I was laid down, scrolling through my phone. It had been a couple hours since God of Absolute dropped the prophecy on me, and then I suddenly heard a voice.
"Everyone gather inside the meeting room, we have some new members," Toshiro's voice echoed inside my head.
Without wasting a second, I got up and headed to the meeting room, while others were coming behind me. We all entered and sat down.
The door opened.
Toshiro entered with the two new faces.
A boy and a girl, just about my age.
The boy had black messy hair, brown almond eyes that gave off an unnatural amount of terror and seemingly a false malice which wasn't directed at anyone—and also looked unintentional. His skin was white, and his face resembled Toshiro's but looked more handsome. His extremely eased out and loose body made him look like he didn't have any tension in the world, with his height being the same as mine. He emitted an aura of darkness which didn't seem evil, yet dangerous.
The girl had long blonde hair with a ponytail that barely held her silky hair together, with blue, doe-like innocent eyes that looked unnaturally fearless—but not scary. Her white complexion made her look a lot like Haruka, except for her eyes. With casual clothes, she looked beautiful and mysterious enough that I couldn't tell what she was feeling. Her stiff posture was the exact opposite of the boy's. She emitted a yellow aura of calm and wisdom.
Toshiro and the two sat down immediately, with the boy to Toshiro's right and the girl to the left.
Before they started to talk, the boy looked at me.
His gaze met mine. His eyes stared deep into my soul, yet he smiled at me. His smile looked like a sign of friendliness, but his gaze said otherwise.
VoidMind: "It could possibly be the type of power he possesses. Sometimes, the person may possess a power that doesn't resemble them in appearance. His power could probably be something to do with darkness manipulation, although that's just a guess considering his aura."
That made sense to me—why his gaze might give off hostility, yet he himself didn't.
"Meet your two new members, my younger brother, Tatsuki Fukumoto, and Chihiro Murakami, Haruka's cousin," Toshiro said as he gestured toward both of them.
So it wasn't just a guess but they really were related.
"I am Chihiro Murakami, you can just call me Chihiro. It's nice to work with you all from now on," she said, her voice calm and her smile never left her.
"I go by the name Tatsuki. It's nice to meet you all, if you can give me enjoyable fights," Tatsuki said, his arms raised in a greeting manner with excitement.
I didn't understand what he meant by 'enjoyable fights,' but by the looks of it, he seemed like a battle maniac by his words. Yet, his eyes seemed to know his own limits and didn't intentionally go too far with his words to the point he'd regret them later.
He certainly was an interesting one. I thought we'd get along well.
Soon after, everyone including me introduced ourselves.
"If any of you have any questions—or you two have any—you can ask," Toshiro said.
"I do, I do," Tatsuki said immediately, got up, and pointed his index finger at me.
"What?" Toshiro muttered.
"You're the Black Cloaked Manipulator killer, right? My brother said your power is similar to mine, and he said you're strong among the cadets such as myself," he said excitedly, and in a smiling manner that seemed innocent yet scary at the same time. His words confused me.
"I want you to fight me... Will you please?" he spoke before I could say anything, meanwhile Toshiro gave a faint chuckling smile.
He wanted to fight, although I didn't understand why. Normally since I just woke up a few hours ago, I didn't have that much energy in me.
"He just woke up a while ago from a two day coma, he can't fight you," Misora said to Tatsuki, telling him I couldn't possibly fight, which made his smile of excitement fade away.
I was aware that I couldn't possibly fight, but that didn't stop me.
If things went too far, any of the full members would just stop Tatsuki at that moment.
"Uh… I accept it as long as it's a friendly spar to you, and if something bad happens during the fight, I want the full members to intervene," I said to Tatsuki, his smile arose once again with excitement.
The full members nodded to each other, with Misora being a little worried and the others just curious how it'll turn out.
I found myself stretching and warming up in front of our new member Tatsuki before we started fighting, while everyone was in front of the two trees inside the ice field that Yuki had created before.
Before our spar started, I had gotten two daggers made by Daiki.
Although I might've unlocked Fear Manifestation, I couldn't possibly use it in this condition, so I'd just use Fear normally and mainly rely on the daggers.
"What's with Kuroto's luck? When he came, he had to fight Hayato, and now when a new member comes, he also fights this guy," Saya whispered to Yuki.
"Looks like fighting others is his literal fate. Well, unlike last time, it's not going to turn out as a battle of words, so this'll be interesting to watch," Yuki whispered back to Saya.
"I wonder how this'll turn out," Hayato whispered to Riku.
"Well, it'll certainly be fun to watch," he whispered back.
Meanwhile, Toshiro had a worried look on his face while I was still stretching.
"What are you so worried about?" Riku asked Toshiro.
"It's Tatsuki. I'm afraid if it comes out and hurts Kuroto before we're able to save him," Toshiro said worriedly.
"Yeah, you told me he has one of the four Great Spirits. These four are spirits that choose someone once in a century and adapt to the user's own power. They not only greatly enhance the user's strength, but they themselves are extremely powerful and can work as their own partner," Riku said.
"It's true, but ever since True Awakening came, their own power has reached the concept of True Awakening. That's caused a pre–True Awakening spirit to lose control, and it mustn't be used before True Awakening. Pre–True Awakening has a risk of releasing the spirit out of the user's body and causing havoc with no control—unless you knock down the user," Toshiro said.
"What? You never told me that. And how did you even get to know it in the first place?" Riku said, now confused and curious.
"When I first found out about Tatsuki's great spirit, it was when it first came out of his body with consciousness for some reason. Without saying anything at all, it just went back inside Tatsuki. While Tatsuki was confused, a purple, ancient-looking book just came out of thin air and dropped onto the ground. It was titled 'Knowledge of Spirits (After True Awakening)' and it had all the knowledge of how spirits had been affected by the new phenomenon of True Awakening. But for Tatsuki, it was nothing but an empty book with nothing written, just titled 'Knowledge of Spirits'. It was most likely due to his pre–True Awakening state. But I was able to read everything perfectly fine. It also mentioned how Tatsuki wasn't supposed to have a spirit before True Awakening, but for some reason, he got it," Toshiro explained.
"That's what happened? That's some crazy stuff I didn't know about the spirits when True Awakening came. By the way, what type of spirit form does Tatsuki's spirit have, and what's its name?" Riku said, amazed.
Toshiro sighed and said, "His spirit is named 'The Dragon of Darkness.' It was written in the book. It's a giant wyrm—purple and dark-style dragon—and it's absolutely terrifying in the truest sense. In fact, it even frightened me. Although when it appeared a couple of times after the first time, it wasn't that strong so I was able to deal with it without a problem, most likely due to Tatsuki's pre–True Awakening state," Toshiro answered.
Hayato listened to this conversation as well and was amazed.
I was done stretching and gestured to start the fight. Now, it was just time to see who would make the first move.
Tatsuki had nothing in his hand, so I assumed he could form a weapon with his ability.
Tatsuki just stood there, staring at me—that let me know he wasn't making the first move.
I dashed straight at him with my two daggers. Tatsuki remained still.
I swung my right-arm dagger.
Tatsuki stayed still as my dagger slashed from his right.
It passed through him as the dagger carried black smoke. When it was done, his body slowly turned into smoke and disappeared.
"What?"
I was confused—when could he have switched with a clone?
I stopped at my feet. The smoke didn't disappear; instead, it just traveled a few feet back as I watched it move.
The smoke moved a few meters, and then, from toe to head, Tatsuki's body manifested from it.
"How do you like my trick?" Tatsuki said, chuckling in an excited manner.
"It sure confused me for a second. So you can convert your body into black smoke—what else can you do?" I said to Tatsuki.
"You'll have to see," he said and smiled. I smiled back.
I dashed and jumped straight at him, this time even faster.
I didn't understand how his power worked, so I just dashed again to see if I could get any leads.
Just when I was a few meters away from him, I suddenly heard a voice from behind.
"Threads of Darkness, forbid movement."
I froze in midair, completely unable to move, struggling to set free.
Tatsuki was behind me, while the Tatsuki in front of me slowly disappeared into black smoke.
"What the heck?" I said, confused about what had happened.
Tatsuki had his fingers extended with his hands. He stood still.
"What just happened?" everyone wondered, including me.
Suddenly, some black strings became visible—ten black strings extended from all his fingers and attached to my legs and arms.
As soon as they became visible, I was able to break free and land on the ground.
"I guess this ends here," Tatsuki said as I looked back.
"Why? What happened?" I asked as I approached him.
"I already used Threads of Darkness to forbid your movement. Well, I wanted to try it, but I guess it failed since they became visible to you, looks like I got some training to do. If we go any further, there's a risk of him coming out—and what I wanted to see is done. There isn't a need to continue unless you want to," Tatsuki said.
"I won't ask what could come out, but what did you see from me?" I asked, confused.
"I wanted to see your abilities. When I attached my Threads of Darkness, I was able to analyze through your body that you possess an ability called Fear and an assistant-like ability that I couldn't see the name of," Tatsuki answered.
That didn't answer much, but only made me more curious.
"Will you tell me how your ability works?" I asked.
He turned back and started walking away. "I will, but another time," he said.
I sighed. He went back and started talking to Toshiro.
"That's it for the fight?" Saya muttered to herself.
"Oh well, let's head back inside. That's it for the very short spar," Toshiro said to everyone.
And then we all headed back inside the base.
I laid on my bed, wondering what his ability was.
VoidMind: "I may be able to explain what his power might be."
"What? How do you know?"
VoidMind: "When he attached his strings to you, it formed a link between the two of you. Although normally it would be a one-way connection, due to my extreme intellect as an ability, that one-way became a mutual connection, which led me to know his ability."
"Really? Well, that's VoidMind for you. Tell me what it is."
VoidMind: "His power is Darkness. The ability he used is called Threads of Darkness. These threads are just as their name suggests. When connected to whatever they're attached to, they take on a form of property. I'm unaware of what kind of properties the ability might take, but the ones he used on you were 'forbid movement' and 'ability reader.' That's his ability, but I don't know many details since he disconnected the threads soon after. That's about as much as I know."
"That's still insane. So his ability is called Darkness… no wonder he said his and mine are similar, but that still doesn't explain the clone that disappeared or how he got behind me."
VoidMind: "I couldn't understand how he performed that, I am sorry."
"It's fine, you found out this much and it's more than enough for now," I said to VoidMind as I smiled.
I just thought about it more and came up with some unimportant, idiotic possibilities that didn't make sense—and VoidMind just kept denying them.
It had been a while since I was thinking about those stupid possibilities.
"Food is ready. Everyone gather inside—especially you, Kuroto. You haven't eaten a thing in three days," Toshiro's voice spoke in everyone's mind.
It was true. I hadn't eaten a thing in literally three days.
I instantly gathered in the meeting room with everyone.
I sat between Chihiro and Tatsuki.
"Is it true that you haven't eaten in three days?" Tatsuki asked.
"It is true. To be honest with you, I don't really get hungry in the sense of feeling hunger. Obviously, I need to eat food, but I never crave it to the point where it feels like, 'I can't survive a second more without eating,'" I said to Tatsuki, his face turned to amusement.
"I could never do that—neither can my brother," he said, then looked at Toshiro, desperately waiting for the food with bowls already laid in front of us, although I didn't know why they were bowls.
"Hm...."
Soon after, Yuki and Saya arrived with the food.
From the giant bowl, Saya and Yuki instantly served the food into everyone's bowls in the blink of an eye.
While the food was being served, I was wondering why the heck Chihiro was so silent. Was she a new Ryota?
Just as the food was served and the two sat in their chairs, Tatsuki's mouth drooled—but he knew he shouldn't touch the food until everyone started.
Before we began, Yuki spoke.
"Do NOT spill the food on the table. The moment you do, you're dead," she warned us and stared death into our eyes, intimidating even the mysterious Ryota.
We all took the chopsticks and started eating.
It was tasty.
No, it was too tasty, even for someone like me.
"So tasty," Tatsuki and Toshiro said while devouring the ramen with a slurp.
Soon after, we were all done, and everyone headed back inside our rooms.
I was tired now after eating the ramen, so I just dropped onto the bed.
Before that, I reminded myself—I had to go on the same mission as before tomorrow.