“Here! I’m right here!” Prince Keith smiled and pointed to himself.
Malena looked at him, then the knight, then the king, both of which nodded. Well, if these two were accepting him, maybe she was judging him too much by appearance. After all, Takumi did pretty well despite looking much more like a commoner than a royal, even if she was meticulous.
Wait, no. This was a prince, not a commoner, so why was he overweight? He should’ve had access to people who’s entire jobs it was to make sure he exercised or ate right. Had he chosen to be like that? If so, why?
She decided she would test him a bit. She didn’t want to let on that it was a test though, so she thought about how to phrase it, slowing down time again for a moment. “Okay. Well, I just got done with some work I might want to double check with a prince like yourself: in the event of a prison break, what would you do to secure things?”
The king and knight both stiffened, but the prince shrugged. “I think that’s up to the aides, right? Or the King that’s in charge? Not me.”
“Well, this is assuming you’re king, since you might become that one day.”
Prince Keith shook his head. “I’m one of the younger sons, so it’s pretty unlikely that I’d become king.”
“Unlikely, but not impossible,” Malena said.
“True.” Keith frowned, then paused. “What was the question again?”
Malena felt a growing pit of worry as she repeated herself, “What would you do in the event of a prison break if you were king?”
Keith thought for a while, then shrugged. “I’d tell my aides to deal with it.”
“And if you couldn’t get to them in time?” Malena asked.
“What do you mean I couldn’t get to them in time?” Keith asked back. “The king always has his aides.”
Malena couldn’t hold her expression neutral any more. This so-called prince was failing every test. “What would you do as king that didn’t involve having your aides deal with it?” She asked.
Keith shrugged.
“Malena, this isn’t necessary,” King Solis said, grabbing her arm and gently pulling her away. He hadn’t expected the prince to be that bad. He’d met with him earlier before he demanded ‘his princess’ in the shortest time possible. He seemed arrogant and demanding, but if he liked Malena, they had some leverage over him and Voldia that he wasn’t about to let her ruin. “You already gave your answer. You’ll get to learn how he performs his leadership later. Now, if you’re satisfied, we have more work to do.”
Reinhold nodded.
Malena followed.
“Hey, we only just started talking!” Keith complained. “Reinhold! Stop them.”
Reinhold shook his head, but his runes glowed and he was filled with pain. Still, he didn’t move.
Malena looked back, seeing the runes glowing and the knight clenching his teeth in pain. So this was how the prince commanded his troops? No, Voldia itself, since the prince wasn’t in a position to make this? She wished she could break those runes there, maybe with her magic, but she was already too far, and she couldn’t teleport the whole set of armor. Maybe she could teleport a piece of it if she was closer?
“You’ll… have. Plenty of time…” Reinhold choked out. “To meet her. Later!”
The king pulled her away into a separate hall.
Prince Keith frowned at Reinhold. “Go after them!” He yelled.
Reinhold simply grit his teeth.
Prince Keith grit his own. “Reinhold! You’re my knight, so you should accept my orders! If you don’t go after them, I’ll leave you like this all night!”
Reinhold could see the problem and why the King of Solis left with Malena: Malena couldn’t hide her disgust, and the prince would see it. Nothing good would come of bringing them back so early. Also, the prince’s order was born of selfishness, and stopping the king was against his own king’s wishes. Since the prince was lower ranking, it wasn’t even a lawful order. However, it was an order from royalty, so the runes still fired up.
If he followed that order, everything between Solis and Voldia might fall apart. However, unless he was moving towards that door they both left from, his armor would be locked in place. So, it would just have to remain locked in place. That wasn’t so bad. Apparently he would just receive torture for disobeying. That was all that could happen for disobeying an unlawful order after all.
---
“If that’s how Voldia acts, why do we even want them as allies?” Malena said. “Just let them fall apart on their own.”
The king shook his head. “Voldia’s army is three times our size with more powerful mages. If you don’t help us form an alliance, they’ll send that army and take us by force.”
Malena grit her teeth. “I’m not sure if dealing with the army is better. If that idiot’s commanding all those knights that are already set up, then the people aren’t safe. He could have them arrest or attack anyone!”
“Then make sure he doesn’t. Keep them safe,” the king said. “That is your duty.” He grimaced. Placing such a duty on someone so young was wrong, but it was necessary.
Malena opened her mouth to say something back, but she couldn’t think of anything. She was in a unique position to help Solis by dealing with that monster, and it was a terrifying position she accepted in her speech earlier. So, she’d have to lie and say that she liked him? That he was a good prince? She wanted to throw up. He was the opposite of a good prince. Using a chessboard analogy, no one should let him advance to be King, it was far better he stayed a pawn.
A pawn! Right. He had command, but they said ‘a fool and his money are quickly parted’, and the same applied to power. He really did seem to like her, so maybe she could use that over him.
The king looked back as Malena contemplated. Wait a minute, had he heard right? Yes, she was definitely questioning him. It was convenient if she was going to become Queen in time, but what happened to the loyalty to the king that most Solis citizens had?
Eventually, they both made it outside.
“You’re still in school, and you should continue with your lessons. But you’ll be returning tomorrow. Think about how you’ll deal with that brat until then.” King Solis let go of her.
Malena nodded, rubbing her wrist now that it was free. “I will.”
---
After they left Hana with the egg, Lilith went back to bed, exhausted, and fell asleep rather than taking a nap. She found herself by Wispy’s lake again.
Relieved, she looked up, and let out all her insecurities and worries on him. He was the only one that was really able to deal with them. “Wispy we almost died. Is the adit safe? Is Silene right? Will that dragon come back for its egg?”
Wispy nodded. “Your new home is safe, and Silene is correct. If the dragon was going to come back for its egg, it would’ve done so before it nearly froze to death.”
Lilith let out a breath. That was good to know. “There aren’t going to be any other dragons like that, are there?”
Wispy paused.
Lilith paled. “There won’t be, right?”
“There won’t be, by your adit,” Wispy said. “Silene said the dragons are territorial, which means your adit is safe. However, outside of there, you might encounter them. Solis may not be entirely safe either.”
Lilith blinked. “Huh? Nowhere else is safe?”
Wispy nodded. “It’s unlikely that they’d risk their life to attack Solis, but it can’t be ruled out entirely.”
“But then how the heck do we deal with those things? Could Alec handle it?” She asked.
Wispy paused. “Your trio, with your magic, was lucky. You had the ability to hide, and your electricity scared it. Even then, you couldn’t get close. Anything short of the small army you saw in the dragon’s vision would likely end in a similar defeat at best.”
Lilith's ears folded back. “I don’t want to live like that. Like my friends and I could die at any time from those things. And we got lucky with the small dragon too…”
Wispy nodded. “So, are you asking for a way to fight dragons?”
Lilith hesitated, but nodded. She’d fight it if that kept her friends safe. “Do you know how it made those ball things? Maybe we could learn to fire some back?”
“I do not,” Wispy said. “However, it reminded me of a phenomenon called ‘ball lightning’. In my memories, there have been no successful and repeatable recreations of it. However, your magic gives you more control than the people from the previous world, and there were two promising theories that could help, but it may take a while to see any progress.”
Lilith nodded. Even if she’d have to wait a while, it was better than nothing.
Wispy moved a tendril forward and showed her an image of interlocking rings of electricity. First a few, then countless, getting closer and closer to a sphere. “The first promising theory uses rings like this. Their electrostatic and electromagnetic fields should push and pull to keep each other stable. Since any electrical arcs you make tend to shoot off, you may need to start with two or more at the same time so you can rely on that self-stabilizing nature. So, try making two circles with your electricity and magnetism.”
Lilith tried. She used her magnetism at the end of some electrical arcs, which curved them when she applied enough power, but then they flew off afterwards before she could react. So, she applied time magic in order to keep the magnetic forces at the ends of the arcs. She managed to make them curve slightly more now, but they still just shot off in a different direction.
She tried a few more times, but no matter what she did, they kept shooting off. She moved the magnetic force around, eventually settling on something spinning close to the center of the circle, but while that made a circle, it was still unstable. She was also starting to lose track of time. It felt like hours had passed even though time with Wispy usually went by quickly.
“Please keep trying,” Wispy said.
Well, he was usually right, and this was the only hope she knew of against giant dragons now, so she just kept at it.
Once she managed to get one ring relatively stable, she made another right beside it, spinning the same direction. However, even though the magnetic fields she was making with her magic shouldn’t have interacted, the rings accelerated towards each other until they crashed. So the rings had their own magnetic field?
“Can I have some iron?” Lilith asked.
Wispy reached out a tendril and deposited some ‘iron’ in her other hand.
Lilith made one ring, and noted that it did move towards the ‘iron’, no matter how well she kept her own magical magnetic fields away.
She remembered playing with her magnetic powers a long time ago. There was always a positive and negative side to the magnets, and opposite sides attracted. So, somehow these electrical rings were non-magical magnets.
Now the problem was getting them to not collide. She tried making them spin in opposite directions, counter clockwise beside clockwise, but that just flew apart. Then, she tried putting three together, since the rings wouldn’t be directly on top of each other even if their magnetic fields were touching.
Unfortunately, the electrical sparks would push each other away whenever they got too close, destabilizing the whole thing. Then she thought back to Wispy’s theory: interlocked rings, not intersecting. If she shifted them slightly by putting in some constant force to offset them just enough, those sparks wouldn’t be able to collide.
Finally, she had three interlocked rings! They all spun above her hand for about half a second, before it wobbled and the electricity faded to nothing. She wasn’t sure whether she should feel elated or distraught.
“Perfect!” Wispy exclaimed.
“What do you mean perfect?” Lilith looked up, confused. “How is it useful if it disappears in less than a second?”
“There was a second theory,” Wispy said. “It stated that microwaves were trapped within the sphere of electrical plasma, and that they kept it stable. However, for that, you’ll need another part: a cavity magnetron.” He sent forward a tendril, and a screen showed a circular object in Lilith’s palm.The circular object cut in half showing several cavities in the center. When the hand on the screen sent sparks of electricity through the object, it disappeared, but then a ball of lightning on the other side stabilized. “You’ll have to memorize and re-create that structure as usual. Once you make it, send your electricity through the center to create microwaves.” He squeezed his tendril around the image, then created a fake version of the device and dropped it into Lilith’s hand with that same tendril.
[https://i.imgur.com/XYjtuOF.png]
There was a strap attached to it, so Lilith put that around her hand. Then, she aimed the device down and outwards and focused her electricity through. It disappeared like it did in the image. Now, she just had to do that while making the rings too.
This was starting to feel impossible. Just keeping the three rings up was like high-speed juggling, but with magic.
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“Touch the grass you just aimed at,” Wispy said.
Confused, she knelt down and touched the grass. It was warm.
“One danger of this method is that it can boil anything you aim it at from the inside out, so try not to aim it at anyone.”
Lilith nodded. Being boiled from the inside out sounded pretty terrifying.
Continuing her practice, she tried pushing electricity into the cathode of the magnetron and pulling it from the anode, while also arcing the electricity. She could see the circles of electricity glow brighter on the side opposite to the microwave, and there was a bit that seemed to bounce back as if reflected. But it also pushed the electricity away, made it more unstable, and eventually it all faded anyway. But if it was a cage for the microwaves, which is what it looked like, maybe too much was leaking out?
Wispy looked around. “It’s about time to wake up,” he said. “Create the device and practice throughout the day. And remember, don’t aim the microwaves at people. There might be times that you don’t see progress for a while, but just keep trying small variations until something improves.”
Wispy’s dreamworld faded to white.
---
Lilith woke up. It was still the afternoon on the weekend, so she melted some brass sheets and cut graphite until she had something close to the device, then practiced with it while aiming out the window.
That was until Malena came back into the room muttering something like, “stupid prince…” before she saw Lilith. “What the heck happened to your clothes!?”
Lilith turned. “Oh, uh, dragon,” she said.
Malena’s eyes widened. “What? Dragon? Are you okay?”
Lilith nodded, smiling. “I managed to scare it off.” Her smile faded. “I think we just got lucky though.”
“Well, you can’t wear that to class,” Malena said.
Lilith nodded again. “I have another pair just like it. I’ll have to wash them more often though.” She tried making more rings and filling them with microwaves again.
Malena sat back in her bed. “Well, wait… I feel like this should be common sense, but you are going to stop going to that adit now that there are dragons, right?”
Lilith shook her head. “Silene said the adit’s one of the safest places to be now, because dragons like that are territorial.” She looked away. “Solis might actually be less safe than the adit.”
Malena blinked. “What?”
“Don’t worry though. I’m going to make sure I have a way of dealing with them.” She turned back to the window and put more energy into another attempt.
“Lilith, it takes a whole adventuring team to safely deal with a dragon. You shouldn’t try dealing with one yourself,” Malena said.
Lilith blinked, then turned back, confused. From her classes, she knew how strong the average adventuring team was, and it wasn’t strong enough to deal with the monster they encountered. Then, she realized. “Oh, you must mean the small red ones. No I mean the big blue ones. I think Silene called it a Baleen?”
Malena froze. She read in her history books that those dragons nearly wiped out Solis a long time ago. If Lilith encountered one, it was amazing she was even alive.
Suddenly, Lilith made a few stable rings, then as a small variation like Wispy suggested, she aimed the microwaves slightly off to one side of the sphere. That made it spin more and more rapidly, which for some reason made it stabilize and glow brighter. She kept feeding it until there was a bright white sphere in her hand. “I got it!” She exclaimed.
Then, the sphere exploded and threw her back.
Malena slowed time and ran towards her.
However, before Lilith hit her head against the bedpost behind her, she twisted in midair to avoid it, and turned in midair until she was able to land with one foot on her bed and one hand on the wall. Then, she looked down at her other hand, which had a weird device in a leather strap. There were also a few burns.
“Oww!” Lilith held her hand, then shook it. “I’m going to need a glove for this.”
“Lilith what the heck?” Malena asked, her eyes wide as she rushed over. “Are you okay?”
Lilith nodded. “Just a few burns, and my hand hurts a lot. Nothing’s broken though.”
“Why are you even trying to make a bomb?” Malena asked.
“It’s not a bomb,” Lilith said. “It’s a seeking arrow.”
Malena blinked. What was a ‘seeking arrow’? Well, whatever it was, she should probably stop Lilith from hurting herself trying to deal with monsters that could threaten Solis itself. “How would that even help with Baleen dragons?”
“When we fought, Silene could make us invisible and Jatte deafened it, but I couldn’t do anything since I was far away. This thing should let me do something outside of my range of magic.”
“Why not just buy a bow then?” Malena asked.
“I don’t think a bow will do much against that huge thing,” Lilith said. “I have to practice more.” She held her hand towards the window again.
“Stop!” Malena yelled. “At least get something so you don’t break your hand first!”
Lilith paused, then lowered her hand. “Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.”
“Change your clothes, we’re going shopping.”
Lilith smiled. “Okay.”
Malena sighed. Lilith was usually focused on her creations, but this seemed like that had been taken to the self-destructive extreme. She was glad mentioning shopping was enough to distract her.
…
During the trip, Malena was happily distracted from her worries by Lilith’s ramblings. And after, Malena managed to distract Lilith by listening to her magic ramblings even more, until she fell asleep.
But in Lilith’s dreams and with Wispy, she continued practicing. She managed to get one or two lightning balls, both of which exploded in her hand, but it wasn’t repeatable.
---
Lilith continued practicing making her lightning ball in between classes, now wearing white leather gloves that matched her outfit. She even tried once during flight class.
She tried making one while everyone was taking a break after some new maneuver, aiming it off to the right. This time, she tried making a fourth ring now that she was getting the hang of things, and fed it as it spinned. It seemed a bit more stable now, but then it flew away from her hand in the direction she made it spin. She jumped back, thinking it might explode, but it wobbled as it drifted down, before exploding with a loud crack and burning some of the grass.
“What the heck was that?” Alec turned.
“Sorry, my bad,” Lilith said.
“‘Your bad’?” Alec repeated, raising an eyebrow. “What did you do?”
“Er, this.” Lilith tried making a few more arcs of electricity. She was able to get three to stabilize until it spun and fed it with the magnetron. But this time, since she knew it would explode, she pushed it out with telekinesis. It wobbled out a few feet before it popped.
Everyone stared.
“What is that?” Alec eventually asked.
“Well, I spin up a few arcs of electricity into circles by guiding them with spinning magnetic fields, offset them slightly, then feed them with microwaves at an angle so they spin,” Lilith said.
Alec blinked. “Electricity, got it.” Then he paused. “I didn’t think electrical mages could do that though.”
“Electricity and light,” Lilith said. “I can’t make light, so I’m using something to do it for me.”
Cyla stepped forward. “Like a lantern? You’re not burning yourself, are you?”
Lilith shook her head. “Nope. That’s what the gloves are for.”
Alec stared at the patch of grass that Lilith’s lightning ball exploded over. When he thought about it, what she just made was a really poor projectile. Those were useful for every flight mage, though he was making sure they were all comfortable in the sky first. But maybe it was time that they learned offense instead of dodging and flying away.
“Alright, that gives me an idea,” Alec said. “Ethen, I’ll get you a proper weapon to train with later, but for now, you and Jatte, pick up some rocks and fly to the edge of the target. We’re going to try hitting the center. Lilith, you’ll be trying with whatever that thing was.”
They all flew over.
First, Ethen picked up his rock and flung it with his magic. It reached the second circle from the center.
Jatte picked up a large rock, but Lilith’s electro-ball made her think back to that giant dragon. And then she realized something else: she moved both Silene and Lilith, and more rapidly than she should’ve been able to. Did something about the danger of the situation give her a boost? She tried to remember the feeling, and picked up a few more rocks, with volume a bit larger than she should’ve been able to handle, then flung them all forward. They all landed slightly off center from the bullseye.
“Isn’t that more than normal?” Lilith asked, slightly stunned.
Jatte nodded. “If I feel like I did then, apparently there’s some boost.”
“Then?” Ethen asked.
“We ran into a monster out of the city,” Lilith said. She didn’t want to worry everyone with the full details since Malena was freaked out by them already.
“Ah.” Ethen frowned. “Well, be careful”
Lilith nodded, then furrowed her brow and muttered to herself, “That’s weird though. That should just be adrenaline, which is a chemical. Magic isn’t chemical though…” She also realized she carried both Jatte and Silene when she flew away from the dragon and its blasts, which normally would’ve been too much for her, so it boosted both of them. Since adrenaline boosted physical and mental strength, was magic related to that? Or was there something else purely magical that was released instead of adrenaline?
“Your turn Lilith,” Alec said.
“Oh, right.” Lilith made her electro ball and pushed it forward. It drifted down and landed on the furthest rung of the target, the one closest to them, and the explosion was smaller.
Alec frowned. “If that doesn’t improve, you might be better off with a bow.”
Lilith frowned. If that was true, Wispy would’ve suggested the same. There must’ve been something to this ball lightning since he didn’t. “I think it’ll be better once I get used to it.”
Alec shrugged. “Well, you’re the only electrical mage here.”
---
After school, Lilith came back to her dorm, exhausted. Malena wasn’t there, so she opened her window again and tried making more of the electro balls, but now she had a hard time even making them. After a few attempts with the electrical arcs shooting off in different directions or dissipating, she walked back to her bed and flopped back onto it.
She was so mentally exhausted that she just stared up at the ceiling for a while, but after a few moments, she could practically see those spinning magnetic fields, the electrical arcs, and the microwave device.
She shook her head and looked at some of her old projects. She still hadn’t finished her engine, since she needed electronics and wire that she hadn’t made yet, and there was another project related to her watermill: the electric motor. No one sold copper wire, so she had to make it herself, which was super boring.
Now, she took a small piece of sharp metal, and dug a hole through a chunk of graphite with her telekinesis by spinning it, which took a while. She measured the hole with a ruler until it was the right size, then picked up a sheet of copper. She heated one corner of the sheet with her magic, then pulled a thin part off with her telekinesis, and shoved it through the graphite hole until she could wrap it around some scrap wood. Then, she just kept heating and pulling like that, making a larger and larger spool of copper.
She still thought about the electrical arcs some, but at least this was distracting enough.
However, after a few hours, and a partially assembled motor, Malena still wasn’t back from whatever she was doing, and Lilith was lonely. So, she walked out, ran into the hall, and knocked on Silene’s door.
“Hey Lilith, what’s up?” Silene asked.
“I’m bored,” Lilith said. “Malena’s not back for some reason. Can I show you what I’m working on instead?”
Silene shrugged. “Sure.”
---
Malena sat across from Prince Keith in an upper class diner with marble everywhere. Even there, the waiters and waitresses rushed around and nervously glanced at them, and the other customers couldn’t help but stare.
But Keith’s attention was on Malena, which was exactly what she wanted. He didn’t even notice the perfect cube of fish on her plate from her teleportation practice, despite the fact that she didn’t have a knife.
He liked her, gross as it was, and she could use that. If he wanted her approval, then she could use that to control him, to at least push him in some direction that wasn’t, gross, useless, mockery of a prince. He couldn’t even be compared to Ethen, who was technically way lower status.
He saw her smirk and smiled back. She actually seemed happy to be here, unlike last time. Things were improving!
“I have to say,” Malena said, looking around at the people in the diner, then outdoors, spotting a few Voldian knights. “You have a lot of power.” She looked back at him. “But it’s not really your power, is it?”
He tilted his head.
“Isn’t it all your dad’s?” She asked.
He raised an eyebrow. “My dad’s power is my power. That’s what it means to be Prince.”
Malena frowned and shook her head. “Have you ever disagreed with your dad? I know I have.”
“Well yeah, but--”
“And if you disagreed, well you can’t really use his own troops against him. They’re his troops after all.”
“I mean, yeah--”
“So it’s not your power.” Malena practically glared at him. “I’m not meeting with your dad. I’m meeting with you.” She pressed her finger down. “What do you bring to the table that your father doesn’t?”
He blinked. A few people had asked him that question before, but he brushed it off. This time he thought about it, before smiling. “My dad and I wouldn’t disagree like that. And really, he’s given me a portion of his power. I command the knights here, and he commands the knights in Voldia. Because of him, I really do have more power.”
“Really?” Malena raised an eyebrow. “Without their suits of armor, do you think your knights would really protect you? If you were adventuring with your knights and a dragon attacked you, would they rush forward and save you, or would they let their runes immobilize them until the dragon ate you?”
Prince Keith paused, paling at the description, then shook his head. Sure, some of his knights might’ve hated him. Even he knew that. But would it be enough that they would take the opportunity? But wait, it was a strange scenario that would probably never happen anyway. So, he asked, “Why would I be adventuring in the first place? The king is supposed to stay with his kingdom.”
Malena shrugged. “It was the first thing that came to my mind because I have a roommate that likes adventuring. And the king shouldn’t always stay with his kingdom. If you really want to show trust between kingdoms, sending the king in person says a lot.”
Keith frowned. She had a point.
“I’ll be honest, Keith, I think most of your power is an illusion,” Malena said.
Keith frowned. Why was she insulting him?
“But I think you do have potential,” she said.
“Potential?” He raised an eyebrow. No one told him that before. They mostly said, with some jealousy, that he already had everything.
“You have access to all the personal trainers you could want, and anyone would lend you their ear, their opinion, or their books.” She leaned forward. “You can use that to do what you want and get out of your father’s shadow. You won’t be bound by others that way.”
---
After the dinner, Malena unfortunately had to go back to school to do her work, but the Prince had his own goals now. So, he walked back to Reinhold, whose runes were still glowing, and said, “Your punishment is over. I need you to get me some personal tutors. The best you can find.”
Reinhold grinned. He was delirious from the lack of sleep and the pain, but he heard what he heard. Something made this useless prince want to train. “Hehe.” Well, wasn’t it way, way too late for that? “Hehehehehe.” He stood.
“Why are you laughing?” Prince Keith glared. “What’s so funny. Do you want to be replaced?”
“Nothing’s funny.” Reinhold smiled. “It’s just the lack of sleep. I’ll get you the best trainers I can find.”
Keith felt a chill run up his spine, but shook it off. “You better.”
…
A few hours later, Keith was surrounded by people that looked incredibly powerful: a shirtless giant of a man made of muscle, a researcher in a lab coat, a strategist in commoner clothes with a gaze that pierced through his soul, and a man in dark clothes with a permanent scowl. Absolutely none of them were Voldian, so he couldn’t command them like he did his knights.
“Alright kid,” the muscle bound man said. “We gotta build you up if you wanna inspire confidence. Let’s see how many pushups you can do.”
He hesitantly stepped forward. He was pretty sure he couldn’t do a single push up, and he didn’t want to show that, so he stood still.
“What the fuck are you waiting for!?” The strategist yelled. “Why are you hesitating!? Get on the fucking ground right the fuck now!”
The prince panicked and flopped onto the ground. He tried to push himself back up with both his hands, but he struggled. Then he thought: why was he taking orders? He was the prince! However, in his fear and annoyance, he did manage one push up, and then took a few breaths.
“Come on kid,” the muscle bound man said. “That’s one, I know you can do more.”