Chapter 7 – The Path of Discipline

After the ceremony of disciple acceptance, the once powerless servant boy Leo had taken his first step toward becoming a warrior of the people — a demon of liberation.

The old man stood before him, voice firm yet proud.

“From today, your life will no longer be your own, Leo. You walk the path of duty, and it is a brutal one. I will forge your body, mind, and soul into a weapon. You will suffer, but you will endure. And if you endure… you will become worthy.”

Leo nodded without hesitation.

“Yes, Master.”

The Training Begins

“Your day shall begin before the sun rises,” said the master. “Each dawn, you will run ten rounds through the cursed forest with weighted chains bound to your arms and legs — weights forged from iron infused with mild binding curses. They’ll grow heavier the longer you resist them.”

At first, Leo struggled to even lift them. His body screamed, but he gritted his teeth and obeyed. Every fall was met with a rise. Every failure became a lesson.

“At noon, you will hunt,” the old man continued. “You may not use tools, magic, or weapons — you must learn the behavior of beasts, the rhythm of nature. Trap them with your mind. Kill them with your resolve.”

Leo learned to survive by setting traps, camouflaging himself, and tracking movement patterns. Every day, he brought back food — or went hungry.

“After the hunt, comes the true battle: your mind,” the master said, leading him to a hidden trapdoor in the floor. It creaked open, revealing a long spiral staircase, descending into darkness.

Torch in hand, Leo followed him down.

The Hall of Honors

The air was thick with dust and memory.

Leo stepped into a massive underground library — books stacked to the ceiling, scrolls written in ancient demon script, cracked maps of battlefields long lost.

“This,” said the old man, “is the Hall of Honors. A record of every war, betrayal, uprising, and reform in demon history. Strategies that shaped the kingdom. Mistakes that shattered empires. You will know them all.”

Leo’s eyes widened in awe.

“You must learn not just to fight — but to lead, to outwit tyrants, to inspire armies, to break chains with words as well as blades.”

Leo’s Daily Regimen:

4:30 AM – Weight-Run through the Forest of Nightmares
(Chains that curse fatigue and fear resistance)

8:00 AM – Meditation & Breath Training
(Sitting under freezing waterfall, controlling demon aura)

9:00 AM – Hunting Session
(No tools — only instincts, traps, or ambushes)

1:00 PM – Combat Training
(Hand-to-hand martial drills with weighted limbs, against illusions of real beasts)

4:00 PM – Theories of War
(Study war history, tactical books, language of lost empires, cipher training)

7:00 PM – Survival Cooking & Campbuilding
(Learning to build fires, cook, patch wounds, hide tracks, survive ambushes)

9:00 PM – Reflective Journaling and Memory Drills
(Rewriting strategies from memory, meditative mental recall)

Four Years of Fire and Ash

The first month was agony. Every muscle in Leo’s body rebelled. Every night he collapsed, but woke again with burning eyes and broken hands bandaged anew.

But he never stopped.

He mastered strategy after strategy, learning how a single piece could topple a kingdom if moved at the right time. He learned to read maps upside down, to memorize topography by touch, to calculate enemy movement with only a whisper of wind and broken twigs.

He hunted beasts ten times his size. Learned to hold his breath for three minutes in freezing water. He cooked from blood and bone, treated his own wounds, built shelters in storm and frost.

He didn’t just grow.
He was reforged.

Even though Riley's whereabouts were unknown, even though the pain of his sister’s death still lingered… he carried their memory like a sword inside his chest.

Every sunrise was another step toward his vow.

“I will liberate them all.”