Chapter 75: Morgaine, a Homo Aetherius!?
"She mentioned waiting, so...you going somewhere?"
Morgaine asked, exhaling a cloud of smoke from her red lips.
"Yes."
"Finally got what you wanted with your triple challenge."
She asked, and he turned, giving her a cursory look.
"How’d she know that?"
She could see his look, but did not explain, simply blinking those pink eyes of hers once.
"I guess you can say so..."
White said, exhaling smoke from his lips.
He already knew how to smoke from his past life, though he never really thought much of it at all.
Funny enough, he had heard once that smoking was once illegal and even a thing frowned upon in most places on old Earth.
But after the supernatural came, maybe the world had too many issues to focus on than bother around putting a stick in your lips and blowing smoke through your lungs.
Besides, with the current advancement of technology, it has been engineered, preventing it from being destructive to the lungs.
Some cigarettes were even engineered to cool down the brain, after intense fights, back in the United Earth Federation, and some, like this one, were simply meant to be fun.
That’s why they were engineered with various fruit tastes.
They remained there for quite a while before White’s attention was brought to it again.
The gem on her forehead.
"So, you wish to tell me now what that gem of yours does?"
He asked, watching her grin.
"Why’d you want to know so badly?"
"Because you kept gatekeeping it so badly."
"What are the chances of you never returning from where you’re going?"
She asked, and White rolled his eyes.
"See, gatekeeping again."
"Just answer the question."
"I’ll say 50-50. Anything can happen. And Xtremecyber is brutal in thinking. There will be no shockwave at all if one student died, no matter how much potential shown."
"Maybe a slight pity before things faded off."
He said, with a shrug, and Morgaine smiled.
"At least you’re not that dumb."
"Sticking your head out of the pack sometimes might indeed look like a smart move, but it’s a double-edged sword. You either go up or you get knocked down worse than everyone else."
She said, exhaling, and he paused before asking.
"Is that why you’re not sticking your head out?"
He asked, and she paused.
"What do you mean?"
"I think you could have taken them on, too. Davinci, Rukun, and even Gustav. I think you can take them all head-on and not lose."
White said, staring in suspicion at Morgaine, who rolled her eyes.
"You’re overestimating my capability."
She said, exhaling once more, but even as she looked down, she could see his piercing gaze on the side of her face.
Morgaine had always been a mystery amongst the rest of the students.
Everyone had seen her fight, but only once, and that was his fight with Denmark, in which she had overwhelmed the boy in the space of an eyeblink.
After that fight, Morgaine had never fought again, meaning no one had challenged her after that.
There was something about her.
She was powerful, powerful enough to overwhelm the fourth position on the cyber ranking with a single attack when she never challenged anyone.
White never tried to challenge her because of her relationship with Nova, even though he wanted nothing more than to duel her and see how powerful she truly was.
There was a feeling he had that this pink girl sitting beside him could pull off the same feat that he had: fighting some of the strongest and not losing.
"What is fighting to you?"
Morgaine asked, throwing away the stalk of the smoke cigarette, before bringing out the last one from the box, lighting it up.
"Fighting? It’s just what it is, right? To fight?"
Her silence made him continue,
"You challenge someone, you fight, someone challenges you, you fight?"
"Get beaten up? That’s fine, you’ll heal."
"You win? Good, you could get an improvement, strength, or points. It’s as simple as that."
"To you." She said, and he paused before asking.
"What is fighting to you?"
"Fighting..." Morgaine said, her hands, which were bringing the cigarette, paused, and she brought both hands down.
In that moment, White watched her curved back slowly straighten, the haze in her eyes fading as they burned a brighter pink.
"Fighting to me is war."
"It’s a matter of who lives to see the next day, and whose headless corpse gets devoured by awakened beasts."
She said in an absolutely cold tone that made White’s hair stand on end.
"It’s not fun at all...I hate it."
She said, before her aura settled once more, and she continued to smoke.
"Fair enough."
White said, continuing to smoke.
For someone who thinks fighting was war with such a hard, unflinching belief.
They obviously didn’t wake up from a sweet dream and suddenly came to that conclusion.
They must have gone through hell for it, so who was he to refute?
The silence permeated for a while before it finally broke as Morgaine turned to him.
"The gem." She said, and White turned to her, seeing her pointing at it.
"I was born with it."
She said, leaving him in quiet surprise.
Born with a gem on her forehead?
He had thought it was some sort of accessory or something.
"Born unnaturally with an object brimming with essence energy. A clear sign of Essence Evolution from birth."
White mused to himself, remembering the teaching from class.
It made him turn to her, and he could see her quiet grin.
"Say it."
She said.
"You’re not a Homo sapiens," he said. "You’re... you’re a Homo Aetherius."
He said in shock, which made Morgaine giggle.
She wasn’t a human!?
Homo Atherius... he had wondered about that during his early days in the academy when the instructor had mentioned it, especially since the system said he had met one already.
A different class of humans that were said to exist in the faraway edges of Earth, outside Humanity’s great walls.
Some have managed to traverse all the way here and join humanity, but they were incredibly rare.
They weren’t just human, but like a special evolution of the base human.
Who would have thought the brutish neighbor of his was one of them?
[She’s the one I said you’ve met.]
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