Zectas Volume IV: The Salubrious City of Centzo Read Free Page B

friends positioned inside Bulwarks."

After their final day of training, the strike force set off on their mission in high spirits.

                                           
 
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    Sweat drenched Nash's sleeveless shirt as he repeatedly struck an old tire hanging from the garage ceiling with two eskrima sticks. Thirty minutes in, he finally stopped and started to do his stretching exercises.

Done with his eskrima practice, Nash was about to head up to his room when he saw a forlorn Donny, with his head on the kitchen table. He was surprised to see his youngest brother looking so sad, so he stopped and asked, "What's up, little bro?"

"I'm twelve! I'm not that little anymore, Nash." exclaimed Donny.

"Hey, what's with the attitude?" Nash asked and sat next to Donny.

"Sorry," said Donny sincerely, "it's just that Seth's been avoiding me lately."

"Weird, I thought I heard you guys earlier this morning. Weren't you doing eskrima training?" asked Nash with concern.

"We did, but he left right after we finished the basic exercises. I was hoping to train some more, but he just left, saying that he had to read a book on 'Data Lakes'." said Donny sourly, "If he wanted to do research on some lake, he could have done it after we trained some more." He then crossed his arms and shook his head. "I’m telling you right now, Nash: there's no way Seth is going to make it past the second round of eliminations of the upcoming AUTOMATA competition."

"Donny, I think you misunderstood. ‘Data Lakes’ is probably a book related to the elective he's picked up, not a book about an actual lake."

"Huh? What do you mean?" asked Donny curiously.

"You see, I think that Seth realised at a young age something that most people don't realise until they're much older." replied Nash.

"Still in the dark here." said Donny, "You’ll have to do better than that."

"What I mean is, I feel like Seth already knows what he wants to do for the rest of his life. Maybe that'll change, maybe not, I'm not sure. But for now, it's best that we support him."

Donny nodded and tried his best to understand. He then asked, "So what's Seth going to be?"

"A Computer scientist, like Dad was." answered Nash with a smile, "The road to getting there is rough, so do you think you could cut him some slack?"

Donny shrugged. "Fine. Guess I'll have to get used to training on my own. I still want to become the national champion of AUTOMATA." he said with conviction.

"And that's great too. Let's just be supportive of the things each of us wants to pursue, okay?" said Nash. He stood up and ruffled his youngest brother's hair. "Okay, I'll let you plan out your training. I'm going back up to my room."

Once back in his room, Nash comfortably sat on his computer chair and rolled its wheels over to his desktop computer. He started scrolling through his latest video feed. After spending some time editing, he did a final check on his latest video and finally clicked the ‘publish’ button, uploading his video for the month.

Nash couldn't decide if he should include Crucibelle in the video or only show the defense of Banal village. In the end, he included the fight with Crucibelle, but erased the parts where he managed to block her attacks with his perlite chain and sickle and the parts that showed that he had high resistance to her flames. He only showed that his life bar was low, and that he was rescued by Mamelon and the Elemental Knights.

He understood the importance of always hiding your aces. After all, that was what Horrabelle demonstrated—she made it seem like she was meeting up with him to negotiate, when in reality she was only there to rob him of his abilities.

'A fool doesn’t realise that he is being deceived, while a clever man would merely play the fool.' thought Nash to himself as he remembered how foolish he was to take Horrabelle's words at face value. However, he was no longer