“Hmmm, so runt eat this, we'll start training tomorrow after I am sure you at least got something in your stomach to vomit.”
It was clear for all with eyes that he was extremely rigorous in his training, and if what he was talking about meant anything, it was obvious he’d made me see hell; whether I died of little importance.
"So I can eat?" I asked on the defensive.
"Eh, don't if you want, you'll be wishing you did tomorrow though."
Still, my stomach was grumbling, and the food looked appetizing, I lowered my guard. Such a man wouldn’t kill a child with poison… right?
I reasoned as I wiped the drool with the bone of my wrist.
The vertical tunnel lead to a small but cozy underground area. The first room seemed to be the main area of this “residence” and was wide enough for 10 people to lie comfortably on the ground. Wooden weapons lined its walls even though it was hard to call them such; they were just big sticks of most likely evonite, whose shape approximated that.
The place had a strong but somehow comforting fragrance of clay and smoked meat. The lighting was tame. Emanating from 10 luminous spheres scattered throughout the room.
Light spheres?
These were of the highest quality, similar to what one could find at the manor.
While the coprolithium — or whatever the Galvrung would actually call it — had a similarly luminous nature, the light these emitted seemed more natural, warmer. While the light of the metal was a blinding white, these reminded me of the parting gift of the sun right before the moon took its place.
Warm and mellow.
In a corner of the room lay a board game, looking much more sophisticated than anything else in this place. It seemed familiar.
Kress, was it?
My father played it every time one of his subordinates came to visit; despite having never played, I had always wondered how it was even possible to lose.
It had always seemed obvious to me which move to make. Whenever I watched a match, I boiled inside at the blunders each party would make. Soon enough, I had grown to find these games dull, insipid even.
Is he good at it?
Considering the game was already set, and a game was being played, one could easily assume he was playing by himself.
Maybe he’d be open to a new playing partner?
“What are you doing? It’s gonna get cold,”
In a clay plate, he had served me a portion of Glousstross along with a viscous white sauce and some flat bread.
“What’s that?” I asked dubiously.
“Uh that? Glousstross... with sauce secrète.” he said curtly, digging in his own plate.
“Is it good?”
“Oh yeah, my wife couldn’t get enough of it.”
“Somehow, this sounds gross.”
I wasn’t really confident about the taste of this white sauce.
“I can serve you a portion without sauce.”
I ignored him.
Taking a piece of flat bread and dipping it into the sauce that was covering the meat, I slowly brought the piece to my mouth to try.
Gulp.
A second passed.
Two second passed.
Three second passed.
Eh, it doesn’t taste bad.
The sauce had a creamy consistency in mouth, along with a salty and buttery taste. Hollandaise?
The outward appearance of the sauce was weird, looking like the yolk and the butter hadn’t quite mixed but the taste didn’t lie; this was hollandaise.
“So how is it?”
“Not bad at all,” I said, reassured.
“See told you it was go-- eat your fill, then.”
I did as he said and ate my fill. The glousstross was juicy and perfectly seasoned, spicy, while also having a mildly sweet after taste. I ate and almost ate the plate with it.
Romuald, with his functioning eye, looked at me with a satisfied look as he, too, finished his plate. “Hahahaha, it’s good to see you got a good appetite. Now go to sleep. We’ll start training tomorrow.”
“Really? That’s all for today?” I asked, wondering if this was a test.
“Uh yeah, why you don’t want to rest?”
“No no no no, it’s not that.”
He looked at me with an inquisitive look. Scrambling my brain to find an excuse, I looked back in my brain and thought back. Oh yeah, kress!
“I was just wondering if you were open to the idea of playing a bit?” I looked at the board game and he followed my gaze, a smile drawing on his face as he got what I was aiming at.
Kress is a strategic board game played by 2 players in which each player tries to defeat their opponent using their respective pieces. Each side had 20 pieces, and in Kress, the capturer could use pieces captured by the opponent (by dropping the piece on any free case at the cost of not playing that turn). A player could win by mating the opponent’s General, or with an optional rule stating that if a player captured 3 pieces without the opponent’s capture, he automatically won. Essentially forcing quick and reactive play.
“Kress?” He looked at me with a mocking grin.
“Hahahahahaha, you are on!”
#
In a clear forest that boasted an air so pure that one could get drunk on it and nature so luxurious that it was art, a resounding and weirdly grumpy voice disrupted the idyllic picture.
“Why are you slacking for? You still have 100 meters... RUN!”
I was running to save my life, and the act itself was about to kill me. I had been running for the past hour nonstop and I was panting; having already vomited two times already.
Petty bastard!
I could only think to myself. I had defeated him 3-0 last night, a perfect victory. Maybe I should have pulled my punches a bit.
“I HOPE YOU’RE NOT THINKING ABOUT USELESS STUFF, FOCUS AND RUN!”
Stop reading my mind!
“Hew Hew Hew.. I... can’t.... do... it... anymore” My legs buckled as I fell on the ground extenuated, my throat was dry and my lungs painful. “I’ll have to do that for the next 2 weeks?”
Just the thought brought tears to my eyes.
I puked again.
“BWARRRGH”
“Uh, you held on longer than expected, not bad for an untrained runt.” He grunted. “Take a 10 minute break and we’re back for another round.”
“Please, no!”
“SHUT UP!”
“But sir!”
“Every word you say is one less minute. I want to hear a ‘yes, sir!’”
“y—” I opened my mouth before swallowing my words. Was that a trap?
“I said I want to hear a ‘yes, sir!’”
He looked at me with the most threatening glare, laced with a terrifying aura.
“Chet.”
“You’ve just completed the first part of the warmup. Considering what you already ran, I’ll just make you go another 3km.”
“Anymore than that and you’ll probably die. Hehehe”
If you know that, then let me rest some more, you bastard.
“Uh, lower your eyes you brat”
I had been unconsciously glaring at him.
“Little cub trying to scare me, impudent trainee.”
“Anyhow, you’ll need at least that much to survive in this world.”
“Hmph, since you’re resting, let me tell you today’s plan. I want to hear a ‘yes sir!’”
Now positive it was a trap. I just looked at him.
After another “chet”, he started explaining.
“Once your body has thoroughly warmed up, we’ll make it fold more than paper and work on your flexibility with some qigong.”
Qigong, what is that?
“Once you are done, you’ll eat something and you’ll have 2 hours after that to rest or work on something else, then we’ll meditate.”
‘’And after that we’ll train this twig frame of yours until supper and then you go to sleep. Got it?"
“Questions?” He said with a mocking grin.
“...”
I looked at him, seething.
“Good, you have 9 minutes left. Move around. We don’t want your muscle to stiffen up and don’t forget to hydrate.” He said, tossing the gourd around his neck at me.
We had spent half a day together, but I had a decent read of his personality. He wasn’t mysterious like his twin, hiding his true meaning behind sarcasm, intimidation, or voice transmission. Romuald was like a wild beast. When he was angry, you knew it; when displeased he’d make you know, and when you impressed him, he did too. He was wild in his behavior but also in the way he didn’t seem stiffened by anything neither social conventions nor what others thought of him.
Which was probably why he felt so okay with the idea of openly tormenting me like that. Still, I wondered how I was to gain his approval. Giving my utmost was a given. After all, as he kept saying, even a powerful body would not allow me to scrape by in this world without mana to go along with it.
And while I had these regalias, I had no idea how to use them.
I pondered, and quickly enough, the time I had ran out.
“WAKE UP WEAKLING! 3-kilometer run, GO GO GO!”
“Sir, 10 more minutes..”
“SHUT UP AND RUN”
“Yes, sir!”
By the time I was done with my run, my legs were cramping, and my whole body was tense. I couldn’t even lay, however, since it was already time for flexibility training and qigong.
Thankfully, we start immediately. We walked at a brisk pace to a cascade, which, while difficult, allowed blood to circulate through my body and for the cramping to lessen. The way there had taken a good 20 minutes, but once there I lost myself in contemplation.
It was breathtaking; the water was of pristine clarity and its thunderous roar while it crashed against the rock blew life into my broken body. The trees surrounding the place boasted an even lusher foliage, and fishes, not minding us in the slightest, were swimming gracefully upwards.
Woah.
“Nice place, isn’t it? I come here whenever I want to meditate, or if I feel like swimming with fishes.”
“You’ll have all the time in the world to admire it later. Let’s get back to business.”
He clapped twice.
After a 30 minutes warm-up, to add to what I had already done, I was finally ready for qigong. Or so he said.
My legs were heavy, the stretching had come close to snatch my soul away multiple times, and I was on the brink of falling asleep.
CLAP
“Wake up,” he said unimpressed, “you’ll have all the time to sleep after that.”
“Chet,” I replied, barely shrugging away the sleep.
Romuald looked at me as if wondering whether to slap me or to let it be. In the end, he only sighed and went to his explanation. “Do you know why I am making you practice Qigong?”
“Honest answer?”
“How honest do you mean? As long as you can handle the consequences.”
“Maybe because you are still mad about having got beat by an 11 years-old.”
He quickly brought his hand to my head, at a speed so high I could feel the air it displaced on my skin. Eh, it was worth it.
I thought while closing my eyes.
Weirdly enough, the slap that I was expecting never came, and instead a slow pat followed on top of my helmet, followed by melancholic words.
“Poor kid.”
These words struck a chord in me.
“Did you have some naïve belief that I wouldn’t kill you for real? Not even a flinch...”
“W-what?” I woke up from my confusion.,
“This doesn’t matter,” he shrugged off after a cough.
“Let’s get back on track. Why do you think I am teaching you Qigong?”
After what had just happened, it would have been awkward to reply again with a joke, so I took some time to think. Thinking about it, I realized I had actually no idea what Qigong was.
“Mmm, I don’t, but first, what is Qigong? You never really explained that to me”
He then stared at me, shocked. And then embarrassed, he replied “Hahahahaha that’s true isn’t it? What is Qigong now?”
He coughed. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was sick.
“Umm, if you want the historical side and all of that, you’ll have to ask Albert about that. I only ever cared about how useful it could be.”
“Qigong is an art that we inherited from a nation of proto-humans that existed ages ago. It seemed they lived somewhere in the east where the Water and Wind clans now lived... what was their name again the Tchai-Knees?”
He said awkwardly, struggling with the last word.
“Tchai-Knees?” I replied. This wasn’t a word I had ever heard before and the way it sounded, it was vaguely reminiscent of the language spoken by the Healers, but it still sounded foreign.
“They claimed that in the body there was a sea of energy of sorts, in the Dantian, and that this energy then circulated throughout the body through meridians.”
“Does that remind you of something?” He asked expectative.
“Isn’t that similar to how mana works?”
“Bingo!”
“This is probably a coincidence since proto-humans didn’t have a core and meri — veins like us ... Still, it just so happens that this meridian system overlaps with how our core and mana veins function. Obviously, there are a few discrepancies here and there, but what is interesting to us are acupoints.”
“Acupoints?”
“Yes.”
“You can see them as strategic points in the body placed, coinciding with the meridians. That could clear any blockage that would prevent life energy from flowing or..?”
“Block them?” I said, reflecting on the implications.
“Exactly!”
“The overlap yet again is not 100% accurate, but most of them are close enough that they are actually usable. With this, even a cripple like you can win a fight. By bringing them to your level.”
“This — this is incredible,” I said in shock.
“RIGHT! But there are a few caveats, first it will only work for a short while. Even if you manage to do it, you got 5 to 10 seconds...”
“I see. This is still pretty usable.”
“Yes, it is, but the second, one point, won’t suffice. You’ll need to learn combinations of upwards of 20 points per area, which means you’ll need to survive until then.”
“Oh, I see.. Well, rote memorization is my forte!” I bragged. After learning characters and spells, 20 points seemed like a joke.
“Third, and most obvious, most mages fight at long range and those who don’t are highly capable martial artists, hitting 20 highly specific points like that on anyone with proper training will is no simple task, especially for a little sprout like you.”
“Ah.. this makes sense”
Why is nothing ever easy?
Crestfallen but not surprised, my face darkened.
“Therefore, you will need a body strong enough to press these points, and before that, you will need the stamina needed to even give you the chance to fight that long, and then before that the brain to power that hardware does it make sense?”
“I see…”
“Good. Use those eyes of yours and memorize these movements.” The way he phrased that order gave me some pause, but soon I realized he just meant “watch well.”
He looked at me with knit eyebrows, but when I nodded, he started.
One breath.
Two breaths.
Three breaths.
As if entranced by the thunderous roar of the cascade, he started moving. His movements had no martial utility. Less like a martial art, they looked like a dance; he seemed like he was trying to align himself with the flow of nature. His movements were bold but controlled, snappy but graceful, unpredictable yet flowing like... water. The way his energy flowed confirmed this similarity, sometimes surging like a tyrannical wave and sometimes docile like a gentle stream; the only thing that was constant was the seamless way the energy cycled in and out of his body.
He kept at it for a solid 5 minutes, 5 minutes during which he repeated no movement and finally, as if forcefully dragging himself from the trance, awoke with a long forceful breath.
“G-got all that?”
“Yes — no, but also yes…”
He mostly had expected another answer, as his face became the image of confusion. “Um? Then try.”
I breathed in and out. Imitating the sequence as best as I could, imagining that I was moving mana through my body the same way he could. Moving with as much accuracy as I could through these awkward movements, it didn’t take long for me to fall in trance. I could feel in my mana core nothing had changed, but my perception of the world changed.
It felt like the noise surrounding me was becoming dimmer. I was both disconnected from the outside world and hyper-aware. I was 100% concentrated on the movements that were now making me flow, but my senses felt sharper than ever before. While dimmer, everything felt more… real?
It was an extremely weird sensation. I wasn’t too sure how long time I spent, but soon enough, with no input from me, this trance subsided. The world and its colors came back. The boisterous laugh of the cascade and the mocking snickers of the wind through the foliage resounded tenfold.
Uh — what… why did it go?
I kept moving, trying to copy the movements again, but it just wouldn’t work. The only thing left was intense frustration and gaping emptiness as I remembered this blissful state of being focused on only one thing, of being one with the world while being out of it, of controlling my body perfectly.
After the frustration and emptiness came confusion.
What was that? How can I feel that again?
Romuald was the one to bring me back to reality.
CLAP CLAP
“Wow kid…” He sized me up and down as if reassessing me. “I am impressed. I expected you’d need the whole 2 weeks to get this down, but seems like you already have the rough thing. Your movements need polishing, but to go there by yourself and while practicing this choreography like that on your first time, impressive…”
“Really? And what do you mean ‘to go there’?”
“Um, yes… you entered the zone.”
“The zone?”
“Yes.. the zone, a state of elevated concentration, where anything but the object of your concentration becomes irrelevant and dims into inexistence. Once you taste it once, it’s hard to get by; but don’t be impatient. The more you chase it, the farther it’ll run. Just be diligent in your training.”
“Eh, that you maintained that for 15 seconds is pretty impressive still. So give me 5 minutes to draw some diagrams, practice these moves and remember to stay calm. Don’t force it.”
“Yes, sir!”
