Chapter 12: The Sprout

Franswift had woken up from his bed 30 minutes ago. He had already washed up, changed his clothes, and was on his way down the stairs towards the dining room.

Wilhelm was there, and the food was already prepared. He sat down to eat the food in front of him. Both he and Wilhelm began eating together silently without anyone talking, as usual, both of them finished every dish without leaving a single grain.

Franswift ate his food cleanly because he knew how precious food was, especially the food in front of him that was prepared to develop his body. His body was getting healthier, robust, and gaining muscles just from the third day of eating those meals signified how precious this food was.

After they finished eating their food, Wilhelm began to talk, “A boy will be coming soon to spar with you.”

“Why? Haven’t you been practicing with me from the start, why the sudden change?” Franswift did not want to miss the chance of Wilhelm training him. He did not want to decrease his rate of progress, knowing that this was a golden opportunity, much less wasting time sparring with other people.

“Greedy, aren’t we. I can’t say I dislike that, but.” Wilhelm made an expression of seriousness. “Although I have been training your weapon mastery, we spent little time to develop your hand-to-hand combat, that was because you almost became a copy and abandoned your own style, you were able to restore it only because you broke your death perception, but it isn’t almighty enlightenment. If I begin teaching you hand-to-hand combat, you might end up the same, and you may not be rescued so easily this time.”

Easily! Franswift wanted to retort back. He almost went into madness because of that.

Wilhelm continued. “It isn’t like there are no other ways to teach but then again...” He grinned. “You know, I think you are on the pavement of becoming something greatly talented. Although this is just the start, still, you become one. Now think about what the best nourishments for talents to grow, everything is served on a silver platter or fighting in blood and mud to acquire it.”

Wilhelm stayed in silence for a bit before continuing and answering the obvious question, “Of course the best nourishments and nutrients are the latter.”

Franswift contemplated and said, “So you want me to fight and acquire what I want.”

Wilhelm answered, “You got a part almost right, firstly fighting sure will make you stronger, but how many fights do you have to take to get stronger visibly?”

Franswift remained silent, not knowing the answer.

“You don’t know, right? The sparring partner I arranged for you will definitely make you benefit from every fight. Secondly, don’t think copying other people’s moves is easy, I made every move visible for you to learn, yet you were only able to learn the basic moves after failing a couple of times, then you needed time to learn how to apply them before actually using them.”

Franswift nodded in acknowledgment. He knew it was impossible for him to copy other moves unless they were fully intended to teach them. His focus ability was only enhancing his learning ability based on his current senses.

He nodded again at Wilhelm, seemingly convinced. He decided to wait and see the results of such spars.

A day before the conversation.

Avelyn walked in the inner city towards a flattened ground covered by white stones and surrounded by high walls, half of the ground was filled with exercising tools while the other half was completely empty.

A youth with a well-defined body and short white hair was standing in the middle of the empty ground in a horse stance while closing his eyes. Serenity appeared to be the only thing that surrounded the youth, only to be disrupted as the supposedly locked door was slammed open.

Bylun was just about to frown due to the visitor’s unexpected rudeness but immediately swallowed anything he was about to say when he saw the scarlet-haired beauty stare at him.

“Why is the door locked?” Avelyn seemed irritated as she raised an eyebrow while asking.

“You should have knocked if you felt it was troublesome to open the door with the key, I would have come and opened it.”

Irritated even more by the youth for revealing her thoughts, she just stared and asked, “So I need to knock and have permission to enter this place?”

Bylun just did not answer. No, he couldn’t answer. He felt helpless every time he dealt with this woman. She was unreasonable and did everything to her liking. If she did not admire the commander and listened to him, this woman would have been a raging storm in this city.

“Are you going to answer me or not?”

The youth could only sigh helplessly while he surrendered and said, “You can do whatever you want, Miss Avelyn. I will make sure to keep the door open next time.”