He looked at his reflection in the mirror with disgust. “Is this why everyone hates me?” He thought in his heart as he clenched his hands. His skin was crimson red, his eyes were like devil’s and two horns were protruding out of his forehead. “I look like a monster.”

“Why are you admiring yourself in the mirror? Let’s go.” A voice pulled him out of his stupor. The newcomer tried to pat his shoulder but he was standing at three meters, thus he failed. He turned to look at his only friend with a smile. “Hmm.” The teen was unaware of his inner struggle. He was walking at the front. He looked at the teen with admiration. He was a person who could fight against injustice although he was kind-hearted.

“Xavic—” He said before stopping. The purple-haired teen turned to look at him. His purplish-blue eyes were staring at him with questions. “What is wrong, Zall?”

“Why do you keep on fighting? You have a pretty good ability that can help you earn as much as you want, why do you risk your life?” Zall asked abstractly. He was poor and alone as far as he knew. When he first awakened his superpower, people were beating him because of his look. His ability wasn’t useful either, it was only good for taking the beat. But Xavic was different. With his rare abilities, he could earn his fill.

“Because we have to,” Xavic said after thinking for a while. “I know you don’t like fighting Zall, but whether you do it or not, monsters are our enemies,” Xavic said, then kept on walking. Zall thought about what his only friend said. He thought about it a lot and knew monsters were enemies, and they had to kill them. Although humans weren’t any better than monsters, Zall knew that it was an “us or them” situation. They had to kill monsters, or they would be killed.

Zall encountered the evil side of humanity since he was a kid. Because of his different looks, he was always outcasted. He was always alienated. Adults beat him, teachers ignored him and kids despised him. He was used to it when he grew up, but some injuries were hard to heal.

His family was different. They were the nicest people he knew, and although not as much as him, they too had different looks, earning them the scorn of people. But his mother taught him to be nice, “Zall, when people curse you, take those words and use them to strengthen your heart. Then, put on your brightest smile. That is your biggest weapon.”

“The world is not as simple as you think.” Zall thought. Xavic was a good man, although his superpower was a problem for him too. He was still strong-willed.

“This is it, buddy. This forest is filled with strong monsters. With your defenses, and my paralyze, no one can stop us.” Xavic said with a grin. Zall would like to be as enthusiastic as he was, but he could only sigh helplessly. “You know I can’t injure any monster right,” Zall asked just in case.

Not that he didn’t want to, well, he didn’t want to. When his mother died, he promised to live up to her expectations. He would take all the hatred his adversaries threw at him to strengthen his heart, then put on his brightest smile. Luckily, with his superpower, he could do that.

“Don’t worry, I will,” Xavic said and walked into the forest. The wet grass on the ground and turquoise leaves on the trees were good indications of a prime element of the forest. Monsters in the forest were mostly water elemental. Because Xavic had a lightning element, they decided to hunt in here.

Not long after they walked into the forest, a rhino with a deep blue color walked in front of them. Its three horns were almost black. “That is mine!” Xavic said as a purple lightning ball formed in his hand, “You take that one.” He pointed at the tiger walking slowly towards them. Zall looked at the white tiger with cyan stripes.

The tiger’s blue eyes were looking at Zall with ferocious hunger. Zall raised his arm as the tiger attacked. A blue aura surrounded the increasing paw’s might, while Zall did nothing. When two forces collided, nothing happened. “Sorry, tiger. I have to keep you here.” Zall muttered silently as he started to wrestle with the monster. The monster was dumbfounded, but he couldn’t fall back. Its opponent was able to take his attacks as if they were nothing.

On the other hand, the rhino Xavic was fighting was getting more and more furious. These two humans were its prey, but this tiger walked out of nowhere to steal its food. Rhino turned to look at Zall and saw nothing happened. It sighed in relief and roared towards the tiger to leave its food alone. Tiger ignored the noisy rhino and kept on attacking. But the human in front of it could take all the attacks without any injury. But the weirder thing was, it wasn’t attacking at all.

“There, there. I know you are hungry, but I cannot let you eat us.” Zall said as he smiled from ear to ear. “How about you go hunt somewhere else?”

“Roar?” Tiger looked at Zall dumbfounded. It couldn’t register the behavior of this human.

Xavic unleashed the lightning ball in his hand while shaking his head at Zall’s words. When the rhino saw the lightning, it snorted and wanted to deflect it with its horn, but as soon as the lightning hit it, it felt its body was numb while a current traveled its body to energize its cells.

“Hehe. My lightning is special.” Xavic smiled and unsheathed the dagger on his belt. After they helped the post commander with controlled humans, he and Zall were awarded middle-tier weapons. Since Zall wasn’t willing to use any weapons, and the post commander didn’t have a shield, they exchanged it with money instead. But the dagger Xavic had was still strong enough to kill the beast in front of him.

“Since rhino is a low-tier monster, I should be able to kill him with this dagger.” Xavic thought and stabbed the rhino in the head. The daggered fastened on the monster's skull, but couldn’t go past it. “How hard! As expected of a rhino.”

Zall raised his arm to stab over and over again. Rhino was stunned by the lightning, but when its life was on the line its body started to move barely. “Oh no, it can move already,” Xavic said and charged another lightning ball. Before the rhino could move, the lightning landed on its head, stunned it once again. But a strange scene displayed. The wound on the rhino’s head closed up. “It healed it completely.” Xavic cried in despair.

“I need to stab harder,” Xavic shouted and kept on stabbing. But the rhino’s skin was too hard. Before it died, the duration of the stun ended, so Xavic had to charge another lightning. To the rhino's surprise, its injuries healed once again. It looked at the human with grievance, “Brother why do you keep on healing me. Why don’t you just kill me? The stabs hurt, your lightning hurts, and you stun me to kill me only to heal me to start all over again.”

After an hour, in the forest with blue grasses, and sky blue leaves, a teen was lying on the ground exhausted. A rhino was lying next to the teen dead. Not far from the two, a tiger and a giant of a man were snoring at each other’s embrace.