Out in the woods, creatures of an eerie monotonous shade of black darted through the trees in a deranged frenzy, leaving scratches and deep, violent grooves in the ground and trees, each one of them drooling with the lust to kill the human prey riding off in an open carriage.

  Some bounded forward on two sets of limbs, some scurried forward on several jointed pairs, some swung from one tree to the next, while others slithered and hissed in competition.

  Their similarity lay in the deranged eagerness with which they ambled on, and that one shade of black meant to leave nightmares forever embedded in the minds of those who saw them.

  Demons of different shapes and sizes overrun the woods. Their number was nowhere near the demon stampede Alaric and Scarlett had barely survived, but it was still a number that could make anyone pale.

  At the back of this lumbering pack of grotesque anomalies, a being made completely of white substance emerged from the shadow of a tree. An ashen look was planted on his face as he swallowed hard.

  The white being, who looked like a white copy of the original Alaric, looked around silently, making sure even his breath wasn’t heard. In his mind, he whispered to a hidden entity, “You’re kidding, aren’t you?”

  [ I don’t ‘kid’ about training. You of all people should know that ] a feminine voice rang in the clone’s head.

  Alaric’s copy looked around the tree he was hiding behind and saw a small demon the size of a dog lumbering forward. This demon was most likely the weakest of them as it could barely move and had perhaps the worst leg coordination he’d ever seen.

  A closer look revealed that the beast had been trampled on by the others, weakness being its only sin. Now, it was not just weak. It was injured too. Despite all this, the dog still wore the same greedy expression as all the others.

  There was a feast of humans and it was just wrong not to be enthusiastic about the hunt.

  On top of having one leg mangled, this demon had a broken canine and a disfigured eye, making it stumble into a tree every now and then… and yet, even this seemingly disoriented demon made Alaric’s copy shudder.

  “I have no sword,” he tried to back out of the guardian’s training.

  The ground before him shuddered and vines extended from the root of the tree, weaving tightly into the rough shape of a sword before drying over and over again until a solid weapon stood still, still connected to the tree by a small, breakable tip.

  The copy held the hilt of the sword and snapped it off the tree, his jaw open in shock… [ THIS IS WOOD! AND HOW THE HELL DID YOU MAKE IT? ]

  [ Stop whining, brat! Now coat that sword in magic and use it. Show me what you can do. Perhaps this way, we can make you stronger by having you think more. ]

  [ It’s supposed to be Alaric doing the thinking… not me. ]

  [ Well, we won’t know until we try. ]

  The copy ground his teeth but had nothing more to say to the guardian. If anything, he was getting tired of how she treated him like a weakling.

  He gripped the sword with both hands and took in a deep breath, holding it out in front of him, ‘You underestimate me too much, knight.’

  His world went silent and a slither of aether coiled up the blade igniting the edge with a clean slit of fire magic.

  From the depths of the shadows, standing at the top of a small hill in a meadow in the In-Between, Alia stared at Alaric’s copy with a curious look on her face, ‘Does Alaric always focus on his breathing?’

  In the next moment, however, she lost all track of thought as the white copy of Alaric shot forward, the awareness of his surroundings having heightened to a frightening level.

  The wooden blade cut through the dog-like demon before it even had the chance to know what had happened. A few meters away from the demon’s corpse, the copy stopped with a light step and let out the breath he was holding.

  The forest remained silent with the sound of the lumbering demons in the distance.

  ‘He… He didn’t make a sound,’ the guardian was shocked.

  Before the guardian could praise him, however, he staggered and leaned against a tree, gritting his teeth in pain, “Too much!”

  [ Don’t push yourself too hard. I only want to know your capabilities in a real battle. Alaric wasn’t really thinking when he made you, so I want to know what you can and cannot do. How useful are you in a battle? ] The guardian explained.

  The white copy nodded and looked forward.

  This time, he forged ahead at a slower pace. His thoughts soared as well. Alia wasn’t the only one interested in knowing his abilities, after all.

  He wanted to know as well. ‘It seems I have Alaric’s fighting abilities, but since he didn’t think of my Temper Rank, I’m just as weak as a human who hasn’t undergone the Tempering Ritual. If I try fighting at the strength of a Wood Temper Rank, my muscles will tear and I’ll be incapacitated quickly… That means I need to focus on using magic and aether to close that gap.’

  Aether flowed through the Vivid Clone’s body, enhancing his abilities as he shot forward. A bird of flame dipped beneath the canopies and spared him a glance as he dashed towards his next victim.

  This far back, the demons he found were bound to be slow as they lagged behind the rest, unable to keep up. Either that or they had some problem with mobility.

  Assuming they lagged behind simply because they were weak would be foolish.

  The Vivid Clone was perfectly aware of this, so he chose his next victims from the smaller weak-looking demons and steered clear of the larger ones.

  The next demon he found was much like a rodent. At least three times the size of a squirrel with fangs sticking out of its small mouth, the deranged thing ran from tree to tree, gliding between them yet still making slow progress when compared to the rest.

  Choosing not to rush, Alaric’s clone took note of how it tripped on branches every now and then only to catch itself or glide to safety before it hit the ground.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  It was missing a single toe.

  The weird rodent’s death was swift and silent, just like the weird-looking dog. Only this kill was slower as he couldn’t risk breaking down after only one swing of his sword.

  Two became three and before Alia knew it, the clone was culling the woods of weak demons one by one. It was only a matter of time before he met one strong enough to counter him.

  The phoenix had pretty much figured out its strategy and started setting fire to the demons that weren’t all that weak, drawing attention to itself and enhancing the clone’s stealth even more.

  [ I don’t remember teaching Alaric stealth. ] the guardian thought to herself.

  ‘Don’t you recognize this Dance?’ the Vivid Clone asked.

  [ Sloppy! ] the guardian scoffed, [ Alaric’s not too interested in the Dance of the Leopard. He’s far too grounded. ]

  The Vivid Clone chuckled before leaping into the canopies, [ What are you doing? ]

  [ Just watch, guardian. Watch the parts of your charge you didn’t know existed, ] the clone thoughts rumbled.

  This high up, the art of combat shifted entirely. Movement was no longer limited to just using one’s legs. Here, the hands contributed as well.

  The white clone swung off one branch, leapt off another and vaulted over a thick branch in a convoluted choreography that had him on top of a swinging ape-like demon in a heartbeat.

  The eight-eyed fanged monkey had just locked eyes with the strange white intruder when its head slid off its head, following the sound of the sizzling slice of a fire-enchanted wooden sword.

  Alia stood frozen in the meadow, watching with an expression of shock. The Vivid Clone’s abilities were similar to what she believed to be Alaric’s capabilities before the Temper Ritual. The Clone, however, wasn’t restricted to Alaric’s habits and had different thought patterns.

  Alaric easily reverted to the Dance of the Serpent and the Dance of the Bear, which, for basics, were the equivalent of a strong offense and a strong defense respectively.

  His strategic reasoning, while simplistic, was justified. The Dance of the Serpent equipped him with maximum agility and speed, allowing him to deal much damage in a short amount of time, while the Dance of the Bear allowed him to defend efficiently.

  His clone, however, was thinking even further than that. He used the Dance of the Leopard to improve his stealth and completely shatter his grounded limitations, using the trees themselves to his advantage.

  He didn’t have access to as much aether as Alaric but he made up for it with more than efficient Aether Manipulation. Despite having the body of an average human, he didn’t move like one.

  ‘Hmm… not bad,’ the guardian thought to herself. [ Kill all the weak ones. Let me ask Aslan for help with the strong ones. ]

  [ You can talk to Aslan? ]

  [ Focus ] the guardian chided.

  It wasn’t long before a white winged lion flew past the canopies above the Vivid Clone, followed closely by a flaming phoenix.

  ‘That lion’s too big for these woods,’ the clone shook his head and turned his attention to his next victim. Normally, the white clone’s presence would have already been detected but part of the elements of this variation of the Dance of the Sword heightened the clone’s sense of stealth.

  By simply trying to embody what it meant to be stealthy, he understood aspects of the art he’d never given thought to before.

  He understood that it wasn’t enough for him to just creep up behind the demons but to observe far more than the demons he could creep up on. It was almost like the battlefield was laid out in front of him like a board game of which he was an overhead observer.

  With the silent and deadly clarity of a stalking predator, Alaric’s clone quickly understood an underlying faucet to stealth.

  He attacked methodically, singling out demons that weren’t being observed by others while also factoring in their ability to alert them. Did they have large mouths, high-pitched vocals… or something similar?

  Sometimes it wasn’t even about which demon was watching the other but more about whether the watching demon was indeed capable of alerting the others of the white clone’s presence.

  The eager ones to claim his life were his favourites. He led them into darker parts of the woods, using the thick leaves and the thick stems as cover before silently ending them.

  It felt simple… but there was nothing simple about it. With each second spent emulating what it meant to be stealthy, he learnt more… and the variables he was meant to consider increased.

  His mind was running at a hundred miles per hour, taking in too much information and methodically sifting through all of it to deliver the swiftest kill in the safest and most silent way possible.

  He hadn’t taken a hit even once despite his fear of this mission.

  He was putting down demons faster than he should have been capable of… but that’s where the problem lay.

  Alia watched the unrelenting killing streak with a troubled expression, ‘He’s growing too confident.’

  [ Oh, come on, Alia. Do you ever compliment me? ] the clone chuckled, [ Just admit it. I’m too good at this. ]

  His next target was a giant centipede, the largest demon he was attacking since the start of this ‘training’. His wooden sword had brought down demon after demon without him receiving as much as a scratch to the point that a permanent smirk was starting to form on his face.

  ‘I’m better at this than I thought. Pfft! Demons! They don’t scare me one bit…’

  Clang went the sound of his hardened wooden sword against the steel carapace of the demonic centipede. A sizzling line along the centipede’s carapace shattered his preconceived idea of its hide… ‘It’s armoured!’

  A row of grotesque eyes opened from within the segments of the beast before it turned completely and coiled like a spring, wrapping tightly around the white clone.

  Crap

  Chitinous legs dug into the clone’s white skin, as the giant creature’s body coiled along his until only his head remained exposed. An ugly black maw rose into the air, mandibles clacking with a morbid sound that was bound to seep into the real Alaric’s nightmares.

  A morbid stench akin to death washed over the clone, forcing him to cringe and squirm in the beast’s hold. Fire erupted from his hands in an attempt to burn the creature from inside the restricting coils… but nothing happened.

  A strong gale of wind, summoned by yours truly, surrounded the demon and clone, carrying with it a hot torrent of flames that kissed the creature’s glossy carapace only to die out without leaving as much as a scorch mark…

  The ground trembled with Earth magic but didn’t respond to the clone’s orders. It seemed his magic was nearing a limit. Either that or he was too scared to think straight.

  His heart thundered in his chest.

  Alaric’s clone gasped for air, only to take in the revolting stench coming from the demon’s mouth. It seemed the beast had been mesmerized by the dancing flames and was taking its time squeezing the life out of the magical white clone.

  ‘I’m… I’m going to die! Damn it,’ Alaric’s clone mentally screamed, struggling against the demon’s hot breath. His sword clattered to the ground, leaving him defenceless against the beast.

  Something inside him snapped, like the last stick of hope had snapped… and he stopped struggling. His eyesight shifted in and out of focus.

  ‘What good is a clone anyway… if not to be dispensable in battle? Better me than Alaric himself,’ he reckoned.

  In truth, he didn’t want to die.

  No one did…

  From the corner of his blurry vision, he spotted a creature covered completely in snow-white fur, then chuckled, ‘Now I’m seeing things. There’s no way a lion that big could land in this forest.’

  BOOM the sound of an explosion rang in the distance… or was it right above the clone? He couldn’t tell. He’d done everything he could and now, it was time to die. He refused to ready his mind for such a morbid end and clung to all the things he didn’t get to do.

  ‘I didn’t even get to show Alaric how cool I can be as a decoy.’

  He’d been practising his annoying lines in the Old Tongue during his boring times in the In-Between. ‘Hey you, demonbreath! Is it just me or do you look like an ox’s rump? Believe me when I say you’ve never looked in the mirror… because I bet they always break just to make you look a little bit better.’

  ‘Ah, yes! That was a good one. Though Alia didn’t look amused when she heard it. Does that woman even smile?’ he wondered.

  Silence…

  He blinked… ‘Does death always take this long?’

  Then he noticed the countless wriggling legs that once held him tight, massaging him in a chilling rhythm that promised a gruesome death by mandibles had all gone still.

  The whole centipede’s body had gone limp, in fact.

  The white clone looked up and where there should have been a head, he saw straight to the tree behind it. The whole upper section of the creature was missing—sizzling even.

  “You okay, kid?” a familiar voice reached his ears.

  He turned to see LionHeart swinging his sword and putting down one demon after the other. Aslan, the white lion, was swatting them with his large paws and biting into them with no mercy.

  The lion darted from one demon to another with far more agility than its size suggested. Together, the pair fought together like a well-oiled machine, neither of them holding each other back as they cut down the demons attacking them.

  Follow, add to Favourites, Comment and if you've got some time on your hands, review. Reviews go the longest way in helping the book's visibility. And for those who would like to read more, I've got chapters on my Patreon.