Page 74 of Cheating Fate

Tharek and his siblings gasped in shock. Then he glared at me with an air of betrayal.

“That’s not fair! You’re bigger and stronger. So of course you can smash it like that,” he exclaimed.

I huffed dismissively. “That doesn’t matter. With the right technique, you can do it, too.”

“There’s no way!” he said, as if he was doubting my intelligence.

I gave him a stern look, and he scrunched his face. In that instant, he heavily resembled Vahl, just a younger version, with the same dark purple eyes.

“Then what’s the right technique?” he grumbled.

“Another good question. There might be hope for you yet,” I mocked, making him grimace even more. “Observe.”

I showed him how I shifted my weight and transferred the power from my legs to my hips, core, shoulder, and then arm. He struggled with the hip rotation to create the perfect whip effect to accelerate his upper body. He needed to silence the acquired instincts of his previous training so that he could embrace the new one.

And then he got it.

“Whoa!” Tharek exclaimed, when the rotation didn’t make him partially lose his balance.

“Better isn’t it?” I asked. “Do it again.”

He nodded and repeated the movement, gaining more assurance with each attempt.

“See? Now you recover faster because you’re more stable. You also stopped opening yourself up to be struck on your flank,” I explained before handing him back the staff. “Let’s try that dummy again.”

With a vocal command, I made a new dummy appear. Tharek stared at it and then at me with a nervous expression. He approached it, licked his lips, and squared his shoulders. Even before he began swinging, I knew he’d fail. He was too much in his head. His strike was weaker than the previous one. He looked at me with a crestfallen expression.

“Why are you looking at me? Did your swing feel like what you just practiced?” I asked, unimpressed.

He shook his head.

“I asked you a question,” I snarled.

“No. It didn’t,” he replied, chastised.

“Then swing until you do it the right way. You know how.”

He gave me a stiff nod and swiped his staff at the dummy again. The next three swings were just as pathetic. And then, on the fourth, something clicked. The dummy didn’t shatter like it had done with me, but it snapped in half, with a few fragments breaking off here and there.

Tharek shouted in victory and jumped up and down with excitement under the cheers of his siblings. He turned back to me, puffing out his chest with a massive grin. I snorted and nodded with approval.

“Well done. But you can do even better… if you listen,” I said with a stern look.

“I will,” he replied, subdued.

“Good. First, no more training with them,” I said, pointing at the others. “From now on, you will train like a Braxian. Based on your current size, I suspect you will grow to be as big as my father, or at least bigger than Ghan. That means you must do all the Braxians training modules. I expect the same high scores from them as you got with the previous sparring modules.”

“Understood,” Tharek said with determination.

“One more thing,” I said with a serious expression. “You will completely stop attacking Vahleryon. Your days of trying to kill him—even just as play—are over.”

He recoiled, and his temper flared again.

“That has nothing to do with you. It’s between my brother and me. It’s our way of bonding,” Tharek said aggressively.

“Absolutely not. This affects everyone,” I said in an imperious tone. “The Great War is upon us. Vahl cannot waste his energy constantly defending himself from you. From this day forward, your role is to protect him and your siblings. You will be his greatest weapon. When Vahl sees you, he must feel safe, not stressed.”

Tharek gaped at me, all aggression bleeding out of him the moment I stated he should be his brother’s protector.