Eshen is a coastal northernmost nation on the continent Nuntip, a southern hemisphere continent on Urotrope.

The current year is 1056 since the hero and demon lord war, or 1056 HD.

Eshen is a somewhat blessed nation with fertile land whose coastal currents provide abundant fish life. To the east, despite the area being mountains, thanks to sea travel they can access an isolated area of land which breeds many unique and special items.

For the sea, there are many archipelagos and reefs between the mountains and Eshen meaning it is their territory.

Because of this they are capable of boasting a strong military as well but all this is not without it’s cons.

Most of Eshen’s neighboring nations suffer in one way or another and maybe because they had enough Odriacia, the nation located to the west of Eshen and also a coastal nation, went to war with them.

Different from Eshen that has fertile land, a large river to the west split the border but also provides a huge change in geography of the nations.

While Eshen has dirt Odriacia has rocky ground improper for farming.

No one can explain and even with magic it is difficult to farm. Also the ocean currents and lack of islands close to their coasts don't provide as many fish and deep sea fish are dangerous and difficult to acquire.

As such, envious of their neighbor’s natural bounty and angry at their poverty, they attacked.

As explained, this world had developed not just magic but technology and weaponry similar to that of earth but with magic enhancing it.

A war meant the most brutal state of man.

That said, Odriacia wasn’t the only envious one. Though not as heavily affected or poor. During the confusion of the war, the other three neighbors did their own dirty work.

And this is where our story begins.

Eshen is actually divided into two major regions. To their east is a very dangerous mountain range which blocks off a large segment of land. Thanks to sea travel they safely settled the area and obtained the special goods and creatures unique to this isolated land.

Naturally, the area was preferred by the rich due to it’s safety as the mountain wall is nearly inaccessible if not by sea.

This naturally led to the capital being rebuilt there while the rest of the territory to the west and southwest of the mountain range was occupied by Eshen.

The first nation to actively ambush Eshen was named Shiarus. It is southeast of the main territory and is a completely inland nation with no access to the sea because it has the mountain range of the Eshen nation in the way and to the east is another wall of mountains followed by a long stretch of desert before reaching the ocean which makes it very inefficient to cross due to the danger of both regions.

They were the first to sneak into Eshen, and in their envy, actually kidnap the citizens in the western territory.

Despite the development of the world, slavery is still an existent thing. Heavy manual labor is either done by criminals, war prisoners or actual skilled workers.

Following Shiarus was their direct neighbor to the west, Oblistan. This is a nation situated in a heavily volcano active territory and similar to Shiarus, it is an inland nation with extremely poor fertility and a rather small but very technologically strong nation with focus on firearms, this is due to having a very high dragon population that lived near volcanoes.

Lastly the final nation to ambush Eshen was from the south west, Tosmana, a forest nation with no access to the sea. They aren’t able to develop well due to the hilly forest which makes the area filled with mana. The denser mana although helps breed powerful magic users it limits the population greatly and breeds a lot of magical monsters which inhibit a lot of the land development.

Now our story starts 10 years before the present day, three months after the war between Eshen and Odriacia began in the year 1046 HD.

The first neighboring nation finally struck by sending raiders. This nation was Shiarus. Hating their northern neighbor, they were the first to send raiders because of their envy.

That said, they were not the only ones or the most brutal. Living in a volcanic nation, Oblistan, they tended to live in mountainous areas or even inside mountains. With their advanced technology they are able to also tap into dormant volcanoes with magma pools for energy but they are not very good producers of food.

Because they developed more the side of technology, magic, which helps grow food, is poorly developed so they sent raid parties to Eshen to acquire magicians of nature magic. It may sound like a special type of magic but in fact, for Eshen farmers, it is a common type of magic passed down among farmers. They are very skilled in farming without ruining nature around them favoring orchards over plantations.

Our young hero, whose name is Logan Halt, is a farmer's child as well. That said in his grandfather’s generation it was not the same. His grandfather was actually a pretty well known adventurer because of his greatest feat before retiring.

As a B rank adventurer, alone he fought and killed a raging Thunder Dragon near the mountains in the middle regions of the mountains of Eshen.

B rank is not the same as it once was. What is today a B rank adventurer was once an A rank. This is because of reestablishing the ranking system by the adventurers guild throughout the world.

Before, F rank was considered a novice who hunted weak animals and maybe a few weak monsters but a few hundred years ago the change happened that E rank would become the new F rank meaning to become an adventurer now everyone had to be at least the strength of an E rank adventurer from the old system.

This came with clear benefits because there was now a new threshold of strength and was a very good indicator of a person’s actual strength because an adventurer now had to be someone who could actually battle at least a hobgoblin or maybe an alpha Black wolf.

Logan’s grandfather, thanks to the prosperity of his nation making it a trade nation, also obtained a very strong eastern sword called the Katana. He was known for his quick and powerful sword strikes which was how he slayed the dragon by cutting its throat after battling for nearly a whole day.

Sadly that same day was the day he retired because he lost one of his arms in the final confrontation between the two.

He sold the dragon’s corpse but before that took two major bones and part of it’s core to repair the sword and have some dragon material forged into the sword as the final memento of his adventurous life.

He settled down, married and formed a family.

During his children’s youth one of them, father of Logan, wanted to be an adventurer and was given his father’s sword by the man himself to protect himself.

Sadly he was not made out as an adventurer and eventually returned. During his time as well, he damaged the sword breaking the guard and handle. Not knowing who to look for to repair it he found a somewhat skilled blacksmith who placed a new guard of a common long sword with a V guard.

It made the sword look a bit awkward and filled the father with shame but there aren’t many people in Eshen who know about the katana sword and know what the hilt and guard looked like.

As such the father simply stopped ruining his father’s sword and retired very early on and just settled down like the rest of their family.

When the war started, the entire family lived at the southwestern farmlands about a third of the way from the borders but the raids came too unexpectedly in many small parties that passed unhindered and unknowingly.

Together with more than ten other locations, the village Logan lived in was attacked heavily by a large raid party looking to capture slaves for heavy manual labor.

By this age the grandfather of the family had degraded in strength by a huge degree but even so an ex-b rank adventurer isn’t an easy force to stop. Together with his children, they sent the women and his grandchildren away while they faced the raiders.

The sword of the family was used by the grandfather one final time to fight to his death if need be to protect his lineage.

This was the first time all these children saw the cruelty of humanity.

Sadly these were healthy and powerful raiders led by an authentic B rank strength raider.

Still the men stalled the raiders for a very long time before they were either killed or captured.

“Go after the escaped ones!” the man shouted.

“Hey boss, mind if I take that spoil?” a cocky looking raider asked pointing to the corpse of Logan’s grandfather. The single arm held the sword tightly.

“Sure, it is an old sword anyways.” the boss said. “Get your spoil and go after those escaping.” He said.

“Sure boss!” the raider happily said and took the sword from the hands of the grandfather.

Those captured were loaded up into cages while those dead were piled up and burned along with the village.

The raiders then released hounds to follow the scent of the women and children.

Over the course of two days they ran after them and soon one of the women discovered the tracking men from a vantage point.

“What should we do?” one of them asked.

“We need to protect the children, we need to distract them or divert them.” another woman said.

“I’ll go.” Logan’s mother said.

"I shall go as well.”

Very soon most of the mothers all walked out. The children instantly began to cry but each of them pulled the children off of them. “It is important to inform the kingdom about these raiders. We will buy you all time. Each of you children go a different direction to try to find a village or town as quickly as possible.” Logan’s mother said.

She nodded to Logan’s only other sibling, an older sister who was 3 years older than him.

Like himself, many older siblings had to drag their younger siblings away while their mothers ran a different direction with far more obvious tracks while the children went more discrete.

Sadly they didn’t account that the number of raiders was large enough that they could split off.

Tragically for the children the next day they were made to split up by their siblings.

“No don’t go!” Logan cried.

“Logan, I need you to be strong for all of us.” she said and kissed his forehead and pushed him along before turning and running.

Logan, like all the children, were made to run one way or another. Of course these were children who weren’t even 10, they weren’t brave or knowledgeable enough to know where they were.

Furthermore with the hounds behind them, many cracked but Logan was actually able to run for another day before he found himself at the edge of a cliff overlooking a very dangerous forest which was actually where his grandfather had once come to fight the thunder dragon and was a hot spot of thunder monsters nearing the central mountains. It was one of the most well known places to find lightning magic monsters.

As he overlooked the cliff he gulped and turned to run away only to freeze as a man walked out with a grin but veins were on his head.

“You really took us on a very annoying run huh brat!” he said pulling out his sword.

Logan gasp, “T-that sword…” Logan said choking up.

“Huh? This?” the raider muttered and grinned, "I got it off the cold hands of some old bastard in that village of yours.” He grinned.

Tears instantly gathered in his eyes and the man noticed. “Heh, don’t tell me that geezer was your family? Heh, just great. I was made to come get you but because it was so annoying running through all these woods, I feel that it is better to just kill a brat like you.” He said.

“Hey, the boss wanted slaves.” One of the men said.

“The boss is busy raiding and I am in charge of this raid party. We just tell the boss that the brat encountered some monster while running away.” He said.

Logan began to feel cold.

What went unnoticed was that the clear skies were rapidly getting covered in dark storm clouds. These clouds appeared and disappeared regularly in this region due to the large amount of lightning mana in this region.

The man was grinning as he gestured for the men to cover the sides and reluctantly they did so and closed in on Logan.

“Be glad that you are dying by your family’s own sword, brat!” the raider said.

Logan was moving back but suddenly tripped and fell back before trying to get up but at that moment the man suddenly rushed and got in front of Logan. He raised the katana into the air and just as he was about to bring it down, the entire world turned white.

BOOM!

All Logan saw was a light for a moment but something in him showed everything slowly. A bolt of lightning shot down from the sky and hit the sword and suddenly burst apart. Dozens of tentacle-like bolts split off and crawled down the man holding the sword turning his body to charcoal while thicker branches jumped to the nearby men and hounds turning them into a similar state.

When the lightning was nearing Logan only a small bolt reached him before rapidly diverting before everything sped up.

That touch though stunned him entirely and flowed through his entire body.

He fell to his knees and collapsed to the side just as the blinding light vanished.

He was still conscious as he trembled in pain but he found that the black body of the raider stood there releasing black smoke holding the sword.

All the men and hounds just stood there before a breeze blew and suddenly they began to break down. Several parts turned to ash like the hand that held the sword while the rest was just charred black.

The bodies fell down breaking apart while the sword that took the brunt of the lightning fell down striking the ground in front of Logan. The handle and guard were completely destroyed but the blade was intact but completely scorched and riddled with scars that looked like lightning.

There was a strange attraction from the sword to Logan. That said all he thought was that it was his family's sword and the only thing he had left to remember his family by. After the stunning subsided he weakly extended his hand around the tang of the sword and grabbed it but as soon as he did he was encased in a bright light and lost consciousness.

For a short time the light surrounded the boy until it vanished and the area became silent but on his right hand was a scar that looked like a bolt of lightning that released a faint warmth and glow but that also soon subsided becoming just darker than flesh color as if it was a scar from magic.

That said the boy had an iron grip on the sword and the sword also magically held on to his hand.

It was unknown how long he was like that but soon several more men in army clothing of the Eshen nation appeared.

“Captain! We found someone!” a soldier shouted.

They came out holding swords or guns and soon checked the men until they reached Logan.

“All these men were killed by intense lightning but the kid just took a few injuries from the attack.” one man analyzed.

“For us to let children suffer like this. These fucking bastards got off too lightly.” One soldier cursed and searched the men.

“Can you figure out who these guys were?” the captain asked, appearing from the bushes.

“Look captain!” one soldier said lifting a piece of fabric that survived. After shaking the fabric a destroyed magic badge which once had communication magic for talking over long distances.

“This is Shiarus communicators. It seems this area was attacked by them.” The captain said coldly. “Quickly bring the child to the military base and treat his wounds.” the captain ordered.

“Captain there is a problem. He is gripping a sword and it is heavily charged with electricity making it hard to touch him without getting tased.” a soldier said.

“Call the magic medics then. They can work around the magic.” the captain said.

They pulled out a communicator and called out support. Soon a group of men dressed like field medics appeared and began to put magic stabilizer bracelets which contained magic making it possible to touch people adversely affected by magic.

They soon extract him and take him to their base and put him in the military hospital where they began magic treatment to heal his body. Still that sword got really in the way due to the magical interference it had but eventually he was out of danger and left to sleep with an IV attached.