Fleeting time.

England, United Kingdom.

The Curran family had been keeping a close eye on the mission that the Grey family had taken up. Ronald was about to send Kane and her sister to accomplish this mission, just as the Grey family had informed the collective that it had now become executable. This would have helped Kane regain his confidence and he would have finally had a chance to get to know more of his adopted elder sister.

They did expect that the information could have been released because they had been planning something that concerns their family, and there was also speculation that this mission had been opened up for Alex to complete.

And that had been the case. Alex had undertaken this mission and had completed it. Ronald was left grinding his teeth due to dissatisfaction, and Kane was once again reminded that his brother was still far ahead of him. The sister had been added to the family from one of the branch families to compensate for the loss of Alex, back when he was sent away.

Ever since Alex had started showing his capability, this very girl had been attracting a lot of hatred from Ronald, because she always reminded him of the mistake that he made by allowing Alex to slip away from his hands. For the first three years, she had been the center of attention in the family, Ronald even tipping her to be as good as Sylvia in the future, but now she had not even seen the face of her so-called father for a long time.

And she wasn't like Kane. She didn't have guilt holding her back from aiming all of her hatred towards Alex. She had been excited about taking up a new mission and working hard with her adopted brother to show off their potential, but just like that, the outcast had outplayed all of them.

Today, she was in her room, with a red mark on her face. The imprint of a very large hand could be seen, and she had done nothing to deserve a punishment like this. She never liked Sylvia because she had been nothing but negligent towards her, but today she had been punished by the person that she respected the most.

It was Ronald. He had started to realize that no one in his family was capable enough to stand in front of Alex. His two elder sons could only work well as a team, and the 2 younger kids had been nothing but failures. The shame of losing such a capable young child had led to public scrutiny from many sides, and the Curran family was rapidly losing momentum because of the antics that Sylvia was putting up behind the scenes. Despite being the leader of this family, he was helpless in front of his own wife. The tensions were so high, that they hadn't even seen each other ever since Alex had been shipped off to the Grey Family.

The Zhao family had openly declared in many major circles that Currans had finally fallen off from their spot, and he was responsible for this mess. It was only a matter of time till these rumors became reality. The pressure was building up, and everyone in the family could feel the effects of this pressure on the family leader.

Kane was slowly losing confidence in himself. The Prodigy of the branch family was nothing but a simpleton. He had been pushed into the corner because of the hypocritical family members that considered themselves to be the 'elders' of the family. They were ready to pass on all the blame for the current predicament on him. Gave away a prodigy, couldn't control his wife, the family reputation had been tarnished in the collective due to his action, all of this was brought up in the last family meeting.

And then, this adopted girl had the gall to come into his quarters and demand him to allow her to kill Alex, which was worse than a joke. She was dumb enough to even think of killing a disciple of one of the heads of the main family, so she deserved that slap on her face.

In the corner of her room, she was sitting and scribbling something on her book. On taking a closer look, you would notice she wasn't scribbling inside the book. She was stabbing it with her pencil. On the front page, the name 'Alex' had been written in a large font.

"No one else will kill you, Alex. Your death has been written in my destiny."

Megan Curran was embroiling herself in the feeling of vengeance.

----------------------------------------------

Another month had passed. Only one week was left for the system to finish its update, and Alex had been religiously grinding himself in Mansion.

The mission had confirmed a few doubts that Alex had, and he was now learning everything he could in a hurry. Advanced Programming languages like Python and C++ were being studied by him simultaneously, and even Clara had been left shocked by the rate of improvement, let alone Steven. He had been taking one or more books every day inside of the system space to read while training his body.

Utilizing every second of his time, he was making progress at a rate that was even faster than before. He had also started to take tests from the institute with the help of Clara and had become a legend for the second time in the institute, this time because he was the fastest and the youngest person to complete an advanced course, which was the programming language of Python. But he continued to remain an untouchable personality on the campus, which led to the formation of a fan club solely based on admiring his mysteriousness.

In terms of his battle instincts, he was finally able to dodge. His reflexes had been tempered by his continuous training with Lucius, who had been less apprehensive after the mission because his father had beaten some sense into him.

Clara was still pretending to be a loving mother to Alex while using Steven and Claudia to get closer to him. They had been interacting with each other regularly, but it was only for training purposes.

Jane had secluded herself from everyone ever since she had been defeated by Alex. She wasn't angry or sad, she was enthusiastic about training herself even more, due to which she had decided to focus on herself for the time being.

During this one month, Sylvia had visited Alex once. She came to congratulate him, but Alex pretended to be angry with her to continue fooling Clara. Sylvia took the hint without any problems, and they played a perfect act to make a complete fool out of Clara and Lucius.

He was currently meditating in his room. His mastery had also reached previously unexplored regions when it came to this technique, and he was able to completely suppress all his over the top emotions, which led to a calm personality that stopped feeling emotional fluctuations caused due to unforeseen circumstances. He hadn't felt annoyed for 3 weeks straight, which had been a significant bonus of this technique.

When he finished his meditation, he decided to go to the training field. Today, there was going to be another sparring session with Lucius. This time, they were going to fight with each other using weapons, and Alex had been looking forward to this.

When he reached the familiar training field, Lucius was standing there, sharpening one of his knives. He preferred to use knives as his main weapons, except when he had to kill someone from long range.

When he saw Alex, he threw one of the knives in his hand towards Alex. He caught the knife without any problems, but then saw that this knife was completely blunt.

"Just like I always tell you, your temperament when you attack is excellent. It's not perfect, but it is way above average. I also think that your weapon skills while attacking might not be too shabby, because after training with you for almost 2 months, I can tell that you have the instincts for attacking with a melee weapon. I am not so confident about your skills while defending yourself with a weapon, against a weapon. Fistfights seldom happen in fights to the death, so now that you know how to dodge, the next step would be to learn how to defend using a weapon."

"You can only use that Blunt knife to defend yourself against my knife, which is really sharp. Every time you fail to block my attack, you will receive one cut. Don't worry, the cuts aren't going to be deep, but for every 10 cuts you receive, you need to take a full-powered punch from me without defending yourself."

Ok, now this was a terrifying punishment. Alex had experienced his strength beforehand, so he was genuinely scared by the fact that he had to receive one of his punches on his body. He did heal faster than normal people, but that didn't mean that he was completely immune to pain.

"Scared?"

Alex took a stance with the knife in his right hand. He couldn't waver in front of the enemy.

"Good Boy."

Lucius attacked him with his own knife and went straight for his neck. Alex, who was a master with knives in his last life, had already predicted the trajectory of his knife and defended himself without any problems. He had a Knife-wielding skill, so this was not that hard. He repelled his attack and got back in his position.

Lucius looked at him with a grin on his face.

"So you can defend yourself using a knife. Very good."

Lucius attacked him again, this time not halting with one attack. As soon as Alex defended himself once, he immediately used his knife to attack him again. Alex didn't have any problems blocking the second attack as well.

Lucius took a deep breath.

'Let's see how many attacks can you defend in succession.'

He attacked again, this time not intending to stop until he left a cut on his opponent.

One, two three, four, five, six... and so on. Alex was not giving him any chance to leave a cut.

His defense was almost impenetrable. Lucius couldn't use too much of his power, because that could lead to a serious injury, but this exchange was leading them nowhere. He underestimated the 3 years that Alex had spent increasing his stamina and reflexes, which made his ability to block near perfect.

Not able to find any loopholes, Lucius stopped his attack. He was panting, but Alex was completely fine. There wasn't even sweat on his face, and he had successfully blocked 39 of his attacks without making a single mistake.

"There is no use in training your knife skills. You have already made me feel threatened without even attacking me once. We will skip directly to my favorite part, sniper rifles."

While mentioning Sniper rifles, the look on his face was like a toddler that had just been told that he was going to a candy shop. Seeing that look on his face, Alex couldn't help but chuckle.