Keeper Armament didn’t allow the boy his excitement for long, though. The dark, hooded man walked over to Rethi and pulled him up from his place on the floor like he was as light as a feather and placed him on his feet.
“Let’s see how well you fare in combat against the Demigod, shall we, little Midday?” Rethi, though surprised, simply nodded and looked at me with a set of hungry eyes. I couldn’t help myself and grinned back at the boy. Rethi had been wailing on me for months, and now it seemed like I was going to be able to get a good fight out of him.
Rethi rushed out, barely able to contain himself from running towards out usual spot. I took a backward glance at the kneeling form of Mayer, and he waved me off with a grin that told me that he’d be fine. I nodded at the man, making sure to keep an eye on his emotional state. For the most part, though, he felt relieved that the blade was passed on.
Good enough for me.
I ran after him, following the ball of sunny excitement that was Rethi, followed closely by Keeper Armament, his footsteps silent even on the hard dirt road beneath our feet.
It made me reminisce on the first time that Mayer had brought me out here to learn ‘footwork’, a singular even that sparked a change in who I was. The Sharah had been formative for me and Rethi both, our every movements somehow reminiscent to the strange dance I’d once seen Mayer perform on dark grass. Now, a walk that used to take forty minutes only took a few as we raced out to our regular spot.
Then, all of a sudden, we were standing across from each other, wide grins plastered onto our faces. Rethi’s excitement was addicting, a warm and sunny emotion by nature, and my mind was bathing in it with reckless abandon.
The Keeper stood between us, shadowed form turning to look at each of us intensely.
“No weapons, just fists.” We both nodded, taking the Keeper’s words as law. If anyone was qualified to officiate a match, it was Keeper Armament. The intensity of the upcoming match burned between us, our eyes blazing with that same intensity, scouring each other for possible movements and stratagems.
“Go.” And when the Keeper called the start of the match, the world slowed to a standstill. Rethi was the first one to make a move, pulling himself tight and rushing forwards, feet blazing with the speed. But I waited, seeing his movements a mile away.
He may be a hell of a lot faster than before, but he still fought the exact same way. Let’s see if I can show him how true warriors fight.
As the boy drew close enough, my legs bent, breaking Rethi’s belief of what was possible with the human body. Because of course, I didn’t have a human body. By now, I was a little past that.
My legs bent, lowering myself to an angle that was irrecoverable with regular human strength and flexibility, but with my overpowering strength and decent agility, I was able to bent and twist myself, using momentum to swing my body around and towards the boy’s legs.
I let go of my grip on the ground, sending my body hurtling forwards, ever so slightly removed from the ground, allowing me to grab onto Rethi’s leg and use my own force to pull him to the ground, forcing his legs out from underneath himself.
But he didn’t allow himself to go down so easily. As soon as his body started shifting downwards, he put his arms out, digging his hands into the dirt and using that anchor point to pull his body forwards, pulling me along with a surprising amount of strength. Then, in one smooth motion, he straightened the leg I was holding onto and pulled his body up into a flip, launching me up into the air like a catapult.
As I was flung into the air so easily, I somersaulted, repositioning myself to look at the boy that had flung me. Our eyes met and out grins grew even wider.
Finally, a real challenge!
Mayer had never truly fought me head on. Maybe he wasn’t strong enough without using Hindle, too many years of not wielding the blade and its power having faded, forcing him to use his powerful shifting to compensate. But Rethi had just been infused with the power of the Midday Sun itself, his flesh blazing with an unmistakable golden warmth.
My feet hit the ground and, without a moments reprieve, Rethi was onto me. His fists pummelled against my body like hammer blows, rupturing skin and muscle only to heal moments later. I grabbed one of his wrists, flipping him over myself in an adapted jiu-jitsu throw, but he was too quick for that.
His feet hit the ground before the rest of his body, allowing him to pull into himself, forcing me to let go of his wrist or he could pull me down with him, but I was already up on my feet and simply turned towards the boy and began to pummel down on him, using my almost foot longer reach against him, slamming him with kick to his own legs that brutalized my legs as much his own.
Thing was, Rethi’s regeneration was far slower than mine, but observable. It’d probably take him a good few minutes to recover from a broken bone, but minor flesh wounds would be the downfall of him, depleting his limited supply of blood.
Rethi quickly learned this as well, meaning that he knew that he wouldn’t be able to win a battle of attrition and he needed to go on the offensive. He pulled into himself like an upturned beetle and then rocked forwards, allowing him to get onto his feet and dashed forwards underneath a punch I’d just thrown.
The boy went straight for the chin, his uppercut reaching upwards with the sound of wind cutting under the speed of the blow. But I was faster.
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I blocked the powerful blow and grabbed it with the other arm, clasping it in my iron grip. The boy struggled and pulled against it, but I didn’t budge at all, my strength far overpowering his own.
Then my elbow slammed into the side of that arm and, with a sickening pop that reverberated throughout his arm and into mine, his forearm dislocated. I let the boy pull away, grasping his arm tightly, his knuckles white with the force of his grip.
He growled against the pain. This was one of the worst injuries that he’d suffered while training me, and he looked at me and only saw a predator’s grin. He had spent so long cutting me to pieces, sending swords through my stomach, bones, even through my eye and into my brain. Now it was time for the boy to get a taste of his own medicine.
I was no longer the same man as I had been, tentative and squeamish around violence. In six months of training, it had become a second nature to me, pain as much a part of my day as any other sensation. It no longer debilitated me like it once had, paralysing me with the searing sensation.
Rethi popped his own arm back in, me giving him time to do so. After only another second or two the pain seemed to have faded from the boy’s expression and the grin regrew.
“Let’s kick it up a notch then, shall we?” I goaded, cracking my neck loudly. The boy’s grin turned vicious once more.
He raced towards me once more, running headlong into me. I wasn’t an idiot, however, and when he darted off to my side trying to get me at my flank, I turned my back to him as a kick flashed out and slammed him right in the chest, ribs breaking underneath my powerful kick, sending him hurtling away from me.
“Come on now, Rethi.” I said as I walked towards the fallen boy, “How many times have you pulled that exact move in training. Remember, I can hit you back now.” I said, a mixture of mockery and instruction.
It was true, the boy was a natural born fighter, exceptional instincts and an eye for combat. Back on Earth he would have been an excellent sports player, or the same with e-sports, but with sport, there is no death at the end of the day. For months he had been fighting against someone who’s only goal was to dodge, with the occasional bout where I pulled all my punches.
But now the boy was tougher than a bull, and if I give him a solid kick, his insides won’t be obliterated along with his bones. The boy struggled to his feet, the wind having left his lungs something fierce.
“I-I know. Didn’t have to hit me so hard.” He protested, but his heart wasn’t in it, a grin still on his face even as the bones underneath the muscle and skin slowly realigned themselves. Though it was far slower than I had thought it would be for the moment. Might need some training first, like my own body had needed time to actualise its limits.
“Let’s wait for a while until your bones are fully healed. Tell me when.” Rethi nodded amiably, and Keeper Armament didn’t seem to care, silently observing from the sidelines. We continued to size each other up as Rethi’s bones healed squirmed and reset under his skin. The boy grunted in pain on occasion, face fighting against showing too much pain, trying to keep his mind active and assessing.
In the end it took almost fifteen minutes for his bones to fully reset, which wasn’t good. It sounds great, and it would easily stop the boy from dying to anything stupid and save him from Gods know how many things on his journey with me, but let’s just say that I’m thankful that Alena will be coming along with us.
Theoretically, Alena will be able to totally fix up bones, muscle and skin in only a few seconds, though for the moment it takes a few minutes of pain. Intense pain, but worth it for a whole new arm in only a few minutes.
Alena had told me that there are other shifting techniques that able to heal, almost every element has their own botched version of it, nature shifting being the most potent outside of life shifting, though it amounts to sparkling someone with fairy dust and hoping it heals them. Most tend to rely on healing potions, which are prohibitively expensive, taste disgusting, and only really work on physical damage, accelerating the body’s natural healing. It’s been observed that healing potions accelerate some cancer’s growth.
Just another reason that life shifting was criminally misunderstood. All you needed was some incredibly rare and advanced understanding of human anatomy, simple!
“I’m all good now.” The boy said excitedly. I sneered at him, playing the villain.
“Well, with recovery times that long, you better hope your girlfriend gets good at healing you.” I snarked, making him growl angrily, but with a grin regardless.
“Angry, are we?” I goaded, “Come on then, little Sun.” Rethi’s grin widened at my taunting and then, with nothing but his grin as forewarning, the boy shone a brilliant gold, light radiating and streaming off of him like golden water.
Power radiated from him as he rushed forwards at a speed even I found difficult to keep up with. This time he came straight at me, a look into his mind telling me that he wasn’t able to control the power very well, only the beginning of his conception of it.
I shot my knee forward, hoping to catch him in his chest, he jumped, lifting his own knee to intercept, the blow causing a resounding crack as my kneecap exploded under the force and our knees slammed together, though Rethi seemed fine, the power reinforcing his body to be far more durable.
He forced me to lower my regenerating knee to bolster my stance against a flurry of blows to my face, chest and arms. His elbows, knuckles and pals assaulting me at a ferocious speed. Though, ultimately, they lacked what it’d take to truly take me out.
In a split second of calm between blows, I let my elbow shoot out on instinct, catching the younger boy right in the chin, smashing into him with his mouth open and slamming his jaw closed and knocking him out in an instant.
The boy was knocked out, crumpling to the floor, a piece of his tongue falling out of his gaping mouth. I quickly turned the boy on his side, making sure that he wouldn’t choke in his own blood as his tongue healed itself.
“Good thinking.” Keeper Armament commented, “Too many rookie duellists and pugilists are ignorant to how to recover an opponent.” I chuckled at that. It only made sense, especially if you were somewhere backwater like the string of towns along these roads. I lifted the boy’s legs above his centre mass to help him recover a bit faster, relaxing for a little while.
From this short fight alone, it was clear that Rethi was far more formidable. Mayer had commented many times over that he was an exceptionally good duellist, most likely from fighting against me for hundreds of hours. We had easily spent more than a thousand hours combined, fighting and training together in total. Not a massive number, by any means. But to progress so quickly he had pulled out every stop, pushing his body and minds to its limits to become the best warrior he could and fulfill the dream that he stored somewhere deep in his heart.
“Midday Orsen, huh?” I question the Keeper that stood only a few metres from me, carefully keeping watch of the boy as the bleeding from his tongue slowly stemmed itself and began to heal itself back.
“It is a title afforded to those that have been granted the full power of a Sun-blade, the ranks of the Divine Weapons created by the Sun Gods. Hindle being the most powerful and first of its brethren.” I nodded thoughtfully.
“He’s going to be a big deal, isn’t he?” I asked, almost rhetorically, but the Keeper answered regardless.
“It would be more surprising if he did not.”