Scumbag Fate System-Chapter 87: Breakthrough

Reinhard barely made it three steps outside a building before Alice appeared before him. Her green eyes gleamed with excitement as she blocked his route completely.

"Reinhard! Let’s go do some training." Alice declared without preamble.

Reinhard blinked at the sudden ambush. "Hm? What do you mean-"

"Yor’s gone healing those siblings," Alice interrupted, counting on her fingers. "Rika’s busy with some history research project. Sirin is busy dealing with the other professors whom she owes favors to. And Louis won’t be available for two whole days because he’s modifying weapons for us."

She grinned widely. "So, you’re my partner now!"

Reinhard’s mind caught on something odd in that declaration. He couldn’t recall Rika or Sirin ever sparring with Alice. They’d never mentioned being her training partners. Rika’s combat skills were decent but far from Alice’s level.

Sirin was strong enough, but he heard she was busier with classes.

Why had Alice specifically named them as if they normally trained together?

The claim felt wrong, like it was constructed. As if Alice had invented excuses rather than stating real reasons. But why lie about something so simple? What was she actually after?

Curiosity sparked beneath Reinhard’s calm expression. Still, on the surface, he indulged her with an easy smile. "Alright. Lead the way then."

Alice’s grin brightened. "Yes! Come on, I already reserved a private training room."

She grabbed his wrist and practically dragged him toward the Arena. Other students moved aside as Alice bulldozed through the hallways with Reinhard in tow. Within minutes, they reached a heavy door and quickly entered.

The room beyond was spacious, easily fifty feet across, with reinforced walls designed to contain destructive magic. Training dummies lined one side while weapon racks held practice swords, spears, and other weapons.

Alice released Reinhard’s wrist, then immediately grabbed her preferred weapon. A massive sledgehammer that probably weighed more than Rika. She swung it experimentally while blue energy crackled along its surface.

"Ready?" Alice asked with barely contained excitement.

Reinhard drew his practice sword from the rack. "Sure."

"Good!" Alice charged.

Her hammer came down in a devastating overhead strike, but Reinhard dodged left as the weapon smashed into stone where he’d been standing. Cracks spider-webbed outward from the impact point.

Alice’s Crush ability activated on contact! The stone didn’t just break; it pulverized into fine powder.

"That’s playing?" Reinhard asked as he circled away from her reach.

"Of course! I’m going easy!" Alice laughed while swinging again in a wide horizontal arc.

They fell into rhythm quickly.

Alice attacked with overwhelming force, but Reinhard evaded and sometimes deflected her strikes. Each hammer strike that came down on him was side-stepped or smacked to the side.

The clash of metal on metal rang through the arena. When Reinhard’s blade met Alice’s hammer shaft, sparks flew where steel scraped against enchanted iron. The impact sent vibrations up Reinhard’s arms, but he’d angled correctly, letting the force slide past instead of meeting it head-on.

Alice grinned wider with each exchange. "You’re good! Really good!"

"You’re not making this easy," Reinhard replied while ducking under another swing.

Alice’s expression shifted to something more serious. "Alright. No more holding back."

Her aura exploded outward as the blue energy around her hammer intensified to blinding brightness. When she moved, the floor cracked beneath her feet from pure force.

The next strike came faster than before.

Reinhard activated his precognition without conscious thought. Five seconds into the future, he saw Alice’s combination. A strike from above followed by a spinning sweep at ankle level, then a rising uppercut that would catch him mid-jump.

He moved before she completed the first swing. Rolled under the overhead strike before jumping over the sweep before it came. And then he landed behind her as the uppercut hit empty air, where his precognition had shown him being.

"How did you—" Alice started, but Reinhard was already moving.

His sword found the gap in her defense that precognition revealed. A light tap against her ribs that crashed into and sent her skidding back.

Alice’s eyes widened in surprise before her grin returned fiercer than ever. "Oh, you’re definitely not just lucky! Let’s keep going!"

After fifteen more minutes of intense sparring, both of them collapsed onto the stone floor, breathing heavily. Sweat dripped down their faces, and their muscles were trembling from exhaustion.

Alice rolled onto her side to face Reinhard with a satisfied smile. "You know why I actually asked you?"

Reinhard managed a tired chuckle. "To get to know me better?"

"That’s half the reason," Alice admitted with a laugh. "But I’m also really curious."

"About what?"

"About how far you’ve come," Alice said as her expression grew more serious. "You started with no Sigil and had no support from anyone. Everyone wrote you off as worthless. But somehow you gained a Sigil, and now you can keep up with people who’ve had years of training."

Reinhard blinked before he asked with an amused look. "Asking me directly wouldn’t give you the same answer?"

Alice grinned. "I feel like you’re the type to downplay your achievements. Besides, don’t you think it’s better to confirm something yourself rather than just believing what people say?"

Reinhard laughed because she wasn’t wrong. His previous life as a spy had taught him to always verify information personally. Never trust a single source and always check multiple times before accepting anything as truth.

"Fair point," he conceded.

"One more round?" Alice asked while pushing herself with a beaming grin. "I want to see something."

They squared off again despite their exhaustion. This time, Reinhard focused less on pure evasion and more on testing his limits. He predicted Alice’s strike patterns three moves ahead using precognition.

Their weapons clashed repeatedly as they exchanged over twenty strikes. Each time, trying to overpower or see a gap in the other defense, which both sides quickly took advantage of. Reinhard’s sword met Alice’s hammer shaft at precisely calculated angles, redirecting devastating force with minimal effort.

When Alice tried her signature spinning attack that built momentum through three full rotations, Reinhard saw the pattern complete in his precognition. He waited until the exact moment between rotations when her guard opened for a heartbeat.

His sword tapped her shoulder.

Alice stopped mid-spin and then laughed with pure delight. "How?! That move has never been countered before!"

"Good timing," Reinhard said simply.

They collapsed again on the training room floor. This time, they were truly exhausted, muscles burning, lungs heaving, and sweat pooling beneath them. For several minutes, neither spoke, just focused on breathing.

Finally, Alice broke the silence. "I’m from a commoner family. Got into the academy purely on combat merit."

Reinhard turned his head to look at her. "I didn’t know that."

"Most people don’t," Alice said while staring at the ceiling. "My parents can barely afford the tuition. They sold our farm to send me here. If I fail, if I don’t graduate, I destroy everything they sacrificed."

"That’s a lot of pressure," Reinhard observed quietly.

"It is," Alice agreed. "But I can’t fail. I won’t. So I need to keep getting stronger." 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

"Then what do you plan to do after graduating?" Reinhard asked.

Alice giggled despite how tired she looked. "I plan to become the mayor of my hometown. Graduates get lots of benefits, such as positions of authority, respect, and connections. If I graduate, I will be able to easily take over as mayor and make things better."

Reinhard nodded slowly, understanding dawning. As he processed this, Alice rolled onto her side to face him, and he mirrored the movement. Until they lay facing each other, his silver eyes meeting her vibrant green ones.

"I want to know your secret," Alice said bluntly. "I think understanding how you got strong will help me figure out how to get stronger too." Her grin returned, tired but genuine. "Also, you’re really fun to hit."

Reinhard chuckled. "If I knew a way to help you specifically, I would share it. But my method just helped me get a Sigil."

"Then how did you get so good at controlling your magic and using your Sigil? The way you move, the precision in your timing, that’s not beginner-level control."

"Without any classes to attend, I had all the time in the world to practice," Reinhard said softly. I was alone in the training rooms, constantly experimenting and testing out new things. "

Alice’s expression softened with understanding. "You turned your isolation into an advantage. That’s actually amazing."

They both laughed.

Then Reinhard felt it, the familiar pulse of the system activating without warning.

[Congratulations, Host! Stats Breakthrough Achieved!]

The notification appeared in his peripheral vision, where Alice couldn’t see it. More text scrolled past:

[Strength: Extreme → Extremely High]

[Defense: Very High → Extreme]

[Stamina: Extreme → Extremely High]

[Agility: Extreme → Extreme]

Reinhard mentally summoned his full status screen, keeping his expression neutral:

[Reinhard Malvin]

[Gender: Male]

[Rank: Initiate]

[Sigils: (Precognition), (Spatial Lord), (Void), (Phasing)]

[Stats: Strength: Extremely High

Defense: Extreme

Stamina: Extremely High

Agility: Extreme

Magic Reserve: Extremely High

Magic Potency: Extremely High]

Almost every stat is at maximum or near-maximum for his current rank. The sparring with Alice had pushed him past another threshold. Her overwhelming power forced him to adapt, to push harder, to break through limits he hadn’t known existed.

He chuckled inwardly at the timing.

"What’s funny?" Alice asked, noticing his expression shift.

"Nothing," Reinhard said with a smile. "Just thinking that you might have helped me more than I helped you."

Alice’s eyes narrowed with a fierce grin. "Oh? And how’s that?"

"Training with someone as strong as you forces improvement," Reinhard explained truthfully. "I had to push myself harder than I have in weeks just to keep up."

Alice beamed at the compliment. "Then we should do this regularly! You help me understand how to get stronger, and I help you actually get stronger through practice. Win-win!"

"Deal," Reinhard agreed.

But as they lay there on the training room floor, eyes locked and breathing slowly returning to normal, Reinhard couldn’t shake the feeling that Alice had learned more from this session than she’d revealed.

The way she’d watched him fight. How carefully she’d observed his movements and timing. The specific questions about his magic control.

Alice was studying him just as carefully as he would a target. And that made him curious, what was she looking for that she wasn’t telling him.