Chapter Nine: Psychic Applications

Pixis residence

Maggot's crown

Outer Pit

Pitland AKA "The Pit"

Continent of Zenithan

The world around me was a fractured ruin, a war-torn graveyard of shattered structures, burning wreckage, and blood-soaked pavement. The stench of scorched metal and ozone filled the air, mingling with the acrid tang of spilled oil and the unmistakable copper bite of freshly drawn blood.

Explosions flared in the distance, painting the cracked skyline in bursts of fiery orange and hellish red, their shockwaves rumbling like the growl of some unseen predator. And in the center of it all—I stood, unshaken. Three Ghostkillers encircled me like predators closing in on prey, their Astral-Tech-infused bodies shimmering with enhanced kinetic energy, their movements calculated, precise, and lethal.

They weren't just here to fight. They were here to kill. The air between us hummed with tension, a static charge building in the space before an inevitable storm. Their intent was clear, written in the sharpness of their stances, the deadly stillness of trained executioners waiting for the perfect moment to strike. I exhaled. Calm. Composed. Ruthless.

They came all at once. Fast. Precise. Coordinated. But not fast enough. I moved before their attacks fully formed, my body reacting with the refined instincts of a high-tier Esper, my mind threading calculations in real-time, mapping their trajectories, their angles, their weaknesses.

The first struck from the left, his telekinetic blade slicing toward my ribs. A feint. Too predictable. I caught his wrist mid-motion, felt the micro-shift of his energy field, and twisted sharply, redirecting his momentum against him. A sickening crunch. His body slammed into a concrete wall, the impact sending cracks spider-webbing outward. He crumpled, dazed, momentarily removed from the equation.

The second launched an Astral energy wave, a disruptive pulse designed to scramble my psychic field—to throw my coordination off just enough for a killing blow. Smart. But not enough. I barely moved. A flick of my fingers, a shift in the pressure of space itself—and the energy wave collapsed mid-air, neutralized before it could even touch me. I heard the moment his heart skipped in panic.

Then—

The third came. The most dangerous. He moved in my blind spot, his kinetic burst accelerating his approach, a streak of motion nearly impossible to track.

He almost got close Almost. At the last second, I dropped low, twisting beneath his attack. He overextended—just slightly, but enough to give me my opening. Before he could adjust—before he could process that he had lost the advantage— My hand was already at his throat.

A telekinetic pulse erupted from my palm, an invisible force detonating outward. His body shattered backward with bone-snapping force, limbs twisting unnaturally as he crashed into the debris-strewn ground. He didn't die. But he wasn't getting back up so soon.

As I fought, my mind dissected their techniques with the precision of a surgeon. There was no doubt that they were skilled Espers. Their movements were practiced, and their attacks honed through years of psychic cultivation. But they weren't at my level. They had power. They had control. But they had limits. Espers cultivated along seven paths, each one marking a step toward the pinnacle of psychic evolution. Most spent a lifetime perfecting a single art, devoting themselves to one discipline, refining it into an unshakable force.

These paths defined what it meant to be an Esper and they were each known as the Art of Telekinetic Dominion – The power to command kinetic force itself. To manipulate movement, gravity, and impact with a mere thought. The foundation of all control—where mastery over the physical world begins and ends. The Art of Psionic Reinforcement – The fusion of mind and body. The power to infuse the physical self with psychic force, strengthening bones, accelerating reflexes, making the body as unyielding as the will that drives it. The Art of the Mind's Eye – The cultivation of perception. To see beyond time, to react before action. To hone combat intuition until instinct became inevitability, until every movement was a step ahead of fate itself. The Art of Astral Projection – The liberation of the mind from the body. The power to exist beyond the self, to step into unseen planes, to move in multiple places at once. To transcend physical limitations and walk the voi The Art of Cognition Supremacy – The dominion over thought itself. To bend perception, to command minds, to rewrite the very fabric of reality through sheer will. To impose one's existence upon the world and force it to submit. The Art of Cosmic Synchronization – The rarest and most elusive art. The ability to harmonize with universal frequencies, to align physics and willpower into absolute mastery. The ones who walked this path did not manipulate the world—they became one with it.

But there was a forbidden seventh art. One that no true Esper was ever allowed to touch. It stood outside the cycle of mastery—outside the balance of cultivated power and this was the art of Entropic Will – The power to unravel existence itself. It was not an art of creation, nor an art of control. It was the undoing of both. To wield it was to erode, corrode, and negate—to rip apart the delicate equilibrium of all other forces. To master it was to walk the edge of annihilation.

Among Espers, the truly gifted mastered two arts—a feat that set them apart from the ordinary. The prodigies? They walked three paths, wielding a level of versatility that made them legends. But the monsters—the ones who stood at the apex—the ones who rewrote the very rules of psychic combat? They mastered all six. They weren't bound by limits. They became the limit.

I was a specialist, refining my power through Telekinetic Dominion and Psionic Reinforcement—a fusion of control and raw, unyielding strength. And these assassins? They were killers trained in the Mind's Eye. They could predict, react, and adapt—reading attacks before they fully formed, shifting with an unnatural fluidity that made them ghosts on the battlefield. Killing them wouldn't be easy. But I never needed easy.

The third assassin joined the fray. He moved differently. More precise. More methodical. A counterforce user—one who wielded kinetic negation fields, disrupting my telekinetic pressure before it could fully take hold. A direct attack would be useless.

So I didn't attack. I baited. I let my next strike overextend, feigning just enough vulnerability to lure him in. And he took it. The assassin dashed in, closing the distance in a heartbeat, aiming for a finishing blow—clean, efficient, lethal. That was his mistake. At the last moment, I shifted my weight, using the very force of my miss to twist my momentum. A whip-like telekinetic burst coiled around me as I redirected the energy, driving a high-speed elbow strike into his jaw.

Bone cracked. His body jolted as the impact sent shockwaves through his skull. He stumbled—but the others compensated. Their movements were seamless, their strikes overlapping, their coordination effortless. They were a unit—trained for this, built for this.

And me? I adapted. I pushed my body harder, reinforcing muscle fibers, flooding my nervous system with raw Psionic Reinforcement until I forced past human limitations. A blade grazed my ribs—a shallow cut, fast, clean.

Pain. I registered it. Acknowledged it. Then discarded it. Pain was a limitation of lesser Espers. Pain was a suggestion, not a rule. I had intended to capture them. To interrogate, and extract information. But it became clear—these weren't men meant to be captured. Their minds were fortified, laced with psychic fail-safes. Even if I subdued them, they wouldn't speak. And worse? They were too skilled—too dangerous—to be left alive.

So I stopped holding back. I surged forward, moving faster than their predictive algorithms could adjust. My first strike tore through the throat of one assassin, his windpipe collapsing beneath the force of a single, precise motion. He gurgled and fell—already gone. The second came at me immediately, spinning his blade in a clean, ruthless arc aimed to behead me.

I stepped inside the motion before it could fully form, caught his wrist mid-swing, and twisted sharply. His arm ripped clean from its socket. He collapsed, screaming, clutching the ruined limb, but I was already moving. The last one tried to retreat—to disappear into the shadows, to escape me. I didn't let him.

With a snap of my fingers, I collapsed the air itself, sending a crushing gravitational field downward. He fell to his knees, his body pinned by invisible weight. The pressure shattered his spine. He struggled. Twitched. I stood over him, feeling the hum of energy coursing through my veins, the sheer power I had unleashed. For a moment, I considered ending it painlessly. Then I decided not to. A ruthless downward strike to the back of his skull finished him, his body going limp. The battlefield fell silent.

I exhaled, rolling my shoulders to shake off the lingering tension. The fight had cost me. Blood dripped from my side, the gash deeper than I wanted to admit. My muscles throbbed, burning from the overuse of Psionic Reinforcement. But I was alive.

And more importantly—I had won. I turned toward the ruins of Ash home, where the real battle still raged. The Old man was falling. And Ash was heading towards him, and the Ghostkiller Leader?

He was still standing. My fists tightened, a low hum of psychic energy crackling at my fingertips. The pulse of power steadied me. This wasn't over yet.