From Moving Crates to Killing Gods-Chapter 52: Ten

I dragged myself to the training room the morning after our adventure with the girls, my mind still turning over the Quickstep spell’s failure. Three interconnected spheres that refused to harmonize no matter how I visualized them.

The mental block felt like a wall I couldn’t climb, so I decided to do what I always did when I couldn’t figure out a spell. To push my body instead of my mind.

At least physical pain had the decency to be straightforward.

The training room stretched before me, vast and empty. Phinyx as always near the entrance of the training room. He gave me a lazy wave, his perpetually chill demeanor somehow both irritating and comforting this morning.

"You’re back. Ready to run until your legs fall off?" he called, his voice echoing in the cavernous space.

"Maybe today they actually will." I muttered, stretching my hamstrings with more force than necessary. Every muscle fiber in my body seemed to groan in anticipation of what was coming.

I took off without another word, letting my feet pound against the track as I settled into the familiar rhythm. One lap became two, became five, became ten. Why couldn’t I get those damned spheres to align? What was I missing? The questions cycled through my head with each circuit of the track.

By lap twenty, my lungs had settled into the burn I’d come to recognize as normal. Sweat plastered my shirt to my back. I passed Phinyx, feeling the gentle wash of his "endurance vibe" roll over me, taking just enough edge off the fatigue to keep me going.

"Looking good!" he called as I passed. "Very determined vibe today!"

Around lap thirty, something strange happened. I was running at my usual pace when I felt an odd sensation in my legs, a lightness, as if the gravity pulling at my limbs had suddenly decreased. My stride lengthened without conscious effort. My feet seemed to spend less time touching the ground.

I was going faster. Much faster.

Not just a little increase in speed, I was practically flying compared to my normal pace. The walls of the training room blurred slightly at the edges of my vision. The cool air of the room cut sharper against my sweaty skin.

"Whoa!" Phinyx’s startled voice reached me as I blazed past him. "Are you using a new ability?"

"I don’t know what’s going on!" I shouted. Another lap passed in what felt like half the normal time. By the third lap at this new pace, I realized I wasn’t even breathing harder than before. Something had fundamentally changed.

After a couple of more laps I decided to take a small water break, Phinyx stood against the wall with the water canteens.

"What was that?" Phinyx asked, his eyes wider than usual. "You just.. accelerated. Like, a lot."

"I don’t know." I gasped, snatching a canteen and taking a long drink. The water felt impossibly good against my parched throat. "It just... happened."

A thought struck me then. I closed my eyes, focusing inward. "Stats."

The familiar blue window materialized in my vision:

Strength: 7

Agility: 10

Constitution: 8

Intelligence: 9

Wisdom: 5

Luck: 5

"Agility is at 10." I said, staring at the number. "It was 9 yesterday."

"Does that matter?" Phinyx asked, taking a sip from his own canteen. "I mean, it’s just one point, right?"

"I don’t know." I said again, but a surge of excitement was building in my chest. "But something definitely feels different."

I handed the canteen back to Phinyx and rolled my shoulders. The lightness in my legs remained, not fatigue but potential energy waiting to be unleashed.

"Let me try something."

I stepped back onto the track and broke into a run. The sensation was immediate, my legs responded with a quickness that felt alien yet perfectly natural. Each stride covered more ground, each step landed with perfect precision. I wasn’t just running, I was flowing across the surface.

"Holy—" Phinyx’s exclamation faded behind me as I accelerated.

A laugh bubbled up from somewhere in my chest. This was nothing like the exhausting laps of previous training sessions. This was... amazing. I pushed harder, curious to find my new limits. Lap after lap, the count in my head kept on climbing.

Forty. Fifty. Sixty.

Phinyx kept pace with his vibes, every time I was approaching him, he would hit me with bursts of energy that kept me going. I could see the strain on his face growing with each passing lap, he was pushing his limits too, using his ability far more than he normally would.

"One more..." I gasped as I approached seventy laps. My muscles were finally screaming in protest, the initial euphoria giving way to familiar pain. But it was a higher threshold than before, a new boundary to push against.

Phinyx nodded, sweat beading on his forehead from the effort of maintaining his vibes. "Energy... vibe..." he managed, flinging his hands toward me in an exaggerated gesture.

The wave of vigor hit me like a physical force. I dug deep and found one last burst of speed, completing lap seventy one before finally staggering to a stop. My legs trembled beneath me, threatening to give out entirely. My lungs felt as if I’d been underwater for minutes.

But I’d done it. Seventy one laps. My new record, but not one hundred still.

Phinyx collapsed onto the floor nearby, his chest rising and falling rapidly. "That... was... insane." he murmured.

I nodded, unable to form words just yet. When I could finally speak, I said. "Something changed. When agility hit 10."

"A threshold?" Phinyx suggested, his voice weak. "Like... a barrier breaking."

We lay there for several minutes, both too exhausted to move. Eventually, on shaky legs, we helped each other up and began the long, agonizing walk back to our rooms.

As we shuffled along, I wondered what this meant for my training. If reaching 10 in agility had so dramatically improved my speed, what would happen when other stats reached that threshold? What would intelligence at 10 do for my spell casting? For the Quickstep that still felt distant?

"You know..." Phinyx said, breaking into my thoughts. "I think... I think I’m going to need a nap."

I laughed, the sound rasping in my dry throat. "Me too. And food. Lots of food."

But underneath the exhaustion, a new determination was building. My body was adapting, changing, becoming something more than it had been before. And for the first time since killing the Corruptor king, I felt like I might actually be capable of becoming what Damian wanted, a weapon against what roamed beyond the barrier.