A loud bang echoed in the training room, the sound sharp and concussive, and the others watched in horror as Joe’s head flung back, sending him crashing to the floor in a heap.
Darno’s mouth was left wide open, his composure utterly shattered by the sudden violence. "This is crazy, this is crazy! You said to put us in a life-or-death situation, not to kill us!" Darno shouted, his hands instinctively raised in a defensive, non-combat stance.
"Don’t worry," Max shouted back calmly, his voice ringing over the tense silence. "He’s fine. Look."
Joe slowly lifted the upper half of his body, groaning. He now had a massive, red lump forming on his forehead. When he went to press on it, a sharp sting caused him to wince and pull his hand away immediately.
"What Aron just fired there was a rubber bullet, but they carry a lot of force and velocity," Max explained, the scientist and the gangster speaking simultaneously. "Honestly, if you get hit too much by them, and certainly if they strike you in the wrong place, you can absolutely die." Max paused, letting that deadly reality sink in. "I’ve told Aron to up the ante with his various weapons against you, and I promise you, this is going to be a painful process. When you fight, all of you are going to have to fight with your lives on the line."
He gestured to the mercenary. "So, I want you to come at Aron, one by one. You fight until you cannot stand."
The four inheritors collectively gulped. None of them looked remotely ready, but their fear was momentarily interrupted when one person, the ever-curious Wolf, bravely volunteered.
"I’ll go," Wolf said, stepping forward, shedding his initial hesitation. "I always wanted to see what it was like going up against an S-rank fighter."
Max smiled beneath his mask, knowing the true education was about to begin. The second phase of the training had started.
With weapons and tools expertly moving in his hands, Aron was almost like a different fighter altogether. He was a force of controlled, deadly precision. No one was able to get close to him; he used the ranged weapons to force separation, and then, as they desperately closed the gap, Aron was skilled at transitioning seamlessly, using his tool and then his fists when he got close.
As Max had instructed, Aron started off by merely beating them and pushing them past their endurance, rather than immediately pushing them to the literal edge of death. This wasn’t just a way for them to find their Vow and unlock the special cells that were dormant in their bodies. This was also a vital training exercise for them—to fight against a person who was far above their rank, and to see how they would overcome the immense physical and psychological challenge.
As the fights went on, and the rotation went back to Wolf again, Aron began upping the ante, trying to strike genuine, debilitating fear into what he was doing. Using training blades that were sharpened but dulled for non-fatal contact, he went close to hitting vital areas and stopping just before causing lethal injury.
As Max watched this calculated display of martial prowess, he was learning a great deal about Aron’s true skill level.
I knew Wolf said he was an S-rank, so he was incredibly skilled, and I learned a bit about his background, but this is beyond anything I expected, Max thought, reviewing Aron’s file in his mind. He managed to put up a decent fight against Hercules, right? If anything, I guess Aron would be borderline a Super Human as well, even without the Vow.
The fighting was exhausting, but Max and Aron maintained the pressure. For Na, Max’s personal bodyguard, who had been watching the whole time, he couldn’t help it—he too decided to get involved. He stepped into the ring to challenge Aron, which gave the four inheritors a much-needed chance to take a break and recover.
In the end, Aron had gone through three brutal rounds with all of them. It wasn’t that they had no will left to fight, but their beaten bodies simply weren’t going to listen to their minds anymore.
"Don’t worry, we have an entire week to go through this process," Max said, kneeling beside the battered inheritors. "As I said, bit by bit, Aron is going to up the pressure. He won’t just aim for your limbs or use rubber bullets; he will start actually stabbing you with these things as well, just stopping before hitting a vital organ."
"Stab?" Joe gulped, wondering how Max could say something so casually, as if talking about the weather.
But Joe knew that’s what it took. He remembered when Hercules had broken his bones and left him crippled, and even in the world of the Underworld, he had been stabbed a fair few times himself in street fights. The pain was necessary to get stronger.
After Na had completed his round with Aron and everyone was on a recovery break, waiting until they could stand and go again, a thought popped into Joe’s mind.
"Hey, with how strong Aron is," Joe asked, looking up at the towering mercenary, "I was wondering, wouldn’t it be good for him to take a Vow as well? I mean, with him being so strong already, if he took a Vow, wouldn’t he become super, super strong?"
Max also wondered the same thing. Aron had been present when Hercules talked about being a Super Human. Aron could have researched this power himself and sought out a Vow, but why hadn’t he done so before working for Max?
That was when Aron was the one that had smiled—a rare, unnerving display of emotion.
"Taking a Vow?" Aron repeated, the question sounding ridiculous to him. "Why would I do that, when I have already had a Vow for a very long time?"
The four inheritors, and even Max, turned to stare at him. Aron’s smile only broadened as he delivered the stunning truth.
"My Vow, is to make sure that nothing happens to Max Stern," Aron declared. "The more I feel like I’m successfully doing my job of protecting him, the stronger I get. That is my Vow."
Max’s mind raced. He wondered if Aron was speaking in a metaphorical sense, a deep professional commitment, or a literal sense, as in a real, life-altering Vow.
Because if it was true, it explained everything. What if Aron was already a Super Human, but with what happened with his family, and what happened with Max’s near-death experience, perhaps that collective trauma and failure had broken his Vow, making him weaker than he should be. But now, as he was successfully fulfilling the Vow again by protecting Max and his assets, he would soon become strong... incredibly strong.