Chereads / The Abyss beyond the stars / Chapter 7 - The training begins

Chapter 7 - The training begins

On the bright early autumn morning of the day Dubhe, a young boy about 5 years old awoke feeling refreshed. He stretched himself and got out of bed.

As he made his way to the bathroom across the hallway, he heard the sound of the front door opening.

"Whoo! Hey champ, are ya up yet?!" A man's voice came from downstairs.

"Yeah I'll just be a few minutes!" The boy shouted back.

The boy spent eight minutes of getting into his training clothes, and tying his black hair into a ponytail, one red strand still poked out though. He examined himself one more time as his golden eyes stared into those of the boy in the mirror.

"Yep, all set!" He said with much vigor.

"Kai~ your father is waiting!" Loriell shouted from the kitchen. A heavenly aroma arose from the food she was busy making.

After coming down the stairs and having breakfast, Kai swiftly made his way outside to Hanzo, who stood next to a tree, he wore comfortable combat clothes and had what looked like a wood carved Japanese sword in his hand.

The sword was twice Kai's size in length, and it looked fairly heavy.

"Oh, you're done eating already?" Hanzo asked.

"Yep!" Kai responded, 'Finally! I'll learn about all those techniques that I read about in all those books.'

"Okay then we will start with a 5 kilometer run"

"Um... Okay." Kai responded.

Shortly after he started running, at first 5 kilometers seemed like an easy task, but with the body of a child, it was hell difficulty.

1 km passed, Kai was alright.

2 km passed, He began feeling hot.

3 km passed, He started losing breath.

At 4 km, he started slacking.

At 5 km, he was knocked out.

'Curse this child body!!!'

Afterward Kai had to do body conditioning training like climbing the cliff behind the house, and hunting specific beasts, after which his whole body would ache.

And so as the seasons came and went, Kai kept swinging his sword, and training with Hanzo, improving little by little. Some would call his improvement rate monstrous, as what he has learnt in only a few months, others would need a few years to learn.

Then, one autumn morning, as the leaves of the trees turned crimson and orange, Hanzo called Kai out to the top of the cliff to train under the crimson Wonkai tree, a tree with red leaves that emit a special type of spore which reduces speed and strength.

"Now begins the final training season. You must spar with me until you can defeat me. Take your time, we will spar between the hour of the dragon (16:00) and the hour of the moon (20:00).

"Okay" Kai who was exited to demonstrate what he has learnt responded.

And so another hardship started for Kai.

In the first battle Kai actually held his own, using a great movement technique. As he tried to use the seventh movement of the dream sword : Nightmare stance, he was truck down by Hanzo because he took to long to execute it.

That was when he knew he had to train some more…