Chapter 16

As I stood over the dying bear, my body ached from the effort. My arm and leg were bleeding heavily from the cuts and scrapes, the adrenaline slowly wearing off, leaving only the pain. The massive creature beneath me gasped its final breaths, its eyes dulling as life drained from its enormous form. I had survived—barely. But the battle had left its mark.

And then, as if nothing had happened, my father appeared.

Yujiro walked into the cave with the same casual, self-assured gait he always had. His eyes scanned the scene, and for a moment, he seemed almost impressed. But I knew him better than that. He looked at the bear, then at me, and smirked.

"That was some good technique you used there," he said, his voice as calm as ever. "To think you're already capable of turning yourself to liquid, accelerating to your top speed in an instant." He paused, his eyes narrowing slightly as he examined me. "How did you figure that out?"

I stared at him.

He had just thrown me into this cave with a monster—a six-meter-tall beast that could have killed me at any moment. I had fought for my life. And now, after I barely survived, he wanted to talk about my technique? About how I managed to move like that?

I felt the anger bubbling up inside me. My father—this man who constantly pushed me, tested me, threw me into life-threatening situations just to see what I could do—was asking me about my moves, about my skills, as if I hadn't just come within inches of death. As if the blood dripping from my wounds didn't matter at all. As if the fight I had just endured was nothing more than a minor inconvenience.

I wasn't in the mood to answer.

I turned away from him, my wounds still bleeding, and started walking toward my base. I didn't care if he was mad. I don't care about him right now. The pain in my arm and leg was making it hard to think straight, but the anger was stronger. This was the first time I had outright ignored him—walked away from Yuujiro Hanma—and part of me expected him to lash out, to hit me or demand I stop. But he didn't. He just stood there, watching me.

Maybe he was amused. Maybe he was waiting for me to collapse.

I didn't look back.

The cold hit me as soon as I stepped outside. The snow was falling, soft and quiet, blanketing the ground in a layer of white. The icy wind bit at my skin, but I didn't have the luxury of worrying about the cold. I had no good clothes—my previous ones had been shredded long ago, in other fights, by other wounds. My body was covered in makeshift clothes, a mixture of animal leather and plants I had learned to use from Motobe. The leather was crude.

I walked through the snow, my steps heavy and uneven as the pain throbbed in my leg. Each step sent a sharp, stabbing sensation up my thigh, but I forced myself to keep moving. I couldn't stop now. I had to get back to my base, to patch myself up before the cold and blood loss caught up to me.

The base wasn't much—just a shelter I had built with my own hands—but it had kept me alive through the harsh months of training. I'd made it with whatever I could find—branches, leaves, and animal hides. It wasn't warm, but it was enough to block the wind and keep the snow off my skin. I had survived out here for months, living off the land, training day and night, pushing my body to its limits and beyond.

And now, I had meat.

The bear I had just killed—it must have weighed several tons, and its body would provide meat for weeks if I could store it properly. The problem was the storage. Without proper preservation techniques, the meat would spoil quickly, especially in the changing temperatures. The cold would help, but I needed more than that. I thought back to everything I had learned, from the books I'd read. Smoking the meat would be one option, but I didn't have the right equipment for it. Maybe drying it out, preserving it with the natural herbs and salts I had found in the mountains.

I would have to figure it out. But right now, I need to heal.

I made it back to my base, collapsing onto the floor of my shelter, my body screaming in pain. The adrenaline from the fight had completely faded, and now the exhaustion set in. Every muscle ached, every cut burned, and the cold gnawed at my exposed skin. But I couldn't let it consume me. I had been through worse—or at least, that's what I told myself.

I started working on my wounds, using the mixture I had prepared. It was crude but effective—plants with natural healing properties mixed with animal leather to bind the cuts. Motobe had taught me how to make these remedies during my time training with him, and they had saved me more than once. It wasn't pretty, but it worked.

As I sat there, bandaging my arm and leg, I thought back to the fight. The bear—that massive, monstrous thing—had pushed me further than I had expected. It wasn't just a battle of strength—it had been a battle of survival, of mental endurance. I had to stay sharp, stay smart. I had to find ways to outmaneuver it, to outlast it. And in the end, I had. But the cost was high.

My mind wandered back to Yuujiro.

His casual remark about my technique—it made me sick. He didn't care. He never cared. He threw me into situations like this without a second thought, knowing I could die, knowing I might not survive, but it didn't matter to him. To him, it was all a test. And the moment I showed him something interesting—something new—he was curious. That's all I was to him. A curiosity.

As I tightened the last of my bandages, I felt the cold begin to numb the pain. The snow was still falling outside, the world quiet except for the soft crackling of the fire I had built earlier. This was survival.

I was alone out here—completely alone. Even with my father nearby, I was on my own.

Yuujiro POV

The fight was impressive—there was no denying that. Baki handled himself well. He didn't even need to use the Demon Back, which was a surprise in itself. But more than that, it was the acceleration—that move, the one where he turned his body into liquid and reached his top speed in an instant. He'd learned it quickly and executed it flawlessly. If he ever uses that against me when he's stronger, it could be dangerous.

The word brought a smirk to my face. I felt a spark of something close to excitement. He was catching up. Slowly, but surely. Baki's potential was far greater than I had anticipated. It was clear he was becoming stronger, faster, and more resourceful with every challenge I threw his way. But he still had so much to learn—so much more to understand.

When he walked away from me earlier, ignoring me, I felt a brief moment of amusement. The kid had guts—no question about it. Not many would dare turn their back on me like that, and if it were anyone else, I would have put them on the ground for it. But this was Baki. My son. My blood.

He was mad—that much was clear. He thought I had thrown him to his death, but that wasn't it. That wasn't my intention. I wasn't trying to kill him. No, I was pushing him. Testing him. Baki still didn't understand the lessons I was teaching him. He didn't see it yet, but one day, he would. One day, he would know that everything I put him through was for a reason.

I love strength, and Baki—he is strong. That's what he doesn't understand yet. Strength is everything. It's the only thing that matters in this world. Power, the ability to dominate, to control your fate with nothing more than the force of your own will—that's what I want him to learn.

But he's not there yet. He still clings to his anger, his frustration. He doesn't see the bigger picture. He thinks I'm cruel, that I'm just testing him for my amusement, but it's more than that. I want him to grow stronger, to surpass me one day, if that's even possible. I want him to become something far greater than what he is now.

But first, he has to learn to love strength the way I do. That's the lesson he hasn't figured out yet. Strength is the only truth. It's the only thing that doesn't lie, the only thing that defines who you are. It's not about survival—it's about dominance. Survival is just a byproduct of strength. If you're strong enough, nothing can touch you. Nothing can defeat you.

And Baki... he's strong, but he's not there yet. He has potential—more than anyone else—but until he learns that lesson, he'll never reach his full power.

I gave him space because I knew he needed it. He was furious, and in his mind, he had every right to be. But emotions like anger and frustration—they're weaknesses if you don't know how to harness them. One day, Baki will learn how to use that anger, how to channel it into power, into strength. But for now, I'll let him stew in it. Let him process everything I've thrown at him.

He's learning, even if he doesn't realize it yet.

As I watched him walk away, bleeding and bruised, I thought about the next steps. What will it take to push him further? To force him to see beyond the anger and frustration and embrace the true power that lies within him?

The bear was only the beginning. Baki handled that fight well, but there are far greater challenges waiting for him. He thinks this training is hard, but he has no idea what's coming. I'll push him to the very edge of what he can handle. I'll push him until there's nothing left but pure instinct, pure survival. And when he survives that—when he rises above it all—he'll finally understand.

He'll understand why I do what I do.

Baki Pov:

It had been a week since the fight with the bear. A week, and I was already back on my feet, completely healed. Well, not completely. Scars ran across my arms and legs—reminders of how close I had come to death. But the fact that wounds that deep had turned into scars in just seven days? That was insane. In my previous life, I had dealt with injuries—some serious—but nothing healed this quickly. This body... Baki's body... was something else entirely.

At first, it was shocking. Every cut, every bruise that should have taken months to heal seemed to disappear in a matter of days, provided I had the right nutrition and enough sleep. My muscles rebuild themselves faster, stronger, every time I push them to their limits. It wasn't normal, but it was becoming something I was getting used to. Maybe that was the scariest part—that I wasn't surprised anymore. I had seen what this body could do, how it could endure, how it could recover.

The fight with the bear had been brutal, but looking back, it had also been a revelation. I wasn't just strong; I was adapting, evolving faster than I had imagined. This world, this body—everything was pushing me toward something greater. But the more I pushed, the more I felt like I was losing pieces of myself. What was I becoming?

Yuujiro—my father—had been taking it easier on me this past week. No more life-or-death fights, no more death traps to navigate. He'd been talking to me more instead, trying to lecture me on his philosophies, his twisted ideas about strength.

But honestly, I wasn't listening. It all sounded like bullshit.

I tuned him out, pretending to pay attention while my mind wandered. A rest week. That's how I saw it. After everything I had gone through, I deserved at least a little time to recover, to breathe. Yuujiro's lessons about strength, about dominance and control, didn't resonate with me the way he probably thought they would. To him, it was all about power—being the strongest, the one who could crush everyone and everything in his path.

But that wasn't how I saw the world. Power wasn't everything.

Maybe that was the one part of me that hadn't changed, the part of me that still held on to my previous life, to the person I used to be. In that world, strength didn't define who you were. There were other things that mattered—relationships, kindness, understanding. None of those concepts existed in Yuujiro's world. To him, they were weaknesses, flaws that could be exploited. I knew that if I mentioned any of those things to him, he'd probably just laugh and tell me to "grow up."

But I hadn't forgotten. As much as this new body and this new life tried to shape me into something else, something colder, I hadn't forgotten what it meant to care about people, to want more than just survival. Maybe that's why I could never fully accept Yuujiro's teachings. His way wasn't mine.

That didn't mean I wasn't learning, though.

I might have ignored his words, but I was still observing. Watching how he moved, how he approached every situation with that same cold, calculating demeanor. He lived for strength, and in a twisted way, he believed he was teaching me something valuable. And maybe he was, but not in the way he thought.

I was getting stronger, sure. But I wasn't becoming him.

That was the line I wouldn't cross. No matter how much I trained, no matter how far I pushed myself, I wasn't going to let Yuujiro's ideals swallow me whole. I had to stay true to myself, even if that self was constantly changing, evolving.

I could feel it, though—the pull. The deeper I dove into this world, the more I understood why Yuujiro lived the way he did. There was power in strength. Power in being the one who could walk through any challenge and come out on the other side unscathed. But I didn't want to lose sight of why I was doing this.

Survival wasn't enough. Dominance wasn't enough.

I needed more.