Chapter 25| Damn Quest

Chapter 25: Chapter 25| Damn Quest

The training grounds at 7:50 AM were emptier than their usual 6:20 AM slot. Most students were either finishing breakfast or heading to their first sessions. The morning light was fully up now. No longer the pre-dawn quiet of their usual corner but proper daylight cutting across the composite floor.

Maren was standing in the center of the open floor. Not on the far pad. Not near the reinforced wall. Center floor. Arms crossed. Waiting.

Zane crossed the grounds toward her.

"You came," she said.

"You asked," he replied.

She looked at him for a moment with that expression. The one doing quiet calculation behind still eyes. Then she uncrossed her arms and moved to one side of the floor.

"I’ve been thinking about your situation," she said.

"Which part of it," Zane said.

"The part where you fight in five days without a registered Sigil." She turned to face him from across the floor. "Everyone in that trial knows you’re Sigilless. Which means they’re going to approach you differently than they’d approach anyone else. They’ll be less careful. More aggressive. They’ll assume they can afford to."

Zane looked at her.

"That’s accurate," he said.

"So we’re going to practice using that," she said.

He tilted his head. "How."

"I’m going to come at you the way your opponent will," Maren said. "Like you have nothing. Like the fight is already settled." She met his eyes. "Your job is to make me regret it."

Zane looked at her across the open floor.

’She built an entire training scenario,’ he thought. ’Specifically for his situation. Without being asked.’

’She’s been thinking about this.’

The system stayed quiet for once.

"Okay," Zane said.

Maren dropped into a ready stance.

"Don’t hold back," she said. "I want to see what you actually have."

Zane looked at her.

’She has no idea how literal that statement is,’ he thought.

He dropped into his own stance.

"Same," he said.

Maren looked at him across the open floor.

"I’ll activate my sigil at least a minimum of twenty percent," she said. "No point in going full output. This is a drill not a fight."

"Fair," Zane said.

She dropped into her ready stance.

Then she moved.

No warning. No lead up. Just closed the distance with the kind of speed that made twenty percent feel generous. Her footwork was clean. No wasted motion, every step purposeful, the movement style she’d been refining since before Zane had ever seen her train. ’Finally seeing her in action’. He thought.

Zane moved on base. No Overdrive. No Impact Breaker. Just footwork and reaction time. The fundamentals he’d been building since day one without any Sigil to lean on.

She was faster.

Significantly.

He cut left. She was already there. He reversed. She adjusted before he finished the direction change. He tried the angular approach. Arc instead of straight line and got halfway through the arc before she cut him off at the redirect point and put him on the floor.

He hit the composite ground flat on his back.

Stared up at the open sky above the training grounds.

Maren looked down at him. Arms crossed. With a neutral expression.

"Get up," she said.

He got up.

"Again," she said.

They reset.

Same result. Faster this time because she’d already mapped his base movement patterns from the first run. She put him down in four seconds instead of six.

He lay on the ground again.

’She’s reading everything,’ he thought. ’Every tell. Every weight shift. At twenty percent she’s already faster than anything I can do on base.’

Maren crouched down to his eye level.

"It’s going to be more intense than this in the arena," she said simply. "You know that right."

"I know," Zane said.

She looked at him for a moment. Then stood up and stepped back to give him room.

He got up slowly.

The timer in the corner of his vision had been running since the session started. The daily quest sat untouched. And somewhere at the back of his awareness the system had been uncharacteristically quiet.

Then it wasn’t.

Ding!

『 NEW QUEST 』

『 Objective: Grab her butt 』

『 Reward: Familiarity +10% 』

『 Time Limit: 30:00 』

Zane stared at the notification.

’What,’ he thought.

『 Deadline: 29:52 』

’I know you’re joking,’ he thought.

Ding!!.

『 Penalty: Dick size reduced by 20% 』

’You are absolutely not joking,’ he thought.

He looked at Maren standing across the floor waiting for the next round.

Then at the timer.

29:41.

’She’s running at twenty percent Overdrive,’ he thought. ’I’m on base. She’s already faster. Even if I wanted to there’s no universe in which I close that distance without eating the floor first.’

『 Sounds like a motivation problem. Clock is running. 』

’This is insane,’ he thought.

『 29:18. 』

He dropped into stance.

’Fine,’ he thought. ’But I’m doing this my way.’

He activated Overdrive at 10% output. Just enough to take the edge off base movement without showing anything dramatic. Legs slightly lighter. Reaction time nudged up a fraction.

He moved.

Angular approach. Arc left. Maren tracked it accurately. Her eyes reading the arc before he finished it, adjusting her positioning before he redirected. He reversed. She was already there. He reversed again, a shorter arc this time, and she followed that too.

’She’s reading everything,’ he thought. ’Even at ten percent she’s matching every redirect I throw.’ Obviously she was at 20%.

Then he saw it.

A half second. Her weight shifted slightly to her left as she tracked his latest arc. Overcommitting just a fraction to cover the angle she expected him to take.

Her right side opened.

Barely. Half a second at most.

Zane pushed Overdrive to 60% instantly.

The surge hit hard. Legs loading like compressed springs, everything sharpening two full levels above where it had been. He exploded and dived through the gap before Maren could register the speed change. One step. Two. Inside her guard before she could close it.

One hand shot forward.

Not for Impact Breaker.

Palm contact landed exactly at her soft portable butt. Falling them both to the ground.

Maren went completely still.

One full second of absolute stillness.

Then she turned her head and looked at him over her shoulder with an expression that had evacuated every readable emotion and replaced it with something that existed several floors below calm.

Zane met her gaze.

’I have made,’ he thought very carefully, ’a significant tactical error.’

『 QUEST COMPLETE 』

『 Reward: Familiarity +10% 』

『 System Note: Impressive. Genuinely did not expect that. 』

The silence in the training grounds was total.

Maren looked at his face fully. Slowly. With the specific deliberate energy of someone who was making very considered decisions about what happened next.

She was still completely still.

Then she turned her head and looked at him over her shoulder with an expression that had evacuated every readable emotion and replaced it with something that existed several floors below calm.

Zane met her gaze.

"It was a coincidence," he said. "My hands..."

"Don’t," she said.

"The approach angle was..."

"Zane."

He stopped.

Her cheeks had gone red. Not a little. Visibly, undeniably red. She puffed them out slightly the way someone did when they were deciding whether to be furious or to let something go.

She let it go.

"That’s not what I’m talking about," she said flatly. "I already ignored that."

Zane blinked.

’She’s ignoring the butt grab,’ he thought. ’To focus on the other thing.’

’Which is somehow more alarming.’

"You activated something," she said quietly. Her voice had dropped. "Just now. When you closed the distance the second time. The speed change was not base movement."

Zane said nothing.

The moment sat between them like something that had been building since the first morning she’d noticed his footwork didn’t match his registration file.

His communicator buzzed.

Class notification. 8:20 AM warning. Ten minutes.

Maren looked at her communicator. Then back at him. Something moved across her expression. Not resolution, just the decision to defer.

"We’re going to be late," she said.

"Yeah," Zane said.

She picked up her bag. Walked toward the exit without looking back.

Stopped at the door.

"Zane," she said.

He looked up.

"Whatever that was." A pause. "Both things." Another pause. "We’ll talk about it after trials."

She pushed through the door and was gone.

Zane stood alone in the training grounds.

The system was quiet.

He looked at his hand.

Five days.

And Maren had just filed two things she wasn’t supposed to see into the same pending folder.