Ning lived in a small house close to the western border of the city.
This was not a house that he owned or one that he rented. It was a house owned by a dud couple that were going to be out of a few weeks, so they had decided to give him the house.
After all, he didn't have a proper place to stay after the hotels decided to kick him out all because he was the Apostle of Alexis.
These people that were born with aether couldn't stand seeing someone of slower status rising to the same ranks as them. The differences between a normal man and a dud was slowly disappearing, and they didn't like that.
Ning could only sigh when he thought that. The prejudice and hatred the aether users had against the duds was so deep rooted that they couldn't see the rise of the duds being anything other than bad.
Ning woke up in thee morning and pulled out something to eat. Once done, he walked out of the house and shook his head.
Once more they had trashed the place. There were trash all around the front yard, not a single place for him to set up his shop at.
There were also writings on the wall the called him words like traitor and waste of Aether.
'Am I going to have to not only help the duds get Aether, but also go around teaching why there should have been no distinctions in the first place?' Ning wondered. That was too much work. He would rather not have to do that.
He sighed as he looked at the outer wall with the large texts. 'I better clear this all before the peo—"
Suddenly Ning's hand moved behind him and caught a stone right as it was about to hit his head.
He pulled the stone front and saw that it was about the size of a chicken egg.
He turned around and saw that there were a bunch of young men there glaring at him. Ning looked at the young kid at the center, about 15 or 16 years old.
"Did you throw this stone at me?" Ning asked.
"Ptui!" the kid spit next to him. "I was only throwing stone at a pile of shit in the middle of a garbage. Didn't know there was a human here."
The bunch of kids next to him started laughing as if he had said the funniest joke they had ever heard.
Ning looked around him at the pile of garbage and smiled. "Did your parents ever tell you that why you should never throw a stone at a pile of shit?"? he asked.
"Why?" the kids asked with a still smiling face.
"Because if you throw a stone at shit, it usually splashes back on you."
Suddenly a bunch of stones flew off from near Ning, accurately hitting the shin of all the legs that those kids had.
Not a single bone was broken, but the kids fell onto the ground and started crying out in pain.
People started to gather around his house and saw the bunch of kids on the ground. They didn't sympathize with the kids.
They were known troublemakers that ran around the city causing problems to the duds. Their parents had high status in the city, so the duds couldn't even do anything against them.
Right now, all they thought in their heart was whatever happened here, the kids deserved it.
Ning walked up to the kid and pulled up the leader of the group and asked him, "are you responsible for this?"
"Fuck off! Do you think I will answer you?" he shouted.
"You will if you don't want me to break those legs," Ning said as he grabbed at the same part he had hit the stone at and started putting incredible pressure at it.
"AAHHH!!" the kid started screaming in pain. "Answer me quickly or your bones will break in half."
"N-No!" the kid cried.
"Very well," Ning put more pressure on it, getting the bone to the point of snapping.
"Wait! Wait! Wait! It was us. We did it," the kid shouted.
Ning let go.
The kid immediately started massaging to red, almost purple spot on his leg where Ning had been putting pressure.
"You did it?" Ning asked. The other kids were fully terrified seeing what the main kid was going through.
"Yes, we did it," the kid said.
"Under whose order?" Ning asked.
"No, no one. We just heard the adults talking about you and came to do what we did," the kid said.
"Alright, you have 1 hour to fix this house the way it was before. If not, I will break all of your legs for sure this time," Ning scared them.
"Ye-yes!" the kids nodded quickly and stood up to go clear the garbage and the writing on the wall.
Ning didn't care how they would do it, he only cared that they did.
He cleared a bit of trash in one area, and setup his table there. People started gathering in a line in front of him.
There were people who hadn't yet gotten their share of ores and scrolls to become an Aether user yet.
So he spend the next few hours waiting for people to come. From what he knew, there shouldn't have been that many people left yet, and in a matter of days he should be able to leave this place.
The line was disrupted as a bunch of buff adults walked up to Ning with a bunch of sticks and metal rods.
They slammed his table the moment they arrived, smashing it into bits.
"What are you doing?" Ning asked.
They didn't answer and instead surrounded him and grabbed him by his arms, pulling him up.
A man appeared from the crowd with an almost obese body and a fancy looking suit.
"Who are you?" Ning asked.
"I am the mayor of this city, and I have come here to punish you for the chaos you have brought into my city."
