Perceived Fate

As the meeting adjourned Malums instructor walked towards the Troop Leader,

“Sir I wanted to speak to you about my group.” Surprise entered the Leaders face, before anger arose,

“Those recruits haven’t been giving you issues have they, punishments are never too harsh instructor.”

“No, no, not that sort of issue.” Surprise re-entered the Leaders face, “Instead I think my recruits have real potential, Southern potential.”

The Leader faced turned grim over the words Southern, it meant the Southern front and of the 2 cardinal directions in which they were attacked: it by far the worst one. Stronger demons, even more casualties, if the Eastern front were hell then then the southern was the Abyss.

“Southern worthy, high praise from you Paul. Depending on the coming test results I will see what I can do. I’ll see you at the tournaments, good day instructor.”

“Good day Troop Leader.”

Walking out the door the Troop Leader muttered to himself, “Southern front ey, that brings me back. Only time will tell if they are worthy.”

He stopped tapping his fingers and focused down on his documents. The work wouldn’t complete itself, although sometimes it did make his old soul miss the adrenaline it had once felt.

The training continued, with instructor Not Funny continuing his hellish lessons day after day. Sometimes they would get a few hours of Martial study, but the rest was all training, training, and even more training.

Malum was slowly becoming a stamina machine, now lasting any exercise all the way up untill the sun went down and with this growth in stamina allowed Malum to further grow and develop his muscles. That and a growth spurt had made Malum into quite the physical beast.

Standing at 6ft’4 his physique could be described as a built however he was certainly not too big. Muscles too big, restricted movement and those were simply hindrances.

His silver eyes, black hair and built figure made him attractive enough to be a Noble’s bedwarmer. Malum was sure those parasites would pay gold for his servitude but sadly death in the war was going to his fate.

Thinking about it, Malum wandered which path he would rather. Perhaps being a solider wasn’t so bad after all, he could still have been a serf or even a slave if some foreign army captured him.

In an oddly good mood Malum started his day with a smile. He was up early, as he always was, and he used this time to begin some stretches.

Soon, his companions awoke and joined him in this `strange ritual`. That was what they called it when they first noticed his odd movements. It didn’t take much convincing to make them join him, and soon every member joined Malum in his morning routine.

“Morning squad, today we have another assessment.” Such news brought frowns to everyone’s faces.

Their first assessment was when they arrived, and when they also got their rankings.

“I have heard that all 3 attributes will be tested again, but this time they will include another subcategory of `Martial Strength`. I assume this will have our groups be separated and then faced against each other in a tournament-based layout. That’s a guess but considering the facilities unless the instructors decide to rank us I have no idea how else they would do it.”

This predication came with nodding from the group, Jerome shared his thoughts,

“That seems reasonable. If so, please go easy on me Leader.” He sounded less meek than before, Malum had seen how training had put some confidence in the boys voice.

“C’mon Jerome only in public do you need to address me as Leader, stupid titles mean nothing. I am called Malum, and such would like to be addressed as what my parents named me.”

Malum would have gone easier on the sleepy head if his mistake was not so common. Malum didn’t want to become arrogant, pride was a deadly sin for a reason.

“Jerome only looks up to you Malum,” Alicia said, “still Jerome it shouldn’t be every time. Now, I think we should spend the rest of our morning on practicing martial arts against each other. If our group comes first overall I heard we would get a bonus.”

The entire group woke up slightly from the mention of that bonus. It was something the Troop Leader had let slip during one of their morning roll calls, he didn’t say what it was, but hope was scarce inside the camp and that bonus was about as close to hope as they were going to get.

They voted on what they wanted to, with Malums vote counting as 3 because, well, he could. It didn’t really matter here because the only good option was training, the other was Jake’s lazy option of extra sleep but who needed that when strength could be gained.

They arrived and trained, Malum acting as the groups mentor as he had already learned most of the basics and now just passed them on. Basic stances with regular attacks were simple things but they were necessities to mastering a weapon.

His Uncle described them as the basic colours of paint: red, yellow, and blue. By themself and they were nothing to special but mix them together and you could create any portrait.

Actually now that Malum thought of it, the martial art he learned built a lot on that concept as well.

Thinking deeper he continued to cross reference the analogy to see how the martial art would play out. There were 12 stances and 6 basic attacks/defences with the sword and shield inside the book.

These were his basic colours, say he matched forward attack, with slash and you had a fairly basic attack but if you came from top defensive, hold, and then moved your blade into a slash you had a combined defence and an attack at the same time.

It was simple, laughably so, but it was choosing the right colours at the right time and applying them to perfection that created the perfect painting. Malum was still no master, but now he was on the right path. All it took now was effort and time, and he had both, at least before his debut on the battlefield.

For the martial tournament, not so much.

Jake couldn’t help but feel impressed by Malums training knowledge. His basics in sword and shield techniques seemed beyond the level of intuition to the point he felt like he had already done some sort of training before.

Nobody had asked because there life before, this, was seen as a touchy subject especially with so many having sensitive stories behind them. Himself and Alicia included.

He looked at his girlfriend, her determination as she swing the sword. She looked strong, determined... She looked hot.

She seemed to notice his gaze and gave him a stink eye to get training. She was always so sensible, sometimes he wandered if he was really the older one.

She meant well, she always did. He got his sword back into position and continued to practice. That endless laziness he felt attracted him towards rest but he knew now wasn’t the time.

Those tests were coming up and so he put in something he rarely ever did, extra effort.

“The martial test will be two tournaments 1 will be an individual tournament and the other you will be split into your groups. No killing and no going for the eyes either. You all know the basic rules, now the instructors will monitor each fight and they will call you when its your turn. Good? Great.”

Climbing down the podium and Malum had to admit his troop leader truly was lazy. He imagined the top brass to be all mean looking with a serious stern tone constantly, but the Troop Leader spoke like he was half awake most of the time and Malum had a sneaking suspicion he was also chronically drunk. Not like that made him any less terrifying, if anything it made him more of a monster.

Apart from that, Malum was happy over his successful prediction. With the information already provided it wasn’t that hard, but still, it had given him an advantage in practice over the overs and that wasn’t to be understated.

Now he just needed to perform.

The group shuffled their way over to the training squares which were essentially just square patches of dirt surrounded by grassy walkways. An instructor stood in the centre of each and was occasionally shouting two names.

“Joseph and Troy!”

“John and John!”

“Malum and Sera!”

The John situation put a smile on Malums mouth but hearing his name upped the pressure in his brain enough to completely evaporate the humour.

He wanted rank 1, so winning was his only real option.

Hearing it was a girl gave him good odds. His Uncle had warned him of stereotyping in the upper bands of strength but for mortals the difference in strength was stark.

Still, outliers always existed and just because they weren’t strong didn’t mean they weren’t powerful. Speed factored in as well, as did several other factors the Dao had used the balance the sexes.

They stood opposite in the dirt as the instructor asked them to shake hands.

They did and Malum used it to see how strong his opponent was. She was stronger than expected but still weaker than himself. She held a simple sword so Malum began to predict what kind of style she would likely fight with.

Speed based combat using her small but agile frame would bring out her strengths, with that in mind Malum thought of counterplay. Except the kind of stopped there, he didn’t know what all speed-based people usually attacked like, Jake was his closest frame of reference, so he thought of his opponent as Jake and continued on.

At the end of the day this was Malums first fight and so he began to overthink things.

It started whilst he was still strategizing which immediately costed him the initiative. She used it well to land a few goods hits against a blocking shield, but the pressure of attack still wore down Malums shoulder.

Looking for counterplay and Malum over extended over his shield so his head was poking out o much, this opened himself up to an attack which the woman took and landed a solid blow against Malums hastily placed defensive sword.

Wanting to take a step back to think, Malum did so but found himself giving up too much space as he realised how close he was to the edge of the square.

He did gain a second to think, but it was spent thinking about how to take back the space he had just lost.

Closing in, she attacked simply but effectively, using her full strength to attack for his chest. Unluckily for her, it was a move Malum was familiar with as Gerald enjoyed full on attacks and such Malum was used to guarding against them.

He parried the blade with finesse and used his shield to nock the weapon from her hand. In battle he would have gone for the head, but it wasn’t, so he didn’t.

She looked to her blade and clearly thought of retrieving it.

Malum didn’t need to say anything, he just moved his blade towards the woman’s neck.

“Okay, okay I get it. I lost”

The instructor wrote down the result and moved onto the next battle, before Malum rejoined his group he turned to Sera.

“You fought well. Don’t go for all out attacks like that without knowing it will cause you to win, it leaves you far to open when if it doesn’t go through.”

She seemed to appreciate his advice as she thanked him and moved back towards her group. Malum saw who they were and noticed Trent, who was his villages other hunter, and gave him a nod.

If he remembered correctly he ended around 5th overall in the previous tests, he was a contender here for sure and Malum was not looking forward to fighting him in the slightest.

Thinking about it, pain wise that was true, but Malum found that fight extremely enlightening. Pressure had ruined the lessons he knew previously; it was like he had never learned them. He needed more experiences and tougher opponents would give him exactly that.

Perhaps he did want strong opponents then.