Adam sat down on the seat and rested his body on it, completely at ease. He wasn't worried at all about the fact that Leo had a gun, with his current speed Adam was confident that he could murder Commander Wesley ten times over before that gun cleared leather.

Wesley squinted his eyes at seeing Adam relax himself, as if unhappy that he was apparently letting down his guard. Nevertheless, he took out a few folders worth of documents out of his right pocket.

"Adam, were have you been? Do you have any idea how many resources and manpower we wasted looking for you?"

"Then, just as we had given up, you just show up in the middle of god damn nowhere."

Leo seemed to be quite angry at this moment. The composed kind of angry, the one that you would get from a professional diplomat, attempting to lay the fault and guilt on you in order to maintain a higher negotiating advantage.

However, this tactic would prove futile against Adam. Who would possibly expect any strategy arising from social tact to work on an individual with a total charisma value of 6. A value which accurately represented how much he cared about whether or not he gave Leo any trouble for the past few months in which he was under the care of Master Li.

Commander Wesley took the pipe to his mouth and slowly inhaled for exactly five seconds, after which he lowered the pipe exactly to where it had been before and exhaled all the smoke, it came out in a perfect ring which slowly expanded outwards, accurately demonstrating his ability as a skilled smoker. The whole time he was looking at Adam, a glint in his eyes that demanded an answer, a satisfactory one.

Adam looked out the window, it was a clear day but the tinted window dampened the colours of the outside. The car was still in the national park, a magnificent mountain range extended beyond to the horizon, these must be the Blue Mountains. Looking outside, Adam slowly responded.

"Leo."

Commander Wesley's face contorted slightly as he heard Adam address him by his first name.

"You just need to do your thing. You tell me what needs to be done and I go ahead and do it. I do my own thing and you go off and do your own thing."

Adam was still calmly looking out of the window.

Leo simply looked shocked. His jaw was hanging loose almost as if he couldn't believe that Adam had just said that.

Then, he reached out from his seat to shirtfront Adam.

Only to stop.

A deadly stop.

Leo's head was already halfway through the cabin when he found the sharp end of a skewer, which was used to hold together a burger in the snacks table, softly pressing against his neck.

Adam was still calmly looking outside the window, towards the distant horizon. He didn't even need to look at Leo to judge where to point the skewer since his [Awareness] allowed him to perceive everything in this room perfectly.

If Leo wasn't shocked before, he certainly would be now. He opened his mouth to speak but found that nothing came out. Instead he closed it and took a deep breath.

The whole time not moving from the position in which a skewer was pointed at his Adam's apple.

He exhaled and unmasked his face as a broad and extremely sincere looking smile was revealed to Adam.

"My, my. This was just a misunderstanding. You see I had just wanted to clarify a few terms of your employment. But I believe it's all cleared up now."

Adam lazily turned to look at him.

"Any more misunderstandings which you seem to have no lack of?"

Leo's facial expression didn't change whatsoever, he seemed very experienced in matters of intrigue.

"Of course not, I have all the terms of the agreement here with me, along with your first assignment."

"The terms are as such, you will be paid a monthly salary of twenty-thousand dollars for virtue of being a special operative operating under the crown. This is in addition to the payout for Projects, Assignments, Missions and such. Work related expenses will be provided for by the crown, as such all weaponry, training and ammunition you may require can be requested through the military."

"You will be required to undergo SAS training. The most elite special forces in the Commonwealth and in fact the World. Since you will be operating alone we can forgo the signals, patrol and squadron induction training. This will mean a course of eleven weeks ."

"So, it'll be two and a half months in military training?"

"Yes."

Adam wouldn't be too enthusiastic about this, his body had progressed to the point in which he would probably be able to handle it. However, one shouldn't underestimate the brutality of the SAS training regime. It would still prove to make him stronger though, so he would still go along with it.

Commander Wesley seemed to continue despite seeing the obvious reservations in Adam's eyes.

"You will begin tomorrow, so you had better pack your things and expect us to pick you up. Before you ask, this is non-negotiable. In return for allowing you free reign we will have to keep you in a tight schedule. On the bright side this training counts as your first assignment so you will be getting paid for these two and a half months."

Adam kept his cool composure, but inside he felt like crying. He had an entire cohort of people to beat up, couldn't this wait a while.

...

No...

I'll manage, I don't need to compromise when I know I can achieve something.

"Leo, can you pull over at that Chinese looking building for a couple minutes. I need to do something."

Leo was confused but complied with Adam.

Before he knew it Adam was standing before the wooden gates of the Goju Ryu Karate training place. The last time he had been here was a few months ago. It was also the first time he had met Master Li.

Back then Adam had wished that he had never opened this door, but now, now Adam wanted to test out how strong he had become.

Taking a step forwards, he put both palms on the gate's doors and slammed them outwards. Literally barging into the place, if he was going to offend someone, he may as well thoroughly offend them.

The crashing door let out a resounding BOOM as they swung inwards and smashed against the stone walls. There were about three dozen practitioners inside the courtyard this time, a significantly lesser number than before. However they were all at least black belt and they were sparring with each other. A spar in which Adam had resounding success in disrupting, as evident by the few dozen pairs of eyes curiously looking at him in hostility.

A tall Asian young man with Japanese features stepped forward to receive Adam, at first he had an expression that said.

'What the hell are you doing?'

But as soon as he noticed that Adam was wearing a sinister black changpao that hostile expression was replaced with one that almost seemed like an oxymoron. It said.

'How dare your kind set foot in here, take one more step and a year from now will be the anniversary of your death. But, don't actually take that step forward, you see, I am a righteous person and don't feel like fighting evil today. If I were afraid of you then may heavenly lighting smite me from the surface of this world.'

However the last part of that expression disappeared when the Japanese man saw that Adam wasn't an old Chinese man with an extremely long white beard and a terrible sense of humour.

He stepped forwards and took a low stance. If he remembered correctly this one was called Ge-dan.

Adam walked forward a few more steps and took a neutral stance with [Shadow Footwork]. It allowed him great manoeuvrability and manipulation of his techniques, however it lacked great destructive power. Although it didn't matter since he didn't want to kill them.

His feet were about thirty centimetres apart, facing outwards and heels up. His palms were in front of him, bent forwards in a thirty-five degree angle. His right foot and right palm were slightly in front of their left counterpart.

This stance should be good, this posture was passable according to the standards of Master Li.

The young Japanese man was now roughly five metres in front of him. His fellow practitioners were watching on with a judgemental expression, they were treating this intrusion as an honourable challenge to their martial discipline.

The young man took a wide step forward and executed a roundhouse kick towards Adam's body. The judgement of the distance was perfect as the ankle would strike just under the protection of Adam's arms, into the side of his stomach. From the looks of how much force this kick had, it would likely land someone out of action if they were struck by this.

The roundhouse kick in Karate is a favoured technique by many practitioners. It allows for a pre-emptive strike outside the range of someone's hands, destabilises the opponents stance if they choose to block it and give the initiative to the practitioner. Let alone the fact that it packed great power, this move was a vital instrument in most Karate practitioners.

Of course, this wasn't any problem for Adam. His neutral stance was specialised to move anywhere at a moments notice. The footwork in most Japanese martial arts emphasised a solid structure which allowed explosively attacking forwards at a moments notice. Kendo and Karate are good examples of this. However it would be difficult and slightly awkward to move sideways or backwards with this footwork technique.

That is the advantage that lay in Adam's [Shadow Footwork]. It was designed for evasion and lightning quick strikes, with a flexible footwork that allowed one to retreat omni-directionally.

Adam stepped backwards in the time span that it would take the average human to blink just as the kick was about to land on him. The young man was surprised at this, firstly because he hadn't encountered anyone that could move backwards with such ease and secondly because it caused his roundhouse kick to miss.

Normally a practitioner would simply lower the kicking foot and take a Ge-Dan stance so as to stabilise their position if they miss, however, Adam dodged at the last possible moment and caused the kick to go much further than his body. This made the practitioner become of balance and slightly turn their back towards Adam.

Of course, the first advantage of his stance was freedom of movement, the second was lightning quick attacks. He would be a fool to let this opportunity go by, thus, Adam took two steps in the time it takes to blink three times. This placed him right beside the young man.

Adam decided to take him down with a combination of a sweep and a hand chop. He swept the outstretched right foot of the young man and caused him to fall backwards. While he was still falling backwards Adam could see the fearful face of the young man. His hair had become bedraggled and cold sweat had formed at the young man's brow. It didn't matter since Adam sent his right hand chopping into his solar plexus. Causing the young man to almost black out from the pain and accelerate his fall backwards into the stone pavement.

Pkkk!

It was a loud, yet muffled sound. The sound of a clothed man hitting the ground very hard.

Adam looked down at the first person he had dispatched for the day, his eyes were blanked out and drool was coming out of the right side of his mouth. He was out cold.

Looking back up, he saw the surprise faces of all the practitioners when he had dispatched the young man in one fell swoop. Then, they were replaced by faces of anger until a young man walked out of the temple inside the courtyard.

He was Adam's age, and yet everyone was looking at him in respect. His features were fair and sharp, reminiscent of Oda Nobunaga. His belt was black without any golden stripes on it, however, by the look on everyone's faces, it seemed that his belt didn't determine his skill.

The practitioners around Adam seemed to part for the young man like how the sea had split for Moses. They took their positions on the sides of the courtyard and ceremoniously sat down on their knees, as was traditional in Japan. This was the first time that Adam could get a clear look at the young man, not through a sea of people.

His face was fair and sharp, his bearing lofty. He seemed like the Emperor of a Divine Kingdom, not a practitioner in some dojo.

He spoke out in English. Surprisingly he spoke perfect English, better than some natives and without any accent at all.

"What is your name, worthy opponent?"

Adam was surprised at the gall of this kid that was his age, surely someone that was around his age couldn't possible be as strong as he was.

However, Adam kept his thoughts to himself, he didn't respond since he had built up some small amount of prejudice against this guy.

Seeing Adam's silence, the young man smiled, if he was offended the he hadn't shown any signs of taking offense at Adam's silence.

"I am Ito Toshihiro. I believe that you should know this since judging from your clothing, Old Man Li has sent you, hasn't he?"

Taking Adam's prolonged silence as an affirmative, Toshihiro continued.

"Seeing as you are probably the disciple of that old man, I should tell you about my history with that old man. Three years ago, when he first came by, he thought that this was a Buddhist temple and wanted to recruit a disciple from this place. Seeing me, he exclaimed at my latent talent, telling everyone in the dojo at how well suited I was for practicing the martial path. Then, just as I was about to accept him as my master, he realised that we weren't a Buddhist temple when someone came in with a Karate-Gi. After we explained to him that we were Japanese, he burst into a fury and seriously injured the majority of everyone here."

"Ever since then, he comes by every year and breaks out in a rampage. Now I am not sure what reason he has that we have made him so angry, and I assume that you are here for the same reason."

By this point in time, Toshihiro had reached the bottom of the stairs, he took a normal stance with his fists spread apart and lightly clenched. From the natural position in which he stood, Adam could tell how formidable an opponent Toshihiro would be.

Toshihiro then extended his right hand forwards, in an open palm. This only meant one thing in the martial world.

"Come!" Toshihiro proclaimed.