Xuan Long

Xuan Long was only a stage-1 Master as opposed to his ancestor who was a Legend, but to the present Lance this was as far away as the stars. Due to having almost no free time in the past month, Lance hadn't managed to find a way to contact Attok and find out how the hell he could get this geezer to back off of him.

Lance was not usually one to go running for help to the grown ups, but in this case he was just at his wit's end. He had gone through a training which was at least 10 times more difficult than what the other bottom level group had gone through.

Each and every bout of sparring, Lance almost always found himself paired with a sneering Asian youth who would beat him within an inch of his life. Lance had felt the pain of his ribs being broken, his bones being fractured and once even his skin being peeled off due to a peculiar martial art of one teen.

Each time he lay on the ground, bleeding and broken, Xuan Long would press his face to the ground parallel to Lance with a manic look on his face.

"Do you give up?", he would ask.

Each and every time, Lance would shake his head. Once, he hadn't even had the energy to shake his head, so he had to whimper a "No" out unless this crazy old geezer took that as a yes.

He branded each and every face of the youths who had beaten him up into his memory. Xuan Long's face in particular was branded so deeply that he even dreamt of taking revenge on him.

The worst part was the healing. When he was hurt this badly, Darius would give him an extra portion of enidra. All night when he meditated, it would get harder and harder to concentrate as there was a constant itching in his body which was the enidra healing him.

No, actually, the worst part was knowing that this wouldn't be the last time this would happen.

This was also one of the major reasons for Lance wanting to break through as soon as possible. As a stage-1 Initiate, he would more or less be on the same stage as them and would at least manage to stand his ground.

The only information he could pierce together was that there were multiple factions in IE, and Attok's faction clashed often with Xuan Long's. As a descendant of Attok, Lance belonged by default to his faction, unless he changed factions later.

The pain and Xuan Long's gloating only served to strengthen Lance's will. He added "taking revenge" to the list of reasons why he could not give up and could not die no matter what he faced.

If he was really being honest with himself, Lance's personality was such that when an insult was taken, he could not rest and would not forget unless he paid it back, except in special cases. So, Xuan Long's had actually constantly "encouraged" him to not give up. If he knew this, he would definitely be spitting mad.

"Yes, Master Xuan Long.", answered Lance, bowing to Xuan Long while secretly gritting his teeth.

"Thats too bad. If you hadn't broken through, maybe Attok could have argued in front of the high martial and tried to save you from going on the mission. Now that you have, there is no chance."

Lance didn't answer. He wordlessly walked to the PP and KP testing machines, his joyous mood dampening due to this black raven.