Chapter 57: Ch96. Powerless
The gym was completely empty at that time of night, and the academy didn’t have any rules for students being out of their dorms after a certain hour.
So, when Kurt accepted that he just wasn’t going to be able to sleep, he got up, wore a pair of black jogging pants, a black t-shirt, and went out to work out a little bit.
Or at least until sleep finally kicked in.
When Kurt passed an empty small park, where a few students used to sit down during their free periods, he saw a small group of noisy students from an unidentified class.
It was too dark for Kurt to actually discern anything but silhouettes.
’Unless...’ He thought, having an idea. ’Yes. How about we test it out?’
He didn’t understand what the system meant by conversion, but ever since then, he became completely unable to access his stats window or any other window at that.
So he wanted to see if he was able to, at least, use any skill during the time that the system said it would take for it to be converted.
And what better skill to be used than a new one?
Kurt focused a little bit with his eyes closed, and after a few seconds, he opened them.
They glowed with a green light, and everything suddenly unfolded before him.
Unfortunately, though, Kurt didn’t have much time to actually enjoy the sensation of having a new skill so cool, because the scene that unfolded in front of him, even though it was happening several meters from him, made his heart pound hard in his chest, and his blood boil in anger.
Kurt inhaled and exhaled, watching as the rat-looking student from the Crimson class, along with some of what Kurt thought as his goons, even though they belonged to Dark-Green, were picking on Evellyn and Nikolai.
But picking on was too much of an understatement to be used for what they were doing.
Evellyn’s clothes were in tatters on her, and Nikolai had his nose broken, along with his arm.
He was on the ground, crawling towards the students, like he wasn’t the one who helped him kill some werewolves back in the Nest.
"I don’t know what happened to you, Russian dude, but you’re better off the way you are now. Power doesn’t suit you." The leader of the small mob, Lester, said, kicking Nikolai in the stomach. "As for you, ginger beauty... What does that freak Blake have that I don’t? Huh?"
Something felt definitely off about what was happening, and it only felt more and more uneasy, the more the seconds passed to Kurt.
’I know Evellyn isn’t especially strong, but she does have Precognition, so why didn’t she evade them, like she did with the Beasts in the Nest? And what about Nikolai? Can’t they defend themselves out here in the open?’
But even though these thoughts ran across Kurt’s mind, his feet were already moving, involuntarily, towards Lester’s group.
And his fist was already clenched tight.
’They saved me and helped me when I needed, after all...’
He didn’t know if the feelings came from the remnants of the [MEMORY FRAGMENT] or the situations he got through in the Nest, but the feelings felt real to him, and he was starting to accept more and more the idea of wanting to be friends with those two.
So he wouldn’t let anything happen to them, as long as it was in his reach.
And even if it weren’t, Kurt was willing to stretch out, even if ever so slightly, just so he could be able to grasp them.
One thing, however, felt extremely curious to him, despite the anger that made his blood boil, and the torrent of thoughts in his head.
The more he walked, the more he noticed that...
His steps weren’t making a single noise.
And as he finally approached the group, almost face to face with Lester, he noticed that it weren’t just his steps.
It seemed like none of them were able to see him.
So Kurt went for his next move.
He threw a punch aimed right at Lester’s chin, and when the leader of the group was falling to his knees, Kurt sent a knee strike right at his nose, finally letting out some of his aura.
And only then, the students seemed like being able to see him.
"Kurt...?" Evellyn cried.
Nikolai just grunted, opening a bloody smile and giving a thumb up to him.
"That’s what I call a hero entrance." Nikolai said, spitting a mouthful of blood on the ground.
From then on, it turned from a fight to a one-sided massacre very quickly.
He punched, kicked, evaded their attacks. And even when two of the students threw energy spheres at him, Kurt was able to easily brush them off.
Lester got up after a few moments, though, and pulled a knife from his pocket.
A part of Kurt’s mind was ready to ask "What do you think you’re going to do with that?", when Lester let out a powerful aura, which he infused his knife with, and not even half a minute later, the knife began to grow in size.
And soon it became a full-fledged sword.
"You’re gonna pay for ruining my fun!" Lester screamed with a nasal, muffled voice.
"Fun, huh...?"
From that moment on, even though Kurt kept his cool, just so he wouldn’t end up killing anyone there, he just let his emotions overflow.
And he didn’t stop until every single one of the students from Lester’s group were severely injured and bloody.
Especially Lester.
Kurt felt invincible while fighting the bully.
It almost felt to him that the night itself was enhancing his physical prowess.
That, or the darkness of the night, but he didn’t have the system active to check on it, so it became a question for another time.
When Lester and his goons were beaten and bloody enough, Kurt let go of them and proceeded to help Evellyn and Nikolai.
"Here, everything is okay now." He said, getting Evellyn up and taking off his t-shirt, so that she would have something to dress.
Evellyn sobbed and cried, but Nikolai got up without Kurt’s help, just as if he had been through worse things, which Kurt thought was the case.
Evellyn hugged Kurt really tight for a few seconds, trying to regain control over her breathing, and a few minutes later, she was recomposed enough to shoot a few glances towards Kurt’s naked torso.
He rolled his eyes inwardly but let that slide. She was a girl after all, Kurt wasn’t that bad-looking, and there were other versions of them throughout the universe with some story, so he thought that it would probably affect the way she looked at him, at least to some extent.
"What were you two doing outside the dorm?" He asked when everything felt calmer.
"We went out to see if we could clear our heads and come up with a strategy to train for the combat tournament next month." Nikolai answered.
"But then, we ran into Lester and his friends. And everything was fine, because we thought we could deal with them, right, Nikolai?" Evellyn followed up, letting out a sobbing sigh.
"Yeah. But when I was ready to use my Blink, I just... Couldn’t."
They arrived at the gym and entered, the huge building full of training equipment only gave their talk a darker tone.
"What do you mean by you just couldn’t?" Kurt asked, going for the bench press and loading it with a few weights.
And as he started working out, trying to not give space to the idea that was growing stronger in his mind, Evellyn spoke the words that he didn’t want to hear.
"I don’t know. Even my powers... They just... Didn’t work."
