???

Waking up with the sun as always, I stood up slowly.No dream as always. It's one less subject to talk about to the others. Shaking those thoughts out of my head, I exit my chamber, a simple room with just a plant as decoration, the only thing mom left here, so I took care of it. 

Following the same daily routine for the past 5 to 6 years I know exactly what to do. Leaving the house to go the lake next to it, I take some water to water the plant, then taking the plant outside to let it have some sunlight. Looking around me all the time, in case some beasts try to attack me, the house may be in a 'safe zone', it already appends. Mom was here to deal with the beast but now she isn't, and I'm not strong enough to take on what can lay in this forest.

I may have lived here alone for the past 7 years, I only fished and picked up fruits, to have meat I could only trade it with the villagers. So in those 7 years, my preys were just fruits and fishes, some days it'll change.

 Whatever looking around me, I see nothing no beasts no mom, neither come back. After this, I did some light exercise to truly wake up, it took 30 min, 10 min eating and washing up and it's time to go.

I live 6 kilometers or so from the village, why mom wanted to live here, I never understood. I may have good memories in this little house with only 5 rooms ( 2 bedrooms, 1 kitchen, 1 restroom, 1 toilet), wait there is also a cave, where I don't have the right to go until either mom come back or me turning 16. Whatever I have good memories here but why forsaking the security of the village and the facilities there? 

Still, I smile, at the memories inside the house, I could just revive 2 or 3 memories before seeing the massive wooden village gates and its walls made of stone. The doors were already open as some hunting groups already left, I entered the village without any problem.

The village was simply organized with the habitations near the wall and the different facilities near the central plaza, the facilities were classed by the materials they needed to work, as such the smithies were regrouped together in the iron plaza, the alchemist shop was placed near the different markets and finally the school, where I'm going was regrouped with the training grounds.

 It only took ten minutes to arrive at the school from my home, even then I'm not even out of breath thank to the stamina training we've been undergoing for the past year.

I still remember the smile on the face of our instructor when he said that we were going to start the training. We all thought that we were going to learn how to hunt, fight or survive in the forest. We learned how wrong we were the day after when the very same instructor made us run laps this day... and the day afters and all the following days.

It started with just laps around the training grounds and as time passed we had to run more and more until we were able to run 6 laps in one hour and to for 3 hours straight (one lap length being around 4 km). At first, I couldn't even walk back home and they had some hunter take me back home each day. It took three months to be able to run the just the number of laps asked, and four more to respect the time limit.

After the laps, we had to do some push-up, pull-up and others exercises, without healing magic it was impossible to move after the training.Well, even with the healing magic we were unable to move, without it I don't event want to think about it.

When we were able to run under the time limit the training became even harder when they gave us weight at the start of the day to keep all the time. Needless to say that the first day nobody finished the training.

Well, it's been 1 year since we've started the stamina training, and today we will start something new. As I was thinking that, I arrived at the school. The others had their backs facing me and only the instructor could see me.

"Dan, you're here! Excellent we can begin! Congratulation on passing the stamina training! We will start something new today, you can't keep building up stamina right? So today you'll have new instructors appointed and finally, you'll learn how to fight, cool right?" Instructor

 The only answer he got was the cry of joy of everyone around me, as for me I was just smiling. It's the first step in becoming strong enough to find you, mom. Wait just a little more, I'll soon be coming for you!