A Year later.
Whoosh!
A howling wind pierced through the air beside Enshin. He quickly ducked to his side as he picked up a stone and threw it at his opponent. Enshin used this moment to circle around the enemy, giving him the perfect chance to smash down his wooden sword on his opponent's head, all of which happened in a matter of seconds.
Shinzo smiled before he sidestepped and hit Enshin's hands causing him to drop the wooden sword on the ground. The sword landed with a dull thud and Shinzo smiled as he expected that the match was over, however, he suddenly felt a chill crawl down his spine.
Enshin caught the wooden fragment that he threw and hurled it at his father's head at a frightening speed but he was stopped by a tight grip on his wrist. Both of them froze on the spot, Enshin was breathing heavily while Shinzo presented a calm facade.
Enshin and Shinzo felt their hearts shudder. Shinzo had clearly felt killing intent, and Enshin was so enthralled in battle that he lacked restraint!
Enshin quickly spoke, "I apologize for losing restraint father! I lost." He bowed his head and released the stone in his hand.
Shinzo quickly held his son's shoulders and held him up, "No, no, why would you be apologizing, father is proud that you have such a strong instinct for battle!" He paused, "However, you truly shouldn't be so cruel during spars and practices. You might accidentally kill your opponent!"
Enshin couldn't help it. Back in the past when he was often in desperate straits, he had no qualms with being unrestrained in his attacks. It made him hit harder, more fatal hits that required a small amount of effort, making him survive the endless hunts.
In spars and tournaments, the fights will be long and drawn out because the competitors had to use their strongest and most showy attacks or techniques while making sure that the opponent wouldn't die, so they will be used to weakening their attacks. In a real battle, a tournament champion was nothing but a huge lamb for slaughter, no matter how strong they are, they will naturally lose against those born of the battlefield that attack with no mercy.
Just now, he accidentally attacked with frightening resolve. If it was anyone else, it wouldn't be so bad a mistake, but it was very bad in this case. Who he attacked was his father, a sword king with keen perception.
His son just had an intent to kill him, what would he think? And his son was no more than four years old!
"Let us continue this again tomorrow, have a good rest son," Shinzo said,
Enshin hurriedly nodded and apologized again before he walked away while Shinzo worriedly stared at his back.
"What's wrong young master Enshin?" He just left the training hall when a lovely voice greeted his ears. He turned to see Alice coming over with a concerned look on her face. "You seem to have finished training earlier than usual."
She proceeded to wipe off the sweat from Enshins body, as per usual.
"It's nothing," Enshin cooly replied, "Father just got tired too fast, he's getting old you know.""
"Your father got tired?" She muttered with a curious tone, however, Enshin sensed something else within her tone that he couldn't identify.
"Yeah." Enshin merely nodded,
"Well, even though he is a sword king, he is still human after all. He gets tired and weak like the rest of us. He's not invincible..." She paused and suddenly chuckled,
Enshin sideglanced at her before closing his eyes again to wait for her to finish wiping. After being wiped clean, he paced a few meters towards his household, before discreetly speeding away into the forest.
Amidst the bushes beneath a tree, Enshin picked up a small dagger that was half his height, in his arms the dagger seemed to be a sword. The dagger had traces of blood along the blade, and the blood seemed to have just dried.
He paced deeper and deeper into the forest with the dagger in hand, soon reaching a wolf's den.
In the past months, he would occasionally head over to the forest to hunt. This wolf den was one of his recent exploits, he massacred half of the wolves inside while injuring their alpha wolf. The wolves were more tenacious than he thought so he escaped.
This time, he intended to leave nothing alive. He scanned around and gathered dry grass, he placed a toxic piece of snake herb, then he set it on fire. He threw the smoking grass at the entrance of the den and waited at the front.
Snake herb was a low level toxic herb, it wouldn't be enough to kill, but it was enough to confuse and weaken most animals. Soon enough, countless howls emerged from the entrance as wolves rushed out, however, these wolves were obviously dizzy as they occasionally crashed into each other.
Enshin stared emotionlessly at the wolves before rushing in with his dagger. The first slash was inflicted upon the stomach of a large gray wolf, it howled in pain before stumbling on its feet, crashing on the ground. Enshin hopped back, and slashed once again at another wolf, rendering it immobile. As the wolves gushed out the cave like a wave, Enshin slashed at them viciously, giving one slash to each and every wolf. None of them were able to fight back, Enshin seemed like the true beast as one slash was all he needed to paralyze each of them. And each of them was twice the size of Enshin.
The wolves stacked outside the den, like corpses, but they were all barely alive. One by one he placed a green glowing hand on them. Later, all there was, was a pile of withered wolf corpses and a young child sitting in the middle of it all.
The vitality he got was an amazing amount for his body, and he started to consume it all, however, the amount was too much, he had to stabilize it himself to prevent his body from bursting into bits and pieces.
At the same time, in their residence.
Shinzo paced back and forth as he pondered whether he should tell his wife or not.
Their child was four years old, it shouldn't be possible for him to bear killing intent. Malicious intent was within the range of child tantrums but killing intent was not! It was impossible that it was his imagination, he was a sword king. He out of all the people in Samara was the one most familiar with what killing intent was.
Enshin had never ever presented signs of evil. He was a good obedient child that would do all that was asked of him. He even loved animals, he would occasionally see him playing with animals and birds.
"Was that really from my boy?" He asked himself, and suddenly his eyes went wide. "Guards, search the whole building!"
If it wasn't his son, the only explanation would be that there was an enemy at their household that watched them spar at that exact moment! Who would believe that their child was a murderer after all?
The house was instantly searched and amidst the chaos and noise, no one noticed Enshin's absence.
A surge of energy swept through the grass as Enshin opened his eyes, however instead of assessing his improvements, he suddenly stood up and rushed towards his house as he noticed the time. He was way over curfew.
Beneath the darkening sky, Enshin's figure was like a flickering shadow. His speed has increased by two times! Enshin grinned as he felt the overflowing vitality within his body. With a five year old body, he had attained the strength of a late teen!
The younger you start the more the body will adapt was truly a saying of fact.
He was still praising himself for his awesome body when he suddenly heard voices coming near him, he stopped and listened.
"Why did they search the house out of nowhere?!" A man's hoarse and tired voice was heard from the direction of the house.
"How the hell would I know?! You must've alerted them of your presence somehow!" A familiar woman's voice replied,
Slowly, two figures emerged from the treeline of the forest. A woman adorned in the clothing of a maid and a man covered in black robes. The pair met the gaze of Enshin and stopped dead in their tracks with an expression of shock that slowly turned into malicious smiles.
Enshin's eyes glimmered nefariously before a tear gushes out, "Miss Alice! I'm glad you found me!" He said, starting to cry as he ran towards them, "I was so scared I wasn't going to get home again!"
Alice's smile went wider as he widened her arm, "Young Enshin! We have found you at last!" She held a dagger behind her back and went close to 'hug' the boy.
Alice scoffed at the boy's naivety in her heart but little did she know Enshin was doing the same.
Alice was a maid his parents recently employed a few months ago. She had been eager to serve Enshin whenever they crossed paths and she always acted kind and sweet around him. Back then Enshin knew she wasn't as innocent as she seemed, and now that they were traitors, she and her companion were nothing but beasts in his eyes now.
When Enshin hugged Alice, before she could even utilize her dagger, he quickly took a needle hidden in his sleeve and poked it into a certain nerve in her spine. She was paralyzed in an instant.
The man couldn't even react, Enshin hastily threw the needle at the man's eye. The needle penetrated deep inside the man's skull and before he could scream, he was stabbed in the throat with a dagger. A green light glowed as Enshin gripped the man's head, with blood splattered all over his young physique.
This was the first person that Enshin had devoured. When the vitality flowed in his veins he was met with a pleasant surprise. The amount of vitality he could extract from humans was twice the amount that he got from beasts.
He felt his fatigue disappear and his strength rapidly surged to the point that his baby muscles bulged. His vitality was finally compressed to the maximum.
Enshin hadn't absorbed much to kill the bald man, so he quickly healed the man to the point wherein he could be said to be barely alive, then he threw the man at Alice.
A thud was heard as Alice was crushed under the man's weight. She was still paralyzed so she couldn't resist much in the beginning, even more so now that she was being crushed. The man groaned in pain above her.
Enshin calmly strode beside them and muttered softly, "The one who answers me first gets to live, okay?" His childish voice echoed in their ears but his tone was cold and emotionless, "If you try anything funny..."
He stabbed a dagger at Alice's leg releasing her from the paralysis as well as making her shriek out in pain. The man gawked with his remaining eye in fear as he watched the child tapping on the hilt of the dagger as if he was impatient.
Enshin seemed calm, to a frightening degree. His eyes made them feel as if they were being stared at by a predator. He barely had any expression on his face, as if he was simply playing with insects.
"Please....please....don't kill me..." Alice's fear overrode her shock as she cried, begging at the face of a child, who at present was bathed in blood, looking like the devil's spawn himself. She couldn't believe that this was the boy she served for the past few months.
"Who do you work for?" Enshin's emotionless voice rang out in the air like an alarm, making the two adults rack their brains for an answer as fast as possible.
"L-Lancel!" They screamed in unison with their trembling voices.
"Very good..." Enshin tugged at the dagger, slowly unleashing it from Alice's leg as he spoke, "Who the fuck is Lancel?"
Alice was well prepared to answer as she knew Enshin had never ever set foot in the city, the moment Enshin finished asking she opened her mouth, "The princ-"
Before she could finish, her head was bashed in by a rock, making a sickening crunch echo throughout the forest, as the man continued, "-he is the principal of the Blue Sky Institute..."
Enshin watched silently as Alice twitched in her last moments. He wasn't surprised at all with what the man did. It was a human's nature to put himself above others. A vile nature that all humans manifested, making them no more than animals.
"What were your goals?" Enshin asked as he wiped the blood off his dagger using Alice's clothes.
"We...we were tasked to kidnap you..."
Enshin's gaze turned cold as he dragged the dagger along the man's healed throat.
"Why?"
"I....I don't know...I truly don't know! Please spare me!"
Enshin paused as if he was contemplating it, then sighed and stood up. "It can't be helped if you don't know, and don't worry, I am a man of my word."
The man froze before suddenly crying, he tried his best to bow his head as he thanked Enshin for his kindness. Enshin merely turned around before smiling viciously.
With severe injuries like that, surrounded by countless beasts of the forest...
The man was left thankful and utterly confused. The child that they were tasked to kidnap was a monster! A monster! Not only could he throw the man's adult body that was around three to four times his size, the child was also completely unnerved from the blood that showered him.
He started crawling away. He wanted to be as far as he can from this place. He barely moved an inch, when a growling sound was heard right by his side.
Moments later, Enshin could hear the man's shrieks, accompanied by the joyful roars of whatever beast got lucky.
After hiding his dagger, he snuck into his own room and changed. He burned his old clothes with magic and jumped under the covers to sleep as if he didn't just cause the death of two humans.
Shinzo was alerted when they discovered that one of the maids escaped into the forest. He quickly organized a search party and roamed the forest in search of the suspects.
Shinzo cursed his own lack of awareness to actually hire someone that had bad intentions. If he found the culprits he would surely make them pay hell for disturbing his family's peace, but later he realized he didn't have to.
Alice the maid and an unidentified male were both dead on the forest floor, they could barely identify them after the wild animals had feasted over them.
It was discernable that Alice died due to blunt force trauma on her skull for there were no signs of struggle against the beast, the man on the other hand, was full of bites around his arms and wrist as if he fought them off, a wretched end to be eaten to death.
However, what was strange was that the man had a patch of regrown flesh on his throat as well as a needle lodged in his left eye. There was no sign of needles on Alice and she held a clean dagger in one hand.
She died without being able to fight back and the man was injured severely to the point where he couldn't defend himself. This was obviously not a fight between the two of them, but a fight against a third party.
They were silenced!
Shinzo felt a sudden burst of dread as he yelled,
"BACK TO THE HOUSE!"
With a portion of the guards away from the household, this would be a perfect chance to attack and with him away it would be even easier.
Shinzo and the guards were completely drenched in sweat when they arrived at the calm and peaceful mansion.
Shinzo hurriedly ordered the guards to scan the perimeter as he rushed to check on his family. He first bolted to his son's room since his wife can defend herself but his son could obviously not.
His worst fears vanished into thin air when he saw little Enshin in his room, sleeping like a baby. With a relieved sigh, he turned around and closed the door, thanking the heavens that his little angel was safe. As soon as the door shut, his face contorted into one of rage as he spoke.
"I'll find you, no matter who you are."
Meanwhile, in a grand and luxurious building down in the city of Samara. An elderly man sat in his office, his hands fiddled around with a crystal ball. On the crystal ball was a face of a visibly anxious middle-aged man.
"What's the matter?" The hoarse voice of the elderly man reverberated through the room. The tone of his voice made it quite clear that he didn't like the disturbance. The face on the pearl opened his mouth, he hesitated, but still spoke,
"Boss, I am sorry to report that Alice and Boros where killed."
"Oh? And how did that happen?"
"They were found dead in the forest behind the Lazik household, they speculated that they met with at third party and died in battle."
"How many spies do we have left?" The elderly man's voice was cold and aloof, but the man in the pearl knew that he was enraged inside. To place a spy in the enemies ranks was a hard task, especially since the unrivaled sword Shinzo could perceive the slightest bit of ill-intent. The fact that Alice lasted this long was already quite a feat in itself.
"One sir, we have one left."
"Have her lay low for now. Send scouts to peruse the forest, look for any signs of the stranger that has caused the demise of our people." The eldely man paused, "I never hire weaklings, and the fact that the mentioned third party could beat them both means that he is not to be underestimated."
He swept his hand over the crystal ball and the face started to fade. "I hope you won't dissapoint me again."
Before the face completely disappeared, he replied, "Yes boss!" The elderly man sighed and hid the crystal ball within a drawer. Inside the drawer was a file with bold letters engraved on the top,
'Blue Sky Institute'