As the sun blazes down from right above them, Lex and Elaine relax on the grass plain by the river, having it sprinkle a cooling haze of water droplets onto them.

“I don’t know, don’t you think we could have handled that differently?”, Lex asks her friend.

“Why would we? It’s not like we were in the wrong.”, she replies.

“But it’s not like what he said is completely wrong either. We’re just like he says everyone is, demanding something of him because of how he was born. On one hand, sure, it wouldn’t be too much trouble for someone like him to fight of a few crooks. We would probably not even consider them a danger.”, Lex ponders. “But on the other hand, it’s probably like this everywhere he goes, just one small problem to fix. Once it’s taken care of, the next one appears. I know that what he said yesterday was awful, and I can’t deny my hatred towards thinking like that. But I also can’t deny that I believe living like this, never being able to satisfy even just a decent part of stranger’s expectations whilst giving everything you have, it must have taken it’s toll on him.”

“You might be right with that. Still, this doesn’t excuse him saying that he’s disgusted by people in need.”, her friend comments.

“Well, you might be right. But I’ve decided I’m going to apologize nonetheless.”, she tells her as she gets up. “Not because he’s right, but because we didn’t even get a word he said. Besides, keeping things like this won’t benefit us in any way.”, she declares, while heading for Nathan.

Upon arrival, she takes a peek through the wooden hut’s small window, and finds the chosen one to be.. training? Standing on only his hands, shirtless, he pushes himself up and down. ‘What’s that idiot doing?!’, she asks herself, and rushes into the hut to stop him. “Hey, you idiot, stop that!”, she yells at him.

Nathan lifts his right hand and places it on the other side of his head to turn his body. “What are.. you.. talking about?”, he questions her, now looking at her, as he keeps pushing himself up and down.

“You shouldn’t push your body like this in your state!”, she tells him.

“I’m the.. chosen one.. remember? My body.. is different. I.. should.. know best.. when.. I’m ready.”, he replies as he keeps training.

“Will you just stop? It’s annoying talking to you like this.”, Lex demands.

Sigh. Nathan drops himself down once more, then launches himself up into the air with a powerful push, and lands on his feet. He sits down on his bed when his leaf-bandages fall off, revealing two scars on his stomach, almost fully regenerated on the outside. “What do you want to tell me?”, he asks her.

She analyzes his scars, then sits down next to him, leaning backwards and supporting herself with her hands. “So you’re body really is different, huh?”, she comments. “It seems even though you said that it doesn’t matter, you have taken our words to heart. For you to start training all of a sudden, that is-”

“Once again, a foolish thought. One does not become a master of his body and Chi without training, not even the chosen one. This has nothing to do with your words, I do not intend on helping that village out.”, he explains.

Lex is baffled by his response. “Then.. Why does the royal family say that you haven’t trained even once in your life?”, she asks him.

“If you do not have anything to say, please leave me alone. All of this really does not matter, since I will be leaving once I have fully recovered anyway. Looking at how fast the outside has recovered… I would say that will be in about two weeks.”, he replies.

Lex gets up from the bed, opens the door, but turns around again. “You know, I came here to apologize because I thought it was wrong that we didn’t even get one word you said yesterday”, she tells him. “I thought maybe, just maybe, having all those expectations from strangers has taken it’s toll on you, and you’re just exhausted.”, she continues calmly, but then starts yelling, “But it seems I was wrong! Does nothing matter do you?! Do you not even understand desire?! Is there nothing in your life that you give value to?!”. She waits for an answer, but as usual, she only gets a blank stare. Lex storms out and clashes the door into it’s frame.

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Meanwhile, Nathan just sits there, looking at the door. “Desire, huh?”, he repeats her words to himself, but soon stops thinking about it and starts training again.

As the days go on, whenever Lex brings food over or observes him, Nathan is always occupied with the same few things. When he doesn’t eat, sleep or go to the toilet, he sits on a boulder most of the day. Sometimes meditating. But more often than that, he carries a boulder over to the one he sits down on, smashes it into pieces with a loud thunder, and then puts on the cloth mask and metal glasses with a small slit in the middle he bought at the village. He sits down, takes a piece of the pile of rocks he created, and holds it between his hands. With a quiet crackling sound, the rock starts emmiting some kind of steam, and sometimes a droplet of molten rock falls to the bottom, but then, the rock blasts, and a muffled thunder is emitted. With pieces flying in all directions, it’s clear that this is why he’s bought the protective gear. ‘If he planned on doing that before going to the village, then.. he really doesn’t train because of us’, Lex painfully realizes, and as a result, the last bit of hope she had fades away. Other then those two things, he also trains his body, and when he does neither of those, he just stares off into the distance.

One day, a week after their last conversation, she decides to confront him again. There’s got to be some reason he trains this hard this consistently, something that drives him to go to those lengths. She just has to find out what it is. Nathan notices her swiftly approaching and stops blowing up rocks.

“So you’re still training, I see.”, she tries to open up a conversation. Nathan just stares at her, not saying a word. “It seems like even not talking to anyone for a week doesn’t leave you talkative.”, she notices. “Fine, whatever. But I need to just need to know, even if it has nothing to do with me, us or the village: Why do you keep training so hard?”, she asks him. “It’s like you’re giving it your all the entire time. Whenever I see you, I find you to be training. Why is that? Do you seek revenge for whoever did this to you?”

Nathan keeps silent for a couple seconds, thinking. “I am not interesteed in revenge. Actually, I do not really understand your question. You ask what motivates me to do this, but what else would I do?”

Lex is dumbfounded. “What else… would you do?”, she repeats.

Nathan confirms, “Exactly, what am I supposed to be doing if not training? It is like you expect me to be doing something else.”

She can’t think of any words for this. ‘What else… are you supposed to do? What kind of question is that?’, she thinks to herself, and then remembers what Marc had said when they decided to go to the village. ‘“It’s like that guy is an empty shell… It’s like his body is human, but his mind isn’t”… It really is just like he said. Is this guy, is Nathan, really not human? Like, actually not human? Is the chosen one really just someone who looks like one?’, she wonders. “Nevermind.”, she tells him, and leaves. Nathan picks up one of his rocks again, and continues blasting them, with an always slightly increasing amount of molter rock dripping to the ground. Whirr.. Crash! Whirr.. Crash! Whirr.. Crash!…

The next day, Marc and Lex straddle along in the village.

“That’s it. That was his answer. The thought almost scares me, but what you described last week, the entire thing with him being an empty shell of a human body, I beginning to feel like you might have been right.”, she tells him. “I mean that quite literally, I’m actually starting to believe that the chosen one might not be a human being.”

“That isn’t what I intended to say back then, but after what you’ve experienced with him… He is a being of legends after all, so it might actually be true… But.. Uhhh..”, Marc ponders. “You know what, it’s like he says, it’s none of our concern. Stop thinking about him, your getting way to involved in his affairs. He’ll be gone in a week anyway, and if everything goes well, the king will help this village as thanks for bringing him back his beloved chosen one.”, he advises his friend, and smiles at her.

“Actually, you’re right. This whole situation with him has really been straining my nerves, when it’s so simple. We just have to get the help as a reward for him, instead of from him.”, she agrees. “Thank you, Marc.”, she tells him, and hugs him tightly. Marc blushes just a little holding her in his arms.

‘I’m glad when this is over’, he thinks to himself.

Clash. Clash. Something sounds weird in the distance. Is someone training? But aren’t there designated times for that? “AHH! Please, don’t - don’t d-!”, a scream appears from the same direction.

“What the hell is going on over there?!”, Marc asks, letting go of Lex and hoping for anyone to know an answer. Panic spreads like a wildfire. The clashes become more, and so do the screams. Someone is running towards them from the street. Is that… “Kaze?!”, Marc recognizes him. “What the hell is going on?!”, he yells at him.

“It’s soldiers! Foreign soldiers are attacking us!”, Kaze screams back, running full throddle.

“What did he just say?!”, Lex asks Marc to confirm.

“Foreign soldiers are attacking us?! But why? There hasn’t been a war for almost two centuries!”, Marc shouts in confusion.

“It’s true! They don’t look like knights, but they’re carrying red flags with a black raven in the middle!”, Elaine shouts at them, approaching from another path. “The Proxia Kingdom is attacking us!”