Chapter 30. As time goes by. Part 1.

*Yawn*

It took me about five minutes to catch up with Elise, but more than halfan hour passes before I finally step back into our yard.

"Yeah... It's going to be a long wait." I whisper silently starting to miss her already.

*Yawn*

"Damn. I think I will go and take a nap." I say feeling quite sleepy, most likely because I hardly had any last night.

As I’m walking towards the house, my father strides out of the barn and says whilst noticing me: “Oh! You are finally back.”

‘For some reason he looks impatient.’ I think to myself.

“Yeah…” Is the only thing I let out.

“Huh? It’s so early in the morning and you already look so tired.” He says with a small shake of the head, as if not liking what he sees.

“I didn’t sleep well last night, so I’m planning to take it easy today and rest.” I explain to him.

“Rest? Asger, you are not a kid anymore, so it’s about time to grow up.” He says with a grin.

‘Shit… I have a bad feeling about this.’ I think to myself sensing that something is up.

Suddenly the grin from his face disappears and now in a serious voice he continues: “Your training starts today! So in the upcoming years I will be teaching you many different things. For example how to track, kill, skin and preserve the meat of your prey.”

“…” Hearing this I just stand frozen with expression painting my face which says: ‘I’m sorry what?’.

Since I’m not saying anything, my father decides to ignore me completely and just keeps on talking: “Anyway first thing first, you need to get some real weapons.” He makes a few small nods to himself before continuing: “Go eat your breakfast but don’t take too long because we need to go meet my good pall Ulv in town.”

‘Ulv… Ulv… If I’m not wrong, he should be the town’s blacksmith…’ I think for a few moments try to remember who he is.

“Haaa… Fine…”I say in a low voice as I start walking towards the house.

****

I tenderly touch my cheek.

“Uhggg…” A moan escapes through my gritted teeth as a sharp pain pierces through me.

It’s already been around a month since the day of the summer festival and since my father started training me.

Well at least he calls it training, while I think the name: ‘Hit the punching bag’ is more fitting.

“I was so naive.” I cannot help but state the obvious noticing the double edged axe leaning against the chair on which I’m sitting.

“It’s quite the bad ass weapon… The only double edged axe Ulv had to sell.” I mumble to myself looking at it hardly with any emotions in my eyes.

Suddenly some flashbacks surface in my mind:

how I chose my new weapon with excitement and joy;

how I imagined being a great warrior on our way home;

how I heard my father explaining the first lesson;

how I immediately tossed the axe away;

and how I ran with all of my strength.

“And I would have succeeded in my escape, if not for my mother who suddenly appeared and caught me.” I whisper under my nose with a slight hint of anger while still remembering that day.

“That time she literally dragged me back while holding my head with one of her thick arms tightly wrapped around my neck as I thrashed and screamed like a little girl.”

Well this behavior is normal when you see your father having a huge grin on his face while saying: “Well brat, lesson number one: enduring the pain. Ha, ha, ha…”

Of course once he stopped laughing,he tried to explain why.

Apparently the reason being something about a fighter, who instead of giving in to the pain manages to overcome it, and counterattacks. Or something similar like that since I didn’t listen well because at that moment I was already tossing the dead weight away and preparing to initiate my escape plan.

Anyway from that day on I was forced into sparring with my father.

Well he gives me some pointers on how to avoid or attack and that is great. But the worst part is he doesn’t hold back at all. The moment I show an opening I regret it dearly.

‘And the fact that I’m knocked out cold at least once every day is just proof on how much he loves me.’ I’m trying to stay positive.

This thought almost makes me laugh, but through sheer willpower I hold it in. Since I got more than a few heavy hits to my sides yesterday, now even breathing is not an easy feat.

In these hard days I learned how important vigor and vitality is. Since thanks to them smaller bruises heal almost overnight and even the bigger ones only stay for a few days. So even if by the evening I’m beaten to a pulp, in the morning I’m already in a good enough shape to get some more…

Either way like this we train for six days and on the seventh I’m given a free day to rest.

So here I am, back in the cave, sitting in this uncomfortable wooden chair, all beaten up from yesterdays training, while studying the spell I found last week.

“Asger!” Suddenly I shout my name with anger in my voice.

“For crying out loud can’t you stay focused? *slap* ” I say loudly as I slap myself for motivation.

Immediately a wave of pain rolls over my cheek and charges at my brain.

“Ahhh! Damn it, I forgot how much it hurts…” I curse myself for being careless.

“Anyway I don’t have time to waste on thinking about my stupid dad.” I say this looking at the lights illuminating this place.

After all my supply of rat cores is not limitless and I have already burned through most of my reserves.

So I lower my eyes back onto the table where there lies a big, old book and concentrate my attention once more on the text I was reading before.

This book has no page numbering, but if I had to guess from the thickness I would say that there is about 1000 of them and the page I’m currently reading is somewhere in the middle.

As I was skipping through the pages full of stupid and useless skills I found one which caught my attention.

It’s name is ‘Boost’.

Basically it allows the user to increase his or her bodily functions for a short amount of time. And since it’s pretty much useless for magicians who avoid physical labor. This skill is considered to be a 3rd tier spell.

All skills are grouped in tiers by their usefulness and the 3rd tier is considered to be the lowest. In other words most magicians would describe those skills like: “Nah… I got no time to learn that shit.”

“First cover your body in the element, then collect a small amount of your inner energy in the muscles… Hmm…” Without noticing I read the line out loud.

“Wait… What’s this: ‘For skill to work the energy outside and inside the body must be synchronized.’ Seriously WTF does that mean?” I say with a hint of despair in my voice.

It takes maybe a moment before everything just piles up inside me and my frustration level hits the maximum.

“AHHHHHH!!!! Fuck this shit!” I shout loudly and toss the book away.

I take a few deeper breaths and lean back in my chair.

“After waiting for a whole week and having a dream of becoming so fast that nobody could catch me…” I say in a calmer voice.

“Haaa…” I make a sight and direct by attention back on the book, which now is lying on the ground about 1,5 meters from me.

Without saying anything more I stand up and slowly walk towards it.

“Why is it never easy? I’m tired as hell and every part of my body is screaming even from the slightest movement. What’s more this cave is pretty far so to get here requires a lot of strength and willpower…” I complain to myself as I’m picking up the book.

“Haaa…” I give one more sight and walk back to the table.

“Seriously I got a fucking title stating that I’m a lucky bastard, but why is it that I don’t feel like one at all?” I complain one last time as I’m searching for the page with that boost skill again...

== End of chapter 30 ==