The orchestra of artillery blasts and waves of bullets played the bittersweet song of death and destruction, as the entrenched troops were barely kept awake by the nearby artillery fire. The sun hadn’t been seen for at least a hundred days, only the overcasting smoke and dust from their failed prayers.

The once green fields filled with the aroma of life had become the harvester of breaths, seething with the stench of death. The skyscrapers in the distance had turned into the ruins of a once thriving city, just like the rest of the planet. War wasn’t hell, hell was hot. War was a frozen wasteland that made your blood pause and freeze at once, it was a land that was indifferent to who you were, it was where the sight of the blind and the voice of the mute went. No, war wasn’t hell, it was the icy depths beneath it.

Trench warfare had made a comeback for defensive confrontations in large open areas, as most armored vehicles would be shot down by an artillery shell or a medium laser in mere seconds. Of course the previous physical faults of trench warfare were patched up, as they weren’t as narrow and damp, and they would be systematically dug in mere minutes, no longer requiring much manual labor. However, the mental burdens still existed, as soldiers would be forced to stay in one place for indefinite lengths of time with no contact to the outside world, while facing constant threats of death.

“Just a few more days until the reinforcements, Nolan… just a few days…” A scrawny teen sat in the trench with his teary baggy eyes staring at the dust covered skies. He tried to moisten his cracked lips as he realized that even his tongue didn’t have enough saliva. His hand that was full of scrapes and either broken or missing fingernails reached for the chest pocket of his baggy light forest green uniform, slowly pulling out a picture of a huge and bear-sized young man giving an ecstatic smile while wrapping his giant arms around the grimacing scrawny teen.

The scrawny teen gave a tearful smile at the picture until he remembered what Nolan had last told him, what his brother had last told him in his arms, “While… I’m gone… Never let go of what really matters to you, never let go of what matters of you… Good… luck…” It was after that when he first had smelled it, when that bittersweet smell first grazed against him… the smell of death...

---North Central High School - Gym---

Standing up from his kneeling and quick daze, Mr. Flanigan’s stern expression shrouded his face once again. Kezner looked around in a groggy state as everyone looked at him like he was a damn monster. At this point it didn’t matter what his status actually was, if there was one thing to learn from today’s lesson, it was don’t mess with the gray-haired guy or else you’ll be boiled alive.

Arlean had woken up a minute after being forcefully removed from the pressure chamber and was even more confused since she had looked at Kezner’s report. “I thought that the report was just a cover story, but if it was, why would he lose control over a few personal insults? The insults do correspond with the cover story… could they be true? But then why does the Governor have her eye on him, though he is powerful, he’s not strong enough to be of any use to her…”

She slowly started piecing things together, realizing that he actually might just be a poor youth with a crappy past, she was even more set on courting him. A person like him would climb up the ranks by being favored by the Governor while easy to manipulate by using his emotions to court. Though Arlean was thinking like a selfish prick, she was honestly thinking about the livelihood and future of the Family. She was more than willing to sell herself to whatever major Clan or Duke Clan for the preservation and growth of her Family.

It only took a minute for everyone to collect themselves and line back up without Mr. Flanigan saying anything, it was slowly getting engraved into their heads. Being pressed by this beast was scarier than any extra homework or detention.

“Hmmm… good.” Mr. Flanigan gave his first words of approval, while rubbing his cleanly shaved face, “I’ll count this round as a draw, both teams get a point.”

Though some people were discontent since it was Mr. Flanigan’s intervention that had caused Kezner to lose control, they just kept their mouths shut. They knew that their complaints would do nothing but enrage the currently calmed beast, so they could only roll with the punches.

“Alright, we have two more tests to complete in 15 minutes, so if anyone dares to waste any time, I won’t hesitate to fail you for the rest of the year, first and final warning!” Mr. Flanigan warned as he tapped his holo-watch once more. At this point Kezner had truly awakened from his stupor as he had finally recalled and comprehended what his ability had told him. He learned that after his ability took control of his body, he advanced by another minor stage to the 4th Foundational Stage, increasing his strength and his Energy Aperture’s size, a huge boon to an anomaly like Kezner.

A 50 meter track had appeared in another corner of the gym, “This test should take five minutes at most, even if you had to crawl with your teeth and dig with your noses! You will each take a turn sprinting 50 meters and back, but the winner of the round will be the faster team average! I just hope that this time, the track could come back unscathed!”

Bringing everyone’s attention to the new and clean track then to the demolished target and pressure chamber, finally to Kezner. All of their eyes pleaded for nothing to happen to the track, as they took Mr. Flanigan’s words as a threat rather than an off-hand comment. Kezner could only shrug and try his best not to destroy it.

Olivia walked up to the track and started her sprint, where she quickly realized that she could use her ability to help, so far, the past two tests had related to their abilities rather than their physical states. So Olivia used her average water ability, turned it into ice, and slid on it while sprinting, she had been doing this for years so it felt natural. This inspired many others to use their abilities after her, all except Kezner, Arlean, and two other students named Bryan and Jasmine.

Bryan and Jasmine came from lower-class households and were pretty average students, so they didn’t have much to offer. What they had in common with Kezner and Arlean was the elements used, as Jasmine had a fire ability, while Bryan had a lightning ability. Fire and lightning abilities, in simple terms, didn’t have enough force to propel a person forward, even if they did hold a lot of momentum. If we took Gareth, an earth ability user for example, he could move himself forward by moving the ground underneath him. Other than water and earth, there was wind, an element centered around momentum. Britt, though husky, was pretty speedy as he used his ability to have all of the surrounding air propel him forward, giving him one of the top speeds.

Bryan and Jasmine had the lowest times, while Arlean was right after them since she was physically stronger than them, giving her a slightly better time. After Arlean went, it was finally Kezner’s turn. Everyone was already predicting that Arlean’s team had won this round as they not only had Britt, but Kezner’s team had both Bryan and Jasmine, pulling down the average. However, against everyone’s expectation, Kezner didn’t plan on using his ability, only his physical prowess. Even Body Cultivators couldn’t compete by using their physical power at the Foundational Stage, only the Avatar Stage truly started building up the body.

Actually, Kezner had taught himself a neat trick when using his body. If he manipulated his Natural Energy intake into doubling, converting it into Body Energy then have the excess leak out of his body while covering the excess with his Spirit Energy. With this extraordinary amount of Body Energy under his control, he was able to surround it around any of his limbs to increase his raw power output, in this case, it would be his legs.

Loosening his limbs, Kezner was going to sprint like his life was on the line. Though, he had to consider another problem, the turn. You see, he was not only supposed to sprint the 50 meters, he had to turn around and sprint the 50 meters again, this was the true test of agility. So if he wasn’t able to stop his acceleration in time, he would sprint straight into a wall. Kezner didn’t have to take it as seriously as he had, but he was aiming for the top, he either grabbed every meager piece of destiny he could possibly gather, or he could miss every opportunity and throw his future out of the window.

Taking a deep breath, he waited for Mr. Flanigan to blow his whistle, only to be met with Mr. Flanigan’s verbal abuse one more time. “Kid, I hope you don’t expect to amount to anything, your parents sure didn’t!” Kezner still hadn’t forgiven Mr. Flanigan for earlier and now he was only pouring gallons of gas on the already burning fire of hate.

Kezner didn’t know what to do now, but he sure as hell couldn’t let it get the better of him like last time, or else he would definitely explode this time! His breathing grew heavy as Mr. Flanigan was unrelenting, until he just decided to start the sprint anyways. Like a spring finally let loose, he moved at an extreme speed, with the track being sprinkled with indents of his foot that got progressively deeper. At the halfway point, he knew that he might have gone a little too far as he couldn’t reign the energy back in, like a bull halfway into its charge, he just kept shooting.

Everyone started sweating when they saw the deep indentations on the track, keep in mind, although the Foundational Stage made you stronger than any regular person, you weren’t able to damage such a dense stone track until at least the 7th Foundational Stage, and even then, it wouldn’t be near this deep. Even Mr. Flanigan had to pause in bewilderment, “What the…”

Just as Kezner reached the turn, he knew it was too late to decelerate, so he came up with the next best thing, and instead of stepping and creating an indentation, Kezner stomped with all of his might. This forced his entire leg to create and fall into the ground. Raising it back up, he regathered his energy, turned around, and decided to just continue with what he had been doing.

Everyone’s sweat started to flood their clothing as they realized that he had enough strength to puncture through at least 3ft of highly dense stone, normally this would basically break your entire leg and put your body into shock from instantly bulldozing through such thick material. However, Kezner was able to just get up from it like he accidently stepped on a slight dip on the sidewalk.

Kezner had turned out to have the best time out of everyone, with a sprint of 7 seconds. He didn’t want to show off his power, he just didn’t want to lose, winning a battle was better than losing the war. As his team cheered, Arlean’s team could only blame themselves for not picking Kezner’s line, but regretting never solved anything, so they silently decided to improve themselves rather than blame anyone else.

However, it didn’t matter if Kezner won or not, his team was bound to lose before he even started running. Their average was a lot worse than Arlean’s team, as Arlean’s team only had Arlean substantially dragging them down, while the rest of her team was full of earth, wind, and water ability users.

“Arlean’s Team wins this round, bringing them neck-and-neck with Kezner’s Team, with the winner decided by the dexterity test!” Olivia announced, as she finished writing down the scores.

Everyone quickly got back into their lines. Kezner was slightly tired after expending so much energy all in one go, he had to learn how to efficiently use his energy.

“Forget the dexterity test, I just thought of something interesting for you maggots!” The beast had a sly smile on his face as his eyes slightly squinted, staring at Kezner. “Since we only have 10 minutes left, I’ll have you all spar against each other, one exchange, no lethality!”

This came as a shock to everyone, as they all looked at Arlean in pity. After learning about Kezner’s lack of control of the lethality of his ability, many assumed Arlean as a deadman. Knowing Mr. Flanigan’s brutal methods, he was going to risk Arlean’s life in order to taunt Kezner. Arlean only gulped and looked at Kezner as her eyes pleaded for him to not go overboard like he had in all of his tests. Kezner frowned at Mr. Flanigan’s approach, he couldn’t counteract Arlean’s ability with pure physical prowess, it could only add more power into his body, not defend, not yet at least. Using his flames would lead to a draw but he couldn’t risk using it as Mr. Flanigan would most likely force it to turn black. Plus he wanted to learn how to use his ability properly rather than as a flame, it was important to learn how your ability worked rather than to learn how to work with your ability.

Kezner had already ruled out two of his options, leaving him with two more to think about. He could use Soul Energy but an experienced man like Mr. Flanigan would catch on quickly, even Kezner couldn’t read out his stage, meaning he either had something that muted the energy coming off of him, or he was at least in the Avatar Stage. His last option was to use Spirit Energy, but he definitely didn’t want to resort to it. Out of all three of his energies, currently, Spirit Energy was the scariest, as to attack with it would mean to attack another person’s mind, a huge problem. The mind was still a delicate part of the body, hit it the wrong way and you could be mentally ill for the rest of your life.

In this test, Olivia didn’t fight as she had nobody to spar with, leaving the two teams of seven. Mr. Flanigan directed who fought who, so he easily made it so Arlean and Kezner were the defining combatants. As lightning and fire weren’t resistant or effective against each other, this should have been an equal fight. The five core elements went; water was effective against fire, fire was effective against wind, wind was effective against earth, earth was effective against lightning, and lightning was effective against water. This symbolized a natural harmony that couldn’t be broken. Of course this didn’t include non-core elements such as ice, wood, and metal, which were branch elements. Water could naturally be turned into ice, while wood and metal could be derived from earth. Though, wood and metal could only be controlled by a few “special” folk, that preached their connection with rocks and plants.

Finally, it was time for Kezner and Arlean to face off, everyone expected this to be a one-sided slaughter, with Kezner’s Team winning and Arlean being sent to the hospital. Mr. Flanigan, on the other hand, had his arms crossed against his chest as his eyes lost focus, as if they were reminiscing about a distant past. Quickly pulling himself out of it, Mr. Flanigan announced the start of the final round.

If this was the usual school fight everyone would be recording and sending it to everyone and their grandmothers, but it was silently agreed not to. They were commoners with barely any standing in society, recording the heiress of the Ocano Family get brutally slaughtered by a normal looking young man would make them lose face. Families and Clans couldn’t bear their reputations to be tarnished in the slightest or they would come after you like you killed their ancestors.

As they both stood 10 meters away, Arlean was planning to give it her all, while Kezner was planning on holding back. Arlean started by giving the strongest attack that she had mastered, but it wasn’t Martial Arts. Getting into a horseback stance and pointing her right hand’s index and middle fingers at Kezner while pointing her left hand’s index and middle fingers at an angle towards the ceiling. Taking a deep breath, she let the Natural Energy refine as fast as possible, intaking fresh energy from her surroundings would hold more Natural Energy from the Natural Law of Lightning than if she held it in her Energy Aperture all the time.

Her left hand’s two fingertips started glowing as lilac lightning surrounded them and then coiled around her left arm, slithered past her chest and back, then to her right arm until they reached her fingertips that were facing Kezner. With all of this going down, Kezner rushed towards her with his legs covered in Body Energy, it would have been quick but to everyone it was as if everything was in slow motion. However, just as he got as close as he needed to be, a concentrated ray of lilac lightning made its way towards his chest.

Out of instinct, Kezner pushed his hands out in an attempt in throwing his gray flames to cancel it out, but it was then that he heard Mr. Flanigan’s voice rang out, however he didn’t have time to finish his sentence when Kezner retracted his flames, and decided to focus on dodging and getting up close before attacking. Moving as much Body Energy to his moving legs, Kezner then noticed a second ray of lilac lightning coming from Arlean’s left hand.

“Shit.”