The meditation was as relaxing as it had me frustrated in the end. Ani assured me it wasn’t a problem, that she didn’t expect me to have a breakthrough in the next day or so. What she didn’t realize was that her expectations only made me anxious. 

My metaphysical finger itched to spend that point and get the ball rolling on the magic department, but I held on. Her advice had been sound, and although I had my reasons to be wary of her, she had been solid when it came to my personal development.

After we were done, Ani didn’t look as exhausted as the day before. She told me she had finally found a good pace for her that would also be beneficial to me. This time there was no level up for her magic attribute, but she could still meditate for hours before she had to take a break.

Next up was physical training with Sarah. She and Noah had been going at it since I started meditating with Ani, which, according to the sky clock, had started three and a half hours ago. Noah looked exhausted while Sarah had just started breaking a sweat. I could tell at the glance he sent me he wanted to stay and practice more, but just couldn’t take it. He left to get some rest and also do some archery and dexterity training on his own.

Sarah and I started with some warm up exercises, getting my sore muscles going, before we started the training in earnest. We started with strength training and calisthenics before moving to bare handed combat. 

Sarah was pushing me to be more bold and get used to pain. Since our recovery rate was so absurd, she thought it would be smart to take advantage of it. I couldn’t fault her logic, although I wasn’t particularly looking forward to it.

The idea was to build calluses around my extremities to help me handle better direct blows. Sarah also suggested breaking knuckles to make my punches tougher, but we both agreed it wasn’t a good time to do so while we were facing hordes of creatures every day. My regeneration was improved, but it was a gamble if my hands could get fixed in less than a day.

When we both felt satisfied with the bare handed combat training, we switched to our weapons. We started slow, especially me, trying to consolidate the new moves ingrained in our brains. It was one thing to let the skill guide instinctually, another to have complete understanding of the technique.

Although my body knew how to move, where to be and when to strike, that was all of it. There was no feinting, no directing the fight towards a grand opportunity, no predicting of how to leverage external elements to my advantage. Understanding and dominating the instinctual knowledge in my head would open up these and other possibilities that for now remained locked for me.

 While the fights against the creatures and Maccurach were good for pushing myself, the purpose there was different. It was life and death, there wasn’t much leeway to experiment and take things slow. Practice was important, too.

Our training had a good flow, Sarah and I respecting each other’s limits as we got into a rhythm. Despite the lack of skill upgrade, which I didn’t expect at this point, the training was good. I felt like I was starting to understand my spear fighting better, making deliberate follow ups, trying to lead her into a disadvantageous position.

Sarah was a natural, while I was starting to grasp the concepts, she understood them as if it was obvious. I knew she was going easy on me so as not to overwhelm me with her skill, while I didn’t use all my newfound speed. She had me beat in skill while I had her beat in raw attributes. It was a delicate balance, but it was working for us.

With the end of our training session, Sarah sat down next to Ani with a bottle of water in hand. Noah was still practicing his archery on the upper floor, and Sarah had decided to rest a little while waiting for him before going for a jog.

I hadn’t eaten yet, but I still wanted to do some dexterity training. I had found a good and fun way to train it with my spear. Using it like a poorly balanced staff, I twirled it between fingers, around myself and between hands. It was fun and looked cool, hopefully.

I am less than proud to admit that I cut myself no small amount of times until I nailed the technique down to a, mostly, safe standard. Thankfully now it was just the odd cut once in a while, but it was still much better than anything else I had done before for dexterity training.

Noah came down from his archery training and left with Sarah. Despite how crass he was, she did seem to genuinely enjoy his company. I wondered if she had realized his interests were more than training. Probably, Sarah didn’t strike me as dense.

My stomach grumbled and put a stop to my dexterity training. It was just me and Ani in the building, but she was still meditating. I felt tempted to approach her and make small talk, if for nothing else, just because I enjoyed talking to her. It also helped that she had an enchanting smile that would appear from time to time.

I turned heel and left towards the group’s base. I had things to do that I had been postponing. A conversation with Johann was due, and I couldn’t, in good conscience, delay it any longer.

---

I said my goodbyes to Mrs Aya. We had lunch together after I arrived, and we had some nice small talk. We both avoided the events of this morning. Plenty of people were talking about that. I was happy to have a moment of normalcy with my friend, even if it didn’t last long.

Johann was leaning on a window on the second floor talking softly with Ciara while holding her hand. I couldn’t see her face from where I stood, waiting for them to finish so I could speak with him. He saw me and it didn’t take long before they parted ways. A quick kiss was the final touch of their sweet moment together.

Ciara left towards the medical ward area and Johann waved me to come closer. I approached and placed my spear against the wall beside me. I crossed my arms and rested my shoulder against the window frame.

“Congratulations. She seems like a great gal.”

“Yeah, she is.” Johann said. “Ready to talk about the events of this morning.”

“I am, but before you say anything,” I raised a finger between us. “I did the best that I could with the information I had in the moment. I will not feel bad about not being perfect or not doing what you think it is best for the group. Don’t even try to manipulate me into doubting myself.”

“Is this what you think I did last time?” Johann frowned.

“Kinda, yeah.”

“Leo, I have been nothing but honest with you. The things I said after your altercation with John were the things I thought were best for you and the group.”

I sighed at Johann’s doubtful honesty.

“Look,” I stared at him straight in the eyes. “I am not here to fight you on this. With John still out of commission, you and I are the de facto leaders of the group.”

Johann raised an eyebrow at my statement.

“I don’t have any interest in taking a direct leadership role like you,” I said before he could interject. “But I understand that oftentimes I take decisions that impact and direct the group, whether I like it or not.”

“That’s true.”

“Right. So, in the spirit of cooperation, I wanted us to be on the same page on this.”

“That’s good. I agree that we should be on the same page for the benefit of the group.”

“Yeah...,” I spoke, not convinced of his motives. “Let’s get to the issue at hand. This morning was a clusterfuck, more so than usual. One of us died, we have what, five or six newcomers to be ingrained into an already established group and we have probably made a powerful enemy. How do we plan to deal with it?”

Johann frowned at the way I put our situation, but he didn’t complain. It took him a while to start talking, but I believe it was just him figuring out how to communicate his ideas.

“First,” Johann started. “The funeral will be held as usual. Some people are already preparing the pyre and it will happen at night. The second situation is a bit more complicated. We are keeping the two women together, in the women’s dormitory. Ciara, Gabriela and Aya have been a great help on that, but dealing with traumatic experiences is not my forte. I believe it’s best if we defer that to Ciara.”

“Agreed.”

“The other members of the group were divided between the two battle regiments and, although they are relatively free, we have a few people keeping an eye on them. They have probably figured it out by now, but I don’t think they are surprised by that.”

“Go on.”

“Calm down,” He gestured to me to wait. “It’s not that simple, Leo. We don’t really know if we can trust these guys. I know you pushed this situation onto them and you want to see them as victims, but for me, they are more like accomplices. I am not entirely privy to their situation there, but from what Ciara told me, they could have released the girls and escaped with them here.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“They have known the location of our base since the day we first moved in. Maccurach, he wasn’t Maccurach yet, but that’s not important. Anyway, the crazy guy didn’t want to join us. Said we had a bunch of useless people and we would just slow them down.” Johann waited for me to make a comment, when I didn’t make any, he continued. “From what I understood, they were pretty lax on pretty much everything, including supervising the girls. Maccurach was known to take long walks and be absent for hours and hours. Any and all of them could have just taken the girls and run for us at any moment. Not only did they not do that, they also prevented the girls from escaping.”

“All of them?”

“It’s not clear, yet. Maybe just the ones who didn’t join, but it’s really hard to believe that none of the guys who joined us had anything to do with those girl’s suffering.”

“I see your point now,” I said as I turned to look out the window. “When I forcefully invited them, I just wanted to weaken Maccurach, maybe also provoke him into something stupid. Starting a fight with me while our entire group was watching was such a thing. In the end, he was more cautious than what I expected from someone that deranged. He left before I could critically injure him and didn’t put himself in an inescapable situation.”

“That whole situation was very reckless of you, Leo.”

“What? Do you think we could have talked our way out of making that guy an enemy?”

“No, that’s not-”

“He already wanted our heads even before Francesca came to us.” I looked at Johann from the corner of my eye. “We both know that, Johann.”

“Yes, you are probably right.” He sighed. “Still, it doesn’t make all of this any less dangerous.”

“No, it doesn’t.” I looked out the window once again. “What are we going to do about it?”

“We keep an eye on the people who joined, try to protect the girls and figure out how Maccurach can hurt us.” Johann said. “He has a way to interfere with us during the wave, which makes someone like him extremely dangerous. I don’t want to imagine what would happen if he jumped our defensive line during a crucial moment.”

“I don’t think he will do that.”

“Why wouldn't he?”

“It’s just too risky for him.” I said. “He might be reckless, but he is not suicidal.”

“He seemed pretty much both when he was riding that bear creature.”

“He isn’t. Not the straightforward way.” I shifted my position, turning to face Johann directly. “He is also more crafty than you think. He is going to come up with something to hurt us while making him stronger. He will keep doing that until he feels strong enough to face us.”

“You think it will ever be possible for one man to face so many?” Johann spoke with no small amount of wariness in his voice.

“In this place? Who knows.” I shrugged. “I wouldn’t bet against it.”

---