Chapter 50 Conclusion

Lenny was crouching with both her arms and legs on the ground. It was the way she moved when she lived in the forest.
Josiah saw her using that form only once and then never faced anyone moving like that before. He had no idea what to expect. In his experience moving in such a way is only bad for a human.
‘An animal also moves on four feet. If she is confident in her speed this means I should expect her speed to match at least that of an animal.’
Lenny began crawling around Josiah, trying to find a weak spot. He swung the sword at her, causing her to stay back. They tested each other for a while and then Josiah got accustomed to her speed.
Or at least he thought he got.
Lenny charged at him with the speed he assumed she would but she dramatically altered the speed midway, causing Josiah’s timed to swing to be a little late.
‘What!? She can jump almost like a talpig!’
Josiah had to switch his swinging to some plan to defend from her leap. He used a cross-blocking stance to protect his face and upper body, but Lenny didn’t attack him. Instead, she used his body like a pole, contoured him and slid to his back.
‘So you’re not aiming for me? Therefore, I know where you’re aiming at!’
With Lenny on his back, Josiah quickly changed his defensive stance and swung the sword to the ground, on a large, vertical swing. The tip of the blade hit the ground with strength, causing everything right below it to be tossed far away. The dirt. The grass. The dagger which was right below it.
‘I anticipated Lenny could use her speed advantage to try and obtain the dagger back, so I positioned my body right above it on purpose so I could do this.’
Josiah turned back on one move to face Lenny.
Obviously, she was running on four limbs on the direction of the dagger, which had been thrown away.
Josiah gathered all his breath and began pursuing her, with his sword in hands, ready for an attack.
Lenny got to the dagger first and after she caught it from the floor, she quickly turned her body back to face Josiah.
However it was too late.
“Never turn your back on a fight!” Josiah shouted. His body was near hers, the sword was in position and he only had to swing.
In a desperate measure, she let herself fall back to avoid getting hit. Josiah’s swing missed for an inch.
‘That’s what I wanted.’
Josiah then leaped above her fallen body, with one arm he took the dagger away and tossed it to the side and with the other he held Lenny’s other arm.
For an instant, there was a deadlock. But Josiah thought quickly and with a swift movement, he used one of his arms to spin Lenny’s arm until it got close to the other one. He then released her arms to free his hands and quickly immobilized them once again by just pressing them with his right arm.
‘I remember this trick to free one of my hand on a bare-handed fight. The person below now can release herself, but it takes some time. Meanwhile, I should use my free arm to…’
Lenny was desperately trying to get off Josiah’s hands.
“Lenny… This is the time where I punch you repeatedly in the face…”
“Try it.”
Even in that situation, she wouldn’t give up. Lenny kept moving her body quickly to try and release the pressure from Josiah’s arms. She was almost releasing herself.
‘That’s cheap. You know I won’t dare to do that. Well… If you are going to act cheap, then I guess I also am allowed to.’
Josiah said he was only going to use his sword, but the rapier could be used to enhance his strength mildly even without piercing his body, as it was already at level 11. He had been controlling his blood flow so that his power wasn’t enhanced. But at that time he let his blood flow normally. Lenny could feel the change of the pressure as she was being pressed on her arms. Josiah had his arm immobilizing both hers, and they would be fairly easy to get rid of, weren't Josiah using his enhanced strength.
“Uuungh!” Lenny tried and tried removing her arms from below Josiah's but couldn't. During all the time Josiah could have followed in and punched her if it wasn't a spare fight. Some time elapsed in that deadlock.
“Joe…” Lenny said after a while.
“What’s it? If you are going to give up, say it.”
“Joe…?”
"What's it? Admit you can't get out?"
“Joe… Two minutes have passed.”
“…”
A common property of universal bracelets was indicating the time, like ‘watches’ from Josiah’s homeworld. They used blood technology to devise a way of measuring the elapsed time by changing the inscriptions on a glass stone, similar to how nature did with the hilts of the bloodbound weapons. Except that a bit more of human work was needed to make it display the proper characters.
Lenny had one of those. She said she bought it with what she saved in the army. They were among the cheapest universal blood bracelets in the stores.
Josiah glanced at the bracelet on her wrist. It was true. Two minutes had already passed.
Days later, the coronation ceremony was held in the central building of the reserve. Several important figures attended it, but Josiah couldn’t meet any of them because he was too busy standing to attention on a line, together with the other members of the upcoming crew. Several people were nominated soldier, corporal, officer and sergeant. Later, the higher ranks were also nominated, for those who managed to perform notable feats.
The ceremony was very boring, full of commentary by people Josiah didn’t know who spoke using fluffy phrasing on a very monotone tone.
Josiah and the others also had to shake a lot of hands, not knowing exactly who was who. As the only kid below 5 feet, the event was even more confusing to him.
The highlight of the evening was when Josiah was called and received the badge and the nomination was said to him.
After the whole thing ended and people started going away, finally the banquet moment started, and the new nominated soldiers could be at ease. The recruits from who didn’t make it to the emerging talents were also there.
Albo was the first known person to greet Josiah in the middle of the crowd:
“Yo, bro! Congratulations! I also am going to move on to next year's team. See you there.”
“Nice!”
“Guess now you’re my superior, haha! I should salute whenever I direct to you.”
“Meh.”
“Congratulations, mr. corporal.” Watt said once again as he found him in the crowd.
“Congratulations you too. Hey, this is Albo. Albo… Watt.”
“Oh, by the way, a girl was looking for you…” Watt said. “She’s over there.” He pointed to a known figure by the side of a table.
Josiah approached Lenny.
“Hello.”
“Hi.”
“It’s weird being the only child around, right?”
“Well, you are here now.”
“As a corporal, you have the right to pick someone to instruct, they say it’s training for leadership.”
“Yes, I know. I guess we are going to be side by side from now on. From this day on you’re now my right-hand.”