Military training
North of Besilico, Noxus Empire
The air in the barracks was always thick with the stench of sweat, the scraping of metal, and the rough roars of sergeants; this had become Draven's new "home." Though called a military camp, it was more like a large, crude training ground enclosed by a wooden fence, interspersed with low-lying barracks. Life here was more structured and harsher than in the slums. Before dawn, the sound of whistles would yank him from his dreams, followed by endless running, hand-to-hand combat, weapons drills, and those sleep-inducing sermons about the Noxian Legion's discipline and honor.
Ten-year-old Draven was like a discordant note in this steel jungle. The smallest leather armor still dangled on him, but he walked with an air of defiance, his chin held high, and his eyes always carrying a slickness and provocation honed from his street-smart past.
He practically chased after trouble. During drills, he always stood at the very crooked corner, and would wink at the person next to him when the instructor wasn't looking.
The muddy ground of the recruit camp had been turned into a sticky swamp by countless pairs of boots. Rain mixed with sweat slid down every young and tired face. Draven stood in the ranks, feeling ants crawling all over his body.
Instructor Basque, a burly man with a neck thicker than Draven's thigh, was scanning the group of rookies with eyes that could peel a layer of skin off a person.
"You bunch of scum! Do you think this is a game? In the Noxian Legion, the first and last ironclad rule is—obedience!"
Basque roared like thunder, "If your superior orders you to eat shit, you have to ask 'Hot or cold?' Do you understand?!"
"Understood, sir!" came the scattered replies.
"Didn't you eat enough, you scum!" Basque's face was almost pressed against the face of the soldier in front.
"Understood, sir!" The voices were more unified this time, but Draven's lips curled into a slight, mocking sneer. Eat shit? He, Draven, only knew how to shove shit into other people's mouths.
This subtle expression did not escape Basque's eyes. Like a bear that had smelled blood, he strode heavily toward Draven, his shadow completely enveloping Draven.
"You scum. What were you laughing at just now?"
Draven looked up, his face still showing a hint of nonchalance: "Sir, I just think it's more exciting to make the enemy eat shit."
The air seemed to freeze instantly. The surrounding recruits didn't dare breathe.
The Basque stared at him for a full ten seconds, then suddenly grinned, revealing teeth stained yellow from tobacco. "Very good. Like something spicy? Step forward!"
Draven stood up with his head held high, as if he were about to receive some special mission.
"See that mud puddle over there?" Basque pointed to a deep, filthy pit in the corner of the training field. "Push-ups. Keep going until I tell you to stop. You like to show off, don't you? I'll let you show off to your heart's content."
Draven hesitated for a moment, but his stubbornness kicked in, and without a word, he lay down in the mud puddle and started doing them. At first, he tried to maintain proper form, even counting in his head, thinking about how many he had done later.
But the muddy water quickly covered his mouth and nose, and the cold sewage soaked through his thin training clothes. Fifty, one hundred... His arms began to tremble, and his breathing became like a broken bellows.
Basque ignored him and continued his lecture. The other recruits stood at attention in the rain, while Draven struggled in the mud in front of them.
The shame gnawed at his heart like a venomous snake, far more unbearable than the physical exhaustion.
"Stop." After what seemed like an eternity, the Basque finally spoke. Draven lay exhausted, sprawled in the mud.
"Get back to the ranks." Draven struggled to his feet, dripping with mud. As he walked back to the ranks, he slipped and nearly fell, eliciting a few suppressed chuckles. He glared at them fiercely, and the recruits immediately fell silent, but the contempt and schadenfreude in their eyes were unmistakable.
In the mess hall, a veteran tried to cut in line, but instead of letting him, he grinned and bumped into him, deliberately knocking over the veteran's soup bowl while shouting, "Hey, the road's slippery, be careful!"
Conflicts often escalate instantly. Draven fights without any strategy, employing the most ruthless tactics from the streets of Besilico: groin kicks, eye gouging, hair grabs, and whatever he can grab to smash his opponent. Although he often suffers from being beaten black and blue due to his size, his reckless, ruthless attacks on the groin send shivers down the spines of even his much taller opponents.
Whenever he was about to suffer a major loss, Darius would always appear just in time. He would first scare away the troublemakers with a look, then drag the still-flailing Draven out like a chick. Darius's face was ashen, and veins throbbed on his forehead: "Can't you just be quiet for a day?! Do you have to be so stupid?"
Draven, wiping his nosebleed, nonchalantly curled his lip and said, "What's there to be afraid of? You're here, aren't you? Besides, that bastard provoked me first!" He was self-righteous.
The one truly responsible for cleaning up the mess is usually Quileta. She hasn't yet joined the front-line combat ranks and is currently helping out in the logistics medical team. Darius would carry the wounded Draven directly outside the medical tent and briefly tell Quileta, "It's yours now," his tone full of exhaustion.
Quileta would always sigh silently as she looked at the boy before her, who looked like he'd just been pulled from a mud puddle, yet still sported a nonchalant smile. She'd fetch some clean water, dampen a clean cloth, and gently wipe the blood and bruises from his face. Draven would grimace in pain, but he wouldn't stop talking: "Be gentle, Quileta! I make a living with my face!"
"Make a living off your looks?" Quileta's hands didn't stop, her tone calm and even. "I think you make a living by taking punches with your face." She skillfully applied medicine to his wounds and bandaged them, her movements swift and steady. Occasionally, she would whisper, "Draven, don't always make things difficult for Darius."
Draven would snort and turn his face away: "He's the one who always seems to dislike me." But in front of Quiletta, his arrogance would always subside somewhat. Perhaps it was because Quiletta didn't try to "discipline" him like Darius did, but simply silently fulfilled her duty of care; this calmness made it difficult for him to cause trouble.
On the training field, Draven utterly despised the monotonous drills and uniform chopping, but he displayed an astonishing talent for throwing exercises. While others struggled to keep their throwing axes from missing the target, he could already accurately strike the head of a target a hundred paces away.
When that heavy axe was in his hands, it seemed to come alive. He completely ignored the standard posture taught by the instructors, doing whatever was fancy, even performing tricks like catching the blade behind his back, spinning his hand, and bouncing it off the wall to hit his target. When putting the axe away, he would always look around triumphantly, enjoying the astonished looks of the recruits.
"All show and no substance!" the instructor yelled angrily.
"A fancy move that can kill people is a good move! My move can scare a whole platoon to death!" Draven immediately retorted, eliciting a burst of snickers.
They enjoyed arguing, but punishment followed closely: cleaning the latrines, running with weights, and solitary confinement. Darius, known for his composure and self-discipline, had been promoted to squad leader. His attempts to discipline his brother were often met with Draven's sarcasm: "Brother, are you content to be a mere puppet? Look at me, I win in my own way!" The brothers' bickering was commonplace in the barracks. However, in several realistic combat exercises, Draven's unconventional and reckless tactics consistently disrupted the "enemy's" formation, creating crucial opportunities for Darius's squad. Some pragmatic lower-ranking officers began to see him in a different light, and Colonel Cyrus, during occasional inspections, would linger his gaze on Darius.
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Noxian calendar year 976, autumn. Riverside village, Winnie's two-story house.
Two years passed, neither fast nor slow. Draven finally received the order to go to the battlefield. The twelve-year-old boy, like weeds after a rain, suddenly grew taller, the roundness of his face completely gone, and his eyes and brows blazed with a wildness like an unquenchable flame, mixed with excitement for the distance.
The news arrived in the afternoon, under a clear, bright autumn sky, the sunlight almost blinding. These greenhorns, who had been training locally for nearly two years, were finally being crammed into the official Noxian Legion and dispatched to the west—a territory they had just conquered, barely settled into, and plagued by frequent rebellions. The name sounded nice: "garrison training." In reality, it meant going to their deaths, to see blood.
Upon receiving the order, Draven seemed to have springs in his feet, immediately asking for leave from the person in charge and rushing back to Riverside Village without stopping.
The yard was quiet. Winnie and Laurie were tidying up the dried vegetables when he burst in, and they simply nodded. Winnie pointed upstairs, her voice flat: "Inside, feeding the birds on the windowsill."
Draven strode up the stairs and pushed open the familiar door. The afternoon sun shone warmly, casting a fuzzy golden glow on the figure kneeling on the bed by the window. Alice was holding out her small hand, a few grains of rye in her palm, a gray sparrow hopping and pecking at her fingertips. In the two years that had passed, she had grown a bit; her baby fat had faded, revealing the slender contours of a young woman, her long, silvery-white hair cascading down to her waist like a waterfall, dazzling in the light.
Draven stood frozen at the doorway, a slight jolt running through his heart. It was as if he was realizing for the first time that the little girl he had always protected and carried since childhood had unknowingly grown into a young woman.
Alice turned around when she heard the noise, and when she saw him, her eyes instantly curved into crescents. Just like hundreds and thousands of times before, without thinking, she opened her arms and said in a soft and sweet voice, "Xiao De! You're here!"
Draven's inexplicable lump in his throat instantly vanished. He strode over, instinctively pulling her into his arms and sitting down on the edge of the bed. Alice snuggled closer to him, proudly displaying the remaining grains of wheat in her hand, her cheeks flushed: "Look! My little bird friend! It says it likes me!"
“Absolutely!” Draven grinned, ruffling her smooth silver hair. “Who wouldn’t like Alice? You have good taste!”
Alice giggled as he rubbed her, half her body resting on his lap, fiddling with the little rag doll Laurie had sewn for her from scraps of cloth, and asking indistinctly as she played, "Little De, why did you take so long to come again?"
Draven cleared his throat and began to boast animatedly about his time in the military camp—how he wrestled down the big guy, how he practiced throwing knives with perfect accuracy, making the tedious training sound like a legendary adventure. Alice listened intently, occasionally letting out small gasps of amazement, her eyes filled with undisguised admiration.
They chatted on and on until dinner was over and darkness fell. Draven, as usual, put Alice to bed. Only a small oil lamp was lit in the room, casting a dim, yellowish light.
He tucked the blanket around her, looked at her eyes that were still bright even in the dim light, took a breath, and tried to make his voice sound normal: "Alice, tomorrow... I have to go on a long trip. To the front lines."
Alice blinked: "The front lines? Then you'd better come back soon."
“Maybe…not so fast.” Draven’s throat was a little dry. “It’ll take a while, maybe a few months, maybe…longer.”
"How long is 'longer'?" Alice's smile faded.
"Maybe... a year or two?" Draven didn't dare look her in the eye.
A moment of silence fell over the room. Then, as if she finally understood something, Alice's eyes instantly welled up with tears. She sat up, grabbed his collar with her small hands, and her voice trembled with sobs: "I don't want to! So long! I don't want to! Little De, don't go! Don't leave me!"
Tears streamed down his face, instantly soaking his coarse cloth clothes. Draven frantically pulled her close, the warm tears stinging his heart with a sharp pain. The small body in his arms trembled as she cried, her expression one of utter despair, as if the sky were about to fall. For a fleeting moment, a thought surged wildly within him: To hell with Noxus! To hell with military merit! I'm not leaving! I'll stay in this riverside village, hunt, farm, and watch her smile every day…
The words were almost on the tip of his tongue, but the memories of being trampled underfoot in the slums, the curses of the guards at the city gate, and the blood-soaked sense of relief after Rona's death... like a cold tide, fiercely suppressed that impulse.
He can't turn back. If he does, he'll forever be a rat in the gutter.
He hugged her tighter, his chin rubbing against the top of her soft hair, and said in a low, husky voice, "I'm not abandoning you! Alice, listen to me, I'm definitely not abandoning you! Family will never abandon family, that's what my brother taught me, and that's what I promised you! Once I've made something of myself, I'll come back for you, and we'll give you a good life, and no one will dare to bully us again!"
Alice was still crying, sobbing uncontrollably, as if she were crying her heart and lungs out. Draven kept repeating "Don't go" and "Come back," like chanting a spell, it was hard to tell if he was trying to comfort her or himself.
I don't know how long she cried, but the sobs in her arms gradually subsided, turning into intermittent sobs. Alice raised her swollen, red eyes, her nose also red, and looked at Draven. Her little mouth twitched, and with a thick nasal tone, she used her final "trump card":
"Then...then kiss..."
Draven felt a pang of sadness. Without thinking, he lowered his head and gave her a solid kiss on the lips, deliberately making a loud "MUA!" sound to accompany his own words.
Alice was momentarily stunned by his exaggerated antics, then burst into laughter through her tears. Though tears still clung to her face, her smile was as radiant as the sun after the rain. She leaned in and, mimicking Draven, gave him a loud "MUA" on the lips.
Seeing her smile, Draven's taut nerves finally eased a little. He ruffled her hair one last time, making her smooth silver hair look like a tangled mess, and said in a deliberately arrogant tone, "Alright! Crybaby! Just wait! Just wait and see how Draven will dominate the front lines and become famous throughout the world!"
He abruptly stood up, turned, and strode towards the door, his steps large and hurried, as if he weren't going to join the army but to cause trouble. He dared not look back, not even once. He was afraid that if he turned around and saw her still wet, red eyes, the hard shell he had painstakingly built up would shatter into nothingness.
Only after he walked out of the courtyard, out of the village, and out of sight of the small building, did the forced, nonchalant smile on his face vanish like a collapsed dam.
He stopped, glanced back at the blurry outline of the riverside village, wiped his face, and muttered a curse under his breath:
"Damn it... I really have to make something of myself this time. Otherwise, how will I be able to hold my head high and brag in front of Alice in the future?"
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