He slowly pressed his hand on the screen to lock his mana signature, and pushed the tablet back to her.
The process was very quick. The moment he touched the black screen of the tablet, a sudden suction force grabbed a small trace of his mana and engraved it onto the registration cards.
"R-Right! Here's the registration card that you could use to enroll into the Swordsmanship's course." The receptionist blinked rapidly, shaking her head as if waking up from a daze, took out one of the two registration cards, and gave it to him.
"Thank you," Alex said, quickly grabbing the card and pulling his hand back.
"If you need any more help... with anything at all," she added, her voice dropping into a low, hopeful whisper, "my shift ends at five."
Alex offered her a polite, tight smile, pulled his hood back up over his head, and quickly turned away.
His heart was beating fast as he walked out of the building back into the warm sunlight.
"See how easy it is?" the Empress giggled in his mind, thoroughly enjoying the show. "You didn't even try, and she was ready to beg you to take her to the back room. Women, men... soon, they will all fall at your feet, my beautiful queen."
Alex ignored her teasing and walked towards the training grounds to meet his new instructor.
"HAH! HYAA!"
The collective, booming shouts of hundreds of men echoed through the air as Alex approached.
He looked around and found a massive open dirt field.
There were hundreds of men exposing their bare, sweaty chests, practicing breathing techniques, swinging heavy wooden swords, and sparring with loud grunts.
To Alex's newly mutated cold-blooded body, the sheer amount of Yang energy radiating from that field felt like a giant, tempting bonfire.
His body instinctively wanted to step out into the sun and soak up all that heat.
But the terrifying thought of those men catching a whiff of his pheromones kept him firmly hidden in the shadows of his oversized hoodie.
Surrounding the large open grounds were many private halls, with people in different training sets coming and going.
This time, the person sitting at the entrance desk of the training grounds was an old man.
He had a sloppy, unwashed appearance and was basically lazying around in his chair.
When Alex inadvertently glanced at what the old man was watching on the screen in front of him, he found that the old man was giving lecherous smiles while secretly peaking through security cameras at female martial artists practicing in the other halls.
"Damnn… This old man was a true pervert even at his old age." Seeing that the old man wasn't even bothering to check who was at the desk, Alex let out a slight cough to disturb him.
"Ahem." Alex cleared his throat, pulling the edges of his gray hoodie closer together to hide his chest.
The old man grunted, not taking his eyes off the screen where a woman was doing deep stretches. "Hold your horses, kid. Can't you see I'm conducting important security checks?"
"I have a registration card," Alex said, trying to force his voice lower, but it still came out soft, breathy, and undeniably feminine.
"Yeah, yeah, just put it on the desk," the old man waved a dismissive hand, finally tearing his eyes away from the monitor to look up.
The moment the old man's gaze landed on Alex, his annoyance vanished entirely. He froze.
Even though the hood cast a dark shadow over Alex's face, the flawless, porcelain skin of his jawline and his full, pink lips were clearly visible.
Worse, the warm morning breeze shifted, blowing a concentrated waft of Alex's sweet scent right across the desk.
The old man's hairy nostrils flared. The creepy smile that had been aimed at the monitor slowly turned right at Alex.
"Well, well..." the old man mumbled, leaning his chest over the desk. His eyes greedily scanned Alex's figure, trying to guess the soft curves hidden beneath the baggy, zipped-up hoodie. "Aren't you a cute little girle? What's a delicate flower like you doing in a rough, sweaty place like this?"
Alex felt his stomach drop. His heart hammered against his ribs. "Not again," he panicked internally.
"My, my," the Empress purred in his mind, her voice vibrating with dark, sadistic amusement. "Look at him drooling. He wants to peel that ugly sweater off you and taste your soft new skin. Go on, let him. Touch him and drain his filthy little life away."
"Shut up," Alex snapped back mentally.
"I'm here for the Apprentice Swordsman course. Just tell me where to go, also I'm a man and not into other men." He quickly slammed the registration card onto the wooden desk with an angry voice, pulling his hand back fast before the old man could try to grab his fingers.
"Hehee.. What an angry tomboyish girl," The old man didn't bother to thrush Alex's words and slowly picked up the card, with his lazy attitude he just scanned it and returned it back.
He didn't even bother checking it or he could have seen that what Alex said was indeed true, but the old man was too lazy to do that.
"Swordsmanship?" The old man chuckled. "Swinging a heavy piece of iron is rough work for someone with such pretty, soft hands. You sure you don't want to come to the back room with me? I can teach you some... private stretching techniques. It'll make you feel real good."
"Damn you fucking pervert, can't you even recognize the difference between male and female," Alex's skin crawled.
A wave of pure disgust washed over him, he couldn't hold his anger back, but when he heard the Empress laughter in his mind, he didn't want to argue anymore. "Just give me the room number. Please."
Seeing the hard, warning glare in Alex's dark eyes, the old man sighed, though he didn't stop staring at Alex's waist.
"Private Hall Number 7," the old man said, licking his dry, chapped lips. "Your instructor is waiting inside. Don't push yourself too hard, sweetheart. If you get too sweaty, you can always come back to my desk to cool off."
Alex didn't say another word. He snatched the card back and power-walked away, his hips swaying with that annoying, natural fluid motion he couldn't control no matter how hard he tried.
While moving away, he seemed to have heard the old man muttering that he must keep an eye on room 7 from now on.
Alex paused for a moment to turn back and smash the old man black and blue, but thinking that this is the Gene Association training grounds.
He kept his head down, walking through the maze of hallways that bordered the open training ground.
The sounds of grunting men and clashing steel grew louder, making his highly sensitive ears ring.
Finally, he found a heavy wooden door marked with the number '7'.
He took a deep breath, trying to calm his racing heart and the lingering heat in his belly, before pushing the door open and stepping inside.