” drilled into them before they could even learn basic morality. They spent every day breaking their bodies in training.
Make Human Great Again.
Exactly. Make humanity great again.
On that tiny island, there were only two real choices if you wanted to survive: swim away, build a raft, and escape—or embrace that insane “Human Again” mentality and grow up to become a “Kill All The Beasts” maniac.
—You must not fight the beastmen! We should hold our breath, hide our identities, and live quietly!
Of course, there were pacifists too.
—You traitor to humanity! Slave of the beasts!
—That’s not what I—
—Burn the traitor!
—N-no, aaaaahhh!!
There had been some. Then they weren’t there anymore. At least they didn’t eat them—they burned them to a crisp until only white ash remained.
Watching that, I sometimes thought: What if I had been born as one of the beasts that rule this world instead? Like those birds flying through the sky.
When my friend back on Earth had suggested we try on dog fursuits, if I had just picked one at random, maybe the beast god in charge of reincarnation would have taken pity on my sincerity and reincarnated me as a dog beastman.
“...Huh?”
Watching the birds soaring over the sandy beach, five-year-old me suddenly realized something. Those wings were nothing like the wings of ordinary seagulls or migratory birds. Their flight patterns were completely different from anything I had learned in my previous life.
“Oh, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
Humanity had survived. On a tiny island, stuck in a near-Stone Age civilization. Stripped of every bit of technology and culture they once possessed by the beastmen.
“Humanity is so fucking doomed.”
Five years after my reincarnation, I finally became aware of my status as an endangered species.
Fifteen years passed.
“Whoa, Neon! What is this thing?! It’s incredible!!”
“H-hmph! Just because you made a few tools doesn’t mean you get to act like our leader. Don’t get ahead of yourself!”
The island had somehow progressed from the Stone Age to something resembling the Bronze Age. The reason? Me.
I had only created tools to make my own life easier. I didn’t dare spout anything about laws, ethics, or modern knowledge—doing so would probably get my neck snapped by those giant eagles patrolling the skies. So I pretended to have simply recreated some archaic techniques.
“Leader. What are you doing?”
“Breathing.”
Now twenty years old, I had become the de facto next-generation leader of the roughly seventy humans left on the island.
“Neon. You are the brother I acknowledge. Even though we don’t share the same father, if the chief’s son and the great warrior’s son join forces, we can definitely crush those filthy dogs! Hahaha!”
Hector, the only young warrior who had grown physically stronger than me, had no idea. He didn’t know who the real beasts were. He didn’t know his father wasn’t really his father. He didn’t even understand the concept of half-siblings.
The island was larger than it seemed. With so few people, there was plenty of space. While the children were being worked to exhaustion with training and patrols, the adults had secretly been breeding like animals in the forests, caves, and underground spaces.
Yes. Breeding.
It was the fundamental reason humanity had lost to the beastmen. No matter how hard the adult women tried to produce the next generation, the absolute limit was one healthy child per woman per year.
“Mother. You should stop giving birth now.”
“Neon. This is the duty of our generation. Even if I die in childbirth, I must bring at least one more life into this world before I go.”
“Mother…”
“Look. If I die, that’s one less person. But before I die, I will have given birth to six children.”
“......”
Even though repeated pregnancies and births destroyed their bodies, the elders had brainwashed the children born on the island that this was humanity’s sacred duty before dying off themselves.
“Leader. Shouldn’t we start breeding soon too?”
“You want to have children just so you can send them off to fight beastmen?”
“Then what other reason is there to have children?”
“Goddammit. I can’t even say it. If you want to breed, go do it with some other guy. Anyone but Hector.”
“What? Why not Hector? The strongest warrior’s child should be the strongest, right?”
“You and Hector are… haa, never mind.”
After the old generation gradually died off, the adults who no longer had anyone above them became no different from beasts off their leash. My so-called father had used “duty” as an excuse to sleep around everywhere. Thanks to that, humanity was completely screwed.
He probably didn’t know. If he had known, he would have realized that the one who doomed humanity was the previous great warrior, whose mind was completely ruled by lust, rutting around like a village mutt.
And the trap of humanity’s downfall that they had left behind was slowly tightening around me.
“Breeding is your duty, Neon!”
“Don’t we have enough people now to launch an expedition? Let’s build ships! Then we’ll shove these stone blades down the beastmen’s throats! Just like when we spear fish!”
Breeding or war. Both choices led only to disaster and despair.
The silver lining—if there was one—was that I never had to choose between them.
The misfortune was what came instead.
“Kyaaaaaah!!”
“Ugh, run!”
“Run where?! The beastmen are this strong… guh!”
The beastmen had arrived on the island.
They came on ships that looked like steel-covered cruise liners. The furry-eared humanoids snapped Hector’s spear with a single finger and captured the women who tried to flee into the sea with ropes.
The island’s residents—whoever or whatever they were—finally faced cold reality. The protection period for this endangered species had ended.
“You’re not going to fight, human?”
“There’s nothing left to protect even if I do.”
“I see. So that’s how it is.”
And then I…
“Ladies and gentlemen! Today we present the second-strongest specimen from the human herd that was under the Empire’s protection!”
Under brilliant lights. A red curtain drew back to reveal a stage with iron bars gleaming. In what was unmistakably an auction house—even to human eyes—I woke up once again.
Creatures wearing human masks but clearly anything but human filled the seats. Some had animal ears sprouting from the tops of their heads. Others had animal ears where human ears should be. Still others had long tails stretching behind them.
These beings, each wearing different human disguises, stared at me through pupils like those of predators.
“We will now begin the auction! The starting bid is a whopping one gold! One gold—!”
“Two thousand gold.”
From the middle of those beasts, a witch-like figure with purple cat ears smiled at me.
“U-um, starting at that price goes against the rules…”
“Three thousand gold.”
“No, at least let other people bid and compete properly for it to be a real auc—”
“Five thousand gold.”
“Come on, seriously! Hah, five thousand gold!! Five thousand gold has been bid! Any higher?!”
“Ten thousand gold.”
“Stop raising your own bid, damn it!!”
The cat-eared beastwoman who kept sending me looks like I was some fascinating new toy finally declared:
“Twenty thousand gold.”
“Sold! Auction closed!!”
She had a suspiciously ridiculous amount of money.