LEO
He sat at the dining table holding his swollen head with his left hand while also trying to keep his right hand in place so that it would not hurt. He had been beaten, broken and knocked out. Each time his turn to take Jacobs down came around he could do nothing to him until he tired himself out. He found himself overworking himself to make his turns last longer even past the point when he was already exhausted. Regardless of how enhanced his body's healing capabilities were after he became superhuman some of the injuries he sustained were just too much to shake off in between the sessions.
He ended up accumulating enough scrapes and bruises and broken bones that he could not fight anymore by the 25th round and so they finally called it quits. So now he sat there waiting for Jacobs to make some sort of ointment that he claimed would help soothe the swellings as well as aid in the healing. Jacobs came out of the kitchen with a dish that contained something that smelled quite rancid and a towel.
"You should apply this to all your bruises and the swelling and after about 3 hours you can wash it off with some cold water to maximise the effects and the numbing powers of the remedy. It was not bad for the first day and you lasted longer than men twice your age kid."
Jacobs was now in more comfortable looking clothes and barely had a scratch on him to indicate that he had just spent the better part of the day fighting someone repeatedly. He had managed to fend off Leo with just one arm and also had left so much damage on him that he now had a slight trauma about him. Leo considered calling it quits with the training because he found no reason to explain how taking such horrible thrashings would allow him to improve.
"I still do not get what the point of all this was, you seem to be enjoying beating the living daylights out of me. What is the lesson here Mr Miyagi? I need to understand what I need to do so that I can trace my growth," Leo said while wincing due to the rancid concoction causing a sting on a bruise on his cheek.
"you just need to follow my instructions and let me worry about tracing your growth. We are going to do this type of training every three days meaning that for tomorrow and the day after, you will be free to recover and do whatever you want. Two days from now, we are going to meet at 0600 hrs and we are going to start again and I want you to last up to the 30th bout since you are so concerned with improvement. I will help you build your endurance as well as fighting techniques."
Leo began dreading what would happen to him two days from then and was thinking about the pressure he had felt during those 25 fights. He had never really been in a fight before since he was able to avoid interactions with people that would lead to such conflicts. Matter of fact that time with the two soldiers was truly the first time he had come to blows with someone so he was worse than a greenhorn. Fighting Jacobs was like confronting a tiger while being a house cat.
"have you seen what the world has become out there since it all began?" Jacobs asked him breaking him out of his reverie. Leo considered his question for a second as he thought of the ashes of his home.
"I woke up to find my home completely in ashes and I ran for hours and finally reached this place. The last I saw of my home, there was a horde of monsters marching in there so I think it has become a monster settlement by now."
Jacobs gave him a look that let him know that he sympathised with him and he did not pry into where the home was and what he had lost. Instead, he went up to his room and came back holding a map. "you see, the world has been divided into safe zones, war zones and conquered zones or monster zones as we have taken to calling them. Safe zones are completely safe from monsters entering them due to some specific energy field that our scientists have not fully understood."
"Outside a safe zone monsters are incapable of approaching it for about a 100 km radius which is why you don't see creatures prowling the borders of the town. So, in the event you that you want to go out and hunt for monsters you would have to travel 100 hm distance just to be able to find one. That is assuming you find a war zone of course."
Leo took in all the information in silence as he began thinking about his goals. Jacobs unfurled the map and it was a huge splash of green, red and black regions that Leo realised represented safe, war and monster zones respectively. Jacobs pointed to a small green spot that was crack middle of three red zones and a very large black area that swept through what used to be Leo's home.
"this is where we are right now and as you can see; we are chock in the middle of hostile territories. The large black area is the monster settlements that were taken near our region a week ago. Monsters swiftly destroyed and burned down a large part of the human settlements that existed days ago in the area and then moved in when they wiped out over 90% of human life in that area. We have approximated that only 10% made it out of there to the safe zones or war zones to meet up with human parties."
The black zone was extremely large and Leo noticed something which then made him come up with a theory. The black zones were concentrated around most of the affluent areas in the country. He noticed that what used to be the fanciest place in Harare, Borrowdale was not completely owned by the monsters now. It would seem that all of the low-density areas which did not originally have large numbers of human residents had been the easiest to attack and had thus been taken over first.
Was this a coincidence or had something made sure that the points of invasion were only concentrated to places with less human life? Was it an act of the gods or something else had intervened to make it so? This talk with Jacobs was raising new questions for Leo that he had not considered before. He needed more information and fielded questions to Jacobs, most of which he could not answer. This left Leo dissatisfied and overrun with curiosity. In the coming months he would decide on which war zone he would be headed to once he was ready.
After talking with Jacobs for an hour or so he headed to his room to recover and wait the last two hours before washing off the ointment and then catching some Zs. While he waited, he began running simulations of Jacobs's fighting techniques and marvelled at their fluidity. The man seemed to blend a great degree of ferocity with a state of calm that just threw Leo off. His martial arts style was the military combat of Zimbabwe which combined various different elements from Karate, Judo and Krav Maga and it was quite efficient and open to innovation.
Leo found it worthy of note but still felt that his choice of fighting techniques were enough for him. Instead, he began trying to retrofit some of his attacks from his three styles and blend them within each other to make them seamless and unpredictable.
His mental capabilities allowed him to practise through simulations in his head however he would need to actually physically try them out in order to truly perfect them and integrate them. He would try them out once his injuries were healed the day after.
The world had completely changed and now it was not even assured that he could live till old age. He knew that for now the weak minded would simply crowd into the safe zones and assume they could live peacefully there however that was all an illusion. If less people chose to enter the fight over the war zones then monsters would claim more land and grow more powerful until the safe zones themselves became the new war zones.
In time humanity would become the outcast on their own planet, to be hunted out of existence. It was now a kill or be killed type of system and only the strong would survive. He would have to find the power necessary to guarantee his own survival regardless of what other people did and he would not allow his race to hold him back.
In essence he knew that the safe zone was both a safe haven as well as a cage to let them live as cattle. And he was not cattle, he would be a fighter. He would become a hunter no matter what. He went to sleep hours later, his own obsession with his own survival and desire of revenge made that much more consuming.