"The most important before each trip are preparation."

Loud clunks between wooden batons resounded through the practice yard behind the farms.

A boy at the age of 15 struggles to deflect all of his opponent’s strikes. A skeleton thin man is also having trouble against the boy however his problem is at breaching his defences. From his physique, he can’t able to overpower him but there was something else at play.

It was a Hero’s Aura, the force released by their soul. An Aura-clad Hero can do things impossible with human body like crushing boulders with fragile bodies. The skeleton man was obviously a Hero but the boy wasn’t. Being a non-Hero while facing a Hero on close combat on an equal ground would be stupid-no, it would be suicide.

The man then kicks with ten times the strength of what he can do with his meagre body. This threw off the the boy but with a careful rapid steps he manages to reposition on the man’s blind spot.

It was the perfect chance to strike, the boy swung his baton, hitting the skeleton of a man squarely in the head however it wasn’t enough.

Instead of falling down, the man turned to his left side brandishing his stick for an attack but the boy was gone…

He looked left and right, spinning slowly and concluded he ran away.

“Favio, stop running away if you really want to leave this village! DID YOU GIVE UP?”

“... Carelessness-”

A whisper came from behind and the man’s vision distorted as a ringing pain echoes in his head.

“- is your worst enemy. Just like your words said, teacher.”

“Ugh…”

“I think I should bash you to death if I don’t have anything to tie you with.”

“Please don’t… I’m not a bandit.”

Favio extends his hand to help the downed man.

“How did you do that? I never seen you use that technique. I think you could graduate today.”

His teacher grabbed his hand, getting up as he pat dust of himself.

“I just stepped silently around you as you spun and then I poked your head.”

“Really? That poke could critically injure Mages and Contractors and that wasn’t even a poke, it was a full force lounge, don’t you know the meaning of control?”

“Says the Hero that had a B rank when he was at peak, did you even suppress your Aura and Abilities?”

“All I used was Owl Eyes and 90% of my Aura, I held back, okay?”

“Yeah, right… But hey, at least I can defend myself from stray Unreas now.”

“Yeah… You graduated from now on. Better tell your parents first before leaving. I believe you can’t just stay put in a cage, huh.”