"Don't worry, we'll discuss more about this. Let's prepare for the year just a few seconds ahead of us." Wang said, tapping on Gray's shoulder before exiting the assembly hall and entering his ash-colored car.
Soldiers greeted him as he drove out of the barracks, joined the crossroads of the city, and sped into the dark corners of the city, where huge buildings were located.
The warm wind of the city whistled through the black stone walls of the barracks, carrying the fragrant scent of fresh meat and baked bread.
That night, under a rumbling stormy sky, leaves rose up as soldiers moved in and out of the dormitory, placing their weapons in their cases and lying on their beds. But one door remained locked, not opening like the others, letting darkness dwell and fill the room, locking others and preventing them from accessing.
Crushing sounds echoed in the courtyard, which had no ceiling or anything covering it from the sky. Leaves spiraled, but landed on the ground, split into two when the sharp edge of a dagger sliced through them.
In fact, it wasn't a normal act to slice a floating leaf into two, but the boy everyone talked of made it happen within a few minutes of imagining it. Kai kept on swinging his daggers at the stark trunk of the only tree standing tall in the courtyard like a madman. For the first time, he felt his body weakening after standing and slamming his daggers at the tree for five hours straight; even then, his grip on the daggers wasn't weakened.
"Haaa… haaa…" he gasped, stopped, stretched his hand, and shouted. His voice blasted into the still air and bounced back to him; it flew above, sounding from every corner of the barracks and stirring up sleeping soldiers.
Kai shook his head, his hair tilting and wiggling in the air before stabilizing and standing still. Being the only male in the barracks with long hair, he found it tempting to shave it, but kept it on, remembering it to be the only thing that reminded him of his mother, especially her blue hair.
He turned the daggers, the one he had selected and used against the mechanical bees, focused his dual eyes on it, and smiled. After seeing his blue and red eye reflection in it, he placed the dagger in his right arm into the left, adding it to the dagger in the left, wiped the sweat beading on his face, and swung his hand, letting the sweat drip from his fingers.
He slowly sat down and lay on the floor flat, then closed his eyes as he tried to steady his heaving chest.
"Mom, how I wish you were here to celebrate my ninth birthday with me," he thought, imagining sleeping by his mother like he used to whenever he returned after being disowned by the children in the village.
He remained there, relaxed until footsteps echoed from beside his head, and acted, moving the daggers and using their unsharpened edges to kick the boots standing at his side.
"Sorry, sir," he said, jolting up and brushing off the dirt that had attached itself to his brown training outfit.
"Why are you here all alone?" Gray said, hiding one hand behind his back and placing the other on the boy's shoulder, pinching him slightly.
"I came to practice the moves you taught me in our last training, the leaf-splitting stance," Kai said, scratching his forehead and smiling.
Although Lieutenant Gray wasn't there when the boy was splitting the leaves, what he saw when he moved toward him first made him suspect, and now he finally knew…
"That's nice. So how many leaves did you split into two?" Gray said, smiling, removing his hand from Kai's shoulder and placing it behind his back.
"I wasn't able to do as much as you did, but here are the ones I was able to split into two," Kai said, pointing and counting the leaves torn into two.
"How in the world can he split so many leaves?" Gray thought, following Kai to the leaf he thought to be the last, but he got carried away when the boy moved to a different location, still showing him the uncounted leaves.
"That's impressive, Kai, but you've got to do more and train more as well. That is why I've come: for us to continue our evening lessons we stopped five months ago. We have to lay the dead soldiers to rest tomorrow, but we still have to continue with our training in order to prevent more from dying," Gray said, removing both hands from his back and surprising the boy with the sword he was holding behind him.
He moved the sword forward without waiting for any verification and began throwing countless strikes at Kai, who also kept on blocking and parrying the strikes like a professional swordsman.
Though Gray's motive was to train the boy and to make him become one of the best, he also got the chance to increase his sword skills and to mend and find new stances to defeat the eight-year-old boy, who was nearing his ninth birthday.
…
"Denis, where in the world do you think Theo took this sword from?" Kang said, tilting the golden sword in the air and turning it sideways as he moved it toward Denis.
Though the sword was one distinct to them, Denis didn't give Kang the attention he needed; he simply nodded and yawned, jolting from his seat and walking toward the bonfire burning sharply.
"I think it's best to put that away; we don't fully know what it can do or what it can bring upon us. Don't just be enthused by what it did when you pierced the soldier with it, turning him into a zombie, if that's the only thing the soldier turned into."
"Days are flying by without hearing any action from them. We need to give them another heavy surprise like we did in order to get to meet that beast among them and end him completely like Lord Osai ordered us to do," Denis said, folding his hands on his chest and closing his eyes, inhaling the heat coming from the fire.
The words were more surprising to Kang than Denis's reaction, and he knew what Denis meant by "heavy surprise."
"Don't worry about the sword, I'll only use it when we've understood its implications and have also trained fully. But for the surprise, let's wait for our friend among the soldiers to give us the full coordinates of their next operation. I'm sure that beast will, by all means, be part of that operation, and then we can kill him and send his eyes to Lord Osai as a gift from the city of Bion," Kang said, walking and stopping beside Denis, then closing his eyes and beginning to inhale the heat erupting from the fire.
"Good…"