Chapter 3: A Mother's Echo
The first night in the slums of Nuoding City was the coldest Mame had ever felt.
He sat curled in the corner of a rotting, narrow alleyway, the freezing rain soaking through his thin academy uniform—the only clothes he had left. The smell of garbage and wet ash filled his nose. He had no fire, no food, and no family.
In the pitch black of the alley, something ancient and violent stirred in his blood.
A terrifying heat began to radiate from his chest, burning away the chill of the rain. His small hands curled into fists, his fingernails biting into his palms until warm blood dripped onto the cobblestones. The sheer injustice of it all—the Grandmaster's arrogant sneer, Tang San's cold indifference, the corrupt guards who had let his mother die in a damp cell—fed a monstrous rage that threatened to consume him.
He wanted to scream. He wanted to tear the stone walls of the alley apart with his bare hands. For a fleeting second, the faint, ghostly silhouette of a massive ape flickered in the shadows behind him, and his dark eyes flashed with a dangerous, feral red.
"Hush, my sweet Mame."
The voice echoed in his mind, cutting through the roaring in his ears. It was his mother's voice, warm and gentle, from the night of his Awakening.
"The world will be cold to us, Mame. It will try to make you cruel. But you have my heart. Promise me you will always be kind. Never let their darkness turn you into a monster."
Mame gasped, his eyes snapping open. The red hue vanished from his irises, and the oppressive heat rolling off his body immediately dissipated, leaving him shivering in the rain once more. The phantom ape receded into the depths of his soul.
Tears finally spilled over his cheeks, mixing with the rain. He uncurled his bloody fists and pressed his hands over his heart. "I promise, Mom," he whispered into the dark. "I won't lose myself. I won't be like them."
He survived that night, and the next day, he went to work.
If he couldn't cultivate in the comfort of an academy, he would forge his body in the fires of the slums. Mame found work at a brutal lumber yard on the outskirts of Nuoding City. The foremen laughed when an eight-year-old boy asked for a job, but when Mame silently hoisted a log meant for two grown men onto his shoulder, the laughing stopped.
The pay was abysmal—just a few dull copper coins for a grueling, fourteen-hour shift. But Mame didn't just see it as labor; it was his cultivation.
Every heavy lifting motion was an exercise in circulating his stagnant Spirit Power. Every drop of sweat was weakness leaving his body. Without realizing it, the extreme physical stress was slowly compressing his muscles, making his Saiyan biology denser and vastly more durable than any human child's. He ate the cheapest, plainest gruel to survive, hoarding every single copper coin in a small, hidden pouch beneath a loose floorboard in an abandoned shed.
Months bled into one another. He remained a Level 3 Spirit Scholar, but underneath his soot-stained clothes, his body was becoming an unyielding weapon.
Finally, the day came. The pouch was heavy enough.
Mame washed his face in a public fountain, put on his cleanest tattered shirt, and walked to the Spirit Hall outpost that managed entry into the captive Nuoding Spirit Hunting Forest. He just needed to pay the entry toll and maybe hire a cheap, low-level guide to help him secure a ten-year ring to break his bottleneck.
He placed his heavy pouch of coppers onto the polished marble counter. The clerk, a bored Spirit Master, looked down at him.
"Name and Martial Soul," the clerk droned.
"Mame. Brown Monkey."
The clerk sighed and opened a thick ledger, running his finger down the pages. Suddenly, his finger stopped. His bored expression vanished, replaced by a cold sneer.
"Application denied," the clerk said, slamming the book shut and shoving the pouch of coins back across the counter.
Mame blinked, stunned. "What? Why? I have the toll money right here."
"Your name is blacklisted, boy," the clerk scoffed. "Direct orders from the regional administration. You are permanently barred from entering the Nuoding Spirit Hunting Forest, or any captive forest under our jurisdiction. Take your coppers and get out before I call the guards."
Mame's heart sank like a stone. He scooped up his coins and stumbled out of the majestic hall, the heavy oak doors slamming shut behind him.
He didn't know that Yu Xiaogang—still nursing his bruised ego—had pulled a few strings with his friends in the administration to ensure his "failed disciple" would never have the chance to progress. Mame simply assumed it was the lingering shadow of his mother's fabricated crimes. The Spirit Hall had taken her life, and now they were taking his future.
Mame walked until he reached the edge of Nuoding City, staring out at the vast, untamed wilderness beyond the walls.
The safe, captive forests were closed to him. The world had slammed every single door in his face. But the stubborn, burning pride of a warrior race refused to be extinguished. If the safe routes were blocked, he would have to walk the deadliest path imaginable.
He looked toward the distant horizon, toward the center of the continent.
The Star Dou Great Forest.
It wasn't a captive breeding ground. It was an ancient, primal wilderness where ten-thousand-year and hundred-thousand-year beasts roamed free. It was absolute suicide for an eight-year-old Level 3 Spirit Scholar to even step foot in its outer perimeter.
But out there, the Spirit Hall had no control. Out there, the Grandmaster's words meant nothing.
Mame gripped his pouch of coins. He would use the money to travel to the border of the Star Dou Great Forest. He would find a way. He had to.
Mame knew he couldn't just walk to the Star Dou Great Forest. It was hundreds of miles away, and the roads were plagued by bandits and wild beasts. He needed travel money, and he needed enough left over to hire an escort once he got there.
So, he went back to the lumber yard.
For four more agonizing months, the eight-year-old boy became a machine. He took the night shifts, the double shifts, the jobs hauling ironwood that made grown men spit blood. He didn't complain. He barely spoke. He just worked.
The foremen stopped laughing at him and started watching him with uneasy awe. Mame was small, wrapped in oversized, ragged clothes, but beneath the fabric, his muscles were dense like coiled steel. His Saiyan biology—starved of Spirit Power cultivation—was compensating by reinforcing his physical frame to absurd, unnatural degrees. He was absorbing the brutal labor, his body adapting to the crushing weight of the logs day by day.
When the freezing winter finally broke into a muddy spring, Mame unearthed his hidden pouch from beneath the floorboards. It was heavy. Two years of academy allowance from his mother, plus nearly a year of backbreaking slum labor, had yielded a respectable pile of silver and copper coins, with even a few gold pieces buried at the bottom.
It was the price of his future.
Mame bought passage on a spice merchant's caravan heading south, hiding in the back amongst sacks of pungent star anise and dried roots. The journey took three weeks. He spent the entire time meditating in the dark, trying to force his stubborn, microscopic drop of Spirit Power to circulate. It still felt like moving a mountain, but he refused to open his eyes.
When the caravan finally lurched to a halt, the air had changed. The safe, sterile scent of Nuoding City was gone.
Mame hopped out of the wagon and looked up. The sky ahead was swallowed by a towering wall of ancient, colossal trees that seemed to scrape the clouds. The air was thick, humid, and heavy with an oppressive, suffocating aura. Even from miles away, Mame could feel the ancient, primal danger radiating from the tree line.
This was the Star Dou Great Forest. The absolute deadliest place on the Douluo Continent.
The border town sprawling at the edge of the forest was nothing like the orderly streets of Nuoding. It was a chaotic, muddy frontier settlement built out of rough-hewn timber and canvas tents. It smelled of roasted meat, cheap ale, and dried blood. The streets were packed with hardened freelancers—men and women bearing visible scars, carrying massive weapons, and openly displaying their Spirit Rings to ward off thieves.
These weren't the arrogant scholars of Nuoding Academy. These were killers who made their living harvesting the bones and rings of monsters.
Mame pulled his ragged hood up, keeping his head down as he navigated the muddy thoroughfare. He found a noisy, open-air tavern where freelance Spirit Masters gathered to form hunting parties. A large wooden board was nailed to a post, covered in bounties and requests.
Mame took a deep breath, clutching his heavy pouch of coins to his chest. He walked up to a sturdy wooden table occupied by three rough-looking men. They were drinking heavily, their armor scuffed and stained with old blood.
"Excuse me," Mame said, his voice quiet but steady over the din of the tavern.
The three men stopped laughing. The leader—a tall, wiry man with a jagged scar running through his left eyebrow—looked down at the small boy. He took a slow sip of his ale, his eyes flicking down to the bulging leather pouch in Mame's arms.
"You lost, rat?" the scarred man asked, his voice like grinding stones.
"I need a Spirit Ring," Mame stated plainly. "I have money. I need an escort into the outer perimeter to hunt a ten-year or fifty-year beast. Something simple. I can pay."
The three men exchanged a look. It was a subtle, dangerous look, communicating volumes in a fraction of a second. A lone, ragged child. A heavy bag of silver and gold. No parents. No academy uniform. No guild badge.
To them, Mame wasn't a client. He was walking, talking loot.
The leader set his mug down and let out a warm, greasy chuckle, completely shifting his demeanor. "Well, well. A young master looking to break through! You've got a lot of guts coming to the Star Dou border all by yourself, kid. I'm Gao. These are my brothers, Li and Chen."
The other two men grinned, revealing yellowed teeth.
"We're a registered hunting party," Gao lied smoothly, leaning over the table. "Two Spirit Masters and I'm a Level 23 Spirit Grandmaster. We specialize in safe, outer-rim extractions. You want a fifty-year ring? We can get that done by sundown. But the Star Dou ain't cheap, kid. It'll cost you."
Mame placed half of his coins on the table. The unmistakable clink of silver and gold made Gao's pupils dilate.
"This is half," Mame said, his dark eyes locking onto Gao's. "You get the rest when the beast is subdued and I absorb the ring."
"Smart kid," Gao praised, scooping the coins into his own pockets with practiced speed. He stood up, grabbing a wicked-looking hunting spear from leaning against the table. "You got yourself a deal. Come on, boys. Let's take the young master hunting."
As Mame followed the three men out of the tavern and toward the looming, dark canopy of the Star Dou Great Forest, he felt a cold knot form in his stomach. His instincts—the latent, primal intuition of his bloodline—were screaming at him. He knew these men were dangerous. He knew their smiles were fake.
But he was desperate. He was an eight-year-old boy trying to cheat fate, and he had no other options left. He tightened his grip on the remaining coins in his pouch, silently praying to his mother that his gamble would pay off.