Chapter 34 Bloodless

“Done with that already!? The day is about to end.”

“Koda, sir. This little rascal keeps slowing me down.”

“Liar! He was the one goofing off and leaving the job all for me!” Josiah shouted.

Both him and Reeve were designated to cleaning duty. They had been mopping the room for the last couple of hours while the others went for physical activities. They were inside the men’s room during the time they went there to get dressed for the bloodless training.

“You two still can’t get along? I guess you’re going to have to be the duo on the cleaning until you learn how to.”

“…”

“Finish that already and come to the bloodless training.”

Josiah felt a chill down his spine.

The bloodless training was a modality where the holder didn’t use the bloodbound power of his weapon at all. Aiming both for perfecting common-weapon wielding and beginning on blood control.

“Sir…” Josiah asked in a low voice as he went near Sergeant Koda.

“Say it.”

“I don’t know how not to use my bloodbound powers.”

Reeve overheard and mocked loudly enough for everyone to hear:

“Haha! Told ya? He’s a babyface!”

The other soldiers inside couldn’t help but to chuckle.

“Oh yeah, you’re the new guy. If you haven’t learned that before you are going to begin today. Just talk to Tal when he shows up today.”



The group was redirected to that same sparring room of before. The ones who already knew how the thing went could spar like before. This time without using the powers of their own weapons. As for Josiah, he went straight to instructor Tal to learn his first lesson on blood controlling: trying not to use the power at all.

“So this sword of yours just gets stronger the higher the level it reaches? It’s a pretty common power.” Tal spoke after Josiah clarified the situation.

‘Actually the sword creates bloodbounds on other weapons as well, but I’m not going to reveal that to people here…’ Josiah thought to himself.

The tall instructor proceeded:

“..It’s also an easy power to measure whether you are controlling it wrong or right. We always begin controlling the power to tone it down rather than toning it up. You are still eight. Your body isn’t ready to tone it up anyway.”

‘Yeah, Thomas told me that…’

“Listen up. You are already pretty good with your sword, so you must’ve noticed that bloodbound powers are related to the flow of the stream, which means they only work if you are on a certain state of mind.”

‘That’s right. When I stagger people with my dagger their powers seem to tune down for a while. Also, Benson cut the whole effect of my usage when he slit a cut to my shoulder at that time.’

“So what you’re going to do is leave your mind wandering elsewhere, trying not to completely focus so that your power is going to come weaker, understand?”

“U-hum.”

‘I never thought about that. Sounds easy enough.’

“Come then. I won’t go very hard.” Tal just drew a short sword which was actually human-made and not bloodbound. Since he wasn’t the one training, he was allowed to have that.

Josiah took a deep breath.

He started thinking of unrelated stuff. Things outside from his sight. The village. Thomas. Dirtswamp Point. For some reason, he remembered his mother from the other world. Her son died when he was on his way to the pharmacy.

‘I wonder how did she stay after that? I wish I could see her again…’

Josiah went for an attack.

Tal easily caught his hand in the air and twisted his wrist. The sword fell down.

“Ouch!”

He let Josiah go. He wanted to say ‘What are you thinking of!? Weren’t we going to measure if I’m using the power low enough!?’ or something on that line, but Tal was his superior, so he didn’t say a thing.

“I knew that would happen. Wandering off with the mind to alter the state seems like an easy thing to do but you shouldn’t forget you are fighting. If you don’t focus you’re going to let yourself get caught on basic attacks. The key here is balance. You shouldn’t only alter the overall mood in your thoughts but should still keep focused. It’s a very hard thing to do.”

‘I foresee this guy is going to beat the cr*p out of me in the upcoming days at this time of the day…’



Josiah finished the training session full of bruises, the nerves on his right arm throbbing, and his hand shaking out of fatigue.

Tal said after they were done:

“You’re doing well on controlling your state of mind. I felt almost no bloodbound powers from your swings.”

“I did!?”

“You just need to work on maintaining the pressure on the fight while you do the same to your mind. Anyway, let’s try this again tomorrow. Or better… The day after tomorrow. Tomorrow Koda has other plans for you.”

‘Plans? And Koda plans out of plans of any kind? I don’t like the sound of that…’

Josiah went back to his room wronged.

‘How am I supposed to diverge my attention to weaken the stream and fight at the same time? It sounds so contradictory. If I focus on the fight my bloodstream begins to act accordingly.’

The first day at the emerging talents went by long and harsh. The routine was filled with sparring, aim training, physique building, and for Josiah… A lot of cleaning.

Josiah had a hard time sleeping.

His body was all hurting. The bunkbed felt strange. People inside the room kept snoring… And ever since the training, he couldn’t take his life at Dirtswamp Point out of his head.

‘Did that happen really in another world? Am I never going back to that place? Why did that happen?’

Josiah turned his body over for the hundredth time in his bed.

‘What am I doing? Why am suddenly remembering that now of all times? That life is long gone. I should get some sleep before Koda kicks in and starts barking out orders.’

And then he started paying attention to the snoring again.

The scene repeated itself many more times until the dawn.

The group woke up with Sargeant Koda’s deep voice from outside the room. He shouted as he knocked on the door:

“Wake up, everybody! We have a mission today!”