The Underground Training Ground

Seeing Rafael's smile, Cecillia knew Rafael wasn't your average person. She had seen that type of smile a long time ago. It was the same smile her brother had when they were kids. They were only kids back then living on the streets.

It was the smile of someone who not only knew what they wanted to do in life, but also how they would do it. Almost as if they had a perfect plan. A merciless and arrogant smile. After living on the streets for so long, her brother finally had it and created his own gang which slowly gained traction. He would methodically plan his moves in the dark and strike his opponents showing no mercy.

After that, it only took her brother a few years to create a monstrous mercenary group and finally join the Black Water Syndicate as a core member. Of course, Cecillia took her own path and created her own organization, but that's for another day.

"Come with me." Cecillia stated, standing up from her chair and walking towards the door. "I want to show you something," she beckoned, stopping at the door and waiting for Rafael. Following along, Rafael walked beside her towards the main entrance.

"Where are we going?" Rafael asked.

"Somewhere special." she said with a grin on her face. Walking down the stairs she led him down a flight of stairs and into a relatively large and dark storage room littered with boxes and other junk.

Looking around, Rafael was confused as to why she would lead him down here. The floor and boxes were littered with dust and miscellaneous items. Reaching out with his finger, he picked up a layer of dust showing the place hadn't been cleaned in some time.

"Don't fall behind," Cecillia said as she walked to the other side of the room. Following along, they reached the other side of the room. Cecillia placed her hand on the wall and with a shine from her palm, a large magic circle appeared on the wall.

Although Rafael had no idea what she was doing, he could tell it was something large and complex from seeing the array of magic symbols packed inside the magic circle. With a soft glint, a small portal the size of a large door appeared in front of the circle.

With a few fluctuations, the portal stabilized showing the other side of where it led it. Peering in, Rafael could see a large room squarish and metallic in design. Cecillia walked into the portal followed by Rafael closely behind.

"What is this place?" Rafael says while looking around the lobby like room. On the other side of the room were large glass windows. Seeing Cecillia walking towards them, Rafael followed along as she started explaining.

"For starters" she started off. "The place we are currently in is the true headquarters of the Black Water Syndicate.". Stopping in front of the glass panes, she continued talking ."This facility has everything we would need without alerting city officials. This is where we gather and plan all our missions, hold records, exercise, and practice our techniques." As you can see below, we have an arena for sparring .

Looking down below to the arena, Rafael was able to see two girls he hadn't seen before sparring against each other at fast speeds. One of them was a beautiful human girl with short brown hair while wearing a yellowish blouse with a matching skirt along with black leggings under it. What was surprising was that she was fighting while still wearing heels!

On the other hand, the other girl, a few inches shorter than the other, had green skin along with a tail on her back. She had brown bob cut hair and yellow eyes and, while also charming,had a more stoic and cold feeling to her. As they fought Rafael could see them screaming at each other as they fought. If anything they looked like sworn enemies.

As he watched captivated by the fight, the green girl jumped up and threw down a kick using gravity to increase the weight to her kick. Seeing the kick incoming, instead of dodging, the girl grinned and jumped up taking hold of the green skinned girl's leg, which surprised the green girl, and slamming her down onto the ground caused a cloud of dust to form from the impact.

"Ouch" Rafael said seeing how hard the green girl was slammed to the ground

As the debris cleared, Rafael saw the green girl lay motionless on the cracked ground in defeat. The girl with the skirt walked up to the fallen girl and squatting down next to her poked her cheeks a few times checking if she was fine.

Although Rafael was unable to hear what was happening, Cecillia was able to read the green girl's lips as she mouthed "I really hate you".

"She'll be fine," Cecillia said with a light laugh. "Battles between those two are quite common," she explained. "It's more of a rivalry between them. They bicker between each other all the time and roughhouse all the time so be careful around them since they can be very... well… physical when they argue" she said. "Come along I'll show you something else" she said while leading him to another hallway.

As they walked, Rafael couldn't help but ask. "So.. did we get teleported to another place?" Rafael wondered since after crossing the portal created by Cecillia, he wasn't sure.

"Not really," Cecillia said. "Were actually still in the basement"

"Then where are we? Didn't we go through a portal?" he asked.

"Actually, this whole place is actually an underground bunker with a bit of spatial expansion for more space.The whole thing is coated with magic arrays and layers of mythril composites and anti-magic materials. Cost us quite a heavy sum to set this up. I'd say that most if not all of the countries don't have something as good as this." she said with a bit of pride.

"So are there spatial rings too?"

"Yeah. I have one on me" she explained while taking the ring on her hand off, and tossing it to Rafael. Catching it Rafael took a look at it. Rafael had always heard of storage rings in the novels he read back on Earth, but seeing one for real was better. After putting it on, he was able to visualize the inside of the ring in his mind and take things in and out with just a thought.

Handing back the ring, Cecillia asked, " See anything you liked in my storage?"

"Huh? Oh sorry, I wasn't really paying attention to what was inside your ring" Rafael explained quickly.

"It's fine," she said with a smile. "What's mine is yours. Even I am yours" she said the last part flirtatiously.

"I'd rather not" Rafael rejected her while moving ahead of her.

"Aw!! Come here" she said putting her arms around his neck from behind "There's no need to be shy. I already declared myself as yours"

"Can you not," Rafael said, a bit flustered from having a beautiful girl fawning over him. Seeing Rafael's nervousness Cecilly chuckled to herself.

"Fine, but remember if you ever change your mind". She got in close to his ear and blew some air into it seductively. " You can always come knocking to my room" she whispered, causing Rafael to shiver.

She let go of him and with a cheeky smile walked ahead opening a double door not too far from him. "This is the place," she said, gesturing him in.