"I feel disappointed in myself; I couldn't even keep up for more than 5 minutes, and he didn't even break a sweat." Kleos muttered to himself.
He was feeling truly disappointed in himself, since he had been training in the forest for 3 months and had increased his skills tremendously, having to run around like a headless chicken every time something that exceeded his pay grade would chase him.
He would have to use clones and magic to get away every single time, and because of this, his mana had also grown in quantity. But as it turns out, his mana use was still very inefficient. He was also a toddler who was running instead of crawling. So perhaps that's yet another thing why he couldn't keep up with Adam.
***
Soon after, Adam was back, with a sack hanging over his back full of items. But Kleos couldn't see what was in there, considering that the bag was closed.
"Alright, let's head outside, Kleos; I hope you got some rest." Said Adam, still strangely cheery considering that his family had died just about 3 days ago.
Still, Kleos wasn't willing to question it or mention it. His best guess was that Adam was simply trying to forget about it and immerse himself in something completely different.
As Adam walked in, he walked over to the other side of the house and opened a door, which Kleos had yet to explore. While he had been shown the bathroom and such, he was never shown what rested beyond that door.
Once it was opened, Roland saw a room decorated with targets and dummies, which looked crystal clean. Almost as if they had never been used before.
The room was quite large, and the walls were not made of wood but stone, a complete opposite of the rest of the house. But it was quite cold in there, no fire and nothing. Even with the temperate temperature of the forest, it still felt quite chilly in there.
Upon a closer look, there even were some ice particles here and there.
"Oh, those? I'll show you what that ice is later." Said Adam after noticing that Kleos was glancing around the room frantically. "For now," he said as he took out a wooden sword from the bag that he had placed on the ground. "I want you to take this sword and strike those dummies a couple of times. Just show me your skills."
"If you want me to show you what I can do, I think it would be better that I use my own sword." Said Kleos, looking a little smug.
"Holding his arm out, he summoned a sword, much like the one he had been using for the past three months, yet it was clearly sharper and lighter than 3 months ago, showing how much he had grown in item creation. Which even made Adam raise an eyebrow in interest.
Taking the silence as an approval, Kleos took his sword in a high guard above his head, pushed some mana into his legs, and lunged at the dummy, swinging the sword while putting his body weight behind it.
The swing struck true straight at the side of the armored dummy. Cutting it nearly halfway through. But he wasn't able to draw his sword back, so he instead lunged back with a bit more mana and shot 2 stone bullets out of his fingers, one from each hand. One hit the dummy in the forehead, the other on the chest.
"Tsk, I missed one," Kleos cursed. But he wasn't done showing off. Hardening his arm, he switched to close combat and swung a left straight. With near-perfect form, at least what his tiny body would allow for. This was thanks to the amount of war experience that he had amassed. And the number of people he had killed just through his hands.
With his fist the same as iron, his mana-amplified punch managed to surpass most regular humans. And managed to lop off the head of the damaged dummy.
Turning around and suddenly feeling arrogant, he tilted his chin down and asked.
"How was that, Sir Adam?"
All he got in response was a near evil grin from Adam and a sentence that awoke a long-lost fear in Kleos. Something that he had experienced in the military academy, far too long ago.
"Who do you think you are, brat? That dummy was the same as White Heart, at best low yellow." Said Adam with his chin up, but as soon as he saw the fear in Kleos's eyes, he knew the best way to train the ball of talent that stood in front of him. "But not to worry, I'll teach you how to get high off power soon enough. For now, pick up your shitty stone sword and come fight me. I'll only need a simple branch to get rid of your ego, and I'll build it back up as many times as it takes." He said as he took out a flimsy-looking branch out of the bag. But then added. "Also, use anything you want, whether it be sword magic or even your gift."
***
Leaning on his sword and breathing heavily, while bleeding from his forehead, mana depleted. He collapsed.
"C-can we stop? I-I'm tired. We've been training for nearly 6 hours. My legs don't work, I'm out of mana, and I can no longer even hold my sword. Nor send any bullets in your direction." Painted Kleos.
"Yeah sure, we can rest." Adam yawned. "But hey, I didn't expect you to last this long. And you have some very interesting spells. Especially that quick little thing you call a bullet. It's fast; you even forced me to use my water magic. But now I know everything you can do, and I'm very impressed, to be honest. You have good physical stats for a toddler, even some young adults. You have decent mana control and quite a high quantity. That ability of yours to heal is also quite amazing; I'm surprised I didn't figure it out before. But every time I made you bleed or broke your finger, it healed up quite quickly."
"Why would you even break my finger?" Kleos barked
"Well, I do still blame you for the death of my family, Kleos. And I know healing magic, so it wouldn't've been a big problem either way. But that doesn't matter; what surprised me the most about you is your gift. You can create clones, you brat, and you never even told me. Someone of your age having a gift, which isn't a royal gift, is very rare. It's about 1 in 100,000, I'm pretty sure. And before you ask, the reason I know it isn't royal is because I could see every time you spent your mana."
"Is that your gift, sir?"
"No, it's just good mana sensing; my gift is way cooler than that, though I won't show you just yet. But Kleos I need to tell you something: you were mainly fighting me with your sword… But you have no talent for it."