Life and death

'I can't waste time meditating now,' Khan thought as a helpless sigh escaped from his mouth.

His chest hurt, his ankles were killing him, and his knuckles had many cuts that made them unsuitable for another battle, but the lessons would arrive soon. Khan actually expected the training hall to interrupt him in the next minutes.

'I'll just fix the ankles,' Khan decided before entering his meditative state and forcing the mana to expand toward his legs.

Khan didn't rely only on his nape at that time. Sparse lumps of mana had appeared in other parts of his body after five months in the training camp. Moving them through his flesh was troublesome, but some of them were closer to his ankles, so they were perfect for his needs.

The numbness that afflicted his ankles slowly dispersed, but that feeling was still there when he left the meditative state and struggled to stand up.

'This will have to do,' Khan sighed in his mind before giving the order to the training program.

A metal rope immediately shot out of the wall and dragged the broken puppet inside the workshop. Cleaning robots also came out of the cavity to remove all the scraps and shards from the floor. It didn't take much before the entire training hall returned to a perfect state.

Khan closed his eyes and took deep breaths as he waited for the arrival of the puppet. His mind was ready for the imminent beatdown, but he had no intention to go down easily.

"Level six," The training program eventually announced. "Superior body, superior techniques, superior aggression, battle instincts."

A clanging noise spread through the training hall as the puppet stepped out of the workshop. Khan opened his eyes and saw four blinking red eyes fixed on him. The neon had also turned red and had given a menacing aura to the dummy.

Khan mustered all the power he could find in his body to shoot ahead. His sprint was inevitably slower compared to before, but he still appeared quite fast.

However, the puppet seemed able to follow his movements perfectly. It raised its arms before Khan could reach it, and its fingers took fang-like shapes while its entire body crouched forward.

Khan raised his leg as soon as the puppet entered his range. He didn't dare to use potentially dangerous techniques like his roundhouse kicks. He limited himself to launch his foot forward while keeping as much distance as possible from the dummy.

His foot seemed about to clash with the puppet's face, but the latter suddenly bent on the side. Khan promptly spun his waist to turn his front kick into a circular attack that followed his opponent's head, but his leg never managed to hit its target.

The puppet's arms had never stopped moving. They had flown toward Khan's leg while the dummy bent on the side, and its fingers ended up hitting three pressure points.

The attack didn't only spread an intense numbness through Khan's leg. It also pushed it back to interrupt his technique. It seemed that puppet was able to match his physical strength in the sixth level.

Khan gave voice to a battle cry as an ugly expression appeared on his face. He gritted his teeth and frowned to endure the pain and jump forward by releasing the power accumulated in his rear leg.

His condition was far from optimal, and the puppet had even managed to neutralize one of his legs in a single exchange. He knew that the battle would be over right after completing that technique, so he couldn't let it end so soon.

The puppet's arms shot forward, but the suddenness of Khan's reckless action made it unable to launch precise attacks. Its metal fingers hit his abdomen and chest, but only one of them landed on a pressure point.

Khan lost his breath for an instant, but he didn't let that sensation surprise him anymore. His whole body was flying inside the puppet's guard, and his arms quickly grabbed its neck as he used his leg to cling on its chest.

The puppet didn't let that reckless attack disrupt its forms. Its arms shot toward the leg clung on its chest and turned it numb in an instant. Still, Khan endured the pain and began to assault its head.

Khan had relied on a sudden move that didn't follow any technique. His chances of winning that battle through martial arts were basically zero, so he had to do something that the dummy couldn't predict.

His fists slammed on the tough dark metal and began to bend its fabric. The puppet raised its arms and started to aim for the pressure points on his side, and Khan soon lost his balance as numbness spread through his whole torso.

Yet, Khan clung on the metal head with one arm and continued to use the other to throw punches. The puppet started to miss attacks since Khan was behind its head, but metal fingers still landed on his limbs and side from time to time.

Some of those attacks eventually hit pressure points. Khan felt his thumb going numb and threatening to release the grip on the puppet, but he promptly bent forward to regain his balance.

Still, that gesture exposed him to the blinking red eyes. Khan couldn't move as he wished in that position, so he didn't manage to avoid the metal finger aimed at the center of his forehead.

Everything went dark for an instant. Khan barely had the time to sense the cold sensation carried by the puppet's finger before his back hit the floor.

His senses slowly focused on his surroundings, and disappointment inevitably spread through his mind. He had fallen. The battle was over.

A dark figure appeared in his vision. Metal legs landed on his arms and locked him on the ground while threatening fingers fell toward his face.

Then, the fingers stopped. The puppet interrupted its attack as soon as it touched Khan's face.

"Defeat," The training program announced as the puppet straightened its position and stepped off Khan's arm to return inside the wall. "Analyzing performance. Do you require additional actions?"

"Send everything to my phone," Khan ordered. "I'll close my eyes for a while."

Khan didn't bother to think about the battle anymore. His whole body hurt, and only his meditation could make him able to stand in time for the morning lessons.

A sudden noise resounded inside the training hall before Khan could even begin meditating. He glanced at the wall and sighed when he read that the lessons would start in less than twenty minutes. Luck wasn't on his side that day.

Khan tried to stand up, but his body didn't follow his commands. His legs, sides, and right hand were still numb. Even his head hurt. Only his left arm worked properly, but that wasn't enough to bring him to the lessons.

'How mad can they even get if I skip these lessons?' Khan wondered while his eyes closed. 'This is the sixth month. They won't have anything related to mana.'

Khan was only justifying himself in his mind. He had already understood that he was in no condition to move. Meditating was the only process that could restore his body enough to make him walk.

Time always moved quickly during the meditations, but it only seemed to last one second for Khan. He had started to use mana to disperse the numbness in his body, but a voice suddenly reached his ears and forced him out of his training.

"I should have seen this coming," Lieutenant Unchai scoffed while standing next to Khan.

"I just went a little overboard," Khan said in a fake sleepy voice. "Can I marry this training hall? I think I am in love."

Lieutenant Unchai shook his head, but a laugh escaped his mouth and ruined his pretense. The soldier didn't manage to hide the faint respect that had appeared inside him, so he tapped the floor to change the topic.

The summary of Khan's performance appeared on the floor, and Lieutenant Unchai's face froze when he read through the various details. Khan also turned to look at the various writings, and a pleased smile inevitably spread on his expression.

'This is so detailed,' Khan thought before reading the summary. 'Good execution of the techniques, incredible resolve, good instincts.'

Each of those labels led to a different menu that explained the reasons behind that evaluation. It even featured key moments that had led to that assessment.

Lieutenant Unchai studied everything. He didn't let a single label go and inspected every key moment recorded by the training program. His hand ended up covering his mouth while he read through the various descriptions, and his confused words failed to reach Khan's ears due to that cover.

"How does it look?" Khan asked while turning his head to stare at the soldier standing next to him.

"Sad," Lieutenant Unchai said in a plain voice.

Khan's eyes widened. The training program only showed positive evaluations. Only a few labels did have excellent grades, but that came from Khan's overall inexperience. After all, he had only trained for five months, even less if he considered the actual time with the Lightning-demon style.

"You are good, really good actually," Lieutenant Unchai continued without glancing at the boy lying at his side. "You are progressing far faster than I imagined, and you didn't even have access to these tools before. Still, I'm worried about this resolve of yours. You shouldn't treat a training program as a matter of life and death."