One Last System

"She's still eating here."

A hushed voice reached Mia's ears as she continued to munch on her dinner in the main dining hall.

Ever since her first full day at the sect when she visited this place for the first time, she refused to take her meals at the sponsored area. Instead, she kept coming to the main dining hall, eating the same food that all the other non-sponsored disciples of the sect were privy to.

'Being talked about is better than being outright hated,' Mia thought, raising the spoon filled with a thick soup to her mouth.

It was already her eleventh day eating in this place. What was a novelty when she first did it now became nothing more but a curiosity for the few disciples that bothered to pay her any mind.

After all, the greatest of the current accusations against her was that she was coming here... either to flex on the normal disciples or to get their attention in the first place!

Mia turned her head to the side when she noticed that someone had stopped by and stood right beside her.

'So they finally found the courage to approach me,' Mia thought, stopping a small smile from forming on her lips.

"How may I help you?" Mia asked, turning her head to the girl, keeping her expression as passive as she could.

"What are you doing here?" a girl, roughly the same age as Mia, asked. Her expression was uneasy as if someone put her to the task of talking with Mia.

'Did she lose a bet or something?' Mia thought, the left corner of her lips rising a little.

"I'm eating, can't you see?" Mia replied cheekily.

'I waited for this moment for over a week,' she thought. 'I can't scare her off.'

"I don't think you understood my question," the girl said, her anxiety growing even larger. "Why are you eating... here?" she specified her question.

'Yes!' Mia rejoiced. This was the perfect opportunity to start getting to know those people. 'After what they showed me back at the sponsored area... I don't think it will be too bad to get to know some normal disciples,' was what Mia had planned over a long time already.

But if she wanted for her plan to succeed, she couldn't be the one to approach them first.

Mia looked down at her bowl and then at her spoon. Then, she took an expression of fright.

"Don't tell me..." she muttered, her eyes opening wide. "There is something wrong with the meals here?" she asked, turning her wide-opened eyes at the girl.

"Huh?" Mia's current companion gasped, taken aback by Mia's response. "Why would there be something..." she attempted to explain, only to shake her head. "No, that's not it," she said, gathering her courage.

The girl took a deep breath. "There are people who think that you came here to flex on us," she said. "They think that you being here... is a provocation," she added.

'That's given,' Mia sighed deeply. "Why would I do that, though?" she asked out loud, leaning her head to the side. Curiosity flashed in her eyes. "I'm just as part of the Tuxi sect as you guys are. I don't really see how eating in the Tuxi dining hall could be a provocation towards Tuxi disciples," Mia said, stressing out the name of their sect every time she brought it up.

A murmur ran through the crowds at the hall. Even though only a single girl dared to approach Mia, everyone else was pricking their ears to listen in on their conversation.

'Well, that should be enough for today,' Mia thought, putting her spoon down.

"By the way, I'm Mia. And you are...?" she asked the girl.

"Huh?" the girl shrugged in shock once again. "I'm Veila..." she muttered, a hint of fear appearing in her eyes.

'So this is how bad the divide between normal and sponsored disciples is,' Mia thought, stopping herself from another sigh. Instead, she put a wide smile on her face and stood up, reaching out with her hand.

"It's nice to meet you, Veila," Mia said, sneaking her hand into the girl's fingers and gently shaking her hand.

'That should give them enough to think about for a while,' she thought, retracting her hand.

"Anyway, now that I'm done with my meal, I need to go back to training," Mia said, sending yet another smile at her newly made friend. "See you tomorrow!" she said, turning around and gracefully leaving the hall.

'It's been over a week already... and I'm still yet to break through,' she thought, walking back towards the sponsored compound. Then, she shook her head. 'Well, at least the normal disciples don't seem to hate me anymore. It's always something,' Mia thought cheerfully, returning behind the safety of the compound walls.

"Look who's back!" Kathia was the first one to notice Mia's return. Yet, even though her shout was filled with joy, she didn't leave her place.

In the end, even if they were initially slacking off a little with their training, now that they got into it, they wouldn't stop their course just to welcome one of their own.

Mia stared down at the training field she was approaching.

'Compared to how it was on the first day, this seems far more interesting,' she thought, watching how most of the sponsored disciples of both her batch and the others were hard on training. 'I wonder how much of this dedication was forced by me,' she thought with amusement before taking place at one of the training pillars.

The second she entered the spot, the concentrated spiritual energy rushed into her body, prompting her to start blasting her punches against the pillar.

And the second she did, Mia could finally feel some changes happening to her inner state.

Mia managed to get her core established on the second day in the sect. Yet, ever since then, all her efforts at manifesting her Qi proved to be futile.

All her efforts, until the current moment, that is.

As if her core couldn't hold even a single drop of spiritual energy more, it overflowed, filling her torso, limbs, and head with untapped power.

Yet, instead of taking a moment to let the newly discovered power stabilize on its own, Mia continued to punch the training pillar, using her punching routine to force her newfound power into order.

And for the first time in her life, the pillar could no longer just ignore her punches. Although it was only a little, Mia's punches finally started leaving marks over the massive stone slab.

"I did it..." Mia muttered after a while, once her flow stabilized. She relaxed her stance and looked down at her hands. "I did it," she repeated herself, feeling the elation filling her words. 'Now I'm one step closer towards being of use for him!' she celebrated in her thoughts.

"Are you okay?" Kathia asked, noticing the change in Mia's behavior.

Usually, she would just keep on smashing the stone with her fists for the entire duration of her training. Seeing her take a break in the middle of it was unusual enough to attract Kathia's attention.

"Yeah, thanks for worrying," Mia smiled to her friend only to shake her head, getting rid of all the joy that her breakthrough caused. 'I can't take it easy,' she lectured herself. 'I don't even know how strong Arthur is right now, so I have to keep going!' she decided.

With her dedication returning, Mia stood in her fighting stance once again before starting to hit the stone as usual.

There was no point in sharing her breakthrough with the rest of the group. Not when she was unsure how they would treat her once they would realize her plans for the non-sponsored disciples.

"Did you hear that we are going to receive our sponsored resources soon?" Kathia didn't give up on her attempts at chatting Mia up. "We will finally be able to cultivate properly, instead of wasting our time training like the normal disciples outside," she added.

Her words were likely said in good faith, yet they put an even greater dent in Mia's faith towards her group.

"We will talk once we are done with the training," she cut her companion short, indicating that she wanted to focus on her training.

"That means we won't talk at all!" Kathia protested. After all, Mia was known for training longer than any other sponsored disciple of the sect, often extending her training sessions well into the night.

"Feel free to train as long as I will." Mia relaxed her stance just for the sake of telling this sentence to Kathia while looking directly into the girl's eyes. Then, as if nothing happened at all, she moved back into position and resumed her training.

"In three days, once we get the resources, she will understand," Dirk said, moving out of his training array. While he could train almost as hard as Mia did when he wanted, he often preferred to train hard for a short while only to get rest the second he was satisfied with his results.

"Understand what?" Kathia barked at the man, clearly unhappy with how her conversation with Mia went.

"Understand two things," Dirk said with a wide smile. "First, why training hard isn't something good for us, and second," he said, looking at Mia's back, "why associating ourselves with the normal disciples is a bad idea."