Keon was awake. "I survived?" He took in a deep breath smelling the musty slum air and the disgusting scent of burnt flesh. "I survived!" He yelled laughingly.

He remembered what had happened minutes before and the lingering fear was enough to make him shudder. He looked at the spot on his chest where the lightning had struck and was amazed by what he saw. His clothes were perfectly okay except for a small dot of charred blackness. "Shouldn't it be worse than this?" He rubbed it while mumbling to himself. Amazingly, it didn't hurt at all. Rather it felt quite good.

He laid there, back to the ground whilst staring at the canopy of the trees above him, his right palm resting on the black center that almost killed him. It wasn't that he didn't want to stand up, but he couldn't. There was a strange force holding him to that singular spot. The force came from the black dot. A few minutes passed like this. He started to feel the mysterious force becoming more lenient to his movement. He stood up.

Keon knew something wasn't the same as before but couldn't explain it. He could feel a small white ball hovering inside his chest. The same place that had just recently been electrified. "I wonder if this is what all people feel like after they've been hit?" He couldn't explain it so he gave up thinking about it.

He picked up his trusty hatchet and attached it to his tool belt. The wood he had been wholeheartedly collecting before hand was scattered around the huge trees. It normally took him a few hours to cut down just one tree, because they were so huge. But today he had been lucky and found some smaller trees. If the small tree had the width of a finger the huge tree had the width of a wrist. He had easily reached his quota of 3 trees and was cutting them into smaller logs so he could take them back to the clan when he had been struck. The weird part was that there were no clouds in the sky when it happened. He knew this because when it gets stormy around the forest the inner court disciple who oversaw his bunk house takes them back as to avoid any injuries.

He slowly but surely sliced each tree into ten 3-foot-long sections and piles them up. He wrapped a string around them and then, with just a thought, the trees went into his spacial ring. The ring was an expensive item if you wanted to own one yourself, costing around 10 low ranked demon cores just for the most basic one, containing a ten meter cubed space. The cost was dependent on the size of the spacial realm in the ring. The cost of space was roughly one low ranked demon core per cubic meter. The one Keon was using currently was a very expensive 100 meter cubed spacial ring. He, as a low ranked peasant working for the clan, obviously could not afford it.

The clan he was working for was called the Wooden Arrow Clan. They specialized in bows and arrows made from the trees in the ancient forest. Although they were very powerful in the city they lived in, Ancient Wood city, if compared to the bigger clans they paled in comparison. The reasons they had survived so long in this blood thirsty world were these: They used orphans and peasants to harvest wood and paid them with food and shelter. And their bows and arrows truly were great, so the larger clans around them always offered protection for a discount on their products. With the protection of the other large clans, they didn't worry about their workers being attacked, so they gave them spacial rings in order for them to work harder and longer.

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

Once the three piles had all been sucked into his ring, he started to make his way down out of the ancient forest.

The ancient forest is to the east of Ancient Wood city. The city is known for it's wooden products, hence the name. The forest has slowly been corroded away on the western side by the carpenters and laborers who lived there.

"Thank the lord I don't have as big a quota as my bunk mates." He said while trotting through the thick undergrowth.

He arrived at the edge of the thick trees and was met with huge field of grass, stumps scattered around like gravestones.

"Oh hey, if it isn't Keon. Did you manage to get your quote this time?" The condescending voice instantly made Keon's face look angry and filled with hatred. The owner of this voice was a boy named Zain. He was the strongest in Keon's bunkhouse.

"Of course I did you bastard," Keon was intensely angry. The last time he had had a conversation with Zain was when he was first put in his bunk. He had been nice to his future nemesis in the beginning, but it ended with Zain's cronies beating him up. "Why don't you bully someone who is as strong as you, you asshole." Keon thought to himself while supressing the urge to kick him in the nuts.

"Hmph" Zain said with nonchalant-ness "Well it's not exactly hard seen as you only have to get three trees. Today is my twelfth birthday, so soon I will no longer be in your little bunkhouse any more. You know the first thing I will do when I become an outer court disciple?" He laughed.

Keon already knew what he was going to say so he did not answer him and just stared hatefully.

"I'm going to kill you." He laughed heartily and loud.

Keon said nothing and walked away, off towards the inner court disciple to hand him the ring he had filled.

A few hours later after everyone had made it back to the bunkhouse and a rest, the inner court disciple came in. As soon as he did all of the kids in the bunk became extremely quiet. They all knew what was happening. When one of the orphans in the bunk turns twelve years old, they are given the clan's basic technique manual. The manual contains breathing exercises and nature essence manipulation techniques that allow the to manifest nature into the body. If they can, in under a year, become a Rank 1 Fighter they will be taken out of the bunk house and moved into the outer court halls.

Rank 1 Fighters compared to people with no nature energy in their body was the difference between a fly and an airplane. The person who was being given the manual was non other than his nemesis. Zain.

As he went to take the manual from the inner court disciple he took a hateful glance in Keon's direction. Zain looked evil with his sharp, black eyes glaring killing intent at Keon. He usually wore a lot of black clothes because, in his own words, "I am a dark person, so I wear dark clothes."

Keon suddenly had an idea. "Steal the book from him."

As he started to think this idea over he realized how bad his situation was right now. "If I steal the book and am found out I am dead, if I don't steal the book I am definitely dead. I should definitely steal it so I can have a little chance of staying alive. So he started planning his theft.