The sun rose and fell, days passed then months and finally a year had passed since Nick had come to this world.

During the last year he had passed many hardships, fought many battles and survived. He had  survived in this alien world, in this forest that had nothing to offer him but only an endless battle for survival. He fought many opponents, sometimes wining and sometimes loosing, but je never gave up, only continuing to move forward.If there is a sentence that could describe what had happened to him, his only answer was.

“I became strong.”

It was as simple as that.

  His house didn't change that much since the last year with the exception of some wear and tear on the outside.  In his backyard the orange had grown once again by at least two meters since the last year making it look like it had been growing here for at least 20 years. This year the orange had also bore some fruits that looked like oranges in the outside but didn't taste like an orange at all, in fact it tasted like nothing. Another difference was that the oranges insides were not orange anymore but a pale blue colour.

The oranges were now like healing potions and Nick would use them regularly  to heal his injuries after a hard battle or just to regain his strength after training hard the whole day. During this one year he had also changed. He had cut his hair, now sporting  short  hair style , grew his beard slightly and now wore clothes made of the leather of his defeated enemies , a reminder that he had fought tooth and nail with them  and won . 

He had also grown physically, being   2-3 cm taller but the biggest difference was his physique. HeIhad now become les muscular than before, but my power had only increased during this last year. The showy muscles were gone making him look just like an average 21 year old slim boy, but underneath my his lied muscles like steel cables and bones like  titanium. He had far exceeded the limitations of humans becoming something much stronger.

 During the last year due to the numerable interactions he had also developed a somewhat close friendship with Munnji. They could be considered friends , but not close enough to tell each other everything.

  Nick had told him that he came from a place not on this continent, but from a small isolated island in the vast seas.  He also told him that the island was so remote that the inhabitants of that island hadn’t seen foreigners for at least three generations creating such a gap between them in language, knowledge and culture.

From Munnji he learned that he also hadn’t seen the world with his own eyes, but had learned by listening to the stories of his father that had passed away 3 years ago. His father once was a captured wild monkey that was part of an experiment conducted by  the  mages of the now fallen empire 20 years ago. The mages were looking for a way to turn wild animals into instruments of war against their enemies, but they faced a big problem.

The intelligence level of all the animals wasn’t that high making the creation of a formidable army capable of complex tactical warfare useless, but they didn't give up. They experimented on them in various ways killing most of the captured creatures in the process, but they got their results.They performed on them the forbidden soul magic SOUL EXPANTION to forcibly increase their soul realm in effect increasing their intelligence. The  SOUL EXPANTION  was a forbidden spell  used by desperate mages to increase their soul realm forcibly  during a fight as a last resort. If it was used it almost always left  its user dead or just  a shadow of their past self.

His father was one of the survivors of this experiment that was used as an expendable pawn during the war 20 years ago, but he had managed to escape. When the emperor died the experimental army was sent into disarray and most of them deserted and fled, but he didn't because of his newborn son that was kept by the mages to be experimented on.  

He fought with all his might, weathered many storms and finally the new emperor was crowned, making him hope he would finally be able to see the son that he had never seen, but was naive in his thinking that because shortly after the empire became hell on earth for all beings inhabiting it. The foul energy of the world of Mono  affected all beings making them turn into monsters, but that didn't matter to him at all. All that mattered was his son.

During the chaos that had ensued at the time he broke into the facility that had become almost completely deserted and sneakily took his son out of there. After that he ran as far as he could, never look back until he stopped in this part of the forest and made it its home, the home where Munnji grew up.

.....

Jack was looking at the horizon without blinking, when he heard a voice behind him.

“Hey, why are you looking so gloomy today?  Did you accidentally eat one of the fruits that makes you poop a lot?”

He shook his head and turned around smiling at Munnji.

“It’s nothing, I was just thinking of something.”

“Okay then, when you are finished thinking about something can we continue with our weekly spar?”

“No need to wait, we can begin now.”

Nick picked up a wooden staff he used for their sparring and went into a stance facing Munnji.

“Ready ...set...”

“GO”    “GO”

The two of them lounged at each other at the same time.