Chapter 192: Good Or Bad Morning

Vivienne, Naomi, and Rhea were watching the fight, but understood jackshit from what was going on.

To their ordinary, unenhanced vision, the entire hallway had dissolved into a disorienting blur of shredded wood, cracking concrete, and phantom gusts of wind. Shadows flickered and vanished in fractions of a second.

Both Rose and Sophia were moving, pivoting, and reacting way too fast for the three unawakened girls to properly track with their bare eyes.

Though, from the rhythmic thud of impacts and the fact that neither woman had collapsed yet, it did seem like the matchup was quite equal.

That alone was an immense shock.

The trio vividly remembered the lower floors, where a single haughty command from Rose’s lips had frozen a whole corridor of snarling undead in their tracks before she systematically slaughtered them like cattle.

Considering that Sophia was an ordinary human woman rather than an ancient demonic entity, matching blows against Rose without instantly folding was a staggering accomplishment on its own.

Still, squinting through clouds of settling drywall dust to watch a chaotic blur they couldn’t comprehend felt pointless. It offered neither comfort nor clarity.

Giving up on deciphering the duel, the three girls edged along the wall toward Fredrinn.

He was standing motionless, casually leaning his broad shoulder against the splintered frame of the broken door. His broken blade hung loosely at his side, but his sharp, dark eyes were narrowed with supreme concentration.

Jenny and Andrea were still nowhere to be found, presumably buried beneath the sheets in the suite behind him.

Considering that Rose was currently wearing a mismatched ensemble cobbled together from both absent women—Jenny’s stretched cotton top hugging her chest and Andrea’s snug shorts clinging to her waist—it was honestly for the best that the other two stayed tucked away inside.

If all three emerged at once, the missing garments and size differences would have made for an awkward, chaotic scene.

"W-Where’s Andrea and Jenny?" Rhea asked nervously the moment she reached his side, tugging lightly at the hem of her jacket.

Fredrinn didn’t take his gaze off the skirmish down the hall.

The exchange was high-octane enough that he had to keep his full attention locked on every twitch of muscle and spark of mana to ensure he didn’t miss a single nuance.

Rose wasn’t the only one taking mental notes on Sophia’s unique botanical abilities—Fredrinn was dissecting every layer of the green-haired girl’s techniques as well.

"Both of them are still inside, and they must be awake by now," Fredrinn chuckled lightly, his deep voice carrying a calm, gentle timbre meant to soothe Rhea and the others. "You guys can head in and see them, I guess?"

Rhea, Naomi, and Vivienne blinked blankly at his casual suggestion. Slowly, their gazes drifted past his bare shoulder, peering through the broken threshold into Room 308.

Even without stepping inside, the evidence was glaring.

Discarded pieces of clothing were tossed carelessly across the armchairs and dresser. A heavy, lingering warmth hung in the air of the bedroom.

Even the slowest, most naive person on earth could assemble the pieces and deduce exactly what wild debauchery had taken place behind those doors until dawn.

"U-Uh... I think we should just stay out here and watch the fight for now..." Rhea muttered awkwardly, an intense blush creeping up her neck. She had zero desire to march in and catch her own biological sister and Jenny sprawled out in their birthday suits.

"Y-Yeah... I think I’m actually going to head downstairs and check on my students first..." Vivienne squeaked, eager to invent any polite excuse to escape the mortifying atmosphere.

She turned on her heel to leave, only to freeze dead in her tracks as reality caught up with her.

There was no way she could slip away.

Rose and Sophia were currently clashing directly in the middle of the corridor, squarely blocking the staircase landing.

Vivienne had no intention of testing whether two lethal Awakeners trading sonic-speed blows would politely pause their brawl to let a civilian squeeze past.

Meanwhile, back in the center of the hall, the tempo of the fight shifted completely.

"Look closer into my eyes, Sophia~" Rose purred.

Her crimson irises flared, swirling into a vivid, hypnotic magenta that pulsed with heart-shaped motes of demonic light.

Sophia’s sharp instincts had prepared her for physical strikes, but this was a completely different battlefield. Her gaze instinctively snapped straight toward the glowing source.

Bright sky-blue collided with predatory, mesmerizing pink.

In that frozen split-second, time seemed to grind to a halt between them.

Sophia’s chest tightened, her breath hitching in her throat. As she stared into the bottomless depths of Rose’s alluring gaze, the chaotic noise of the hallway faded into static.

Her mind grew fuzzy, weighed down by an intoxicating, warm mist that coaxed her guard to lower. The deeper she peered into that glowing pool, the more impossible it felt to pull away. It was a bottomless abyss of pure temptation, endlessly pulling her under.

"Sis, don’t stare at her!" Carmen screamed from the sidelines, raw panic breaking through the eight-year-old’s usually composed facade.

Alas, the warning arrived a heartbeat too late.

Sophia was already ensnared in the succubus’s trance. Her focus shattered, her wooden armor stopped channeling mana, and her posture went slack—a fatal mistake in a high-stakes, ruthless battle.

Before the green-haired girl could fight off the fog clouding her brain, Rose struck.

Exploding forward with devastating acceleration, Rose pivoted on her heel and drove a brutal, mana-infused kick straight into Sophia’s undefended stomach!

BANG!

The breath exploded from Sophia’s lungs in a choked gasp. The violent kinetic force lifted her clean off the carpet, hurtling her backward like a ragdoll.

She slammed violently into the concrete wall twenty feet away, cracking the plaster upon impact before collapsing to the floor in a tangled heap, clutching her midsection as she coughed raggedly for air.

Rose settled her foot down with pristine, arrogant elegance, tossing her crimson locks over her shoulder as she closed the distance with slow, mocking strides.

"Sophia... How was it?" Rose purred cockily, looking down at her with a venomous smirk. "A good morning... or a bad morning?"