Nathan didn’t know how to respond. Rafael closed his eyes and calmed down. 

“Sorry for that, kid,” Rafael smiled forcefully. “Bad memories.”

“What do you mean by ‘do his thing’?” 

“Maybe next time. Right now, we have business to do. I didn’t come here for a chat.” Rafael stood up, throwing the empty water bottle behind his back and into the bin.

“Follow me.”

Nathan looked at Rafael with a raised eyebrow, but he obliged. 

“You keep saying we have business to do. What do you mean by that?”

Rafael reached the middle of the grassy ground, still littered with lifeless RTDs. 

“Wait a second. I’ll be right back,” Rafael said, walking towards the south wall—the main control panel. He placed his hand on the display. Soon, all the RTDs started moving again, this time in a more civilized fashion. The ones capable of doing so walked towards the south wall. The rest whirled on the ground for a while, eventually grinding to a stop.

“I—I didn’t know they could do that. How did—”

“It’s very simple, actually. As you’ve said earlier, RTDs have levels. And these levels don’t just control their strength and speed, but also intelligence and coordination.” Rafael returned to his original spot. “But as you can see, they still have their limits. It would be ideal if they could pick up the fallen robots, as well, but they're not capable of doing that yet.” 

“I see. That would explain the sudden implementation of team tactics and pincer attacks.”

Rafael nodded. “Okay, now this should be enough. I won’t bother cleaning up these few. They shouldn’t get in the way if we stand there.” 

Rafael pointed at a spot on the grassy field, desolate of any RTDs. 

“Will you please tell me what it is that we’re doing?” Anxiety was slowly creeping up on Nathan.

“No worries, kid. I won’t kill you. Hopefully.” Rafael whispered the last word, but Nathan still heard it. 

“You aren’t helping.”

“Okay. This should do.” Rafael stopped at the spot and turned towards Nathan, who had been following him. “The move you were training—how did you discover it?”

“You mean this?” Nathan used Shadowstep to travel the last couple of meters. 

“Yes, exactly that one,” Rafael replied, his voice tinged with excitement. 

“I was training, just like I was today when—wait!” Nathan stopped. He stood still for a second, then Shadowstepped away. He travelled at least fifteen meters. 

“YES!” Nathan shouted. “I did it. Did you see that, Rafael?” Nathan used Shadowstep to travel back to where he was standing just a moment before. 

Rafael was as shocked as he was pleased. Maybe we do have a chance, he thought.

“Well, did you see that? Isn’t that amazing? That’s so—”

“Hold your horses, kid. What you’ve done is impressive, I won’t lie. But it’s still not enough. Don’t get too conceited.”

“I—I’m sorry.” Nathan promptly calmed down at Rafael’s strict tone. 

“Good.” Rafael walked towards Nathan, playing with his beard. “You see, what you did there is pretty unique. So unique, I daresay, that I haven’t seen anyone else using that sort of technique.” 

“That can’t be right. I have seen people use it.” 

“This is what you’ve seen.” Rafael flashed and vanished without leaving any sort of afterimage. 

“Back here.” 

Nathan twisted towards the source. Rafael was standing behind him, at least twenty meters away. 

“I—I’m confused now. You said you have never seen anyone use it. What was that, then?”

“That right there was Quickstep. It’s a technique pretty similar to yours, but there’s one fundamental difference. Do you know how the technique works?”

“Quickstep or Shadowstep? No, forget I asked. I don’t really know how either of them works.” Nathan scratched his cheek.

“That’s what you call it? Shadowstep? Has a nice kick to it. I like it!” Rafael Quickstepped back to where Nathan was standing, once again without any afterimage. 

“Wow! That almost looked as if you teleported!” 

“Haha. Thanks, kid!” Rafael patted Nathan on the shoulder. “Let me explain to you this whole Quickstep/Shadowstep thing. As I’ve said, the moves both achieve the same result—travelling a short distance in a short amount of time. The way they do that, however, is different. I’ll try to slow down as much as possible, and you try to watch.” 

Rafael stood still for a second, then he took a deep breath and used Quickstep. This time, however, there was an afterimage. 

“Whatever it is that I am supposed to be seeing, I’m not seeing it. Could you perhaps repeat that? Maybe I’ll catch it this time.” 

Rafael used Quickstep again. Nathan still hadn’t noticed anything. He asked Rafael to repeat it once again. 

On the fifth attempt, Nathan finally noticed something.

“YES!” he shouted. “I think I’ve got it! You see, when I was training Shadowstep today, I used high-speed cameras to monitor what I was doing wrong. I never found anything wrong there, so I totally forgot about them. But there is one thing I noticed that we’re doing differently!”

“Go on.” 

“When you use Quickstep, you essentially use all your power in your legs and thrust yourself as fast as possible. When you did it the first time, I couldn’t see you at all. This time, however, I could see your afterimage. And that’s when I noticed it!” 

“So do you know now why I said I haven’t seen anything like Shadowstep before?” 

“Yes. Quickstep uses one big burst of power to travel a long distance almost instantly. When using Shadowstep, I only use a minuscule burst of power to travel a tiny distance, but I use it repeatedly.”

“Exactly. I’m glad you noticed it on your own.”

“So is Shadowstep inferior to Quickstep?” Nathan asked anxiously. 

“On the contrary. When we’re talking about potential power and usability, it’s better in all aspects.” 

“I don’t understand. If it’s better, why not use that, then?”

“Perhaps a demonstration would work better.” Rafael stood next to Nathan and readied himself. In a blink, he vanished and reappeared thirty-five meters away. Then he stumbled to the ground. Nathan ran towards him, panicked. 

“It’s fine, kid. That was meant to happen. Do you get what I mean now?” Rafael dusted himself off.

“I don’t, sorry.” 

“Give it a thought. You’ll figure it out.” Rafael turned towards the resting room. “I’ll get a drink while you’re thinking. You want anything?”

Nathan shook his head, pondering what he had seen. He performed a set of Shadowsteps, then attempted a Quickstep. The unfamiliar move brought him only a few meters away, and to his disappointment, it was much slower. 

“So? You found out anything?” Rafael asked, returning with a water bottle in his hand. “Here. I drank mine already. You’ll need this.” 

“Thanks.” Nathan caught the bottle. “So, like I said earlier, Quickstep is essentially one big jump, while Shadowstep is a set of smaller jumps.” Nathan walked for a while and then continued explaining. “For us, it doesn’t really make a difference on a small scale. But for a regular person, jumping once gets him far and doesn’t exhaust him much.” 

Nathan took a single jump. “But if you do ten smaller jumps, essentially covering the same distance, you are a lot more tired.” He jumped again, this time making a series of ten short leaps to return to his original spot. 

“And this is exactly what happens with Quickstep and Shadowstep. It also explains why you travelled a lot more but collapsed at the end,” Nathan said, looking at Rafael for confirmation.

“Correct. What you’ve said is exactly right.”

“But I don’t understand one thing. When I tried to execute a Quickstep, I barely moved a few meters. How come I can do the Shadowstep, which is objectively harder?” 

“There are a couple of things you’re forgetting,” Rafael explained. “It’s not that I, or any other assassin for that matter, can’t execute your Shadowstep. It’s just that it isn’t worth it for us. I was able to dash approximately a dozen meters more with Shadowstep, but I was so exhausted afterwards that I wouldn’t have been able to fight a fly.”

“And you can’t execute a Quickstep because you’re not strong enough yet. You have great stamina for your age, but your body is still relatively underdeveloped. You can’t compare to an adult.”

Nathan wasn’t happy to be called underdeveloped, but he had to admit, Rafael had a point.

“Your situation is unique. If you manage to become an assassin, you will be the youngest one in the history of this country. The usual age for assassins to join is around eighteen to twenty. There have been a few people who discovered their gift later in life, but the vast majority of assassins start young.”

“Most of these people never have access to stuff like RTDs or a seasoned assassin to train them. That’s why they only do basic training and hope to improve. Most of their improvements happen only after they become assassins.” 

Nathan had never thought about how unusual his training experience had been. In retrospect, his father’s excitement at showing him the RTDs for the first time made sense. It was a memory he had cherished, but never fully understood until now. 

“So what you’re saying is that I’ve got an early start? That’s good in the long run, no?”

“Of course it is. But your early start is not the only thing that you’ve got going for yourself. From what I can tell, your genes are also superior.” 

“Genes?” Nathan asked, perplexed.

“You’ve inherited Blithe’s genes. Pair that with all this training from a young age, and you’ve really got a huge advantage.” 

“Do genes play such a huge role in that?” 

“Oh sorry, I forgot. You don’t know anything about why assassins are special, right?” 

“Special?”

“Sorry, bad wording. I mean, why assassins are able to do all this crazy stuff. Shadowstep, Quickstep, destroy metal with their bare hands, and so on. Why aren’t boxers able to do that, for example?”

“So you’re saying it’s our genes that cause that?”

“It’s a pretty rare mutation. Assassins haven’t always been the way they are now. Hundreds of years ago, assassins were normal people with daggers and poison. But about a hundred and fifty years ago, something weird started happening. People started emerging with what was called “superpowers.” 

“Let me get this straight. . . We’re bloody mutants? I always knew that I was different, but I thought it was because I was training more seriously. My classmates could barely run a hundred meters.” 

“That’s certainly one way of putting it,” Rafael chuckled. “But now you can understand that you weren’t really being fair. Your classmates might’ve trained just as hard as you, but you would always have had an advantage,” he scolded. Nathan looked a little ashamed. “Some of our genes have undergone a mutation and heightened our capacity. Very important word—capacity, not strength.”

“How is it important?”

“Estimates say that, on average, there are two people in a hundred with mutated genes. With the current population, there should be at least two million assassins just in our country. And I can certainly tell you, that isn’t the case. Why is that?”

“Because people haven’t discovered their gifts,” Nathan replied, his hand at his chin. “So what you’re saying is that one might be a mutant or assassin, but unless he trains he will never know?”

Rafael nodded. 

“And since I have been training ever since I was young, I have an extra advantage. Because not only are my capabilities greater due to my father’s genes, I have started developing them a lot earlier.”

“That’s right. But don’t forget, you might be stronger than kids your age, but if you become an assassin you won’t be fighting alongside or against assassin kids. They have the age advantage. That’s why I still need to prepare you.”

“You keep saying if I become an assassin. Aren’t I one already?” 

“You wish, kid. Every aspiring assassin needs to complete the assassination entrance exam. Do you think that Occidendum just hands out quarter-million-dollar licenses to anyone who walks through the front door?” 

“I suspected that might be the case,” Nathan sighed. “So what do I need to do?”