“Son, it is time for your first hunt” Kuat said to his now 16 year old son, the entire village had gathered for the coming of age ceremony where each new adult gets three hours to go out by themselves and hunt, the hunters either have to return after three hours are up, create a fire to signal their location to the rest of the village, or return before the three hours are up with their catch. To make sure no one die’s two expert hunters always hide their presence and follow the new adults.

There is a reason behind the villages extreme training, they do not do it just for fun, there are in fact extremely dangerous animals that live in the vicinity of the village and the normal training that the children do should bring their strength to the average level of the forest, but they are by no means the strongest beings on the mountain, even Damai and Salju pale in comparison to some of the monsters on the mountain, the real reason behind this hunting ceremony is to teach the young ones, who grew up in relative safety, the dangers of the world.

Damai as the village leader’s son was the first one up to the challenge and he was nervous. He had sparred a lot before and had extensive training, but this would be his first real battle, both him and creature he chose will be fighting for their LIVES and he was shaken. Kuat seeing his son’s nerves tried to calm him down and succeeded by mentioning all the training Damai had done and that it would amount to something, he told Damai that he was not helpless because he had turned his body into a weapon and a shield that would protect him. Damai steeled himself and left for the forest, he trekked through following the tracks of one of the weaker animals, when all of the sudden he heard  a very loud and very high pitched scream, he started to panic wondering what was wrong but quickly slapped himself to regain his calm. Damai ran in the direction he heard the scream and when he reached the area he saw something unexpected, he saw a group of 5 people, 3 of them were women and the other two were men, one of the women had lost consciousness and was lying to the side of the clearing, one other woman and a man were standing by her and appeared to be heavily injured while the other two were running away.

The group that had stayed were being charged by a Rockhide boar, and as the name suggests it has very tough skin, but it is also very aggressive to the point that only expert hunters were meant to hunt them solo, but at this point Damai had little choice in the matter as he needed to save the people being attacked. Damai jumped up to a height by kicking off the tree trunks and when he was high enough let himself fall towards the boar, while infusing his KI into his arms and BO staff, thanks to the increase in weight due to the gravity rings he accelerated quickly and smashed his staff down on the boars head as hard as he could. The boar was stunned by the sudden attack and was diverted from his original course, but was by no means defeated; it quickly recovered and charged Damai who was back into a stance. Damai was caught off guard by the speed the boar demonstrated and just barely dodged but he received a wound on his arm, he realized that head on he would lose from just that exchange, since if he took off the gravity rings he would gain a lot of speed but would lose the power he needed to damage the boar.

Damai came up with a plan and for the next 20 minutes he kept agitating the boar, using his tail as whip with a small amount of KI in it, getting it angrier and angrier, letting its rage consume the little intelligence the poor creature had and eventually Damai led the boar off a small cliff, the boar did not die but it did receive injuries. While the boar was stunned, Damai jumped to a large tree close by and focused all of his KI into his right fist, Damai broke the tree trunk and used his still powered up fist to position the falling tree above the boar, the tree hit and even though it was twice as thick Damai, the boar still did not die “OH FOR THE LOVE OF…..” Damai said tiredly, slightly out of breath from the large amount of KI lost. The boar was not dead but it was now heavily injured and pinned underneath the tree, then the god of wisdoms blessing kicked in and showed him that the weak point of the boar was somewhere around its underbelly, Damai watched the boar until he saw a slight dip in the boars flesh on its stomach, he figured that since this was the only noticeable thing about the area, that the dip must be the weak point. Damai’s guess paid off as he stood to the side of the boar and charged his staff with the remaining KI he had, he then thrust with all his strength at the dip and the boar’s life was instantly lost. Damai rested for a couple minutes before he realized something “OH, the injured people” and he ran off to the group he had saved.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

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The group of adventures had come to the mountain to find some rare monsters, three of the group were against it but the other 2 just kept pushing for it and since they were the strongest of the group the other’s believed they had a chance, although one, a woman called Kaya, still doubted it and often argued with the two bragger’s, if it wasn’t for her best friends going with them, she would of left the group. One of the arrogant ones led the trek up the mountain, while the other started to make sarcastic comments towards Kaya, the other two were excited to be traveling with strong people and did not notice Kaya’s annoyance.

As the group moved on they travelled a fair distance up the mountain and did not really meet any real threats, because of this the arrogant ones started to make even more sarcastic comments towards Kaya, then the male annoyance suddenly shouted “ahahahaha were strong, the monsters can tell and they stay away” in a loud voice, which startled everybody and made them lose concentration on their surroundings.  The next thing Kaya saw was a large pig like creature heading towards her friend, Kaya jumped in the way and used all of her mana and strength to perform a counter shot. The result of it was that the monster got sent back a few feet but because it had so much power Kaya was unable to negate all of the damage and was knocked unconscious just after seeing the boar charge again. Darkness enshrouded her and she thought her time was up.

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(Author note-those two jackasses will get what’s coming to them…….*evil smile* trust me)

Damai finally found the other people and attempted to talk to them but quickly realized they could not understand him and likewise he could not understand them, he pondered for a minute and then opened a small bag strapped around his waist that was mostly filled with bandages and tonics for wounds, however in a small pocket he found two necklaces holding purple crystals, the crystals were created to allow hunters in groups to communicate while staying silent, he put one around his neck and handed the other one to the two people and watched as they bickered between who would wear it. When it was finally decided the man would wear it, Damai used it to transmit his thoughts, he believed that the crystals would be able to help them communicate and he was correct, when the man put the necklace on Damai asked him a question in his mind “can you understand me? If you can then in order to reply you need to just think about what you want to say” and after this the man showed a clearly shocked face, but he managed to recollect himself and reply “yes I understand, what are these things?” Damai smiled knowing that his idea worked and replied “these are thought transmitters, they are convenient but difficult to make, they also only work over a short distance, so stay close” the man heard and nodded then Damai continued “you and your friend should sit down I need to apply bandages to your wounds, your other friend will need better treatment so I shall bring you to my village if you are okay with that” the man was surprised to hear that there was a village nearby, he had never heard of one being in this area before.

After Damai had finished bandaging all the wounds he could he asked if the man could carry his friend and after the man said yes he ran back to the boar and brought it with him, it had now been about 2 hours since his hunting session began and he was finally heading back to the village. Twenty minutes later and the group had reached a clearing but the surrounding trees were very clustered, then Damai just stopped and said “were hear, hold on a second” the man was shocked once again by what Damai had said, since he could see nothing. Damai then jumped of the ground with incredible strength towards a tree, which he then kicked off of to reach even higher and continued this process until he was 300ft (91m) high and reached his village that was built atop the trees, this was another reason behind the harsh training as the villagers needed access to the village. The man and woman watched Damai with awe and amazement at his strength, and when they saw where he was going their jaws dropped, they had never seen a massive tree house village before, then a platform with Damai on it came down and Damai was able to speak to the man again “get on, the other villagers will pull us up” and for the first time (excluding Damai, who was raised as one of their own) another race entered the ape beastman village.

(the real adventure starts next chapter)