Somewhere in the depths of an old forest, a brand new existence became conscious that it had just gained consciousness. Lost in its own mind, this existence attempted to make sense of all the information that was trying to drown him. It was flooded in knowledge but could not remember having ever learned anything. In fact, it was very sure that before this moment, there had been nothing.

More knowledge was being poured in its mind without pause, as if it would never stop. It first knew that he was a man, then, how to eat, how to walk, how to hold things between his fingers, then, the knowledge of even possessing fingers, followed by how to breathe. Realizing suddenly that he needed to breath in order to live, he took a deep gasping breath. Luckily, he possessed a body that was able to breath.

"It's working!" A deep voice exclaimed nearby.

"Of course it's working, why would it not work?" Answered a second sharper voice.

A brief moment, which he felt dragged on for an eternity, passed by. In that moment, he vainly tried to make sense of all the information appearing in his mind and to organize it.

His biggest problem was that the information wasn't given to him in a logical way. For example, the concept of logic itself came to him before knowing how to breathe. His other worry was that he didn't know if all that knowledge would be lost to him forever if he didn't catch it immediately as it appeared in his mind. This forced him to try and analyse each little bit of knowledge, throttling it's unstoppable flow as more and more piled on to the rest.

There was too much of it, quickly, he felt crushed by it and unable to resist any longer, he was swept by the torrential flow. In the end, he could only let himself be thrown in confusion and madness by the storm raging in his own mind.

After a long while of being unable to form any coherent thoughts of his own, his mind started to calm down once again, there was no more knowledge left to invade him.

He felt it was extraordinary. Mere moments ago, he didn't even exist and now, he was full of knowledge. At least enough to formulate such a thought.

He took a long time to regain the total control of his mind. He felt relieved that none of this precious knowledge had been lost, he probably needed it after all.

Once it was done, he opened his eyes to discover the world around him for the very first time. He was laying on his back in a small clearing. Around him, four beings were gathered and were observing him with great attention. There were three men and a women.

The first was a burly man whose facial traits were extraordinarily pronounced. His black hair was long and matted, his beard larger than his face and his smile seemed franc and amicable. He wore an armor sparkling like a thousand fire and dozens of sharp objects of all kinds dangled from everywhere on him. He radiated a noble and proud air as his piercing gaze observed him from above his massive crossed arms.

On his left, a woman wearing a long flowing red dress was fixing him with the same intensity. Her blonde hair were so long that they should have been sprawled on the ground but they seemed to refuse to do so on their own accord. They were lightly floating just above the blades of grass. There was no words to describe her other than beauty. Her slender arms were bringing her hands, seemingly even gentler and thin, to rest upon her sublime face, giving her a pensive yet breathtaking look.

The next man possessed a beard like the first, his, was only covering the tip of his chin to exaggerate its sharpness. He seemed much older than the first two and wore long robes on which the sleeves were so loose that they reached his knees even if he kept both of his arms in front of him. This one seemed serious and intelligent, much more than the first two. Wisdom was written on his face with small wrinkles and his eyes reflected something astonishingly deep and powerful.

The last of the four observer was hard to describe with a word different than eccentric. He wore two different pieces of clothing, sowed together by the middle. A total of sixteen different colors were dancing on them without ever stopping in place for more than a brief moment. He possessed long bonny fingers that never stopped from rubbing against one another, as if he was really impatient. In contrast though, his face was made of an interesting masculinity and his eyes seemed made of gold.

The four of them had a joyous expression and exclaimed of triumph upon seeing him open his eyes.

"Fantastic! He is conscious. Do you understand what I am saying?" Asked the muscled man with the deep voice.

To answer, he opened his mouth for the first time in his existence.

"I think", he said. "I feel it is strange though. How do I know if I am really understanding or if I only interpreted the words at random? Maybe all the words are wrongly arranged in my mind."

"Wha...?"

The sage started laughing when he saw the confused air of his companion.

"We were supposed to create an ordinary man, not someone super smart! I don't understand even half of what he said!"

"Now now, don't embarrass yourself. He isn't that smart, only a hair's breadth above the average. It is you Strength that isn't smart enough."

"What? You want to die? Is that it!" His smile was swiftly replaced by a raging frown.

"Please, calm down." Intervened the sweet voice of the women. "This poor boy was just born right now. Instead of bickering, we should explain to him what is going on."

"Yes, alright." Grumbled the warrior.

He cast his gaze down on the newborn adult man once again and started to explain the situation in a caring manner.

"First of all, let me introduce us. All four of us are gods. I am Strength, she is Love, he is Sage and finally, this is Luck. It is us that created you for a bet."

"A bet? As in a gamble?"

The new born was curious of what kind of bet prompted them to give him life.

"Yes, answered Luck. It's a funny story. All four of us were invited together at a feast organised by emperor Mardrakon Landeater XV of the green dragon empire. It is common knowledge that we do not like him very much but we do appreciate feasts. Thus, we went there anyway and started to argue over every single thing like we usually end up doing.

Drunk on anger and alcohol, we declared that anyone would make a better emperor than him. This whole thing quickly got out of hand until a bet was thrown."

"The rules are simple." Said Love. "If the emperor dies from anything else than old age or lose his title of emperor, we win. On the other end, we do not have the right to intervene in anything aside from designating someone who will try to topple him on our behalf and bestow upon him a very limited help. Since the green dragon empire is extremely old, powerful, and stable, we will lose without a doubt if we don't do anything."

"We could chose another emperor to wage war against him and throw him down but no one would dare attack the biggest power of the continent and even if they did, they would not have the required strength to do so." Said Strength.

"Hiring an assassin is not much better, if he fails, we lose our only chance to make a move and the bet will be lost. In light of all this, we decided to create our own luck like I always say we should." Said Luck.

"Instead of choosing someone, we created our very own champion, you!" Followed Sage.

"I exist to murder an emperor?" Asked the newborn, stunned by what had been said.

"No, not exactly. We got an even better idea, you exist to take his place!"

The newborn felt much better knowing he had not been created to murder. It would have been horrible to be given morals and then immediately asked to ignore them.

"By creating a new life form to beat him, we are already stretching the rules to their maximum so we could not create you as a superior being like we wanted to. We could not even give you our blessings because it would have been too obvious. All we could do is create you slightly above the average. To make us win, you will have to work hard and rise above the masses by yourself."

"But if I don't have any advantages, how am I supposed to defeat the biggest empire? I do not even have a name!" This seemed like an impossible task to the newborn.

"You do have a name my darling" Said Love. "It's Emperor."

Emperor thought that the gods had a really bad naming sense.