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Lock felt oddly sombre leaving the church after he’d had the usual conversation with Kruto about what he was planning to do in the future to challenge himself and grow.

He felt as if he'd reached a rut. What was he doing with his life? Intellectually he knew that he was training Harald, so that he may gain access to the magical training of the academy. But, it all felt so weird all of a sudden. As if the arbitrary goal of becoming immortal in this world as well had become meaningless.

Was he having fun doing so?

He liked to think so. It was a game, he loved playing games, and winning. It didn't really feel important however. It was, by design, arbitrary.

Oh Lock definitely didn't consider what he was doing right now to be meaningless, or even a negative. He felt however, as if there was something more out there than just an eternity of setting up differing challenges for himself and completing them just so he could bask in the glory. The problem naturally being that he didn't know what that something was.

The thoughts continued to plague him as he, more subconsciously than anything, visited a whore, paid for the service with the money hidden in his underwear, and swam back to the clearing where he'd left Harald almost six hours ago.

He found the boy meditating furiously, sword laid out on his lap, Lemmings standing behind him menacingly.

When was the last time he'd meditated? Seventeen years. Must have been, he was sixteen now and hadn't meditated once since in this world. He also hadn't meditated for one year prior to his death, having been too consumed by his work.

Lock sat down and crossed his legs in the lotus position and laid his palms on his knees. He didn't close his eyes yet, instead deciding to watch Harald breathe in, and breathe out, chest rising.

Meditation as he knew it probably wouldn't help him with his current conundrum. He'd only ever used it to increase his focus. Had never gone further than necessary into the discipline than was strictly required to increase his productivity.

It was, for all intents and purposes a complete waste of time as he was now, the only rationale that he could think of for meditating was that it would spur Harald on even harder. Never command someone to do something that you wouldn't do yourself after all. This would increase Harald's willingness to meditate, increasing the effectiveness of the action, and with it his chances of winning the tournament.

Yeah, that's why he was doing it. Yeah... He closed his eyes, diffused the senses to a large circle surrounding his body, of which he decreased the size of every time he breathed in deeply. Eventually the awareness encircled only his physical body, and soon thereafter, only his breath. In, out. All thoughts disappeared within the black circle he'd drawn in his mind. Only the breath remained, and soon, not even that.

Oblivion.

-/-

A frantic shaking of his entire body woke him from the self-induced state of pure nothingness he'd subjected himself too.

Opening his eyes he saw the concerned face of Harald gazing down at him from where he was laid down on the ground. “What?” Lock asked, annoyed at having been awoken.

“We're supposed to start sparring, but we can delay it if you're not feeling well.” Harald said, sounding worried.

Lock stood up and stretched, “why would I not be feeling well?” He asked nonplussed.

“You've been meditating, just lying there for nearly a day. I checked your heart-beat and it only pulsed once every minute.” Harald hesitated. “I was worried, but thought that you knew what you were doing. You're really fine?” He asked.

Lock considered the question, ran a few mathematical problems through his head. Faster than usual. He set his eyes on a sturdy oak tree bordering on the clearing, and suddenly started sprinting at it. Running up the tree completely barefoot didn't sting, Endurance, he came up one step, two steps, three steps, before he jumped backwards, doing a backflip and landing on his feet.

Harald huffed. “Show-off.”

“About meditation, it's not the most fun thing to do, but you will do it to reach your goal, whatever that may be. Right?” Lock suddenly asked. Harald quickly nodded.

“How could I not after seeing you go at it for almost a day straight.” He scoffed. “You must be practised at it.” He stated.

Lock nodded absent-mindedly. “I guess you could say so.”

“Well, if it helped you get as strong as you are, I don't see the reason why I shouldn't do it as well.” Harald said and turned around, seemingly searching for something.

“If it was purely fun, not contributing anything to your training, would you still do it?” Lock asked.

“Even if it was actually fun, probably not. I don't have time.” Harald answered picking up one wooden sword and continuing his search, likely for the other.

“So, from several decisions, you would pick the one most likely to help you achieve your goal?” Lock asked.

 

Harald turned to glower at him, “well that's what we mortals have to do to achieve anything.”

“Yes.” Lock said. “Out of all possibilities you must pick the one that will serve you best. I'm not like you however. Goals are important, but not that important. Not something to orient one's entire life towards. Having several fun options though, I'd probably still try to pick one that at least somehow balances out achieving my goals.” He continued, staring out into space. “I'm not like you.”

“What are you even talking about?” Harald groaned as he finally found the second sword. “Yeah you're special, now get on with it.” He said as he threw a wooden sword at Lock.

“Yes. I am special. I already achieved everything. The only reason I'm not on vacation is because that's not fun. Men need something to work towards” Lock muttered. “but I'm special.”

He suddenly gazed up at Harald hungry look in his eyes, the boy reflexively raised his guard, and took a few steps backwards.

“I'm special.” Lock said as he sprang forward, bringing his sword down on Harald's paltry block with a force unrivalled by anything that he'd used before. Crushing Harald. It was the most fun thing he could do right now while still loosely following his goal of training him. It sucked to be Harald, but Lock's enjoyment was more important at the moment. He was special after all.

Skill Killing Intent unlocked.

Lock didn't pay too much attention to the skill he'd just unlocked, being to busy brutally dismantling Harald with blows meant to kill, and pulling them back at the last second. Watching the fear in the boy's brown eyes spike up every time he clearly felt as if he were about to die, only to be spared at the last moment. It was a fun game. A wide smile unbidenly came to his face, it felt like it was about to split his head to be quite honest. Ten minutes of utterly destroying Harald, tears streaming down the boy's face, Lock felt something odd. As if his adversary had grown slightly taller, not more intimidating, but dare he say so, less fearful? Finally completing one of the moves that would end the fight, he disarmed the boy with a harsh whack on his wrist.

Harald fell to the ground, the slight aura of control that he'd gained immediately disappearing. The boy was clutching himself and shaking, teary eyes erratically flitting about and flinching away from every sudden movement.

Lock sat down next to him after stretching feeling refreshed. That had been fun. He noticed that his face hurt, bringing his hands up to determine the origin of the pain he noticed that he was still smiling like a madman. It took a few moments to regain control of his facial muscles and relax the. His face was sore, but that dissipated after several seconds. Endurance for the win.

It took almost an hour for Harald to collect himself, time that Lock did not begrudge giving him as he needed to come to terms with what he'd just done. He'd done something almost completely for fun, something that wasn't sexual, in what felt like forever. It had been quite liberating. Unbound by morals and decency he'd completely and utterly gone for what was the most fun thing to do at the moment.

He scratched his chin, wondering if he'd do it again, and determined that he really didn't feel the urge to at the moment. Wondering if he would simply give in to the urges the next time they rose up he turned to Harald.

“You know what the problem of reaching the highest peak is?” He asked with a conversational tone.

Harald flinched, wiggling away from. Ah, he hadn't completely recovered then.

Eventually growing bored of the silence he answered his own question. “The problem is that everyone below you suddenly starts resembling an insect. Infinitely numerous unlike your own enlightened personage. You start becoming unable to feel empathy for them due to their utter dullness in comparison to you, seeing them as nothing but playthings. Well to be fair empathy developed as a survival strategy for the weak, but I digress. In an utterly paradoxical way however, you still need them. Our biology shackles us. We may ascend all we want, but the vessels holding our souls are still human. I feel as if, as long as I don't leave this shell behind I will to a certain extent require humanity to exist, for it is only with their help that some of my entirely too human urges can be fulfilled.” Lock finished.

Silence reigned. Harald had begun crawling away from him, towards the lake. It annoyed Lock, it implied that the boy was still afraid, that he had lost himself in his fear.

He continued anyway. “Woe is the man who becomes a monster, for he is then truly alone, and with loneliness, comes boredom. Depending on how high he ascends, the boredom might just be infinite.”

Lock stood up and followed the crawling Harald. Whose delirious eyes, almost hidden behind sweaty strands of brown hair, occasionally flicked over his shoulder to look fearfully at him.

He kept the boys slow pace, growing curious as to where the boy was heading.

Harald upon reaching the small grassy cliff that lead down to the lake, unceremoniously dumped himself into it.

He didn't come up for quite a long time, Lock was even becoming worried. He eventually surfaced however, and the fearful countenance had for the most part disappeared. One could still see it deep in his eyes however.

Then Harald uttered something that utterly baffled Lock. “I forgive you.” Lock tilted his head to the side and uttered an eloquent “uh”.

“For your performance, I unlocked the skill Killing Intent, it's what you were going for right.” Harald said.

“Show me.” Lock demanded and his pupil closed his eyes, seemingly concentrating, before a blast of what a fly would perhaps refer to as killing intent blasted out of him.

The only thing that it really seemed to do was make Lock remember that Harald was in fact taller than him. He probably wasn't the best test subject however. He didn't feel particularly threatened by anything Harald could attempt to do to him, generally just wasn't afraid of death all that much, and felt that Harald would never even attempt to harm him.

“Thanks a lot for your tutelage, you don't have to keep acting crazy for me.” Harald said, and of all things, bowed in his direction.

The silence stretched on a bit as Lock processed what had just occurred, before a giggle broke out of his mouth, it quickly grew into full blown laughter. It went on like that for several minutes, every time that he began to calm down, another attack assailing him. It ended however, as all things did, and he wiped the tears from his eyes to look up at Harald, who looked more embarrassed than anything.

“Yes, an impassioned performance for a role that is no longer necessary, that's all it was. I can go back to normal now, good job on unlocking the skill by the way. It means that while you were shitting your pants, some small part of you wanted to retaliate for all of the Killing Intent I was throwing at you.” Lock said, and just as Harald's body started relaxing, broke out in another fit of giggles.

He raised an arm in his direction, the other clutching his stomach. “I'm fine, I'm fine, go meditate now, you have a new skill to explore.”

Harald did as he was told, which was to be expected.

Another spout of laughter befell Lock.

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