Everything hurt. It felt like millions of needles were stabbing into his aching, sore legs, and like his lungs were on fire. His arms felt like lead, and even his soul was exhausted and hurting. He couldn’t even spare the breath necessary to complain.

‘Am I allowed to curse in my head?’ Leo wondered. He wanted to, and while there was nobody that would know aside from himself, Leo still shook his head.

Standing a few yards away, Maxwell and Erich were having a conversation while Leo worked himself down to the bone.

According to the watch on his wrist, Leo had run five miles in the past hour- and that had only been the start. After that, they had made Leo do push-ups until he physically couldn’t anymore, and then, when he couldn’t use his body, they had him exhaust his soul. Finally, Erich healed him, and the soreness disappeared from his muscles… and they made him do it all again.

While the soreness and tears in his muscles were healed, the exhaustion was not, and Leo was back on the floor in only ten minutes.

“You’re almost done,” Maxwell told him. “You only need to run six miles, do one hundred and fifty push ups, and then crush three more watermelons with your soul and you can leave.”

‘One more mile, twelve more push ups, and three more watermelons,’ Leo told himself.

Leo didn’t understand why this was all happening, but it was at least nice to know that he was improving. Yesterday, he had only been able to run three miles, do forty push ups, and crush two tin cans with his soul. Of course, he had also done those things in half the time.

Crushing things with his soul was both the easiest and hardest one- in that it was easy to do, but left him the most exhausted.

It was because of how young his soul was, apparently. It was absurdly large and potent for someone his age, and very in-tune with his body, but its age meant that it was brittle and tired incredibly easily.

Leo wasn’t even capable of actually using his soul’s affinity- since he could hardly crush things, one of the simplest and least taxing things one could do with a soul-, there was apparently no chance that he could create or even modify anything.

“Doing so will overtax you to the point of possible death,” Maxwell had told him, and thus, Leo had only trained it by crushing things.

“Leo, get up off the ground and come here!” Maxwell yelled to him, even though he wasn’t very far away.

With a great sigh, Leo pushed himself up off the ground and wobbled over to his two torturers. Once he arrived, Erich motioned for him to sit down, and Leo did without hesitation.

“If you had to choose a weapon, what would you choose?” Maxwell asked him after a second.

Leo recognized that this was an important question and pushed aside the tired haze that covered his mind, furrowing his brows as he thought.

Maxwell was deeply impatient with him while torturi- ‘Ahem, teaching,’, and so Leo stalled by asking, “Why?” even as he thought.

‘The best weapon… a gun, right? But in movies, awakened use swords and stuff… is there a reason, or is it just because they’re cooler?’ Leo wondered to himself. As he tried to find an answer to why they were often depicted as wielding melee weapons, Maxwell answered, and it was difficult to pay attention while thinking.

“Because you’re going to start training with one tomorrow,” Maxwell told him. “What you choose today won’t be permanent, but don’t choose a weapon that you won’t like- unless you want to waste a bunch of time.”

The translation was that he would be allowed to switch weapons if he chose poorly, but Maxwell would go ballistic because he had ‘wasted his time’. Unfortunately, even a few seconds after Maxwell had finished, Leo hadn’t been able to come up with even an inkling of a reason for why the awakened in movies used melee weapons, and so he answered quickly before the man began screaming.

“A gun would be the best weapon, I think.” Leo said.

Leo had liked Maxwell in the first few days before ‘training’ had begun, but he couldn’t stand the man anymore. He was perpetually angry and was triggered by every little thing, and while Erich was his teacher as well, Maxwell was significantly stronger and outranked the man in every way- meaning that there was little Erich could do to reign him in unless he started crossing boundaries… boundaries that seemed to be very difficult to cross, since Maxwell had even kicked Leo once and received nothing more than an angry cough from Erich in return.

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“There are a few awakened that use firearms, but that’s only because their souls have an affinity that synergizes with them. Yours isn’t one of them.” Erich told him politely, while Maxwell silently sneered. “Most awakened use melee weapons for a reason. A soul usually doesn’t extend very far away from the body, meaning that an awakened will almost always need to close the gap, in which case a melee weapon is the best choice by a mile.”

Leo glanced at Maxwell, a bit relieved that the man was letting Erich take care of it. Maybe he’d have time to ask questions and actually carefully consider his choices.

“My soul’s affinity is creation, isn’t it? Won’t I be making things, then, and not fighting?” Leo asked.

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But the answer is that you’re only half right. You’ll likely be creating things for people, including yourself, but an awakened with as much talent as you will doubtlessly be sent to fight off awakened beasts.” Erich told him.

Leo wasn’t sure how to feel about this, which was rapidly becoming the norm. He wasn’t sure how he felt about the fact that Verin was affecting his mentality, he wasn’t sure how he felt about his soul’s awakening, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about battling awakened beasts like the awakened in comics and movies.

On one hand, it was very cool, but on the other, it was very scary.

Still, it wasn’t like Leo had a choice and so he shook his head and tried to hurry up before Maxwell reached the ends of his very limited patience. Luckily, his tired and rapidly-maturing mind still carried the imagination of a child, and his eyes widened as a brilliant idea struck him.

“I should choose a weapon that synergizes with my soul, right?” Leo asked.

“Preferably,” Erich answered.

“Then I should choose a really… uh, bendy, I guess… weapon, so that I can use my soul’s affinity. Right?”

Erich stared at him strangely. “What do you mean by ‘bendy’?”

“Like, it can do a bunch of different things well.” Leo clarified.

“Oh… you meant versatile?” Erich asked, and Leo nodded quickly.

“I still don’t quite don’t understand what you’re envisioning.” Erich said regretfully, and Leo concentrated as he tried to figure out how to convey the image in his mind.

“That’s because he’s a kid, Erich. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Just give him a spear and let’s move on.” Maxwell snapped.

“No.” Erich said simply, turning to the man with visible annoyance. “The prince was very clear when he said that the boy must figure this out on his own. This is an instance where you won’t be able to get your way.”

A complex mix of emotions ignited within Leo as he listened to them. Fear, primarily, but right after that, amusement and joy at the fact that Erich had stood up for him. A bit further behind that was confusion, though.

‘A prince is paying attention to something so pointless? Which prince?’ Leo wondered. The emperor had hundreds of children, each with the name Ander. Some were more important than others, though, and so it suddenly seemed a bit reasonable. If one of the ‘loser’ princes was the one paying attention to him, it would make a bit more sense.

Maxwell smiled at Erich ominously, but said nothing further. After a ten-second staring contest that felt like ten minutes, Erich turned back to Leo and he suddenly remembered what he was supposed to be doing.

Fumbling with his thoughts and words, Leo finally just decided to put it in the simplest way he could.

“Like… If I have a versatile weapon, I can make it do a bunch of different things even in the middle of a fight, maybe.” Leo said.

Erich thought about it for a few seconds and slowly nodded. “I doubt it’ll work as perfectly as you imagine it in your head, but I’ve heard of a few craftsman awakened that have done similar things, and you’ve got plenty of talent. Besides, even if it doesn’t work out perfectly, it’s not like a versatile weapon is a bad choice, anyway.”

Leo was just happy that his idea had at least been accepted.

“So… what weapon is the most versatile?” Leo asked, realizing after a few seconds that he hadn’t actually answered the question with his idea.

“Hmm… I imagine that it would be something a bit mundane, like a longsword. Working with your idea, it has enough functions that it could be transformed in many different ways. What do you think?” Erich asked.

Leo nodded, deciding to trust the man’s judgment over his own, even though he was a bit confused. Weren’t longswords… well, long? Wouldn’t it be too big and heavy for him?

Erich glanced down at his own watch, and the screen flickered between several different applications almost instantly, and then he was done. “A sword your size will show up by tomorrow.” He told Leo.

“How did you do that?” Leo asked. His parent’s hadn’t allowed him to use very many of the functions of the watch- which made him wonder why they had gotten it for him so early-, but even if he couldn’t use the watch to its full potential, that was way faster… and cool.

“Do what?” Erich asked, before quickly figuring out what he meant. “Oh, that. It’s called an awakened watch, or, more commonly, an awatch. It works with awakened souls, which is how I did everything so quickly. Yours can’t do that, but I could get you one.”

Leo’s instinctive reaction was one of disgust. He didn’t want to get rid of his birthday present- especially when it was one of the most treasured things he had on him, having come from his parents and all.

But then, he realized that it wasn’t like he needed to get rid of one for the other, and after that, he realized that the restrictions on his current watch probably wouldn’t apply to the new one, meaning that he’d finally be able to watch shows and play games on it.

It was wrong of him, but at the same time… would his family really care? Their family had a television and gaming consoles at home, so why would it matter that he could do similar things from anywhere? Especially now that he couldn’t go home.

“Yes,” Leo told the man, and then, to cover for the slight guilt he still felt he decided to clarify, “But I’m going to wear it on my other arm. Because I like my current watch, too. It was a birthday present.”

"Okay," Erich told him. "Now, go get back to work."

Leo groaned... he had been secretly praying that the man would forget.