Lost Focus

After a minute, I decided to try doing the pull up again by myself. I jumped up and caught the branch. I was quite happy that I was able to do it by myself but I lost the grip after a few seconds. Not discouraged, I tried again and was able to hold on for a few seconds. I continued this process several times until finally I could hold on to the branch for almost 15 seconds.

I sat down and leaned on the tree satisfied with myself. I looked towards Cindy and Mark and saw that they were doing the pull ups on another tree branch. With one arm! After a few, they would switch arms and continue.

It seemed like training was like breathing to these two. They spent all free time training! And I thought this was a break that we were taking.

I watched the two of them with fascination. It was obvious that Cindy was the stronger of the two but Mark wasn't far behind her.

Once they were finished with their training, Cindy came over with the wolf across her shoulders. The magic wolf was still trying to get free but wasn't able to escape his bindings.

"Let's do the same training again." Cindy untied the wolf while Mark and me got into position. I took out the dagger and got ready.

We repeated the training from before but it was much harder this time because I was already tired and my arms were aching. Maybe I was not cut out for Cindy and Mike's type of training! Just how am supposed to fight this wolf just after training. Shouldn't there some kind of break involved here somewhere?

"Let's stop for now…" I said tiredly to Cindy. The wolf noticed my lack of concentration and quickly charged me. I belatedly raised my knife but it was already too close. Just I thought I was going to die, the wolf vanished from my vision!

I was already tilting back, so I fell on my butt. I looked up and saw Cindy standing in front of me with one leg raised up. It seems that she had just kicked the wolf at lightning speed!

"T..Thanks…"

Cindy lowered her leg slowly. She gave me a brief glance before she hesitantly went to check on the wolf. The wolf didn't seem to be moving at all. Maybe it was unconscious. I didn't know if Cindy was strong enough to kill it with just one kick.

As it turns out, I was wrong about Cindy. When she checked on the wolf, we found out that it was already dead. It seems Cindy had kicked it on the neck and broke it. I wasn't sure if that was on purpose or just an accident but I was just glad to be alive and uninjured.

Mark walked over to me to check on me.

"Hey, are you ok? That was close!"

"Yeah, good thing Cindy was able to stop it." I mumbled.

"Yeah…." Mark nodded once and went over to Cindy.

I was still lying on the ground and watched as Cindy used her knife to cut into the wolf's head and extract its magic stone. The process didn't take too long but it didn't seem like something I could do. Gathering herbs was one thing but cutting into a wolf's head was something else.

The magic stone didn't seem very large. It was just a small blue ball no bigger than the tip of my pinky finger. Just how valuable could something this small be?

Cindy cleaned her hands and stored the magic stone. She gave me a hesitant glance once more and then turned away from me. She said something to Mark, turned around and started walking away.

Mark came over and said "Let's get going. We should be able to make it back before sunset…"

I nodded and stood up. Mark picked up the supplies and both of us joined Cindy. It didn't look like Cindy was going to carry me for the rest of the way. Based on her behaviour so far, I was getting worried that I had done something wrong. Maybe I shouldn't have lost focus when I did. Maybe Cindy was angry at me for failing.