Capítulo 7: Two Weeks
"Again!" Olive calmly demanded.
It's not like I can refuse anyway.
So for the following seven hours, Olive and I did nothing but spar in the four-by-four plot of dirt.
And during those seven hours, Olive failed in achieving a single victory.
She had gotten close a few times due to my carelessness, but even so, she's incredibly talented and quick witted. The moment I proceeded a pattern more than thrice she had already come to expect it. She analyzed me and scrutinized me at every possible moment.
My form, my habits, my own attention. That's right. She studied the things I was looking at. What parts of her body I paid attention to and then connected my gaze to patterns she herself exhibited.
At the start of the day, it was a one way slaughter; which was to be expected. I was never formally trained in combat or martial arts, but I got in enough fights to know how to throw a punch. Honestly, if you asked one of my old friends, they'd probably praise me even greater – I was pretty good in a fight. Always have been, but it didn't always get me where I needed to be.
Sometimes it even put me places I never wanted to be.
But nevertheless, in my second chance here, my ability to fight has been incredibly handy.
That was also partly the reason why I forewent obtaining the wooden sword. In the modern world, technically post-modern by the time I died, swords were a thing of the past. I had never used one, let alone seen a real one.
Combined with my strange ability to harden my black skin and obtain monstrous claws, hand-to-hand combat illuminated itself as the obvious choice.
Somewhere throughout the day, however, Olive exploded with growth! She began disrupting my patterns, breaking my chains, and pin-pointing my blind spots. Like a natural predator, her instincts guided her in the right direction and, with her intellect, she was able to piece together a flow of her own combat style that was eerily analogous to mine own.
She prioritizes hit-and-run tactics. Opting to distract me momentarily with feints or quick steps. Then, if I react to any of her bait, she immediately lunges towards my vitals or occasionally targets a blindspot, but only if said blindspot can be chained into further carnage.
She is fierce and brutal.
"Like a demon." I mused to myself.
"You should look for something shorter." I suggested at the end of our final spar as the sun had long ago faded underneath the horizon.
"I was thinking the same." Olive nodded while wiping the sweat from her forehead, pushing away her strawberry-red hair.
She flipped the wooden sword in her hand, grabbing it from behind, "What do you think? Should I experiment with reverse-grip?"
"You won't be able to with a sword of that length –" I shook my head, "but you should master standard grip before overextending yourself. This is all hard enough as it is."
"Do you really believe that?" Olive asked, steel coolness permeating throughout her deep, black irises.
"Do I believe what?" I asked, confused.
"I was just thinking as a demon and all, you must be accustomed to gore and violence." Olive stared into my eyes.
"You'd think, wouldn't you?" I chuckled, momentarily breaking eye-contact as I scanned the camp for the thousandth time today, "But this is all new to me too."
"Then how are you so calm?" Olive pushed.
"How are you so calm?" I repeated. "You've been calm from the start, from the moment you summoned me."
"I can promise you, I'm anything but calm." Olive's voice was stern.
"Collected, perhaps?" I joked.
But Olive merely stared at me, patiently waiting for me to answer her oh-so-important question.
"Sometimes –" I paused.
I don't know how the fuck to say this!
"Sometimes worse things happen than this – and living through those worse things make you really good at adapting to other worse things." I smiled at Olive, content at my summary of my calmness.
"What can be worse than this?" Olive dejectedly asked.
"Oh a lot of things can be worse than this!" I cheered up, this is a topic I regard myself an expert in afterall, "I once knew a guy whose ceiling caved in while he was sleeping! What caused his ceiling to cave in? A nest of radioactive-mutated fire ants! The ants were so massive in quantity, they burrowed into the man's nose, dug past his eyes, and consumed him inside out! And I didn't even mention the horrid effect from the bite of these mutated buggers – acid! Pure, corrosive to the touch, acid! So this guy was not only consumed from the inside out, but he also melted live as he was consumed!"
"I don't know –" I shrugged my shoulders, "I'd rather be here, personally."
"You made that up!" Olive protested.
"I most certainly did not." I countered.
"I've never heard of radioactive ants that spit acid!" Olive's gaze was cold.
"Well you're not from Hell so!" I raised my arms into the air.
It was then that a sudden look of realization dawned upon Olive's face. Then, she raised her wooden sword and pointed it at me once more.
"But you said this was all new to you!" She accused.
"Does this look like Hell to you?" I gestured around us, "Pretty sure it doesn't!"
Olive looked at me with a disgruntled frown on her face until she finally lamented and released the energy she had kept pent up within her. Tossing her sword to the side, she bid me farewell and prepared for rest.
I too needed to head to bed soon. Yes, demon's must get their beauty sleep, a shocker to us all.
And, thankfully, this demon visage is perfect for explaining everything suspicious about me. Although, it does in of itself make me suspicious, with being a demon and all that, but it protects my previous epiphany that I've come from some alternate reality – both similar and different to the one all these people seem to have come from.
I wonder then, if we escape here and Olive returns to her home world – would I follow?
Ahh!
More existential questions! My favorite!
***
Dawn approached faster than I expected and before I knew it, we had already left camp and begun to travel North. First, we needed to back-track for four days – the time it takes to arrive at the start, the mysterious dojo. From there, we have two weeks ahead of us. . . walking in a straight line.
Oh boy.
Olive walked ahead of me, her alabaster skin scorched underneath the blazing sun above; her skin ripening like a fruit and becoming more and more pink with each passing hour. Thankfully, once we arrived at Isaac's camp the day prior, somebody gave her a new shirt.
In fact, her new outfit is on par with the rest of the squad now. She's wearing a brown, leather vest over top a white, cotton shirt. Tied to her waist is a large sack of steel beads and on the opposite end, a sling-shot crafted from the bones of their slain foes.
She's in sandy brown pants and black boots. In her hand, a thin and gentle rapier dangles under the wind.
So she decided to go even longer instead of shorter?
But I suppose she has the stabbing part down.
Along for the journey, positioned at the forefront of our party, Isaac led the way. Behind him, Lily and Cole stayed vigilant. Jenny too stood behind the conveniently named duo, filling in the gap between the pair's shoulders.
Then, there was Olive and I. In conclusion, a party of six. And quite a damn good one at that.
Unknown to the rest of the group thus far, my capabilities are on par with, if not exceeding the prowess of Isaac with his sword blast ability. Between him, Olive and I, we have a stable and efficient source of close-ranged damage. And as I've praised before, both Lily and Cole are excellent.
Perhaps the only downside to Lily's ability is its inherent methodology requiring one to drink. The action of drinking itself is the issue, I can't exactly be asked to drink her rejuvenation potion in the midst of combat. Beside that point, however, she's invaluable to the team.
Cole too, pretty useful. Less so against unintelligent beasts, his Ability is sure to rise leaps and bounds when information gathering presents itself as a hurdle, but even in our circumstances – invaluable.
I don't know what Jenny does, but her presence among those I've already listed proves her right to be here. The only real position we're missing is a tank of sorts, but if applied enough pressure, I'm sure I could fill the role. My only downside simply being the radius at which I could protect at any given time; which comes down to the surface area of the blackness on my forearms.
So not great, but it's something.
We eventually crossed paths with the dojo we all collectively spawned in. Its mysterious presence in this dense and sparsely inhabited jungle ever increasing its pull among the plethora of questions already occupying my mind.
Why a dojo?
Why school uniforms? Why Asian influenced at all?
But again, the same pattern persists. What it really boils down to is the simple fact that there are more pressing matters at hand. And so, without even stopping, we bid the dojo farewell and our journey into the North truly began.
"What are those?" Jenny suddenly interrupted the silence, her finger outstretched to the side, pointing towards four stones lined up, protruding from the ground.
"Those are the graves we made –" Olive replied, "for our other half."
"Weren't there twelve of you?" Jenny pointed out, "Where are the other two?"
Olive shrugged her shoulders to Jenny's annoyance. Then, Jenny looked my way.
"We only found the four –" I informed her, "just assumed the other two were dragged off somewhere."
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TheLostBoy
TheLostBoy have a happy weekend! new chapter Monday!!!! ;D
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