Chapter 21

Nobe and I split ways when we entered the arena. He went to the stands while went to the changing room. This duel was meant to be battled with only one's elements, so none of us were given the option of using a weapon.

I wasn't really exhausted from the 'training' earlier with Emily, like I said before, we space users have enough mana to fight for days on end, but our limiting factor is the headaches, and they get progressively worse if we keep on using our element.

The training didn't take much really didn't take much out of me, nor did it influence my mental state, if anything I feel quite refreshed, like you just came from a warmup. When I entered the changing room, I looked around for a moment then sat down in the center of the room and thought to myself.

'Something is wrong.'

No one or, nothing was in the room, nothing special happened when I entered, in all honesty nothing really happened. And that's the problem, nothing happened with me.

I remember a few days ago I was annoyed for some reason, I didn't know why or what caused it, so I decided to sleep at the kog to rest. When I woke up, I was fine. I don't know why this is striking me as odd now of all times but I'm aware of my tendencies during fights and that's what I don't want to happen as of now.

'Should I forfeit? No, that guy annoyed me into the duel so I should take him up on his offer.'

One can argue that my worries are un-founded, so do I but, these worries do have a basis and that basis are my emotions. In simple terms me and my emotions are not really connected, and because of that certain actions and choices that could affect a normal person, never affect me.

It may seem far fetched because of the way I act around people like Emily and Rina probably Nobe as well. Though my emotions and I really aren't close, I do feel them given the circumstance. So, around people like Emily, who has and still has relatable hobbies when I first met her, I found her simpler to talk to, as for Rina, the fact that I nearly killed her is enough.

*Knock* *Knock* *Knock* "Your duel is about to begin."

'I should really finish this fast.' Getting up with that thought and a sigh, I looked at the battle suit offered to me, but I wasn't in the right state of mind, I felt like I was doubting everything around me, so I decided not to wear it, it wasn't the real one provided by the Ignatius, this was practically a running suit, the actual ones will be provided when our ranks will be given.

Walking out of the room, I saw a bulky man standing by the door. Once he heard me come out he just walked ahead and told me to follow him, 'Not one of many words myself.' I thought as I followed him, he also didn't seem to care that I didn't ware what was provided, he probably didn't expect me to.

The pathway to the arena was well lit but it seemed dark to me, the bright lights looked dim, and the world seemed to be coloring itself grey from the edges of my vision. With each step I took sound gradually faded but only the sound of static remained, it grew louder and louder, I also seemed to hear my thoughts clearly.

When my vision was fully covered grey, it suddenly went darker and darker, like I was slowly closing my eyes. I thought I was, and I apparently was but I wasn't sure. The static never ceased to increase in noise, normally one would try to close their ears o avoid it or make it stop, but for some reason I thought it was welcoming me, so I let scream at me.

It grew louder and louder; I wasn't sure if I could handle this level of sound and my stinging ears were a sign that I couldn't handle it for long, but I didn't bother trying to stop it. At this point I couldn't see anything, I wasn't even sure if I was walking or not, I seemed to have lost my sense of touch as well, but I also didn't feel lost probably thanks to my element.

Then I heard a voice, it was faint, but I heard it. I didn't try to focus on it because I knew I would hear it again and guess what? I did. I couldn't tell what gender the speaker was, but I knew it wasn't the dude Infront of me. Although I could barely understand what the voice said, one word I could make out was "Run." And it sounded desperate. Whatever I was meant to be running from, I didn't know and that annoyed me, at that point when I began feeling the emotions of anger, confusion and annoyance, the static sound became more violent along with me.

The longer I heard that sound, the more those emotions spiked up. Thoughts regarding who he or she was who told me run, who or what I was running from, how long would it take for whatever's chasing me to catch up and why should I run? I did nothing, I don't even know why I'm being chased. A lot of thoughts sprung up in my head, that seemed to anger and confuse me more.

Suddenly, I heard my own voice within the spiraling thoughts in my head, "something is wrong." It was something I said moments ago, I don't know if that was to clam me down or not but when I heard that, all sound disappeared.

I could hear nothing at all, my anger and confusion didn't subside though, but I knew that now wasn't the time. With that in mind my blacked vision returned to normal, well, not normal because everything was now it was eerily grey.

Looking ahead of me with an indifferent expression, I was already in the arena. My opponent looked like your basic playboy, the only thing I would commend him on is his hair style, though crude it was still better than most since it made his deep reed hair stand out even more, but I wasn't in the mood to care.

Right now, I felt, clean. No emotion whatsoever present in me, I couldn't be careless at the few insults thrown my way, nor could I care for the scream of the girls the person Infront of me wooed, no anger, no pleasure, no drive and no passion, another way to describe what I felt was, I felt dead.

Since all sound wasn't being registered in my head, all I could see was my opponent opening and closing his mouth. After a while of him doing that, he begun getting annoyed at my lack of response and begun, what I assumed was yelling, at me. I looked at the ref and he seemed to get the point, so he raised his hand and after around 3 seconds brought it down.

At that moment I felt utter malice directed towards me, of course it was from my opponent. That didn't surprise me, what did was my response to it.

***

"Start already!" Nobe yelled at the ref in boredom. He honestly wanted to see Mono fight one on one with someone, though he knew Mono would win, he was more interested in how. When Mono entered the arena, he looked like he was lost for a moment to Nobe, but he soon deemed it stupid since having a space user get lost was very unlikely and dumb.

'After this I should make an 8-course meal for the fun of it and throw it out.' On a side note, Nobe has a tendency to do stupid things. Anyway, when the ref finally decided to start the match, 4 seconds in, something strange happened to Nobe, one of his active skills activated, the active 'Foresight.'

What's strange is that an active skill, which is meant to be activated consciously, was activated subconsciously and naturally this meant something was wrong. Normally when this happens the host is always in immediate danger that can threaten their life, but this is also quite rare for other elemental users. Take a fire user for example, even if he/she is in immediate danger that can threaten their lives, what is to be activated? In short some elements don't really have a method to save the user. By the way it depends on the situation, taking the same example above, the fire user can subconsciously activate 'combustion'.

Now as for a time user though, if the user is in immediate danger there are two things that usually happen, one is Nobe's case where they are shown the danger before it actually happens with the active skill foresight. This skill is sometimes tricky, if the user is inexperienced or weak they see 2~3 more possible futures, but if their know their shit then everything is a-okay but there is a scenario where, inexperienced, or not, a time user shall see only one possible future, and that's their death, if their current situation is their undoubted death, even if the user is a newborn, they will see only that one outcome. The second thing that happens is another one of their actives called 'Backflow.' What this active does is slow-down time or reverse it, but its usually used to slow down because reversal may kill the user if their weak or don't have enough mana. The reason why this happens is to enable the user act fast to escape their death.

In short the passive activation of 'Foresight' is to enable the user mainly to avoid their death, but their free to do as they please even going as far as to do nothing, while the passive activation of 'Backflow' enables the user to escape, witness and avoid their death. And Nobe being a time user who know what the hell this meant was scared shitless.