Reygart paced slowly, his arms folded behind his back.
"One hundred push-ups… five sets. One hundred pull-ups… five sets. One hundred sit-ups… five sets."
He stopped and pointed into the distance.
"And that tree over there."
"Yeah so, one thousand kicks with your left leg, one thousand with your right. Same drills for a month. By the end of it… that tree should be on the ground."
Michael turned, his eyes widening at the sight.
What he saw made him pause.
An impossible sight.
The tree was larger than the others—easily over ten meters wide, its trunk so thick it looked like several trees had fused together over time. its bark was thick and hardened with age, towering over everything around it. It wasn't just a tree... it was a presence.
A monstrosity rooted deep into the ground.
Michael complained immediately, his hands waving frantically.
"But I'm tired… I just went through life-or-death training, and I've been running around at full speed all day… can't I get a break?"
Reygart smiled faintly.
"You can always give up… the choice is yours. Nobody's forcing you to do anything."
Michael hesitated for a moment.
Then he gritted his teeth.
'He's right… if I want to become stronger, complaining is the last thing I need.'
Reygart glanced at him again.
"Also… your problem is that you take my words at face value. I never said do it immediately. As long as you complete the daily tasks, you can start whenever you want."
He turned away as he walked.
"Learn to interpret things your own way, kid."
Michael's eyes widened slightly—as if something had clicked into place.
"Y-yes… Master Rey!"
Reygart visibly cringed mid-step.
'Master Rey...?'
Then he thought about it for a moment. A faint grin tugged at the corner of his lips before he quickly suppressed it.
'...It actually has a nice ring to it.'
He stopped and casually tossed a bottle toward Michael.
"Here… use it wisely."
Then he continued walking without looking back.
Michael caught it. The bottle held a light-blue ointment within. "What is this… medicine?"
He opened the bottle and sniffed it.
'It doesn't smell like anything…'
Then he rubbed just a bit onto his arm, and his skin glowed as the wounds began to close. A look of disbelief spread across his face.
'Woah… it's like I never got hurt at all. But it doesn't seem to recover my energy much.'
After a short rest of eating and drinking water, with the day already nearing its end, Michael immediately began the drills Reygart assigned him.
He got on his hands and started push-ups, sweat pouring down his face.
"Ninety-seven… ninety-eight… ninety-nine… one hundred!"
He pushed himself up, then moved straight into sit-ups, completing them one after another.
The sun was already setting when he jumped and grabbed a branch, starting his hundred pull-ups. Veins stood out along his arms as his muscles strained under the effort.
"One hundred!" he shouted, then dropped down and landed cleanly on his feet.
By the time an hour had passed, he had already completed all his sets.
"Now then… time for the real show…"
He took a breath as he stared at the tree, thinking that maybe the second time around it wouldn't look so menacing… boy was he wrong.
'Well... here goes nothing...'
He swung his leg at the trunk.
Boom!
The leaves rustled as Michael's body jolted from the impact.
"What's this thing made of… iron?!" Michael said, wincing in pain, his foot already turning red.
'He expects me to drop this thing by he end of the month?' He thought.
Then he sighed and continued to hack at it. The tree shook with each strike. Barely though. Time passed as he kept kicking—again and again.
Boom. The tree shook. Boom. Leaves fell.
He was only using his left leg. On the final kick, he lost balance and fell back onto the ground, gasping, his foot bruised, blood running down it.
"This… this is ridiculous," he murmured.
He pushed himself up and started kicking with his right leg. Redhood stood behind him, watching.
'I really hope Mickey will be okay... this looks tough...'
Michael hacked and hacked as the moon hung high above. Reygart was fast asleep without a care in the world.
With just five minutes left until midnight, Michael completed his tasks for the day and collapsed onto the ground. He lay there staring at the moon, the pain piled up so much he had stopped crying about it altogether. His feet were swollen.
'I wonder... what world awaits me out there... I couldn't even comprehend someone like Rey. I would've never known... if I stayed in Kukuru village. So I guess what happened was some kind of blessing... or something like that.'
Redhood walked over to him.
"You good there, buddy?" he asked.
"Well... I'm not dead. Yet." Michael said.
Redhood lowered his gaze. "Listen, Mickey… you don't have to put yourself through this. This Reygart guy just seems like he enjoys tormenting you… he hasn't even taught you magic. You're just way too trusting."
Michael gave a faint smile. "It's not about trusting Master Rey or not. I've already learned a lot from him. I want to be strong like him… so I don't lose anyone I care about. This… is personal."
Redhood looked at him, then shook his head and sighed. "Jeez, you're so cheesy, you know that…" Despite that, he couldn't help but smile.
"Shut up," Michael said.
"Oh yeah, Red," he added.
"Yeah?"
"Can you rub that ointment thing on me… I can't move," Michael said, lying spread out on the ground.
Redhood sighed. "Yessir."
He poured some of the bottle onto his paw and rubbed it onto Michael's body. The wounds slowly faded under a faint glow as the swelling went down.
*****
Days went by.
Push-ups. Sit-ups. Pull-ups. Kicks against the tree.
The same routine repeated until it stopped feeling like tasks and started feeling like routine.
A grueling one.
Boom!
Each kick made the bark tremble.
Boom!
Leaves shook loose.
Some days the tree gave nothing back but pain.
Some days the trunk seemed to shudder just a little more than before.
Michael began noticing it.
The bark had started splitting in places.
Small tears near the roots.
Not much, but enough to give him a glimmer of hope.
Weeks went by.
His body changed without him realizing it. His legs struck heavier. His stance rooted deeper. The branch he used for pull-ups bent lower than it once had.
But his legs bled every day.
Bruised.
Swollen.
Some days even broken.
The ointment healed him just enough to continue, but never enough to erase the pain that carried into the next morning.
And still, he endured it, soon it became less about enduring and more about pushing back.
Boom!
Kick after kick.
Boom!
The roots twitched.
The tree no longer stood like something impossible. It resisted, which meant... it could fall.
*****
The ointment eventually ran dry, and a week remained. Reygart lay watching in silence, one eye half-open, as Michael kept kicking.
Again.
Again.
And again.
*****
The last day.
"Haaah!!!"
Boom!
Michael kicked, blood splattering from his foot.
"Ahhh!!" he screamed in pain.
He kept kicking, screaming through rage and agony, the tree shaking as its roots began tearing loose from the ground.
"Nine hundred and ninety-nine!!!"
The tree tilted, trembling violently.
Michael's eyes widened with raw intensity.
"Graaahhh! One thousand!!!"
He swung his battered, shattered leg.
BOOM!
The tree rattled.
The impact hurled Michael backward, sending him rolling across the dirt as the ground ripped open and the roots tore free.
Slowly, the roots dragged the soil apart as the tree began to fall, its descent feeling like an eternity.
Then...
BOOOOM!
It crashed.
Michael rolled on the ground, screaming and crying, gritting his teeth, slamming the earth as blood poured down his leg, skin torn so deep even bone showed.
Redhood's eyes widened in horror as he ran to him.
"Mickey!!!"
Michael gasped, forcing a grin.
"Finally… take that, you stupid tree."
Redhood looked at Michael.
Despite the pain he was feeling, Michael's joy at accomplishing what had seemed impossible a month ago outweighed it all, and he didn't want to ruin the moment with worry.
So he simply smiled faintly.
"I knew you could pull it off, old buddy."
Reygart yawned and stood, stretching his arms.
"That was a good nap."
His eyes drifted toward the fallen tree.
"Well look at that… you actually kicked it down. I'm kinda impressed. This tree is known to be one of the strongest in the world… The Great Tree of Eve but anyway, you can rest now so you can heal up for phase three of your training."
He tossed him another vial. It landed beside him.
Michael winced as pain shot through his legs.
"Uhh… I would love to, but I can't move a muscle. Man, I'm surprised my legs are still attached."
Reygart pointed at Redhood.
"You there, foxxycat. Carry him to the tent. Make sure he takes a wash—he smells like shit. After that, bandage his wounds."
Redhood protested.
"Hey, hey, I'm not some helper, and I'm no doctor either… you're the one who put him through this crazy training so you..."
Reygart cut him off.
"You know… today I'm feeling like foxxycat for dinner…"
Redhood stiffened.
"Okay okay fine—just don't eat me!"