Each battle had ended within a few minutes, so neither Clive or the mayor were tired. On the other hand Kan and Leo were both knocked out. They had used all their energy while fighting.

“They’re both growing fine, aren’t they mayor.”

“Yeah, they are. They will be just fine without us in the future.”

Kan and Leo’s strength was excellent for their age. The mayor and Clive were happy that they were getting stronger because they will eventually have to live in the real world without their family.

After 30 minutes or so, Leo woke up. And not soon after, Kan also woke up. They both looked around and realized that they had lost. It wasn’t out of their expectation but they wanted to last longer in the battle.

“Oh, you’re finally awake. Training is over so you guys can go off and do your own things.”

Hearing Clive say that, Kan looked towards Leo. He signalled with his eyes, asking Leo if he still wanted to fight. Without hesitation Leo nodded his head. Leo could already see that whether he agreed or not, Kan would continue to fight. So he wanted to challenge himself too.

“Umm. Daddy I still want to fight.”

“Me too, grandpa. I want to continue fighting.”

The mayor and Clive looked at these two kids in shock. ‘They still have energy.’ They hadn’t expected for them to immediately want to fight again. Both of them had just gone through an intense battle where they used all their energy.

“Hahaha. I guess we’re getting old mayor, these kids have more energy than us.”

“Haha. I guess this old man can’t keep up with the energy of youths anymore. If the two of you still have energy to fight, then we’ll accompany you.”

“Wait Daddy. Can we switch opponents. I want to try fighting Grandpa Ranjer.”

“Yeah, I want to fight you Uncle Clive.”

Neither Clive or the mayor saw a problem with this and agreed to change opponents. Each pair of fighters got to their own respective part of the field and prepared to fight.

Their battle began but the end results were the same. Both Kan and Leo had lost their battle. Even though they lost it didn’t mean that they hadn’t improved. Kan and Leo were satisfied with the result of their second battle. Each of them had landed a few solid attacks on their opponent. In their first battle, it was a struggle for them to even land a single solid hit, but this time they were able to at least land two solid hits.

“Hahaha, Grandpa Ranjer i’m going to get 4 hits on you next time.”

“Sure, you’re welcome to try again when you get stronger.”

“Uncle Clive, why didn’t my last attack work on you.”

“Well Leo, if your opponent is stronger than you, you shouldn’t try to compete with them in strength. You should look for any weakness and attack that.”

Clive and the mayor began to talk about their battles toward Kan and Leo. Clive and the mayor were making them review their battles so they could see what they could improve on. They didn’t tell Kan or Leo exactly what they needed to fix because that wouldn’t help them learn how to improve themselves. It was better for them to figure out their mistakes and find a way to fix it.

They talked and talked and it was already 2. They usually trained at 9 and ended it at 12 but they had gone for an extra 2 hours. Clive and the mayor decided to wrap up this training session and they all went their separate ways. Leo decided to go take a nap, the mayor and Clive went off to do their own things, and Kan was headed for the clinic.

……

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“Oh, it’s Kan. Do you need something?”

“Good afternoon Doctor Frank, is Nicole still here.”

“I’m not sure. Jane should know where Nicole is at.”

“Ok, thanks Doctor Frank.”

Kan went and checked the room Nicole was in first. He needed to talk to Nicole about stopping her attack on the village. He entered the room but didn’t see Nicole. His next stop was to go to Jane’s room.

Kan walked towards Jane’s room and didn’t hesitate to open it at all. This place was like a second home to him and neither Jane or Doctor Frank minded him going around their rooms. They didn’t have anything to hide and trusted Kan not to mess around in their rooms.

Kan opened the door and slowly peeked through the door. If Jane was sleeping then he didn’t want to disturb her. And exactly that, Jane was sleeping in her bed. Seeing that Jane was still sleeping, Kan decided not to bother her.

‘Where is Nicole?’ Kan couldn’t find Nicole, so he also decided to peek into the other rooms. Some of them had sick patients and some of them were empty, but Nicole was in none of them. Since he couldn’t find Nicole in the clinic, he decided to go to the only other place he thought Nicole would be at, the alarm tower.

It took some time but he arrived at the alarm tower. He went to open the door but it was locked, which was unusual. Since it was an alarm tower it was usually unlocked so if there was an emergency, anyone could go in and sound the alarms. The only time it was locked was when Nicole accidentally locked it or didn’t want to be bothered with guests.

Kan knocked on the door hoping that Nicole would open the door, but she didn’t. Kan waited but no one answered. He knocked again and waited, but once again no one answered. Since knocking on the door didn’t work, Kan began calling out for Nicole.

“Nicole!! Nicole!!! Are you in there!!!”

It was silent, no one answered Kan’s calls. Hearing no one answer his calls, Kan became slightly worried. ‘What if Nicole left the village?’ Kan began to think of the worst possible situations. He needed to convince Nicole if he wanted to save the village.

Feeling desperate, Kan decided to break into the alarm tower. Nicole could just be in town, but Kan was starting to have a bad feeling within him. This feeling overcame his sense of reason, so he decided to break in. He could only hope that he was just being over anxious on Nicole not being in the village.

Kan unlocked his body and pushed the door with force. He used enough force to break it open but not to destroy the door. As soon as the door opened, Kan heard multiple clicking sounds. He jumped back and put his hands towards the ground and summoned a wall of dirt. The objects made impact with the wall and Kan could hear three objects making impact.

He walked around the wall and saw that it was three arrows. One was aimed for the head, another the chest, and the last the stomach. This was intended to kill someone. Kan was shocked, and went to pull out the arrows. He looked at the arrowhead and saw some type of liquid on it. And then he remember what Clive had told him before.

“You see this liquid coming out of the fishes mouth Kan. This is a type of poison it uses to kill its prey faster. It's not only animals that uses poison, humans also use poison to attack others. Some would smear poison on the weapons or arrowheads to make them more dangerous.”

Kan was shocked. Why would Nicole set up such a deadly trap? He needed to know what she was hiding. Once again an intense feeling of wanting to resolve secrets welled up inside of him. He went inside the tower and was even more wary this time. Kan knew Nicole wouldn’t set only one trap, she would set up multiple traps to surely kill the intruder.

Kan was ready though, he had been training with Nicole for quite a while so he knew how to deal with her traps. He proceeded carefully and was met with many traps, but he was able to overcome all of them. Many of the traps were dangerous and Kan could tell it was meant to kill.

He reached the top and didn’t see Nicole anywhere. He was still careful as he approached Nicole’s room, but no traps activated. The door to the room was also locked, but Kan knew where Nicole had hidden the key for this room. The key was hidden within the biggest alarm bell.

He went up and grabbed the key and prepared to enter the room. The door opened with no problems and he didn’t see anything wrong with the room. It was the same old messy room he was used to seeing Nicole sleep in. The only thing that caught his eyes were the tattered clothes on top of Nicole’s bed.

These were the clothes that Nicole had worn when they were attacked by the three horned Bone Bear. ‘She was here.’ Kan realized that Nicole had come back to change her clothes and left her old clothes. He went towards the tattered clothes and picked it up. There was nothing wrong with it so he put it back down.

He looked around for a bit more but didn’t see anything wrong with the room. He walked back towards the entrance, but he stepped on something. It was a tattered piece of paper. Kan picked it up and flipped it around to see what was on it. What it said confirmed Kan’s worst nightmares.

“Come meet us.”

It was only a piece of the entire letter, but it was enough for Kan to know that Nicole was no longer in the village. Besides this phrase on the letter there was also a symbol below it. It was a snake but it wasn’t a regular snake. This snake symbol was made out of chains and was formed into the letter ‘S’.

“Nicole isn’t in the village anymore.”

This shock was too much for Kan. All of his plans revolved around convincing Nicole, and he can’t do it, if she wasn’t in the village.