The city of Willow was one of the medium size cities in the Kingdom of Berovia. It was ruled over by the Willow noble family, who in turn worked for the Berovian royal family.
Willow city had a lot of villages surrounding it. These villages supplied the city with its resources. One such village was the village of Nok, which was Zane's home village. Nok was responsible for providing most of the crops which where sold in Willow.
There where also other villages responsible for other services like mining and blacksmithing.
On this morning, about 150 meters from Willow city, was a body.
What was peculiar about this body was that the grass around it was completely dead. It had all shriveled up like it's life force was taken away.
COUGH! COUGH!
Zane woke up, well at least he tried to, but then cried out due to the pain assaulting his legs. The events of the previous day unfolded in his mind as his anger rose.
However he quickly suppressed it as it wouldn't help to get angry, it would only damage his body further.
'Shit' Zane thought. The last time when he had zero mana was when he had just been born. Zane could feel that his body was still incredibly injured, only his jaw and spine had healed.
'I need to get mana' he thought in determination. Standing wasn't an option so he could only drag his body with this arms. Zane listened closely to his surroundings and then he heard the very distant sound of people talking.
'That must be the city' he thought before starting to crawl in the opposite direction. He needed to go into the forest and only then would he be able to steal mana from plants. For some reason he could feel that the grass close to him had no mana at all.
Zane activated his mana gathering skill as he slowly moved towards the opposite direction of the City.
CRACK!
Zane screamed in pain as he felt his ribs cracking. He figured they must have been halfway healed when his body ran out of mana. Due to him crawling on his stomach the weight of his body broke his ribs again.
The pain Zane felt was surreal, he took off the cloth covering his eyes and stuffed it into his mouth and bit down on it hard as he crawled. As he continued crawling at a speed of about 3 meters a minute he began to feel mana filling up his body, although miniscule amounts of it.
This miniscule amounts of mana where consistent to the mana he got if he used his skill on grass.
<(+1 Mana)>
<(-1 Mana)>
<(+1 Mana)>
<(-1 Mana)>
As soon as Zane got any mana it was automatically converted to healing mana and distributed to his injuries. However this mana couldn't do any difference at all, it was just not enough.
One hour of intense pain later Zane suddenly felt the sun's heat disappear. He knew that this either meant a cloud had covered the sun or he was under some shade. Zane hopped for the latter as he started crawling faster with hope.
Then he felt his hand touch something solid and vertical, like a wall...or a tree!. Zane didn't hesitate and immediately sucked the tree dry of every ounce of mana it had. The tree's beautiful green leaves lost their color as it lost its youth.
Three seconds later and it had turned into a black, tree shaped structure which was promptly blown away by the wind.
<(+500 Mana)>
'This must have been a really big tree' Zane thought as he looked at the system message.
"Heal only my ribs" Zane said to no one but his body seemed to understand him perfectly.
<(-350 Mana)>
"Sight grenade"
"Sight grenade"
"Sight grenade" Zane threw three 50 point sight grenades around him. He knew he now had Five seconds of sight and he didn't waste them. Zane immediately pushed up his body and crawled on all fours to the nearest tree he could see.
<(+300 Mana)>
"Heal my legs" he commanded his body, or mana, or system or whatever it was which was in control of his healing.
However it turned out that 300 points weren't enough to fully heal his legs so he quickly crawled to another tree.
<(+350 Mana)>
"Heal my fucken legs!!" Zane shouted. He was angry, angry at the world, angry at Aurora, and very angry at himself. He was too weak and that was true but he didn't understand why people had to be that cruel just because they where stronger.
Zane's body was finally fully healed but the mana he had was stolen which meant that it was seeping out of his body every second. It didn't help that he lost a bit of mana with every breath in order to see.
"I need to kill" Zane said.
"Fuck I don't have a weapon." that thought made him even more angry. His bow was his 13th birthday present from his father and he had lost it the same day he left home.
Zane quickly looked around for a rock as he stole mana from every tree he came close to. However he only stole half, because he didn't want to destroy the forest.
After finding two medium sized rocks he smashed them against each other and took a piece which had a sharp edge. He had made himself a makeshift knife.
Then Zane broke a branch off a tree and proceeded to sharpen it into a spear. Zane could feel the temperature in the environment slowly dropping 'It's almost night' he hypothesized.
Using the skills his father had taught him, Zane quickly found some animal tracks.
'Deer' he thought as he stealthly followed the tracks. Spear in hand.
A few minutes later and Zane found the deer, which was walking alone. Deer have good hearing and it was hard for Zane to stay close enough for him to see it but also far enough not to be heard by it.
Without wasting time he coated his spear with 100 point mana dust and threw it. The spear impaled the deer in the stomach, but it was still alive as it tried it best to run. Obviously it wasn't that fast with a spear going through its body.
Zane just jogged to it's position and slit it's throat.
<(+300 Mana)>
The mana he got from the deer might have been less than that he got from some of the trees. However this mana wouldn't desipate over time like the one from trees.
Zane then roasted the deer meat and was pleasantly surprised and relieved that he could place it inside his inventory.
'I guess this will be my home for a while' He sighed while 'looking' at the forest.