After Zelos got his money, he began counting the minutes to go on his food shopping spree, but soon, he realized that he needed to consider the future of his money… he had to make good use of it. Aside from a few weapons, food, and training gear, he needed to consider how to make his money work for him, since jobs like that would be hard to come by.

One hour later, the group split and then they said their byes, since it would take a few days before they would see themselves like that again. Zelos practically ran to have his real lunch, and then he stuffed himself… the food shopping spree would have to wait. He had to work on some things first.

After he was done eating, Zelos went to check the blacksmith shops for the heaviest weapons they had. In the end, he found a cylinder-shaped club that looked pretty nasty and weighed thirty kilograms. That was a bit too heavy to use with a single hand, even for his training, but he decided to buy it anyway since it was cheap. Clubs weren’t the main weapon of choice for most people. Swords and spears were cooler. At the same time, he would be able to train harder with it.

Once he was done with that, Zelos began to move to the farm where the old man he worked for lived… in order to save some money, instead of paying for an inn, Zelos decided to work and live there. He didn’t need a bed, after all. The cattle shed would be enough for him.

“Zelos! My boy! My back missed you so much!”

“What the… what a weird thing to say… I don’t remember telling you my name.”

“The captain told me two weeks ago. Around that time, my back was starting to kill me because of the heavy work, and then I went to ask him when he was going to return.”

“I would bet. I have a good offer for you if you stop saying weird things. I want to negotiate my services here for you. I will do all the heavy lifting, and you can stay in the shade, counting the sunstone coins coming. I won’t be able to do that all the time, but I will be able to do it around so you can recover from your backpack. How much you can pay me for that while also giving me a bucket of the cow’s milk and letting me sleep in the shed as well?”

“Do you actually like to sleep rough like that? The captain told me a few things about you, but I didn’t think that he was for real… we have one extra bed at home that you can use.”

“I am grateful, but I will have to refuse.”

“He said that you would say that to my offer too… I guess that is for the best since my daughter is too cute and I want to protect her as much as possible, even from kids of your age.”

“I am deeply offended by that statement.”

Zelos wondered why they had one extra bed when they had a daughter… it was probably something complicated, so Zelos had another reason to keep his distance from the family. His life already had too much drama as it was.

“Well, in addition to what you already did on the farm, you can also repair the fences, ensure that no wild animal approaches the farm and hurts the cows, and clean up the mess they leave behind. Considering what you are asking, I suppose I can offer you fifty green coins for a day of work.”

“Then we have a deal.”

Without wasting time, Zelos started to work. He didn’t hesitate in moving all the manure of the cows to the corner of the shed, since it could be used for some things. The main use was fertilizer, and certainly a lot of fertilizer could be made out of all that shit.

When Zelos was done, it was already night, so he began to patrol the farm while swinging the club with a single hand. The club was essentially two times heavier than the other one, so Zelos was unable to train for as long as usual, but that was fine for now, and then he went to bed.

Zelos woke up when the sun was rising and soon resumed his routine… While he was fetching water, bringing the hay, the farmer and his wife were milking the cows. It was amazing that they could do that two hundred of them every morning. After that, he went to do his deliveries. Now and then, he made the deliveries too fast while those two were still milking the cows, so he had some free time for training.

“Eh, you are already working like nothing has happened.”

Zelos looked to the side and then sighed when he saw those three in front of the farm. Irlan, Heirina and Kaitrine… they had too much time in their hands, apparently, and went to bother Zelos. In any case, they looked at his arms, and they didn’t find any signs of the wounds that he had. He was also stepping around like his leg was completely fine.

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

They didn’t say anything about it, but they could tell that Zelos had a healing factor or healing trait that consumed magic. That kind of trait was mainly used for those who wanted to heal others, so they were surprised that Zelos ignored such an obvious thing to do.

“I am busy. What do you guys want? Hei said that we would have a few weeks off.”

“Your idea of days off is a bit different from ours and you should call Dad captain Hei.”

“I guess you guys must be bored out of your mind.”

Zelos wasn’t right. After the last few weeks, staying at home and doing nothing seemed pretty boring. They even decided to use the secret passage in order to come to the farm without seeing anyone… Edea was more mindful of that and decided not to take any chances.

In the end, they killed some time while watching Zelos work, but he had some time off when noon came. Thanks to that, he decided to finally drink his bucket of milk. Heirina was speechless when she saw Zelos raising the bucket like it was a glass cup to his mouth.

“You aren’t planning to drink all that by yourself, are you?”

“It seems that you don’t know me well enough yet.”

Zelos couldn’t help but grin and then he began to drink the milk. In no time, he drank half of it and he felt revitalized. It was truly good to be alive to enjoy moments like that…

“If you have something to say, just say it.”

“We are fine. Since you are busy, it doesn’t matter. It is something that can deal with in the future, no problem.”

Zelos looked at Irlan since it was impossible to expect a clean answer from those two, but he just shrugged. In the end, he decided to just ignore them and focus on his training after he was done with his meal.

While he did that, Zelos couldn’t help but think that there was something off with him… he didn’t have that many reasons to be dismissive about them. They endured a nasty attack by working together, so for all intentions and purposes, they were brother in arms. Still, something else made him feel like he should focus on himself all the time and not on the others.

In the end, they waited for a while to find Zelos free, but he never got free… there was always something that he should do, and then they eventually left. After thinking for a while, Zelos assumed that his memories were what caused his usual behavior, but he couldn’t pinpoint a specific memory.

“Oh well… time to start my new training.”

Zelos began to run around warming up his legs, and then he slowly began to increase his speed. Even when his stamina dropped and his legs began to hurt, he kept going. He imagined that if he trained his legs hard enough, he would be able to copy the bandits chasing them to some extent. If that didn’t happen, at least he would be able to move a bit better. That was one of the weak points that he found when he faced Heirina.

While he was running, Zelos wondered if he should add kicks and punches to his fighting style, but fighting unarmed was something that he didn’t hear people do. With that in mind, that would be the same as begging to get hurt unless he uses some protection on his legs and arms.

After three days, once Zelos added the runs to his routine, he had an idea and decided to check it… he already had plenty of jumping power, so could he use that to move forward faster than he did when he was running? There was only one way to find out.

At first, Zelos had a hard time doing that… the strength of his legs was nothing to laugh at, but when he tried to move forward, he always ended up jumping in a diagonal way… after many tries, he finally managed to fix his stance, he basically had to almost fall forward with his face on the ground before kicking the ground. He actually hit his face on the ground a bunch of times. Still, the results began to appear as he began to cross distances like ten meters in the blink of an eye… he left some marks on the ground as well. The only downside was that doing that several times in a row was really difficult, since gravity always tried to make him slam his face on the ground.

‘If I double the distance crossed, I should be able to surprise most enemies, and if I learn how to do this again and again, I will be able to corner most of them as well… time to work hard on this. Wait, maybe I can use my inner energy to make this easier… I have the feeling that it is possible.’

Zelos began to run with all his might while trying to stir the energy and soon he began to notice the differences… Since he wasn’t getting tired or hurt, he was able to push himself a bit more. For a moment, he also felt like his energy was taking shape outside his body, but soon he was out of it and he couldn’t confirm anything.

The training was starting to get more interesting, but Zelos still had to solve one thing in that aspect. He needed other iron balls… While he couldn’t carry that many of them, he could probably ask some blacksmiths to make heavier and smaller ones. That would do the trick, and that was how he planned to use his free hands in the middle of a battle to surprise the enemies with an almost cannon-like powerful throw attack.

While Zelos was working during the next two weeks, he saw a lot of people coming and leaving the town. Those were the people that wanted to join the clan and also failed. By his accounts, he could tell that around fifteen hundred of them had come and around one thousand had left… Hei was pretty strict, apparently. Just having high numbers wasn’t enough if the people wouldn’t follow his commands or be useful when the time came.

Eventually, people stopped leaving, and the taverns began to get filled, so the selection probably ended after around one week, and those people were celebrating. Some of them still left, but it was because they had to prepare to move to the town. Around the same time, Irlan paid a visit to Zelos.