Chapter 33: I Have To Do It For Those Two
’I’ve got an awakened Blood worm too, you bitch!’ Kyle screamed, his voice cracking under the weight of his own humiliation.
The venom in his tone struck Hannah like a physical blow.
The sudden, terrifying mention of an awakened worm shattered her fragile confidence instantly. Panic flaring in her chest, she scrambled backward, taking seven to eight rapid steps to put as much distance between herself and the enraged boy as possible.
Her breath hitched, her eyes wide as she waited for some monstrous, reality-breaking entity to emerge from his aperture.
Kyle didn’t need a worm to be dangerous; he just needed to stop being lazy. His Qi had filled the aperture sixty three percent.
By all rights of talent and resources, Kyle shouldn’t have been a middle-stage fledgling.
He easily could have been a peak-stage fledgling, standing on equal footing with Hannah.
His lineage was elite.
Both his father and mother were high-ranking core disciples within the sect, possessing enough wealth, Blood Worms, and political sway to drown him in cultivation resources.
The problem wasn’t his potential; it was his sheer laziness.
Kyle hated the grind.
He hated the sweating, the breathing exercises, and the endless hours of meditation.
His body simply refused to cooperate with the strict discipline of the path, preferring luxury over labor.
But that lazy exterior hid a terrifying foundation.
Beneath his loose robes lay a dense, heavily conditioned muscular physique, the product of elite genetic inheritance and expensive bone-tempering serums his parents had forced upon him.
Seeing Hannah retreat in absolute terror, Kyle burst into a mocking, arrogant laugh.
He sprinted toward her, the sand exploding beneath his heavy boots.
’How do you like the bluff, idiot?!’ he roared, his eyes flashing with malicious glee.
He hadn’t awakened a new worm at all; he had completely played on her fears to break her guard.
Before Hannah could even process the trick, Kyle closed the gap.
He drove his fist forward, unleashing a punch that was fast and packed with every single ounce of his raw, muscular strength.
Hannah raised her forearms in a desperate, panicked block, but the sheer force of his fist was monstrous.
The impact cracked against her guard, the heavy shockwave rattling the bones in her arms and throwing her completely off balance.
Without giving her a microsecond to recover, Kyle pivoted on his heel.
Shifting his massive weight, he launched a brutal, whiplash kick aimed straight at her unprotected midsection.
His heavy boot connected flush with her abdomen.
The air rushed out of Hannah’s lungs in a violent gasp.
The immense force of the kick lifted her off her feet, throwing her backward across the arena.
She skidded violently through the dirt, tumbling through the sand for several feet before finally grinding to a halt, coughing and clutching her stomach in agony.
Up in the stands, the crowd roared at the sudden, violent shift in momentum.
Evan’s eyes narrowed to slits, his face darkening, while Santiago’s hands gripped the stone railing tightly.
Down in the dust, Hannah struggled to sit up.
A profound, overwhelming sadness washed over her, accompanied by a sharp, painful ache in her chest.
Her heart felt completely shattered.
She had tried to be kind.
She had held back her strength and power, deliberately striking with half-strength because she didn’t want to brutally injure a fellow student.
And in return, he had mocked her, lied to her, and struck her with absolute malice.
The harsh, cruel reality of the cultivator world finally broke through her innocence.
’I didn’t want to do this,’ Hannah thought, tears of frustration and pain stinging the corners of her eyes as she forced herself to look up at Kyle’s smug face.
’I wanted to win without being ruthless. But I have to win. I have to do it for those two.’
Images of Evan and Santiago, the two people who had stood by her, protected her, and given her the motivation to step into this ring, flashed through her mind.
She couldn’t let them down.
She couldn’t let their belief in her be dragged through the dirt by a lazy tyrant.
Wiping the blood from her lip, Hannah gritted her teeth and locked her gaze onto her aperture.
Deep within her soul, the stagnant, peaceful sea of her peak-stage fledgling Qi suddenly began to boil.
A violent tremor rippled through her core.
The walls of her aperture began to shake uncontrollably, as she willed to activate her Awakened Blood Worm.
