Noah was in his room, staring fixedly at a scroll in his hands.
The process seemed hard, as beads of sweat were running down his forehead, and his eyelids kept trying to close.
'This is fucking hard! Keep going, keep going! Fucking eyes stay open!'
Noah was entirely focused on his task and ignored everything around him.
As time went on, his hands started to tremble, and his already red eyes became bloodshot.
Inside his sea of consciousness, waves kept surging from the center of the sphere where Noah's half-transparent figure was standing with eyes closed.
He had a deep frown on his face.
The waves would crash on the borders of the sphere, enlarging its circumference by a few millimeters every time.
As this process kept going, the sea level would lower, and, by then, it was already covering less than a quarter of the sphere.
Noah abruptly folded the sheet containing the rune and let a long breath out while lying on the floor with arms spread open.
'I feel like my head is about to explode! My sight seems confused, and even thinking makes the pain increase. Terrifying, this kind of training is terrifying! And I feel so sleepy too."
Some knocks sounded on the door of his room.
Noah cursed a bit in his mind, then he felt the pain increase in intensity and that made him curse once more.
He stood up by first leaning against the floor and then against the walls and eventually managed to open the door.
Lily was on the other side of the exit with a radiant face, carrying two old books and a case.
"Some guards brought these to the building. They said that the vice-captain sent the-"
She suddenly interrupted as she noticed that her son had an extremely pale complexion.
He was looking incredibly tired.
His face was ashen, and his eyes were half-closed and completely red.
She noticed that he was using the door as a support to keep himself standing.
She hurriedly jumped to him and put her shoulder below his armpit to sustain him.
She then moved toward the bed, yelling:
"What happened to you!? It's that William, right? Or is it the guards? I'm going to talk to the captain right now! I'm going t-"
Before she could finish venting, Noah sat on the edge of the bed and raised a hand to stop her from any more yelling.
His head ached like hell, but he forced himself to talk because he felt the need to explain something to his mother.
"Mum, don't worry. It's just a special training that will make me able to do magic one day. I overdid a bit because this was my first time, but I will feel better after I get some sleep. Don't worry, the guards are nice to me, they don't do anything against my will."
Lily halted from further talking and looked at her son.
Touching his black hair and looking at those icy blue eyes, she felt warm from Noah's resemblance to her.
She then sat next to him and hugged him, caressing his head.
'This son of mine is so stubborn. His precociousness is only surpassed by his determination.'
Looking at the kid in her embrace, she observed how carefully defined his muscles were and the high number of calluses on his hands.
A bit of pride for such a hardworking son invaded her, and so she broke the embrace and put him in front of her, hands locked on his shoulders.
"Ok, I won't do anything, but you must promise to be more careful! I don't want to see you in this pitiful state anymore! And don't work too hard, remember that rest is also part of the training process. And don't you dare skip your lunch anymore, there will be consequences otherwise! Do you understand me, young man?"
Noah felt extremely warm in hearing those words.
Yet, his focus was elsewhere.
'One, two... and that's only as far as I can see.'
He was counting the new signs of violence on his mother's body, it was a habit he had picked up when he saw the first one on Lily, by the time he had requested for a teacher.
"Ok mum, I promise, I'll be careful."
Noah said while forcing a smile.
Lily looked at him for some more time and then stood up, leaving the books and the case she was carrying on the bed.
"I have to go now, I will ask the servants to bring you an abundant meal. Always remember that your health is the most important thing. As long as you're alive, you can do anything!"
She then kissed Noah on his forehead, and after a last look at him, she exited the room.
Noah kept looking in the direction his mother went, the smile disappearing from his face, and his bloodshot eyes acquiring a coldness that he rarely showed to others.
'Three hundred twenty-four visible ones till now, daddy is increasing the ratio.'
He would only see Rhys entering and exiting Lily's room randomly, never once his eyes went to the son of his.
'It seems that I can only practice the mental energy at night or my mother might see the after-effects of it, I don't want to worry her.'
As coldness enveloped him, the pain in his head kept going, but he totally ignored it.
'I spent about four hours in the sea of consciousness, I could probably stay for more time if I force myself, I just have to understand the recovery rate after one night of sleep.'
He looked outside the window and saw that it was probably still five or six in the afternoon.
Then he shifted his attention on the books to his side.
'Twin saber style and Forging of Seven Hells, apparently my Master wants me to get accustomed to the treatment even if he hates it so much.'
He first picked the book describing the saber style and started reading it, ignoring the pain it caused to his head.
'It is indeed a complete martial art, and the usage of the "Breath" seems a bit easier to master compared with the snake-wrist technique.'
To activate the real power of the martial art, one had to move the "Breath" according to a specific rhythm and pattern, and then they had to synchronize this manipulation with the correct body movement.
'I can't really train it now since it might do more harm than good, but tomorrow in the morning I will definitely start practicing with it.'
He closed the book and opened the case, a short saber was inside of it.
Its quality seemed to surpass the one he had stolen from the training yard.
'What a nice saber, William is really taking this Master stuff seriously.'
Then he took a look at the book containing the Forging of Seven Hells method, and in the meantime, a servant brought him an abundant meal made of rice and chicken.
Unconcerned with the strong headache he was experiencing and the feeling of nausea that it was causing, Noah forced himself to eat while studying the information contained in the book.
'The Mad Doctor joined and founded at least twelve cults to do his experiments on body-nourishing methods. The cults were responsible for providing him with children of age inferior to thirteen so that he could freely experiment on them. At the end of this process, the Seven Hells method was created as a result, but the mortality rate only got lowered from ninety-nine percent to eighty-five percent without considering the after-effects that the treatment would cause on the specimens.'
Noah stopped his reading as he noticed that the night had come, and he felt completely drained.
'I'd better go to sleep, tomorrow I'll start training with the twin sabers, and I'll probably begin with mental energy late in the afternoon, I wonder if it'll be somehow different from today's training.'
As he thought that, he put the books to the side of his bed, the saber back in the case, and then went to sleep.
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Edited by: Alessandro Sica