Chapter 10 – Steel and Sweat
The first time Steven woke up gasping from a nightmare, it wasn't some haunting vision of Earth. It was Vi's fist slamming into someone's jaw.
He didn't know who it was.
Maybe him.
Steven sat up in his bed, drenched in sweat. The dorm room was dark, lit only by the moonlight slipping through a cracked window. His hands trembled as he looked down at his arms thin, weak, a body shaped by study and invention, not survival.
He realized something cold and unsettling in that moment.
He wouldn't survive in this world if all he had was a brilliant mind.
He needed more.
...
...
The next morning, he dragged himself out of bed early. Before the workshop, before the lectures. He jogged the academy's outer courtyard, slow and shaky at first, chest burning after just a few minutes. His legs protested, but he didn't stop.
Every day after that, he ran.
He added push-ups. Then sit-ups. Then weight training with scrap parts he scavenged from the mechanical yard. Slowly, the soreness became familiar. Welcome, even.
Steven started cataloguing his new routine just like he did with his inventions.
Personal Upgrade Program
Morning Run – stamina building
Strength Training – focus on core and arms
Flexibility – still embarrassing
Basic Self-Defense – pending
He studied recorded lectures on self-defense. He watched old combat footage from academy duels. He even tried mimicking stances from a League exhibition match he found in the archives. It was awkward, clumsy but it was something.
And more than once, he stared at the recon visor and whispered, "Maybe one day this helps me survive, not just see."
His diet changed too. Less stimulants. More real food. Protein, vegetables, whatever he could afford on a meager academy stipend. He stopped living on tea and invention alone.
Some students noticed. The weird orphan kid was no longer just a sleep-deprived tinkerer hiding in the workshop. Now he ran laps. He trained. He moved like someone expecting a fight.
But Steven didn't care about the whispers.
He wasn't doing this to impress anyone.
He was doing it for the day when he might be cornered. When something or someone would come for him and Hextech alone wouldn't be enough.
One night, as he stared into the mirror, sore and bruised and drenched in sweat, he smiled faintly.
Still skinny. Still awkward.
But a little stronger.
A little more dangerous.
And maybe, just maybe, a little closer to being someone who could walk through this world on his own terms.