Inside one of the academy’s training rooms, Kaden was practicing with Derrik. The last few weeks had seen them become regular training partners.

In an attempt to make a breakthrough and finally overcome the disadvantage the instructor had given him, Kaden had ramped up his training schedule by a lot. It was natural that, of his roommates, Derrik was the only one that could keep up.

The others helped here and there as well, but they just didn’t have the discipline to spend countless hours on training every day. Derrik took it in stride.

But…

Left shoulder, Kaden thought as he saw Derrik’s body shift. The heavy spear in his hands moved over to block the attack, but it didn’t make it all the way there before it was too late.

“Ahh shit man…” Kaden rubbed his shoulder, feeling a stinging pain in the muscles there. This was the tenth time today that Derrik had gone for that spot, and it was honestly starting to hurt.

“Sorry.” Derrik said, an expression of shame on his face.

“No worries.” Kaden sighed and shook out his shoulder, loosening it and making it a little less painful. “Just… pick another spot next time, okay?”

“Right.”

Oh well, it wasn’t completely Derrik’s fault. If he could just block, then there wouldn’t be any problem. Yet again, he had been correct in his prediction, but it didn’t make a lick of difference. Despite his best efforts, he was just too slow.

Shaking his head, he admonished himself.

I need to do better. If he was too slow, he would just have to make up for it by moving earlier. But the only way to do that was by training his battle instinct so that he could predict his opponent’s attacks earlier.

And that was hard.

They had been at it for weeks, and he still wasn’t anywhere near good enough. In the beginning, he improved rapidly, but then it was like he had hit a wall and progress slowed to a crawl. There was no point in speaking of the second years, because he was still getting his ass handed to him by Derrik. Any blocks he managed were more luck than skill.

It definitely wasn’t easy to see through your opponent’s intentions. If he waited long enough, he could tell with a near hundred percent success rate, however, then it would be too late. On the other hand, if he tried too early, he was too inaccurate and could easily be tricked by feints.

He had gotten quite good at reading his opponent’s stance, center of gravity, and movements, but that wasn’t sufficient. Nothing was static, and everything could change in the blink of a second.

All he had were his eyes, and they could only see what was visible on the surface. Something else was needed if he wanted to make this work. Naturally, his mind immediately went to essence manipulation. If he could rank that skill up, he could use essence to sense his surroundings. That would add a whole other dimension for him to make use of.

However, things were never that simple. He was lucky that he had Finlay to relay everything from the class to him, but as they were still only working on the theory, all that information couldn’t be put to use yet.

Speaking of Finlay, Kaden thought the boy was behaving slightly strange as of late. He was used to waking up early, and in the start, he had always been the first to wake up in the dorm. But that wasn’t the case these days. Now when he woke up, Finlay was already long gone.

It wasn’t only in the morning either, sometimes he disappearing during the day as well, and Kaden had no clue where he went. Having asked the others in their dorm, he knew they didn’t know either.

It was suspicious, but he refrained from digging deeper, because it really wasn’t any of his business.

“You ready?” Derrik asked, looking at him worriedly as he stood there, spacing out.

Pulling himself out of his thoughts, Kaden smiled and said, “Yeah, let’s go again.”

Narrowing his focus onto just his opponent’s body, Kaden took in every minute detail of it, ignoring everything else within his field of vision. Derrik’s stance, the rotation of his waist, his grip and the angle of his weapon, nothing went unseen by him.

The right foot lifted first while the waist rotated to match the step. In that position, Kaden knew that it would be easiest to attack his left side.

The weapon shifted slightly down.

Upper body.

And then Derrik swung, his wrist rotating to find its mark.

Left… shoulder… Kaden almost didn’t believe what he was seeing, and that hesitation cost him.

He wasn’t even remotely close as that war hammer dove right into the familiar target. The pain was sharp and like a jolt of electricity as it reverberated out through his arm.

As Kaden rubbed his throbbing shoulder again, thinking that this was starting to seem like a horrible habit. Derrik seemed to rely more on instinct than strategy when fighting, and he had a strong tendency to go for his left side, and an even stronger tendency to target his shoulder. If he had just predicted an attack there every time, he would’ve enjoyed a far higher success rate.

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Derrik realized his mistake immediately and grimaced, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly.

”Sorry…”

Kaden just rolled his eyes and muttered, “Idiot.”

Seriously, he had just told him to pick another spot moments ago! It hadn’t even taken him a minute to do it again.

Even the second years weren’t that brutal and inconsiderate. They had even turned out to be rather friendly, and Kaden was getting along well with them.

After they had seen that he wasn’t some cocky, arrogant first year like the instructor had goaded them into believing, they had accepted his presence. Even horse-face was a nice enough guy once you got to know him.

They still went hard, but also held back and made sure that he didn’t get too banged up. Kaden appreciated it, and he didn’t want them to go easy on him either. Compared to Derrik, they were almost angels. He could only console himself with the fact that Derrik hadn’t meant to do it.

“Oh well, it’s fine.” Kaden shook out his shoulder again and checked his wrist to see the time. “Let’s end it here for today. Finlay will be here soon, and I don’t feel like breaking my shoulder.”

He really wished that the instructor would’ve let him use the leather armor outside of practice, like he had with the spear. But the man had just said something about him not getting too comfortable. Whatever that meant.

“Right, sorry again.” Derrik apologized meekly.

“It’ll heal.” Kaden waved him off. It was painful, but it wasn’t a big deal. His body was resilient and this kind of light damage was healed overnight. “We need to fix that unpleasant habit of yours, though. You’re too predictable right now.”

Kaden almost felt ashamed saying that, seeing as he hadn’t managed to block a single attack today. Though it wasn’t really the same, as he had been trying to read Derrik’s attacks, instead of just assuming and defending his left side every time.

“Mhm.” Derrik nodded. “I’ll try to do something about it. It’s just…”

“What?” Kaden raised an eyebrow, wondering what he was so hesitant to say.

“No, never mind, it’s nothing.” Derrik shook his head, looking like he had changed his mind. “I’ll talk to my dad about it, he’s the one who taught me.”

“Sure.” Kaden nodded, surmising that it was probably something private. Thinking about it, he realized he didn’t really know much about Derrik’s family. “You said that joining the military is a family tradition, does that mean your dad is in the military too?”

“Mhm, ground forces.” Derrik’s lips formed a happy and prideful smile. “He served out his initial contract years ago, but extended it. It’s because of him I didn’t mind signing a fifty-year contract with the military, so I could go to this school. I’m probably going to spend my entire life in the military anyway, maybe even more than fifty years, so I may as well get the most I can out of it, right?”

Kaden winced at hearing the number, but he could see how it made sense from Derrik’s perspective. Fifty years was a long time, but if he had no plans to do something else anyway, there was no reason not to. “I get it. It’s what you know.”

But just because he could understand, didn’t mean he could ever see himself accepting something like that. He had no interest in being bound to anyone, whether corporation, military, or person. A life of freedom was what he sought.

If he hadn’t been so lucky and been born in a rich family, he probably would’ve chosen to go to one of the worst schools in the Democratic Alliance, so that he could get the shortest possible contract. Either that, or try his luck on some of the lawless planets in the neutral zones between nations. No governments ruled there, which meant the dungeons were pretty much free for the taking.

“Yeah. But the military life does make things troublesome sometimes. I haven’t been able to properly talk to him for a while, as he’s been stationed right on the border to the empire.”

“Ahh… I see.” Kaden understood immediately. Tensions had been ramping up lately, and rebel uprisings had been taking place in large scale on the border planets. All of them were undoubtedly funded and manipulated by the empire. They were making it clear that they desired the Democratic Alliance’s territory. His father had said that war wasn’t likely to break out, but Kaden wasn’t so sure.

Luckily, despite the proxy attacks, both sides still held up the peace agreement, and didn’t venture into the neutral zone, staying on their respective sides.

“It’s not too bad though. The end of the month is coming up, and then he’ll have a few days off. I should be able to get a hold of him then.” Derrik seemed cheered on by that fact.

“Good, hopefully he can help you out,” Kaden said, and then both of them turned around, having heard the door slide open as Finlay walked into the training room.

“I’ll get going then, still got some homework to do.” Derrik started gathering his things.

“Mhm.” Kaden nodded. He still had some as well, but that would have to wait. Training took priority.

***

When Finlay had first told him the good news, Kaden had been over the moon. But now… not so much.

They had finally started practicing how to reach the next level of Essence Manipulation, which was a fantastic thing. However, as he had already learned once today, things were never that easy.

Sitting on the floor, Kaden pooled all of his essence into one point within his finger. Once he had gathered all of it, he focused his senses and shoved all of it against a very tiny spot in his skin.

Around his body was an invisible barrier, preventing him from moving his essence outside of his body. If he could just chip out a tiny piece of that barrier, anywhere in his body, the rest of the barrier would crumble, and he would’ve achieved the next level. This meant that the first time was the hardest, but as long as he could do it one time, it would be easy from there on out.

As he pushed, his essence began to deplete rapidly as it came into contact with the barrier. A slight electrical feeling tickled the skin on his finger. But it wasn’t enough, and no matter how hard he tried, even as he gave it everything he had, he could feel the barrier hold strong, like this amount of essence was nothing to it.

He watched desperately as his essence decreased, dissipating into nothing. It didn’t even feel like he was making a dent in the structural integrity of the barrier.

The dizziness took hold as he ran on fumes, the barrel that was his body, almost completely empty. Frustrated, he had no choice but to give up, unless he wanted to faint.

Sweat dripped down his forehead as he breathed out in exhaustion.

Across from him, it didn’t look like Finlay was faring much better. He had more essence though, and it took a little longer before he too opened his eyes. His expression turned to one of annoyance, indicating that he hadn’t made much progress either.

Just because Finlay’s essence was higher, and met the 1000 that was recommended by the classes instructor, didn’t mean that he would have an easy time with this either.

The barrier on their skin, that blocked the flow of their essence, was quite strong, and would even regenerate over time. All you could do was chip away at it day by day until it was finally weak enough to break.

And that made this whole thing rather frustrating. Even though they had the time to spare, they couldn’t do anything with it right now. Their bodies were completely devoid of essence, which meant they had to wait for it to refill, and that happened at an agonizingly slow rate.

If there was no essence to shove at the barrier, no progress could be made. Neither of them had a method to make it refill faster, if that was even a thing.

Kaden wasn’t sure, it was just a random thought that had struck him. He certainly hadn’t heard of such a method before, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t exist. Maybe? If it did exist, it could make things a lot easier, so he resolved that he had to look it up on the net later and find out for sure.

However, for now, he had no choice but to wait the fourteen hours it would take for his essence to refill.