"C'mon Young master Rowald! Make the mute scream!"

"Hahaha! How would that even work?"

The young master, Rowald, stood in front of me in a relaxed manner. He didn't have any tension that a participant in a spar needed to have. Why would he? Even if this little farce was called a 'spar', it was nothing more than entertainment to all these people.

I knew I couldn't strike back and neither could I dodge. It will only infuriate the child even more. So I just stood there, in a defensive position, looking scared as any child would.

"Begin!"

As soon as Dorian shouted, young master Rowald ran at me with a pace quite remarkable for a child. Not that it would have mattered though.

Rowald closed in the distance and pulled his hand back to get into striking position with his wooden sword. It was aimed at my left side. I shifted inwards, slightly, to get closer to Rowald. The wooden sword hit my left arm, but the force had mitigated due to me going in closer.

I made exaggerated motion with my sword hand to indicate that I was going to attack. I moved my sword from upwards into a downwards arc, but Rowald side stepped to avoid it. As soon as my sword came down, I acted as if the motion had carried me and tumbled my legs. It gave Rowald enough time to hit me again.

Well, this is what happened every other day, and I was growing used to it at this point. Come and get beaten here, then go work in the kitchen the whole day. At least this family was decent enough to provide me with food twice a day.

I had come to know that I was not the only one that received this 'blessing'. There were other slaves beside me in the house. While they weren't treated as badly as I was, they still had it hard. It might be because I was considered a faulty product, as a mute, that I was subjected to their difficult love.

Well, who knows? But what I did know was that this would all end by tonight. And for that to happen, I had to be beaten more.

But I guess that was too much to ask from the poor young master, as he stood there, tired from swinging his wooden sword. I knew this spar had come to an end.

I slowly got up and winced as if I was in pain. I looked at the young child and bowed my head towards him. I looked at other guards in the room and bowed towards them as well.

Then I looked towards the red head, Dorian. I locked eyes with him for a moment, and tried to make an expression of contempt. I turned around without bowing to him before I heard his voice from behind.

"Wait there mute." I wasn't sure if I had successfully made a contemptuous expression, but whatever it was, it sure was successful. I slowly turned around and looked at Dorian, who was now slowly walking towards me.

His expression showed how furious he was, and with his frame towering over me, I could guess he wanted to scare a 4 year old child like me to death. I looked in his eyes as he looked down at me. I could see his expression slowly crumbling down and his rage flare up.

"Know your place, filthy mutt!" He pulled back his hand and got ready to smack me down like a fly. I was still looking at him. By the way my surroundings had gotten silent, I knew what I was experiencing. During the last years of my life as a General and a warrior, I had developed a sort of skill.

Well, this skill was still not under my control and flared up whenever it wanted. It is mostly activated when something extremely dangerous is happening to me.

And now, looking at the mana clad arm of Dorian, I knew this was going to hurt. Losing his cool and attacking a 4 year old with a slap infused with mana, what a charmer!

As his hand started coming down, everything around me became slow and dim. My eyes concentrated at an extreme level and a piercing pain in my head flared up. Disregarding the pain, I focused on the incoming attack. I knew that if that hand connected to my cheek properly, my neck would snap clean off my head.

I could see every muscle in Dorian's body twitch as his hand was coming down. His arm cleaving through the air and approaching my face. I couldn't let this hand fall on my face properly. I could slightly crane my neck backwards to dodge the attack, but that would be detrimental.

So, I slightly stepped back as I watched his hand almost reach my face. Even with the slowed time around me, it took everything from me to move my body by eliminating unneeded movements. Now that I had stepped back a bit, I knew only his fingers would touch my cheek. But even that was dangerous enough. I forced my neck to move in the same direction the slap was moving.

Just as his hand touched my face, I jumped backwards to further decrease the impact of the attack. Even though I knew all the things I had to do, I still wasn't used to my small and untrained body. It took a huge toll to just move around in speed that my body isnt used to.

I tumbled and crashed into the wall behind me. Even after decreasing the impact by a huge amount, I felt as the pain seared into my body. I swear I heard some of my bones break but I wasn't sure as my entire body felt like it was on fire. I could hear faint footsteps rushing towards me.

“Captain Dorian! You can’t kill the slave!”

“Don't worry, he's not dead.”

Haha. Looks like it worked. My tenacious old self was still alive somehow, barely though. I quipped with myself as darkness slowly encroached upon me and I passed out.