Chapter 443: Warm Welcome
It was the night of the Ace Tournament’s final. The last face-off between my sister and Kaelron Vire, the other finalist, was scheduled to start in a couple of hours.
Cadets were already either cooped up in their dorms and impatiently seated before their TVs, or screaming themselves hoarse in the stands of the Grand Coliseum.
The atmosphere across the Academy campus was brimming with anticipation so thick I could physically feel it.
Everyone was waiting for the new Ace of Apex to be crowned — the culmination of weeks of brutal competition, shattered egos, and broken dreams.
Kaelron Vire was the favorite going into the match. He hadn’t lost a single fixture since the start of this tourney, while my sister had lost three in the early league stage and barely edged out a victory in the semi-finals to secure her spot on the grand stage.
It may sound bad, but she wasn’t ever actually the dark horse. The opposite, in fact. You see, there were more than a thousand first-years.
Even factoring out a rough hundred who didn’t participate for whatever reason, making it to the grand final of the Ace Tournament out of over nine hundred elite young Awakened was a commendable achievement.
Not to mention, there were multiple reverse fixtures and second-chance brackets designed to filter out anyone who just got lucky.
Believe me, as someone who watched all the important reruns and highlights, I could tell it was a long and exhausting road to the finale.
So for Thalia to make it to the end with only three defeats (none by knockouts, by the way — only technicalities) and one near-fatal draw that she somehow converted into a win, was nothing short of a miracle.
It was a win rate of ninety-seven percent across dozens of matches against the absolute cream of the crop.
Even I had to admit— that kind of consistency was jaw-dropping.
Yet, against someone like Kaelron, it still made her look like the underdog.
The guy, from what I had heard and seen of him, was a machine. He had cruised to the finals with zero losses.
Yes, he had about nine close calls. But a no-loss streak is still a no-loss streak. Some people were still convinced he was riding his luck. Others were already crowning him the champion.
Either way, one thing was certain: if my sister won against him, she’d pull off a big upset.
And I knew she would.
Not because I blindly believed in her, or anything like that. I was actually cheering for her to get beaten bloody tonight.
But I still knew she’d win because I knew Kaelron’s secret. And I knew my sister must’ve figured it out as well. If not by herself, then surely with Alice’s help.
You see, every lawfully registered Awakened had to explicitly state what their Origin Card was when they enrolled.
But it was a choice for them to reveal it to their peers.
Of course, some Cadets who were already popular, like yours truly, couldn’t possibly hide it even if they wanted to.
Half the world knew what I could do before I ever stepped foot on campus.
And even if they didn’t, once they saw me creating stone constructs from the ground up, they’d realize my power had something to do with either Earth Manipulation or Matter Reshaping.
It didn’t take a genius to put two and two together.
But Kaelron’s innate power was tricky. It allowed him to strip half the strength of anyone who deemed him an enemy and had fear in their hearts.
An insidious passive ability, especially in high-pressure duels.
Because the moment you stepped into the ring, with tens of thousands of people screaming all around and the weight of your future resting on your shoulders, a tiny voice in the back of your mind would inevitably whisper: What if I lose?
And the second that doubt crept in, the trap sprung.
Half your physical and mental reserves — your strength, your speed, your reaction time, your Essence output — would just evaporate, while Kaelron would still be perfectly fine.
That was why he had nine close calls.
The guys who pushed him to the brink were the ones who managed to suppress their fear for the first few minutes of the bout. But the moment they made a single mistake, the moment they panicked, it was over.
In addition to it, Kaelron would ingenuously hide the activation of this innate ability by simultaneously activating several Debuff and Enhancement Cards at the same time, making it hard to discern what his Origin Card truly was or if he had even deployed it.
It was a good party trick, but there was no way Alice or Thalia hadn’t figured it out by now.
So, yeah. I knew who was going to win.
But since everyone else didn’t, they were eagerly waiting for the match to begin.
I, on the other hand, was making my way to Ray’s new place with my friends. Alexia and Kang were already there. They left early because they had to buy party clothes.
Michael, Juliana, and I just made it to the lift before we started questioning if we were really at the right address.
The multi-storey building looked less like a luxury residential complex for wealthy scions and more like a repurposed military bunker that had been aesthetically gentrified.
The lobby was lined with reinforced steel paneling, and there was a huge security drone patrolling the ceiling that looked like it was packing live ammunition.
What kind of place was this?!
The elevator doors, which were thick enough to make me doubt they were salvaged from an old vault, parted with a pressurized hiss.
The three of us moved inside, punched the floor button for the penthouse, and felt a dizzy thrum fill the air as the lift shot upward.
"Wait, Essence Disruptors? There are Essence Disruptors installed in this elevator cab!" I muttered calmly, not at all panicking. "Are we sure Ray didn’t accidentally rent out a black site?!"
"Why do I have to be here?" Juliana sighed, her thumb lazily scrolling through what I was sure were memes on her phone.
"I know, right?!" I agreed, again, calmly. "This place is giving me heebie-jeebies!"
"I was talking about the party," she corrected without looking up. "But Ray did say he wanted to live somewhere ’secure’ after the Wilds."
"Secure is one thing. This place feels like it’s expecting an orbital strike," Michael laughed, smoothing away the seams of his coat.
The lift eventually chimed, a surprisingly melodic sound given the brutalist aesthetic of the building, and the doors slid open directly into a sprawling penthouse suite.
Nothing could’ve prepared me for the sight.
The interior was massive, dominated by floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the glowing neon expanse of the Academy campus.
Oh, and when I say this place was massive, I mean massive. It was practically a small hangar.
The floor was one continuous slab of polished marble that caught the reflection of the city lights outside, and the ceiling was high enough that a giant could’ve done backflips in here without bumping his head.
It completely lacked the cozy warmth of a standard home, but had this sleek, industrial luxury that made it seem like an overpriced bachelor pad.
There were no traditional couches or chairs.
Instead, the furniture looked like it had been carved out of solid blocks of black obsidian, accented by brushed steel and minimalist cushioned leather.
Off to one side, there were three locked rooms.
Off to another, a massive kitchen island hosted a spread of food that looked like it had been pilfered from a five-star buffet.
An array of high-end ambient light fixtures overhead bathed the room in cool mood lighting.
No walls or internal partitions interrupted the space otherwise, making it just one big, open area crowded by hundreds of teenagers snorting lines or drinking expensive beer like the world was ending tomorrow.
Even Juliana was stunned.
She put her phone back into the inner pocket of her leather jacket and sidled closer to me, as if using me to physically shield herself from the room.
Who was supposed to be whose bodyguard here?
"Scratch that black site theory of yours," she whispered. "I think he rented out a nightclub for antisocial billionaires."
At first, no one seemed to notice our silent entrance. But then, as if on cue, the loud background music stopped.
A few eyes turned our way. And then a few more.
"It’s them," murmured someone nearby, whispering too loudly to their friends.
From our flank, a small girl all but shoved some people aside to get to us.
Juliana tensed and quickly stepped in front of me to block her path, for once deciding to take her job seriously.
That was just happening when someone else roughly grabbed my arm. A boy, a couple of heads taller than me.
"Samael Theosbane," his dilated pupils peered into mine as he angrily growled my name in my face, far too close for my comfort.
Before I could make a move to dislocate his shoulder, he yanked my arm to pull me into a fierce embrace.
"Thank you," his shaky voice came muffled against my shoulder. "You saved my sister."
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