After burying Kyle, Romal was no longer the child who laughed across rooftops and chased his dreams with a wooden stick.
The next morning, he returned home covered in mud, his eyes empty of tears. He did not scream, did not complain, and did not ask for revenge. Silence had settled inside him the way stones settle at the bottom of a river.
His father looked at him for a long time before saying,
"So... you've finally learned what it means to lose someone."
Romal did not answer.
His father stepped closer and tossed a new wooden sword in front of him.
"If you want to cry, then cry today. Tomorrow, you'll return to training."
Romal picked up the sword and walked out to the yard without a word.
From that day on, everything changed.
He no longer smiled after every fall as he once had, but he never stopped getting back up.
He trained from dawn until nightfall, carrying boulders, running through the forest, and sparring with his father until the palms of his hands split open. Every time he fell, he heard Kyle's voice deep within him:
"Don't let them break your heart."
And so...
He stood up again.
Years passed.
Romal grew older, his body stronger, and his wooden sword was replaced by a real blade.
His father began teaching him the military combat techniques he had learned during his years of service.
"Strength alone is never enough."
His father said those words while delivering a strike that nearly reached Romal's neck.
"The victor is the one who stays calm when everyone else loses their minds."
Romal learned quickly.
He was not the strongest, but he could read his opponent's movements before they were complete.
He would step back...
Then strike at the exact moment everyone believed he had already lost.
One evening, his father said,
"At last... you're starting to think like a warrior."
But Romal felt no pride.
He only felt that the road ahead was still long.
At the age of sixteen, Romal left his village for the first time.
He carried nothing but a small bag, his sword, and a few coins.
As they parted, his father told him,
"The world doesn't care about your dreams."
Romal met his gaze steadily.
"And I don't care what the world thinks."
For the first time...
His father smiled faintly.
It was so brief that Romal wondered if he had imagined it.
Then he turned and walked away.
The cities were far larger than he had imagined.
Louder.
And far crueler.
He worked as a caravan guard, a dock laborer, and sometimes a mercenary protecting merchants for very little pay.
With every journey, he learned something new.
He learned that bandits never attacked the strongest...
They attacked the slowest.
He learned that fear spread faster among people than fire.
And he learned that a smile could hide a dagger more easily than any threat.
During one journey, the caravan was attacked by a group of monsters.
Most of the guards fled.
Romal stayed behind alone.
He fought until his sword shattered.
Then he picked up a spear.
Then a staff.
Then a stone.
When it was finally over, he was covered in blood.
The caravan captain stared at the corpses and asked,
"Why didn't you run?"
Romal answered while catching his breath,
"Because someone would have died if I had."
For the first time...
He felt that Kyle's words were still alive within him.
After that incident, his reputation began to spread.
He wasn't famous.
But among mercenaries, he became known as the man who never abandoned his comrades.
And that cost him dearly.
More wounds.
Less money.
But a lighter conscience.
More years passed.
One night, while sitting in a modest inn, an old man wearing a black cloak sat down across from him.
Without any introduction, the old man said,
"You are Romal Anderson."
Romal looked up.
"Yes."
"There is a place searching for men like you."
"Why me?"
The old man smiled.
"Because you're still alive."
He placed a black envelope sealed with red wax on the table.
Then disappeared into the crowd.
Romal slowly opened the letter.
It was an invitation to a special competition.
The winner would obtain unimaginable power.
The loser...
Would never return.
He read the letter several times.
Something about it felt unnatural.
The scent of a trap was unmistakable.
But he remembered one thing.
For years he had wandered from city to city.
Fighting.
Surviving.
Yet never taking a single step toward the dream he had promised himself.
If he refused...
He would remain trapped in the same endless cycle.
But if he accepted...
He might finally find the answer he had been searching for.
So...
He went.
A black carriage without any insignia came to receive them.
Inside were dozens of young men.
No one spoke.
Each looked at the others as though they were future enemies.
Romal simply observed in silence.
Frightened faces.
Confident faces.
Empty faces.
He knew that most of them would never leave alive.
After several days, they arrived at the facility.
From the very first moment...
He realized everything they had been told about the tournament was a lie.
It was not a competition.
It was an organized slaughterhouse.
Every test ended with corpses.
Every failure meant death.
Every victory only led to an even worse trial.
Even so...
He kept moving forward.
Not because he wanted the championship.
But because he wanted to survive.
Then came the Transparent World.
It was a place that defied logic, where Romal lost all sense of time. He did not know whether he had spent days or months there. He witnessed illusions, fought battles against himself, and confronted the memories he had tried to bury for years.
There, he realized that the harshest enemy a person could ever face...
Was himself.
When he finally emerged from the Transparent World, his body was covered in wounds, but his mind had become far stronger.
He was no longer the boy who rushed headfirst into every battle.
He had become someone who chose when to fight...
And when to watch.
Jimmy Froth gave him no time to rest.
The moment he came out, he and the few remaining survivors were gathered in a vast arena.
Then...
The monster emerged from the forest.
The pressure of its aura alone was enough to force several contestants to take a step backward.
S-Rank...
Romal kept his strongest techniques to himself.
As the battle grew increasingly desperate...
An old man walked forward with slow, unhurried steps.
Dan Linker.
He did not look like someone who had come to fight.
He looked like a man who had come to finish a tedious task.
He approached the monster without the slightest hurry while everyone stared at him in confusion.
Even Romal stopped moving.
(What is this old man planning?)
Dan Linker cut the monster apart with a single sword strike.
In the next instant...
His fist pierced through the monster's body, and his energy exploded from within.
Time itself seemed to stop in Romal's eyes.
The gigantic monster collapsed to the ground like a mountain that had lost its foundation, and its aura disappeared completely.
One...
Single...
Strike.
Romal could not believe what he had witnessed.
Everything they had done only moments earlier had been meaningless before that overwhelming power.
For the first time in years, he realized that the distance between himself and the summit was far greater than he had ever imagined.
He lowered his head slightly and whispered to himself,
"So... there really are people who can reach that level."
From that moment onward, his understanding of strength changed.
He no longer wanted to become merely a powerful warrior...
He wanted to one day reach a level where he could end a battle with a single strike, just as Dan Linker had done.
As for the black-haired young man...
He left in his usual silence without looking back at anyone.
Only after the mission had ended did Romal learn that his name was...
Adam Ethan.
The moment Romal saw him, he reminded him of his friend, Kyle.