19 His Dream and Her Call

When Reed awoke, he found himself in a familiar room, his bedroom. He felt as if he had slept through an eternity. The laid near the horizon when he woke, which left him wondering whether the sun was setting or rising...

An uncomfortable feeling built up in his chest the longer he looked at the hovering sun. He had suddenly remembered something from when he had been asleep.

The broken words rang softly in his head as he stared at the auburn sky.

"....Wake...soon, my belov....."

Incompleted and fragmented, the woman's voice carried an unforgettable tinge of affection.

"You must.....and...repair the...."

He knew this voice; he was sure of it, but he could not voice out the truth.

Something prevented him from recalling her name.

"....Time is short....will not survive.....collapse. I have sent....."

Such was the fate of the boy, or rather, his unique burden. One he could not run from.

A sudden noise shook Reed from his contemplation as Violett burst through the door worriedly. She'd been watching over him since he had fainted that night. The mother hen rushed in the room as soon as she sensed his awakening.

Reed smiled and said, "Hey. You don't look too well, Violett. Have you been sleeping properly?"

He felt a small warmth in his chest when he thought about how worried he must have made her feel. Given how she looked at the moment, he guessed that she must have been worrying for days. The bags under her eyes and her frazzled hair spoke volumes about how she was doing.

A long sigh escaped her lips when she heard Reed's tease. She knew then and there that he was fine. It was a reassurance that was spoken but not expressed in an explicit way. A soft smile formed on her beautiful face and she said, "You're a dead man, Reed. I'm sure you understand why, right?"

Her cheerful, bubbly voice made his death sentence sound even more horrifying in a twisted way.

Reed hesitated, but then nodded his head. He knew that if he spoke now, he would only be digging his grave deeper. It'd be best to play the game safely and act submissively for now. No matter what she'd say, he'd nod and agree with her.

"Don't even think you'll ever escape me again. I'll beat you within an inch of your life next time you pull a stunt like that."

"We'll see how eager you'll be to play hooky when I break your legs into pieces and dump you in the challenge zone. I'll have you crawl your way out of there as punishment, heh heh heh..." Her eyes ominously gleamed as she crept closer to him as if she was eyeing out prey.

Reed felt as if she had turned into the mistress of death and hurriedly said, "I-I won't play hooky anymore, so cut me some slack! It was an honest mistake; just a youthful indiscretion! H-have mercy!!"

"...Fine. I wouldn't want you to say that I'm not a forgiving person. I'll give you a pass this time out of understanding; I was your age once, too."

"I just want you to understand that the outside world is a dangerous place, especially for you, given your unique situation. You have no idea what people are capable of out there -- they'll eat you alive if you give them the opportunity," said Violett. "You were beyond lucky that no one noticed you during your outing."

"..."

She lightly shrugged her shoulders and said, "Ah, whatever. I'm sure you've properly recovered after a week's of sleeping, right? I'll run you dry now that you've come around; I'll make sure that you won't have any extra energy to waste on useless thoughts from now on..."

I've been asleep for a week!? Holy shit, what the fuck happened to me? I don't remember partying that hard, but then again, I can't remember half of the shit that happened that night.

Goddamn, no wonder Violett was worried out of her mind. Being comatose for an entire week is certainly enough to be seriously concerned...

"By the way, Reed, I didn't think you'd have a tattoo. You're a bit too young to be getting one so soon. And it's such a strange design, too; why'd you choose something so...odd?"

Confused, Reed said, "What do you mean, a tattoo? I've never gotten a tattoo before. I'm not quite sure what you're talking about."

"Oh? Then I'm sure you'll have some sort of excuse or nonsensical story to explain the tattoo on your chest, right? What, are you're going to tell me it's a birthmark?"

"That odd symbol is some sort of character belonging to a language, even I can put that together. What's it mean? Must be pretty special for you to engrave it over your heart, I presume."

Reed hurriedly took off his shirt and inspected himself; what he found left him speechless. An azure-golden glyph lay directly on his chest, above his heart. An unknown text was written within the lines that made up the peculiar glyph, too intricate to read with the naked eye. They looked like faint markings at a distance, but once you got close up, you could see that they were words of some kind.

All in all, the 'tattoo' had a beauty to it that was hard to describe with words. It gave him the impression that it was deeply meaningful to him, even though he couldn't understand it.

"Interestingly enough, I tried translating the text within the tattoo when I first saw it, but my tome couldn't identify what language it belonged to. That piqued my interest; the tomes have records of hundreds of languages and thousands of dialects from innumerable worlds, but it couldn't identify your tattoo's language."

"The great guilds have been documenting all of the various races and their cultures as they've appeared over millennia, so they've indexed an enormous amount of information. That's why this is a very rare occurrence, so to speak."

"That fellow, Julian, inspected your tattoo thoroughly when he discovered it and seemed endlessly engrossed by it. Don't know why though; he just took a bunch of photos of it and hurriedly left after I arrived. He said he'd talk to you soon enough, or something of the sort? Pfft, those scholars always do what they please and leave us with their messes..."

Reed blankly stared at the mark on his chest; he felt unease and excitement. It was another mystery he'd have to solve down the line, along with the egg incident and the shadow who had kidnapped him.

All of these unknowns gave him a sense of anxiety as if...

"...Well, I won't pry if you don't want to talk about it. I was just a bit interested in it."

Tell me about it. If anyone's interested in this tattoo, it's fucking me -- the guy who has it engraved on his goddamned chest.

Looks like no else knows that I didn't originally have it before, they all think I got it before I came here. No, I might wrong. Julian seemed far too interested in it; he might have some suspicions about how where I got it.

There's a good chance he might suspect something happened to me that night. Even then, so what? I doubt he'll do anything about it...probably.

When all was said and done, Reed got away scot-free in comparison to the fate that befell Astor, Horatio, and Sebastian. He learned the following day that they had been imprisoned at the bottom of the challenge zone for a week as punishment, and that was after Violett had thrashed them around.

Astrid and Ophelia berated all three of them until they begged for forgiveness on their knees, and Reed was no exception. They both gave Reed their belated thoughts on the matter, to put it bluntly.

It involved a forceful abduction as they took him to a secluded training chamber. What followed after was them putting their thoughts into action, in the worst method possible.

Violence was how they repaid Reed for their making them worry. These noble ladies subscribed to the belief that pain was the greatest teacher -- some lessons required a more 'hands-on' approach.

That day he swore to himself that he'd never anger those she-devils ever again...or at the very least, never get caught again.

Reed's days passed by painfully after his blunder; Violett kept her promise and upped the difficulty of his training to the point that he was often left half-dead after every session.

Violet would relentlessly tear into him every single time they sparred as if she was out for blood. She was quick to punish even the slightest mistake, even more so than Axtorius did back in the day. At the very least, the old man wouldn't have beaten him into the ground for a simple mistake, unlike this demoness.

In the end, Reed was still forced to accept that the truth -- her hellish training produced incredible results. Her style of training empathized pressuring her students into life and death situations as if to force out all of their hidden potentials.

She would drag you to the edge of the abyss and let you struggle there until you couldn't any longer. It was a way to familiarize oneself with the fear of death without the need of actually risking one's life.

Violett was so skilled that she knew exactly how much strength her blows had to carry to give Reed of death, but not actually kill him. In that regard, she was an expert actress; none could escape this mistress of death.

Reed quickly learned that even simple mistakes would result in fatal consequences when dealt with her. He was constantly forced to improve or die in the face of her relentless onslaught.

In the blink of an eye, five months had passed since that night. Reed had grown considerably since then, he now possessed a level of expertise over Anima that left even Violett astounded and concerned...

Even Violett thought that she might have overdone it, but it was too late to regret her actions.

Reed calmed himself down and focused until he lost track of time. Silence reigned in his private chamber as he lifted his left hand and swung it down gently. He silently repeated the movement, but nothing happened despite his attempts.

He'd been attempting to recreate something for the last five months to close the gap between himself and Violett. Simply put, he wasn't satisfied. His fights with Violett had grown stale; he'd become skilled enough to defend himself against her attacks, but nothing he did would hurt her.

It had reached a stalemate of sorts, one that left him frustrated. He would defend but never be able to attack properly, much like a cowardly turtle. Violett assured him that he was progressing along superbly, even better than any of his peers; the fact that he could hold out against her was enough to guarantee his safety against contenders.

But what of conquerors like herself? Was he supposed to retreat into his shell and wait for help? He recognized that he needed to take another step forward if he wanted to properly survive in this world.

He did not fear the men of this, no; what he feared were its gods. Knowing that he could triumph over men gave him no comfort because he knew that his real adversaries came from heaven itself.

What mattered most was protecting his little life first, everything else came after. That was why he had spent the last five months practicing in secret for this moment.

He gently swung his hand down through the air as if he wanted to do something to it.

Again and again, attempt after attempt, failure upon failure. It did not deter him in the slightest. He believed that it was worth the effort and would continue failing until he succeeded.

After an endless amount of attempts, the fruit of his failures finally blossomed.

One day, Reed swung his hand down and something actually happened. It immediately his attention as he quickly broke out concentration and intently stared at the space where his hand had passed through.

Although small and incredibly faint, Reed was able to see what he had accomplished.

In a distant room, Violett picked up on something incredibly astonishing all of a sudden. She instantly turned towards the direction she had felt the phenomenon occur and immediately knew what -- and most importantly, who caused it to appear.

She felt an unpleasant sweat form as she immediately flashed towards the location of the incident and observed; what she saw confirmed her suspicions.

It was there in the middle of Reed's training chamber, floating weakly as if it was about to disappear.

He had succeeded after five months and 25,778 attempts. A feat that should not have been possible.

An insignificant crack hovered in the air, slowly repairing itself as time passed by - a spatial tear...