Solo Cultivating in Superhero Academy
Chapter 120: Keith

Chapter 120: Keith

Elsewhere...

Beyond the glimmering towers and disaster zones, far beneath the surface of Galvan City, lay a hidden facility—one reserved exclusively for F-ranked heroes who operated independently from Academy High.

A place few knew existed.

A place even fewer were allowed to enter.

Its entrance was camouflaged within a dilapidated subway station, guarded by motion-detecting drones, heat-sensing turrets, and seven-foot-tall armored guards in jet-black exo-suits.

Through the staleness of the underground station’s filtered air came a soft echo of footsteps—heels on tile.

A woman in her late twenties, wearing a tight-fitting blue leather coat and a cap with a F-rank registry badge, approached with calculated calm.

One of the guards stepped forward. His visor scanned her face and credentials.

"Name?" the guard asked flatly.

"Vera Layne. I’m here to deliver a decrypted code from Zone 5 regarding the rogue lightning strikes. They told me to bring it personally."

The guard’s helmet tilted, suspicious.

"Zone 5 doesn’t do personal drop-offs."

"They did today," she answered coolly. "Check your authorization logs."

He tapped into his data pad. A moment passed.

"...You check out. Step forward for inspection."

Her body was scanned three times. Metal detector. Bio-scanner. Heat reader.

All clear.

She was waved through, and as the massive iron doors opened inward with a grinding groan, she descended into the hidden world of subterranean superhero logistics.

Hundreds of operatives, engineers, scouts, and retired heroes bustled below under fluorescent lights. Consoles beeped. Dispatchers barked orders. Walls were lined with data screens showing superhero locations, cube resonance activity, and urban conflict zones.

The woman—"Vera"—walked with purpose, moving past labs and containment halls, always following the pipes colored red and green—the color of cube storage.

Then—suddenly—the cameras blinked.

A static pulse washed through the monitors above.

Just a flicker. Barely a second.

But in that moment...

Vera changed.

Her form shimmered and shifted, like the reflection of light on water.

She became a maintenance worker. Then a delivery boy. Then a cloaked intern. She was always someone else, blending into every crowd, moving silently. A phantom in a world of strict protocols.

Infiltration was an art.

And she was a master.

Room by room, she wormed her way deeper. Past checkpoints. Past biometric scanners. Sometimes she slipped a small illusion stone onto a wall to mask her heat signature. Other times, she mimicked a specific worker’s voice or key phrase.

Twenty-four minutes of shifting identities later—she reached the core.

A circular chamber reinforced with titanium-steel doors. In the center, suspended in an anti-gravity containment field, floated a black-glass cube, the size of a football.

It pulsed softly. Green-red-gold. Like a beating heart of unnatural origin.

Her eyes glinted.

The Cube of Resonance: Type-Q Delta.

Smiling to herself, she stepped forward. Pulled a device from her sleeve.

Click.

The anti-gravity field destabilized with a hum.

Click.

She inserted the cube into a long, narrow slot on her wristband.

Click.

Then the alarm flickered on—but only for a moment. She spun a charm around her finger, and the alert screen turned to a blank, snowy static. Anyone watching saw only a weather glitch.

And just like that—she vanished again.

But getting back was harder.

A patrol blocked her route. She changed again—this time, to a security captain.

An officer challenged her. She used a false biometric signature copied from a guard she’d passed earlier.

A camera nearly caught her shimmer—she overloaded the power grid just long enough to blind it.

More layers. More obstacles. At one point, she had to crawl inside a vent and mimic an engineer’s radio chatter to avoid suspicion.

Finally, she reached the outer zone. Took the form of "Vera Layne" again, with just enough fatigue and grime to pass inspection.

The guards stopped her.

One checked her ID again. "You were in there for a while."

"I had to wait for the senior analyst," she said with a tired sigh. "They gave me an updated code path. Took forever."

"Fair. Alright, you’re clear."

The gate opened.

And as she stepped into the darkness of the outer tunnel, the guards’ eyes glazed over.

Not suspiciously.

But as if lulled by something unseen.

A vehicle appeared from the shadows. Sleek. Silent. Matte black with hover-tires humming inches above the floor.

The woman opened the door, climbed in, and vanished with the vehicle down a back ramp.

Not far from the woman and the vehicle...

High above... unseen... a pair of five silver swords floated within cloud cover.

And standing upon the wind, cloaked by illusion, and with an ethereal post like a god looking at the mortal realm, Elius watched.

His eyes didn’t blink.

His voice was quiet.

"...Shania," he murmured. "The Illusion Master."

His swords pulsed once—alert.

He narrowed his gaze far away, and then, he would step on his sword and flew away from her.

And not long after, he vanished into the clouds.

...

In the shattered industrial district at the edge of Galvan City, where steel mills lay abandoned and nature clawed its way back through broken concrete, Keith stood alone.

A pale breeze swept through the twisted rebar and crushed machinery around him.

His shoulders were broad, posture unshakable, eyes focused like a predator—burning with cold fury and relentless purpose.

His breath was slow, rhythmic, a beast waiting in stillness. Not for calm. But for war.

Around him, a veritable platoon of F-ranked Superheroes had gathered.

Unlike the squad that had fallen so easily to Zhark, these were more prepared. More numerous.

Their numbers had ballooned to over a hundred, arranged in layered rings of defense, a sea of color-coded uniforms flashing different insignias and minor team brands.

They came from outer towns.

Underground shelters.

Independent watch stations not affiliated with Academy High.

Their job?

To contain F ranked villain’s and alert Academy.

To force villains to surrender.

To prevent whatever madness they believed the villain’s were about to unleash.

Dozens of voices rose around him, frantic yet firm, trying to reason with the unreasoned.

"You need to surrender, boy! This is unnecessary!"

"We’re not your enemies!"

"We just want to talk! You can still register as a hero if you calm down!"

"You’re resisting containment! We don’t want to hurt you, but—!"

But Keith didn’t flinch.

He simply raised his head, and his eyes—so dark, so full of vengeance, so filled with a quiet pain sharpened into hatred—glared at them.

And then he spoke.

"Hypocrites."

That one word rolled from his lips like thunder building beneath the horizon.

"You speak of justice. Of rules. Of peace."

His voice climbed, guttural with restrained rage.

"But when he destroyed my life... where were your rules then?"

He pointed a thick finger toward the sky, though his eyes looked far past it—into memory, into the depths of a twisted fate.

In his mind, he saw it again: the searing, burning golden figure of Radiant Man, standing tall above a smoking city, his cape fluttering like a god against a scorched backdrop, smiling down upon devastation.

And below him, Keith’s mother—bleeding, frozen, and eyes broken.

"I will get stronger," Keith growled, each syllable a vow.

"I will get strong enough to make the world kneel. Strong enough to rip apart the lie you call heroism. Strong enough to destroy him."