Chapter 69: Counting Stars

  (Cadel’s POV)

  I had watched the entirety of the match in my holding room. It had been a little anti-climactic, but it wasn’t all too surprising. Asher had simply outplayed Scarlette.

  When he had swung at Scarlette while in shadow-hammer form, he had intentionally missed her, instead smashing the ground to create little rocks in the rubble. He had then picked one of them up, which he threw at Scarlette as a distraction when she thought she had him cornered. The light from both the overhead sun and all the fire that Scarlette was outputting had spawned a tiny shadow on the ground from the pebble, which Asher had then dived into to ambush Scarlette from behind.

  It was a cunning trick, but one that could’ve been easily avoided. Unfortunately, this meant that Scarlette had been knocked out and that I would be facing him in the finals. Technically I hadn’t beaten Zara yet, but victory against her was pretty much a given.

  Still, this match had given me useful insight into Asher’s abilities. While I had expected him to be adept at combat strategy, I now knew that the shadow he could dive into was much smaller than I had initially believed. This information could potentially prove vital.

  I stepped out of the room and made my way towards the entrance to the player’s tunnel, where Zara was already waiting.

  “Shame that Scarlette couldn’t make it,” she seemed genuinely disappointed.

  “I heard that if both losers of the semi-finals agreed to it, there might be a third-place play-off,” I said.

  “It’s okay, I don’t want to fight her that badly,” she chortled. She seemed awfully relaxed for someone who was so outmatched. Was it a false pretence, or did she actually have something planned? If she did, I was curious to know what it was.

  We were called to the arena shortly after, and as soon as the bell rang, I immediately went on the offensive. I reached out and froze Zara in place with a single motion. She retaliated quickly, sending a small tornado my way, but I wasn’t concerned. It was something I could easily shrug off.

  Zara knew it too, so the tornado was obviously just a distraction. Even now, I knew oxygen was being extracted from the air around me. I wasn’t sure if she was simply extracting the oxygen particles or converting them into other gases, but I wasn’t going to sit around and find out. Instead, I decided to counterattack.

  Breathing relies on the movement of air in the respiratory system. So what would happen if I simply reversed the airflow? I steadily began my attack, extracting, literally siphoning air from her lungs. If I pushed too hard, I would create a vacuum in her body and kill her.

  She was fighting back. I could feel the resistance as she attempted to wrestle the airflow from me. But whatever effort she put in only continued to feed me with even more energy.

  In the meantime, the kinetic energy from the rest of her body was still being absorbed, rendering her motionless. However, I could see the panic in her eyes as seconds ticked by. When I felt that I had scared her enough, I abandoned my attack, allowing her to take in air again.

  I glanced at the referee. Other than the tornado, there hadn’t been visible physical attacks from either side, so he didn’t seem bothered. He probably wasn’t even aware that I could’ve killed her. Did that count as crossing a line? Sure, it was an intense scare, but she wasn’t injured. It was a method of intimidation, nothing more.

  Zara hunched over, gasping for air, which was pretty ironic now that I thought about it. If I could avoid it, I’d rather not physically injure her. Therefore, I decided to ask her if she wanted to call it quits.

  I opened my mouth to ask, but no sound came out. At that moment, I realised that I couldn’t breathe either. I looked up to see Zara half-grin, half-grimace at me. Instead of just extracting oxygen, had she been creating a vacuum the whole time?

  It was a valiant effort, but unfortunately, I could easily stop the vacuum. I fought the pull of air leaving me and simply brought it back. Air rushed back in with a loud ‘pop.’

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  “I guess I’ll concede now,” Zara sighed. She turned to the referee. “Hey ref, I concede.”

  I threw a glance at Zara, who shrugged. “Was there even a point in continuing?” She had a point there. I guess sometimes having such an overpowered Ability did have its downsides. There was one thing I was curious about, though I pretty much already knew her answer.

  “Why didn’t you just extract air from my lungs like I did to yours? Surely you’re capable of that?” I asked.

  “You would’ve just cancelled it. I needed something more abstract, but I couldn’t really come up with anything, other than that lame vacuum attack. It was worth a shot, I guess.”

  We had to raise our voices over the announcer’s announcement of the results, which was met with a rather lukewarm response. It seemed the crowd had gotten over the initial shock and fascination with my quick victories and now preferred a more intense, drawn-out fight. I couldn’t really blame them.

  Unlike Zara however, the matchup against Asher should be more interesting. I was curious to see how my Ability would fare against his.

  As we were walking backstage, I was halted by a staff member.

  “Cadel Ren, I need you to follow me,” he said.

  “May I ask why?” I inquired.

  “Please save the questions for later.”

  It looked pretty urgent, so I couldn’t refuse. After saying goodbye to Zara, I followed the suspicious-looking man. We navigated through a bunch of different corridors and went up several floors before we stopped at a door with a big “RESTRICTED, AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY” sign. He opened it, indicating for me to enter.

  The room looked to be a small meeting room, with an oval table in the middle and about 10 chairs placed around its perimeter. Two adjacent chairs were currently occupied.

  “Have a seat, Cadel,” said Dr Connor. “And in case, you weren’t familiar, this is Dr Smith,” he gestured to the man beside him. I recalled him as the man giving the opening brief over here at the Gardens on the first day of the event. He had claimed to be the Overall-In-Charge.

  “Please excuse us, thank you,” he continued. The man who had accompanied me here promptly left the room.

  I chose a seat that wasn’t too close nor too far from them. “You two look like you’ve been waiting for me,” I commented.

  “Right you are,” Dr Smith started, “The board has been tracking your progress through your previous matches, and several concerns have been raised.” He checked his clipboard. “We have noticed a major discrepancy regarding your power level, mainly due to the fact that you’re executing displays of power worthy of, or even surpassing that of a 5-Star rank.”

  “Surpassing?” I blinked innocently.

  “I think we can cut the pretence,” Dr Connor took over. “I’m sure you’re aware of the individual known as Soren Rain?”

  I didn’t let any reaction show on my face. What were they trying to get at? My mind raced through multiple possibilities. Still, I thought it was better to maintain the ignorant front just to see how they would respond. More importantly, I was curious as to why he would make such a claim.

  “Soren Rain?” I asked.

  “Yes, are you familiar with him?” Dr Connor pressed.

  I had to be careful with my words here. “Could you clarify who he is?”

  “I’m asking if you’ve heard of the name before.”

  “I can’t remember.”

  Dr Connor sighed, clearly annoyed. “You’re wasting our time here, Cadel. We’d appreciate it if you could cooperate so we can discuss more about Soren.”

  So they were being serious. “What’s up with him?” I asked.

  The professor could tell I had finally decided to get on with it. “I’m sure Scarlette has spread the fact that Soren is a 6-Star to you, am I correct?”

  Uh oh. After Scarlette’s fight with Kazen, Dr Connor had briefly dragged her to his office to let her in on that little secret. He had told her he suspected that, other than Soren, there was another 6-Star at the school—namely me. Of course, Scarlette had been forbidden to disclose this information to me under the threat of expulsion, but she had done so anyway. Dr Connor had foreseen this betrayal and used it to his advantage.

  It was important that I maintain my composure. Whatever I did, I could not explicitly admit that Scarlette had shared that information with me, just to be safe. “Is that the truth?” I finally asked.

  Just as I thought, he completely ignored the fact that Scarlette had leaked it to me. That wasn’t important to him right now. What was important, was me.

  “You’re a smart boy, Cadel,” Dr Connor continued. “You wouldn’t go around spreading confidential information without good reason. But for formality’s sake, can I have your word that you will keep whatever that we're about to discuss in this meeting a secret?”

  “Yes, I promise to not leak anything.”

  The two professors exchanged a glance.

  “Yes, that is the truth. I’m sure you’re aware of Umbra, one of the organisations under the Administration that specialises in esper research. Are you aware that Soren is one of its members?”

  I nodded.

  Dr Connor continued, “As you’ve known from your past, Umbra is an extremely corrupt organisation that practices forbidden and unethical experiments on espers. Unfortunately, they’re very secretive, and they’re experts at playing politics and covering up their tracks…until recently. Due to a leak, we’ve managed to uncover some information about them, as well as Soren. Unfortunately, things are still very chaotic among the higher-ups, but we believe we are closing in on their current base of operations.”

  He leaned back, waiting for me to absorb the information.

  I waited for him to continue. “And you’re telling me all of this because…?”

  “Given the opportunity, would you like to ensure the safety of your friends?”