Chapter 105: Can You Handle Two High-Output Beauties at Once?

Chapter 105: Chapter 105: Can You Handle Two High-Output Beauties at Once?

We trained for another thirty minutes.

Rei wasn’t as fast as Gianna.

What she had instead was a willingness to open her own veins for advantage: thin cuts, controlled sprays, blades grown from her own blood that let her steal angles most Vanguards would never risk.

It worked.

It was also the kind of fighting that assumed the body was an expendable resource.

When we finally broke, I sat against the same mirrored wall and looked at her hands.

Fresh lines still welled along her palms and the edge of one forearm, sealing slower now that the sparring adrenaline was dropping.

"Stop doing that unless it’s necessary."

Rei glanced up, the familiar stupid smirk already in place.

"I can’t. This is how I fight."

"Then pace it. You don’t need to bleed for every exchange."

"But then you won’t kiss me."

She tilted her head.

"What was that earlier? You usually stand there like a doll when I push. Why did you pull me in?"

I looked across the empty mat and didn’t answer.

"Tch. Just say you like the way I taste."

I scoffed.

"You know, when I first saw you in the simulation, I thought, wow, she’s actually controlled and emotionless. Now you talk non-stop every time we’re in a room together. Perception really changes once you know someone."

Rei’s eyes widened a fraction.

"Excuse me! I’m still emotionless and cold with other people. I keep telling you have no idea how many people have wanted a piece of this, even with the scarcity. Be grateful I’m training with you."

"Yeah, yeah. Whatever."

She punched my shoulder, light and playful. I laughed before I could stop it.

The sound surprised both of us.

"Have you decided?" she asked after a moment.

"Decided what?"

"Who you’re taking the entrance test with."

My face must have shifted.

I wanted Gianna.

That hadn’t changed.

But Rei had already built a working rhythm around me, and the system’s objectives didn’t care about my preference for clean lines.

"How many partners can one person register?"

"Two or three, depending on the bracket and the examiners’ mood."

Relief, small and practical, moved through my chest.

"Then there’s nothing to think about. You’re going with me."

Rei’s expression cooled from playful into something more amused and sharper.

"What about Gianna?"

"Her too."

"Aren’t you bold?"

"I can’t keep pretending this stays simple forever. She’ll understand, or I’ll make her understand."

"Have you told her about these little make-out sessions we keep having in the name of training?"

I turned my head toward her fast.

"No talking about any of this outside."

Rei smiled, slow and satisfied.

"Alright. Penalty. Five more kisses."

"Kiss yourself."

I stood and reached for my bag. Behind me, her voice jumped an octave into theatrical injury.

"But... I’m hurt, Revien. I am hurt."

I stopped, turned, and looked at her properly.

The cuts were already mostly closed. The performance was not.

"You’re doing this for fun, aren’t you?"

"For my development," she said, then added, honest enough to be dangerous, "but you’re also easy to talk to."

I walked back, pulled her up by the wrist, and kissed her once, slow, deliberate, enough for the contact to feed whatever accelerated healing her mutated core pulled from me.

When I drew back, the last of the open lines on her skin had sealed to faint pink.

"I’m addicted, Rev," she said quietly.

No smirk this time.

"Can you handle two at once?"

I didn’t answer.

I took my bag and left the heat of the question where it belonged, on the mat, in the room, in the part of the system’s ledger that already had her name marked in progress.

On the other side of the guild, in one of the public training halls, Gianna Everheart stood in the center of a ring of scuffed mats and watched four guild cadets try to get their breath back.

Two were still on the floor.

One sat against the wall with her arms folded over her stomach.

The fourth had made it to a knee and was looking at Gianna like the rules of basic sparring had been rewritten without a memo.

"How did you get this strong?" the one on her knee asked.

"Gia, seriously. That last hit wasn’t normal."

"Tell us," another groaned from the floor.

"Please. Did your mother finally open the private vault techniques or something?"

Gianna scoffed, rolling her wrist once.

The joint felt clean. The power under it felt cleaner. The core expansion she had not asked for, the one that had arrived the same night everything else went wrong, had not only increased capacity.

It had raised the floor of her output.

Strength landed heavier.

Telekinetic grips held longer before her temples started to ache.

Recovery between exchanges sat closer to immediate than it had any right to after a full circuit.

She could feel the difference every time she moved.

She could also feel the four pairs of eyes waiting for an answer she had no intention of giving in a public hall.

"I trained," she said.

"That’s not training, that’s a different person," the cadet by the wall muttered.

"You used to be sharp. Now you’re sharp and unfair."

Gianna stepped over a discarded practice blade and offered the girl on the floor a hand up.

After a second, the girl took it.

"Unfair is what gates are," Gianna said.

"Get used to the feeling and stop asking questions I won’t answer."

"Is it a support?" one of them tried, quieter.

"Everyone’s been talking about the provisional your mother’s holding. If you’re getting private work—"

"Enough."

The word came out flatter than she intended.

Gianna exhaled through her nose and softened the edge a fraction, because these weren’t enemies and she wasn’t actually interested in becoming the kind of Vanguard who only knew how to scare her own side.

"I’m not discussing my mother’s roster," she said.

"If you want to close the gap, book more floor time and stop fishing for shortcuts in the middle of my cooldown. Same circuit tomorrow. Anyone who shows up late runs it with a weight vest."

A collective groan.

One of them muttered something that sounded like tyrant, and another something that sounded like fine, but still unfair.

Gianna let both remarks pass.

She picked up her water, drank, and caught her own reflection in the observation glass.

I wonder how he’s doing.