[Guardian candidate, your time has yet to come!]
A mysterious voice whispers into Ross's brain until he suddenly returns from dead, starling Piyusha and Bob. He was yelling when he suddenly came back to life.
After Piyusha saw her student return to life, she hugged him, cried instantly, and said, "..."
Ross didn't know what she was saying when his head was dizzy and hurting badly that her talking felt like babble to him. It was so hard for him to think. He was in a dream-like state, and his sensei's hugging felt nothing. He could barely see his surroundings; a giant fog covered most of the room he was in, and that's what he saw.
The faces he saw weren't the faces of Piyusha and Bob but something horrifying. Their faces to Ross were super deformed and had glowing red eyes staring deeply at James' horrified look.
The door swings open automatically. Darkness covered another side of the room, with fog not entering the other side. Red glowing eyes slowly appeared in the dark, each getting closer to Ross. Making James sacred, he tried to stop them from getting closer to him. But nothing was working.
They almost touched James's skin, but a man with a plague doctor mask appeared out of nowhere and blocked most glowing red eyes from getting close to Ross. This man was the same man James saw in a nightmare when he was arriving at the Dragon's Den with Hein Eduard and others.
"James Ross, you need to stop the Great Darkness for greater-"
Before the plague doctor could finish his sentence, they escaped from the plague mask and entered James Ross.
An evil laugh echoed in Ross's head, and he woke up suddenly in a bed, startling his teacher and her robot servant, and he screamed. When she saw him alive, she hugged him, cried, and said,
"I am happy you came back to life, James! I didn't know what to do if you were dead by my hands."
'I feel I see this happened before?' Then he asks his sensei why she is crying.
Before she could answer him, Bob said, "You didn't hear what she said, you stupid monkey!"
He asked her, and she couldn't answer when she could barely speak from tearing up eyes, so Bob answered him instead, insulting.
Ross stands up to punch Bob in the face when he hears him calling 'monkey' to him, and he yells, "What you did you just call me, you trashcan?!"
"You heard me, n-?!" Before Bob could complete the word, he got smacked in the face with a metal arm.
"It hurts, doesn't it, you racist robot?!"
Bob couldn't imagine how painful the punch was from the steel arm because he had never been so hurt by any human, with or without a metallic component. James was the first one to give him pain!
"Sensei, don't cry. I'm not dead anymore, and can you please change Bob's programming?"
"James, please don't call sensei or teacher; just call me by my name, and I didn't program Bob to say that. He learned that from his black friends. He's not being racist. He thinks it is a nice greeting to say." Tears were still dropping down her eyelid, but not as much as before.
"I do not know. Bob did call me monkey after I asked you, why are you crying, sensei?"
Bob stood up and said, "You humans are too sensitive around words!" Ross stared at Bob menacingly after he said that but didn't do anything about it.
'If you don't know the history of that word, then shut!'
"Bob, please shut up! God, what happened to you? You saved Ross, and now you are racist toward us." When she said that, Bob stopped talking and followed Piyusha and James to another room with the VR.
They entered the simulation world. This time, the world was slightly different; half of the ground was split open. Piyusha wiped her tears away with a digital napkin and said, "This time, I will be careful and make it slower."
"You couldn't catch the ball at the speed of light. How about the speed of sound?"
After saying that, she threw the baseball at Ross at sound speed. She didn't throw it where exactly Ross was because she didn't want him to die again if he failed to capture the ball again. The ball broke the sound barrier after getting thrown.
It was so fast that Ross couldn't process the ball past him, hitting a three far from him, breaking it into pieces.
"Piyusha sensei, please stop throwing balls at me and do something different?"
"I will do what you ask, but first, you must drop your formality and address me as Piyusha without any extra words."
"Sensei, can we do something different to help me train?"
"Ugh. No, I'm going to test you on your reaction time."
"I have a great?!"
Piyusha hit Ross without moving a single step, making Ross fly. The nanobots did activate, but she was faster with her attack.
"Your armor reacts faster before you, James. You can't always rely on your arm to save you. What if someone is faster than your armor to form and kills you like the ball at the speed of light? You need a quicker reaction to these things so you won't happen the last time they happen; this is why I'm helping you improve your Observation of Sight."
She teaches improvement on Ross's Observation of Sight in two weeks. "James, let's see how you improved your reaction speed." She threw the baseball at the speed of sound again, but this time, Ross caught it. It was not a perfect catch, but he did it.
Piyusha saw and said, "You need more improvements with Observation of Sight, but for now, move on to something else.
"What should I focus on to improve on, Piyusha?" When she heard Ross say her name without the sensei part, she became happy and said, "I'm so glad you said my name without being formal. Let's fight!"
***
After doing hand signs, she summoned a ghost of a grim reaper behind her and said, "Let's see how you can handle a real fight with your new and improved Observation of Sight."
Then she pointed her finger at Ross, making the grim reaper go toward James. It was so fast that it was already in front of Ross after getting summoned a minute ago, and it swung its scythe at Ross after appearing in front of him.
Ross ducks under the scythe when he feels it is coming towards him without the help of his arm. The weapon was fast enough to break the sound wave, so it was impressive for Ross to sense and dodge it.
Ross tried to punch the ghost in the fast when he was under, but when he did that, his punch fazed through. Before he could react, another attack came in the form of missiles.
"Wait, wait, wait, this is cheating, Piyusha. Why is Bob helping you?" Before he heard an answer from her, the grim reaper used the scythe on Ross. The nanobots protected him from the attack.
'Hmmm, his Observation of Sight can only focus on one opponent rather than two.'
"You should focus on yourself without questioning everyone!" Bob said while firing more missiles at Ross. The grim reaper wasn't letting James catch a break.
'Fuck, why is the only thing I can do is dodge?'
Ross found a weakness in nanotechnology: when he fights one person at a time, the nanobots activate faster for one person, but two people oppose him simultaneously, and he gets wounded. But you say he did fight two people, twin brothers, in the past at the Blood hospital, and why it was fine protecting him from them without being slow, but why now?
This weakness happened because model XI0's nanobots weakened from Ross using lots of Flow in his past battles in the underground and at Dragon's Den.
So, he needs to get back to the same strength before the fighting in those places or improve it to beat Bob and his teacher. If he doesn't, then he loses. Now, nanobots can only block attacks from one opponent. More than that than Ross toast! That's the greatest weakness of his arm.
'Fuck, blood!'
When the nanobots block Bob's missiles, the ghost gives James a tiny cut on Ross's finger when he pays attention to the robot.
"James, I thought you improved your Observation of Sight. Why on Armora are the nanobots protecting you still without you doing anything."
"I guess I must use my revolver and the brass knuckles to win this if you don't want me to use Model XI0." After saying that, he pulled his revolver and fired at Bob.
He felt the grim reaper's weapon swinging next to him after firing at Bob, so he dodged it before the scythe touched him. And then he avoided all the missiles the robot fired at him after he pulled the trigger on his revolver.
When his sensei saw this, she called back the ghost and said, "James, you did it. You sensed our attacks coming at the same time. Now, let's move to something else."
Six months passed, and Ross trained with Piysua. Now, he's ready to fight on D-day. "James, tomorrow is the day of the tournament. Get rest for the big day."
Tomorrow, 7:42 am on December 5th, the D-day of the Rankes Tournament A starts. Today, for better or worse, the Empire of Man would change forever.
To be continued.