John’s eyes fluttered open. He was startled to find himself laying spread eagle in the middle of a dense forest. Naked. He quickly sat up and winced as bright light filtered through the treetops into his eyes.

He quickly assessed his surroundings. The densely packed underbrush beneath him irritated his bare behind and so he got to his feet. A wave of dizziness hit him before fading quickly. Confused, John looked down, fully taking in his lack of clothing and sighed.

“This is going to be one hell of a walk home.”

John racked his brains trying to remember what the hell happened. He had simply gone back to his dorm after attending classes, ate dinner, and went to bed. Perhaps he was drugged, stripped, and left here as a prank? No, that didn't make sense. His friends might have loved to prank each other, but this was way too much.

In any case, the first priority was getting some clothes and then finding his way back home. Without any real idea of where he was, he set off in a random direction. As the sun was just rising, he should have plenty of time to find his way home before nightfall and anyone put in the effort to drag him absurdly far into a forest just to abandon him. He had to be close to some kind of town. John walked for about two hours before cutting the bottom of his heel on a sharp rock buried beneath fallen leaves.

“Dammit! What the hell, I suppose it would’ve been too much to leave me with a pair of shoes in the middle of nowhere”

A sharp pain made him wince when he tried to place weight on the cut heel. As he grumbled to himself, he found a long stick and used it to ease the weight off of his now bleeding foot. John walked, and walked... and walked.

“Aaaaaah!” John yelled in frustration at no one in particular before leaning against a tree to rest.

Just as he sat down to take a breather he heard rustling in a bush beside him. He subconsciously covered his tender bits before calling out.

“Hello, is anyone there?” he paused as he heard no response. “If you’re the bastard who stripped me down and abandoned me in a forest, you’ll have hell to pay!”

As he still heard no response he stood up and angrily walked to the bush mumbling curses under his breath. Suddenly a wild boar charged out from the bush beelining for John!

“Shit, shit, shiiit” he screamed as he bolted away.

The wild boar quickly caught up to him and rammed its long red tusks into the back of John’s leg. Red? No, there wasn’t any time to consider such things as he was bleeding profusely while the boar was clearly rearing up to attack a second time.

Unyielding, the boar charged a second time. John held up the stick he had been bracing his weight on and attempted to sidestep and strike the boar on its side. Futility.

The only possible weapon was split as the boar rammed into the stick without slowing. Now holding his split weapon, one in each hand, John felt an excruciating pain as the boar's momentum broke through his own flimsy guard. To his shock, the beast’s protruding horn deeply slashed into John’s thigh as it barreled past! Horror washed over John when the boar again turned towards him and charged a final time.

However the hell he ended up in this predicament didn’t matter anymore. John wasn’t able to outrun the boar, and his strength was clearly dwarfed by it. These were likely going to be the final moments of his so far... meager life. Panting, and now bleeding heavily, John drew upon courage he didn't know he had in him. If this was the end to his all too ordinary life, why not let the ending be interesting at least? Letting out a battle cry, he ran at the boar ready to go out swinging.

“Ahhh!” he screamed like a lunatic .

His courage left him, quicker than it took to find it. His brave charge, holding what was now two sticks ending in a point and staring death in the face abruptly ended when John bailed on his attack. He pivoted his foot and tried to quickly turn around and try his luck with outrunning the boar, but pitifully tripped over his own feet falling flat on his face.

John's skull cracked against an unfortunately placed rock and he was swiftly knocked out.

When John slowly regained consciousness, he felt a warm liquid run down his right arm. Groggily, he cracked open his eyes and as his vision focused he made out that his arm was covered in red. Panicking, he squinted his eyes and slowly made out the image of the boar. The blood coating his arm wasn’t his. When John fell, he flailed out his arm, each brandishing the sticks that were snapped into sharp points at the end. The boar had built up so much momentum that when John hit the floor with outstretched arms, the boar was not able to stop itself as it ran right into the spike.

The pointed end of the stick gruesomely stabbed into the throat of the animal from below. John's eyes grew wide as his vision cleared and he saw that the boar was still breathing. Its body shook as it struggled to breathe. With blood gushing from its wound, there was no chance of it being able to attack John again.

Shakily, he got to his feet and took the other half of his brace turned weapon. His injured leg almost gave out as he raised the spiked end and pierced through the boar's underbelly. A soft whimper left the boar’s lips as it died due to absurdly bad luck.

John fell to the ground in surprise when the boar began to shimmer. The corpse looked as though it was dissolving into a dim red light. He was dumbfounded when the boar's blood coating his arm did the same. Frozen in shock, he stood there while the light seemed to enter his body. When the dim red light entered him, it felt as if every cell in his body began vibrating. When the sensation ended, the injuries he had sustained became miraculously healed! Not only that, but John felt full of energy and somehow stronger than when he woke up hours ago. Frankly, it felt great. He sat there silently for a moment taking in shaky breaths and reflected on what just happened.

After some time had passed, John managed to mostly calm himself down. While it was hard to believe, he was now certain that he was somehow impossibly far from home. Not knowing what else he could possibly do, he concluded he had to keep moving. While frightening, John was amused to think that he might have somehow become some comic book like Wolverine character. How else could he explain his injuries in the matter of a few minutes! But then, what the hell happened to the boar's corpse then? He would need more information before he made any conclusions, so he just settled on being grateful that he hasn’t bled out yet.

For several more hours he kept up a moderate pace and was careful with his foot placement so as not to cut himself again. When the sun was beginning to set he decided to climb a tree and sleep above ground. Fumbling his way up, he gripped the bark and settled down onto a larger branch. John attempted to get as comfortable as possible as he drifted to sleep while hoping he wouldn’t be woken up to the crunch of his body having fallen the ten foot drop to the ground.

“Why the HELL is a naked man sleeping in a tree” a boorish voice startled John awake.

Despite his best efforts, he lost his balance and he fell out of the tree only to be caught like a princess by the man who had called out to him.

John’s face turned red as he tried to cover himself and he took in the fact that he was being held in the arms of one of the largest people he had ever seen. The man was built like a professional bodybuilder with thick arms and legs like tree trunks. He wore what looked like... silver colored leather armor black pants? His body was entirely hairless and his large bald head was plastered with a cheeky grin.

“Buy a man a drink first before you jump into his arms” the boorish man winked with a smirk.

John yelped and jumped from the stranger’s arms. Momentarily, he forgot his nakedness and stood there in all his “glory”. To his dismay, he was quickly reminded of his nudity when the stare of three landed on him.

An upsettingly good looking man in his late twenties with blonde hair, a similar chest armor, and blue pants that matched his blue eyes fell to the ground laughing. He tried to muster the words “Buy me- DRINK- HAHAH- first” between fits of laughing.

To the right of the man who was making no attempt at calming himself was a red haired beauty. They all must be some type of team because she too wore leather chest armor. She had what looked to be a silver painted stick attached to her hip. She was rolling her dazzling emerald colored eyes in annoyance at the man who was gasping for air during his seemingly uncontrollable fit of laughter.

Slightly off to the side was a slim girl with pearly white skin and black hair. Unlike the others, she was fitted into a black bodysuit. John guffawed as he noticed she seemed to have black cat ears protruding from the top of her head. He tried not to stare as it might be considered rude and the knife sheathed against her side was probably not just for show.

John stammered “I- I woke up here, a boar attacked me... clothes?” he had never been so embarrassed. Here he stood, naked, before 4 strangers and could barely form a sentence.

The man with blonde hair stood up wiping away tears. He was well built and seemed to finally have calmed himself as he dipped his head to John. He cleared his throat and spoke in a jovial tone.

“I am Arther, of the Golden-Sword family, leader of this party. Who might you be... oh naked stranger” the man smirked.

“Im John Slayder... of the Slayder family?? And can anyone tell me what the fuck is happening. I woke up nude, valiantly fought a boar that turned into a red light that my body ABSORBED then I somehow healed myself. “ John rambled on about everything that happened to him since arriving in this forest.

“John Slayder, I don’t know why you’re here in Aerlorhn forest but it sounds like you got into a fight with a spirit beast, and despite having a low foundation of spirit energy won.” Arther nodded seemingly out of respect at this. “However, the absorption of red light is something only spirit beasts, creatures composed of spiritual energy, can do so I find it hard believing that you had done so.”

Arther frowned. He looked the naked man up and down then grinned. He waved his hand and a pair of blue pants shimmered into the air. He tossed them to John whose expression became one of pure gratitude. As John pulled on the pair of pants, he felt nearly as good compared to the feeling he experienced when absorbing the boar’s corpse. He looked at Arther with a steady voice and asked “What is Aerlorhn forest... and what the hell is a spirit beast?”