Kai sits in a helicopter; across from him is Lucius, looking at him. Kai turns his attention from the window to Lucius.

  "Why are we taking the helicopter? It would be much faster traveling by ourselves."

  "Because I find it more relaxing. After all, I'm not the youngest anymore."

  Kai smirks and looks Lucius up and down.

  "Come on, you're not that old. At most you're like 50."

  Lucius laughs at Kai and shakes his head.

  "Ouch. That's a bit off. I'm 41."

  Without a word, Kai looks out of the window again and thinks to himself.

  "He only wanted to take the plane to bore me."

  Hours later the helicopter lands at the shore of an island in the middle of the ocean, with no other land nearby. After leaving it, Kai stretches his limbs.

  "Man, am I hungry."

  "No time to eat. We lost way too much on our way here. You'll go training immediately!"

  Kai stares at Lucius in disbelief.

  "IS THAT MY FAULT?! It wasn't my idea to take a helicopter!"

  "I don't want to hear it. Now go to your training field!"

  Kai sighs annoyed and stomps off towards a forest that's near the beach. Lucius shakes his head, and while taking a phone out of his pocket, he walks towards a huge modern estate at the other end of the beach. Behind it in the far distance towers a huge single mountain.

  Lucius holds his phone to his ear.

  "Hey. Yeah, we're back. Mhmm... yeah... he is already on his way to the field. Be a bit harder with him than usual, but don't overdo it."

  Lucius hangs up and puts his phone back in his pocket before opening the front door of the estate and entering.

  Five hours later, the sun is already gone, and stars are all over the night sky. Kai walks out of the forest, over the beach, and enters the estate. His destination, the kitchen. Inside he opens the freezer and takes out a bag of ice. Right after he closes its door again and stands up straight again, he winces. Lucius suddenly stands at the kitchen counter.

  "Geez... you scared me. Do you have to move around so silently?"

  "I wasn't even hiding my presence from you."

  Kai sits down at a big kitchen table and holds the ice bag against his left thigh.

  "You're an asshole, you know that?!"

  "Why's that?"

  Lucius says while trying his hardest to act surprised. Kai looks up from his leg and glares at the man.

  "You told her to go harder on me."

  Lucius is unable to hide a smirk.

  "Guilty as charged."

  "She beat me to a pulp, giving me no chance to even hit her once!"

  Without saying a word, Lucius leaves the kitchen. Kai sits alone, the icebag still on his leg. After half an hour he stands up, puts the bag of ice back into the freezer, and makes his way to his room. On his way he comes past room number 4. He stops in his tracks, looking at the door, thinking to himself if he should ask for another training session, even though it's only been a short while since the last time. After a second he shakes his head.

  "No... no, I need rest for today."

  He continues on his way. Inside his room he plops down on the bed and instantly falls asleep.

  The next morning he gets woken up by a loud knock on his door. Slowly he sits up and rubs his eyes.

  "Yeah?"

  Lucius opens the door.

  "How are you?"

  "Sore."

  Kai murmurs before stretching and yawning. Lucius walks inside and sits down at the desk.

  "I figured so."

  "And whose fault is that?"

  Lucius grins. Resting his elbows on his legs and crossing his fingers.

  "Whatever. Get up; I may have a mission for you."

  Kai jumps up from his bed, causing Lucius to look surprised.

  "Even though he got beat up, he is so full of energy again."

  Lucius grins and watches as Kai puts on his battle suit. It's less armored than the ones his friends wear on missions, granting him much more agility. After just a few seconds Kai stands there wide awake and ready.

  "Where and how strong?"

  "One of our satellites spotted an exceptionally big nightmare on a mountain range somewhere in Asia. Right now some of our scientists are figuring out how strong it might be..."

  "But?"

  "But, because of pure size alone, it's at least a threat to whole countries."

  Kai's eyes open wide.

  "You expect me to fight a nightmare that could threaten to destroy whole countries?"

  "Where is your enthusiasm? I really think you can do that. If not, there are others who could take care of it."

  Kai gives Lucius a doubting look.

  "Except for you Hyper-Lethals, who could do something like that?"

  "Nova could. Without breaking a sweat."

  Kai walks towards the door of his room.

  "Hey, where are you going?"

  "I'm going to kill a nightmare!"

  Lucius grins to himself before standing up and following the boy.

  Kai waits outside the estate on the beach, staring at the ocean in front of him.

  Lucius walks up to him, phone in his hands.

  "I've sent you the coordinates."

  Kai nods before jumping up and flying off. Lucius turns around, walking back into the estate, and takes an escalator down. He enters a control room, which looks near identical to the one at the base.

  Lucius watches a big screen at the other end of the room. It shows Kai's position on a map.

  "He is already this close to the destination."

  "What did you expect? He is training with me."

  Lucius turns around and looks at the wall right beside the door. There stands a woman in a black tank top and sweatpants. Standing tall, arms crossed over her chest. Scattered over muscular arms are scars. Her purple eyes are locked on the screen. Wet white hair falls down her shoulders and back.

  "Just out of the shower?"

  Lucius asks. The woman walks to stand beside him and nods.

  "Do you think he will beat it, Rumi?"

  "If not, I'm going to beat his ass."

  Kai is flying over snow-covered mountains until he reaches the coordinates that Lucius gave him. Standing in the air, he looks around trying to spot the Nightmare. His eyes widen in shock as he sees massive footprints in the snow. His blood freezes the moment he hears a loud growling behind him. Turning around to where it came from, he sees a gigantic lizard-like nightmare. Sitting atop a mountain peak, its tail wrapped around it multiple times. Orange glowing eyes stare at the boy, while warm drool drips out of the monster's open mouth. The moment it comes in contact with snow, it instantly melts. Kai swallows hard.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  "I've never seen a nightmare that big."

  Kai has barely enough time to end his thought before the monster jumps towards him, jaw gaping open, trying to swallow him.

  The boy dodges to the side, causing the monster to crash into another mountain peak. It breaks into big chunks, which fall down the mountain and cause multiple snow avalanches.

  Kais eyes follow them before falling back on the threat in front of him. The back of the nightmare starts to glow, and it opens its mouth.

  "FUCK! I've seen enough movies to know what comes next."

  The nightmare shoots an orange energy beam at Kai, which he barely dodges. The beam hits the peak where the monster sat before, instantly evaporating it, leaving nothing behind.

  "That was close!"

  The Nightmare crawls around the mountain range while shooting beam after beam at Kai, none hitting its target. Some hit parts of the mountains, melting them down immediately.

  "I need to find the right time to attack."

  In the boy's right hand appears the outline of a spear, which resembles a lightning bolt. Kai continues to dodge attacks; the weapon materializes completely. After evading a few more attacks, he reaches out to throw the spear. As it does this, the weapon turns into pure red lightning and grows slightly.

  He throws the spear at the same time the nightmare shoots another energy beam in his direction. The spear cuts clean through the beam, flying into the monster's mouth and piercing through the back of its head. After leaving the monster's head, the weapon crashes into another mountain peak and destroys the whole thing, leaving a massive crater in the mountain range.

  Kai winces at the impact, and the spear appears back in his hand the way it looked as he created it.

  "Maybe that was a bit overkill..."

  His gaze moves back to the nightmare. It twitches slightly. Kai throws the spear again, this time right through its back, leaving another crater right beneath the monster's feet. This time the nightmare instantly dissolves into black sand, which gets blown away by the wind.

  "Wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be."

  The bolt disappears completely, and Kai turns around, making his way back to the island.

  Lucius and Rumi stare silently at the big screen in front of them. Rumi breaks the silence first.

  "Why does he never use something like this while training? Would make it much more interesting."

  "Better this way. I like my island intact."

  Kai lands back on the beach and makes his way straight to the estate and into the kitchen. There at the dinner table sits Lucius, greeting Kai the moment he enters.

  "You did better than I expected."

  While thanking Lucius Kai jokingly bows down before opening the fridge and rummaging through it.

  "That spear was from your favorite game, right?"

  Kai nods before turning around, an apple in his mouth and a water bottle in his hand. He sits down across from Lucius at the dinner table. Lucius watches the boy eat for a moment before speaking up again.

  "You won't get any use out of this game in the near future!"

  Kai drops the apple onto the table in shock.

  "Why not?!"

  "You need to get out of your comfort zone to really get stronger."

  Kai rolls his eyes, annoyed, before taking the apple again.

  "Don't look at me like that. Your power revolves around anything fictional. Go watch new movies, read new books, and play new games. Maybe you'll find things you like even more."

  Lucius stands up and leaves the kitchen. After a few minutes he returns and places an old console and a few games on the table, together with some comics.

  "Here, try these."

  "Out of which hole did you pull these now?"

  Kai asks, causing Lucius to chuckle.

  "They're mine. My childhood."

  Kai looks down at the stuff with shining eyes.

  "You played these... I feel honored that you trust them upon me."

  The boy stands up and takes the things in front of him with unneeded caution before running off to his room.

  A few days later Rumi walks through the estate and finds Lucius standing at the kitchen counter, drinking coffee.

  "Do you know what's going on with Kai? He didn't come to our training field once these past days."

  "Yeah. He is broadening his horizon."

  Rumi gives Lucius a confused look.

  "He is playing video games and reading comics I gave him."

  "O...okay... I understand. J...just tell him that I'll wait for him to come to training again."

  Rumi replies, still confused, before turning on the spot and leaving the kitchen again.

  "Looks like you're starting to like him, Nr. 4."

  Lucius thinks to himself. With a smirk on his face, he empties his coffee and makes his way to Kai's room. He knocks on the door before opening it.

  "Heyy, are you still playing..."

  His sentence is cut off as he sees Kai running in a circle in the middle of his room, blue lightning sparks coming from his hair.

  "Oh, did you already finish the games?"

  Kai abruptly stops and turns to look at Lucius. The boy's eyes are glowing blue.

  "Yeah, and I also read all the comics."

  "I see. I figure you liked them."

  Kai nods.

  "I really enjoyed them."

  Lucius smirks and leans against the doorway.

  "I'm here to tell you that Rumi is missing your daily training and that she waits for you to return."

  "Then I'll go right away."

  The boy runs past Lucius into the hallway with incredible speed before stopping.

  "Do you know where she is right now?"

  Lucius chuckles and shakes his head.

  "I guess she is at the field."

  "Gotcha."

  Without wasting another second, the boy shoots off.