Chapter 56: Accepting the Challenge

A flicker of blue light suddenly caught the corner of her eye, causing her to sit upright and turn toward Declan, and the sight before her left her jaw hanging open.

"What... What is this!?"

She could hear the sound of Declan’s heart pounding from where she stood, and considering the wound she had just repaired around his heart, his bandages should have already been soaked in blood, yet there wasn’t even a trace of red.

Instead, faint blue rays of light were flickering through the bandages wrapped around his chest, while thin, runic blue lines spread from his chest and crawled upward along his neck.

The veins protruding from his neck looked like lurking snakes, except they were no longer green but had turned blue, and the same phenomenon had spread across his hands, where blue runic lines covered his skin as his fingers dug tightly into the mattress.

"Hey, Declan, what is..."

Lady Blythe’s words abruptly stopped when Declan’s body suddenly lurched upward, his eyes having completely turned blue as a blinding ray of light erupted from them and illuminated the ceiling above.

VROOOOOOM!

A terrifying shockwave exploded from his body when his mouth opened, releasing the same blue radiance and sending Lady Blythe flying into the wall.

She immediately recovered and rushed toward him, appearing beside the bed in an instant as her hands reached for his chest, but then she stopped when she noticed that the violent pounding of his heart was beginning to fade along with the blue light surrounding his body.

The bulging veins on his hands and neck slowly receded, while his eyes and mouth gradually returned to normal, and his body settled gently back onto the bed as the remaining blue light was drawn inward, disappearing completely into his chest.

For five seconds, Declan’s heart remained completely silent.

Lady Blythe’s own heart nearly stopped.

’He... he died!?’

BAAAADUMP!

A heartbeat suddenly thundered through the room, heavier than before, and another followed two seconds later.

BAAAADUMP!

As the blue light faded from Declan’s eyes, clarity gradually returned to his gaze, and he raised both hands before his face, slowly clenching and unclenching his fists as though testing his body.

[Congratulations on reaching a 100-Stats Power Level.]

[Host has touched upon the first barrier of true power!]

The system panel blinked before disappearing, and Declan immediately sat upright, with the first thing Lady Blythe seeing him do being reach for the bandage around his chest.

"Wait, don’t pull i—"

RIIIIIIIPPP!

The bandages tore apart, and Lady Blythe’s jaw dropped.

It wasn’t merely the transformation of his musculature that shocked her, as the enormous surgical wound she had painstakingly sewn together was completely gone, leaving his chest smooth and flawless without even the slightest trace of the injury.

Declan slowly rose from the bed and looked down at himself.

"I’m fully healed now."

He turned toward her, leaving Lady Blythe unable to form an immediate response.

"How did you—"

"I can leave now, right?"

He interrupted her before she could finish, and her brows immediately furrowed as she tapped her spectacles twice, causing the wall behind Declan to open.

Without another word, he stepped through, leaving Lady Blythe standing alone in the room.

"That..."

She stared at the spot where he had disappeared, replaying everything that had happened only moments ago.

"That isn’t normal..."

_____________

Walking down the street, Declan immediately noticed that the world around him felt different, as the hoverboards that normally shot across the sky, disappearing before ordinary people could even get a proper look at their riders, now appeared to be moving at little more than the pace of a leisurely bicycle.

He could hear the rumbling of vehicle engines from nearly a kilometer away and could even make out the license plate of a vehicle approaching from roughly two hundred meters ahead, while the vehicles themselves seemed slower and even the flyingcars appeared to be moving at a crawl.

Yet strangely enough, the people around him were moving at a perfectly normal pace.

Then he began hearing them.

Conversations.

Whispers.

Footsteps.

Even voices coming from inside buildings nearly five hundred meters away became crystal clear whenever he focused on them.

For the first few minutes, the sheer amount of information flooding his ears was almost unbearable, making the world feel deafening and chaotic, but Declan quickly learned how to control it and narrowed his effective hearing range to roughly forty meters.

_________________

Ten minutes later, he arrived at the Students’ Dorm Room, and it was as bustling as ever.

Most of the students didn’t seem to sleep at night, and within the academy, there appeared to be almost no distinction between day and night.

Declan ignored the activity around him and entered an elevator, allowing himself to be whisked upward.

DIIIIING!

The elevator doors opened, and he stepped into the corridor before making his way toward his room.

He pulled out his green card, swiped it across the scanner, and stepped inside.

Everything was exactly as he had left it, although there was still a faint smell of cigarettes lingering in the air.

It reminded him of her.

Faintly.

Declan sat down on the sofa and exhaled, his hand unconsciously moving toward his chest.

His heartbeat was slow, but every beat felt incredibly heavy.

More importantly, just beside his heart, he could hear it.

HUUUUUUM...

It sounded almost like an engine humming deep inside his chest.

"I am now a Nexian."

Declan mused quietly before grabbing his device.

He navigated through the challenge section and clicked the accept button.

The fight had been scheduled for tomorrow at 5:00 PM in the Battle Arena and with slight curiosity, Declan checked the profile of the student who had challenged him.

The opponent had accumulated a total of 200 points and had already challenged seven students before Declan.

He hadn’t lost a single one, not even once.

Declan then opened the challenge rankings and soon found the student’s name.

Edgar Dominic.

He was currently ranked fifteenth on the Newcomer Challenge Ranking, while Declan himself sat at number 205.

Yet the number of points he possessed was something normally only students within the top thirty could boast about, and that number of points must have been what caught Valcan’s attention.

"Edgar Dominic, huh..." Declan leaned back slightly, a faint smile appearing on his face. "We’ll see."

The first class the next morning was Weapon Class, so Declan had awakened early and made his way to the dojo.

When he stepped through the doors, he found that only around twelve students had arrived before him, but rather than immediately taking his seat, Declan turned toward the walls lined with weapons and reached out to grab a spear.

The moment it entered his hands, the familiar weight and balance immediately returned to him.

The spear had always been his weapon of choice, and after years of using one, handling it felt almost instinctive, but this time, Declan looked at the weapon wall differently.

Why had he always limited himself to the spear?

There were so many other weapons here, so perhaps he should try them and see whether there was another weapon that suited him even better.

With that thought, Declan began experimenting, swinging a heavy club, testing several different swords, trying the weight and balance of axes, and eventually moving on to throwing knives, carefully examining each weapon before returning it to its place.

As more students entered the dojo, they gradually began noticing him.

One moment, he would be swinging a weapon, and the next, he would return it and pick up another, testing its weight, balance, and handling as though trying to find something hidden among the countless weapons lining the wall.

And none of them knew that Declan was doing something far more important than simply playing around with weapons.

He was searching for the weapon he would use in this new life.

Most of the students quickly understood what Declan was doing, and several of them joined him, picking up different weapons to get a feel for their weight and handling before returning them and trying something else.

The previous training session had been brutal, with every single one of them beaten into the ground, though they all knew Declan had suffered the worst of it, so if they didn’t want a repeat of that humiliation, then coming prepared was the obvious choice.

After trying roughly thirty weapons in succession, Declan finally found one that caught his attention.

A pair of gauntlets.

They were forged from a metallic blue alloy that covered his hands from the fingertips all the way to his elbows, and the moment Declan curled his fingers into fists, sharp, pointed edges emerged from his knuckles, gleaming with a sharpness that looked even more dangerous than a blade.

THROOOM!

THROOOM!

The air trembled as he threw two punches forward, and when Declan lowered his fists and looked at the gauntlets again, his eyes immediately lit up.

[Close Combat!?]

The system panel flashed in surprise.

’It’s perfect.’

Declan’s fingers tightened around the weapons before he eventually removed the gauntlets and returned to his seat, placing them in front of him.

At exactly 7:00, thirty minutes after the class was supposed to begin, Declan finally raised his head and looked toward the front of the dojo.

There he was.

No one had seen him arrive, yet somehow, the weapon instructor was already standing there, his presence alone weighing down on the entire room.

"Pick Your Weapon!"

His command was exactly the same as last time, and the students immediately scrambled toward the weapons, grabbing whatever they had chosen during their preparation.

Declan remained where he was for another moment before reaching down and picking up the gauntlets he had already placed before himself, slipping them onto his hands and slowly rising to his feet.

CRACK!

CRACK!