"Shit!" Oliver shook his head, trying to recover. "What's going on?"

  With his eyes still watery, he tried to push himself up, but to no avail. The punch had hit him he , leaving him disoriented; his legs felt like jelly, uo muster any strength.

  "e on, damn it! Get up. I'm not going to hit someone while they're down.”

  Oliver couldn't reize the voice, but as his vision cleared, he saas standing before him. It was the boy who looked like a mountain of muscles, with a shaved head and a tattoo on the side of his scalp.

  'Kyle?' Oliver couldn't uand why he was being attacked. He had never done anything that could cause trouble with him.

  As Oliver struggled to get up, a crowd of students had gathered around, mostly from the Sed Battalion, who had been waiting to ehe mess hall. None of them tried to break up the fight; instead, they were focused on watg and discussing the battle.

  "Hey! What's going on?"

  "I don't know, the big guy just puhe one on the ground out of nowhere."

  "Damn coward, hit him from behind."

  "Don't like it? Go tell him yourself."

  The only exception was An, but he had his own problems. As soon as Oliver was hit, An turo protect his friend, but two other boys grabbed him.

  "Nuh-uh, you're not getting involved in their fight," one of them said to An.

  They weren't as big as Kyle, but they were still strong enough. The two boys held An back, preventing him from interfering in the fight.

  Oliver could see that no help was ing. An already had his hands full with the other two. He o focus on Kyle, who stood before him. With his mind rag, Oliver was desperately trying to figure out a way out of this situation.

  'Maybe a captain?' Oliver thought but quickly dismissed the idea. There was a good ce they wouldn't intervene.

  'What House is Kyle from? If it's a powerful one, I'm screwed.' Oliver khat if there was too much political power involved, the Academy might not step in. He wasn’t wrong.

  All that was left to Oliver was his physical strength, but looking at his oppo, he was clearly at a disadvantage. Without his Artificial Ranger Armor and Energy Pistol, he had no way out.

  "If you're not going to get up, I'll have to e to you," Kyle shouted.

  Without waiting for a response, Kyle swiftly approached and prepared a kick aimed at Oliver's head. With no time to react, Oliver used all his strength to cross his arms into a guard, abs as much of the kick's poossible.

  The impact was to for his arms to hold, and his makeshift guard broke, but it was enough to deflect the dire of the kick.

  “Fuck! Fuck!” Oliver’s arms throbbed in pain. But now was not the time to focus on that.

  With adrenaline pumping, Oliver forced his legs to take a few steps back, putting distaween himself and his oppo. He had been in a few fights oreets of New San Francisco, but this was the first time he was fag someone clearly trained and physically superior to him.

  Luckily for Oliver, Kyle didn’t seem to have brought his Artificial Ranger Armor. It didn’t improve his situation much, but every small detail was crucial at this point. That’s when he began to notice a few things about his oppo.

  Oliver had never seen Kyle wear that mask during training. Now and then, it seemed to release small bursts of gas from the sides. Also, Kyle's eyes were an eerie shade of red—something Oliver had never seen in anyone else.

  Still staggering, Oliver raised both arms to form a guard.

  "Before it's my turn, how about you expin why you're here?" Oliver at least wao uand why Kyle had targeted him.

  ‘Let’s try to buy himself some time.’ Oliver reasoned.

  "What? I 't fight one of the top-ranked guys from the st exercise?" Kyle replied, but without giving a clear answer. Oliver also noticed the obvious sarcasm in his oppo's voice, especially when he mentiohe ranking.

  "If that's all, we could just fight during the css. Are you really going after everyone iop 20 now?" Oliver tio press.

  "Nope. Just ohe one iop 20 with the stupid idea that messed up the exercise." Kyle made it clear how angry he was about the disrupted training.

  "So that's it? You believed those fug rumors?" Oliver was shocked that this was the reason; he couldn’t believe it.

  "Believe? Holy, it doesn’t really matter if it’s true," Kyle said in a lower voice, just for Oliver to hear. "But I 't let someone mess with my performand just let him go unpunished."

  'This boy is fug crazy. All this just to send a message?' Oliver felt even more lost than at the beginning of the versation.

  “You do know, you’re cuckoo cuckoo. Like fug crazy. But well … Go to hell,” Oliver breathed deeply and charged for the attack.

  The brief versation had given him some time to pn. Oliver knew he cked the strength, and having seen Kyle fight before, the differen that regard was huge. But his agility was slightly better, and he wao test another card up his sleeve.

  [Observation] Oliver tried to activate his sed Boon on Kyle.

  It was his first time using it on a human, but it didn’t seem that different. Around Kyle, lines began to appear, indig potential movements he might make. The effect was simir to what happened with monsters, but there were more probabilities. Maybe because Kyle was human, there were more possible as he could take.

  'Maybe. Maybe, with this, I fight him,' Oliver thought as he prepared for his move.

  Oliver tried to stay calm and took a few quick steps toward Kyle. His oppo remained unfazed, keeping his guard up with a look that seemed to challenge Oliver.

  To outsiders, what Oliver was doing didn’t make much sense. He could have just run away from the fight, but he was charging at Kyle instead.

  'I o limit his movements,' Oliver thought just before starting his pn. Watg the lines indig Kyle’s potential movements, it seemed none of them would involve defending from his current position.

  With a low kick using all his strength, Oliver hoped to injure Kyle’s legs and gain at least a slight advantage. But wheruck, though Kyle's leg bent slightly, it seemed to absorb the impact without any problem.

  Oliver's senses began to scream warnings as the lines from Observation shifted rapidly. Moving faster than Oliver had ever seen in css, Kyle terattacked with a punch that came dangerously close to Oliver’s face. He would have been hit squarely if not for his quick reflexes and sharp senses.

  "Impressive! I thought with that speed, you'd have no ce of dodging." Kyle cpped his hands twice before tinuing, "But I won’t give you another opening."

  The crowd around the boys was mostly silent, abs every detail of the two fights, but a few ents could be heard occasionally.

  "Has Kyle always been this fast?""The kid from the Sed Battalion is holding his own, though.""But those other two won't st much longer."

  While the crowd tio chatter, Oliver was focused on dodging each of Kyle's attacks. But just a few steps away, a very different se was unfolding with An.

  As soon as the two hen grabbed him, An didn't hesitate and activated his Boon.

  [Gravity Pressure]

  An had excellent trol over Energy, which allowed him to use the Boon passed down by Aqui House from a young age. Gravity trol was a unique Boon, and to this day, they hadn't found anyone else or any other House with a simir ability.

  However, it wasn’t without its drawbacks. In addition to ing a lot of Energy, it was plex to use. At lower levels, it was impossible to distinguish between allies and enemies, and it was also impossible to create fields far away from the user.

  But few people khis information. That’s why the two brutes began to notiething was off as they felt their weight increasing expoially.

  “Wh-who are you?” one of the boys stammered as he struggled to move, barely able to lift their feet off the ground.

  “You should have asked that before trying to grab me,” An responded. Now it was his turn to take trol of the situation. His skinny arms looked like twigs o the two attackers, but with his hands gripping their throats, there was no doubt inning the fight.

  "Just wait for me. Don't go anywhere," An said before turning around.

  “THUMP!”

  GCLopes