Raviel didn't stop.
Even after his thousand push-ups, even after his arms tore raw on the pull-up bar, even after his legs trembled under mana-loaded squats, he didn't stop.
The hours bled into each other. Sweat dripped in steady streams, pooling on the mat. His breathing became ragged, shallow at times, but his eyes—those strange violet irises that didn't belong to the boy he used to be—remained steady, burning in the low light of the training room.
His body screamed, yet his mind refused to shut down.
If he could not sleep, then he would forge himself awake.
By the time the holographic clock in the corner announced morning, Raviel was barely standing. His hoodie clung to him, soaked and heavy, and his hair plastered to his forehead in damp white curls. His muscles throbbed with a dull fire, the kind that made every breath feel earned.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and muttered, voice low and rough,
"…Coffee. Or something strong."
Dragging his exhausted body back to the reception hall, Raviel leaned against the counter, chest still heaving faintly. The auburn-haired receptionist blinked up at him, startled at his sudden reappearance.
"I need a cappuccino," Raviel said simply. His voice was flat, no excess words.
She hesitated. "Uh… right. One cappuccino." She tapped the order into her device.
When she turned back with the steaming cup in hand, she froze.
The hood had slipped from his head, and for the first time, his face was clear in the morning light. Pale skin slick with sweat, strands of short white hair clinging messily to his forehead, violet eyes sharp even in their weariness.
Her gaze flicked down—his body, lean and perfectly cut beneath the soaked fabric, chest still rising and falling with the remnants of exertion. He looked less like a guest and more like someone carved out of endurance itself.
"Y-You…" she stammered before catching herself, cheeks coloring faintly. "You've been training all night?"
Raviel took the cup from her hands with steady fingers, ignoring her wide-eyed stare. He brought it to his lips, the bitter warmth hitting his tongue like fuel poured into an empty furnace.
He didn't answer her question. He didn't need to.
Instead, he let out a quiet exhale, set the cup down briefly, and said only one thing before turning away:
"…Keep them coming."
And with that, he left the receptionist staring after him, the image of that drenched, inhumanly composed figure burned into her mIn
The cappuccino was gone before the warmth even left the cup.
Fuel in, fire out.
Raviel set it down, wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist, and walked wordlessly back into the training room. His body was still sore, every step dragging faint threads of pain across his muscles, but pain only reminded him he was alive.
This time, he wasn't here to crush his body.
This time, he was here to sharpen it.
Inside, the faint hum of mana-powered projectors filled the quiet chamber. Raviel slipped the Arctic from his wrist, tapped it once, and let its sleek interface connect to the holographic screen mounted on the far wall.
A menu popped up—archives, training simulations, recorded combat feeds. He scrolled past the beginner tutorials without a glance and tapped into the secured section: Awakened Combat Archives, Rank A+.
The room flickered to life.
On the screen, two fighters clashed—one wielding a blade that shimmered with condensed mana, the other unarmed, their movements swift and fluid. The fight wasn't chaos. It was structure. Precision. The kind of brutality that was born out of technique.
Raviel leaned forward, eyes narrowing. His chest tightened—not with fear, but recognition.
"Krav Maga… Systema…" His voice was almost a whisper. The screen shifted to another feed—an axe wielder against a spearman. "Kali… MMA… Muay Thai… Jiu Jitsu…"
His throat tightened, not from exhaustion but from a memory—his little sister's mocking laugh. "Marky, you're a freak. Who the hell memorizes fighting moves but never fights?"
He'd loved watching them. Hours in front of glowing screens in his old life, replaying clips until he could see every strike, every stance in his mind. But he had never fought. Not once.
Now, in this world, those obsessions weren't hobbies anymore. They were lifelines.
An idea sparked.
He flicked his eyes back to the status panel hovering faintly in the corner.
Skill: Mindlock (C+ Rank)
Description: Provides hyperfocus and complete cognitive control over mental processes.
His lips parted, breath uneven. What if I could… focus the way they do? No distractions. No wasted thoughts.
He whispered, almost afraid of what he was about to unleash:
"…Mindlock."
The panel flared.
[Skill Activated: Mindlock]
And the world… changed.
The fatigue in his muscles bled into nothing. His heartbeat slowed, steady, perfectly even. The projector's light no longer seemed like mere flickers of color—every frame of movement unfolded in perfect clarity. He could see the twist of a wrist, the torque of a shoulder, the weight shift in a fighter's heel.
No noise in his mind. No fear. No hesitation. Only analysis.
It was terrifying—this clarity. Like stepping outside himself and watching the world as if it were made of lines, numbers, and inevitabilities.
Raviel's lips curled faintly, but there was no warmth in the expression.
"…Show me everything."
The footage played on, fighters moving with lethal grace—knees snapping upward, elbows slashing down, fists carving through the air with perfect precision.
For ten full minutes, Raviel sat unmoving, his body still, his mind devouring every frame.
Every strike.
Every slip of the foot.
Every twitch of a shoulder before impact.
Mindlock stripped the noise from his thoughts, leaving only pure calculation. He wasn't watching fighters anymore—he was dissecting them, pulling apart their movements until the very bones of the techniques lay bare before him.
When the skill deactivated, it was like being hurled out of icy water into fire.
Raviel staggered back, pressing a hand to his temple. His breath came rough, shallow. His limbs felt heavy, sluggish, as if gravity had doubled around him. For two minutes, he leaned against the projector console, waiting for the haze to pass.
"…Side effects," he muttered, grimacing. His voice was hoarse. "Figures."
But even through the exhaustion, he couldn't stop the crooked smile tugging at his lips.
Because it had worked.
When he replayed the fights in his mind, the movements weren't blurs anymore. They were sharp. Intact. He remembered them all. The subtle weight-shifts, the angles of attack, the defensive pivots that could turn a strike into a counter.
Not all combat—no, not yet. Weapons, he knew, were beyond him. To wield a sword or spear properly wasn't just instinct; it was experience, guidance. Someone to hammer the lessons into his bones.
But fists?
Fists were different.
Fists were raw, unrefined, something primal anyone could use. And with the knowledge he'd pieced together, his fists were no longer just tools of desperation. They were weapons.
He clenched one now, feeling the sweat-slick skin stretch across knuckles, feeling the faint tremor in his arm from overexertion.
"Not bad," he whispered, half to himself, half to the room. "Not bad at all."
But beneath the exhaustion, another feeling simmered.
Something dangerous.
Mindlock.
The taste of that clarity, that control—it hadn't just been useful. It had been intoxicating.
The part of him that once stayed up nights, obsessively replaying fight clips, studying the way a stranger's body moved, now wanted more. More perfection. More dissection. More control.
And that hunger felt stronger than the ache in his body.