The rain was heavy, the night air was cold as he sat there in front of the leader of the clan. "W-what do you mean master? I can't possibly be banished! I've done so much…and yet, this is how I'm treated?" He said angrily, while clenching his fist. "You called me in for something important, and now you're banishing me???"
"Listen, I'm not concerned about how you feel. With your core broken, there's no longer a point of having you with us. Now begone and never set foot in these mountains again for the rest of your life." The leader said with a powerful voice sending air pressure around at the doors, opening them immediately.
The man stood up, turned around and began to walk out. He said something to himself that might as he walked away from the clan's leader room and walked outside to the exit.
"Oh? Would you look at that, I told you all, Zion would end up getting himself kicked out of the clan!" He began to laugh with a few others joining him, even a friend of Zion began to laugh at how he had his core broken just hours prior. "The news has already hit everyone, Zion. You're completely garbage, nobody here even cares for you to begin with! You were only a motherless bastard who even his father killed himself over, since you were so pathetic."
Zion at that point had so much anger in him that he could do nothing but stand there in pure anger while looking over at him. However, knowing his circumstances, he would not win or even get close to getting a punch in. He would wait until the day he could evaporate the entire clan before coming back. With that, a girl appeared with dark red hair, decently tall, dressed in a well-mannered fashion and walked past Zion simply saying "Farewell, I hope everything turns out well for you." Before leaving the area.
Zion sighed and tried to look at his core to just see nothing but black within himself. There was no core, there was not even a trance a soul could be there. It was empty. Plainly empty. "... Very well then, I'll see you all again one day." He whispered to himself before walking away down the mountain while clenching his fists together tightly to the point of making them bleed.
As the days went by, Zion laid and did naught, except for existing and growing older by the days. "Fucking hell… I need power, I need anything. I don't care for the price. I don't care for the consequences. I don't care for nothing. I want it all. I want the world to fall and crumble." Zion said loudly while making the wildlife around him run from the sound of his voice penetrating the deep, dark trees ahead, behind, and from both sides. He stared up into the stars as they looked back down onto him. "Power?" A voice said from an unknown direction.
Zion stood up quickly with the strength in his body and yelled with the remaining strength he had left. "I don't care who you are if you can make me more powerful, do what you will. I want to conquer it all!" Zion's voice yelled, his voice filled with anger, sorrow, and yet calm at the same time, almost as if he were born to be a leader of the world but ended up on the wrong side of the coin. "Very well, if it's power, you seek… I shall train you until you can master the concept of power itself." The voice responded while chuckling in the woods all around.
4 days has passed and Zion woke up in the middle of a room on a bed with an older man next to him and looked down at Zion. "Welcome to the world of the living again. Now, are you ready to conquer power for yourself?" Zion stood up on his legs not knowing who this person was, but just felt like this man would be the key to everything he asked for prior. "… Yes sir! I am ready for this training." Zion said devotedly. "Very well, follow me to the back." He stood up and walked over the door, opening it, walking out of it and carried down the long corridor before turning a corner and walking outside to a vast sized area of nothing but fields. Within those fields were weights, swords, daggers, rapiers, spears, and many, many more weapons grounded into the field itself. "What's your name, kid?" "My name is Zion." "What about your family name?" Zion stood down in silence for a moment before replying as the wind blew cool air towards them. "I have none." Zion looked up confidently, yet also sadness appeared in his eyes for a split moment before vanishing. "Very well. Zion, from today onward your name is now Zion Flare. Now, what weapon do you wish to master?" "I wish for the rapier as my first weapon." The old man looked down at Zion for a moment before looking over the fields again and chuckled. "Very well, Zion, the rapier is a pretty interesting one to start with. However, we can begin now."
Years have passed at this point of constantly training, such cruel some training that one could say that death wasn't even possible after what all he endured. Within those years, he mastered multiple weapons. Rapiers, spears, the bow, the tachi, the odachi, katana, jian, and martial arts. After so much training, he eventually took a pill called the "Fire of destiny" which recovered his core completely and even increased his power by multiple levels. After so many years of having broken bones, sweating tears, crying blood, and working out to the point of passing out multiple times a week. He had finally achieved a level of power he could never have imagined before learning from this old man. Today is the day he sets off into the world for the first time since coming here. Zion Flare is now 21 and still holds a grudge against everyone except for two.
Zion sat there on the floor. "Thank you for everything you've taught me. Without your help, I would've been dead by now." Zion looked up at the old man. "It was nothing. However, before you go, I have one request." "Yes sir? What is it?" "I want you to master this before leaving at the end of the day." The old man stood up from his chair and reached up, grabbing a scroll of some kind and handing it over to Zion. "Read it, copy it, master it. That's the last thing you have to do before leaving." Zion looked down at the scroll he now holds in his hands and opened it and his eyes widen. "M-master, isn't this the "Void cutting art" that's said to equal even the highest level of arts the world knows of, "Demonic era art", "Heavenly hand art", and the "Spiritual space art"? W-why are you handing this to me… And how do you even have this?" Zion looked up at the old man, still not knowing his name. "Listen Zion… I think it's time for me to tell you the truth about me before you learn it. My name is Ryu Flare. The last member of the Flare clan, which died out hundreds of years ago before. Before you that is, The master of the void, the immortal who never ascended. That's who I am." Zion looked up at Ryu in shock and his eyes widen as he only heard legends about Ryu yet never knew the last name. "Yes sir, I understand… I will master this technique, no matter how many hours it takes me to learn." Zion said confidently, immediately beginning to learn the technique slowly. Ryu looked up at the sky and sighed before walking away to a distant room in the back of the house. "Is this what you meant back then, Aryan? The feeling of having a student is truly wonderful. Thank you for teaching me the things I know even if we were not meant to meet in this hellhole of a world even throughout history as the world changed and the way people gain power. This feeling is truly special. A one of a kind." Ryu said to himself in his room before laying down.
Fourteen hours have passed since Zion had begun to learn the Void cutting art, and he had already mastered it. Zion grabbed his all black rapier, a spear on his back, and a pair of dark red gloves, putting them on. Zion sighed before yelling at the house. "Old man! I'm leaving now, I left it in your room next to you!" Zion looked away from the house and left the property suddenly looking behind him and the house, the vast area of the fields were no longer there. It was nothing but trees in the forest he remembered laying in all those years ago. Zion looked up at the sky and smiled slightly while thinking to himself. "Thank you old man, without you and your help… I would be nothing, I would be dead. Thank you for showing me love, even if you never meant to. Thank you for showing me what a warm house could feel like, even after disobeying a few times." Zion began to walk away not looking back ever again in life, instead he looked forward to how the world changed and how much more there is to explore now.
Zion continued to walked through a forest which he thought he remembered, yet it felt entirely different. He looked up and down the trees and remembered a few trees he planted himself, which began to turn into trees now. Zion felt happy with himself, seeing the development of nature around him.
Hours later of walking he saw sun rise which he then sat up a camp. He sat up a small campsite inside the forest, so nobody would notice him. After setting up the camp, Zion then fell asleep on a makeshift bed he had made himself. Nine hours had passed and Zion had woken up and left once again to travel to the closest city of which he remembered. The city of "Conv" It's a city that is pretty poor compared to the other cities nearby, yet it also has some of the hardest working people you'll ever find on this continent.
"I should get on a move on before it gets too late… I would rather not bring much attention to myself even if I have a spear, and a rapier on me… That's much more attention than I originally wanted. However, it's fine." Zion said to himself as he made his way to the city. Only forty minutes of walking and Zion was already inside the gate for the city of Conv. It was extremely close to him.
Zion continued to think back on his memory, of which he remembered clearly, and made his way to a certain shop. "Hey Zhou, you still working here?" Zion shouted inside the small store, awaiting an answer. A few minutes later a man appeared from stairs which led down into some type of basement it looked like. "Holy shit, Zion, is that you?" Zhou looked up at Zion, then looked him down and up again to make sure. "Holy shit it is, where have you been for so long? What's with the weapons? You have to tell me everything." The inside of this small store was semi run-down, old, had a few old chairs in the corner of the store, a small menu of items they were selling including food. You could smell the food in the back constantly, the tables were close to each other, and everyone looked as if they knew everybody in there.
Zhou began to talk again before anything else. "Follow me back to the basement, we have a lot to go over, I feel." Zhou then went back down the stairs. Zion set foot on the stairs, remembering the unstable and creeping noise the stairs made as he went down into the basement and sat on a nicer chair. "So… Zhou it has been interesting, but first I have some things to say about what had happened before I went missing." "Yeah, you better start with what happened, I haven't seen you in years. I thought you ended up dying in a duel, since none of your clan members came down to explain anything at all." Zion sat there in silence and rocked his chair back and forth for a moment before replying again. "Well, my core was broken hours before being kicked out of the clan." Zhou's face looked shocked. "Then…how come I can sense your core? Even if I am the lowest level of power, I can still sense it." "Well, that's a story for another day, but I came by just to see if you had my old hat lying around anywhere. I need it again." Zhou got up from his chair and walked over to a door and opened it, grabbing a hat from within and bringing it back to the table. "Well, this is your old straw hat if you meant this." Zion grabbed the hat, putting it on, matching his black outfit.
"Well, I'll begin to explain the whole story from how everything happened, what happened afterward and how I even got here with my power still." Zion then took the following 2 hours to explain everything that had happened, stopping sometimes to take a break to allow Zhou to process everything that the clan had done to Zion. However, Zion did exclude a few things including the Void cutting art, how he acquired his weapons, and a few extra things.
"So, you're telling me the clan kicked you out, you got laughed at, they insulted your family, you almost died from losing all your strength in the wild, you woke up suddenly in a bed… Then trained for years, almost dying multiple times?" Zhou looked stunned as he said that out loud, his face almost pale at this point from what he heard. "And you learned multiple different arts and martial arts?" Zion looked at Zhou for a few moments in silence before replying. "That's about right." Zhou just stood up, not knowing what to do. However, he was praying that Zion would get his revenge on the clan, and wanted to help him in any way he can. "Zion, can I come with you?" Zion looked up at the now standing Zhou and sighed for a moment. "Sure, you can come with if you want, but what about this place?" "Oh, don't worry about that, this place… It's going down hill anyway, and we're receiving less and less customers as the days go. I can barely keep this place open." Zion sighed once again after hearing that. "Alright then, we're leaving now. I can't waste any more time than what I have lost already." Zion stood up and walked up the stairs, with Zhou following behind him. Once reaching the top of the stairs, they looked away to see nobody in the store and walked outside. Zhou closed the store, locking it for the final time. They both went over to a horse buyer and bought 2 horses, one for each of them. "That'll be 15 silvers for both of them." The man selling the horses said. Zion placed down a bag with 15 silvers in it exactly. "Thank you sir." Zion said, getting onto his horse with Zhou already on his.
They both took off down the road, leaving the small town of Conv. It was currently 3:25 in the morning yet all they knew was that it was night. The cold breeze felt wonderful as they galloped away into the night's breeze not knowing where to go next, but Zhou knew it would better than in this small city.