The first blows from Mayer came fast and hurt just as much as they always did, making the bones inside of me rattle and creak like wonky floorboards.

I quickly moved to the side, dodging another set of blows and summoned my hammer, swinging it down over head. Mayer dodged with ease, but I used the missed blow’s kinetic force to create a cube shaped kinetic blast, launching Mayer back off his feet for a few meters. He was much more prepared for the blow in comparison to the first time he’d taken it head on.

I quickly unsummoned the hammer, letting the metal melt back inside of me. Mayer didn’t give me the chance to ready another blow, and he closed in as soon as he saw the hammer begin to unsummon. He flanked me with all the ferocity that Rethi usually showed in his bouts with me, landing a painful kick to my side and cracking a few ribs that immediately began to heal.

I slammed my foot into the ground, enough to push Mayer away from me slightly and put him off kilter. I moved into a flow of words, a sentence of the approach of a predator. The words took me uncomfortably close to Mayer, and I rose my knee into a powerful strike between the legs. Mayer grunted, but grabbed hold of my arms and threw my body towards the ground.

However, I expected that he would try to throw me, so I prepared a sentence, and used the force of the throw to then launch Mayer into the air, allowing me to use his grip on me against him, ultimately slamming him into the ground instead.

I used the words of retreat as Mayer got up from the ground, dusting himself off.

“Good going, Max. You’re a much better fighter than you were only a few months ago. Your insight into the Sharah shocks me more and more every time I see you use it.” I could only give a dry chuckle.

“Don’t be all conciliatory, Mayer. We both know that you are playing with all your limbs tied behind your back,” I looked the old man over, seeing nothing but a few minor abrasions, “I don’t see any real injuries on you, anyways. It’d take me hours to take you down like this.” Mayer took a step, and then he was right in front of me.

“I guess you’re right.” He said, as his hand flew towards me. I dodged the first, forming the hammer in my hands and in the way of the second punch. His fist recoiled off of the hammer, and he grimaced.

“Bet that didn’t feel any good.” I grinned, using the shaft of the unformed hammer to fend off a few attacks. Mayer grunted, but didn’t bother replying. I swung the formed hammer head at him, making him step back. I followed him, using a centrifugal motion to retain the force of the swing. Mayer held back even further, but I proceeded to use all my might to force the hammer to swing over my head, the massive silver coloured hammer streaking through the air like a comet.

Mayer dodged slightly to the left and kicked the hammer head off to the side, nullifying any kinetic force that I could have pulled from a missed swing.

I began to unsummon and move back, but Mayer was on me. His first fist landed directly on my throat, crushing my windpipe with ease, and then he started pummelling me in my face and upper chest.

I was still very vulnerable to being knocked out, so I dodged and weaved as much as I could, but the limited access to oxygen, and the desperate wait for my windpipe to regenerate, made it incredibly difficult to keep up, landing me a few solid hits to the head and both collar bones being broken.

When I felt my windpipe regenerate with a familiar sickening pop, I took a long, slow breath to stop me from coughing too much, and used my willpower in the moment to focus on coughing the blood from my lungs quickly.

I hated coughing up blood, but I had gotten good at it over the months I had trained. I was constantly breaking bones and having flesh ripped up in my face and throat, so I had to get good at managing it in battle, because it was likely going to happen more than once.

Mayer raced forwards at me, trying to capitalise on my current task, so I spat a mixture of blood and mucus into his face, making him recoil somewhat. I took a deep breath and roared as I started to execute my most dangerous sentence.

The movements were smooth, and extremely snappy, the air around my limbs almost vibrated with the excitement of my silent words. My body danced with a deadly promise. Mayer’s eyes widened and he began to quickly move in to try and stop my incitement of the shift.

He was too late. As my foot slammed against the ground, the fragile earth giving way beneath my monstrous strength, an invisible blade screamed through the air, seeking to bisect the older man in two.

Mayer dropped to a knee and reinforced his position, putting every physical defence that he could between him and the blade of raw kinetic energy. The invisible blade hit the arms that he had erected in front of his face first, tearing and biting into the muscle of his forearms. He quickly began to rise against the blade, defying the force and trying to guide the force to a less vital area of his body.

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It took him a few seconds until the force behind the blade was depleted, barely able to make it to the bone of Mayer’s forearms. He rose to his feet, opening his mouth, ready to congratulate Max on his newest addition to his arsenal…

Then he saw the hammer slam into the ground in front of him, the earth shaking ever so slightly as I angled the handle of the hammer towards the man’s centre mass and grinned like Rethi did. A vicious little expression, almost demonic in nature.

I let the immense energy from the hammer blow hit the end of the hammer, blasting it up from the ground, rocketing the shaft of the hammer forward towards Mayer’s chest like a spear blasted from a cannon, with only the meagre guidance of my hands as a guard rail of sorts.

Mayer desperately tried to twist away from the blow, but the immense speed of the shaft was overwhelming. It caught the old man on the shoulder, an issue more with my aim than Mayer’s reflexive movement.

As saw as the shaft touch the man, I realised that this was different. This wasn’t like every other time I had hit the man, where he would shrug it off with so little damage that it was almost infuriating to me.

This time the shaft began to chew through Mayer’s flesh. I heard the crack as the bones of his upper arm, collar bone and shoulder were pulverised by the sheer force of the blow. My stomach dropped as I saw the shaft of the hammer dig into Mayer’s flesh like a hungry shark, devouring his meat and feasting on his pain.

The man then yelled– no, he roared.

There was a blast of almost incomprehensible energy, in that moment I saw the natural elements surround Mayer and aid in the ways that they could, the earth rose around the man’s legs, the air at his back pushed with its mighty gale, the flame flickered into life, fed by the wind and burning like gets at his back, and the water drained moved with the earth, aiding it in forming and solidifying like stone around his legs. And what brought it all together, was the golden glow of a powerful light radiating off of the man, of a power far more than anything I’d encountered before.

Mayer’s roar lingered in my ears, the force of the elements assisting him with all their might, spurred onwards by the warm, golden light that wreathed him.

Before long, the force behind the hammer had been depleted, and Mayer’s power disappeared along with it. Mayer’s body slumped to his knees, his hand hovering over the damage to his shoulder.

I raced forwards, suddenly terrified of what I had done to him.

“Mayer!” I almost yelled. Mayer grimaced as he looked up at me.

“Yes boy, you fucked me up pretty hard.” He said, a harsh pain in his voice, but none of the venom that I had almost expected. I ran a hand through my mane of brown hair nervously, mind whirring with what words I could possibly say to rectify this.

“Oh man, I didn’t mean to…” I stammered, but the man slowly interrupted me with a grunt.

“Of course you meant to, you idiot. I was pushing you to do it.” He looked up at me and gave me a pained grin. “Look at how damn strong you are, boy. You’re so strong you could probably kill me if you did it right!”

Mayer’s voice was pained and laboured with strain from the injury.

“Shut it Mayer, I don’t want to kill you. What the fuck should I do to help right now?” I said, my words coming out a little too fast, and almost tripping over each other.

“I have them!” A voice called out from ten or so metres away. I turned quickly, seeing Rethi stand their with an awestruck expression, holding a small wooden box in his hands.

“Get over here then!” Mayer growled, and Rethi ran over with nimble feet and quickly opened the box, pulling out a sizeable opaque vial and then handing it off to Mayer quickly, before nervously awaiting more orders with bated breath.

Mayer practically threw the thing down his throat and grimaced at what was probably the taste of it. He reached out to Rethi’s shoulder and patted it gently.

“Did you get to see something good, kid?” Rethi nodded with fervour.

“It was amazing! You were both so fast, and Master Max’s shifting was so fluid, it’s like he knew what was coming! And…” But I interrupted the boy’s rambling excitement.

“What the hell are you talking about! I almost killed you!” I said, a little bit of anger leaking into my voice. I was met with a quizzical gaze from Rethi, and an amused one from Mayer.

“Of course, Max. That was the whole point.” He laughed gently and gave me an almost admonishing look, “You didn’t actually think I was so strong that I’d be able to stop you forever, did you? I was overwhelmingly powerful in comparison to you months ago, but back then you were basically just a normal human with a big ass hammer. You are five times stronger than that just in raw statistics alone, along with your usage of the Sharah and kinetic shifting. You are probably somewhere in the realm of twenty to fifty times stronger in a fight than you once were.” He laughed painfully.

“You are growing to become a real monster, and you don’t even realise it yet.”

I didn’t know how to respond. I knew that I’d grown stronger, but twenty to fifty times stronger? That was insanity to my ears. I could barely conceive of myself being anything in the face of the old soldier, his overwhelming might now vanishing abruptly to show me the reality to my unprepared mind.

“I didn’t want to do that to you.” I said, unable to stop looking at the gory mess that I’d turned the older man’s shoulder into.

“This is the first step for you, Max. You don’t know what brutality is. Not truly.” I almost opened my mouth, ready to decree that brutality was all I experienced for months in training, but Mayer cut me off.

“No, you don’t really know. You have experienced brutality knowing that it couldn’t truly kill you. This is your first true example of that. The first step in becoming a true warrior. A true Champion.” Mayer looked me dead in the eyes, and I knew that he was right.

It was all still too much like a game to me. All too easy to brush off and forget once the wounds heal. But now I’ve brutally injured Mayer, and I know that there is no way that I’ll ever truly forget that wound. The pulverised flesh and bone leaking blood.

“Why now?” I said, my voice quiet against the whirlwind of emotions in my mind.

“Because now is the best time. Now you need to go out and truly fight. This time, against the environment.” He grinned.

“You’re gonna go monster hunting.”