### Cod ###

After walking out of the hospital together with grandpa, we entered grandpa’s traveling sphere and selected our home’s location in the terminal. The sphere began to move up and soon was hovering over the ground. Then it just started to fly forward. How was it done? It was kind of gravitational thingy. Somehow physicists managed to make gravity tangle and wrap in a weird way, which allowed such a thing to happen, making Newton’s head hurt in the process.

It was not only very convenient and fast, or so grandpa said, because to me it was just normal I mean. He told me that back in his days, you would drive in a ‘car’, which was powered by ‘fuel’ - usually petrol or diesel. What a crude way to power things, using carbohydrates, which aren’t ( in these times ) energetically dense nor eco-friendly. Anyway. Not only were they very expensive, but also slow. I mean, c’mon, travelling with max speed of around 200 km/h on a normal road and only less than 100 km/h in town. Nightmare. Compare that to the speed of 1 mach, which was around 1200 km/h. Crazy, eh?

If that wasn’t enough, they also had to build special ‘roads’ for these cars.

Traveling spheres on the other way didn’t need ‘roads’ as they were hovering over the ground, they were very cheap to run as the electricity was free. Well, not that you had to charge them, they were provided together with a small battery, that could last for 100 million kilometers of driving. No one has ever managed to drive so much in one vehicle.

And pedestrians were also very happy, so much space! Seriously. Anyone who has ever been in Tokyo, Beijing, New York or London in rush hours know what I mean. Anyway.

Grandpa was rather quiet man, so we didn’t talk much during the travel, and soon, we arrived.

Our house wasn’t anything glamorous or big, just casual residence with a small backyard and a gym. Cod thought that everyone should have gym in the house. Just to move some shit around, let the steam go, to relax.

They entered their house and took of their shoes. That was rare in these days, taking off one’s shoes I mean, as every shoe was covered in a special layer of nano-particles that made it unable to get dirty and hydrophobic, so they were very clean. However, when Cod was young, Jan showed him wonders of direct contact, direct touch and feeling. Feeling of watery grass in the morning or the feeling of hot sand under your feet on the beach. Wonderful feelings. Anyway.

After arriving, Cod wanted to go to his room to read some interested book from his grandpa’s library. Unlike modern books, it was made from paper! He loved the feeling and smell of books, e books couldn’t give him these. One disadvantage of paper books was the fact that they take a lot of space and well… No one makes them nowadays, but fortunately his grandpa has huge collection of these from his younger days, that will last Cod for quite some time.

His plans were quickly canceled, as Jan said, “Come here, Coddy, we gonna train.”. “Yes, grandpa. Right away.” Ugh. Thought Cod. And so began the training. His grandpa knew what he was doing, as a former gold Olympian in oly-lifting, he trained for around 95 years, starting when he was 13! Imagine that!

First, weightlifting and strongman routine in their garage gym. Some dead lifts, squats, flipping tires and shit. Under careful eye of his grandpa, Cod was doing his training, using low range repetitions for optimal strength grow and a lot of series for some hypertrophy, so he wouldn’t be too skinny. At least that was the case for weightlifting exercises, every strongman one, such as flipping the tire or farmer’s walk had different rules. At the end he just did 5 minute of plank to strengthen his core. That was all for the gym routine.

Even though all of that was freaking tiring and his muscles hurt like hell, it was nothing, when compared to his experiences from the Dream that he had earlier, so even tho he suffered, most of the time he had a stupid grin on his face, as today he managed to break his records in almost all the exercises. His grandpa noticed that and said, “Hoho, having lots of energy today! Good! I’ll take that into consideration during our sparring. Hehe.” Gulp. Cod almost shit himself. I’m going to die, he thought.

After that was the time for combat techniques or just something like that, depending on the day. It was held in the basement, where a big mat was laid on the floor, as not to damage yourself when falling.

Last part of the training was a sparring. Cod was fighting with his grandpa using techniques learned earlier. This day was day of sword training, so they both took wooden swords from the rack standing under the wall and began.

When Cod stood in front of his grandpa, and became serious, suddenly that feeling from the Dream came to him. The thing that tried to suffocate him back then, but he resisted, pushing back ominous aura. Now he kind of emitted something similar. Very mild compared to what he felt in the Dream, but it was something. His eyes also changed, and so did his mood. He became serious and calm suddenly. It was very sudden and Cod didn’t know what happened, but his grandpa noticed it immediately.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“Ho… What is this? I feel like I’m back on the battlefield… Did Cod manage to make me feel that way? This will be interesting. Let’s start.”

And so the spar started. However it was different from normal. It was just a spar, but it kind of felt lethal. Cod was beginning to enter the state, he was in the dream. Either me or him. He knew it was his grandpa and all, but still. Well, even if he got serious, he probably would not be able to hurt this sly old man, which had over 90 years of experience with fighting under his belt. That was something.

And so the fight went on. Cod was slowly becoming more and more ruthless in his attacks. Joy left his eyes, which became cold. So did his face. He looked kind of scary. This continued for 30 minutes, he sank deeper and deeper into that mood, until Jan said, “Enough, time to end this!”. He somehow parred Cod’s attack and quickly hit him in the head, instantly knocking him out.

“What the hell was that, this boy actually managed to give me a little bit of pressure here! He suddenly got better! No. Wait. It wasn’t his skill that got better. It was that aura that he emitted, that mood that he got into. He resembled a soldier on a battlefield. One who has killed people. But how did he do that? Well, doesn’t matter really.” Thought Jan in his head.

He was amazed by his grandson’s performance and very proud of him. Why, one might ask? It was pretty obvious - thanks to the treaty of peace that all the behemoths signed, no wars were allowed and all kind of conflicts were managed in a peaceful manner. How? Through a sport. Simple one - dueling. It was kind of comeback to the past, when the strength mattered most.

All 4 countries had theirs kravers, as they were called, which fought for them. It was mostly 1v1 duels, but sometimes also team battles and stuff, but these were rare. Anyway.

These duels were very simple, two opponents would get into an arena and fight. One who was unable to continue, surrendered of left the arena loses. No biting or pinching. Fair play.

Simple as that. There were no other rules beside that.

Most of Kravers fought with swords, as it was said to be the best weapon forged during years of ancient warfare. It was a little bit lethal, these competitions I mean, even though the rules, which forbid purposeful killing, and special suits made to protect the combatants, often different shit and ‘accidents’ happened and sometimes there were casualties.

Conflicts between countries were resolved with fights in the ‘open’ category. This meant no weight limit, no age limit, male or female. Didn’t matter.

So if some country wanted to, let’s say, get a piece of land, they could challenge the owner of these lands, but they had to wage something of equal value, thanks to that one couldn’t just blindly challenge anyone counting on luck to win. That’s why conflicts were rare, but soon all kinds of organizations picked this kind of resolving the grudges up and so swordsmanship and combat spread, becoming important thing for every person now.

All kinds of school sprout, tournaments began taking place and so on so forth. Now even on PE students would learn that. Some school even focused entirely on training kravers, not caring about anything else, just strength! However, they mainly were teaching there ‘mild’ combat. Not the real one made to defend oneself, to kill and eliminate the opponent as fast as it was possible, that kind of combat that Jan specialized in and was thought back during his days in the military and later. Nowadays fighting styles were much more suited to this sport, which was called Maga, by the way, not to real life fights. It was less lethal and less efficient. Anyway.

That’s why Jan was so happy for his grandson and his breakthrough - strength could let anyone to become someone who matters.

He carried his unconscious grandson to his sleeping capsule and then left Cod’s room.

These so called ‘sleeping capsules’ were kind of handy things, which could heal and relax the body during the sleep. Even though they weren’t as good as ones at the hospital, which could heal almost anything, even regrow limbs and organs, they were pretty useful as they could quickly heal almost any bruise, cut or wound that wasn’t critical. Complicated diseases and stuff were out of its reach, but still, they were enough.

### In Cod’s consciousness ###

“This… This is… Again?” Thought Cod.

….