Victor stood tall and straight, his eyes peering at the men in front of him. His gaze was strong and powerful, his expression sharpening. Then, clapping his hands together, he gently smiled.

"Okay, men, I need one of you to step up." Victor said, as he watched carefully for the soldiers reaction.

Raven stood within the crowd, not budging as he kept an eye on Victor, his gaze unfathomable. Suddenly, turning to look at Mark, his eyes seemingly dimmed.

Mark heard Victor's words and immediately knew what he was going to do. He wasn't going to intervene, he just had to watch to make sure that nobody tried something fishy against Victor or tried to disrespect him.

No one dared to step up, merely looking at each other as if they were telling someone to step up instead of themself. Their gazes never went to look at Victor nor Mark. Finally, a tall alpha stepped up, walking towards Victor.

"What's your name?" Victor asked as he examined the man in front of him, his eyes doing a quick scan whilst looking at Mark's reaction.

"My name is Nix, General." Nix was a bit taller than the average alpha man, his eyes brown, and his hair a pitch darkness. There seemed to be a bit of Asian blood within him. His features weren't delicate, but they also weren't as rough as you would expect. His physique looked thinner than what would be expected from a soldier, but it wasn't totally thin.

"Hmm...your physique seems like it needs to bulked up. Actually, most of you do. Although, I do trust that you are much stronger than how you look, judging that you do have one of the best generals as your instructor and that you all are some of the military's best soldier." Victor turned to look at Nix first before looking at the thirty-or-so people in front of him. "First of all, the rest of you, I want you all to start doing some warm-ups. From now on, every time I am to instruct you, I want you to run three laps around the base, and you must also do one hundred pushups, pull-ups, and a five minute plank. You may get started."

Although there were some groans, the rest of the men turned to begun their task, some already used to this. Raven could only take a final glance at Victor before also following the crowd.

With Mark, Victor, and Nix in the room alone, it seemed awfully quiet.

Turning to look at Nix, Victor cocked a brow before saying, "I need you to fight me."

"Fight against you?" Nix's mouth slightly opened, surprise within his eyes as if he was never expecting that sentence to come out of Victor's mouth.

Victor merely nodded his head, saying, "Come at me the hardest that you can. A little rule, you are not allowed to use any weapon. Here, take this and tie it on your wrist." Victor handed a small piece of cloth to Nix, who accepted it with a blank look and tied it around his wrist. Victor also tied one on his wrist too.

"We'll play a little game here. This piece of cloth on our wrist are our life, if it gets stolen away, you are dead. Your goal is to take away your opponent's cloth, meaning you must take away the piece of cloth on my wrist. But, if you are unable to take away my cloth and I take off yours before you can do so, I want you to find another soldier and challenge them to a match. Doing so, you also have to explain the rules yourself to them. If you take away their cloth, then the next person will have to do the same thing as you did. This game is never ending, meaning that you can be challenged and also die at any time." Victor quickly explained the game and turned to look at Mark to make sure he was listening.

When Mark saw Victor turn to him, he unconsciously nodded his head away. Trying to hide his embarrassment, he pretended to look at something else.

"Are you ready?" Victor asked as he saw Nix start to get into position.

"Yes, General." Nix replied.

"Alright, then let's begin." Victor said before the room grew silent once more. Tension began rising.

Victor stood in place as Nix walked around him, assessing him carefully. Then, from he corners of his eyes, he saw Nix's foot shifting before the man lunged at him.

Victor merely dodged, stepping to the side as Nix's hand rushed through the air, aiming for the cloth around his wrist. Victor struck out a hand, and Nix flinched back, then, he quickly aimed a kick toward the back of Nix's knee, intending to take him down.

Nix quickly jumped, avoiding the kick as he looked at Victor before kicking at Victor's face. Victor blocked the kick with his hand, and grasped into Nix's legs, and threw him onto the ground. Nix didn't even take a second to recover, getting up quickly as his fist aimed for Victor's stomach.

The process repeated for a while, each of them unwilling to back down, moves were exchanged over and over again. Then it finally ended.

Victor quickly caught onto Nix's wrist, and flipped his whole body onto the ground. Just as Nix was about to attack once more, Victor's voice stopped him.

"You've lost," Hanging from Victor's fingers was a white cloth. He stood, smiling as he looked down on Nix who was still on the ground.

Nix got up hurriedly, his eyes wide and confused, "How, how did you get it off in only that amount of time?"

It was less than even one second that Victor had held onto Nix's arm, flipping him towards the ground. It shouldn't have been possible to take off the cloth in that split second, especially when he was preoccupied with taking him down.

Victor merely smiled, "Every time you were trying to punch me, I would stop you by holding onto your wrist. Throughout that whole time, I was secretly loosening the cloth just enough so that it wouldn't fall off. You were certainly a good soldier, your moves were quick and you didn't take long to recover to all. But, once you get started on a fight, you forget about the other things surrounding you. I was able to tell that you never noticed my repeated actions of grabbing into your arm, nor did you notice that I was always blocking your attacks instead of dodging it."

"Now, as the words stated before, you must find another soldier and continue the same thing." Victor handed the cloth back to Nix, taking off the one that was tied around his wrist. 

Nix accepted it with a blank look, all the while walking out of the room.

After the words were exchanged, Victor turned to look at Mark, raising a brow as he asked, "How was it?"

Mark walked up to Victor's side, saying, "It was rather interesting. You turned it into a game when it was also a spar. It involves quite a big amount of analyzing your opponent while also comparing their actions to yourself. There is a lot of work out in, not to mention that you just also keep you actions hidden from your opponent. You have really done a huge task since this will also help our soldiers get better combat skills and also tighten the relationship between them and their companions." Mark's face was still unmoving even as he said such lifting words.

Victor wanted to laugh as he looked at Mark's frozen face while saying such moving words. But instead, he held it within himself, and didn't let out the laugh he could barely suppress. 

"That's great then. I do hope that my actions weren't too demanding for them, as I do not want that image stuck within them. I feel like you have done a great job at instructing them, especially Nix. His movements were very solid and he was also agile. It made me think that if he could also use his brain more, he would become a deadly weapon." Victor shook his head as he said so, his eyes shining under the light. 

Mark looked at Victor, unsure about the beating of his heart. It wasn't normal, especially since he was an alpha, to have his heart beat for another alpha. In fact, it was almost unheard of, rarely thought about. In his world, alphas couldn't socialize well with other alphas because of their possessiveness, alphas were never close with one another. 

But, he also didn't want to drift from Victor.

[Male lead's love percentage is at 25%]

..........

"Why? Why would you save me? Someone like me...I am unworthy of being saved by you."

"You remind me of myself greatly. And since long ago, I had made a promise to never let another suffer like I had. From now on, you will become my brother, my family. Your name will be Fei Shang from now on."

"A child? Why are you injured?"  

His face was cold, his expression piercing, but as he looked at the young boy in front of him, he got down on his knees, his white robes touching the dirty ground. He had a sword upon his back, his purple eyes were glistening under the night sky, his hair gently swaying.

The young boy was drenched in blood, his eyes seemingly dead, as if he had already lost his will to live. He didn't respond to the man's question, he merely stared ahead, his face blank, devoid of all emotion.

The man didn't continue his words, instead he took a long look at the boy in front of him before a sharp breath left him as he saw the wound on the boy's arm. Standing up, the man gently out a hand on the boy's head, and the boy closed his eyes, his frail body falling towards the man's already awaiting arms.

The man looked at the boy in his arms, whose breath was shallow, his body pale and weak, the blood colored his white robes, yet he didn't seem to care. Then, looking back once more at the house that was brunt down, the man's body disappeared. Along with him, he took a child away.

The man healed the boy, and just as he had appeared out of nowhere, he disappeared just like that.

The boy tried looking for the man, but he didn't remember how he had looked like. And because of this, when he grew, he had mistaken the man who saved him, ultimately destroying everything.

But whose mistake was it?