Chapter 19: The First Confrontation

When Cale went into the bathroom, he looked at himself in the mirror. There was a big gash on his nose. The bottom of his nose was red because it had bled and there were blood stains on his white T-shirt.

Normally Cale would have been able to heal the wound with chaos energy, but he decided against it as it would only cause suspicion if everyone saw his nose healed after seeing it split open.

He sighed and turned on the faucet to wash the blood from his face. After leaving the sink, he went into the room he saw was the infirmary, where a nurse applied the cream that made his wound heal faster to his nose and put a band-aid on it.

He went to the changing room to change out of his bloody T-shirt. Realizing that he was sweating profusely, he decided to take a short shower instead of changing. After a short fifteen minute shower, he was getting dressed when the door opened and he was left with only the t-shirt over his arms.

"This is the men's locker room," Cale said as he put on the shirt and looked at the girl with indifferent eyes.

"What are you doing here?" Amy asked, and Cale could hear a hint of anger in her voice.

"I was getting dressed, as you can see."

"Don't play dumb, you know what I mean!" Amy raised her voice involuntarily and took a deep breath to control herself. The anger she was feeling right now was too much.

"No, no, I don't," Cale said, tilting his head to the side to look at her.

"What the hell are you doing coming back into my life!" Amy frowned when Cale chuckled as if he'd heard something funny.

"Don't put yourself on such a pedestal, sis," he said, looking at her with a wry smile on him face. "Seeing you think it's all about you, as always," he said and shook his head. "It's nice to realize you haven't changed, but the world doesn't revolve around you, Amy."

"Then tell me what you're doing here!" Cale's words hurt her ego.

"Since when do I answer to you?" Cale said, and Amy unconsciously took a step back when he gave her a creepy look.

When Cale noticed her movement, Amy swallowed and glared back at him. "Amy, even though you don't want to be seen with me, the first time you see me, you're there," he said with a grin and walked towards her.

He put his hand on her shoulder and leaned in close to her ear. "What do you think your fiancé would think if he saw you alone with another man?" he asked and Amy's eyes flickered. "Don't hang around me if you don't want them to know I'm your brother," he said in a cold voice.

Cale walked past her and Amy sat on the bench with trembling legs. Even though she didn't want to, Amy knew he was right. If Elliot saw her here alone with him, he would get suspicious and she would find herself in a situation she didn't want.

"God damn it! Why are you even here?"

Cale walked out of the locker room, frustrated and not wanting all eyes to be on him, so he left the training area and went to his room.

The conversation with Amy bothered him in the corner of his heart, but he ignored it. He had more pressing problems than Amy right now.

Even though his training had ended in injury, Cale had been able to get the results he wanted, up to a point. During the training he had cleared his mind and focused only on feeling through all his opened senses.

Focusing on all of them at once put pressure on his brain, so he wanted to go in one go. Limitless Emptiness was a skill that required him to constantly keep his mind open. This meant that Cale's mind was alert to all kinds of stimuli. This made Cale tired and prevented him from using the skill for a long time.

Cale had to train himself to keep using such a useful skill. So when he arrived on a hill behind the academy in the falling snow, the first thing he did was to sit down and reactivate the skill.

Closing his eyes and focusing, he again concentrated on the sense of touch, as he had done at the training ground. He focused on feeling with his whole being. He focused on everything animate and inanimate because even inanimate things have a very low energy.

On the snowy hill, far away from the eyes, he felt among the clouds that he could touch if he stretched out his hand. The trees, the creatures hibernating under the ground, the slow fall of each falling snowflake...

Every second his focus increased, he felt it more and more. He built a barrier around himself in his mind to avoid feeling the cold. After a short while, the bone-deep cold no longer affected him, but he continued to feel it.

To use the second step, the pulling force, he called the small stones he felt in the forest behind him towards him. It was still difficult for him to use push and pull. So he stayed focused even though he was bleeding from his nose.

He opened his eyes when he felt something rushing towards him. His eyes widened as dozens of large and small ones rushed towards him. He tried to stop but couldn't avoid a few stones hitting his head.

"Shit!"

With that, Cale canceled the skill he had some control over and left for his room.

***

Damien had left the training ground with Sylvie and Veronica, following Amy and Elliot who had left ahead.

His face was slightly flushed because he had pushed himself too hard in training. Nevertheless, the admiring looks of the girls who gave him a brief glance were noticeable.

"Hey, what do you think that injured boy was doing?" Sylvie asked the two curiously.

"Pfft!"

"What?" Sylvie asked a laughing Veronica.

"No, I just remembered her split nose when he was paying for him stupidity" Damien frowned when she laughed.

"It's not funny Veronica."

"Yes, yes, Mr. Right," she said, waving her hand.

"What were those two thinking when they were doing really stupid things like that!" Sylvie grimaced as she remembered Terry and Nevil.

"They were punished at a level appropriate to what they did," Damien shrugged his shoulders.

He knew the Academy wouldn't want to antagonize influential members of the elite families from the next door family for someone who didn't know where he came from.

"This wouldn't have happened if that idiot hadn't just sat there and exposed himself" Veronica finished as they saw Cale wiping the blood from his nose.

He was heading towards the dorms, oblivious to the strange looks he was getting.

"A freak shows himself everywhere," Veronica laughed at Sylvie who muttered.

Damien looked thoughtfully at Cale's back as he left. Even if no one understood, Damien knew that a person couldn't sweat that much just sitting there. Whatever Cale was doing was something they didn't know about.

Damien frowned with a feeling of unease he couldn't understand. He had always been a boy who was considered a genius. Ever since he was little, he had been praised for his talent and swordsmanship by family, friends and everyone who knew him.

Damien had been like that for as long as he could remember. Those who called him a genius, those who praised him and those who tried to be good for him...

Yet Damien didn't think it was enough. He had always strived to be the best and in this exam he had to live up to the expectations many people had for him.

"What will the exam be like?"

"I think they will test our strength in duels rather than theory," Veronica said.

"I'm sure Damien will come first," Sylvie said with a smile as she took Damien's arm, startling him out of his thoughts.

"Who else could it be but him?" Veronica smiled wryly as if it was something funny.

'Yes, yes that's how it should be'

He was the best. It was not possible for someone better than him to emerge. While his family gave him every opportunity, he couldn't lose.

"Of course, I will do my best in the exam," he said with a sweet smile on his face and his humble words touched the hearts of two young girls and made them smile.

***

After leaving the training ground, Hope Duncan went straight to her room and took a bath. After drying her wet hair because she was tired, she sat on her bed to read her monster book. But no matter how much Hope read, she couldn't focus.

In the six months since she had gotten out of the hospital, she had wanted to hear news about Cale, but after the incident, information and news videos about Cale had been removed from the internet.

Hope had found it strange, but she hadn't dwelled on it and it had slipped from her mind. She didn't expect to see him here now. And wounded again.

She planned to thank him for saving her when she saw him, but Cale didn't seem to notice her. It would be strange if he remembered anyway. She didn't expect him to remember a girl he had seen for a moment when even he had forgotten her.

'I still want to thank him'

When she found it difficult to read, she closed the book and lay down on her bed, leaving it next to her pillow. When her eyes closed from exhaustion, she soon fell asleep.