Chapter 150: Chapter 150: Academy’s Entrance Phase One [4]
"Why did you do that?" Rei shouted.
The biscuit was still in the air, a gold streak tumbling toward the far end of the hall while half the scramble pack broke into a fresh sprint.
I walked forward through the gap they left behind and caught Rei’s forearm, lifting her from the partial crouch she’d landed in after the palm-check.
"Was it really worth it?" she demanded, on her feet now, braid coming loose.
"Then all our training goes to waste."
"We trained to fight tho."
"But still..."
"Also, I didn’t abandon anything."
"Huh?"
Even Gianna, steadying Rei’s other side out of habit, looked at me like I’d grown a second head.
"What do you mean?"
I opened my palms.
A thin spatial chain, blue, fine as wire, almost invisible unless you knew how to look, still ran from the inside of my wrist out across the floor in a long, lazy arc.
The far end was looped through a micro-link I’d set against the biscuit the moment it had sat under my boot.
Not a full Submission binding or a power projection loud enough to trip Laila’s hall rules.
A technique-level tether. A cheat that lived in the gap between "no powers" and "use your mind."
Right as the thickest part of the candidate wave committed to the corner, I pulled it back.
The biscuit jerked mid-flight like a fishhook had found it, reversed, and came racing back along the chain’s line toward my hand.
"Revien...!"
Rei broke into a bright, startled giggle.
Gianna’s mouth curved despite herself, sharp, approving, a little dangerous.
"You said it wasn’t worth it," Rei said, already grinning.
"Not winning," I answered.
"Playing these students is definitely worth it."
I could feel Laila’s stare from the stage.
Not impressed.
If anything, the weight of it said she disliked exactly this flavor of casual, someone treating a future-defining token like a toy because he could.
The observation boxes above us seemed to lean in another degree.
I didn’t care about her opinion and waited for the biscuit.
Once it hit my palm, the five-second clock would arm again.
This time the pack was strung out, wrong-footed, half of them still facing the wrong wall.
An easy finish if I wanted it.
What should I do?
Should I let this be an effortless win for us?
The thought had barely formed when something in the line cracked.
Not in the air.
But in the connection of power.
My chain went slack with a sensation like a plucked string snapping against bone.
The pull died mid-motion.
For a fraction of a second the biscuit hung free again— 𝘧𝓇ℯℴ𝓂
—and another chain took it.
Same structure. Same biting logic. Wrong color.
Instead of my soothing blue, the chains were red, now connected to a different host.
[Alert: Foreign binding signature detected]
[Pattern match: Submission-analogue / Technique-tier]
[Source: Unknown — High precision]
[Host tether: Severed]
[Advisory: Replication or parallel architecture]
The red links drew taut and carried the gold in a clean lateral yank, away from me, away from the recovering scrum, into the right-hand corner of the space where I had been standing.
I hadn’t seen her.
Not when Rei climbed. Not during the hulk’s blind thrashing. Not when the stretched woman went flying.
She had simply been present the way a blade is present in a drawer, out of sight until the hand closes.
White hair. Red eyes. Posture composed enough to make the surrounding chaos look like an insult she had chosen not to acknowledge.
Giselle Kestava.
The biscuit settled into her palm as if it had always belonged there.
She looked at it once.
Then she put it down on the floor at her feet and simply stood.
Thud.
No one moved to take it.
Neither the bubble gum women team nor the Hulk nor the elongated woman with the wrong shoulder.
The nearest candidates froze in a ragged circle, instinct overriding greed hard enough that the gold sat untouched in open air.
"The fuck?" Rei hissed.
"Those idiots—"
She started forward.
Gianna’s hand locked on her elbow.
"Don’t."
"Why?"
"It’s not worth it."
"Gia, she can’t use powers."
"And she knew that exactly."
Gianna’s voice stayed low, controlled, primary-anchor steady even while the hall’s attention rearranged itself around a single quiet figure.
"She didn’t need to hold it. She only needed everyone else to understand they weren’t allowed to."
On the stage, Laila Thornsworn watched the display and smiled, small, genuine, the first expression she had worn that looked like pleasure instead of sorting.
A green-haired girl detached from a cluster near the observation line and walked into the open space as if the frozen candidates were furniture.
She didn’t look at the red chain residue still fading from the air. She bent, picked up the biscuit, and rose in one motion.
Five seconds.
She held it where everyone could see, eyes flicking once to Giselle.
But not one of them moved to take it from her.
Giselle smiled back, not wide, not kind.
Acknowledgment between predators who had already finished the interesting part of the hunt.
Laila’s voice carried without strain.
"And the test concludes. Student Seung Ah Hyun and her support, Kim Sun Rok, have successfully cleared the preliminary and are now provisionally selected for academy classes. Congratulations."
A clean chime marked the record.
Seung Ah turned the gold once between her fingers, then looked toward the stage.
"I will be waiting."
Giselle nodded once.
Then she turned.
Her red eyes found mine across the thinning chaos, across Gianna’s still-raised guard and Rei’s half-step of frustrated momentum, across the broken blue line of a chain that had been copied and cut in the same breath.
Our gazes met.
All I could hear, sudden and sharp as if Jenna had spoken into the bone behind my ear, was the warning from a quieter room in another sector:
Do not approach.
Do not challenge for reputation.
Play the rules, not your pride.
Giselle held the look a second longer than courtesy required.
Then she looked away first, not in retreat. In dismissal.
As if the man who had turned a hall full of students into a game had just learned that someone else could play the same board without raising her voice.
[Foreign signature: Withdrawn]
[Note: Technique replication exceeds recorded Acolyte parameters]
[Host cover integrity: Strained under observation]
Rei looked at me, concerned.
"Are you scared, Revien?"
"Not exactly. Just curious. She interrupted my line. I will drain her core if we ever cross paths in the scramble."
It wasn’t hostility.
The fact that Giselle was able to intercept my power means she read me like a book.
And I absolutely despise being read.