10 Chapter 10:

Ace opened his eyes, his body wracked with pain, clouding his senses and invading his gaze, overtaking his conscience.

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Ace woke, for some reason fully aware of the nightmare he had just gone through, a tribulation that reminded him how far he had come, as well as of the existence of the creature - for he had no other name for it, that had saved him from the darkness.

Ace had read more than enough psychology books to know that the nightmares would become more and more frequent, he had gone through a great change, and now that enough time had passed for his mind and body to overcome the shock, the realisation of how good he had it now would sink in, and the concern that he would lose this, now clouded his senses and would begin to fill his nightmares. Nevertheless, Ace did not despair, he had a full belief in his now full recovery, so the nightmares would stop at some point, it was only a matter of not dying from lack of sleep before then. He checked the smartwatch in his nightstand, a sleek black piece of electronics that now told him the time was precisely 04:23:57 am, earlier than the time he usually woke up. Even then, he knew that he would now be unable to a=fall back asleep, the adrenaline coursing through his body, and sharpening his almost superhuman senses. He decided to instead get an early start to the day and walked into his home gym and dojo. When he walked in he saw that a maid was cleaning it, and winced whilst thinking about the time they must wake up. Nevertheless, he knew nothing much could be done, if he relieved them of their duties and his grandmother came home, they would all be fired, and no other employer would dare to employ them, scared of the eventual consequences.

"I am sorry young master, I had no idea you would be arriving so promptly.", the maid declared, in a respectful manner, her head bowed down, yet her eyes still travelled around his body, inspecting his defined muscles - at least for a 13-year-old. His grandmother would have her fired and probably would sue her until the debts choked the life out of her, but Ace allowed it, he now only understood how hard the maids had worked for him to have as much of a simple life as he could - with the pain and all, but he now understood that their lives were almost as hard as his, with all the work they were expected to complete in a daily time frame.

"It's fine, I had no idea I was coming until five minutes ago.", Ace said this with a grin, attempting to put the poor woman at ease. He seemed to have achieved this as she let out a long sigh and let out: "Yes sir, thank you sir, when you are finished, I will be waiting outside the door and will clean the room, I will ensure this is done even earlier tomorrow.", she bowed and walked out quickly in silent but hurried steps, clearly wanting to avoid any chance of a confrontation.

He finished his workout, and arranged his thoughts, he knew what he wanted to do: play games all day, but he also knew that such feelings were dangerous. Instead, he decided to make a plan, one that would allow him to game a specific amount of hours per day, in order to regulate the budding addiction to such exciting stimuli. This plan would also include any 'chores' he had to perform for his grandmother, as well as always giving him time to exercise in the morning and afternoon if needed, while also granting time to activities such as reading or the study of more interesting topics that Ace found necessary to learn about or simply entertained him.

In this way, he would attempt to regulate his days in a more efficient manner, whilst also giving him time to work on any necessary skills he wanted to practice, or any new knowledge he wished to learn. He would maximise the potential and advantages of his body, in preparation for life in high school.

For now, however, his tutor would be coming, in order to give him worksheets to work through the week, which would supposedly give him an advantage when preparing for exams for the more popular courses that students would want to take part in. These usually consisted of medicine, law, business, economics and their various variants, due to the fact that all these topics interested Ace, he had studied them to an almost university level simply out of curiosity and entertainment - he loved learning new things. Therefore, he knew that no matter the exam, he would assuredly do better than any other participant except for the heirs of specific houses, lineages or organisations, that already had a predestined path and therefore had tutors on one or maybe two of these specific courses. Nevertheless, he knew that the chances of them being hardworking and talented were low, so he assumed that he would still be able to rank high enough in the exam that he would be able to enter without issue. He already assumed that he would have to enter those courses, at the insistence of his grandmother to show off all his knowledge, Ace had no problem with that as long as the workload still allowed him to carry out activities that interested him, such as gaming and exercise.

"Ding Dong!"

Ace opened the door to find Leilah waiting for him, dressed casually in some blue jeans and a white hoodie. She smiled at him and entered, going straight for the table and setting down her bag, removing a large stack of papers, that Ace assumed where the worksheets.

"Ok, you have to try and work through them throughout the week, and I'll come to pick them up next week, mark them and give them to you the week after, some may be a bit too hard so you can leave out any questions you do not know the answer to or do not understand, we can go through them in these lessons. I know that the level of these may be a bit excessive but they are for your own good, persevere and you will definitely get into the courses you wish to enter."

Ace smirked internally, she knew that he had a handle on the school curriculum but assumed that he would not have had time to begin to study for the courses that involved preparation for study in university. 'Oh poor girl, how wrong you are…'