'Straighten your back more, you slouch more than necessary when holding this stance…'

'The strike should be swifter, do it again, then add a hundred more…'

'No, you are holding out too much when sitting back up. Again, and add another two hundred with twice the speed, young Gin.'

'Head held high! This is the last lap! Move your legs and don't drag them behind you, 30 laps shouldn't leave you like this, young Gin!'

Gin could barely move his body, but he did so anyway. Haaah, my life! Three weeks ago, true to his word, Spear had done his 'Impression Of A Good Student, Act XX, Scene III', and advised Il San to increase his training routine. Not knowing since when or how, but the bad blood between him and Spear definitely took an upward spike that particular week. Il San had just humphed but hadn’t said anything else, as usual. Gin had sighed in relief and slept rather well thinking that the very good Master wouldn't mind Spear's words.

Unfortunately, Il San not only took Spear's advice but the Demon Lord's advice as well because instead of his exercises doubling, they were quadrupled. No, it wasn't just the regular doubling of the exercise count he had done, but increased speed as he did them, and in addition to that were workouts he never knew were possible. Gin had told Il San he would die, but Il San paid him little to no heed. He not only turned away from Gin's complaints, but he also turned away from Gin's very humanity. Gin had morphed into nothing more than a training doll for the old fogey's amusement.

With days gone, Gin had to praise himself a little. He had endured, and persevered; however, not conquered, not yet. And the quadrupled training had the same effect as when the training began at its starting stages. He could run a little faster, and for a longer period, and he could lift more weights than when he had been at the farm. His stances, the major elements of the Fighting Arts, had improved, and so had his strikes which were, apparently, decent enough to have Il San not glare in displeasure every time he did them. Though, in truth, the glares had just reduced in intensity only but hadn’t gone away altogether.

Meditation was Gin’s biggest weakness. His blame for the failure had, of course, been placed on the Master. He had babbled to Il San that the old man meditating with him put too much pressure on his soul. He was already suffering from the training, now he had to suddenly calm his mind and think of nothing with his torturer beside him?! It didn’t make any sense! Had Il San deigned him with a response? No, but long story short, through some painstaking efforts, he could last at least five minutes with a blank mind.

"That's enough for today, go wash up and rest. Tomorrow we'll begin another training regimen," the Master grunted and left the training hall.

Words of praise, you ask?

What words?

Is your face made of words of praise?!

Gin decided against throwing himself on the floor, but he nonetheless plopped down on it and flapped in frustration like a fish out of water. Well, flapping as much as he could with the aches his body mercilessly wore. His Master, the great Il San, had never raised those pinched lips of his to praise him, not even once! Oh no, what he did best was to speak of routine changes and increasing his workout counts. Just like he had done before leaving.

Gin sighed. He felt that ever since he walked into the Distant Jade he had never sighed so much. He was still so young, but he was going through enough tribulations to make full-grown folks cry crocodile tears. And speaking of crocodile tears, Gin had tried to milk them out of his eyes when he wanted the old fogey to give him a break. Or, that time when he pretended to have sprained his ankle and wailed that he couldn't exercise any more. It had been embarrassing since the person he performed for was a block of unfeeling wood that, highly likely, didn't know what a sprained ankle was. Gin could only give up and wait for another chance.

He did get those chances, he did utilize them, but all led to nothing but the creation of the punishment system. The punishment wasn't much, just repeating the same set of exercises he did for the day at twice the normal speed. However, these punishments tended to last to midnight, and his Master never budged from his spot as he conducted the extra-extra training.

That day Gin had received said punishment. That was why he was only able to rest so late in the night. Why was he punished? The answer to that question was really simple. He had snuck in the kitchen and tried to find some snacks he could eat. Anything really. His diet was disgusting, and he had not had any of his favorite dishes ever since the training started. Vegetables were at the forefront, rice, and pork as a side dish only added on the last of the week's training. He had eaten foods he had never seen or heard of, and he was a farmer's son, but according to his Master, the foods were very rich in carbohydrates and protein.

To his dismay, Spear found him right as he was taking a bite off an oily bun. Spear had grinned evilly and stepped aside, and there stood his Master with a brooding look. Gin had frozen but eventually, all he could do was put the bun beside the container he got it from and walked towards his Master. He had also made sure to glare angrily at Spear as he passed him by. He had to wonder if the two had superhuman hearing with all those Divine powers. He was sure the old Master hadn't told him about such a thing all those weeks ago, well, he hoped he hadn't because for the life of him Gin couldn't remember the little details from then. And nothing should be mentioned about the books he never had the chance of reading...

On another important matter though, if he was to write an entry of his time with Spear, he could say they had developed a tit-for-tat relationship that came weirdly naturally to them. Spear had told him in no few clear and explicit terms, that he was an easy target for his frustration and still too green to land a solid hit. Gin didn’t believe any of it, of course, he prided he would have done better if Spear was around the estate enough times—like he was as of late—and when he wasn’t sweating to his death to give him a piece of his mind.

And so, there he lay tired out of his wits. Gin shut his eyes slowly and slowed his breathing. He quickly entered a meditative state and stayed that way for a short period. This state made him feel every part of his body more intensely, and he was aching all over. Soon enough, that state changed to him falling into slumber's embrace.

While he was almost losing himself to sleep, Gin was woken up by a sharp sound. His consciousness quickly came back to him, and when he opened his eyes, his focus was first captured by the bulls' ever-present gazes staring at him from the ceiling. Taking his attention back, and raising his upper body from the floor, he looked out of the open screen door that his Master had exited from but had left open. By chance, he saw a dashing figure of what he quickly concluded to be a servant and then soon after another flash of another figure that Gin could confidently mark as Spear. It was easy to distinguish between the two due to the color of their clothes, the blue and yellow combo of the robes worn by the servants never changed and Spear had on the red robe he had worn the whole day. However, aside from this observation, the pressing matter was that the two weren't playing around, Spear would never tolerate such behavior in the estate. So… evidently, one was running, the other chasing.

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Gin's heart palpitated, he stood up quickly and followed the figures. Even though the two moved very fast, the direction they were heading was too obvious thus making it easy for Gin to follow them, albeit slower than the two. His body pumped with adrenaline and worry, Gin made it to the front yard of the Distant Jade.

°°

Reaching there, Gin saw that the two were already exchanging blows. Their flurry of movements was accompanied by disturbances of the space surrounding them. As they went on, Gin stared wide-eyed at the development, and he couldn't help but think the worst of Spear. He knew that Spear had a temper and for the past several days he had had the worst of it. Gin had tried to talk to him, but Spear would just smile and brush it off, or pick on him to relieve some of the stress all in the name of helping him improve. From what he could gather though, Spear had been having a few bad days with his ventures again, rather, they were worse. However, this frustration was then transferred to the servants of the estate. Yet… for it to reach a point of them exchanging deadly blows...

The fighting figures suddenly stopped and Gin quickly recognized the handsome servant that had come to his aid on his second day at the Distant Jade. For the past several days the young man had occasionally offered his assistance whenever he noticed Gin having an issue or other. These interactions were only done when they met by chance, but in every case, Gin was ever grateful. Thinking back to those times, the young one felt his heart clench into further distress. What exactly had the servant done for him to end up in such a situation? If anything, was such a reaction even necessary?

After the brief pause, Spear rushed towards the servant again and didn't relent with his attacks. To Gin's surprise, Spear wasn't using his weapon of specialty, his name's sake, the spear, as he currently held a dagger that looked very much like those that were in their Master's weapons storage room he had seen once before. Spear seemed very proficient with the dagger and made the servant, who Gin noticed was wielding a sword, back away one step at a time. With every retreating step of the servant, Spear's speed increased. With every second that passed by, Spear executed incredibly heavy strikes with the dagger that Gin knew very well should be terribly hard to attack with.

Gin remembered the fight between Flower and Kiri, but he had to admit that the fight between those two didn't have the murderous aura that the men before him were radiating. However, from the looks of it, Spear seemed to be the one single-handedly giving off most of the killing intent from the two, especially if his vicious expression from the brief pause was anything to go by. From his concentrated efforts of observing what little he could, Gin was surprised by the servant as their seemingly disadvantageous situation suddenly turned to their favor. He first used his sword as a shield and parried the blows from Spear, but in the same instance, Spear was pushed away from him.

From the space Spear was thrown from, a sudden circular dented ripple had appeared and disappeared just as quickly. An invisible force of sort, which finally appealed to Gin's clouded thought process, that the servant was a Divine Art user. Stepping away from his sentiments and raising his awareness, Gin finally understood where the inconsistency of the whole matter laid. The confusion accompanied with the furrow of his brow, had Gin question: do all the servants residing in the Distant Jade know how to use the Divine Art? And a sword?

Other than the Training Hall, where he had been for half the day, there were no other weapons lying around the estate. So, how did the servant come to possess it? Do they have knowledge of the Fighting Arts and thus Spear had them have one in person? The situational redundancy of the latter question made it not add up. What of the Divine Art, though? But then again: would Spear go out of his way to make such a thing happen? The answer to this was simple; no, he would not. They weren't the Master's students, they weren't Noble's, and it wasn't a requirement for their employment. If he were to put it harshly and in simple enough terms, they weren't that important.

Not given enough time to ponder further, Gin was distracted by three lines of ripples that suddenly appeared in the space above the servant's outstretched hand, which then flew further into the night's sky. There was a distinct flicker from the ripples as if something besides the ripples were heading towards the vast sky. When this happened, Spear's wide sleeve flashed and one of the three ripples suddenly stopped and blinked out of existence. When Gin looked back to Spear who was lowering his arm to his side, the dagger he had held was no longer in his hand.

The curious moment was short-lived as Gin noticed someone walking towards him. Turning his gaze, he saw that it was Il San. The old man didn't look hurried or alarmed, he had an air of leisure as he made his way to Gin's side. And when he did reach Gin, he just stood there, quietly and unmoved. No emotions were betrayed on his face, he looked solemn as usual and didn't seem to have any intentions of intervening. This too became yet another curious factor added to Gin's piling list of confusing things to note for that very eventful day.

"Master..." Gin called out cautiously.

"Silence. Observe," Il San ordered without sparing him a glance.

Swallowing his words, Gin could only turn his head back to Spear and the servant. Currently, the pause between the two men had extended far longer than previously, and Gin didn't know if it was because of the Master's appearance to the scene, or the earlier derailment with the outward flying ripples. Spear was standing still while glaring at the servant with a crooked smile on his face. Gin didn't know if he was angry or amused since his eyes and mouth were saying two different stories. The servant, sword still held firmly, never took his eyes off Spear and had his own indistinct smile tagged on his lips.

From the two, Spear was the one to break the stalemate, he raised his forearms slightly and inserted one hand in the left arm's wide sleeve. He leisurely fished around and soon enough took out what seemed to be a brace of some sort. Looking quizzically at the spectacle, the only thing Gin could do was identify the item since he had seen something similar on the forearms of the full warrior's armor in Il San's death's, no, weapons storage. On top of this, border guards stationed at the entrance of Janln City also wore two of them on each arm, the difference being, theirs were made of leather.

However, the brace Spear had taken off had its own differences, it didn't have the flat surface the others had, instead, it had rows of thick short rods seeming to have had its width cut in half then stuck up together, and it was likely long enough to reach his elbow. Flicking his hand, the brace detached, then quickly reattached itself, but instead of being semi-circular as before, the rods pieced themselves in a straight line. Its width was oddly large as if winged, but soon enough though, the 'wings' clamped shut to form a chunky not-too-long-not-too-short pole. Another flick and the pole extended outwards, becoming longer and slicker. With a one-handed twist, a sharp edge came out at the end of the pole. The completion of the weapon made a dark spear that looked enchanting and daunting.

Spear smiled, and lifted the weapon to his free hand, as he caressed it tenderly, He saw the slight flow of the Divinities Aura form at his fingertips as they passed over the pole of the spear.

"It's been too long... Now then," Spear's loving mutterings ended on a serious note as he stretched his weapon towards the servant.

As the servant faced the pointed weapon, his earlier undecipherable smile turned into a crumpled one.

Trouble was brewed.