Prologue 08

Shadow began his journey towards the city anew.

On the way he trained his body, ate, and slept in areas he thought were safe.

One day he looked at a can of food and thought:

'Why did the ants collect these?'

When he was in the cave he didn't question it since it gave him an easy way out of the cave, but now that he was thinking the ants could smell the food and collect it, so why did something that didn't give off any smell of food get collected?

He didn't dwell on those thoughts anymore and decided to forget about it.

He continued his journey that would take him a couple more weeks to complete.

*

Without Shadow knowing, a war started, and it was all his fault.

Since he never met the ant queen, he didn't know what she liked, or better said, what she was obsessed with.

It seemed that she was obsessed with canned food, and the way things unfolded were as follows.

The ants that were under her command gave her constant updated on the food supply.

The ant queen glad that there was so much canned food decided to go to the food storage to take it with her to the throne.

She had the ants carry it to her throne one by one, but at the end, something didn't add up.

There were certainly less than what the ants had said.

She trusted her followers so the answer she came up with was that the food was stolen.

The ant queen knew that there were quite a few people gathered together very close by.

She couldn't forgive anyone who stole from her so she went on and attacked the humans.

The direction she went to was the military base.

She waged war against the humans, but ended up losing in a fierce battle against the Hero.

Since Shadow went towards the opposite direction he had no way of knowing this, and by accident he also made the Hero stronger.

*

During the weeks he traveled, Shadow also sharpened his sword to the best of his ability.

He also practiced how to swing the sword.

He learned that the katana would be of better use if he just dodged the opponents and slashed away at their weak points.

He practiced while thinking of how to maneuver towards those weak points, and found out that the best method was through practicing his footwork.

He spent the rest of the way practicing with the sword and strengthening his fists.

Shadow also dismantled the pistols and gave them proper maintenance to check if there was something wrong with them.

He checked throughout the many pieces of the pistols but found no cracks inside them, and when he put them back together their mechanisms worked without any problem.

The only thing he hadn't tested was firing them, but that would only be a waste of the limited amount of bullets he had and would alert anyone of his location.

*

He arrived at the city and much like the other one, it was pretty destroyed, but at the entrance he could see a tall man.

This was the first person Shadow had seen since leaving the abandoned city.

He debated to go in or to leave.

He didn't know if this was a military base or just a bunch of civilians surviving by themselves.

Shadow decided to try to enter the city.

He approached the entrance and that the guard in front remained unmoving.

Shadow took it that the guard in front of him would not try to stop him.

Once he set food beside the guard took out an axe he had strapped on his back and attacked Shadow.

Shadow dodged it with minimal effort and jumped backwards, simultaneously taking out his sword.

The guard examined him and saw the sword.

The guard put away his axe and signaled Shadow to follow him.

Confused, Shadow followed the guard while still holding onto his sword, in case he was attacked.

*

The guard guided shadow to a pretty large and spacious building.

The guard signaled him to enter the building and then left back to guard the entrance.

Shadow was extremely confused by the actions of the guard, but entered the building seeing no harm in doing so.

*

He entered the building and saw a bunch of weaponry mounted on the walls.

Shadow also saw a counter behind the door with only a door behind it.

He could hear clanging sounds from behind said door.

He walked towards the door and then slightly opened the door.

In the room he saw an old but buff man in front of a fireplace.

The old man had a hammer in hand, and he would repeatedly bring it up above his head and slammed it down to a heated piece of metal.

Shadow saw what the old man was doing and stood by the door, waiting for the old man to finish without interrupting him.

The old man kept hammering away for a couple of hours and also did different things to the piece of metal in between.

Shadow tried to memorize everything the old man did and while doing so imagined himself doing it as well.

He tried to learn everything he could in case it would help him in the future.

*

After the old man finished he took notice of Shadow.

He also took notice of the sword that shadow was holding onto.

He saw that it was in great condition and had been greatly taken care of.

The old man knew that this young man wasn't part of the abandoned city, and the only way to get into the city was through the guard.

The guard must have probably let him in after taking a glance at the sword.

He thought that he wasn't part of the military, because the military didn't care about the quality of weapons, and let him in because of the well sharpened sword.

"Have you ever worked with metal, young man?"

The old man asked while looking at Shadow, who simply shook his head to answer the question.

"Shall I teach you how to work with it?"

Said the old man who seemed to have been wanting an apprentice to pass on his knowledge to.