A young boy could be seen wielding a sword. He was standing on a deserted grass field. There were a few trees surrounding it, making it feel like a deserted patch of land in the middle of a forest. The wind was calmly blowing, almost like it was whispering something to its surroundings. The boy was graciously striking, blocking and parrying while moving, making the grass move along with him. The sun hadn’t come up yet, so there was no light to reflect off the sweat that had slowly started to form on his brow. He was holding a steel sword, which was actually a little too heavy and big for his stature, but somehow, he didn’t seem to have a lot of trouble with it. During his training session, he was slowly building up his pace. The slashes he was making were slowly increasing in strength and speed. He continued his training for quite some time, constantly trying to improve the flow between his moves.
Two years ago, he would often stumble or have pauses between his strikes, but if someone would see him at this moment, no one would think they were dealing with an inexperienced swordsman. His strikes sometimes still had small flaws to them, they were either too quick or a little off aim, but when looked at a whole, it was definitely on a high level.
The boy turned half a circle and started a combination of strikes, all his slashes fluently connected to each other. He kept up his pace, not stopping, only advancing. Finally, when he finished his final slash, he paused. He held his sword at the same place where his last strike just ended, exactly in front of his eyes. He slowly started to recover his breathing while he closed his eyes.
He calmly inspected his own body, feeling how the weight of the sword was affecting his arm and how his arm was influencing the rest of his body. When he was satisfied with what he felt, he opened his eyes and spun around. While spinning, he twirled his sword and put it back in his sheath located on his hip.
The sun had come up by now, fully bathing his body and face in light. If someone were to watch from the sidelines, they would be able to see a kid around 12 or 13 years old, wearing leather clothes. They would see a kid with an indifferent face that was covered by parts of the black hair that reached his shoulders. He had a handsome face that was above average and although it wasn’t too exaggerated, a lot of girls might fall for the cold look he had.
This boy was exactly Keith Dominus.
Compared to two years ago, his features had changed a little. His childlike neutral expression had lessened and the proportions of his body were slowly starting to resemble an adult. He had begun to develop the right muscles at the right places for his swordsmanship, making him look like an athletic young boy. This was a sharp contrast from most of the other children who walked around at the academy.
Some of his friends had repeatedly asked him why he kept training with the sword, instead of spending the time meditating or learning about magic. At first, he actually didn’t know himself, he just said that Dillim wanted him to keep training the sword. But as the days passed and his training progressed, the more he realized it was because of another reason that he kept picking up the sword. Furthermore, it was an extremely simple reason.
It was because he enjoyed it!
Keith didn’t have a lot of things that he enjoyed, for now there were only a few; one was to study magic and another thing was to wield a sword. He didn’t really enjoy meditating, even though he was able to quickly enter a state where he thought of nothing. This was only possible because he didn't use a common method any more. The first few times he tried the common method, it went okay, but after he kept training his mind, he started having troubles. The more he started to calm down his mind to enter a meditative state, the more he would think of home and his brother. He was still able to train, it just didn’t feel pleasant at all.
Once, he exited his meditation while feeling a little odd. When he touched his face, he suddenly noticed that tears were actually streaming down his face. He decided that this shouldn't continue any longer, so he went to Dillim and asked him if he had a solution.
Dillim had worn a sad smile, while understanding could be seen in his eyes. From his expression, it felt like he had almost experienced the same thing. He sat Keith down and told him that although there was a way, it would not make meditation more enjoyable, but it would produce the necessary results. He had told Keith to meditate, not by calmly letting his thoughts flow away, but through sheer suppression!
Every time he would start his meditation, he would have to think of all the things that troubled him. He would then need to try and visualize this idea. When he had done that, he would have to completely accept the image and only when he had done this, was it possible for the image to flow away, making him enter a state of meditation. Instead of slowly having the thoughts come after each other, he would have to accumulate all the things that bothered him at once and then discard them.
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Keith had only recently started to develop his abstract way of thinking enough, so it was only then that he could really employ this method. At first, it sort of worked sometimes, but he still used the previous method, until he was able to make this method work.
Due to his past, it was hard for him to meditate, but because it was necessary, he saw through it nonetheless. Because of this, Keith started enjoying the things he liked even more. He knew he wouldn’t accumulate world energy and his swordplay wouldn’t really be of use later, but he still diligently trained.
Keith looked at the horizon and saw the sun shining through the trees up ahead. He figured it was time to head back to the academy, so he wiped his forehead and left the outer edge of the forest.
Today he had another class, making him need to stop his training early. It was the beginning of his third schoolyear, which meant that he only had to attend two mandatory classes each week. There was a mandatory class only two times every week, in this class they would simply discuss some general problems that every student was encountering.
At the same time, the non-compulsory elemental classes were still held every day. Instead of just talking about the element, the teachers and students would actively start to train the element this time. All the students would turn twelve this year, or had already turned twelve. This meant that they would be fully able to start storing their elemental energy and start casting spells.
When Keith thought about tomorrow, he couldn’t help but smile. Tomorrow was the day he would turn twelve. By then he would fully be able to set his first step upon his road to power. Right now, he was still no different from any kid that could be found on the continent. He maybe had a slightly better understanding of the sword, but that’s it. Everyone would form their mana cores and energy veins by twelve, there was no distinction between people. But tomorrow he would start converting mana. He couldn’t wait to experience what it would feel like to hold the power of magic within his own hands.
Even though Dillim had often mentioned that he shouldn’t make his life goal to get revenge, Keith hadn’t fully accepted this advice yet. The only thing that he really knew at this moment, was that he needed power. No matter what choices he would make later, he needed power to back them up. Only then could he complete his goals, whatever they may be. He often thought about what had transpired and no matter how hard he trained, the burning fury that was still smoldering inside him couldn’t be extinguished. For some reason, even though he didn’t completely understand it, he knew that he had to exterminate this anger inside him before he could truly be happy.
When Keith reached the male student dorms, he coincidently found Vaeryl sitting before the building. “Hey, Keith!” Vaeryl said as he ran up to him with a smile. “Yesterday I didn’t have the time to show you this, but I really have to show you!”
“Calm down first.”
“Heh, let’s see how calm you’ll be after you see this,” Vaeryl cheekily said as he stood right in front of Keith.
Keith kept having a small smile when he saw Vaeryl running to him. They had deepened their friendship over the past two years, both sharing their experiences in swordplay as well as in meditation and magic. Keith had already understood Vaeryl was a show off, but it was seldom that he was so enthusiastic that we would sacrifice sleep to show him something.
“Heh, watch this!” Vaeryl closed his eyes and a solemn look replaced his previous expression. He then raised both his hands in front of him. After a few seconds, a faint golden light was starting to surround his hands. The intensity of the transparent energy was slowly starting to increase, until it reached a very dim glow. When it reached this level, the amount of light had stopped increasing. The only thing that kept increasing was the paleness of Vaeryl’s face. Eventually he lowered both his hands, dropping the spell he had been holding a second ago.
“Wow, what spell was that?” Keith asked after he observed Vaeryl’s pale face for a moment. He didn’t really care about a very simple spell, but seeing how Vaeryl had manifested his first magical achievement, he couldn’t help but be happy for him.
“Hah,” Vaeryl proudly said while he tried to recover his posture. “This is not a spell, it’s pure light elemental energy! It’s the first light elemental energy I’ve gathered, look at how grand it looks!”
“Well, it looked grand, but you dropped it on the ground,” Keith said with a joking smile. “You just spent all your elemental energy to make it look grand on the ground. I can only commend your graceful self!” Keith repeated a sentence he had heard Rinza once use when he mocked someone. He thought it was fitting to use as a joke at this moment.
“Pfft,” Vaeryl sighed, “You jerk!” He then shook his head and suddenly charged at Keith.
“At least I can cast spells, you haven’t even turned twelve yet!” Vaeryl yelled as he tried to grab Keith’s hips. Keith had just finished his training and was still a little groggy, but he managed to extend his arms in front of him, preventing Vaeryl from advancing by pushing against his shoulders. “Alright, alright,” Keith said in an attempt to stop Vaeryl. “I’ll turn twelve tomorrow! We’ll see how my lightning compares to your light element by then, alright?”
Vaeryl laughed and stopped his attempt to tackle Keith. He then took a few steps back and called out, “You should wash up fast, class is starting soon!” He then ran away in the direction of the main school building.
Keith shook his head while he looked at the running Vaeryl. He had tried to take advantage of his worn-out state after training. After Keith started to beat Vaeryl with the sword, Vaeryl kept trying to find ways to defeat Keith in other things. They had slowly created a friendly competitive mentality. Everything that could be competed in, they would compete in.
Keith walked back to his room and washed up. He left his sword and then walked to the main school building to attend class along with the other students. When he walked through the halls to his classroom, he already knew that it would be very hard for him to concentrate today. The only thing that he would be able to think about, was the moment that he would fill his mana core. He balled his fist and his eyes shone with determination when he thought of tomorrow.