Alright, it's my turn now. As I stood up from my spot...

"Heh, so the Dud finally worked up the courage to go for it, this should be good," Laughed Tairo condescendingly.

​​

"Wait, so a Dud really did pass the entrance exam? I thought that was just a rumor," Exclaimed Misaki in surprise.

"Haha, that's hilarious," Chuckled Makoto with a smirk.

Tch, how annoying. To my surprise, a few of the others looked at those three disapprovingly, while some looked indifferent. At any rate, no one else joined in, guess not all Prodigies were arrogant assholes. I suppose I should have figured, my sister was also a Prodigy, after all.

"," I mumbled inaudibly under my breath.

I decided to ignore the comments and stepped forward, heading for the middle, but as I reached the edge of the sidelines, I felt myself losing my balance and falling forward, I quickly put my palms out in front of me to keep my face from hitting the ground.

"How pathetic, the little Dud couldn't even avoid being tripped, so sad!" Laughed Tairo, who had stuck his leg out in my path.

"Hey, that was kinda uncalled for...," Alex spoke up with a frown.

"Yeah, that wasn't cool, man," Agreed Andre with a look of disdain.

Tch, I'd been too busy focusing on ignoring them to pay attention. Whatever, this never happened...

"," I grumbled, returning back to a few seconds ago.

Alright, this time, I'll get the last laugh. I stood up and walked towards the training area, acting the same way I did before, showing no signs that I was expecting to get tripped. Wait for it...

In my peripheral, I saw Tairo start to move...almost there...now!

I swiftly turned my gaze downwards, his outstretched leg inches in front of me. I could step over it and resolve this peacefully, but fuck that. As I took a step forward, I raised my foot over his leg and...stomped down on it as hard as I could without making it obvious that I did it deliberately.

"Aaargghhhhh!!!" He yelled in pain, as I pretended to stumble with a surprised look on my face.

"Oh, my bad...your annoying chatter was so distracting that I wasn't watching where I was going. But what's wrong, did a frail little Dud really hurt a mighty Prodigy like yourself?" I inquired in an innocent tone.

One of the others stifled a laugh and tried to pass it off as a cough, while a few others snickered quietly.

"Y-you bastard, you did that on purpose, didn't you!?"

"Hm? I have no idea what you're talking about."

I stopped myself from smirking by biting the inside of my lower lip and continued walking towards the instructor, switching my weapons' output settings into Phantom Mode, while also increasing the output setting on my X-Blasters to the maximum.

"Okay, whenever you're ready," Said the instructor, clicking his pincers a couple of times.

Here goes...

I sprinted towards him rapidly, taking out one of my X-Blades with my left hand. I flung it straight at him, he responded by deflecting it up into the air using his stinger. I then fired a few shots from my X-Blasters at him, as he brought his pincers in front of himself to block my Phantom energy bullets. Since I had increased the output to the maximum, the force upon impact made him stumble back a bit.

I put on a burst of speed and shot towards him, springing up as high as I could as I neared him. The X-Blade he'd deflected up earlier was falling back down, it still had about five seconds before it would disappear, and the base of his balance wasn't stable...as the X-Blade dropped within my reach, I spun my body across in mid-air and slammed my foot against the back of the handle, kicking it down at him while simultaneously firing a barrage of shots.

The blade pierced into his left pincer, cracking it out from the point of impact and staying embedded, though the blade wouldn't stay manifested for more than another couple of seconds. The shots I fired forced him down onto one knee, and I shifted my weight across while still in mid-air, slamming my foot down at him. He began to whip his stinger towards me, but I was expecting that, and deflected it away with two well-aimed shots at the end of it, my right foot slamming down onto his left shoulder uninterrupted.

I then quickly sprang away and got some distance, as my X-Blade dissipated and the handle fell off his pincer. He fixed the cracks in his Manifestation and shot towards me, leaping up and swinging his stinger down at me as he closed the gap, I evaded it by swiftly rolling forward till I was positioned under him, and fired a barrage of shots straight up at near point blank range.

He was unable to avoid it since he was in mid-air, keeping his legs from getting hit by positioning his stinger below him, taking the brunt of my attack, severely cracking the Manifestation...but despite the damage, I wasn't able to destabilize it, his level of concentration was deceptively strong.

I backed away and fired a few shots at his back as he landed, he swiftly spun around with a quick shuffle of his feet and blocked my attacks using his pincers, before countering with a couple of fireballs. I ducked backwards under them, using the momentum to flip back while firing another handful of shots, which he blocked again using his pincers. My shots cracked them all over again, which he was quick to fix.

Repairing damage to his Manifestations had to consume some extra XFE, in which case, I'll move in close and see how I do against his grappling techniques, I was curious to see if I could counter those...I'll create a Save point now and if he gets me in a lock or tackle, I'll use Load to go back and-.

"Okay, that's enough. Next!"

...never mind, I guess.

I walked over and picked up my X-Blade that had fallen earlier...hm, the handle was slightly cracked but I don't think it was broken or anything. Kicking it down had been a bit reckless, I hadn't planned to do that and only did it because he deflected it upwards, it probably wouldn't have even crossed my mind if he'd deflected it down or off to the side.

Anyway, I headed back to the sidelines, noticing that more than few pairs of eyes were on me. I ignored the attention and sat back down, as the final person stood up and stepped forward. Kiran Sigdel, the guy who had picked a spot in the classroom next to me, with the black face-mask and dark blue hoodie.

"Alright, last one! Let's wrap this up," The instructor declared, with a look of relief.

"Yeah, let's get this over with," Kiran muttered while scratching the back of his head with a yawn, "."

A green energy swatter appeared in his hand, I'd say bigger than a tennis racket...seriously, his Primary Manifestation was an oversized fly swatter? He'd placed eleventh in the first stage of the entrance exam, and obviously won his second stage duel, which meant that he had to have some degree of skill...but a swatter, really?

He walked towards the instructor with no visible intent or aggression, he was absolutely oozing lethargy...he raised his swatter, and it rapidly began extending and expanding, with each side of the flat square end of it about twenty-five meters long...in other words, it was massive.

The instructor's eyes widened in alarm and he begun to spring away...but it was no use, Kiran slammed the swatter down with a whip of his wrist, pressing the instructor's arms down to the ground...till he deactivated his Manifestation and broke free, since the Phantom Mode swatter only pinned down his Phantom Mode XFE Manifestations, not his physical body.

"Well...that was embarrassing. But at least it's over. You can all go home now," Declared the instructor, letting out a dramatic sigh of relief.

Sweet, glad that's over. I stood up and headed for the exit, after the instructor wasted no time in leaving the training hall. I guess today had been a sort of follow-up to the entrance exam, in order to gauge what each of us were capable of. I'm assuming that the data they gather on us from the entrance exam was inadequate, since luck played a huge role in passing it...those with long-range and rapid-fire attack options at their disposal had the advantage in the first stage, and in the second stage, the right match-up could result in an easy win.

But today's exercise was different, all sixteen of us were made to fight an opponent who was stronger than us, which was arguably the best way to accurately gauge our capabilities. After all, even with Instructor Satou holding back, none of us actually landed a real, solid hit...well, except for Kiran at the end there. Sure, he was caught off-guard plenty of times, but his incredible reaction time and reflexes meant that he was always prepared to evade or counter at a split second.

Is that even humanly possible, I can't imagine my own reaction time getting that good no matter how hard I train. Oh, well, no sense in worrying about what I'm not capable of, I'll just focus and improve on what I am capable of. I had to say, I was looking forward to classes starting...seeing all those X-Abilities on display today got my blood pumping, I wanted to get stronger than all of them, while letting them believe that I'm nothing more than a Dud the whole time.

In the past, my life had put me through hardships thanks to factors that were completely out of my control, but things were different now, I'm much stronger than I used to be, and I had my X-Ability as well. I'll use both it and my natural abilities to slowly but surely get stronger and stronger, till I'm strong enough to achieve my goals. In the past, my life had constantly been thrown into disarray by factors entirely out of my control, and I planned to use my ability to make sure that won't happen again...the thing I wanted more than anything, even more than revenge...was control...control over everything...

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