Chapter 166| Figuring Things Out

Chapter 166: Chapter 166| Figuring Things Out

Zane got to Arena 3 at 7:58 AM with about two hours of sleep behind him. He’d spent most of the night replaying his explicit moment with Nil, and he could still feel the soft weight of her butt in his hands. Somewhere around dawn he’d given up and stared at the grey light in the blinds. His mouth tasted like stale coffee.

The door was already unlocked. Nyx stood in the middle of the floor in her black suit with the steel-blue lines, one foot propped on a bench, retying a boot lace. She was bent forward over it, and her big breasts strained against the fabric of the suit like an invitation. She didn’t look up when he came in.

Zane’s eyes lingered a second too long before he dragged them to the wall.

"You’re on time," she said.

"You sound surprised."

"I’m checking a theory." She finished the knot, set her foot down, and finally turned. Her eyes went over him slowly, from his hair to his shoes and back up, and stopped on his face. "You look like you fell down a flight of stairs."

"Rough night," Zane said, rubbing the back of his neck.

"Hm." Nyx tilted her head, her eyes narrowing a fraction.

That was all she said. She walked to the far side of the floor, rolled her shoulders, and dropped into her low stance with her hands loose at her sides, and Zane had the clear feeling that she’d just filed something away for later.

"Ready?" Nyx asked, dropping into her low stance with her hands loose at her sides.

"Give me a second," Zane said, rolling his stiff shoulders.

"No," Nyx said flatly, and she was on him before he’d finished blinking.

_ _

The first few exchanges were bad.

He knew it, and so did she. His reads came a beat late and his feet felt heavy. Nyx slid his first strike off her forearm, caught his wrist on the second, and tipped him sideways with a light push that sent him stumbling three steps. He recovered, came back, and got turned again.

"You’re slow," Nyx said.

"I’m warming up."

"You’re asleep." She stepped inside his reach, tapped two fingers against his sternum, and stepped out again. "That counts. Again."

He shook his head hard, once, like a dog coming out of water. Then he pushed Overdrive up to B-rank 10% and let the room sharpen.

It helped. The floor tightened into clean lines, Nyx’s shoulder dropped a fraction before she moved, and he caught the angle of her next redirect before it landed. He sidestepped. Her palm slid past his ribs.

Nyx’s eyebrows lifted by a millimetre.

"Better," she said.

They traded a dozen more. His strikes started finding her guard instead of the air, and hers stopped getting through quite so easily. Twice he made her step back. Once she had to use both hands to turn a blow aside, and the force of it rattled up his arm.

At the fifteen minute mark she stopped and lowered her hands.

"You’ve changed," Nyx said.

"I’ve been training."

"No. This is different." She tilted her head, and her blue ponytail swung over one shoulder. "You were stiff in here two weeks ago. Now you move like you’ve got a map of the room. Seems you’re already getting the hang of your B-rank prowess, after that spar with Ryan."

"It was a good fight."

"It was a very good fight." She said it carefully. "That’s why I’m asking about the sphere."

Zane’s stomach tightened. He kept his face blank. It took more effort than usual.

"I got lucky," he said.

"You keep saying that."

"It keeps being true."

"It doesn’t." Nyx watched him, steady and patient. "I’m not going to push. I told myself I wouldn’t. But I was on the rail, Calloway. I saw your hand."

"My hand?" Zane asked, his stomach tightening as he glanced down at his palm.

"There’s a way a body moves when it’s turning force," Nyx said, her eyes fixed on his hand. "I’ve done it my whole life. You did it for half a second, badly, with nothing behind it." She paused, and her voice dropped. "And it still turned a compression that size."

The arena was very quiet.

"I’m figuring something out," Zane said finally, flexing his fingers. "I don’t have all of it yet. It might be a new effect on my Sigil."

『 System Note: That may be the host’s favourite sentence. 』

’Don’t start,’ Zane thought.

Nyx held his gaze a moment longer. Then she nodded once, like she’d expected exactly that answer and had decided to accept it.

"Fine," she said. "Show me."

"Show you what?"

"Whatever it was. I’ll give you a clean hit. You try it."

_ _

"Hit me with that wave force from your Sigil," Nyx said. "Low output, aimed at my chest. I’ll send it back, and you try to turn it."

"And if I can’t?" Zane asked, rolling his sore shoulder.

"Then you’ll feel it," Nyx said, without a flicker of a smile.

Zane exhaled and set his feet. He reached inward for the third slot, the dark, quiet space at the bottom of his chest where Kinetic Force sat at zero percent, and found it exactly where he’d left it.

’Just the handle,’ he thought.

Zane planted his back foot, drew his palm back to his hip, and thrust it forward. Impact Breaker ripped out of him at B-rank 10%. The shockwave tore across the floor in a narrow, hissing line, scattering dust and rattling the benches along the wall, and the air between him and Nyx buckled like a sheet of glass about to crack.

Nyx caught it with her open hand. The air between them pressed in like a held breath, and her forearm trembled once. Then she turned her wrist, and the wave came back at him.

It hit like a shove from a moving car.

Zane braced and let the force run up his arm and down his spine, the way Nyx had shown him in the last spar. He followed it to the thin line where his motion and her redirect overlapped. It was still there. It always had been.

He pulled.

Nothing flared. No light, no ripple, no crack in the air. But the force pushing against him tilted a few degrees to the left, and instead of slamming through his sternum, the wave slid along his ribs and out past his shoulder.

He stayed on his feet and held onto that faint thread of the Sigil for one second. Two. Three.

Then it slipped, and the rest of the wave hit him square in the chest and knocked him onto the mat.

"Ow," Zane told the ceiling.

『 System Note: The system is seeing some progress with the host’s new Sigil. 』

’Progress,’ Zane thought, wincing. ’Sure. Add it to my list.’

Nyx walked over and stood above him, one hand still half raised. For a moment her face wasn’t flat at all.

"Three seconds," Nyx said.

"You counted?" Zane wheezed, propping himself on his elbows.

"Of course I counted." She crouched beside him and studied his chest like she could see through the suit. "That was real. It was weak, and it was ugly, and there was nothing behind it. But it was real."

"I don’t have anything behind it," Zane said.

"I know." Nyx sat back on her heels, her eyes finally lifting to his face. "That’s what bothers me."

『 System Note: Nyx Hale has now observed the host’s Kinetic Force redirect at close range. She is close to a conclusion. 』

’I know.’

『 Familiarity update. 』

『 Nyx Hale — Familiarity +4% 』

『 Current: 32% — Stranger tier 』

『 System Note: Three percentage points remain until Acquaintance tier. 』

’Three,’ Zane thought.

『 The +20% output reward remains available. It may be claimed at any time. 』

He thought about it, and about what a working Kinetic Force would mean in this room. Then he thought about how little sleep he’d had and how many things he’d already done this week without thinking them through.

’Tomorrow,’ he decided. ’I’ll do it right.’

『 The system supports a rested host. 』

"Calloway," Nyx said.

"Yeah?"

"I’m close." She said it quietly, looking at his chest and not his face. "I don’t know what you are yet. But I’m close. I’ll give you a week."

"A week for what?"

"To decide how much you want to tell me." She stood and held out a hand. "After that, I’ll stop being patient."