Chapter 0: Prologue

Aron was the son of a male named Harald and a female named Elia in the settlement of Kol that resided within in Limbo, the one true world from which all others originated.

The settlement of Kol was home to the race known as Kolieans. A humanoid race who at first glance weren't much different from humans... at least appearance wise.

Due to being born in a matriarchal society, Aron was rejected by his mother who was among the most powerful and well-respected women at that time. She had wanted Harald to forget about the boy and focus solely on growing stronger so they could try for another child, a girl. His father however refused to allow his one and only son to be abandoned.

By choosing to do this however he earned the enmity of many, a decision that didn't faze him in the slightest as companionships among Kolieans were only necessary for bearing children in the first place.

The concept of love in the settlement of Kol was non-existent. The males craved strength and the females wished to have strong children. Customs such as marriage and courting did not exist. It was all about survival and growing stronger, especially for those with beast monger blood. A bloodline seemingly unique to males that allowed them to absorb mana from a beast and inherit some of its abilities, also known as aspects.

Not long after Aron was born, the Kolieans got an opportunity to return to their origin world, Pesia. Origin worlds were worlds that existed in a separate space from Limbo itself and had their own independent laws of space and time.

The major difference between Limbo and origin worlds is that the latter had stable and consistent laws while the former was extremely chaotic and changed laws without warning.

Origin worlds for example had easy to understand astronomy which made telling days and time possible whereas Limbo had no such stability, often making even a simple task like telling the time impossible.

The region of Limbo the Kolieans resided in called Obrime was an extremely harsh region to live in so the opportunity to return to the world their ancestors originally came from seemed like a blessing.

For the women who were born adept in mana control, this was great news. But for some of the men with beast monger bloodlines who depended on mana beasts to grow stronger, this was a dilemma.

The chances of growing stronger if they returned to the origin world would greatly diminish but the chances of them living would certainly increase by a lot. Harald was sure that the men wouldn't allow such an offer to sway them after all the time they put in to get where they are.

But he was wrong...one after another they accepted it was time to move on. This was mainly due to how scarce beast mongers were. All the clans in the settlement of Kol had between two to three beast mongers whilst many other men were simply augmenters, using what little mana they had to strengthen their bodies.

Harald's pride as the settlement's strongest male wouldn't allow him to just leave. More importantly he feared his son would never grow strong in the origin world. In a settlement where only the strong were respected, Harald worried his son wouldn't survive if he was to be weak.

With that in mind, Harald chose to stay. If his son hated him for doing this then so be it, he refused to allow his child to be a weakling and thus end their long-standing bloodline.

As for Elia and the other women, losing their strongest male didn't matter as they expected to find stronger men in the origin world of Pesia. This was how Harald and his son Aron, remained in Limbo and migrated from the harsh region of Obrime to a place he found more suitable for raising a child.

.....

Harald was not a soft man, as soon as Aron was old enough to start receiving information...his training had begun.

The way Koliean men raised their sons was normally extremely harsh and quite unorthodox. Firstly, due to time being such an incomprehensible concept in Limbo they separated growth into stages.

A baby was the earliest stage and consisted of the fragile phase in which the child couldn't protect himself and the learning phase in which they would start to learn basics from observing their mother or father.

At first Harald had him only observe and mimic his actions while educating him on everything he needed to know to survive in Limbo. After all, Harald knew that life was fragile in Limbo and that each moment could be his last, the more his child knew the greater its chance of survival.

Growing up with only his father, Aron knew nothing except that which his father taught him or that which he taught himself through curiosity.

Harald never hid the fact that he had them stay behind but Aron didn't care and was far too young to fully understand. The only thing that did seem to catch his attention was the very idea of someone being stronger than his father.

The fact that his father wanted him to be stronger than him seemed impossible to the boy but this never stopped his blind determination. Aron was always fast and eager to learn as it was all he knew. No friends, no family, no distractions, just training and striving to survive constantly.

Harald never once showed how proud he was of his son as he saw it as a weakness. A standard train of thought among the men of Kol, most especially the beast mongers. Emotion breeds weakness or at least showing it.

Getting emotionally attached to one's child was a sort of unspoken taboo because once the child reached a certain stage, the father would need to banish him from the clan so that he could start his own. In such clashes it wasn't odd for them to turn bloody, Harald never once hid the fact the he too killed his own father before inheriting the mantle of clan chief.

It was also a way to increase their own strength, since beast mongers could hunt each other the same way they could beasts. Sometimes it was easier to just take the mana from an aging beast monger and inherit multiple aspects at the same time.

However, they were so many times Harald had wished to tell his one and only son that he was proud but didn't. He spent nearly all his time looking after this boy and teaching him all he knew so it was only natural for emotions to arise, often making him wonder if his own father felt the same and just hid it as well. Training Aron was hard on both parties but strength and power were absolute in Limbo, anything else was secondary.

Just like that, time began to fly by and Aron began to grow, learning everything from survival skills, combat, beasts and everything else Harald thought necessary for making a strong beast monger out of him. This knowledge was however limited and quite primitive due to the small region Harald himself grew up in.

When Aron's muscles had developed somewhat adequately, he successfully hunted and killed his first mana beast single handedly. But it didn't end there, Aron had successfully managed to absorb the beast's mana so as to try inheriting his first aspect.

This process was extremely painful and hard as much of his body got restructured, everything underwent a drastic change and when the pain had finally ended, he had become a beast monger with a primary aspect belonging to a white Limbo Strider, a beast that largely resembled a giant wild canine.

The primary aspect a beast monger inherited was one they would hold for all their lives. It could be said a percentage of their physiology was now permanently that of their first beast.

The joy Harald felt could not be described in words. Although he may not have shown it, Harald was the happiest he had ever been in his life. But this was only the beginning of his young son's long journey....