The first day passed like that. Silva made sure that everyone got a very good dose of beating. Dawn, Fay, Roxy, and Aaron all had the fight to survive but ultimately lost against their opponents.
When night came, Silva decided to watch everyone. The first person he went to was Dawn. She had faced off Fang that day, and he absolutely dominated her.
In speed, technique, and strength, she was absolutely helpless against him. Silva noticed how much she hated that.
She fought Fang with all she could. Her sword movements were perfect, and her fighting abilities showed that she was indeed a warrior.
But the gap in strength was too much, and Fang won. Fang simply used his speed to get into her blind spots and attack her with a bolt of lightning.
Even if she successfully blocked the attack, he would use his speed to counter and land a hit. But her build was a tough one.
She took attack after attack but refused to go down. No matter how much Fang punished her, she would still pick up her sword and attack again.
When Fang finally used more strength and knocked her out, Silva saw the anger in her eyes, so he knew that she hated that loss to her bones.
Silva found Dawn under a large tree. She was bent over, leaning on her sword that had been stabbed into the ground.
She was sweaty, her breath was unstable, her body was red and trembling, but there was something that stood out—something Silva noticed.
The fire in her eyes burned brightly. She wasn’t done; she could still keep going.
Dawn pulled the sword out of the ground. She took a basic stance and started swinging her sword.
“Go faster, go faster,” she said after every swing, forcing her slash to be faster. The sweat on her body scattered in all directions every time she swung the blade.
Her muscles tensed as the sword came down and stopped right before hitting the ground. She would take it up again and then slash down, repeating the process over and over again until her feet gave out and she fell to her knees.
“How will I show my worth if this is the best that I can do? How will I be able to protect Silva when the time comes?” she said to herself and started pushing herself up.
Silva watched in simple amazement. A smile formed on his face as he looked at her, and his thoughts and feelings toward her deepened.
She was committed to serving and even ready to wreck her body just to get to the power level where she could protect him.
Silva was genuinely happy with this, but he could not let her cause herself permanent damage, so he decided to knock her out.
He moved at top speed, expecting that he would go unnoticed and knock her out. But as he was closing in on her, she suddenly moved and slashed at him. Silva changed direction at the last minute and ran into hiding.
His heartbeat actually spiked due to the experience. He looked in her direction.
“I thought I felt something. Guess it’s just my imagination,” Dawn said and continued her slashes.
Silva watched from his hiding spot. What had just happened now? How did she notice him? How did her sword actually move that fast?
It moved so fast that even he was scared of it. If that blade had actually touched him, the injury would have been serious.
Dawn was not supposed to show such strength and speed. It was impossible, especially taking her current level into account.
The thought worried Silva for minutes. He watched her, but he couldn’t see that speed again. She was back to normal.
So how did she pull that move off? How did she make her sword move fast and not take any damage? It didn’t make sense.
He had the feeling to walk to her and talk to her about it, but he decided that it was not a good idea. So he finally decided to leave for now.
He would take a lot of time to watch Dawn and figure it out soon.
After Dawn, the next person he thought would be best to see now was Mike. Mike, just like Dawn, didn’t take his loss well.
He hated the fact that he was that weak and that his sword style, which he polished for all that while, fell short.
He would definitely take the loss hard. Silva wanted to see how he was coping with it, but what he saw when he arrived there was not what he expected one bit.
He had simply expected that Mike would be training his mind out, but it was far more than training. Mike had chopped down several thick branches and sharpened them all.
He dug holes and put the spikes inside at different angles, creating a very dangerous place to be in, as one wrong step and the spikes would rip into his flesh badly.
Mike was running through this spike field at top speed, gracefully dodging the spikes. His eyes were focused as he moved, struggling to move faster and more agile.
Silva could understand why Mike would choose this training. His sword style focused on speed and agility.
But in his fight, he fell short, so he wanted to get better.
But Mike was getting tired, and as he got tired, his movements became sloppy, and the spikes started tearing into his skin. Yet he didn’t stop.
Silva watched this and was a bit worried for Mike, but he wasn’t going to stop him. From what he saw with Dawn and Mike, they didn’t want to stop. They wanted to go above and beyond.
So he decided that he would leave them to train till they couldn’t move. The aim of this program, after all, was to help them all evolve.
Their commitment would play a massive role in helping that come to pass. Silva left Mike alone to continue his training. He hoped that it would pay off in the end.