Chapter 55: Imbroglio

[Operator Profile]

Name: Marcellus Severan

Species: Human

Sex: Male

Age: 18

Status: Alive | Conscious | Neurologically Strained

Affiliation: Severan Military Group | Main Family

Designation: Thirteenth Pillar — Reaper

Cadet Rank: 117

Core:-

Status: Active — Depletion Flagged

Classification: Axiom

Development Stage: Awakened

Combat Grade: 5

Force:

Total Capacity: 100%

Current Capacity: ~3%

Circulation Stability: 61%

Output Efficiency: 58%

Physical Condition:

Skeletal Integrity: Normal

Muscular Condition: Above Average

Internal Injury: None Detected

External Injury: None Detected

Neurological State:

Cognitive Function: Normal

Neural Fatigue: High

Adaptation Load: 34%

Force Adaptations:

Axiom: Observation (active)

Registered Techniques:

+ Oscillation | Combat-grade disruption technique.

+ Zero Point | Force circulation hijack via reverse-flow mapping.

+ The Weeping Garden | Signature technique.

+ Vaticinator | Structural analysis of a target resolved into its highest-probability near-term trajectory.

+ Nociceptor Override | Suppresses pain signal transmission during sustained repair or trauma.

+ Cellular Repair Acceleration | Biases damaged tissue toward its optimal stable state, exceeding natural recovery thresholds.

+ Intent Recognition | Passive detection of intent prior to physical action.

+ Blood-Crystal Conversion | Reconstructed via Observation.

Emergency Override:

Status: Available.

[Notice: Current Capacity has fallen below the critical threshold. Regulation and recovery are advised before further output.]

[--------------------]

There was silence in the room. Accompanied by the occasional beeps of monitors.

Maeve lay on the bed without moving, colour had returned to her skin. Her eyes stayed shut, and wrapped with white bandages.

Apparently, it wasn’t just her core, but countless vessels in her body burst open because of the overdrive.

Marcellus sat on the bench beside the bed. His back was against the wall, hands rested loose on his thighs, and for a long stretch he kept his eyes closed.

Healing her had taken the core down to the edge because he had to repair the blood vessels more than the core itself.

He opened his eyes, and his profile already floated in front of him.

After the duel, and after putting her back into a body that could survive, that line...emergency override, irked him.

He had asked the system multiple times since the beginning like usual, of what it really was. But he never really got an answer regarding this one.

It was... irritating.

He would have to revisit the matter later.

His gaze moved to Maeve. There was a reason for bandages covering her eyes.

The damage had been repaired, but that didn’t mean she could immediately use them, her body needed time to recalibrate to the changes. For now, keeping them covered was the sensible option.

But he wasn’t that worried, she would recover.

He sighed, and got up.

The door of the medical ward opened without a sound. Marcellus stepped into the corridor and pulled it shut behind him.

The upper medical floors were usually deserted. Breck Kyson had made certain this one remained that way.

Only two people waited outside the room.

Breck leaned against the wall opposite the room, his silver-rimmed spectacles rested neatly on his nose.

A few paces away, Brody occupied a bench with his wired earphones plugged in. His head moved faintly to whatever he was listening to.

Breck looked up first.

He didn’t speak anything. He knew the moment he looked at her in the arena, her blood vessels were ruptured and core was damaged beyond any practical use. Even the Glein brothers he knew of, could only heal the body.

Core was something beyond their scope.

And it had not been more than an hour since Marcellus entered that room. He could see the monitor reading core’s stability performing well.

Breck hated to admit it. But the student that argued with him on the topic of cores on his first day at the academy, was certainly more knowledgeable and capable in handling cores than he himself.

Brody looked up when Marcellus’s shadow fell across him. He removed one earphone.

"She’s awake?" he asked.

"No," Marcellus answered.

"Is she going to be alright?" he asked again.

"Certainly," Marcellus replied. "I feel like a doctor who just treated an emergency patient..."

"..." Breck just looked at him at that statement.

"Well...you actually did that..." Brody was confused, too.

"Anyways, that’s good. Now can you heal Kate, too?" he asked.

Marcellus reached into his pink coat.

Brody waited, looking at him ruffling in his pocket.

Instead of something useful, Marcellus fetched a sealed envelope, and placed it in Brody’s hands.

Brody looked down at it, and then he looked back at Marcellus.

"What is this?" he asked.

"My best wishes," Marcellus replied.

"..."

"..."

Brody was left speechless. He turned the envelope over, and the front bore Kate Magnar’s name, written in rough handwriting.

Marcellus already anticipated the question and had prepared this in advance.

Brody slipped the envelope into his jacket. He didn’t appear particularly impressed by the gesture, but he didn’t throw it back, either.

"Is it because you’re exhausted? Can you heal her when you’ve recovered?" he asked again.

"No," Marcellus replied.

"Why?"

"Because I don’t want to," Marcellus shrugged his shoulders and sat beside him.

Brody shook his head and put his earphone back in.

Breck pushed himself away from the wall.

"Marcellus," he called out.

"Hm?"

"There’s something we need to discuss," Breck said.

"That sounds serious," Marcellus tilted his head toward him.

"It is..." Breck then glanced at the bench.

"The situation of Maeve...is more complicated than mere copy allegations," he then pointed at Brody.

"Take Jaxon for example," he said.

Marcellus followed his gaze, and Brody was also now interested in the conversation, so he took out his one earphone again.

"What about him?" Marcellus asked.

"Brody has the force control of thunder. His output is considerably far more destructive than the Magnar family’s electrical impulse. His superspeed is also extraordinary," Breck began.

"The Magnar family has spent generations refining their force control. Their methods allow them to manipulate magnetic fields, electrical currents, and their own movement. They would have liked to produce someone capable of achieving what Brody does."

"Brody’s speed isn’t simply a matter of generating enough force to move his body. His reaction time is extraordinarily short, measured in fractions of a millisecond. Combine that with his enormous physical strength and the amount of information he takes in and processes every moment, and he can move at speeds that would make most people incapable of even seeing,"

"Without that reaction speed, he’d be little more than a cannonball crashing into walls."

"That’s...a rather unpleasant way to introduce my power," Brody commented.

Breck turned back to Marcellus.

"The Magnars might want their force control to be something like Brody’s. But that doesn’t mean Brody has copied their techniques. It’s even safe to say, that his force control is far more precious than the Magnar family’s control and methods," Breck said.

"I get what you mean," Marcellus nodded. "Two people can achieve similar results but from different means,"

"Exactly," Breck nodded.

"Maeve’s shadows are similar. I observed their structure during the fight. They resemble the Tuoni’s Merging with shadows, but the underlying formation differs. The way her shadows manifested and interacted with her body wasn’t quite what I would expect from that technique,"

"So she developed her own method?" Marcellus asked for the conclusion.

"Partly. But there’s more to it. Even if the structure was different...the underlying principal of how shadows emerge, how her other creatures work, is the same as Tuonis. She was taught the fundamental of Tuoni’s force control, but never guided in it," Breck concluded.

"Beyond fundamentals, everything is of her own."

"And what about the Severan technique?" Marcellus asked.

"That’s the part I’m concerned about," Breck’s expression changed slightly.

"It wasn’t just remarkably similar, it was the Core Overdrive of Severans. Not just the result, but the way she forced her core beyond its limits, the regulation, and the toll on her body. That sort of similarity cannot be developed by simply observing," Breck pointed out.

"Core Overdrive isn’t simply a movement you can observe and reproduce. It’s a method of controlling the core under conditions it ordinarily cannot sustain. The Severans have refined it over generations, and their blood provides the adaptations necessary to endure it." Breck adjusted his spectacles.

"Maeve has neither the blood nor those adaptation qualities. Yet she attempted something that nearly destroyed her own core in the process."

Marcellus listened without interrupting.

"We...no, you cannot rule out that someone deliberately taught her that. Which raises several questions," Breck continued.

"In cases like these I would generally conclude that someone may have put her life at risk without giving her the means to understand that risk herself. But Maeve doesn’t look like someone who can be swayed by such tricks," Breck concluded.