Valerius awoke to the smell of rust, damp earth, and a quiet, all-consuming dread. The first thing he registered wasn't the pain in his back, or the splintered wooden floorboards pressing into his skin, but the memory of a speeding truck and a life that was not this one. He was a man of the modern world, a man of computers and coffee, but he was now inside the mind of a young lordling, a boy named Valerius with a grim inheritance.
A weak, gray light filtered through a cracked window, illuminating the tattered curtains and the peeling wallpaper of what was once a grand bedroom. The dust motes danced in the air like a ghostly ballet, a silent testament to years of neglect. He pushed himself up, his muscles aching with a weakness he wasn't accustomed to. He looked at his hands, thin and calloused, nothing like the soft hands he remembered. This was real. The memories of the boy, Valerius, were his own now: a lonely childhood, a distant father who was never home, and the recent, sudden death of both his parents in a mysterious "forest accident."
The manor was a ruin. His inheritance was a liability. He slowly made his way out of the room and down a grand, curving staircase, each step groaning under his weight. The once-gleaming wooden banister was now rough with grime. Tapestries hung in shreds, their vibrant scenes of noble hunts and feasts faded into murky, forgotten dreams. The air was heavy with the silence of a house long abandoned by joy.
He found the manor's massive front doors barred, not from the outside, but from within. A series of heavy iron bars and thick wooden planks were nailed across the entrance, a desperate attempt to keep something out. Or perhaps, to keep the villagers in.
As he walked, he could hear the faint, muffled sounds of a village a little ways off. He pushed through a cobweb-ridden archway and found himself in the manor's courtyard. It was overgrown, a tangle of weeds and thorns. Beyond the crumbling stone walls, he could see the village, a cluster of sad-looking cottages with smoke struggling to rise from their chimneys. Their windows were dark and shuttered, even in the middle of the day.
Valerius finally saw a person: an old woman sweeping a small porch with a broken broom. She was hunched over, her face a web of wrinkles, and her eyes were fixed on the imposing, dark treeline of the forest that dominated the horizon. Her expression was one of profound, paralyzing fear.
This was the Cursed Woods, the reason for the manor's decay and the village's despair. The memories of his new life came flooding in, giving him context. The world was governed by a tiered power system. Most people were born with a specific tier of power, from F-tier (a slight increase in strength or speed) all the way up to SSS-tier, a near-mythical level of ability that could topple kingdoms. The people of his village, the last vestiges of his family's domain, were almost all F-tier or, more commonly, non-powered. In this world, they were nothing. They were food for the beasts that roamed the Cursed Woods.
He had to get out of the manor, to find out what was going on. He eventually found a smaller, back entrance that had also been barred, but one of the wooden planks had rotted away. With a heave, he broke it free and slipped out into the cold, damp morning air. The world outside was even worse than the manor. The roads were muddy, and the cottages were in a terrible state of disrepair. A sense of hopelessness hung over the village like a shroud.
As he walked, he could feel eyes on him. The villagers, peeking out from behind their shutters, watched the young master with a mixture of fear and resentment. He was the son of the man who had lost everything, the son of the man who had abandoned them to this fate. They didn't see a boy with a new mind; they saw the last descendant of a cursed family.
He approached a man chopping wood, his movements slow and tired. The man, a broad-shouldered F-tier with a weak-looking axe, froze when he saw Valerius.
"Master Valerius," the man said, his voice flat. "You're outside."
"What happened to my parents?" Valerius asked, his voice sounding strange and foreign even to himself. "The accident in the woods?"
The man's face hardened, and he looked back at the Cursed Woods. "They went in. They didn't come out. Like all the others. The monsters took them."
"The monsters," Valerius repeated. "Are there no soldiers? No one to protect us?"
The man let out a humorless laugh. "Protect us? The nobles don't care about a village of F-tiers. They call this place the 'farm,' a place to grow their own power. They send their S-tier lieutenants to hunt the C-tier beasts that stray out, but they leave the F and E-tier monsters to us. They say it's our natural place, to be a barrier for them."
The raw injustice of it all sent a shiver through Valerius. He came from a world where everyone, for the most part, had equal rights. This place was a waking nightmare. He now understood his people's fear and the reason they'd all but given up.
He went back to the manor, his mind a whirlwind of information. He needed to find a solution, a way to survive. The old Valerius had no plan. He was just a boy, too scared to even leave the manor. The new Valerius, with his future knowledge, knew that to change this world, he needed power, and lots of it. But where could he find it? The tiered system was a dead end for people like him. He had no power. He wasn't even an F-tier. He was a non-powered human, the lowest of the low.
He remembered a fleeting note in the old Valerius's journal, a mention of his grandfather and a secret study. He spent hours searching the dusty halls, his frustration growing with every turn. He found nothing but cobwebs and decay. Just as he was about to give up, he noticed a section of the wall behind a large, broken tapestry. It looked different, a different shade of stone. He pushed on it, and to his surprise, it shifted, revealing a hidden passage.
He lit a torch, the sputtering flame casting long, dancing shadows on the stone walls of the hidden corridor. The air was cool and stale, tasting of old books and something else... something earthy. He followed the passage deep underground until it opened into a large, domed chamber. In the center of the chamber, under a single shaft of light from a hole in the ceiling, stood an ancient, gnarled tree.
It was not a tree of this world. Its trunk was a twisting mass of dark, knotted wood, but it wasn't dead. A soft, ethereal light pulsed from within its core, illuminating the strange, grotesque fruits and glowing orbs that hung from its branches. The roots of the tree were a shocking sight. They were thick, like massive veins, and they were wrapped around the skeletal remains of countless monsters. Skulls of beasts of all sizes were tangled in the roots, their empty eye sockets staring up at the ceiling.
Next to the tree was a stone altar, and on it, a leather-bound journal. It was his grandfather's. He opened it, his hands trembling. The first entry was a stark confession. "The curse is our legacy. The tree, our burden. To live, it must feed. To feed, it must have blood."
Valerius read through the journal, his mind reeling. The tree, his inheritance, was a living engine of power. It didn't just produce fruits and orbs; it ate the remains of monsters and, in return, created power. The journal went on to explain the different types of power the tree could generate: Devil Fruits, which offered limitless creativity, and Haki orbs, which gave mastery over the spiritual energy of the world. But the most stunning revelation was on the final page, a secret passed down through his family. The tree's power granted the user complete knowledge of the abilities it produced. Every fruit, every orb—Valerius would know its full potential the moment it was harvested.
He looked at the tree, then at the journal, and then at the dark passage leading back to the village. The hopelessness he had felt earlier was replaced by a cold, calculated determination. The world had told him he was worthless, a non-powered human destined to be food. But he had a secret. He had the key to a power beyond their tiered system. The Cursed Woods was no longer a tomb; it was a resource. The monsters were no longer a threat; they were the fuel for his ambition. He was not a lord in a ruined manor, but the master of a forge, and his hammer would be a tree that fed on death to produce life.
The last descendant of a cursed family was no longer afraid. He was ready to start his harvest.