Alex woke up early the next morning and made his way toward Tala’s house. The crisp cold air of the early morning was something he hadn’t had in a few days. Without Sunhearts, the desert was hot throughout the night as well.
Tala’s house was one of the bigger ones in the city as he was a prolific salesman, who had ended up contributing a lot to the city in exchange for this place. He was awake already in the morning and met up with Alex.
“Have you thought about what you want?” he asked.
“Blood,” Alex said. “Just blood. As much as you can. You could fill an entire pond with blood, and I’ll accept it graciously.”
“Pond? Oh right, those things. I’ll see how much I can get you. Are you certain you do not need beast cores and Sunhearts? Wasn’t that what you came here for?”
“That was before I knew how I could acquire those,” Alex said. “I can get the other things on my own now.”
“Isn’t that the same for blood as well?” Tala asked, frowning.
“Yes… but I’m too lazy to kill dozens of beasts for the amount of blood I need. I’d rather let the warriors do that since there are so many of them.”
Tala shrugged in the end. “If you say so. I’ll have it prepared.”
“Here, I made the list you want.” Alex handed over a talisman in which he had written the various ingredients he needed for other types of pastes.
“I’ll get these gathered by tonight. I might need more time for the blood,” Tala said.
“Fine with me,” Alex said. “I’ll head out now. I’ve got to train a few women out there.”
Alex left Tala behind and made his way up north where the warrior training ground was. Despite coming so early on, almost every single one of the apprentices was already training on the ground.
In one place, a group of teenage girls and young women were gathered, trained by Gorang. Alex went down to meet them.
“You’re finally here,” Gorang exclaimed in relief upon seeing him. “I’ve been just making them train for the past 2 days. Here, let me introduce you to the all-women warrior group, just as you asked for the test.”
The many women all looked at Alex weirdly, as many hadn’t seen him before at all.
“Oh, you’re the one who defeated the Sun Wraith 4 days ago, aren’t you?” one of them asked. It was a younger woman, no more than in her early 20s.
“I am,” Alex said. “My name is Alex. I am an outsider, but I’ll hope you won’t treat me as one. Do you understand why you have been gathered here?”
A few of the women nodded.
“We were told this is an experiment of some sort, but we weren’t told what the experiment was,” one of the teenage girls shouted from the back. “If I pass this experiment, can I retake my tests to become a warrior?”
Alex turned toward Gorang. He had no idea what he could tell them here.
“Instructor Alex has no say in that matter. But, if you do good enough in this experiment, I will personally bring up the matter of letting you all take retests to become a warrior.”
Enthusiasm among the girls grew upon hearing that.
“So, what do we need to do?”
Alex had the girls quickly form the battle formation. Counting through them all, he realized that there were 47 women gathered there, all ready to fight.
Alex first had them do a simple warm-up with the battle formation to see how much they remembered. It quickly became clear that these women hadn’t forgotten anything. In fact, they were doing much better than the other apprentices in the training field at that moment.
But then again, that was to be expected. While they had failed their tests to become a warrior, it was only because of how difficult the test was for a woman that they had lost. Without it, it was unlikely that they would have done any worse than the men had.
After some light preparations, Alex had them practice for real. “Using that formation, I want you all to actually fight something.”
Alex turned toward Gorang. “Do we have any beasts prepared for them to fight?” he asked.
“We do, but I don’t know how good that idea is,” he said. “Some of these women are as good as the male warriors, so they will easily defeat the beasts. I don’t know if the experiment will be successful if that were to happen.”
Alex frowned. “No, we can’t let that happen,” he said. “But we still need an opponent for them to practice on. I guess I will be the opponent.”
Alex stepped forward.
Gorang belatedly realized what Alex had just said and tried to stop him, but Alex had already announced his intentions to the young women and girls.
“I want you all to form your battle formation and fight me.”
The women paused for a long while, looking at each other as if trying to determine if they were being pranked.
“What’s wrong? I’m not kidding. You can all come at me at once.”
“But…” one of the older women spoke up. “Isn’t that unfair? There are 50 of us here.”
Alex raised an eyebrow. “It is unfair,” he said. “Which is why I will only be using half my strength, if even that.”
The women narrowed their eyes. “Are you saying you are strong?” one asked.
“I am,” Alex said. “I am the strongest person you will have met in your life, so don’t worry and come attack me.”
The women felt the intensity in his words, but that was still not enough to make them act at all.
So, Alex raised his leg and slammed down on the ground. The entire training ground cracked open, with fissures moving all the way up to a building on the side, one of which even collapsed.
The sudden show of strength shocked the women and even caused them to fear him.
“Is that enough?” Alex asked. “Will you fight now or not?”