Chapter 70: Addictive Feeling

The campus athletics complex was a massive, dome-roofed facility located on the southern edge of the academy grounds. It housed the high-tier conditioning labs, the indoor swimming tanks, and the primary arena for Blue Wave Powerball, the academy’s flagship competitive combat sport.

Rain walked through the heavy double doors into the primary arena at one-forty-five, fifteen minutes ahead of his scheduled meeting with Coach Marsh.

The air inside was cool, smelling faintly of polished synthetic floor wax, ozone, and sweat.

The main court was a massive, glass-walled oval twice the size of a standard football field, fitted with adjustable gravitational dampening tiles and holographic boundary lines.

Down on the floor, eight players were mid-run in a full-contact training scrimmage.

Rain walked down the concrete steps of the empty spectator bleachers, leaning against the cold metal railing to watch the drill in action.

Powerball was a brutally fast, high-tier augmented combat sport. Two teams of five players competed to carry a heavy, leather-bound metal sphere, the core, across the opposing team’s goal line while navigating shifting physical obstacles and full-contact defensive tackles. Mana usage was strictly regulated, but physical attribute augmentation, high-velocity movement skills, and tactical physical force were fully permitted.

On the court below, a tall, muscular player holding the metal sphere charged down the center lane. A defensive player stepped into his path, his legs glowing with a faint, blue physical enhancement skill as he drove his shoulder straight into the ball-carrier’s chest.

The impact echoed off the concrete walls of the empty arena like a gunshot. The ball-carrier was launched backward six feet through the air, hitting the polished floor with a heavy slide, but he maintained his grip on the sphere, rolling back onto his feet in a single fluid motion and throwing a twenty-yard pass to a wing player breaking down the left flank.

Rain watched with sharp, focused blue eyes.

’That impact would have broken the ribs of an unaugmented human,’ Rain evaluated quickly, his mind calculating the speed and kinetic energy behind the tackle. ’Strength attributes on those players are at least twenty-five, Agility pushing thirty. The movement speed is insane.’

"Impressive, isn’t it?"

Rain turned his head.

A tall, broad-shouldered man in his late forties stood a few feet away on the bleacher steps, wearing a dark blue academy athletics pullover, gray sweatpants, and a whistle hanging from his neck. He had short, iron-gray hair, a weather-beaten face, and sharp, piercing hazel eyes that looked like they could cut through stone.

Beside him stood Eren Toma, wearing his dark blue varsity jacket, smiling faintly as he nodded toward Rain.

"Coach Marsh," Rain said, recognizing the man immediately from the athletic department banners hanging around the concourse.

Coach Marsh walked down the steps, stopping three feet from Rain. He didn’t offer a handshake. He simply folded his thick arms over his chest, his hazel eyes taking in Rain’s posture, his broad shoulders under his new hoodie, and the quiet, unbothered way he stood.

"Rain," Coach Marsh said, his voice a deep, gravelly baritone that commanded immediate authority. "Eren mentioned you. Said he saw you move during some kind of street altercation a while back, that you cleared a gap faster than a panic dodge should’ve let you."

Eren rubbed the back of his neck, a little sheepish. "It’s the only time I’ve actually seen him do anything, Coach. I haven’t run into him since. But what I saw was real."

Coach Marsh didn’t smile. He kept his sharp eyes locked onto Rain.

"That’s the whole file I’ve got on you," Marsh said plainly. "One story, secondhand, about something that happened once. I don’t sign roster permits based on that. I don’t care about your academic class, and I don’t care about your private records. I care about what happens on my court when eighty pounds of armor is charging straight at your throat."

Marsh turned his head toward the court below, raising his whistle to his lips.

The piercing shrill of the whistle echoed through the arena. The eight players on the court instantly stopped their drill, freezing in place and looking up toward the bleachers.

"Clear the center court!" Marsh shouted down, his voice booming through the space. "Jax, Miller, Orin! Stay on the floor! We’re running a live gauntlet drill!"

The three players, all second- and third-year varsity starters built like brick walls, nodded, stepping into the center circle while the other players walked toward the sideline benches, grabbing water bottles and watching.

Coach Marsh turned back to Rain.

"You want a shot at a walk-in varsity slot?" Marsh asked, pointing a thick finger down toward the court. "Go down there. Take the core from the center rack. Get it through that hoop past those three defenders. You get one attempt."

Eren looked at Rain, his eyebrows raised slightly. "Coach, Jax is our primary vanguard starter. He’s put grown men through drywall in scrimmage. You really want to throw a walk-in straight at him with zero padding?"

"Rain didn’t ask for a handicap, and I’m not giving him one," Marsh snapped back neutrally. He looked at Rain. "Well, Cadet? You want to prove Eren wasn’t lying, or do you want to head back to the C-dorms?"

Rain looked down at the court.

The three varsity defenders were stretching their shoulders, looking up at him with smirks on their faces. Jax, a massive third-year with a shaved head and broad shoulders, tossed the heavy leather-bound metal sphere up and down in his hands before placing it on the center pedestal.

Rain didn’t say a word. He pulled off his dark hoodie, folding it neatly and laying it on the metal bleacher seat, leaving him in his fitted dark undershirt and cargo trousers.

He walked down the concrete steps, pushed open the glass court door, and stepped onto the polished surface of the arena floor.

The floor felt slightly springy under his boots, the gravitational dampening field adjusting to his weight.

Jax stood twenty yards away at the defensive line, flanked by Miller on his left and Orin on his right. The three of them formed an overlapping defensive wedge that completely blocked the lane leading to the raised brass hoop mounted against the far wall.

"Hey, fresh blood!" Jax called out, grinning as he crossed his massive arms. "Coach tell you the rules? No high-tier offensive mana strikes permitted! Physical contact only! Don’t break a tooth!"

The other varsity players sitting on the sideline benches laughed, leaning forward to watch the show.

Rain walked up to the center pedestal, picking up the metal core sphere. It was heavy, roughly fifteen pounds of solid iron wrapped in grip-patterned leather. He tucked it firmly against his right hip under his arm, his fingers digging into the leather seams.

He turned to face the three defenders, lowering his center of gravity into his natural combat stance.

Up in the bleachers, Coach Marsh raised his whistle.

"Drill begins on the whistle!" Marsh called out, his voice echoing from above. "Offense has ten seconds to score!"

Rain took a slow, deep breath. He focused his mind, bringing his Mana pool online:

[Mana: 20 / 20]

He looked at the three defenders. Jax was taking the middle lane, leaning forward with his weight on his toes, ready to deliver a bone-crushing frontal tackle the moment Rain moved. Miller and Orin were covering the side angles, prepared to collapse inward to trap him in a three-man pincer.

The whistle blew.

Jax exploded forward, his boots slapping loudly against the floor as he charged at Rain like a freight train, his arms spread wide to wrap him up. "I got him!"

Rain didn’t run forward. He didn’t take a single conventional step.

The instant Jax closed the distance to within twenty-eight feet, Rain’s blue eyes flashed with a cold, terrifying intensity.

A sharp, high-pitched displacement of air cracked through the arena.

Rain vanished.

Jax hit completely empty air, his heavy tackle carrying him forward as his shoulder smashed through nothingness, his jaw dropping in utter confusion as he stumbled onto the floor. "What the—?!"

Before Miller or Orin could even react to Rain’s sudden disappearance, a sudden spatial distortion rippled directly behind Orin’s left shoulder, well past the initial defensive line.

Rain materialized mid-air, twenty-eight feet away from his starting position.

Without his feet even touching the ground, Rain executed a mid-dash vector redirection, twisting his core violently to redirect his momentum at a ninety-degree sharp angle directly toward the hoop.

A second spatial snap echoed off the glass walls.

Rain flashed across the remaining distance in a blur of motion, his boots slamming onto the polished floor directly beneath the hoop.

[Mana: 14 / 20]

He drove the heavy sphere upward in a short, powerful arc. It cleared the rim clean, dropping through with a heavy, metallic clang that echoed through the silent arena.

He landed in a low crouch beneath the hoop, the sound of the sphere still ringing through the empty court behind him.

The entire sequence had taken less than 1.2 seconds.

The arena went dead, absolute silent.

Jax was still down on one knee near the center court, staring back over his shoulder with his mouth wide open. Miller and Orin were frozen in their defensive stances, their eyes darting wildly between the empty starting pedestal and Rain, who was standing beneath the hoop with the echo of the score still hanging in the air.

On the sideline bench, two varsity players dropped their water bottles, the plastic clattering loudly against the concrete floor.

Up in the bleachers, Eren Toma was standing with his hands gripped tightly around the metal railing, his mouth hanging open in sheer, unadulterated shock.

Beside him, Coach Marsh hadn’t moved an inch. His whistle was still hanging from his hand, his sharp hazel eyes fixed on Rain with an intensity that could melt iron.

"Zero line-of-sight requirement," Marsh whispered under his breath, his voice barely audible in the silent arena. "Mid-dash and he pivot? That wasn’t an Agility burst."

Down on the court, Rain stood beneath the hoop, his breathing steady.

He looked up at the stunned faces in the bleachers, a quiet, dry thought floating through his mind:

’Well, so much for keeping what I can do under wraps.’

And then, right beneath that guarded instinct, a sudden, electric wave of heat surged through his chest. His heart was pounding against his ribs, his blood humming with the sudden, raw adrenaline of the move. For weeks, he had been fighting in the dark, in pitch-black drainage tunnels, under rusted factory bridges, and in secret basement workshops.

Doing it here, in the open air, under the bright lights with dozens of eyes watching, was a completely different feeling.

It was terrifying. And it was intensely, addictively thrilling.