Chapter 64| Someone Tell Me If I’m Cringe?

Chapter 64: Chapter 64| Someone Tell Me If I’m Cringe?

Zane was up at 5:55 AM.

His eyes opened and the timer was already there before anything else registered. No transition. No groggy buffer. Just awake and aware and eight days sitting in the corner of his vision like it had been waiting for him to open his eyes.

He lay on his back for thirty seconds.

Timer in the corner of his vision.

『 BOUND TARGET QUEST — Time Remaining: 8 days 22 hours 41 minutes 』

’Eight days,’ he thought.

He sat up. Pulled on his training gear. Grabbed his bag. Checked the room. Dex face down on his bed, boots still on, Gerald wheezing at his standard twenty minute interval, the hentai wall catching the early morning light in a way that was becoming genuinely normalised which was its own kind of concern.

He walked out took no detour and headed directly to the training grounds.

When he arrived the time was exactly 6:15 AM. The training grounds at this hour were mostly quieter than usual. Obviously, only hands were present at this time doing routine workouts.

A few second years were present in the far arena running their own sessions. The first year section was empty except for one person in the corner that had stopped being just a corner sometime around week two and had become something with a specific meaning attached to it.

Maren was already on the pad.

She was in her usual fitted training gear, the one that had recently been a recurring significant problem since he deemed her worthy of his attention. Her hair tied back in a doughnut shape. She was running light stretches in preparation for her usual burst sequences. The specific pre-session routine he’d watched enough mornings to have memorised without trying.

He stopped at the edge of the grounds.

Stared at her for exactly three seconds.

’Eight days,’ he thought. ’Six weeks in this corner. Same time every morning. And I’ve managed to stay completely inside the training context the entire time.’

’That changes today,’ he thought.

He walked over.

She looked up when his footsteps registered on the composite surface.

"You’re early," she said.

"So are you," Zane replied.

"I’m always early," she said.

"So am I," Zane said.

She looked at him for a second. The calculating stillness registering something slightly different about his energy this morning. Present in a way that was different from the usual present, deliberate in a way that hadn’t been there yesterday. She couldn’t name it yet. He could see that she was filing it under pending.

"Okay, if you say so". She replied and then she went back to her stretches.

He dropped his bag at the edge of the pad and moved to the reinforced wall.

Pressed his palm flat. Pressure. Intent.

Impact Breaker at 65% output.

The shockwave rolled through the wall. Composite material compressing at the contact point. Clean. Controlled. 0.79 seconds activation. The number that had been sitting at this level for a few days now.

The wall held. It always held. Reinforced composite built specifically to absorb Sigil output from students running anything up to A-rank during training sessions. At 65% of a C-rank Sigil Zane was nowhere near the wall’s threshold. The material just compressed at the contact point, flexed, and returned. Doing exactly what it was designed to do.

’One day,’ Zane thought. ’Maybe.’

He started his reps.

『 Daily Training Quest — 50 Impact Breaker reps 』

『 Reward: Activation speed +0.03 seconds 』

’Already on it,’ Zane thought.

He worked through the reps methodically. Eyes on the wall. Peripheral awareness on Maren the way it always was at this hour. Except today the quality of that awareness was different from every other morning he’d stood at this wall.

He wasn’t just training beside her.

He was paying attention to her specifically.

Not to the Sigil output or the chain activation timing or the way she cut before the fatigue window. Those were filed under things he knew by muscle memory at this point. To her. The way she moved when she wasn’t thinking about being observed. The small micro-adjustments she made between sequences that nobody who hadn’t been watching for six weeks would clock. The expression she had when a rep landed exactly the way she’d planned it. Brief, contained, the specific satisfaction of someone whose internal standard was high enough that meeting it actually meant something.

She had a good rep face.

He looked at the wall.

’Focus,’ he told himself.

Twenty reps in, she called a water break. Sat cross legged on the pad the way she always did. Drank. Looked at the facility around them with the distant expression of someone running internal calculations that had nothing to do with the immediate environment.

Zane finished his current set and walked back to the pad.

Sat down beside her.

Not at the usual distance. Slightly closer. Not dramatically, not enough that it announced itself. Just close enough that the space between them had a different quality from the space it usually was.

She glanced at him briefly. Registered it. Said nothing.

’Good,’ Zane thought.

The training grounds ran their early morning quiet around them. The second years in the far arena we’re a distant ambient sound. The morning air cool and clean before the building remembered it had forty two first years in it.

Then Zane broke the silence.

"You had a good session yesterday," Zane said.

She looked at him.

"We scored zero points if it’s the drill you’re referring to," she replied.

"You held the platform atleast...," Zane said, dragging the last word for more than necessary.

She looked at him for exactly one second.

Then the corner of her mouth pulled into the thing it did when she’d decided to let something in without making a production of it.

"Okay.. I agree we held the platform," she said.

"You called Dex’s approach before he made it," Zane added. "And locked him down hard. It all happened exactly as you envisioned it. You called it in under few seconds from just observation alone."