Time passed quickly after the gathering in the basement.
At first, I thought the meeting would change everything immediately, but the next morning our routine continued like before. We woke before sunrise, ran to the village, carried water, studied, trained, and slept.
But the training was becoming easier.
Running to the village no longer felt like a punishment. My legs moved automatically along the path through the trees, and my breathing stayed steady even when we climbed the hill near the southern road. What once felt like a desperate race to stay conscious had slowly turned into something closer to a daily chore.
Theo, Margaretha, and Pritha had even started talking while running.
At first, that surprised me. During our first week, none of us had enough air left in our lungs to speak. Now they could talk about random things while keeping pace.
"Do you think we'll ever visit the southern kingdoms?" Theo asked once between breaths.
Margaretha laughed softly. "You just want to see their libraries."
"Of course," Theo replied proudly. "Knowledge is the most valuable treasure."
Pritha looked toward me while jogging beside us.
"What about you, Rick? Where would you want to go?"
I thought about it for a moment.
"I don't know."
That answer was true.
I didn't really think about places anymore.
My world felt smaller now—training yard, dormitory, village road.
Thinking too far ahead sometimes made my chest tighten.
So I focused on the path in front of my feet instead.
After the run, our morning training had expanded.
We were learning new things.
Horse riding was the first.
At the beginning, the horse frightened me. The animal was large and unpredictable, and when it moved, my body suddenly tensed without permission.
But after several days, the fear became smaller. The rhythm of the horse's steps slowly turned familiar.
Then there was cooking.
Basic meals only, like boiling rice, roasting meat, and making simple soup.
Theo burned the first pot so badly that the smoke alarmed the stable horses.
Margaretha laughed until she almost dropped the ladle.
Pritha ended up fixing the meal while Theo kept apologizing.
Another new lesson was building a camp.
After returning from the village, Spiro sometimes took us deeper into the forest and ordered us to set up temporary shelters.
"Assassins don't always sleep in beds," he said. "Learn to live anywhere."
We practiced tying ropes between trees, building simple rain covers, and hiding the camp so it would not be seen easily from the road.
During study hours, our lessons also changed.
We learned about survival in forests, like what plants could be eaten, which ones were poisonous, and how to find clean water in the wild.
Theo memorized everything quickly, but I needed more time.
We also studied maps.
Understanding terrain.
How to move through a city without drawing attention.
Counting money and calculating prices.
Reading and writing were still difficult for me.
Sometimes when I held the pen too long, my hand would freeze, and my mind would go blank. Letters blurred together.
It felt similar to the moment just before panic, when my thoughts tried to run away all at once.
But no one mocked me.
Not even Theo.
Spiro only looked at the paper once and said calmly, "It's fine. Keep practicing."
Battle training was also changing.
It was still painful.
But not like before.
Now I could dodge most attacks when it was my turn to defend. My body reacted faster, and the world turned into slow motion over a longer time, especially when I activated my Avenir Eyes.
When we practiced striking each other with wooden weapons, Agni and Pritha's hits were still strong, but they no longer felt like my bones were breaking.
That created a new problem.
Training felt easier.
So my mind started telling me it wasn't enough.
At night, after everyone else slept, I often went outside and practiced swinging my sword again.
With my Avenir Eyes activated, usually I only need around an hour to feel exhaustion, but now I have to swing for more than 2 hours.
But it was easier to keep swinging than to lie down and wait for sleep.
Because when the hideout became quiet, other things appeared.
Small sounds.
Footsteps in distant hallways.
Then Frans, Father, and Mother start appearing.
Suddenly, I'm back in my village.
And everything that happens is flame and explosion, and everybody was melting and burning.
I can't stand it, so I prefer to swing my sword at night.
Three weeks passed.
Then Spiro gathered us again.
"We have a bounty job."
The next mission came quickly after that.
It dragged us four days on foot toward the northeastern part of the Empire, near the uneasy border between the Dwayna Dukedom and the Melandru Dukedom.
The land there felt rougher than the southern forests near our hideout.
The roads were narrow.
The village is smaller and more cautious.
Bandit activity had grown worse in that region.
Our target was an infamous bandit fortress.
People described it like a disease in the wilderness.
More than a hundred bandits lived there.
Many mercenary groups had refused the bounty.
Too many enemies.
Too dangerous.
Spiro only said one thing after hearing the report.
"Good training."
We reached the fortress on the fourth night.
The structure stood on a rocky hill surrounded by crude wooden walls and watchtowers. Dim fires burned along the outer perimeter where guards watched the darkness lazily.
We attacked at night.
Before moving, Spiro made us crouch in the forest.
"Remember your positions," he whispered.
I watched the fortress carefully.
My Avenir Eyes traced the faint mana signatures of the guards above the wall.
Ten on the outer watch.
More inside.
My heart beat faster.
But the feeling was different from before.
Still tense.
Still sharp.
But not overwhelming.
More like a tight rope stretched inside my chest.
"Rick," Robert whispered beside me.
"Yeah."
"You see the left tower?"
"Yes."
"Two guards."
"I know."
We didn't say anything more.
Spiro raised his hand.
Then lowered it.
We moved.
The first guard died silently.
My knife struck his throat before he could shout.
The battle started seconds later.
Bandits poured from the fortress like ants from a broken nest.
Arrows flew everywhere.
Many were fired wildly.
Some even struck their own people.
Panic had already begun inside their ranks.
But numbers still mattered.
There were too many of them.
My body moved quickly between shadows.
Dodge.
Step.
Strike.
A man rushed toward me with a rusted axe.
My sword cut his arm before he finished the swing.
I didn't watch him fall.
Another bandit was already behind him.
My mind felt strangely quiet.
The noise of battle surrounded us, but inside my head, everything was calm.
What I hear is just bandit movement and attack, while other sounds don't seem to matter.
That calmness scared me a little.
But I kept moving.
Hours passed like that.
By dawn, the ground inside the fortress had turned dark with drying blood.
My armor felt heavy.
My arms trembled from exhaustion.
Small cuts burned across my skin.
Some of them I didn't even remember receiving.
But we were still standing.
And the bandits were not.
Nearly half of them lay dead or dying.
The rest had broken into chaos.
Many tried to run.
Their leader was among them.
He pushed two of his own men aside and sprinted toward the back gate.
But he suddenly fell down, and Theo appeared, stabbing his back.
"For someone running away," Theo starts mocking the bandit leader, "you were quite slow."
The bandit leader stared up at him with fear.
Theo looked down calmly.
Then he ended it with one clean strike to his neck.
The fortress finally fell silent.