After Lucius woke up, he found himself next to his parents in the medical tent. Feeling a throbbing pain in his head, he forcefully closed his eyes and clutched the back of his head. Then, he saw someone’s hand, holding a wooden plate of meat and fruits, stretched out towards him.

Without any courtesy or manners, he grabbed the plate and started to devour the meat, grabbing it fiercely in his hands and tearing it apart with his teeth. While sucking the juices and grease from his fingers, he stuck his tongue out and saw that his fingers had bandages and some herbs on it.

He then snapped out of his food craze and looked up to the hand that was still outstretched.

He saw Caelus, who was staring at him with a surprised expression. After seeing that Lucius had noticed him, Caelus returned back to a somber expression, then got up and walked away.

The wide-eyed Lucius returned to devouring the remainder of the plate. He turned around to see his parent still sleeping and breathing normally.

He left the plate back on the cot and went away to run after Caelus.

Catching up, Lucius stayed a couple of feet behind Caelus. He tailed after him, as they walked silently around the ruins of the village.

After a couple of minutes, Caelus then spoke in a dry voice, “I’m sorry about Marcus.”

Lucius shook his head quickly as tears started to fall down his face, when he heard his brother’s name. He responded, “No. It’s not your fault. I’m too weak. Please teach me how to be strong.”

Caelus scrunched his eyebrows, “Why me?”

“I know how strong you are! Teach me how to be as strong as you.”

Caelus sighed and said, “No. I’m not that strong. If I was stronger, no one here would’ve died.”

“I don’t blame you. I blame myself for being weaker. Please teach me how to be strong. Please!” Lucius ran towards him and clung to Caelus’ leg.

Frozen at Lucius’ actions, Caelus was not able to react. He tried to push Caelus off with his other foot, saying, “I can’t teach you anything. I’m not that good of a teacher.”

Caelus, then trudge on, while Lucius continued to cling on and beg him.

Delton was then forced out of Lucius’ mind and was brought towards the older Lucius. Lucius spoke to him with a cold tone, “Alright, big mouth. Start performing the morning training exercises. Perform this for six times, then you can have a longer break. After that, it’s gonna be a surprise. Hehehe.”

After Lucius finished speaking, an oppressive aura emanated from his body. Then, Delton nodded his head and complied, starting the morning training routine.

During the break, Delton lazed around and laid down next to Lucius. Delton, then asked, “Oy, old man. How much time’s actually passed?”

Lucius said in an indifferent tone, “It’s only been three hours in the physical world. You’re now at the hospital.”

“Only three hours, huh?” Delton felt too tired to go anywhere. He visualized the mother-son image to recover again. After that, he looked around and took a deep breath, puffing his cheeks.

Rolling his eyes, he turned over to Lucius and asked, “Can you give me a phone?”

Lucius tossed Delton another copy of the same phone he had on him, and responded, “If it gets you to stop making those stupid noises and bothering me, then here you go.”

Having renewed interest, Delton played around with the phone, but grew more and more frustrated when he was using it. He found that he could not message anyone, so he simply read some of the news articles.

The main stories were related to the rising tension between the manufacturers and the Mom Sol Corporation.

After going over the recent news stories, Delton scrolled back up to browse whether any of the other news articles got more interesting. Blowing a raspberry, Delton then asked Lucius another question, “Which show are you watching now? Mind if I watch it with you? Send me the link?”

Lucius grunted, then with a wave of his finger created a projection of what was on the phone screen up in the sky. Lucius then laid on his back while on the air and continued watching.

Delton watched on with a slight smile on his face. The sounds of the show echoed through their ears.

After a couple of hours, Lucius switched off the projected screen and said, “Alright, on to the next part of your training.”

A brown glob extruded itself from Lucius’ body. Right in midair, the glob morphed itself into the like of the ten year old Caelus.

The cloned Caelus dropped himself onto the ground. He looked at Delton with arrogance and disdain. Lucius then spoke, “You’re going to fight with Caelus for a couple of hours. Either get beaten the crap out of you and forge and refine your soul or visualize Caelus’ battles, improve your mind, and then get the crap beaten out of you.”

Wide-eyed, Delton then said, “Woah, woah, woah—“then suddenly his heart started to beat in an alarming rate. Pain filled his entire body, as his soul body grew dimmer and dimmer.

Lucius hissed, saying,“Damn, kid. I told you not to complain about the training. You made a bet and you lose that bet. Existence was our witness. If you even planned on complaining, your body would warn you, and if you actually went through with it, you would’ve died.”

“Shit.” “You thought you were so smart making that bet, huh. Now no complaining any more, alright. Go get your ass handed to you by Caelus.”

“You’ll heal my body, right?”

“Don’t worry, kid. I’ll heal you. I’m not trying to kill you. Haha,” Lucius chuckled, then snapped his fingers, causing an aura to emerge from him.

Delton’s body reformed from Lucius’ energy, then he dropped down to the ground, facing Caelus, who was around fifty meters away. Delton, then began to visualize Caelus’ battles, as his mind accelerated and his breath grew heavy.

Caelus dashed towards him at a speed so fast that even with his mind accelerating from the visualization, Delton could not even catch a blur.

He then increased his heart rate, allowing him to barely make out Caelus’ shape, but it was mainly a brown blur. He increased his heart rate again, and by the time he was able to get a clear picture of Caelus, Delton’s heart ruptured, causing him to cough up several mouthfuls of blood.

Lucius, who was watching on, spat out his drink, while watching the battle with glee. He started laughing and dry heaving, while injecting some energy to Delton to heal himself up, “Oh man! You’re so lucky that you’re in my memories and not in the real world. What the fuck were you thinking? Your internal organs are too weak. You’ve never trained them. I’d have thought you’d learn your lesson from before.”

Clutching his chest, Delton gritted his teeth and swallowed the next mouthful of blood rising from his throat. He wiped the blood from his lips and said, “How then am I gonna keep up with him?”

Lucius waved his hands in front of him, “That’s for you and Caelus to figure out. It’s not only his mind that you’re visualizing, but his keen battle senses, too. I’ll be here to heal you up, when you fuck yourself over again.”

Delton then gestured towards Caelus and smiled, while the aura of a demon took over again.

Delton accelerated his mind again while visualizing Caelus’ battles. Feeling his heightened senses, he did not increase his heart rate to the previous level. While he couldn’t get a clear image of Caelus, he can still calculate the trajectory of the blur in front of him.

Predicting that Caelus was going to punch at him with his right fist, Delton expanded his muscles on his right arm to at least three times its normal size, veins bulging out. Delton unleashed his punch.

After the two fists met, Delton’s face met a pink mist. Closing his eyes to avoid the mist from affecting his vision, he felt a ramming force from his chest, slamming him backward, off of the ground. Feeling off-balance, his body spun to the right while in mid-air. Having landed, Delton opened his eyes to see that his upper right torso had been completely obliterated.

Now his body’s pain receptors kicked in, causing him to scream at the top of his lungs. Lucius snapped his fingers and Delton’s body returned back to normal.

Delton slowly got back up and clutched his right fist, savoring the renewed feeling in his right upper body again. He then gestured for Caelus to come at him again.

By the end of the four hours, Delton had to be healed by Lucius 200 times. Some of it was due to injuries that Delton incurred on himself from accelerating his mind and rupturing his internal organs and veins.

Sometimes it was due to him underestimating the ten year old Caelus’ physical body. He learned it the heard way with exploding body pieces.

Most of the time, it was due to getting thrashed and beaten black and blue by Caelus.

Taking another break, Delton stretched his body, feeling his improved soul body and senses. He found that he could accelerate his heart rate for extended periods of time compared to before, but no more than half a minute.

Delton asked Lucius, “Even though I’m a soul, what am I gonna do when I go back to physical reality? Do I really have to do this again?”

“As long as your soul improves, your body will improve by itself.”

“What? Can this actually improve my body?”

“Yeah. The body and soul are inextricably connected. If one’s improved, the other will try to catch up. Your body will slowly improve while you’re in this coma. Too bad I found it at such a a later time. You’re reaping from my struggles.”

“How the fuck does that even work? So if I don’t exercise, my body will still improve to catch up to my soul body?”

Lucius nodded in agreement and said, “But by exercising in the physical world, you’ll increase the speed in which it’ll come up. You'll see what I mean later.”

The day had turned too evening by now. During his break, Delton floated towards the child Lucius, who had been clinging on Caelus’ leg, pleading to be trained by him.

Caelus shook his head, finally able to peel Lucius from his leg. He placed Lucius on the ground, and said “Do you want me to train you like your brother?! Don’t you see what happened with that?”

Lucius looked back at Caelus and tears started to well up. Opening his mouth multiple times, Lucius could not say anything in response.

Caelus then said, “I’m sorry. I know what it’s like to be powerless, Lucius. Even with all my strength, I was still not able to save everyone.”

Lucius wiped off the tears from his eyes and said in a serious tone, “I don’t care about that. You’re the strongest person I know. I want you to train me like you trained yourself. My brother wasn’t strong enough. I want to be stronger than him. I want to be as strong as you. I need to be strong now.”

Caelus asked, “Why do you want to be strong?”

Lucius spoke “I want to protect my family. That’s it.”

Caelus pondered on those words, then said, “Alright meet me in front of my house later tonight. My father will be there to show you the beginning portions. After the mourning period, you’ll train with me after the morning training exercises. The training will be much harder compared to what Marcus did. All I’m going to say is, it will be the some of the most painful experiences of your life.”

Lucius stared at Caelus with red eyes and said in a barely audible voice, “I’ll go. Nothing will be as painful as yesterday.”