A bone-cracking sound filled the hall as some of the recruits stretched after resting for an hour.
All the remaining ten ladies and some of the remaining young men were already fast asleep, but Kai and a few others were just sitting there.
He watched them, following all their actions with alarming precision, noticing some of their glows slightly darkening whenever their gaze met his.
After twenty minutes of no movement, two soldiers, different from all the ones he had seen, entered and called him to follow them.
They stopped at a blue door that had Gray's name written on its surface, turned, and looked at the little boy with a gaze that was both cunning and worrying.
The one wearing a black cowboy hat knocked on the door three consecutive times, opened it, entered the room, and shut the door behind him.
Less than five minutes later, he returned, opening the door for the little boy.
Both soldiers walked with him until he reached a huge room filled with different swords and metallic objects.
Even as a genius, he could only differentiate a few swords and classify the rest under the sword family, since they all had sharp edges and shimmered under the room's light.
Walking straight under the guidance of the soldiers, he saw someone in a white robe with a blue band tied at the waist, standing there with crossed arms at the back.
"Lieutenant, he's here," the soldier without the hat said, stopping and positioning himself in a soldier's resting stance.
Kai saw a black and blue glow around the man and felt a strange vibration—different from any other vibration he'd felt since setting foot in the city.
But the moment the person turned, Kai walked toward him.
"I can see you're still not as tired as the rest are. Indeed, my instinct made me do the right thing," Gray said, changing his stance and folding his arms across his chest.
The expressions of the two soldiers who had escorted the little boy changed as they realized what they had done.
They shifted their gaze slightly to each other and communicated in codes only those who had served in the military for decades knew.
"Does he want to kill the child?" the one with the hat said, moving his eyelid upward three times.
"I had no idea at first, but now I feel we're the reason for the boy's death," the other replied, blinking in three different intervals.
"What should we do if the public finds out the most respected soldier killed a little boy who would not be above eight years, maybe six?" he continued, curling his mouth inward and blinking after turning his gaze from both the boy and the lieutenant.
"Let's just wait and see how things go. Maybe he won't fight him like he did the fifteen-year-old two years ago," the one in the hat added, ending the coded communication when he noticed the lieutenant's gaze on him.
Kai's breathing changed as he reached Gray. It wasn't anything serious; the only cause of the change was the rumbling sound his stomach was making.
Gray looked at Kai with a more satisfied smile. Reminiscing on what Kai had done during the endurance test, he realized the boy wasn't just strong but could make people follow him without effort.
"Are you hungry?" Gray asked, hearing the boy's rumbling sound.
Kai nodded and clutched his stomach.
Gray gestured, sending the soldier without a hat. After a short while, he returned holding a freshly ripped apple and handed it to Kai, who devoured it without hesitation.
…
Two hours later, Kai entered the hall he'd exited, now with a name tag on the right side of his chest.
A few minutes later, some names were called; twenty people also returned with tags of the same color on their chest.
The remaining nineteen had extreme sadness drawn on their faces, following the same two soldiers who had called the boy out.
Lieutenant Gray walked in after the last person had exited, directing those with the tag through a different door.
The moment the door opened, the four soldiers, including the one Kai had disgraced, welcomed them into a new courtyard and arranged them in groups of four, placing the innocent Kai at the front row of the first line.
"For the last test! You will be facing each one of the soldiers around you. You won't pick the soldiers; they will pick you," Lieutenant Gray announced with a slightly cruel smile.
"I don't expect you to lose, but I know you'll lose. So just survive for more than a minute. If you exceed that, you'll be given a higher point. If not, you'll have no points."
The young men and women began looking at each other, smiling and scanning the soldiers to see if they were strong enough to stand one-on-one for more than a minute.
Kai didn't care to scan them; he already knew just by judging the glow around them.
Gray walked through the arranged groups until he stopped when he reached Kai's group.
"You'll face me," Gray said, pointing a finger at Kai.
Kai was a little surprised but didn't show fear or anything similar and smiled, making the lieutenant smile as well.
'I've never engaged in a fight before, but if it's just surviving, I just have to repeat the same actions I did during all three tests,' Kai thought.
When everyone apart from those in Kai's group saw who Gray was referring to, the place itself was shocked.
Knowing how well Gray performed and how he'd helped other cities fight against monsters and bandits, the soldiers became worried and began to feel sympathy for the boy. Even the soldier who had hated Kai felt the same.
"Let's start," Gray said, walking to a square area with large white circles on the ground like a Chinese arena.
Kai walked swiftly and stood in the square, maintaining a meter's distance from the lieutenant.
The junior soldier walked toward the boy and presented two different swords, but the boy selected the daggers.
One of the senior soldiers handed a wooden sword to the lieutenant and stepped back, just watching who would make the first move.
The boy, who had never fought with a real sword against an opponent, not even his soul, stood there watching the lieutenant.
As the lieutenant began to move toward the boy, placing his steps like waves, he remembered the moves of the men he saw in his village wearing military outfits and dancing with pulsing swords.
Without realizing it, the lieutenant closed the gap and attacked first, and in an instant, the boy saw the tip of the sword slightly at his neck...