One week had passed since he began his training.
The blisters on his palms had ruptured, bled, and scabbed over, only to be torn open again. Slowly but surely, the soft, unblemished skin of a teenager was being replaced by the rough calluses of a warrior.
His routine was grueling. In the mornings, he played the part of the dutiful son—helping Garrick lift heavy machinery and cleaning the workshop with a silent intensity that baffled his father. He devoured every scrap of food Marilla placed before him, treating every calorie as essential fuel for the furnace burning inside him.
However, during his lunch break and into the empty hours of the afternoon, he returned to the scrap heap.
The crude iron slab was still agonizingly heavy. It strained his joints and made his young muscles scream in protest. Yet, the clumsy, wavering movements of that first day were gone. Now, he could lift it without trembling. He could swing it—slowly, but with absolute intent.
Guts was not just building muscle; he was rewiring Johnny's nervous system, forcing this civilian body to remember the mechanics of slaughter.
On another day, after finishing a meager lunch and taking a brief rest to recover his stamina, Johnny stared toward the border of Sector 7—an area known as the "Scrap Wasteland."
It was an industrial dumping ground on the outskirts of the Slums. A desolate, filthy place, lethal to civilians. It was the domain of small monsters, mutated by Mako waste, that prowled in the shadows.
Johnny wrapped his crude iron sword in a shabby cloth. He bade his mother farewell with the excuse of "scavenging for more scrap," then walked steadily toward the wasteland.
Upon arrival, the stench of rotting garbage and acrid chemicals stung his nose. Johnny wasn't repulsed. On the contrary, he felt focused. This was the scent of a battlefield.
He unwrapped his blade.
"Alright," Johnny thought, his sharp eyes scanning for movement behind the mounds of metal refuse. "I need money. Mom and Dad need a decent meal."
Kreek... Kreek...
A chattering sound broke the silence. A Wererat—a mutated rat the size of a poodle—emerged from behind an oil drum. Its eyes glowed red, its front teeth sharp as knives.
The monster hissed upon seeing Johnny. To an ordinary boy, this was a terrifying beast. To Guts, it was a walking sack of gil.
Johnny offered a thin smirk. He dropped into a low stance.
"Come on then," he whispered. "Time for dinner."
The Wererat lunged.
To the untrained eye, the monster's movement was nothing but a blur of gray shadow. Its yellow, razor-sharp teeth were aimed straight for Johnny's throat, ready to tear out his carotid artery in an instant.
But in Johnny's eyes, the world slowed down.
Adrenaline flooded his brain—not as a trigger for panic, but as fuel for focus. He could see the saliva dripping from the rat's jaws. He could see the contraction of the muscles in its hind legs as it hung suspended in the air.
"Too straight. Too predictable," he thought coldly.
Johnny didn't retreat. Instead, he stepped forward with his left foot, using it as a pivot, locking his heel into the muddy ground.
With a sharp, controlled breath—Hup!—Johnny twisted his hips. His small shoulders worked in tandem with gravity, hauling the twenty-kilogram slab of crude iron in a deadly horizontal arc.
He didn't rely on arm strength alone. He used his entire body's momentum, transforming himself into a spinning vortex of death.
THWACK!
The sound wasn't the clean slice of a sharp blade. It was the sickening thud of a blunt object pulverizing flesh and bone.
The flat side of the iron sword slammed into the Wererat's ribs in mid-air, like a baseball bat connecting with a ball. The monster's shriek was cut short, replaced by a gruesome crack. The dog-sized rat was flung three meters sideways, crashing into a stack of used oil drums, denting them upon impact.
The carcass hit the ground, twitched once, then went still. Instant death.
Johnny exhaled a long breath, a puff of white steam escaping his lips. His hands tingled slightly from the vibration of the impact, but he grinned.
"One," he counted softly.
He approached the carcass. With a small pocket knife borrowed from his father's workshop, he began to harvest the valuable parts: the intact front fangs and the hard tail. He did it without a hint of disgust, as if he were simply peeling a potato.
But Johnny knew one tail wasn't enough. His father needed more than just pocket change; he needed proper grocery money.
Johnny stood tall, wiping the sweat from his forehead. He looked out over the vast expanse of industrial waste before him. The sun began to dip toward the west, casting long, eerie shadows.
"Come on out," Johnny muttered, tapping the tip of his iron sword against a metal pipe.
CLANG! CLANG!
The sound echoed—an open challenge. "I know you're there. I need the money."
And come they did.
For the next two hours, Johnny danced.