The integration of the Delta galaxy may have provided opportunity and excitement to some, but for others it led to nothing but danger and despair.

The earth settlement of Kingston was once a peaceful island sanctuary, free from the worries and tribulations of modern human life. The people of Kingston lived simple lives, they were hunters and gatherers, and the few tribes of the island lived harmoniously with one another. The island was a tropical paradise, with an abundance of natural resources and unique animals. Kingston was one of few remaining examples of a thriving group of uncontacted peoples amongst an otherwise modern human society of earth. That was until when a large criminal organisation discovered the island, pillaged its resources and enslaved its people for their own benefit, whilst the rest of the world went on living their normal lives, oblivious to the atrocities being carried out under their noses.

The islanders had greater numbers and fought back vigorously at first, utilising their basic hunting spears and bows as weapons. But the raiders had guns and technology leagues beyond what the Kingston locals had access to. Like the Spanish conquest of America centuries earlier, they islanders were doomed from the very start. It took a matter of days for the tribes of Kingston to be completely overrun, and before long the invaders had taken full control of the island. From that day on the islanders became slaves to their new rulers. Some of the native women chose to lay with the invaders in hopes for a better life for themselves and their children, but most of them were either killed or enslaved. The men did not have access to option one, and instead were culled, with the remainder kept alive for labour. For thirty years this cycle continued, stories of the old way of life still existed but seemed like more of a dream to the new generation of Kingston natives.

Knob was born a slave, to a mother who already had three mouths to feed and could barely provide for her existing family as it was. His mother worked as a cook in one of the criminal barracks, preparing food for the growing militia. His father worked in the ore mine, like many of the men, and was hardly at home. Knob was much younger than his siblings, with them all being between the ages of four and twelve at the time of his birth. Knob was not a planned child, and he was often the cause of many arguments between his parents. His father had wanted his mother to abort the pregnancy for fear of not being able to support the family, a fact that he did not hide from Knob. Under the criminals’ rule, a couple was granted the same weekly rations which they had to make do with regardless of the size of the family. Knob’s mother had refused to terminate the pregnancy, always arguing that she could secure more food from her work to ensure they would all eat sufficiently. However, her plan did not come to fruition, more often than not she was caught stealing food and punished with reduced rations, putting further pressure on the already struggling family. Tensions continued to rise between his parents, anger rose from his siblings, and all this angst was eventually directed towards the young Knob.

“Mummy why are we always hungry?” asked a six-year-old Knob whilst licking the bottom of his empty food bowl.

His mother looked down at her fourth child with bloodshot, tired eyes.

“There’s a lot of us to try and feed since you came along little one,” his mother sighed as she forced a smile.

Knob smiled back, he longed to see his mother happy, it was something he rarely got to experience.

“We’re hungry because you eat the food that was meant to be ours,” his oldest brother Lester grumbled as he walked in, his face weary.

Lester had just returned from the mines where he had worked for the past few weeks since turning eighteen.

“You’ve been nothing but a parasite on the back of this family, no one was hungry until you came along,” Lester seethed.

Tears welled in Knob’s eyes as he looked to his mother for support, but she remained silent.

At the age of twelve Barry’s father died, or at least that’s what his family assumed. There was no announcement or message, he just failed to return home one week. After a few more weeks with no sign of the man, it was decided that he must have perished. One might have thought that this would have allowed more food to be spread between the family, especially since Lester had long since moved out by then. Sadly, that wasn’t the case. With only one working age adult in the household the rations were effectively cut in half. Knob was a small child for his age, and unsurprisingly thin from lack of nutrition. His eyes were permanently sunken, whilst his bony figure and pale skin gave him a ghostly appearance. As his mother was often at work, his second oldest brother Polo and sister Fresca had to care for him. What this usually involved was his two siblings immediately heading out to see their friends and leaving the young Knob at home alone without a second thought. Knob spent most of his days like this, alone in his derelict hut home, entertaining himself by playing with a collection of sticks and rocks.

“Look at your brother playing with rocks, he truly is as dumb as a duck isn’t he!” laughed one of Polo’s friends as they entered the home.

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Polo just nodded in reply as he and his friends walked through to the other side of the room, kicking Knob’s rock pile over as they passed. Knob lowered his head and hid his tears as he started gathering up his rocks again.

At the age of eighteen Knob was finally conscripted to work in the mines like his father had once done, and as his brothers currently did. On his first day on the job Knob was positioned right beside Lester, who appeared to not even recognise him.

“Lester, is that you?” Knob asked weakly as he attempted to heave a large pickaxe overhead but failed miserably.

The much larger and stronger Lester momentarily paused what he was doing to look down at the scrawny figure of Knob.

“Knobhead, well I’ll be damned, you’re still alive?” Lester smirked as he returned to his mining, swinging the pickaxe with ease.

“It’s been a long time, are you well?” Knob mumbled, more interested in seeing his brother than in the task in front of him.

“You best return to your work Knobhead, or you’ll face punishment” Lester warned whilst continuing his task.

As if on cue, a sharp voice with a thick accent cut through the mine as a supervising guard was alerted to the men’s conversation.

“What do we have here? There seems to be a lot of chat and not much work going on,” chastised the guard as he walked closer to the brothers, “Stand up straight and face me worms.”

Knob suddenly felt the wind exit his lungs as the guard’s fist slammed into his ribs. He dropped his pickaxe in the process, and he hunched over in pain.

“Still such an idiot,” grimaced Lester as he too received a fist to the side.

“I suggest, that the two of you focus less on talking and more on digging, unless you want to die?” threatened the guard as he finally released the men.

“I’m sorry,” whispered Knob as he turned around to pick up his pickaxe once more.

Lester refused to make eye contact with Knob as he too returned to his mining. No words were needed as Knob could feel the fury building within his brother. After a few minutes of aggressive mining Lester finally exploded in rage as he spun around and began to swing his pickaxe towards Knob.

“You ruined our family!” Lester shouted as he attacked, but just as he was about to end Knob’s sad life, Lester’s body froze once more, and his eyes went wide.

“I warned you filthy peasant, but clearly you are too dumb to follow even the simplest of rules, oh well,” the guard from before snickered as he fired a bullet directly at Lester’s chest.

Knob watched on in helpless horror as his older brother crumpled to the floor. Knob didn’t make a sound as his brother’s lifeless body lay on the dirt in front of him, with a pool of blood seeping out around him to form a deathly red outline around his body.

“Back to work worm,” ordered the guard, as he turned and walked away.

The next few weeks Knob spent his time silently working in the mines. His days were long, and his skill with the pickaxe did not improve despite his best efforts. He was just too weak to effectively utilise the item. He received many punishments for his poor results, but he always bit his lip. The guards considered him so weak, worthless, and close to death that they did not bother him much. His mother had turned to alcohol that she’d obtained from her job for comfort in the wake of his brother’s death and had stopped acknowledging Knob’s existence. Additionally, neither of his remaining siblings were living at home anymore, leaving Knob truly alone. Knob’s life revolved around working in the mines, going home to sleep and eat what he could, before repeating the process the next day. This pattern continued for some time, until one day Knob woke up not on his straw bed, but on a concrete floor, in a strange room with a demon.

Knob had always prayed for a way out of his old life. But when the change occurred, he was not flooded with elation like one might expect. He was exhausted both physically and mentally. He was damaged. He was broken. He barely listened to what the demon helper had explained to him and the whole experienced seemed like a fog in his head. He did remember choosing the lucky dip item, he’d figured his old life was so unfortunate that surely he was due for something good to happen. He’d received a magical staff that the demon seemed impressed with but Knob didn’t understand why. His light affinity was supposedly rare too, which his demon had been quite excited about. Having only ever been someone at the bottom of the food chain, Knob decided to invest most of his stat points into manipulation, figuring he might as well experience the feeling of being in control for once in his life before he died. With his high manipulation stat and light affinity, he developed the ability to change the minds of his opponents, diverting their attention from him to something else, provided he could touch them with his special light tendrils. It felt good to be in control, to have power, something that he had never experienced for even a second in his life up until that point. Knob did find that his ability had quite a high mana cost, meaning any free points not invested into manipulation were instead placed into mana.

Knob’s unique ability had helped him to survive the first few days of the training grounds. Through trial and error, he gradually honed his skill, along with experimenting with how it could be utilised to for different purposes. At first, he simply used his tendrils to alter the beasts’ thoughts enough for them to cease their attack and flee the encounter. Eventually, his control grew to such a degree that he could sway the creatures to turn on their fellow beasts and attack. Surprisingly, he received a fair amount of experience from these tactics and initially, levelling up was coming quick and fast. However, things soon took a sharp left turn as progress slowed dramatically. The tendrils were extremely effective once they locked on to their target, but they were not fast, and it was becoming more and more difficult to latch onto the increasingly powerful and swift beasts he encountered. This had led to some precarious situations where Knob had come close to death more than once.

On one occasion he was forced to run away from a vicious slug beast, and in his haste, he had stumbled into a large swampy region of forest beset with reeds. Panic set in as he awkwardly waded through the bog at a frustratingly slow pace, constantly turning his head to look back at the rapidly approaching slug that seemed to have no problem manoeuvring through the thick water. In a last-ditch effort Knob launched forward another tendril of light which disappeared under the surface of the water. Surprisingly, Knob found he could feel the path of the tendrils without the need to see their path, like an in-built tracking system in his mind. The muddy water turned out to be a blessing in disguise as the vicious slug was struck by a tendril, unable to see it approaching as it blended into the water and reeds. Knob sent out further tendrils, enwrapping the beast, before infiltrating its mind and forcing it to turn and start chewing its own tail. Knob watched on, partly impressed, and partly horrified with his own abilities as the slug slowly ate itself to death.

From that point on things once again started going reasonably well for Knob. For the first time in his life, he was in control of his own domain, and he felt like he had some real power. He was the unrivalled king of the swamp, having eliminated all comers. That was until a girl carrying some sort of ape and a male human waddled into his territory. He had lived his life enslaved by people like this man. His own brother had tried to kill him, and his family had more or less disowned him from a young age. He was sure that this man and his weird looking partner and monkey would not hesitate to put him down. Despite the risk, Knob knew that if he didn’t strike first, then this group would surely kill him. So, strike first he did.