An hour after Ais and Loki left.
Bell's eyelids slowly fluttered. Alfia noticed it instantly, eyes narrowing at the movement.
She watched with stoic composure as his eyelids fluttered open. Everything was blurry at first, colors bleeding into one another without rhyme or reason, rendering the world incomprehensible.
Seconds passed. His vision sharpened with every beat of his heart, turning that palette of colors into a coherent whole.
Bell looked down first. A loose tunic and wide pants adorned his body—he didn't remember changing into them.
His visible skin came next. All the burns and scars from before had healed, nothing surprising considering his broken regeneration ability.
At last, his gaze shifted to check the surroundings. A single glance and a pang of familiarity told him this was his own room.
His eyes had barely drifted when they landed on Alfia, seated on a chair just beside him.
It took a moment for Bell to recognise her.
"Aunt."
Relief emptied from his lungs. She was still here—still materialised, still anchored to him.
"You can move." Alfia spoke—not a question, a statement.
He twirled his wrist while pulling his back up from the bed. Popping of bones rang out from his body at the movement, muscles stiff from disuse.
"Yes... I should be able to move like normal after a stretch or two." Bell said, watching her with a hint of curiosity as she slid the chair back and stood.
Under his slightly bewildered gaze, Alfia's hand reached out and held onto his collar, hefting him up like he weighed nothing.
"Aunt, what are you up to?"
Bell tried to struggle instinctively. But a single glare from her made him go limp, letting her haul him like a fish.
She walked toward a nearby window with Bell in grip and pushed it open with her free hand.
"Aunt, are you—" His words were cut off as Alfia put a foot on the window's edge and vaulted over it alongside him.
Air sheared around them as Alfia dragged Bell away without letting him greet anyone else after waking up.
Babel in the distance stood rooted in its spot, yet the buildings around them lost their boundaries, smearing past like paint falling outside fixed outlines. They moved fast. So fast that debris in their path wasn't just passing; it was being ripped backward by the vacuum left in their wake.
A moment and they stood atop Orario's southern city wall. Alfia uncurled her fingers from around his tunic, making him land on his heels.
Bell stumbled for a fraction before holding himself straight. He took two steps back from her and glanced around.
"So... why are we here?" He turned back to face her.
His words had barely resounded around when slender knuckles screeched toward him from his peripheral vision.
Bell moved without thought. In one fluid motion, his spine bent back, hands hitting the stone floor.
An arm tore the air an inch above his torso as he flipped back, legs sliding back on either side of that arm to dodge.
Alfia opened her hand without pause and wrapped her fingers around a single leg, forcefully halting his backflip.
He felt his surroundings spiral as she heaved him up and hurled him away without an ounce of mercy.
Bell's hand snapped out mid-swirl, smashing against the floor right before impact. His momentum cut off as he was launched skyward, somersaulting midair so that his legs faced the ground just when gravity started to pull him down.
BOOM!
He crashed down a moment later, leaving fine cracks and a slight depression in the stone floor.
"If we speak purely of technique... among the four of us—myself, that white phantom, and Ares—you are the absolute lowest. Even Ares's theatrics could make a fool of you, time and time again."
Alfia began to walk toward him.
Her stride was unhurried, almost leisurely. Yet every step landed with supernatural precision—heel, toe, weight shift, each one identical to the last. Her shoulders rose and fell in a rhythm so controlled it looked rehearsed. A pulse thrummed at her throat, steady and unhurried, as though combat were a rest state.
Layer upon flawless layer, her movements stacked into a singular synchronization—something that forced her body to unleash a power far greater than the sum of its parts.
"Your stance alone tells me everything. No one has ever taught you how to fight." Her gaze drifted over his stance with a critical eye. "You leave openings so wide that even a half-competent adventurer would have cut you down a dozen times over."
Bell's lips twitched at her words.
"You're right, Aunt. I learned how to fight on my own. I didn't have a teacher to teach me how to throw a punch."
He bent into his usual stance, his expression hardening into something serious.
"And that is precisely why we are here. I will carve every technique I know into you. We will not stop until your movements no longer look like a patchwork of borrowed styles, stitched together by instinct."
Those words made Bell feel sweat bead at his back.
He opened his mouth—and snapped his forearms ahead of his face instead.
BAAM!
An impact made him slide back, heels digging below and steam hissing from his forearms.
Bell let his upper body fall backward after absorbing the force and moved.
Alfia moved simultaneously.
BOOM!
A wall nearby became a stuttering streak of grey. Defense towers flashed past in quick snapshots: a pillar, an outpost, a pillar, an outpost. Orario far below seemed to crawl, but the ground under his feet was a blur, gravel flying off the pavement's edge like spray.
He threw a punch. Alfia leaned back. His fist cut through empty air, and the wind alone tore a banner loose behind her, its red cloth ripping apart and flying away.
She countered. He caught her wrist—felt the wind crush his sleeve against his arm like a second skin—and they turned. Clouds above barely drifted, lazy and indifferent, but a watchtower at the end of the wall had been a distant silhouette a moment ago. Now its shadow fell over them, dark and sudden, and just as quickly it was behind them, shrinking.
The raised, solid sections of the city wall were reduced to jagged teeth whipping past in his peripheral vision. Another watchtower flickered on his left, then his right, then behind him—distance and direction losing all meaning.
His heel hit a loose stone and flicked it off the city wall's edge. He didn't watch it fall. Couldn't. Raised sections were already screaming past again.
A palm struck his chest.
Bell's soles left the ground. Wind roared in his ears—no, ripped—tearing his mouth open, stealing any breath he tried to catch.
He twisted midair, caught the edge of a solid section with one hand, stone grinding his fingers as his body swung in a full circle. He saw a district below—a square, a fountain, ants that were people—flash beneath his dangling heels before he wrenched himself back up onto the walkway.
Alfia was already there.
"Haah...Haah...Haah..."
Bell's legs gave out. He hit the stone on his hands and knees, lungs heaving, each breath a ragged tear.
Alfia watched him for a long moment. Then she vaulted onto a raised section, crossing one leg over the other, and settled like she could sit there all day.
"Barely passable."
...
..
.
***
[300 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter]
[8 chapters ahead on P@tr3on = [email protected]/Not_Aaryan]
...
[Authors Thoughts]
How was this high speed fight? I tried really hard to show how it would feel from Bell's perspective instead of just writing fast or sonic booms and all.
Have a wonderful day, everyone!