Chapter2

He started to wonder that maybe he didn't have enough mana, but how else can you growth your core without using his ability? He was essentially stuck, with no way to grow.

'I guess it's only natural a talentless person like me was exiled,' he thought, looking back and seeing the deer gaining on him, 'after all, no great family will want to have someone that will drag down their reputation.'

He spotted another tree with low branches a few meters ahead and pushed himself harder. He jumped, grabbing the branch and swinging himself up, pulling himself onto a thicker limb.

He crouched there for a moment, looking down at the monster while his arms shook and his breathing got heavier.

The deer circled below, snorting, its antlers scraping bark off the trunk as it moved them side to side like it was sharpening them.

He tried to catch his breath and his mind wandered back to the exile, which was strange because he understood it, he really did.

The Flints had a reputation to protect and he was the living proof that the patriarch had made a mistake with a servant, so stripping the name and dumping him in a border city slum made sense.

It was the logical move, except they had also told him never to use the Flint name, not even accidentally, and the way the elder had said it in a calm, cold tone, was the part that still sat wrong with him even now, three years later.

'They didn't even seem to hate me,' he thought, watching the deer ram the trunk below, 'hate would have been something at least but this was something else, I can't even begin to explain it.'

He jumped to the next tree without thinking, catching a branch and landing on a thick limb, then jumped again to the next one, moving by instinct while his head was somewhere else entirely. He kept remembering memories from years ago, like how he was never allowed to train with the others or how he was never given a maid of his own like his siblings.

He was so lost in thought that he didn't hear the deer stop chasing.

What he heard instead was the roar, a deep guttural blast that hit the tree he was about to land on like a battering ram, cracking the trunk sideways and splintering halfway up. By the time his brain caught up to what was happening