"First, what do you know about ki?" he asked.
"It is like electricity in a wire that flows in our body without giving us shock," I answered childishly.
To my surprise, he said it was correct and continued saying, "Then if you want to bring out that electricity, then you should know about it and master how to control it. Before starting to learn, you need to know how it feels."
He said and asked me to come near him.
As I went and stood near him, he raised his left hand and kept it on my head.
Suddenly, I felt a different kind of feeling which was new and different to me.
He then took off his hand and said, "That is what ki feels like. Now try to feel it in your body and try to circulate it within your body.
This will be your task for this week, so complete it so that we won't fall behind the schedule."
He said that and left, and I practiced to feel it.
In the afternoon, the middle-aged man came, and he taught me the basics of sword once again and started to teach me my clan's swordsmanship.
In the evening, I leave with him for the headquarters and torture people to get used to the sight of blood.
One month passed like that, with all my training completely done, and I mastered the ki and both the sword techniques.
Tomorrow, the four of us have the license exam.
The three of them are taking the normal exam while I'm taking the beast exam.
In the normal exam, you need to kill an opponent who has committed a crime.
These people are basically criminals who have been ordered the death penalty; they are used as the guinea pigs for the license exam.
Both the people are given swords and are allowed to use ki and kill each other.
The examinee should kill the criminal or make him accept his defeat.
If the criminal accepts his defeat, he will be killed then and there by the guards or by the examinee.
If the criminal wins, either by killing the examinee or by making him yield, he can live until his next fight.
But the beast exam is different.
There are magical creatures which also have ki in them, and they are also divided into ranks.
The C and D rank beasts are friendly beasts which can be chosen as pets, as they are small in size and have less anger.
While the B rank beasts are of the size of a five feet five inches human when they are fully grown and are aggressive, with the same anger level as C and D rank beasts.
The A rank beasts are more aggressive and angry beasts; they are six feet when fully grown and are very dangerous.
As for the S rank beasts, each nation has their own S rank as their national beast.
For China, dragon.
England, Griffin.
Both North and South America, phoenix.
Europe continent has Unicorn.
United Korea has Haechi.
And Japan has Kirin, and so on.
There are other beasts that are violent, brutal, and aggressive; we have yokais, if you consider, so do the other countries.
Well, most of these S rank beasts are now extinct, as most of them died in the War, or so the nations say.
I think every country has their S rank beast hiding somewhere.
That's what most people believe, those who are interested in them.
To form a contract with a beast, you should be stronger than them.
All the beast users are kept under strict rules.
To get my beast user license, I have to defeat a beast user criminal.
When I enter the ring, I should check what kind of beast it is, find its weakness, and kill it along with the owner.
Today is the exam day.
The four of us are waiting for the car to come at the Minka entrance.
As I am bored, I asked Kenji, "How did your training go?"
"Well, not so bad," he replied.
"Oh, good, and all the best," I replied.
"Thanks," he replied.
I think he is nervous.
This is expected from everyone who is going to take a license exam.
Even Keiko and Akiko are nervous; it can be seen on their faces.
I, for some reason, am not nervous but am excited.
If I tell them, they would think that I am crazy.
In the meantime, our ride came, and we hopped in and took off for the JSA exam centre.
The exam takes place only in January of every year, and this is being conducted on special recommendation of our grandpas, and its difficulty has also been risen, as it is being conducted for just the four of us specially.
We finally arrived at the venue.
We got out, and there was a man waiting for us.
He came to us and asked us to follow him.
This is the first time I am seeing this exam centre.
I heard that it has many rooms for combat in which our exams are going to take place.
I heard this place has fourteen floors, and each floor has five rooms, and each room is the size of a kendo ground.
And one kendo ground is around five hundred square feet, so each floor is around three thousand five hundred feet.
We went into the building, and he took us to the elevator and went to the fifth floor and asked Kenji to head to the first room, Keiko to the third room, Akiko to the fourth room, and me to the second room.
Each of us departed to our assigned rooms and went inside.
As I entered the room, the referee was waiting along with the criminal and his beast that I should kill.
The referee came to me with a sword and handed it to me and asked me to put the safety gear over there, and he went back.
The swords that are given here are only one-time usable; they collect them back and destroy them and forge them again.
This is also one of the mysteries, and people still couldn't figure out why weapons made of that material behave like that.
This room is just like a kendo court but with no seats for viewers and has CC cameras on all four sides and is so bright with white paint and lights.
I took the sword out of the scabbard, put on the gear, and went to my position.
As I took my position, my opponent also took his position along with his beast.
He looked like a middle-aged man who was in his late thirties, and his face has a scar from the top of his left-side forehead to the right side of his chin in a diagonal way, covering his nose and some part of his mouth.
His hair was brown colour, and eyes were round without dark circles.
I think he is an early bed person.
And his physique is good, and his hair is cut short.
And I think his height is around five feet ten inches or nine inches, as his beast is an A rank beast which is six feet.
This species has strong legs with powerful paws and thick long tail and sharp teeth.
This shoots fire from its mouth and is a very prideful and ferocious beast.
This one is beautiful when it is not angry, and its beauty comes from its mane.
When this is angry, it shoots fire and jumps into it.
As it comes out of the fire, its mane and the hair on the tail and near its paws will be on fire, so it's given the name 'firrein', and it makes it a lot harder to beat him.
We both bowed and offered our greetings to each other, and referee said to start the match.
Today, if I want to win, I should first kill the beast and then kill him.
As the match began, he went back a few steps, and his beast started to shoot fire at me