Chapter 688: Soft

“You want me to make you stay a hall master?” The Vice Patriarch scoffed. “Sheen, while you have been wasting away, being punished for your sins, I have grown much stronger. You do not know what you are saying.”

Hall Master Sheen grabbed at his chin and ran his hand all the way down his beard before doing it two more times. “You are much stronger? That is good to know, Bastian. Because, for an Ascendant such as yourself, you never were all that strong to begin with. It fills my heart to know that you have made some gains recently. Really, it does. Perhaps you can give this old man some pointers? Perhaps you will show me the way of the pencil?”

“The way of the… still making that ridiculous joke, I see,” Bastian rolled his eyes and shook his head. “However, it seems that you really don’t know your place. This is not decades ago when we last fought. Fine, we will have a little spar, but on two conditions.”

“Two conditions? I agree,” Sheen replied instantly.

“You… you haven’t even heard what the conditions are!” Bastian clenched his fist.

“Oh… I forgot already. You can’t blame me for getting old and senile. I seemed to have left some of my sense in my other storage ring,” Sheen turned and winked at Derek, then lightly chuckled. That was the same place that Derek had left his respect, after all. “But you seem like you want to tell me these conditions, so who am I to not at least hear them. Go ahead, tell me, ‘Vice Patriarch,’ what conditions am I not going to have to abide by after you lose?”

Damn…Derek couldn’t help but think. This old man may be better at getting under his opponent’s skin than I am. The hall master is really laying on the mental damage before they fight. The Vice Patriarch is a High Ascendant, yet he’s already visibly shaking. And they were so cordial when they ran into each other outside that building.

“Sheen!” Bastian growled, but took a deep breath and calmed a bit after. “Very well! If I win, not only do you remain a hall master for at least another two centuries, but you must also take Garrett in as your personal disciple. I don’t want to be responsible for him, so that will fall onto you.”

“Interesting conditions,” Sheen replied. “So… if I win, then I’m free to do as I wish, and that young man over there dies… no… I’m feeling generous. Garrett will be banished from House Loomis, and you will see to it that all ties to others that might want to help him are severed. He will have to survive on his own in the System Universe with no resources other than what he can obtain for himself for twenty years. Once those two decades are up, he may come back and be reevaluated by one of us, and if he is found worthy, he may take his place in our house once again.”

“That… we can do that,” Bastian said after thinking for a few moments. It was Sheen compromising a little and giving the arrogant young man from his family a chance to change his ways.

To be fair, it wasn’t much different from what Derek had been going through ever since the system arrived on Earth. It seemed that Garrett would be the first experiment that the old man ran to try to toughen up and educate the younger generation. Derek approved. He didn’t actually think that Garrett deserved to die. It was a heated moment, and obviously the young man had never lost like that before.

It probably would have been different if Sheen wasn’t around. Yes, he was preparing to get stabbed through the head and hoping his meditation and evolution would be enough to keep him alive after such a critical blow, but he’d also been pretty sure that the hall master would step in based on the face that he’d made just before. And if Sheen hadn’t been there, then Derek would have risked using Active Void Shift to escape and hoped that everyone thought it was a regular spatial teleportation skill.

Wait… am I the one being soft now? Derek couldn’t help but wonder. He rubbed at his nonexistent beard. Maybe I’ve become too kind in my old age, too.

“Very good, Bastian! Let’s see if you can take one of those 13 losses back from me,” Sheen laughed.

“I had so much to do today, but alas…” Bastian muttered, then glanced back at Garrett. “Fix the boy up so he doesn’t die while waiting.”

“It would just be a Dying State. We’ll be finished before that runs out… but… okay,” Sheen said, then flicked his wrist. Before everyone’s eyes, the thinly sliced limbs of the young man stacked back together, then very fine, nearly imperceptible threads sewed him back together. “Boy, once you’re able, take another healing potion and you’ll be as good as new.”

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“Okay…” Bastian sighed. “Let’s get this over with.” With that, an aura unlike anything Derek had ever experienced before washed over everyone.

A moan came from everyone who had been drawn to the previous battle, and each person began dropping one by one. Derek glanced back to see many of them even falling into their own vomit from before. By the time most of them had fallen, Alex was still standing, but struggling hard.

Derek turned back to look at Bastian. A bright white-blue aura encompassed him. His eyes were the same color as his aura, and even his robes were fluttering even though there was no wind. Derek bit his bottom lip and focused on staying standing. It was not easy.

Just then, he heard the hall master laugh, then another wave of aura fell over him and nearly caused his knees to buckle. Everyone else who had managed to stay standing fell—some even crashing hard to the ground. Some of the weaker ones even fell unconscious. So… this is what it was like for Thomas and the others when I put them through that training? Derek thought, then nodded. Not bad. Seems like great training for willpower. He glanced at Alex, and his friend had also succumbed to it.

Garrett was on his back and still conscious . Derek couldn’t help but wonder if the young man would have also still been standing had he had more than deli meat to stand on at the moment. However, one thing he did notice was that the young man no longer seemed to care about his injuries. His eyes were focused on the two Ascendants about to fight—particularly, they were drawn to Sheen and his dominant aura.

The thing with Sheen’s aura, though, was that it was entirely white. Well, it was transparent, but what tint it had was only white. It was just like the glow that always appeared around him, but a hundred times stronger. It was so bright—so sharp—that it was even hard to look at. It was almost like glancing at the sun. That was odd for Derek. Though he hadn’t seen many, the other auras that he’d seen from House Loomis members all had at least somewhat of a blue tint to them. But Sheen’s did not.

The two Ascendants glanced around the area. Once they scanned the surroundings, a disappointed sneer fell onto Bastian’s face, and Sheen’s mouth turned up into a genuine look of disappointment until his eyes fell on Derek. As soon as he saw Derek was still standing and even looking at him without flinching, his smile came back, and he nodded and gave him a thumbs-up. Next, he looked at the grounded Garrett and just shrugged.

Seemingly having an understanding, at a speed which Derek couldn’t track even if he wanted to, both men disappeared before his eyes. However, the aura washing over him didn’t disappear with the two men. Instead, it even grew stronger to the point where one of Derek’s knees did give out for a moment before he willed it back into place.

Derek frantically looked around, trying to find the two, and when he finally looked up, he saw two tiny, glowing specks in the air. He wanted to use Void Shift or Void Steps to get closer so he could watch the spar better, but that was a bad idea for multiple reasons. Void Steps was very obviously a void-related skill, and he didn’t doubt that Bastian would recognize Void Shift as one as well. Not to mention the fact that he was pretty sure he would instantly die if he got too close—even if it was just a spar.

So, he had to be content watching the two specks of light clash above. And clash they did. The first time they hit one another, it was with so much force that many of those on the ground were blown away. Derek even slid a couple of feet in the dirt.

After the first couple of clashes, they stopped, and the real fighting began. Of course, Derek had no clue what the real fighting was. He just knew it had started because his entire body was being banged around constantly. Derek had no idea how long it had been since they started, but he figured it couldn’t have been more than just a handful of seconds.

He suddenly got a weird feeling, an odd sensation. It was as if something was blocking some of the wind that was kicking up dirt from reaching him. Slowly, he brought his head down and turned it to the right to see a middle-aged man in the same robes as everyone else standing next to him. He’d never seen the man before, and he had no clue when he’d arrived.

The man had shimmering white-blue hair, a rugged face with a short beard, but kind eyes. Though he would also say that the hall master had kind eyes, so that didn’t mean much to him anymore. The man was stoic as he turned and looked directly at Derek as soon as Derek saw him. They were on eye level with one another.

“Young man… who is not from my clan,” the man spoke casually. “Since you are the only one here that seems capable, would you please tell me why two of our clan’s elders are fighting?”

For some reason, Derek got the sense that this was a man who shouldn’t be offended no matter what. So, even with all the pressure pushing down on him, he managed a bow at his waist and said, “It’s a matter concerning me and that guy over there.” He pointed at Garrett. “We sparred, I won, he went for a lethal blow against me after the match was over and I turned my back.”

“Hmm… I see…” the man said. “And… Sheen was on his kin’s side?”

“Oh… no,” Derek said with a shake of his head. “He was on my side. He sponsored me as a VIP guest.”

The man looked down to where the badge would have been had Derek actually been wearing a shirt, then nodded. “Derek Hunt, I presume?”

“Y-yes, sir,” Derek’s voice caught, and for the first time in a long time, if ever, he felt a bit intimidated. It wasn’t because of the man’s apparent strength, but more from his calm demeanor in the face of the two strongest people Derek had ever seen in his life fighting.

“You are doing well to not only be standing but still being able to speak at your low level,” the man said as his eyes watched the two above.

Soon, a woman wearing the same robes appeared on the other side of Derek, then another, then another older man appeared beside, but a step behind, the first. Even though he was intimidated, Derek still managed to ask a question.

“Could you tell me what is going on up there? I can’t really make out the battle,” he asked.

“What is going on?” the man said. “It seems that our Vice Patriarch is finding out that our resident lunatic has somehow gotten his spark back.”