New Beginning: Road To Conquest

New day for Eliah and he wakes up earlier than normal. He feels so refresh today and full with positive energy. He takes shower, wear new clothes and have his breakfast. Than he waits the owner at the front of the shop since only the owner keeps the key to the shop.

He did not pass the resignations letter early in the morning as he did not want to spoilt his owner mood. He only passes it once the time is rights. He straight away doing his normal chore and sometimes whistling to himself due to his good mood. His colleagues notice for his happy mood and joke with him.

"Yo Eliah, you look so good today. What happen? Did you win the lottery"?

"Nah, just feel good today. No reason at all"

No. I don't believe you. You got new girlfriend right. Is it the girl that come to visit you? What her name again. Alyss,,,Alyssa right"?

"Hahaha….keep guessing but she is not my girlfriend. Go away and continue do your work. I need to clean up the store after this." Eliah replied find an excuse to escape from their teasing.

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"Boss, I need to talk you for a second. Did you free now"? Eliah approaching his boss.

"Sure I am free now since not much of customer. Tell me what is it"? his employer inquired and knit his brow.

"First of all I am very sorry if my actions offend you, but I would like to tender my resignations today since I had found a new opportunity. I hope you can accept it" Eliah handed the letter slowly to his employer.

"I think you just work here for few months right? Well since you had better options, I am not in the positions to reject your resignations. So when will be your last day"

"I planning to work for another 2 weeks and proceed to new place after that. I really appreciate all the things that you had done for me" Eliah answer.

"Okay then, you will work here for another 2 weeks. By the way, did you found a new place to stay. Just stay in the room until you found new place since it will be empty once you left and it's not that there is other people to stay there" his employer accepted his resignations politely. He did not make a fuss since he already experiences a lot in his business and resignations is one of the common things happen in the shop. At least his staff inform him first and not suddenly disappear without any news.

Eliah feel glad that his resignation accepted without any hiccup since he feels guilt for this employer. Since the shop is a small place, everyone knows about his resignations only few minutes after that and most of them come and wish him luck in future.

For Eliah, he will not forget this shop especially his employer since this place had help him a lot when he got nothing and did not look him down even though his status was known to them.

After he end his shift, Eliah immediately goes to Dia Cafe to meet with Hobb to discuss about their contract. He had a call Hobb before he came to confirm the meeting time at the cafe.

"One mocha please" Eliah order his drinks while waiting for Hobb.

"Okay" the waiter replied. She looks young and pretty but Eliah did not observe her too much.

After few minutes of waiting, he can see Hobb are walking towards the cafe and he wear some casual outfit but still look clean and professional.

Eliah wave his hand and Hobb manage to notice him.

"Sorry for waiting, I am having difficulties to find empty parking spot." Hobb feel sorry and apologize to Eliah.

"No, you are on time and not late. It just me come here earlier since I want to ensure that we got empty table since this place always full with customer" Eliah ignore his apologies and wave his hand to call for waiter for Hobb to order his drinks.

"Okay let me show you the contract first. Like we discuss yesterday, it will be 10% for below 1 000 000 and 8% between 1million till 10 million and 5 % if the income is above 10million on yearly basis." Hobb pass the contract to Eliah and show it to him.

"Okay, I trust you in this" Eliah proceed to sign the contract after he read it for a moment. He did not read it into details since he trusts his judgement about Hobb.

"Now let me brief you for my plan. I had contact several of my friend and found out that there is several event that you can join for this month and next month. Since your tender period is 2 weeks all of this event are schedule after that." While Hobb open his laptop and show him the detail.

"Okay so for now, there is 3 event and all is only small event. First is arm wrestling. Second is strong man event and last is slap competitions. Hahaha, what kind of event you want me to join here"? Eliah start questioning Hobb since all the event that he suggests is some kind of exotic sport.

"Opss, sorry. Wrong file. Hehehehe. Let me show you the correct one. I manage to contact the coach responsible for some outstanding athlete in this country and was inform that there are qualifier sessions for track and field on next month. This should be your priority since you can qualify to enter higher level tournament if you manage to win this. Since this is your first step for professional career, you will need to be careful with your daily consumptions to avoid failing in drug test since they might do the drug test for champion especially for you since you are a new face"

"Okay I understand that and I already taken some precautions on this step. Is there any event that I can join in the interim that offer good money as the prize? I had try to search in the internet but no result come out" Eliah start feeling good about Hobb professionalism.

"Yes there is 'Century Marathon' event scheduled next week and the registrations already closed. But if you want, I can arrange it for you since I know someone that can help to register. I fully support if you want to join as this race can be consider as big event and some of the top runner from other country will join this due to its lucrative prize. But the locations quite far from here and we will need to reach there one day earlier as you will need to have enough rest"

"Okay, register me in and I will take leave from my work a day earlier. How much the prize for champion"? Eliah showing his eagerness to join.

"You will receive 50 000 dollars for the winner. Most importantly is the prestige in this race. If you win this race, I can do some trick to attract sponsor for you" Hobb explain to him.

After several rounds of discussions, both agree that Eliah will join the marathon next week and he will focus in his training to keep his body fit. He decides to participate in 100 and 200 metres dash since this category is one of the most famous race in track and field.

For Eliah, this suggestion is good enough for him since he just need to win the marathon and he will have a lot of free time to train and improve his IT skill.

After both of them had come with a good plan, both of them go to separate way and Eliah back to his room. On the journey, he calls Alyssa asking for assistance if she had some nice place for him to stay since Alyssa father had a property company.

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Few days passed and the day for 'Century Marathon' arrived. Both Eliah and Hobb already came to the place a day before. Hobb had done a good job since he had buy high quality running shoes for Eliah with good price. He also had arranged for everything and Eliah just need to focus on the run.

Eliah can see some foreigner warming up in the starting line. Since this is new experience for him, he identified that the starting line is already full with the runner even though there is a lot of time before the race will start. It looks like the competitions was start way before the race. Since Hobb is familiar with the sport tactic, he also did not expect this situation.

For Eliah, this should be no issue since there is long distance and as he already had a very high stat, he had high confidence to win. But of course Eliah will control his speed to ensure his time are not so ridiculous to avoid his body being dissected for research purpose by some mad scientist.

"All runners ready and .....pooonnnngggg"

Horn was sounded and participate start to run. For Hobb, he quickly passes the other runner and sometimes he will need to run at the outside part to avoid other runner which was too crowded on early stage.

If there is no space, he will shove the other runner to force through. There is some runner that glare at him, but Eliah will just ignore them since the runner need to provide some space for other to overtake if you wish to only follow the runner in front.

At one kilometre mark, Eliah already join a group of runner which lead the race. Eliah decides to follow the groups. His plans are to follow closely the lead runner and will only pass him on the last few kilometres. He did not wish to break any record and only focus to win.

During the run, Eliah look around and enjoy the view since the track cover some beautiful place especially when the course is through a woods area where the tree at the roadside are cover them at the top.

Eliah also pour some water on himself to pretend that he is trying hard since he did not sweat much.

Currently, Hobb is waiting at the end line nervously since he did not familiar with Eliah capability. At the same time, Hobb also promote Eliah name to some famous coaches or company representative. Hobb is really good in promoting Eliah name that nearly every important and big person that waiting at the end line know about him and treat him politely. His eloquence and humble attitude able to attract attentions and no one feel disgust with him. Even the coaches which should be an opponent having cheerful chat with him like they had known each other for a very long time.

Now, Eliah with a group of runner had cover more than 35km and there is less than 7km to the end line. There are several runners in the group notice that Eliah appear very relax in the race. This causes them to became warier about him. There are one or two runners that annoyed with him since they thought that Eliah as arrogant due to his easygoing attitude in the race. For them, since Eliah appear too relax, they assume that Eliah is underestimating them and looking down on them.

Eliah is not aware about the mood changes in other runners since he is really busy enjoying the scenery around. Thankfully that he did not wave his hand to bystander that they encounter during the race, or else someone might punch at this face.

One of the runner, Runes already notice Eliah easygoing attitude from the early stage of the race. For him, Eliah attitude is somewhat deem as unprofessional and he should be disqualified as he did not show respect to other opponent. He had try to calm his mind, but it always fails since every time he looks at Eliah, he can see that Eliah always look around like chicken searching for food.

'F.u.c.k, this guy. He thinks that he is so good looking around like that. You think we are in picnic or what.' Runes curse Eliah in his heart.

'Let me try to tackle him a little bit. Hehehehe' due to annoyance, some bad idea arises in his mind to sabotage Eliah.

Runes positions himself at the left side of Eliah but slightly behind him to ensure him in Eliah blind spot. Suddenly he put out his leg in Eliah path a little bit. His actions are very subtle that if another person that look into it, it will be consider as normal and if collisions happen it will be just consider as unintentional accident.

Since Eliah are not given too much attentions to his run, his leg slightly touches Runes leg. Since he was not prepare for the collision, he stumbles and finally fall to the ground after a few steps. However, for Runes, he pretends like nothing happen and continue with his run since the touch only affect slightly of his run. Due to the bad fall, Eliah rolling in the ground several times due to the inertia. Minor scratches at his hand, however his knee are bleeding badly as he subconsciously using his knee to absorb the fall.

All the runners in the groups had left him ahead and Eliah are still in shock for the accident. He cleans up his leg, hand and body from any debris and stand up again. He can see his knee are bleeding and feeling the pain. When he tries to start running, a sharp pain can be feel at his right ankle and the pain become worse if he increases his pace. Due to the pain, he unable to exert his full speed and sometimes his step become slightly disoriented when the pain is become unbearable. Hence he need to reduce his speed. Eliah know that his gap with the runner will become wider if he maintains his current speed. He can see that runners ahead become smaller in his sight indicated their gap become wider at each moment. However, Eliah unable to increase his pace or else he will face with excruciating pain in his ankle. Eliah did not want to force his ankle too much since it will make his injury worse. Step by step taken by Eliah and he are no longer able to see the runners ahead of him clearly. Sometime Eliah cursing his bad luck and sometimes he curses Runes even though Eliah never think that their collisions are deliberate contact by Runes.

As the pain become much worse, his speed become slower and slower. The group runners become nearer to him. Eliah feel frustrated and angrier for each time passed. Sometimes, he feels that life is not fair to him since once he can feel things get better in his life, accident will happen to bring him down. Like god are having fun with his suffering.

One of the staff that responsible to monitor the runner notice Eliah bad conditions. He can see that his knee is red with blood and there is a lot of scratches around it. He also can see that Eliah are limping in his run and force his run with those injuries. He knows that Eliah involve with some accident and rush to him to offer any assistance. While he approaching Eliah, he can hear cursing from Eliah mouth and his face clearly show his bad mood. He can feel some chill at his back while look at him and can feel that he faces with a frightening creature from him. The marshal froze in his step and nearly fall to his but before his colleague tap his shoulder and wake him from his feeling.

'What is the feeling just now. Must be due to my hangover. I need to stop drinking or else my mind will not be stable' the marshal thinking in his heart.