Xavier was frozen on the spot, his breath forgotten in his lungs, and his palms felt moist.
Xavier's brows furrowed as he looked down at his splayed-open fingers.
"...my palms are sweaty..."
When?
Sothing unsettling crept around him. There was an almost overwhelming, chilling sensation that had nearly suffocated him just seconds ago.
His thin smile vanished, and his slanted eyes swept over the audience area, replaced by vigilance. But he couldn't notice anything different.
The crowd and audience were the sa as before: showing mixed reactions at the arena, hurling insults at Victor, and singing praises for Ceres.
Xavier pulled out a small napkin from his breast pocket and used it to wipe his suddenly sweaty palms and brows. Consciously, his gaze shifted toward the arena stage, where it lingered.
"...Number 1499..."
There stood Victor.
He was taking small steps backward, wiping blood off his face. His expression was pensive, but he still forced a smile, as though it was nothing.
Even now, Xavier couldn't feel anything from him.
'Did I just imagine that?'
But that sudden reaction from his instincts was undeniable.
Humans reacted to stimuli and sensitivity differently. So reacted more aggressively, while others barely acted as if anything had happened.
But Xavier had an innate talent for perceiving the abilities and potential of those around him, a skill that had only grown sharper as he matured into a man and an Awakened.
Surely, at that mont, his instincts had reacted vehently to sothing.
"Master Xa— I an... Is sothing the matter?" one of the male students asked, interrupting Xavier's thoughts.
Xavier wiped away the last traces of cold sweat from his brow and palms, shaking his head slightly with a forced smile. He turned his gaze back to the arena, where Victor and Ceres stood apart, locked in a tense standoff.
"No... I was just a little surprised. I didn't think he would be able to evade even a single blow from Ceres, but..."
The two male cadets nodded in agreent.
"Yes, I agree, but it was probably a fluke," one said.
"That's true. That crazy guy was probably just lucky. To dodge a blow from an Ascended... I bet he's used up a vast portion of his life's luck. Hmph," the other snorted in mockery.
"Indeed. It's also obvious that Ceres Walker is holding back, judging by how she suddenly withdrew and stopped pressuring him. In the end, she's still giving 1499 a small chance to try and redeem himself by fighting back. Everyone knows that if this duel were serious, it would've been over as soon as it began. In the end, it's only thanks to Ceres' kindness and benevolence that that talentless bastard hasn't been one-shot and sent flying," the cadet explained exhaustively.
His peers and so mbers of the audience seed to share a similar opinion.
It seed almost unbelievable that the allegedly weakest cadet in the academy had managed to evade a blow from the strongest cadet—soone an entire realm higher than him.
How else could it be explained, if not that Ceres had obviously let him and gone easy on him?
Such was the conclusion that the vast majority of those watching the duel conveniently reached.
But Xavier was different.
Just as he was about to be swayed by the sa logic and dismiss the thoughts of Victor from his mind, Xavier forcefully recalled the earlier tingling sensation at the back of his chest. He rembered the sharp reaction of his senses and instincts and slowly touched the left side of his chest.
He thought of a particular saying his father had repeated to him countless tis since childhood:
"Always trust your gut. The instincts of an Awakened are our greatest weapon. Never disregard your senses, and always be conscious and open-minded."
Those words had been drilled into him so often that it felt as though they were designed specifically for soone like him.
It wasn't an exaggeration to say that a major part of Xavier's life, up until the present mont, had been shaped by that mantra.
It was also for that sa reason...
Xavier clenched his left chest.
He couldn't dismiss such a strong reaction from his senses.
As Xavier continued to look at the arena, he spoke with his usual smile.
"Hmm. And this Number 1499 has no prior recorded feats of this level?" he asked casually.
The two male students glanced at each other, pausing for a mont to think.
"None at all. Even his academics and looks are unremarkable," one said.
The other cadet's lips moved as if he intended to say sothing but hesitated. Eventually, he gathered his thoughts and added to his peer's words.
"Well, even though it might still be a bit early in the sester, there are already a bunch of rumors about him, and most of them point to him being crazy," he said, pausing briefly before shrugging indifferently.
"So say they've seen and heard him scream and talk to himself a lot. Even his training thods are crazy and bizarre. Rather than using equipnt suited for his level, he challenges resources far above him, like the training golems, and often gets beaten."
The cadet spilled out all the rumors and eccentric details surrounding Victor to Xavier without much thought or consideration.
As early as the sester still was, Victor had already beco the subject of nurous rumors and stories without even realizing it.
All of them painted a picture of a crazy, relentless, and untalented training junkie who didn't know his limits or place. Add to that his lack of presence in a room full of others, and he was often described as having a characteristic gloominess that made people want to avoid him even more.
Xavier listened with a raised eyebrow.
There was a lot being said about Victor, yet none of it seed to hold any substantial value or impact.
They were just rumors and mockery of Number 1499.
Xavier was almost compelled to disregard the "crazy cadet" yet again but couldn't stop rembering the sensation.
Even when he turned back and focused on Victor, he still couldn't sense anything from him. It was just as before, yet sothing was different.
"Looks like both of them are about to move again," Xavier heard one of the male cadets next to him say, and his narrow eyes unconsciously widened slightly, as if he intended to capture even the most minute details of the duel with his vision and heart.
He had been watching Victor closely all this while. Ever since Ceres had strangely retreated from him, Victor hadn't moved.
'Even after barely managing to evade Ceres' first blow, he doesn't seem flustered or unbalanced. On closer inspection, he has considerable coordination and composure...' Xavier earnestly noted and praised inwardly.
It was only when he finally began to look closely at Victor that he started distinguishing so aspects he had sohow overlooked before.
'No, it's not a matter of simply overlooking or not noticing them,' Xavier's eyes narrowed yet again—'1499 has skillfully masked his experience with subtlety and ambiguity in his otherwise unremarkable actions. Yes, indeed, sotis the most significant things in life are often subtle, but not unremarkable...'
Xavier felt a rare, vague mont of enlightennt all of a sudden.
'Always be self-aware, keep an open mind.'
Suddenly, he began to reinterpret and see all of Victor's actions from the beginning in a new and different light.
His seemingly leisurely and nonchalant attitude at the start, the careless way he stood with his spear despite coming for a duel—it all made sense now. At that ti, Victor had succeeded in making the audience and everyone else perceive him as worthless and unguarded.
But the mont Ceres arrived, Victor had seemingly shifted casually on his feet.
'...But that mont solidified his defense.'
By presenting an initial form full of loose holes and openings, and through thodical misdirection on a level that could almost be considered supernatural, his experienced actions had gone entirely unnoticed by the audience—and by Ceres.
If Victor, who had been standing with a slouched posture from the beginning, rely rolled a shoulder, who would believe it had a more aningful intent?
'Even I was fooled...'
Victor had expertly masked his true intentions behind subtle, minor, and seemingly casual everyday actions that went unnoticed by everyone.
What Xavier didn't know was that the Crown's Veil enchantnt of the Ring of Solomon was responsible for a significant part of this deception. It cloaked Victor in a "fog," distorting the senses and perceptions of outsiders. This allowed Victor to perform misleading actions as misdirection while concealing his true intentions.
Even now, Xavier still couldn't fully comprehend what was happening without knowing about the Ring. Each ti he tried to focus his senses to observe or study Victor, he found his thoughts slowly drifting, often reaching conclusions on their own without him realizing it.
The terrifying part was that Xavier would never realize his mind was being constantly overwritten and manipulated by a 'fog'—a deceptive veil.
But Xavier was still sharp and cunning, with terrifyingly keen senses and instincts. He couldn't completely decipher Victor's movents or experience, but once he began to notice the subtle nuances Victor made, it gave an entirely new aning and interpretation to his actions.
*Ba-dump! Ba-dump!*
Xavier's golden eyes rippled with realization, their almost illusionary surface reflecting the distant figure of Victor slowly raising his hands in what seed to be an attempt to forfeit the duel.
*Ba-dump! Ba-dump!*
As the audience focused intently on the duel, the challenger, Number 1499, slowly began to raise his hands.
"I give u—!!"
But before he could finish his sentence, Ceres moved, closing the distance in an instant. With a devastating blow to Victor's solar plexus, she sent him barreling across the arena and through the air.
Cadet Rank 1499 couldn't utter another word as his body smashed into the wall and slumped to the ground, unconscious.
One hit.
In just one hit, Victor was knocked out cold.
"Haa... In the end, it turned out the way everyone initially expected."
"There was no way he could have dodged the second blow like the first ti."
The duel was over. Victor lay immobilized, and Ceres stood as the victor and champion.
The audience shared their opinions and comntary amongst themselves as they slowly began to disperse. In the end, Victor had truly been taken down in a single hit before Ceres could display anything particularly flashy. He had been defeated purely by her speed and brute strength, without showing even a trace of opposition.
"Haha, how pathetic. And he spoke so big earlier too..."
People quickly forgot Victor's miraculous feat of evading Ceres' first attack and sohow forcing her to montarily retreat. All they rembered was that Victor had been pathetically defeated in a single blow.
But as the crowd continued to disperse, there was one cadet who stood in place, unmoving, ever since the beginning.
*Ba-dump! Ba-dump! Ba-dump!*
Xavier continued to stare at the arena stage where the duel had taken place. The image of Victor being sent barreling through the air was seared into his mind, yet he couldn't shake the incessant sound growing louder and louder in his ears.
*Ba-dump! Ba-dump! Ba-dump!*
'Huh? What is...'
Shakily, with a hand trembling from excitent, Xavier slowly reached toward his chest, where his left breast pocket lay. His narrow eyes were wide open, glinting with unmistakable intensity, and his crooked smile stretched into sothing savagely twisted.
*Ba-dump! Ba-dump! Ba-dump!*
The resounding thumping grew louder and louder, the rhythm reverberating in his ears.
'Where is it coming from?' Xavier vaguely wondered, his shoulders trembling.
The sound...
*Ba-dump! Ba-dump! Ba-dump! Ba-dump! Ba-dump!*
It was his racing heartbeat.
Xavier's crooked smile stretched further, tearing into a twisted grin. His golden eyes shone with an eerie, electric intensity.
"Interesting."
He had found a new diamond.
One hidden in plain sight, among a pack of coal.
***
anwhile, lurking alone in the darkness of one of the nurous passage entrances and exits of the coliseum, stood a handso middle-aged man with falling red hair and gold eyes that glinted like two yellow magnets.
He had a youthful appearance, tall and striking, with a knowing smile that tugged at his lips. His eyes narrowed amusingly as he watched from the shadows.
"Interesting," he whispered softly to himself.
Reviews
All reviews (0)