"And those people, of course, take it for granted: 'I told you so', 'It's okay, it's normal', 'You are already great, you just have to accept the reality', 'This job is still suitable for men'

.”

Sonia took out her cigarette bag and started to roll her third cigarette.

"You know, they always sound so confident and convincing, always so rational, neutral, objective and sincere."

Sonia's eyes focused on the tobacco in her hand.

"At the end of the day, I was almost convinced that maybe I really screwed up, maybe I wasn't cut out to be a soldier?"

The Flower of Fortress turned around and grinned at Thales:

"Right?"

Thales did not answer immediately. He sat on the ground with his back to the observation deck, his hands on his knees, and his expression was profound.

They always sound so confident and convincing...

At the royal banquet, the scene where Deputy Captain Vogel asked D.D to take the initiative to die is still vivid in my mind.

"Unlike you, I didn't mess up."

The young man suddenly spoke:

"I can solve it. I'm just working hard and adapting. I need time."

Sonia stopped rolling her cigarette, then turned to look at Thales.

"adapt?"

The Flower of Fortress smiled at first, but immediately turned cold.

"Sunset, it seems you really messed up."

Thales frowned.

Sonia rolled up her cigarette and sneered:

"And smash more than a little, otherwise you wouldn't live in the dead man's house, your father wouldn't come to you secretly, and Jinni wouldn't roar and threaten me to fix you."

Thales was not convinced at first, but when he heard this, he raised his head in surprise:

"Jinni, Ms. Jini?"

Sonia skillfully held the cigarette in her mouth and took out the flint:

"Are you sure you don't want to take a bite?"

Thales looked at the rough cigarettes for sale and twitched his lips.

Sonia shrugged her shoulders, lit the tobacco in twos and twos, and puffed and sighed happily:

"Well, boy, maybe of the two of us, you are the one who is not suitable for being a soldier."

Hold.

Thales waved away the smoke, moved his butt to the side, and looked unhappy.

"I know that you have just returned to the royal capital, which means you have entered a new battlefield. But every rule prevailing in the new battlefield is not good for you and unfair to you. They make you feel strange, confused, desperate, and unable to see

Way out."

Thales frowned in disbelief, while Sonia blew out smoke:

"Contrary to what most people think, it is not difficult to fight with a sword. Even the so-called sacrifice of 'risking your life' is just a matter of being hot-headed, gritting your teeth and shaking your mind. The real difficulty is knowing why you are fighting."

Listening to her words, Thales suddenly remembered the words Mallos left after punishing D.D:

【When you decide to trade, make sure it is your own scale.】

"But when you look upward and away from each specific opponent, when you see more and look higher, when you find that the rules of the fight are so fucked from the beginning, when you find that your fight is just in a cage.

It’s a monkey show, and when you can never change the cage... the fight becomes very, very difficult.”

[It is as if what my sword hits is no longer a flesh and blood body or a steel weapon, but an invisible wall. No matter how I swing the sword, it will be of no avail. 】

For some reason, Thales suddenly remembered what Cohen said in the downtown area.

The Flower of the Fortress blew the incompletely burned cigarette butts and spoke calmly:

"Nervousness, fear, panic, mistakes, regret, wavering, self-doubt, and even numbness and giving up. We have all experienced these, and there is nothing to be ashamed of."

The lookout under the moonlight was quiet and quiet, and coupled with the smoke in Sonia's hands, everything seemed like a dream.

"You failed in your recruitment as a guard?" Thales suddenly spoke, expressionless.

Sonia raised one leg, hooked her lips, but shook her head.

"I was just lucky. A big shot happened to be passing by. I got a second chance. I stayed here and waited for the next round of recruitment."

The voice of Fortress Flower is a little dim.

Big shot.

Thales looked around Star Lake Castle for a week:

"John Brightstar?"

Sonia chuckled lightly, held the cigarette in her mouth again, leaned back, and held the back of her head with both hands.

"The days after that were difficult. I ate and slept with the guards in the castle, and worked hard to prepare for the next assessment."

At this moment, there was something more in Sonia's eyes.

"The beautiful words of comfort disappeared from then on. No one gave me a good look, everyone was isolating me, and I also understood that I got an advantage and entered the game without following their rules, which made those men

They feel that their rights have been offended, 'women are receiving special treatment', 'taking shortcuts to get in', 'it's so unfair to men' and so on."

"From bed and duty arrangements to daily work and rest, from frequent emergency training, increased weight-bearing training to the cleaning job that coincidentally got me every time, they tried every means to make me look embarrassed.

A 'experienced person' came to sing the praises and babbled: 'They are not targeting you, they just feel uncomfortable', 'I'm sorry, but maybe you should give up?'."

Thales listened quietly, but he remembered the moment at the royal banquet when Anke took hostages and forced a duel in the palace.

At that moment, all the guests at the banquet and the prominent figures in Yongxing City raised their heads and looked at him.

"Including every 'friendly match' within the team, I would sometimes be so determined that if I won, they would say, 'You're lucky,' 'I'll leave it to you,' 'I'm a bit tired today, so I'll give it to you.

', or 'you've taken advantage of it and are able to face it head-on', 'the outcome would be different in another situation', or even 'you will definitely die if you fight with your life', 'real battles won't be that simple', blah, blah, and so on.

"

"Oh, by the way, there's also my favorite phrase, 'Beating me doesn't prove that you are better than a man. If you have the ability, why don't you compete with a more powerful man?'"

Sonia dusted off her cigarette and smiled:

"Does every man say this? I call this the 'Sharing Technique'. Every time I defeat one of them, they will say this. It seems that as long as I say this, the defeated guy will share it instantly.

The 'more powerful man' is a bit bigger, he holds his head high and regains his glory, and he goes from being short and weak to being invulnerable."

A few sharing skills.

Thales couldn't help but chuckle.

But his smile quickly faded: There were people like this in his battlefield, too, weren't there?

"And when I lost, they all said in unison, 'See, I told you', 'This is perfectly normal', 'Generally speaking, women really can't beat men',' Okay, by your standards, that's pretty good."

'."

Sonia's tone dropped.

"At that time, everything was very frustrating: swordsmanship, fighting, weightlifting, long-distance running, javelin throwing, archery. It seemed that in every activity, I couldn't compete with others, especially those men who had been trained and even served in the military."

"I don't have their strength, strength, speed, explosiveness, physique, and physique. I don't have everything they are proud of in the things that we usually compete with from sports games to knight tournaments."

A dark cloud blocked the moonlight, leaving the boy and the woman in darkness, each feeling dejected.

"But you win," Thales said softly, "in this unfair rule."

Sonia was silent for a long time, then she took a deep breath and slowly exhaled the smoke from her nose.

"I didn't win. I just survived."

The distracted eyes of the Fortress Flower slowly reunited.

"Just when the days were passing by and the date of the next recruitment was approaching, and I was so heartbroken and almost giving up on myself, someone asked me: 'Why, Sonia, why are you on their chessboard?'"

Hearing this, Thales raised his head.

"Their chessboard?"

Sonia smiled and nodded, as if she thought of something happy:

"I was asked: 'There are many ways for soldiers to fight, and there are also many ways to kill people. Why do we have to learn from them to use muscles, rely on their physique, resort to strength and explosion, and learn from them what they say all day long?

Huh? Why do you have to pursue the strong, rude, domineering, masculine, and aggressive things they pursue, and follow them as a model to prove yourself? Why should you learn these things from them and compete with them?'"

Thales narrowed his eyes.

Sonia sighed:

"'Because', I said stupidly at that time, "'Because these are useful, because the commander said, these are all tested in competitions, things that have been tested by history, and are needed by every soldier on the battlefield.
To be continued...