Kace stared at the spot that Bruni had been in only minutes before, he felt sorry for the boy, he had seen how hurt he was and still Kace wasn't allowed to help him on orders of Commander Harriot.
Commander Harriot had seen the potential of the boy and knew that if the anger was left to fester and the hatred to grow, then he could become an amazingly powerful weapon. As long as he didn't break and go crazy then the boy's suffering wouldn't be a waste. They had to guide Bruni's anger, control his hate, and when Bruni was ready they would unleash him upon those who had done the boy so wrong.
Kace had gotten a true glimpse of the boy's power just now, and it scared him a little. He could only cover his arms in stone and harden parts of his skin on his body and he had trained for many years to get to where he was with his mastery. Bruni was untrained but was extremely powerful, the amount of mana that came from within the boy had truly astounded him.
Mana had pooled in liquid form, it took an exceptional amount of raw mana to do that, it was wasteful in the least but absolutely terrifying to see, not only that but the boy had actually ignited a fireball in his own hand without coming to harm, it was as if the boy was beloved by a god of destruction and fire.
Thinking these things made Kace just shudder as he walked into the clearing at the big burnt area on the forest floor and the wilting grass that had been killed just by being in proximity to such potent flames and heat.
Looking around Kace had a chill run down his back as he thought to himself, "Bruni is in a league of his own, thank the gods that Commander Harriot got to him first, I would not want to face this boy in 2 years if he had been taken to the other side of this war, willingly or not Bruni must be trained.
Kace went back to the camp after a while and dropped off a few more small pheasants by the cook fire for the others to deal with as he went to his tent to think about all that had been observed and witnessed, knowing Commander Harriot liked to be informed when Bruni let loose some of his power, he started to write a report in his notebook so that when this training exercise was done he could describe it to the best of his ability to Commander Harriot.
Bruni awoke the next day before dawn with sleep still heavy on his mind and in his eyes he got changed and headed out for the fire pit someone had dug and lined with river stones beside where we had our cookfire yesterday. He grabbed the birds that were left untouched from the night before and started to prep them for a nice breakfast meal. after the birds were butchered and spitted on sticks to roast at the small fire yet again, he took the time to go out and see if he could find any roots around camp that were edible but had no luck.
At the smell of the roasting bird s the other trainees started to wake up and begin to change and prepare for the day, today we would be day one of the basic bushcraft course that Kace would be teaching for only today and everyone wanted as much time to learn the basics as they could.
Sergeant Kace soon stepped out of his tent and seeing yet again that I was cooking had just smiled and waved everyone over to sit by the fire before speaking to me "Bruni you have repeatedly demonstrated that you have a firm grip on more then just the basics that I am going to be teaching your groupmates so why don't you go scout out the area and see if you cant find lunch."
"Very well sir, I will be going for a walk to the stream and maybe scout out the area just north of us, I seen a few game trails and tracks head in that direction," I said
To this, he just nodded and reminded me not to go too far from camp for obvious reasons before starting the morning's lessons on survival.
I left shortly after to the nods of the others when I said my goodbyes. I grabbed up my fishing spear before I left the makeshift walls of camp and headed for the stream once again to see if the fish were sunning in the shallow spots and were easy to spear. Unfortunately no luck this time only a few small fish were out right now but I knew that more would be out when the sun was higher and the water was warmer, so I went to scout out the stream and to look out for other signs of other trainees in the area.
An hour into my morning along the stream I had been following I seen other small footsteps only slightly bigger than mine, must be other trainees that Kace was talking about! I followed the tracks down a game trail for a bit before coming to a camp that looked like ours with the walls around our camp but with bigger gaps in between the horizontal trees as if whoever had been doing this was too tired or lazy to care about it enough to do it properly.
I could hear talking voices inside the camp but I didn't want to get close and alert the group to my presence, so observed from a distance for a few minutes before slipping back the way I had come from after I marked where the camp was in my mind as I made my way back to our camp at a jog to share what I had found with the others.
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