Awakening: Starting With The Villain System-Chapter 68 - 67: After Training
She moved with an agile grace that was almost hypnotic.
It wasn't the practiced, formal style taught in our combat classes.
This was something else, raw, efficient, and brutally effective.
She flowed between the attacking dummies like water, her body a blur of motion.
She wasn't just dodging; she was redirecting, using their momentum against them.
And she wasn't using a practice arrow. With a flick of her wrist, a sharp, crimson arrow made of solidified energy, a blood arrow, would materialize and shoot from her fingertips, piercing a dummy's core with unerring accuracy before dissipating into mist.
The whole display was terrifying and beautiful in equal measure.
So, she had been the person always training every time I had been here.
The relentless, percussive sounds that had become the background music to my own sessions, that was her.
The realization was like a jolt.
And the worse part was that I had never actually seen her here.
Our paths had never crossed in the training ground corridors.
It was like she never trained in the academy, like she just continued growing stronger without doing anything.
But well, I wasn't too surprised. In fact, I would be more surprised to have never seen the top-ranked student train.
That would have been the real mystery. To see a top student not train... That was Impossible.
It was a simple, unglamorous truth. The power I was witnessing through the glass was not a gift; it was the product of countless hours of this.
It was normal for top students to be training hard, just like she is.
The difference was the sheer, uncompromising intensity.
Suddenly, she paused mid-spin. Her head turned sharply, her gaze snapping directly towards the door. Towards me.
I ducked down with speed I didn't know I still possessed, pressing my back against the cold wall beside the window.
I couldn't afford to let her see me, especially looking at her during what was clearly a private, intense ritual.
It would literally look like I was stalking her or something.
But it shouldn't actually look like I was stalking her, though.
I literally told her I was coming here to train.
If she sees me, she would know I was just passing by or something, my own session finished.
And I didn't actually know she was here.
That was the crucial part. This was a coincidence, an unfortunate one.
And most especially, I didn't want to distract her.
That felt like the greater sin.
If someone suddenly distracted me by greeting me, or just showed up staring while I was in the middle of a life-or-death fight with robots, I wouldn't be happy about that.
It breaks the flow, shatters the focus. I respected the sanctity of the grind too much to be that person.
I held my breath, listening. I heard no footsteps, no sound of the door opening.
After what felt like an eternity, I dared to risk a single, quick glance through the corner of the window.
She was still staring at the door, her expression unreadable from this distance, but the intensity was palpable.
Then, as if deciding it was nothing, she moved her gaze back to her opponents.
In that same instant, a dummy lunged at her from the side.
Without even fully looking, she raised a hand and a blood arrow shot out, impaling the robot mid-air and pinning it to the far wall.
The instant she focused back on her fight, I pushed off the wall and walked away, not running, but moving with a purpose that would look natural to any hypothetical observer.
I walked out of the training ground, and proceeded to go back to my dorm.
I got to my dorm, the silence a welcome relief after the day's chaos.
I entered, the door clicking shut behind me, sealing me in my room.
My goal was simple... Go to bed, and sleep.
I was totally drained, my body aching, my mind buzzing with too many thoughts.
It was normal for me to crash hard after a session like that.
I was about to faceplant directly onto my pillow when something caught my attention.
The muted glow of the television screen I'd left on for background noise.
A serious-faced news anchor was speaking, a graphic of a familiar, half shattered building displayed over her shoulder.
It was the news report on the Aegis Collective branch I had broken into.
I instantly focused my attention on my television, but unluckily for me, the moment I did, the news ended.
I didn't hear anything they said, all I saw was the title of the news that only described what it was about.
It seemed like the universe just wished to keep me in suspense. 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦
But I didn't dwell on it much. I quickly grabbed my phone from my pocket and searched for the latest news about Aegis Collective.
The search loaded, and dozens of news about Aegis Collective break in showed.
It was currently trending.
I clicked on the first news website post that showed to me about it.
[Last Tuesday, one of the branch for the famously secretive Aegis Collective, was neutralized. Every worker… is gone.]
[The attacker is rumored to be a "high-tier adversarial entity," a term they reserve for the kind of beings who can casually level city blocks on a bad day. This wasn't a random smash-and-grab. This was a targeted strike. A predator going after a single, specific prey. And it succeeded.]
[After what was said by the Aegis Collective head "multiple, prior, unsuccessful incursions" that left lesser Aegis storages as little more than slag and rubble, the villain finally hit the mark. The target? An Ability Core. Not just any spark of power you might find on the black market, but the Core. The one Aegis Collective was secretly built to contain.]
[The Collective, guardians of abilities, techniques, and weapons, is calling the stolen ability core their "most valuable" asset. And bad news, they have refused to reveal a single detail about it. Not its designation, not its function, not even its color. So, we are left in the quiet.]
[So we are left to wonder what kind of power is so terrifying that the Aegis theirself refuse to speak about. And in whose hands does it now reside?]
[The Aegis Collective assures the public that their investigation is "ongoing and paramount."]
