Chapter 14 – The Coward and the Bully

The remaining fights ended quicker than the first few dozen.

Once the strongest members of the recruits saw someone kill the goblin without taking much damage, they figured they could do the same. Though, as Max watched, many of them ran through his tactics since he had proven it could work. Which made sense. The only reason he had come up with a brand new plane as because he had no one to study before him. Forced into being creative and learning amidst the flames.

Max and the rest were congratulated for surviving by the Optio, promised to be trained hard enough to strike at the heart of greenskin heartland, and then were guided out of the amphitheater with nary another word in.

He couldn’t help but notice how many less they had the very first day of being part of this Cursed Legion.

That exact number of eighty recruits had turned into fifty something from his quick count.

It made the march back to the barracks silent even with the groups and posses growing tighter than before. Joel had lost half his members, and the other groups huddled closer to each other. Olir, Ricardo, and the rest of the elite Arnie mentioned kept to themselves mostly.

Caleb, on the other hand, kept shadowing Max and Arnold.

They entered the barracks.

“Stay in your seats and get some sleep,” the lead legionary said. “Tomorrow will be the start of your training, you best recover your energy and strength. No one will have pity on you.”

They left after that, locking the door’s mechanism with a loud, echoing click.

Max went to his bed.

Arnie to his. “You’re going to sleep?”

“Yeah. Everything hurts right now, I have a migraine too.”

“Oh…”

Max looked up from stuffing his clothing sets under the bed’s mattress and getting the blanket ready for his fake sleep. The plan had been to act like he was asleep for a few hours while activating his Skill Shard, figuring out how to manipulate mana, and trying to see if his system will give him an idea of what those three traits he had unlocked from his Patron Inheritance meant for him. All of which were completely foreign.

“What’s wrong?”

Arnie hesitated for a second.

Max stared at his chubby cheeked friend until he broke and spoke up.

“Aren’t you afraid? You fought that goblin without an ounce of fear… I nearly puked from how scared I was. Holding the blade felt like I was being chased by a dozen of those foaming dogs the city guards used to put down back where I’m from. I don’t know how I survived.”

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“I am.”

Arnie’s eyes widened.

“I… heard,” Max had read it in one of the stories his mother forced him to read. “Umm… I heard once from someone that being a hero and being a coward isn’t whether you feel fear or not. Everyone feels fear except the insane and the monsters. It’s the choices we make when we are afraid that separates us.”

“Heroes? Huh…”

“Yeah. Make the right choices and you’re a hero. Make the wrong choices and you are a coward.”

“Isn’t that strange though?”

“What do you mean?”

“The difference between them seems so small. I would have thought it would be… I mean… isn’t it supposed to be massive?”

Max shrugged and got into his bed, leaning back onto the wall behind him while his legs were covered by the thin blanket. “Nothing is as far away as it seems, Arnie. The trick is to just keep moving and growing. No days off as you get better and soon enough you will be standing among the legends–”

“The hell you looking at?”