Chapter1

Hajin ran, hearing the thing behind him crashing through the underbrush.

'Of all the times,' he thought, lungs burning, 'I get chased out of my mind by a monster when I haven't eaten in two days.'

He threw himself sideways as the thing lunged past him, its antlers tearing through the air with scary precision. He scrambled back to his feet while it turned, watching purple drool run from its mouth.

It looked like a deer from a distance, with two Shards orbiting its antlers in a slow rotation, lighting up faintly as it lowered its head and charged again.

He ran, cut left around a thick trunk, grabbed a low branch and hauled himself up in one motion while the thing slammed into the tree below him. The bark splintered while the wood gave a cracking sound as it backed up and tried slamming into the trunk again.

He pressed himself against the trunk and looked down, watching it ram the tree repeatedly.

'Dammit, I'm just a one-Shard adventurer,' he thought, watching the trunk shudder under the impacts, 'no, I am worse than one-shard. People who are the same rank as me can easily kill that thing, so why am I so powerless?'

The tree groaned and he felt it suddenly tilt.

He climbed higher, fast, but not fast enough, because the deer hit the trunk one more time and the whole thing went down with a crack that sent leaves and splinters everywhere.

He wasted no time, the moment the tree hit the ground, he rolled to his feet fast and sprinted away while the monster was still pulling itself from the wreckage.

'If my summoning ability actually worked,' he thought, feeling his legs starting to burn a little, 'I could at least pull something out to distract it but my ability never worked.'

It has been like that ever since he awakened at sixteen when the awakening crystal registered him as a summoner. He tried everything he could to use his ability but all it ever did was make him dizzy.