Lunar Awakening-Chapter 33: Lots Of Broken Bones

Cassandra pointed to a corner of the huge round room and said in her usual cold tone, "There’s a dresser there. Change into your battle suit and don’t dawdle." She turned and walked in the opposite direction, where he suspected another dresser was.

Leo walked over to the dresser, thinking about why she would want to spar with him. He wondered if she knew he had awakened and was growing stronger. He had seen her fight, however. She was a powerhouse who would obliterate him in a second.

As he got to the dresser, he found a pair of skin tight black suits with red lines running down the joints and collars, all the way down to the legs.

As he slipped into it, he began to think of a way out of his predicament. He did not want to run and be known as the loser who ran. That would only worsen his reputation, but if he lost to her, that would at least preserve his reputation and save him some time.

With the resolve to lose, he stepped out of the dresser in his new body suit and walked back into the gymnasium to see her already waiting for him in the middle. His heart skipped a beat as he saw her beauty in a new light.

Leo gave himself a mental kick in the gut. ’Focus you fool, you just have to get your ass beat by the battle goddess and then you can go home.’

Her suit looked just like his, but it did a well enough job of showing her features and curves. His eyes continued to stray to her chest region, and he remarked quietly.

"Now these suits do that justice."

Surprisingly, he found her staring at him intently, but without any emotion in them. He wondered if he looked any different, but she broke the eye contact after a few seconds.

"Shall we begin?" she asked.

Leo raised an eyebrow. "Are we using practice weapons or the real thing?" He tried not to give away the fact that he already had an artifact, though he doubted it would strike anyone as a surprise. Still, secrecy was his motto.

She shook her head slowly and said, "No weapons, straight hands."

Leo’s interest peaked in that instant. ’Now why does that sound familiar?’ He could vaguely remember something from his childhood.

He thought hard and long before it finally became clearer to him. When he was little and Cassandra used to come over, she would always say those words and have them fight. As a child, she was always happy, open, and very violent in her games, but her father’s death had made her more reclusive.

He missed the old her in a way. Come to think of it, why would a young girl be so aggressive?

He tried to see if there was any hint of emotion or remembrance in her eyes, but there was none.

"Is that fine by you?" she asked again.

Leo nodded after a second. All he wanted was to go back home.

"Begin!"

The second she said these words, Leo found himself on his back choking. Whatever had happened, it only took a fraction of a second. He felt a sharp pain in his chest like he had been hit by a freight train, but it had only been her fist.

He looked up at her, coughing and panting.

Her eyes stared down at him with the familiar disgust he had come to know.

"You just died," she said coldly before continuing, "It seems that after hearing my confession, you did not change one bit."

’Shut the fuck up bitch, how do you expect me to react to your devilish power?’ He screamed inwardly.

He rose to his feet, coughing and feeling the healing process begin to start. "Are we done here?"

He watched her raise her fists and say, "Humour me."

Leo’s jaw dropped. "Aw, crap!"

He was sent flying back by a few meters, and this time he landed on his face and groaned. The pain of her blows reawakened the pain from the death critter battle. He could feel his head pulsing and his body heat rising.

He looked up to see her standing there, looking at him with an unsatisfactory gaze.

He could feel rage building up within him and a low growl escaping his mouth. He tried to hold it back and focus on what was ahead of him.

"Screw it," he muttered under his breath.

He conjured up his stats before him.

Stats—

Strength: 3

Agility: 7

Endurance: 5

Vitality: 7

Aura: 1

Lunar Points: 13

He hurriedly put four points into his strength and three more into his agility. This left him with six more points to use, which he put three into his vitality and the other three into his endurance. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

He looked at his stats with a dark grin. "Let’s see who beats who this time."

Stats—

Strength: 7

Agility: 10

Endurance: 8

Vitality: 10

Aura: 1

Lunar Points: 0

It was a rare moment when he got heated up. He doubted that this would be enough to beat the powerhouse, but if he could land one blow on her, maybe just maybe she would let him go home.

Leo rose to his feet with a reluctant grunt. He could feel his healing working much faster now that his vitality had reached ten. As he had suspected, he could feel his stat increases better when they jumped by five.

He started to walk closer toward Cassandra until he was only a few feet from her. They locked eyes for a few seconds.

"Again!" Since Leo had chosen to give the order this time, he would be able to time when she attacked.

And just like before, her lightning quick blow brushed his face. Her eyes widened as she watched him jump back and barely avoid her strike.

This time Leo had gone all out, relying on both his stats and his wolf like abilities. It awakened an instinct he did not know he had until then.

He surprised her even more by switching roles and attacking her. He threw a strong blow toward her face, which she redirected with her palms as if it were nothing more than a harmless pebble. He increased the rate of his attacks, his reflexes and joints groaning with each passing second.

If it had been his initial practice, he would have reached exhaustion by now, but his endurance was slightly higher. He threw a kick and immediately regretted it as she leapt above him and delivered a drop kick to his head.

He felt like his skull exploded off his neck, causing him to stagger backward and reach for his head to check if it was still attached. Hot sweat poured down his body and he struggled to breathe, yet Cassandra looked completely unaffected by his attacks.

Leo’s eyes flashed bright purple for a second as he lunged forward. His fangs started to grow and his claws extended outward. His body reacted and moved much faster than ever before, but it only lasted a moment before he suppressed it and received a strong blow to the face.

This time he was sure something had broken inside him. A loud ringing filled his ears as he dropped to the ground with a heavy thump. He tried to catch his breath when an ID card fell before him.

She turned and started walking toward the dressing room. "You are free to go."

Leo wished he were in optimal condition to make a snarky remark, but he was not. He did, however, manage to drag himself back to the dressing room by some miracle. When he hit the showers, the events of the day caught up to him, and he realised that he had broken many bones.

Whether his abilities allowed him to self heal or not, it did nothing but make him groan in endless pain. He knew it would take a long time to recover from this.

It infuriated him that he was not able to land a single hit on her, but what did he expect when facing a prodigy? That did not stop him from feeling cheated. He had grown up beside her for a time, so why did she end up becoming the prodigy and not him?

He could not help but think of what would have happened to him if that bite had never happened.

"Life really is unfair, but that’s its own fairness I guess," he said with a loud groan as he changed back into his clothes. "If everyone was born equal, I doubt it would be any fun getting stronger."

He walked out of the room expecting to find Cassandra waiting in the gymnasium, but she was nowhere to be seen.

"I guess I better go then." He hated the feeling of being used and discarded like an obsolete object meant only for someone else’s satisfaction.

Why had she sparred with him despite already knowing the outcome? All she had done was turn his body into an experiment for a chiropractor and force him to use up all his points without consideration.

As he left the gymnasium and headed straight for the gateway, Cassandra was still in the bath. Warm water sizzled off her naked back as he stood there for several seconds, frozen in place. After a moment, she shrieked and smashed her head into the glass mirror before her, causing it to shatter into hundreds of fragmented pieces.

Red blood streaked down her face. Her eyes opened, but instead of being emerald green, they were empty and pure white. She opened her mouth and said, "It happened again."