Chapter 16: Chapter 16: Bastien Xavier
The temperature plummeted.
Frost crawled across the floor in jagged patterns, spreading from Clara’s feet like cracks in a frozen lake. Her blonde hair lifted slightly, caught in an invisible current of cold air, and her blue eyes shifted to a pale, glacial white.
"Get out of my way, Charles."
Charles didn’t flinch. Heat rippled outward from his body in visible waves, the air around him shimmering like asphalt on a summer day. His followers shifted behind him, their own minor abilities flaring — a spark here, a flicker there — but the real power came from Charles himself.
"I’m afraid I can’t do that." His voice was smooth, controlled, but his eyes burned with something uglier. "You should know Bastien won’t be too happy. Rosa’s been the one holding the barrier since we sealed the door, and she’s completely out of mana. If you break it now—"
"I don’t care."
Clara raised her hand. Ice crystallized around her fingers, forming a jagged spear that hummed with A-rank mana. The temperature in the hallway dropped another ten degrees. Students backed away, shivering, some of them wrapping their arms around themselves for warmth.
Charles’s hand ignited. A ball of flame roared to life in his palm, B-rank fire channeled through a Late Neophyte cultivation base — hot enough to melt steel, hot enough to—
The door exploded inward.
BOOM!
The massive reinforced doors — barriers and all — were ripped off their hinges and sent cartwheeling into the main hall like giant frisbees. Students screamed, diving out of the way. One door crashed through a support pillar. The other skidded across the floor and slammed into the far wall, leaving a crater in the stone.
Dust and debris filled the hallway.
Through the gap, two figures walked in.
Lucian’s eyes shifted to gold.
╔═══════════════════════╗
║ ◀ EYES OF THE ETERNALS ▶ ║
║ ───────────────────────── ║
║ Name: Clara Duncan ║
║ Age: 19 ║
║ Race: Human ║
║ Bloodline: Nil ║
║ Cultivation: Peak Neophyte Realm ║
║ Mana: 3,500 / 3,500 MPU ║
║ ───────────────────────── ║
║ Abilities: ║
║ ├─ Ice Control — A-Rank ║
║ └─ Frost Domain — B-Rank ║
║ ───────────────────────── ║
║ Combat Skills: ║
║ ├─ Movement: Ice Glide (Adept) ║
║ ├─ Weapon: Ice Lance Form (Expert)║
║ └─ Defense: Frost Armor (Adept) ║
║ ───────────────────────── ║
║ Name: Charles Martin ║
║ Age: 20 ║
║ Race: Human ║
║ Bloodline: Nil ║
║ Cultivation: Late Neophyte Realm ║
║ Mana: 2,400 / 2,400 MPU ║
║ ───────────────────────── ║
║ Abilities: ║
║ └─ Flame Body — B-Rank ║
║ ───────────────────────── ║
║ Combat Skills: ║
║ ├─ Movement: Flame Dash (Novice) ║
║ ├─ Weapon: Fire Fist (Adept) ║
║ └─ Defense: Heat Shield (Novice) ║
╚═════════════════════════════════╝
Clara and Charles both froze.
Charles stared at the destroyed door — the door he’d been defending — and his flame sputtered out. His face went red in anger.
Clara dropped her ice spear and crossed the distance between them.
"Lucian!"
She grabbed him and pulled him into a hug — a full-body, rib-crushing embrace that drove his face directly into her chest. Soft. Warm. Very soft.
"Mmph—"
"I’m so glad you’re alive!" Clara’s voice was muffled against the top of his head. "When Ryan came back alone and said you’d stayed behind to fight, I thought— I thought—"
Lucian’s face was buried so deep he could barely breathe. But he wasn’t complaining.
"Clara," Ryan said from somewhere behind them. "You’re suffocating him."
"What? No I’m not." She squeezed tighter. "He’s fine."
Clara released him, stepping back with a bright smile. Her cheeks were slightly pink.
"It’s good to see you too," Lucian said, his voice slightly hoarse.
The main hall had gone silent.
Two hundred students stared at the scene with expressions ranging from disbelief to outright shock. Clara Duncan — the Ice Queen, the untouchable beauty, the girl who’d frozen a senior’s legs solid for trying to ask her out — was smiling at a boy. A boy who wasn’t her brother.
Her fanboys expressions changed as a wave of hostile intent rolling through the crowd like a physical force. Dozens of male students, their eyes fixed on him with undisguised hatred. If looks could kill, he’d have been reduced to ash on the spot.
"What the fuck did you just do?!"
Charles’s voice cut through the tension like a blade. He was pointing at Lucian, finger trembling with rage, flame flickering around his knuckles.
Lucian turned to him. "I’m pretty sure I knocked."
He tilted his head, smile widening.
"But since no one opened up..." He spread his hands, gesturing to the destroyed doorway behind him. "I invited myself in."
Clara smiled.
Charles face contorted.
"YOU—!"
A fireball roared toward Lucian’s face.
Clara raised her hand. A wall of ice materialized between them, and the fireball slammed into it with a hiss of steam and cracking frost.
"Charles," Clara said, her voice dropping back to glacial temperatures. "Don’t."
"I’ll kill him! He destroyed our—"
A pressure crashed down. A weight that settled over every person in the hall, pressing down on their shoulders, their chests, their very souls. The weaker students dropped to their knees. Charles’s fireball sputtered and died. Clara’s ice wall cracked and shattered.
A young man descended the grand staircase at the far end of the hall — tall, handsome in a sharp, angular way, with dark hair swept back from a high forehead and eyes the color of storm clouds. He moved with the unhurried confidence.
Beside him, a girl with vivid red hair followed. Smaller, quieter, her posture deferential but her gaze sharp and watchful.
Charles and his entire group bowed immediately. Heads down. Shoulders hunched.
"President," Charles muttered.
Lucian’s eyes shifted to gold.
╔══════════════════════════╗
║ ◀ EYES OF THE ETERNALS ▶ ║
║ ───────────────────────── ║
║ Name: Bastien Xavier ║
║ Age: 20 ║
║ Race: Human ║
║ Bloodline: Nil ║
║ Cultivation: Early Core Realm ║
║ Mana: 9,000 / 9,000 MPU ║
║ ───────────────────────── ║
║ Abilities: ║
║ └─ Lightning Manipulation — A-Rank ║
║ ───────────────────────── ║
║ Name: Rose Chevalier ║
║ Age: 19 ║
║ Race: Human ║
║ Bloodline: Bastion (10% awakened) ║
║ Cultivation: Peak Neophyte Realm ║
║ Mana: 3,800 / 3,800 MPU ║
║ ───────────────────────── ║
║ Abilities: ║
║ └─ Aegis — A-Rank ║
║ ───────────────────────── ║
║ Bloodline Note: Bastion grants defensive enhancement & barrier proficiency. ║
╚═════════════════════╝
Early Core Realm. And someone with a bloodline.
Lucian’s eyebrow rose. A Core Realm cultivator in a school. Not impossible — some prodigies broke through young — but rare enough to be noteworthy. In a straight fight, Lucian would be crushed.
For now.
He filed the information away and leaned toward Clara. "Who’s that?"
"School president," Clara murmured back. "Former school president, I guess. Can’t really call this a school anymore."
Bastien reached the ground floor and stopped, his storm-grey eyes sweeping the scene — the destroyed door, the frost-covered floor, the cowering students, the silver-haired stranger standing beside Clara.
"What is this charade?" His voice was calm.
Charles straightened immediately, pointing at Lucian. "That useless kid destroyed our door! He just — he just ripped it off its hinges! The barrier Rosa spent all her mana on—"
As if on cue, a groan echoed from the hallway. Three normal zombies shuffled through the destroyed doorway, drawn by the sound and movement.
Bastien didn’t look at them.
He raised one finger.
CRACK! BOOM! CRACK!
Three bolts of lightning erupted from the tip of his finger, each one striking a zombie with surgical precision. The bodies seized, smoked, and dropped — charred, twitching, very dead.
The smell of burnt flesh filled the hall.
Bastien lowered his finger and looked at Lucian.
"And what are you going to do about the door?"
Lucian met his gaze. Calm and unbothered. Amused, even.
"It can be fixed easily, of course." He turned, scanning the crowd with golden eyes until he found who he was looking for — a young man near the back, trying to make himself invisible. "That dude over there has heat vision. D-rank, but sufficient for welding metal back together. Or—" He turned back to Bastien. "You could use your lightning. I’m sure a Core Realm cultivator such as yourself has that level of precision."
A murmur rippled through the crowd. The audacity — a Mid Neophyte telling an Early Core Realm how to use his own ability.
Lucian wasn’t done.
"And also," he continued, glancing at the red-haired girl beside Bastien, "I’ll help Rose put up an even better barrier than the one that was there before."
Rose blinked, clearly surprised at being addressed directly.
Bastien stared at Lucian for a long moment. His expression didn’t change — that same calm, unreadable mask — but something flickered in his storm-grey eyes.
"You are quite arrogant," Bastien said quietly, "for a weakling."
