Awakening: Starting With The Villain System

Weeks have passed since my successful… well, I guess you'd call it a robbery.

I rolled the word around in my mind. It felt crude, too simple for what had happened.

It wasn't a smash-and-grab. It was a calculated, hard-fought acquisition.

Well, maybe not actually robbery, but claiming. Yes, let's call it claiming.

It sounded better. More dignified. Like I'd rightfully taken what was meant to be mine all along.

I claimed and escaped, all successfully.

The memory of it still sent a thrill through me, a mix of pride and disbelief.

Wasn't that a win-win situation?

They lost something they clearly couldn't protect, and I gained the power and resources to… well, to become me.

So, yes, I was happy with the outcome. More than happy. I was riding a high that hadn't quite faded.

Due to my happiness about the outcome, right after I finished I didn't go straight to the academy.

No, I had a more important mission first. I went straight to a restaurant.

And it wasn't a cheap restaurant, no. It was a quality one.

The kind of place with cloth napkins, a sommelier, and menus that didn't have prices listed.

The kind of place my old self used to enter on a regular basis.

I wasn't afraid of the price, I had the money to afford eating there after all.

The thought was a giddy, foreign thing in my head.

Well, actually, it was the money I claimed.

Those heavily money loaded bags that was on the truck.

After I left Aegis branch, the first thing I did hadn't been to actually go straight to a restaurant; it had been deposit all the money in my bank.

I didn't have to go to a bank to deposit.

All I had to do was active my card deposit system, and load all the money in it.

After that I checked my balance through my card, because I didn't calculate the money while I was depositing it.

The digits I saw on the screen took my breath out of my lungs.

It was one thing to heft the bags, to know abstractly they were full of cash.

It was another thing entirely to see that number, clean and official, right in my bank.

'$120,000,000.00'

I instantly fell in love with the money.

Not in a greedy way, but in a profound, deeply emotional way.

This was security. This was options. This was never having to choose between the cafeteria and restaurant again.

The moment I saw it, my trust issues rose to the max.

I began to even distrust my bank, and myself at that moment.

Was this real? Was it a trick? Would some government agency kick down my door and seize it all? Or a hacker break in my account?

I must have refreshed the page a dozen times, each time half-expecting the balance to read zero.

Not like it was a crazy big amount or anything.

To the old me, the me from the Nether's family, it would have been a significant but manageable sum.

A normal amount, not too big, neither small. A useful tool.

But to the current me, the me who'd been eating cafeteria food, buying things from cheap places just to save money, it was like seeing heaven.

It was a fortune. A life-changing, world-altering fortune.

I couldn't just let it sit there. Money that didn't work for you was just paper.

So, I became… responsible. The thought almost made me laugh.

I invested 20 million sharing it into different stocks I had some assurance of, tech firms with solid R&D, energy companies on the rise.

And I added a significant chunk to my existing investment in 'Dol.'

So, I had only 100 million left in my bank.

I wrote the sentence in my head, and the absurdity of it almost made me choke on my sparkling water.

Only a hundred million. I couldn't afford to invest all my money, because I had to keep some liquid, just in case of emergency or something important.

Like a sudden need to buy an important item. Or, most importantly, if the stocks drop.

I needed a war chest to buy the dip, to double down. A real villain always has a contingency fund.

Investing was fun, a quiet little game of numbers and predictions that made my new wealth feel real.

But that wasn't the only thing I was doing.

Most of my time, my real focus, had been on training.

On mastering my new ability and technique, and getting used to the strange new feeling of them being a part of me, like an extra limb I was still learning to control.

The technique, 'No—Pass,' was… well, it was quite overpowered.

Saying it felt like an understatement.

It allows me to block any attack coming in my direction with my sword. Any attack.

I'd spent days in the training grounds just testing it.

Blades, bullets, low-level energy blasts from the practice bots, they all just… stopped.

They'd pass this invisible, perfect cube around me and I would instantly be able to cancel it.

It was a defensive cheat code. More like a parry cheat. They're still both almost the same.

But it had some limitations I still find not bad, because they depend on me.

It wasn't some arbitrary rule; it was about my own strength.

So I just had to level up to be able to use it freely.

The main limitation was speed. First, if someone of a far higher level than me, with some crazy speed and attack speed is fighting me, I maybe overpowered.

The technique needs me to simple domain, and then use my high stats to move my weapon.

The domain sounded useless, but it actually wasn't.

The moment I activate the domain, all my stats were automatically increased.

My current stats are 30 now, and I've reached level 20.

The technique halfly relies on my stats, especially Perception and Dexterity.

And if my opponent is far faster than I am, it would be slightly impossible to defeat them.

I could become an immovable object, but if I couldn't touch the unstoppable force, it'd just be a stalemate or I lose.

But it wasn't like I would be easy either to defeat like that. I'd be a frustratingly hard nut to crack.

I knew about this because I tried it in the training ground, and fought a level 40 combat robot.

Well, the fight was hard, very hard. I spent most of it on the defensive, my world shrinking to the next micro-second, the next incoming strike.

My arms ached from deflecting, my mind was exhausted from the hyper-focus. But I still won.

I waited for an opening, for that split-second cooldown after its most powerful barrage, and my katana found its core.

The victory was less a triumph of strength and more a testament to sheer, stubborn endurance.