Chapter 54. It wasn’t until midnight

It wasn’t until midnight that night did everyone finished eating and was having a food coma for eating too much. Boss was the first one to excuse himself when the food was finished and headed straight for bed. Once he had left it also signified time for everyone else to head back for the night.

The Chefs were the only one that remained when everyone else had left, it was their final duty for dining with Boss, they had to clean up the table filled with plates of dishes and scraps of food. “Avery, you’ll do the dishes, Harla you can help Avery. “Gordon, Marco, Rea, and I will clean up the table and put everything back. Once that is done, we’ll call it a night, try not to stay up late tonight. I’m just like all of you guys though, so…sigh… just show up on time tomorrow morning for breakfast.”

“Yes! Head Chef!” Everyone shouted in unison.

“Let’s do this.”

…

Morning came faster than most of the kids could prepare for. Boss was forcefully shaking both Michael and Arthur awake. “You two are going to be late for training, go go go!” Boss stated factually. The dinner they had last night went way past their bedtime causing the two boys to be half asleep. Arthur ignored Boss’ attempt completely and curled up inside his blanket further. “Five more minutes…”

Knock knock

Whish

Boss used his powers and opened the door wide open the moment someone knocked on it from afar, he was still waking Arthur up as Michael tried to get ready. Michael also attempted to wake Arthur up by weakly pushing at him before walking away to wet his face.

Shelly and Julie walked in and noticed that both Arthur and Michael were half asleep still and sighed. “Young master, wake up.”

“Five more minutes…”

“Young master, there’s a spider on you.”

“ACK WHAT? GET IT OFF GET IT OFF EWW” The kid jumped up and swiped away at his clothing trying to remove the imaginary spider on him. Shelly walked over and placed her hand on the ground and covered her palms together. She walked over to the window of their room and opened it. “It’s gone now, young master.”

Arthur sighed in relief. Both Boss and Julie chuckled lightly when they saw this scene, ahh so that’s why that nightmare creature looked like a spider. Boss thought to himself as he blew out the lit flame resting on his finger.

“Young master, we have to be at the Chief’s place soon.”

“How soon?”

“20 minutes.”

“Crap!” Arthur ran up beside Michael who was washing his face in the sink and did the same. “You two can go first! We’ll go once we’re done!” Both Michael and Arthur exclaimed when they heard. It takes 15 minutes of walking to get from the Inn to Gran’s place. If they leave right now, they would barely make it in time by walking.

“Shall we listen to the boys and go Shelly?” Julie asked.

“Okay.” Shelly replied. The two girls quickly departed from the room and made their way out of the Inn.

“When do you think those two will notice?” Julie asked Shelly when they were out of the Inn.

Shelly looked up at Julie and replied. “Will they even notice?”

Julie laughed and replied “True, I bet they won’t even notice by the time for their next beating, err I mean meditation.” Julie and Shelly continued to laugh and converse talking about the boys on their way to Gran’s home.

Arthur and Michael continued to get cleaned up and eventually raced out of the Inn with five minutes left before training with Cobble started. They ran the whole 1600 meters (~1 mile) distance to Gran’s home nonstop arriving exactly once training had commenced in the back.

“You two, are right on time.” Cobble nodded and raised an eyebrow “Seems like you two are also, fully recovered and ready to go?”

“Yes, sir!” Arthur and Michael replied in unison.

“Alright, same thing as last week! This week is your last so do your best. Everyone! ALL AT ONCE. GO” Cobble exclaimed.

Hails of blades and arrows flew directly at the man standing in the center of it. The power energy of Cobble repelled all the object blasting them back to where they came. The those that threw the arrows and shot the blades completely disappeared from their spot and rushed up to Cobble aiming squarely for his upper body from all sides.

The five trainees only had their arms pushed back a short distance before following up with a second barrage of fists flying and exploding upon contact with Gran’s defensive energy. The weeks of training they had with Cobble made them very well adapted to Cobble’s repulsive energy. They were hitting him to their limits of what they could recover from the recoil and continued to press on.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Fists continued to explode from all sides for an hour straight until a slight change in energy near Cobble’s leg revealed itself. “His left leg, go now!” Shelly exclaimed almost immediately. The five instantly changed directions going from attacking his upper body to his left leg.

After their previous attempts training with Cobble, they realized that they can’t do anything when they were fighting Cobble altogether, he would raise his defensive energy to just slightly beyond what he assumed the five were capable of unleashing altogether. From this, any attack they did couldn’t breach him.

This is a strategy they had formulated after realizing Cobble’s trick. They had to unleash a constant barrage at Cobble at the same area until the energy at the spot exhausted itself. Cobble’s body would instinctively try to defend itself by transfer energy at another spot on his body to shield himself from the barrage.

During this time of energy transfer a slight delay of when the transfer leaves and joins the upper body to defend itself shows. The energy surrounding the leg will weaken momentarily to assist the upper body while Cobble’s inner energy works to fill up the gaps as quick as possible.

Bangbangbangbang!

“Gogogo!” Everyone used all their might and continued pounding away at the weaken energy of Cobble’s leg. Cobble was sweating buckets knowing that if the kids keep this up, he’ll get hit by five different fists.

It was a test of perseverance and endurance, who would tire out first? Whoever it was, would lose today.

Sweat soaked everyone’s training clothes as the five relentlessly blasted away the leg no giving a single second for Cobble to recover the energy on his leg.

Bang bang!

BANG!

The energy on Cobble’s leg dissipated completely causing Cobble to inwardly go “oh shit!” Causing him to instinctively used both of his arms and pushing back all five of the attackers sending them five meters with the back of their outfit scraping the grassy training field beneath them before coming to a full stop.

All five were panting, some more than others.

“Haaah, you cheated! You can’t hit back!” Arthur gasped for breath and shouted.

“Yeah!” Julie exclaimed. “This means we win!”

“Haaaaah, gah you kids are so freaking scary, were you all planning on crippling my leg?” Cobble exaggerated and wiped the sweat off of his forehead. “Fine, fine you all passed today, if I didn’t stop you guys, I may have gotten injured from your next attacks. Sheeeesh where did you all get this kind of energy? It wasn’t even like this the last time we went at it. Haaaaah” Cobble grumbled and exhaled; he was amazed at what the five trainees had done in just three days.

Never in his wildest dreams would he had believed that there was someone capable of transferring energy from things and condensing into a pill and snuck it into all of the trainees’ meals at dinner last night. If Cobble had known he’d scream at Boss and called him a cheater.

Four of the trainees didn’t know what had happened either, their body felt great and their control was superb, they went in against Cobble with a feeling that today they could do it. To their surprise, they managed to do just that, penetrate the defensive energy Cobble had up, by consistently barraging him with their own for nearly two hours until small weakness showed.

Clap clap clap!

“Oh my gosh, that was freaking AMAZING! You beat up my brother!” A 12-year-old red haired kid sitting off to the side clapped his hands energetically. “What the heck! I didn’t know you guys were so great!” He exclaimed and then muttered quietly to himself off to the side “Admittedly I should have known when I heard Galafray, But still! AMAZING!”

Clapclapclapclap!

The five trainees couldn’t match Boulder’s level of excitement and awkwardly smiled at each other. Shelly got up and dusted off the mess on her training clothes. Boulder ran over after seeing Shelly got up and stood before her. “You were especially amazing Shelly! When you told them go for the leg, they listened so fast! My heart was racing when you said that!” Boulder excitedly stated.

Shelly calmly looked at the boy half a head taller than her. “Thanks, but it wouldn’t have worked if we didn’t train our hardest.” Her calm reply didn’t dampen Boulder’s excitement as he vigorously nodded his head in agreement.

“That’s right, that’s right! You all were amazing!” Boulder smiled and agreed. He then noticed that Julie was trying to get up too and hurried over to her side. “Julie! You did great too, oh my gosh! Here let me help you up!” Boulder held Julie’s hand, his heart palpitating as he tried to maintain his calm as Julie got up.

“Thank you, Boulder” Julie replied with a smile. She then continued. “Let’s help everyone get up.” Boulder followed Julie’s order and went over to Seth he grabbed the person who looked to be the heaviest there and pulled Seth upward with a smile on his face. He turned around looking at the two ladies who were helping Michael and Arthur up hoping to show off his strength to them.

However, the two girls didn’t even notice or cared when they saw what Boulder had done, it was just helping Seth up in their mind. Boulder laughed it off when he thought they were going to be amazed.

“Thank you, Boulder.” Seth thanked the kid who tugged him up to his feet and walked over to the pavement where the other four had went and sat down beside the house he was too tired to remain standing.

Cobble walked over to Boulder and whispered, “Whatcha expecting? They trained with me, Pebble and our father everyday…pfftahaha” Cobble let out a slight chuckle causing Boulder to scratch his head responded with a bright smile, “Ahaha, I forgot.”

Cobble continued to whisper. “Besides, if you want girls, I don’t think you will have a chance with those two there, if it’s strength those two boys are not your match at the moment, but do you think you’re better than the girls? Probably physically, but they’re definitely smarter than you. Also, remember that kid with the sunglasses yesterday? he’s stronger than them.”

Boulder nodded his head as his eyes remained fixated on the two girls and boys in front of them.

“Did you hear what I just said?” Cobble asked.

Boulder only heard half of what Cobble had said, “Uh huh, uh huh, something something, gotta be stronger than the girls to get them, something sunglasses was stronger than them, gotta be stronger than him too.” Boulder replied. He continued “Gonna go get them drinks! They must be tired! Be right back!” Boulder ran off into the house in an excited

Cobble sighed when he saw the younger brother of his and shrugged his shoulder. Oh well, having a goal isn’t so bad either. Cobble headed back inside to help Boulder with bringing out the trays of snacks and drinks for their brunch.

Pebble, Dr. Galil, Roselyn, and Gran walked out of the home with the same enormous sheet of cloth for everyone to sit around as they ate. Gran asked Cobble how training went with Boulder excitedly jumping in narrating the entire ordeal a vivid and exaggerated manner spewing fruits and breadcrumbs out of his mouth.

Pebble’s face remained expressionless as he listened to Boulder’s narration. However, inwardly as he stared at the five potential monsters before him, he was worried, if what Boulder had said was even remotely accurate, he’ll be in trouble tomorrow. It wasn’t just Cobble that they managed to find a weakness to exploit. Pebble had a few too.

Gulp