Chapter 13: The Road To Change Is A Long One Part 1

Elias Ashburn POV:

"Sorry Aldir." The words slipped from my mind, blood oozing from my wounds as I dragged my legs from my exhausted body. "If I survive...at least I can kill it later. Yeah, that's always better. How I always did things."

"Milo, what do we do?" A vacant area in my ringing ears muffled with the questions of my previous cadets when I was training back in the capital's elite training squad. Back then I was the sole leader of our 1st leading youth squadron. Sixteen years of age, I recalled myself to be, on the first mission allocated to our squad in an infamous dead zone.

Dead zones were places ridiculed for their insane dangers and unexpected scenarios that would emerge even if they had a 0.1% chance of ever occurring. A desolate wasteland with no water and insane weather conditions that was home to multiple calamities yet to be unleashed on the world. It was an extremely unknown area with very little information actually being recorded about it apart from its obscenely harsh conditions that would prove to be a total of 45% of fatalities in the land. That's a fair indication of just the immense strain the surroundings placed on you without even reaching the beasts in there that were stronger than almost anything you would experience in the world outside of this, apart from actual intelligent beings like the three races who forge themselves through their distinguished skills to rise in power.

The dead zone was geographically located in an intersection between the nations on the land and slightly south too the soaring human kingdom. Close enough in the centre of the worlds map if we had to say exactly.

"We'll perform our duties like we have been tasked with. Each of the seven of us kills a beast and claims it for themselves and brings it back as proof of completing the trial." I relayed what the leader of the Silent blade squadron, the leader of the actual main elite squad, had informed of.

They each repetitively nodded their heads affirmatively. It wouldn't be much longer till we would finally arrive at the hunting grounds. This squad was something that I had been a part of for now over two years, spending every intimate and not intimate moment together. Secrets were not existent between this squad, but that was also truth for the whole regimen as a whole. It had a policy of being completely open without secrecy to avoid unesssecary dispute nor unknown hate between members that could be exploited in dangerous and important missions. This was pronounced throughout and to ensure this, squads would be put through multiple bonding exercises and be placed in vulnerable quarters where a persons true face would reveal itself.

Though no secrecy and honesty was the policy, I had not once revealed anything about me remotely. My face remained neutral as always and my emotions constantly were detached from any words in the proximity of others. When others shared their weaknesses I would simply lie with a straight face, my eyes containing no light and no colour. Just faint nothingness that spread deceit and unfaithfulness. Everybody considered each over valued comrades, almost family, but I not once assessed a definitive value to these people that I was forced to live a shared life of company of their worst and best moments. Though in my eyes, both sides were irredeemably annoying. And though I've been making an effort to gain some sort of connection between my parents in this life, something that I could linger onto blindly in my direst moments, yet it seemed the time so far has not been enough. I'm still the same beneath the suppressed act of the incredible prodigy. I don't understand my parents and I can't say I feel a genuine connection to them of any sort.

I feel emptiness, with a scratch of hatred and despise aimed towards my pitiful self who struggles to value anyone around him, who cultivates one sided bonds in the time they spend with me.

And just like then...when they laid on their death bed crying out for help, I turn my tail in order to survive and come back stronger to definitively confirm the kill. I would tell myself that revenge is pointless, pride is suicide, and cowardice is the most vital skill and the biggest indicator of your strength. If you no longer cower before anything, you have reached the summit, however if you still run for your life grasping onto the straws to stay alive, you can and have the potential to get stronger. Th only cowardice I can't accept is running away in futility and and not being able to see anything past the thing assigned before your eyes. That is my version of a warriors death.

A warrior who cannot get stronger or has nothing to prove or fight for is as good as dead. And again, it seems I'm falling into my old ideology again. I wanted to achieve something different, so why is this life still so deeply rooted by who I was in the past?

My legs scraped away at the peeling bark from the flooded trees. Gushes of water fell in smaller interrupted waterfalls of the weighted branches. My heated breath shined the brightest in the area around me and before me the path seemed completely blank, like a blind man stranded in a desert.

"What am I doing?" I asked myself, my reflection glinting in the water droplets. I pull the dagger from my back pocket, spinning it through my fingers into a usable grip, and stabbing my hand. "Remember the pain! You lost so that's why you came here to this world! You couldn't become the strongest the way you was before, so set your cause straight for fucks sake!"

Second chances don't come around often, so make sure you take them. Do things differently but attain better results. Build something special that you'll be able to cherish as much as the strength and arrogance that killed me! Be better!

Mistakes are forgivable as long as you repent and learn. Those who do not learn and commit the same mistakes twice...they're better of dead. My morals can still live, even though my emotions aren't there yet. Progress isn't immediate!

My heels span around, digging firmly into the slippery surface below me and accelerating into a slightly altered direction.

Wait Aldir! Survive! I'll be right there, with something that can help me reclaim enough power to defeat that beast!

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