The City of Langerhans was completely corrupted by the sins of humanity. While still called a City, on the planet we call Earth, it could rival the size of China. Langerhans is a city spread across the southern reaches of the continent of Phios.
It was surrounded by large rainforests causing a perpetually humid climate; the majority of buildings were formed from the powerful trees of the rainforest. The city was protected by the towering walls formed by ancient trees used by their ancestors to protect themselves from vicious beasts. Luc had heard stories from the older generations about the walls coming to life in times of need, he paid them no heed. However, in the past ten years, the walls had continued to grow without him having seen anyone doing work on them; perhaps there was more to them than meets the eye.
On every corner, a different crime was being committed and on every street a life would hang in the balance; this was due to a combination of the plague that none could avoid and the actions of a pointless martyr on the blade of yet another common street thug.
However, in such chaos, organised crime was at the peak of success, a slow and almost undetectable influx of people from the west into both the city and it's surrounding smaller cities led to a twisted renaissance and in the Southern District of Phios, by this point, might was definitely more important than any type of flowery wordplay.
Wood of course was not any sort of family name, like many he was a bastard churned out by the city, he just happened to have been left in an orphanage that was run by the Wood faction, he often darkly joked that whoever had left him in this God forsaken city at least had a little bit of sense.
As a way to provide some sort of belonging, the factions that controlled the city behind the scenes had come to an agreement in which they would divide the obnoxious number of orphans or plainly unwanted children based upon the faction that raised them. This was Luc's view anyway, to the numerous people that had been turned away from the factions, leaving their baby inside a faction could be seen as the ultimate sacrifice for your child's future. In some cases the parents would later reveal themselves and would as Luc would say, be lazy farmers that would leave their crops to be overrun by weeds and then reap meager gains; just to ensure a lack of effort.
While Luc was, in any use of the word, a coward; he preferred to refer to himself as a man who had no intention of risking his life. This starkly contrasted his tall athletic build, he was about 180cm tall, but had a face that instantly read, my life will come before yours. This, to be fair, was only barely hidden by other members of his generation. He was truly shameless in his protection of himself leading others to believe that he was undependable; he simply didn't want others to mistake him as someone that could potentially protect them at risk to himself.
His lithe athletic body had compact muscles which bulged much less than many of the City's other O.Ds, many attributed this to the Wood faction's focuses. However, Luc was a young panther that didn't yet know it's true power and truthfully, seemingly not interested in finding out.
Many people saw him as shadow of his former self, which only became less worthy of their attention as the months without progress crept on.
The city had seven major powers. Five of the powers were the five factions. They were like sects, that raised children and trained them in their respective disciplines. Each of the sects focused on a particular elements. The elements were water, earth, metal, wood and fire. The two other factions were the World Army and the Obsidian Alliance.
The World Army ran the city in name, but barely took part in its duties, resulting in the city's current condition. The Obsidian Alliance was a large organisation that ran businesses across the city. Most of the money in this city was in it's hands. The World Army held a special position. They were the true rulers of the city yet they held little power.
Like the name says, the World Army is an army that spanned the globe, but Langerhans was not of any value to them so they paid little attention to it. The Obsidian Alliance was an organisation that only cared about profit and not the means in which it was made thus they held a lot of sway, but the true power of the city was the factions. Each faction was not that powerful by itself but together they were like a beast that had devoured the city.
Luc had been raised by the Wood faction and in this war torn city, useless people were not something that were easily found. While Luc had no intention of risking his life in any way, he needed to display a minimum level of martial prowess in order to have any kind of comfortable lifestyle in the faction, of course, while at the same time avoiding a level that may result in any dangerous tasks or responsibilities.
The four levels of the human martial path as taught to all youths in the Wood clan are: Formation, Conception, Dispersion and Reformation.Each level has 3 sub levels referred to universally as lower, middle and upper. While the other factions may have slightly different names, the power level and respect afforded to the ranks was essentially the same. The factions had further divided the lower level of the Formation realm into three parts. For example in the wood faction the three sub-levels for Lower Formation martial artists were seed, plant, flower.
For example the Water Faction referred to them as: stream, river and see. To be honest, the factions of Langerhans would be laughed at by the Overlords of the strongest cities, that is, if they were regarded at all. The addition of the levels 'Seed', 'Plant', 'Flower', did not occur in the top tier cities
As he thought this Luc's face showed an emotion between disgruntlement and lazy reluctance before finally forcing himself out of bed. He flexed his muscles, did some lazy stretches, then silently got dressed in a loose fitting dark green shirt and ¾ length shorts that were light brown in color. He didn't bother with anything such as bathing, after all, his destination was the lake behind the practice grounds.
It was still a while before twilight when he finally left his dormitory room on the 5th floor. He left through the window as to avoid any unnecessary gazes. He flickered and landed on top of the dormitory gate then disappeared again, his destination being a lake behind the practice grounds.
His mood was dark as he recalled that the World Army split experts into the:Formation, Conception, Dispersion and Reformation realms. The whispers of the higher realms only reaching him through bribing people that possessed half truths. However, far too few people reached the upper Conception level in Langerhans, let alone the far off Reformation realm.
As such, the factions mostly included those withing the Middle to Upper Foramtion experts. To Luc it was truly too shameful, however, even though they were barely able to maintain the status of a large city; the majority of people in the city never spoke to anyone who would point this out to them.
Those that knew secretly acknowledged their weakness or rebuked the insane person that told them such things. On the other hand, the World Army took the approach of speaking baby talk to the babies, it profited them to have cannon fodder flock to them, but they had no intention of stressing themselves too much in terms of the worldview of those who would never reach the Dispersion level.
In keeping with the requirements of the faction's orphan martial training program, while Luc was valued as much better than his age mates in terms of cultivation, allowing him to live in the dormitory free of charge, along with use of the faction's training facilities and connections, he was, among his peers, seen as someone that barely qualified. While Luc usually tried to show a level of detachment and lack of interest in order to maintain his charade, a dark smile crossed his face as he thought of how little his peers truly knew.
By this time he had been running for around 15 minutes, while the direct route to the training ground from the dormitory was around 5 minutes away from his room at his peak speed, he preferred to take the long way around, this allowed him to stretch his legs during these early hours, without the need to suppress his speed.
Leaving through the window would allow him to avoid certain people, but not all eyes were so easily fooled. Anyone who tracked his comings and goings would feel that an O.D at the mid flower level should take approximately 15 minutes to reach the training ground, at least at a leisurely pace.
As he passed the bazaar that had potentially changed his life, questions began to flood his head. He squashed them once again, what was the point wondering about any existence such as that monster. Especially in his current predicament. He jumped down from the roofs at the same time as restricting his running speed by about 60%.
In accordance with the requirements set by the Wood faction, he had displayed a resonance with the spiritual root provided to him by the Patron of his orphanage. He was then transferred to an orphanage that was run by the family of one of the Faction's sub-elders. Between the ages of 5 and 6 he was repeatedly exposed to low level Wood attribute spiritual energies and environments.
By time he reached 6, like most other people in the faction's program, he'd reached the Seed level of cultivation; he couldn't remember the names of those who were at the plant level now, let alone those that didn't make the cut when he was 6 years old.
When he was 8, he ran into who he referred to an a bull-shit old monster called Flame Shadow. He promised himself that he would one day unravel the secrets surrounding that man and either get his revenge for that which took place on that hazy day, or take him as his Master for life.
...
Thank you for reading! Please vote if you enjoyed it!