Chapter 5: Father's POV
[Arthur Knight's POV]
"Are these the reports?"
"Yes Mr. Chairman. This is the cumulative report of all the businesses we own."
Looking at the report in my hands, I couldn't help but smile a little. Our profits have increased by a total of 40% in the last year and are expected to increase further in the coming years.
"Also what about the new recruits?"
"They are currently being trained by Ms. Sarah"
"I see. Good work Alex, you can go now. Tell Sarah to meet me in my office after she is done training them."
"Yes Sir!"
'Things are finally getting back on track. We can finally make a comeback, just a few more years and we can reclaim our position.' I thought as I looked at the photo frame on my desk encasing a picture of me with my parents and grandparents.
Had it not been for that fight against FRAME, we could have still been one of the top groups in the world.
Every time I hear their name or even just think about them, my blood starts to boil.
Back when I was a kid, The Light cavalry group was ranked at exactly 18th in the overall global rankings. However, one day in just one day everything changed.
Frame executed one of their usual attacks but this time, the targets were us.
Both of my grandparents were extremely powerful awakeners who made it to the global rankings. They were one of the strongest among the top 50 awakeners ranked at 23rd and 30th positions.
Back then my father was still only among the top 100 category. To face their sudden attack, only my grandparents could try to put up a fight. However, they undoubtedly lost. Having to face one of the top 10 awakeners in the world, they didn't even stood a chance.
But they bought enough time for every other member of our group to escape safely.
I truly had lost too much that day. My grandparents, my mother and my elder sister as well.
Leaving only me and my father behind. To be honest, I had also lost my father that day.
From that day he was a changed man, he had just stopped smiling as if he never knew how to. I knew he was just grieving but he became too cold.
To make things worse, the other weaker groups started targeting us. Our enemies who once bowed down their heads in our presence, stood up to us. Businesses were lost, our reputation, fame everything.
Dad had it the worst, Faced with this new threats and having the new responsibilities of being the chairman of the group falling on his shoulders, he didn't even had the time to mourn.
He had to face humiliation from those weaker groups as he could not win against them, not alone. He had no one to rely on. Nobody had his back. Basically he had hit rock-bottom.
After stabilising our situation a little, he started training me. He was harsh. I used to train over 12 hours a day at his command because he wanted me to progress as much as I could in as little time as possible.
One thing we were fortunate about was the loyalty of our members as they didn't for once thought about abandoning our group and they are still with us even today. Still loyal to a fault.
....Father tried to do everything he could, but as he got old he had to focus on his health as well. Of course, we awakened ones have a higher lifespan than normal people but to remain strong even while growing old, we have to do a lot of training just to maintain our strength.
Not being able to lead the people the same way, the position of the chairman fell to my hands. However, that only served as a proof to our weakness to have a 21 year old chairman. And it was true, I was at 112th position at that time and was already nearing my full potential.
In the initial years I had done nothing but make our group a laughing stock in front of the world. But luckily, I was a good leader. That is the only thing I can be proud of about myself.
Under my leadership, I first made sure to get rid of the most immediate threat. Money!!
We need money and resources to train our awakeners. We need money and resources to have some authority in the world. Money and resources are literally the backbone of any organisation. And that was and is something I know how to get.
After stabilising our group and gaining back some respect that we had lost over the years, I was able to prove my worth.
Shortly after that, my father had arranged a marriage for me with one of the representatives of the biggest group in Korea.
It was a diplomatic marriage which neither of us wanted but were forced to as that would allow us to make an international connection that could be used in time of need. The Light Cavalry and The Shinhwa group got close however the same was not true for my wife and I.
We grew apart for years but gave in to the pressure from both of the families and had children together.
I loved both of our children with all of my heart. But.....I could not love her and after a few years, I cheated on her.
It was drunken carelessness that I could not be more ashamed about. Even more so, I can't forgive myself for letting my son be the one to see 'that'. I still remember the way he looked at me afterwards as if I was the shittiest person in the world.
Of course later, Jin Ah found out about it. I apologised to her for doing that and promised to never do that again. Only to hear a confession from her side as well.
She too cheated on me.
We stopped pretending to be husband and wife and started talking about our feelings, our true feelings. And we had both come to one realisation.
We had more in common than being a cheater. We both also loved our children very much. So to try and give them a normal childhood, we decided to give our marriage a shot.
I made the fact that she cheated on me a secret that I would take to my grave. My children deserve to have at least one parent who they don't see as 'the shittiest person in the world.'
Speaking of my children, both of them are my pride, they are absolutely geniuses that we have been blessed with.
When they were only 11, they were talented and strong enough to fight and defeat even a few adult awakeners from our group.
At first, we believed Charlotte was a bit more talented than Owen.
The reason for us to believe that was the fact that it took Owen way longer to learn our force control. And even after that, his physical strengthening which is the ability that runs in the family was weaker than her.
He still won a few fights against her but that was because of his unnatural battle IQ that came as a surprise for everyone.
Not to mention the fact that he would focus on efficiently taking care of his opponents. He would use tricks, strategies and would analyse his opponents and would use unorthodox ways to win his matches.
But in terms of the amount of energy and ability, Charlotte surpassed him by a good margin. She also won most of their matches.
However, one day, all of that changed when he showcased his new skill in front of everybody. He called it "Flash Step" [Soru]. A technique so powerful and useful that it could act as a deterrent in a fight.
From that day on, he kept winning against Charlotte. We kept flash step as a secret that only the people who witnessed the fight and the high officials of the group will know about and will learn.
Creating a completely new and powerful skill such as that at only 12 years of age was simply mind-blowing but he went on to shattering our expectations even further as he introduced his 2 new skill which were "Body Hardening" (Tekkai) and "Sky Walk" (Geppo).
He created new skills to make up for his lack of strength.
One has to know that a technique that can be used by everyone regardless of their ability is incredibly rare. Yet, he came up with 3 of them at a tender age of 12.
After that happened, both Charlotte's and Owen's trainings were intensified and were now under father's hands. Whereas in the group, all of the high officials and the rookies were taught the sky walk and body hardening.
We still decided to keep Soru a secret from the rookies tho.
Both of them were making progress in their training Owen however was still slow. I had first thought that maybe we were teaching him wrong and that he hadn't inherited our family's ability but Jin Ah's family's ability but that wasn't true either.
This lead us all to believe that though he will become powerful in the future, he would not be able to go past the limit of top 200. Which is why we decided to train Charlotte to be the next head of the family and the group and had planned for Owen to be one of the officials of the group or just her right hand man.
This too however changed two years later during his first official spar.
The spar was supposed to be over when one side had sustained enough damage to be considered as serious. However, he refused to give up. He kept standing back up over and over again only to be sent down to the ground more bloodied than before.
I wanted to stop the fight but was forced to stop at my father's orders as he said he noticed something strange with Owen.
And as he said, just a few moments later, Owen's arm suddenly transformed. Our family, unlike the Gesimov and Pikaroon family does not use transformation.
We do not undergo transformations that increases our powers. Instead we focus on pure physical augmentation of our bodies requiring delicate control over energy.
His transformation was only limited to his arms which was of course very different from our families abilities. But it was extremely strong.
With just one move after awakening his actual ability for the first time during an official spar, he ended the match in his victory. Leaving everyone baffled at the result. The losing group was simply speechless as they had never in a million years would have imagined such outcome.
Ever since that day, Owen's rate of growth has been simply jaw dropping. In just a few years after that, he had now become so strong that people his age could not even hope to defeat him.
Now, he is going to the WAA where he would increase our name even further.
I looked at the list of the current top 10 rookies of the WAA and I could not imagine him losing to but one person. Rachel, the current student council president over there. She too is a talent that is simply out of this world.
*Knock* *Knock*
"Sir, Mr. Owen is here to see you."
I was brought out of my thoughts with Alex's interruption.
"Send him in."
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