A month passed in the blink of an eye.

Every morning, before the sun even touched the treetops, Kai sparred with Nadya, Sven, and Isaac. No abilities. No weapons. Just fists, grit, and a lot of bruises. Isaac struggled the most at first, even though he was allowed to use his mutant power. His missing arm left a glaring weakness on his left side, but he made up for it by weaving in his phasing ability exactly as Kai had drilled into him - phasing through attacks when he couldn't block them. It wasn't pretty, but it worked.

Then, after the morning beatdowns, Kai threw himself into Takeshi's brutal routine. It never stayed the same. Every day, Takeshi would ramp it up, adding more bodyweight exercises, longer runs, steeper climbs, and harder endurance drills. Kai could barely keep up, often finishing long after Takeshi, who completed the entire brutal session blindfolded without so much as breaking a sweat.

But Kai refused to quit. Pride, competitiveness, pure ego - whatever it was, it drove him forward every single day, no matter how much his body screamed.

Once that torture was done, Kai would isolate himself, taking whatever blood he could harvest from hunting or leftovers from meals to push the limits of his bloodweaving. He practised everything: speed, precision, volume, and force.

His control over blood was improving by the day as he focused on condensing his constructs as well as furthering their complexity.

It was mentally straining to the point that he hated it more than Takeshi's daily routine, but he endured. The satisfaction that came from the progress was unlike anything else.

The sky was the limit as a mutant.

An average person had ingrained limitations. No matter how long and how hard someone trained, they would never be able to jump a certain height, run a certain speed, or lift a certain weight.

But that no longer applied to Kai, whose body was adapting and developing unnaturally quickly.

By evening, they all regrouped to spar again - this time using their abilities freely. Sven's bursts of speed attacks grew sharper and faster, Nadya's strength and explosive control became even more devastating, and Isaac's phasing got smoother and more unpredictable.

Of course, they all held back slightly... but it always felt like they hit Kai just a little harder. Maybe because they knew he'd recover from it or maybe because he was asking for it with his actions, but he wouldn't have it any other way.

Amina kept up in her own way. She wasn't built for battle, but she grew tougher all the same. With Nadya teaching her basic strikes and self-defence, Amina learned how to survive if the worst ever happened. She trained her healing to dig deeper, speeding up their recovery beyond just surface wounds.

She figured out how to focus her healing, which allowed her to purge minor toxins, mend strained muscles, and even heal fractures if she pushed herself. At first, gutting and skinning animals for food had made her sick, but hunger and survival hardened her. She no longer flinched when she held a blade or snapped a rabbit's neck with trembling hands.

Their little camp grew, too. They built a second cabin beside the first, a bit lopsided but sturdy enough, where Amina and Nadya slept, while the others crammed into the original one. They cleared out a larger fire pit and even cobbled together rough training dummies made from bundled branches and animal hides.

In the rare moments of free time, they fished from the streams, played rough wrestling matches that always ended in bruises and laughter, and once or twice even brewed a crude, foul-tasting alcohol from berries and roots they found - much to Nadya and Sven's delight.

Isaac changed the most.

At the start of the month, he had been shaky, reserved, and frustrated with his own limitations. But now, he phased larger objects easily, phased for longer periods without tiring, and even hovered a few metres off the ground while phased, though he still panicked if he went too high or too fast. He learned caution the hard way, once falling from a good height and winding himself so badly that Amina had to heal him twice in one night.

Hand-to-hand, Isaac's progress was even sharper. He no longer fought like someone who had something to prove. He fought smartly, weaving his intangibility into dodges and counterattacks, forcing even Kai and Nadya to stay sharp against him. He might never match their raw power, but Isaac was carving his own path - one built around wit, timing, and survival.

Amina had also hardened in her own way, no longer the sheltered girl she had been when they first met. She was still kind, still gentle - but now there was a toughness beneath it, a steady calm when she stitched wounds closed, a fierceness when she threw her weight into a punch during training.

As for Kai, Nadya, and Sven, their growth was obvious to anyone who saw them.

Kai's body had thickened with muscle, hardened from constant training, relentless sparring, and a diet of pure survival food, which mostly consisted of meat. His black hair had grown out fast, messily framing his face, and he had to keep flicking it back during fights.

His bloodweaving had evolved, too. He could control far more blood for far longer, compress it tighter, unleash it faster, and hit harder. The difference between the scrawny figure who barely made it out of Nyx's facility with Isaac's help and the man he was now was night and day.

Sven's legs had grown noticeably thicker - more muscle, more endurance. After being mangled and shattered more times than he could count from overusing his ability, he'd finally built the resilience to use it for much longer. Each time he pushed too far, Amina was there to heal him, never once complaining. In fact, she seemed to enjoy it, treating his constant injuries as practice for honing her own power.

Of course, Sven didn't push himself out of pure willpower. No, the credit for that went to none other than the wild woman herself - Nadya.

She gave him hell daily, never letting him slack off, and pushed herself just as hard, if not harder. Her control over her explosive orbs had improved drastically. She could not only detonate them with pinpoint precision now, but had trained the number she could produce simultaneously, and just how powerful each blast could be.

Takeshi, meanwhile, remained an enigma.

Beyond his shared morning routine with Kai, he vanished for most of the day. Where he went or what he trained in, none of them knew. When he did appear to spar with them occasionally, even using just a sheathed katana, he was still like a phantom - untouchable and deadly.

And yet, despite everything - the exhaustion, the pain, the constant pressure - they had all got stronger. The trauma of Volkorye still lingered, but the sharpness of it had dulled. They fought. They survived. They developed.

And more than anything... they grew closer.

Many nights ended the same way: lying on the grass, bruised and battered, staring up at the endless stars above, laughing over shared injuries, botched meals, and the ridiculous near-death moments that came with surviving in a place like this.

From the mutated bear that emerged from the nearby cave network, ending its hibernation, to a snow leopard with glowing eyes that nearly tore Kai apart, their surroundings held no shortage of beasts. It was a place no normal person could live in - only someone like Takeshi could roam such a region without a care in the world.

But despite the danger and tough training, they all savoured each and every day. Because deep down, all of them knew:

The peace they found in that secluded stretch of wilderness wouldn't last forever, and they'd eventually have to return to the chaotic world as rogue mutants...

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