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

During the last year I had passed many hardships, fought many battles, and I survived. I survived in this alien world, in this forest that had nothing to offer me, but only an endless battle for survival.

I fought many opponents, sometimes wining and sometimes loosing, but I never gave up, only continuing to move forward.

If there is a sentence that could describe what had happened to me, my only answer was.

“I became strong.”

It was as simple as that.

My house didn't change that much since the last year with the exception of some wear and tear on the outside. In my 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 and 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 I would use them regularly to heal my injuries after a hard battle or just to regain my strength after training hard the whole day.

During this one year I had also changed. I had cut my hair, now sporting short hair style ,grew my beard slightly, and now wore clothes made of the leather of my defeated enemies , a reminder that I had fought tooth and nail with them and won . I had also grown physically, being 2-3 cm taller but the biggest difference was my physique.

I had now become les muscular than before but my power had only increased during this last year. The showy muscles were gone making me look just like an average 21 year old slim boy, but underneath my skin lied muscles like steel cables and bones like titanium.

I had far exceeded the limitations of humans becoming something much stronger.

During the last year due to the numerable interactions I had also developed a somewhat close friendship with Munnji. We were friends but not close enough to tell each other everything.

I had told him that I came from a place not on this continent, but from a small isolated island in the vast seas. I 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 us in language, knowledge and culture.

From Munnji I 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 , almost always leaving its users 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.

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 experiment 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.

He 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.

.....

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

I shook my head 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.”

I picked up a wooden staff we used for our sparring and went into a stance facing Munnji.

“Ready ...set...”

“GO” “GO”

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