Why?

Before I could make sense of what the Window said, she had rushed towards me and in a split second swung the staff down hard onto my face. A loud THWACK resounded from the wood as it struck my flesh. I flinched away at the impact but managed to recover a lot quicker than I expected because of my increased Strength and Vitality stat.

My quick recovery also stunned her, "how are you still conscious right now?" she murmured as she backed away from me.

A Window popped up in front of me claiming that her user profile had been updated. I saw that her Strength stat was now revealed in the Window.

[STRENGTH: 14 (+6 Master-Level Weapon Proficiency)]

"How are you still standing? Once I have my weapon with me, most men would struggle against me," she mumbled. There was real fear in her eyes and something inside me felt like I was pleased by that fear.

She rushed towards me again, the staff spun in her deft fingers and at the very last moment, I managed to take out my Sword of the Chief from my Inventory and use that to block.

For a moment, genuine surprise at the appearance of my weapon flashed in her eyes, but she chuckled to cover the surprise. "Even if you can hold a weapon now, your proficiency with it will be low. You'll still be as useless as the cripple you used to be."

I could feel my sluggish movements as I shoved her away with my sword. The anger within me clouded my sensibilities and ignored the slow motion my arms made as she masterfully deflected all my wild swings by angling her weapon at all the right angles.

In the midst of my wild swinging, she managed to twirl her staff and used an efficient stabbing motion right into my sternum causing all wind to leave my lungs in an instant. My vision blackened and I dropped the sword as I gasped desperately for air.

Before I could fall to my knees, she managed to spin and bring her weapon around for a full swing onto my side. The full force of the hit made me stumble to the side of the room and I hit the door frame to her room hard.

As I struggled to stay standing, she repositioned to my side and kicked me with what felt like her whole might. My body fell through the doorframe, shattering it to pieces and I stumbled heavily onto the thin wall that lined the opposite side of the hallway outside of the bedroom.

The thin wall was useless against the weight of my fall and I tumbled through the wall and down onto the dining table so hard that the wood splintered. I coughed up blood from the impact. My whole body was covered in cuts, small and large; shallow and deep.

I tried to roll off the table, but the way the wood had splintered, caused me to be trapped at the bottom of a wedge. I felt new scratches getting formed all over my back with every small movement that I made.

Somehow, at some point, I managed to get out of that wooden wedge and was on my hands and knees on the ground. I grabbed hold onto a chair that hadn't been damaged from my fall as further support as I prepared my strength to stand, but another kick came out of nowhere that hit me right in the stomach.

As I crumpled on the ground, the chair I had been holding onto scraped away from my hold by her. Who shoved me onto my side with her foot and then slammed a heavy kick again, this time I was hit in the diaphragm.

Lines spun around in my eyes as I started to pass out from the pain and the lack of air, but a shove onto my back stopped me from passing out completely.

I felt my once-caretaker place a significant amount of weight on the leg she placed on my chest. I struggled to breathe even more.

"I have to say, congratulations on getting stronger," Aoi said in a fake proud voice. She put more weight as she bent down to look down on me, "though I wonder if it was all worth it considering how long it took you to get it."

She prodded my left arm and sneered, "it's a shame that you won't be able to use your arm for much longer, after being a damn cripple for so long…"

She straightened up and sighed. She used a nostalgic voice as she said, "oyoiyoi, it's such a shame that I was never able to sell you, being a cripple and all. I did tell the boys not to hurt you."

She looked down at me again and pressed the end of her staff on my chest next to her foot to accentuate her point, "but who would have known that you were going to be stupid and crazy to run at big men with weapons."

A snippet of a memory I had forgotten flashed in front of my eyes. I ran toward a bald man with a well-kept metal sword that was nearly as big as I was. I was five or six years old. It was a snippet of a memory of the night my parents died.

"What do you mean?" I managed to wheeze out.

She looked down menacingly and placed more weight than before, "I'm sure you can work it out."

My mind went blank.

***

Whether or not the young man noticed the significance of what happened within his body did not matter. The old woman hadn't recognised its significance either as she continued to reveal her deepest secrets to the young man. She believed that the young man would be dead soon enough to prevent complications from her revealed secrets.

Deep down she welcomed the freedom that telling her victim that he indeed was a victim gave her.

She revealed that she had planned to sell the young man to clients that did not care about disabilities. How, in fact, the disability itself would have given her a more premium price.

She revealed that if it wasn't for the other boy's meddling, the other boy that escaped her grasp, the sale would have gone forward without a hitch. However, even without his presence in the immediate vicinity, the other boy still managed to sabotage her business. How it was all to protect the young man.

The old woman didn't notice the change in the young man's demeanour. She couldn't see how the anger swirled inside him like an unseen storm. She couldn't see how the storm originated from the left arm of the young man that she pinned with her staff.

The young man's voice was soft, yet deep; measured, yet unruly; innocent, yet menacing. Calm, yet dangerous.

"Why?"

The old woman paused. The tone of the young man's voice surprised her, but it didn't scare her. It should have. She thought that she was still in control of the situation she found herself in. She asked him to clarify himself.

"Why my parents?"

The old woman laughed heartily. She answered the young man bluntly. The reason that she turned his whole life upside-down? The parents had their suspicions of her con, and to protect her organisation, the old woman knew that the young man's parents had to be taken care of.

On the night a young mother was comforting her son, the old woman gave her two accomplices a job. The bald man and the stinky man completed their task and left the young man crippled.

The old woman paused. She remembered something. She wondered when her two accomplices were going to arrive at the orphanage. The young man knew their names. He knew the attackers that killed his parents.

The storm inside him darkened. Rage turned to wrath. The young man mumbled something incomprehensible. This confused the old woman. She moved her foot off his chest and knelt down beside him and leaned close to hear him better. She told him to repeat himself.

She believed that the young man would be dead soon enough to prevent complications from her revealed secrets.

She believed wrong.

A dark-skinned and mottled arm shot up from the young man's side. It was almost as if the arm had a mind of its own. The fingers placed themselves tightly around the old woman's throat. The moment was so quick and surprising that the old woman dropped her weapon, and she lost the strength bonus that came along with it.

With a big gap between their Strength stats, the young man easily tossed the old woman away from him.

She arced through the air and landed heavily against a cupboard at the other end of the dining room. The old woman hit the back of her head on a part of the wood that didn't crumple from the crash.

The old woman pushed herself off the indentation in the cupboard and wall and realised that she had no strength in her legs and tumbled down onto her stomach.

Before she could recover and stand back up, the young man had silently made his way to her. With supernatural ease, the young man grabbed the old woman by her throat and lifted her up off the ground. He repeated himself.

"Is Saizo part of it all?"

Whether the young man noticed the significance of what happened did not matter.

What mattered was that, after all this time in the existence of the System, something substantial out of its control was finally beginning.