Perceived Fate

“Kill...

Me...

Now...”

Malum barely said as the Troop Leader finally blew a whistle marking the end of the endurance test. For the first time since the tests had started, Malum actually managed to come first.

The strength test he came 4th and for the speed test he came 3rd which together put him at the highest rank among the new recruits.

He was happy with his score; he just wished his lungs would stop burning.

Sadly, he couldn’t lay down instead he had to maintain good posture for the ranking ceremony. It was exactly as it sounded, with the Troop Leader giving out a badge with the Recruit rank etched on the back. It was used as an identity token and the Troop Leader had explained how it was used when trading in Army Credits.

Thankfully the night had come to save Malum from any more training, so they allowed to wonder the base.

He was with his new buddy; Gerald had not done bad himself landing 2nd in the strength test decent in the endurance but slightly lacking in the speed. It placed him on the higher end of 12th of the Troop.

“You monster, how could you run for so long?” asked Gerald as he inspected the legs of the monster in front of him.

“You ran for 4 and a half hours straight, and you can still, move.”

Gerald was limping, as was most of the troop. Some had even landed proper injuries straining their bodies, and yet Malum was walking as if he was going on a normal stroll.

“Okay, it was bad. But it wasn’t THAT bad.”

Gerald just looked at him like the monster he was.

“Sure... You did get first place though, that should be a lot of credits right? I wonder what other things you can trade them in for.”

It was exactly that question that led Malum and Gerald towards the Exchange centre. It was a decently sized building that looked similar to the Town Hall of Malums old village.

There was man at a desk, with several boards around the reception area. A few seats were dotted around, in case it was busy, but those didn’t interest the duo as they instead eyed up those boards.

“Woah look, you can even get servants. The amount I would trade for a maid, actually even just a message would do.”

Gerald dreamed of his sore body getting healed by the heavenly hands of a masseuse. He had gotten one a few times before from his villages doctor and every time it healed his aching muscles.

“Hello? Gerald?” Malum then clapped two times in front of the man before he snapped back to it.

“Yeah, what?”

“Look, it’s there.” Malum pointed at one board in particular, this one didn’t hold many options, but each was more expensive then the last, but it was only the one the two actually cared about.

Relieved from Duty – Cost – 10000 Credits

“Ten thousand eh? We need to check how much we have; you were also a hunter right?”

Malum nodded to his friend.

“You should have way more than me then, should give us a good scale as to how much work it would take.”

They both walked to the worker at the desk, and they handed in their badges to see how much points they had.

It didn’t take long, after all the workers had been asked by this group the entire evening of how much credits they each had,

“Gerald Boxer you have 25 credits and Malum you have, oh, 250 credits. You must have done well in those first few days. To explain both of those, you got 10 points for coming in the bottom 10 of your Troop, 25 for anything up to top 10 and then it ascended all the way up to 100 for first place. The other 150 is from the hunting help Malum completed on the way here.”

Having seen what they could trade in for that amount both were rather underwhelmed by there respective scores. For reference Malum could trade in his amount for roughly 2 and half silvers or two and half weeks’ worth of food. It was alright but both were expecting more.

The goal of escape was still far out of reach.

As they both walked out of the building in silence, it was Malum who spoke up.

“Could have gone worse. I mean at least we made some progress.”

A small smile crept onto Gerald face, “Yeah, guess your right. Of course you’ve made ten times mine but for a monster that makes sense.”

Malum actually smiled from that, “Well this monster looks on the bright side of life and so I’ll take that monster comment as a compliment. Now, being sad doesn’t look good on either of us so let’s head back and at least dream we have a good number of points.”

“Sure.”

Gerald and Malum walked back to their dormitory continuing to speak of their fantasies. Gerald wanted to become the greatest fighter the Kingdom had ever seen, with audiences chanting his name whenever he fought in a ring.

Malum spoke of unlimited strength, becoming strong enough to fight those that had hurt him. Crushing them under his grasp untill there was nothing left but dust.

Both were rather brutish men, but they bonded over their love of strength. They fell asleep that night far to tired to even approach a dream. Strength was something both did not have yet, but tomorrow they would take their first step into becoming truly powerful.

“Martial Arts, now recruits what do you know about it?”

The instructors voice could be heard clearly inside the lecture house of the encampment. He was on a stage, before several rows of chairs which the recruits were sat on.

A few put their hands up, their answers were listened to, but they didn’t hold an answer satisfactory to the Troop Leader. Malum wasn’t going to say his answer, as he knew he such information was kept quiet for several reasons.

“Body Arts, that’s a more basic explanation. It refers to moving the body in certain way to create desired outcomes. Take a simple stab.”

On the stage the instructor took out a knife and simply stabbed it forward.

“All I do is create movement in my arm and thrust it forward. Martial arts are just more complex versions of exactly that. Creating the greatest attacks with the least amount of effort, that is the greatest rule of our Kingdoms martial arts.

Each of you have a book under your small desk, take it out and begin reading it. You will not understand half of what is written but practice will enlighten you of their profound meaning.”

Malum did exactly that, and as he was reading he thought about his Uncles ideas on martial arts. Actually, he called them just Arts, but Malum thought little of that detail.

“They are ways of making humans better unleash their latent potential. After a few levels you can create energy but at the beginning you are just better at unleashing what you already have.”

He did continue for around half an hour, but Malum had zoned out at the time due to being terribly tired. He was awake now and went back into the Martial art in front of him.

It spoke of several movements and stances with the sword and shield, each separately were fairly easy to understand but it spoke about combining each move with transitions that could allow fast changes from attack to defence, or from attack to another attack.

That was a major simplification, but that was about as much as Malum could read into these transitions. They were hard to imagine, Malums mind simply refusing to think up the image of a continually attacking form.

It seemed he would have to ingrain those movements before he could begin to match them together, like those jigsaws Malum had seen before.

Done with his reading, Malum looked up to see how everyone else was doing. Most held confused faces with the occasional realisation of what a single line might look like.

Another thing Malum noticed was that some books were different sizes to one another. Looking further Malum spotted the pattern that the people who sat in the same groups, as in same weapon groups, also had the same type of book.

It seemed each martial art was specialised to focus on a single weapon type. Malum wandered if they were any different, they had to be made by different people after all. Perhaps a cultivator with a long-lasting lifespan had dedicated some time to pass their wisdom to the younger folk.

It was an interesting thought, but not much could be done to verify his thoughts.

Breaking out of his focus, was the booming voice of the Troop Leader who busted through the doors without an ounce of sympathy.

“You done yet Troop? Well, either way we are moving on. Now from paper to practice we shall separate into your weapons groups where some instructors will teach 5 of you at a time.

That means find 4 of your closest pals and buddy up for some group suffering, I meant learning, you get the point, now MOVE!”

He didn’t need to shout twice; everyone jumped from their seats and began to head for the door. Malum was beginning to dislike the new troop leader as he seemed to enjoy the suffering of him and his troop.

His opinion, sadly, meant absolutely nothing so he sucked up hatred to let it stir and moved towards the open mud squares where the troop leader was leading them.

Once there, groups were quickly made with factions becoming clearer for Malum to see. The inner circles were being formed here although Malum had yet to see any real difference in how they would affect his soldier experience. Any more analysis Malum wanted to do was cut when the loud voice of the Troop Commander returned again to Malums eardrums.

His own group had shaped up to be himself, Gerald, Alicia, and Jake they all had the same weapon so was fairly intuitive however the final person was some loner called Jerome. They needed another person, and Jerome needed a team.

Malum had seen him before as he had come from his own village. If he could remember from class he was some quiet kid who sat at the back. Didn’t speak much, and Malum gathered from rumours that his parents had left him in the village to fend for himself. A sad story, but Malum wanted to survive, not live like a saint so he would need to pull his own weight.

“Right that seems about done. You have another 10 seconds to pick a squad leader...”

A scramble ensued as groups without clear leaders had to decided extremely quickly. Malums group looked at each other and mainly thanks to Malum’s achievement as first overall soldier he got voted to be squad leader.

Malum could only nod at his group as he vowed to do his best.