As Mrs. Eimar walked in, the class stared in awe. Her skin was as white as snow with the radiance of the sun itself, and her eyes flashed with the green livelihood of nature. When she walked to the center and smiled, it felt like a proud mother, a sudden sense of safety. The class was entirely lost in her look—all except Michael, of course.
Yeah, she is pretty by the standards humans made among themselves, he thought.
Noticing he wasn't paying attention, she called him out directly. "Michael, was it? Why not volunteer for the first demonstration of Emo?"
Michael stood up obediently. He might have been a cynical misanthrope, but he wasn't a terrible student. As he walked to the front, she called upon Zion, who had just recovered from his previous beating, and began to explain the mechanics.
"Emo is a power granted to us by the unknown—a power that is truly only limited by one's emotions and thoughts, or at least that is what you were taught until now," Eimar explained, her green radiant eyes sweeping over the room. "The truth is, your powers are limited by your brain, which is the core of how you use and apply your powers, and where you draw them from depending on if you are a Mourner, Relier, or Hybrid. Meanwhile, your heart, your second engine, stores the energy called Emo. Without it, you cannot use your powers. If you overexert yourself, you may destroy your heart, which is your core, and you will die. Even the best healers cannot heal a heart overloaded with Emo; it is like a heavenly restriction, and that will be taught later in class."
"Now, we shall begin the first demonstration." Her green, radiant eyes turned hollow as she muttered a single word: "X-RAY."
The room seemed to shift, and suddenly, everyone could see right through each other, every chest cavity glowing with a distinct, burning fire.
"I have just granted you one of my abilities, X-Ray, allowing you to monitor the progress of our two candidates as they fight to the death."
Elizabeth instantly started to stand up—not out of affection for Michael, but because she knew Michael might actually kill Zion.
"Hahaha, don't worry, I'm joking!" Eimar laughed lightly. "Well, mostly. I will need at least one of you half-dead. Now, the rules are simple: fight to the death, and don't worry, I AM HERE, NO ONE WILL DIE—wait, everyone else stand up! Oh, and note: this room isn't an ability. Each teacher in Emox can directly teleport you to any training room. This room is built for both safety and efficiency. Now, Michael and Zion, stand ten feet away from each other."
Zion towered with his broad frame, staring at Michael with deep-seated hatred. To be fair, it wasn't surprising; who didn't hate Michael? In Michael's mind, he was perfection personified.
"Michael, I'll make sure to kill you even before your mummy over there moves in front of your baby Elizabeth, and then I'll have her for myself," Zion hissed.
Michael had initially considered going easy, letting the earlier outburst slide, but now? Zion was just a human, and to Michael, a human was nothing more than dirt.
"Begin."
Michael didn't move. He didn't want to use his newfound power yet; he needed to gauge his opponent. He waited—and in a heartbeat, Zion vanished.
"Behind you."
Michael reacted instantly, spinning to block a punch to his back, but the force behind it was unnatural. It felt like being hit head-on by a heavy lorry. Before he could dodge away, the voice echoed again. "Behind you again." Zion seemed to teleport directly behind him with every strike, leaving Michael with nothing to do but evade. What is his power? Michael thought frantically.
I can't keep taking damage, Michael's mind raced. It doesn't make sense; he's appearing out of nowhere. Fuck, my lungs... I can feel the air being forced out with every punch. If I hold back, he will actually kill me before Eimar steps in. And from the looks of it, she isn't moving. What the fuck am I doing, letting this pest of a human win? Am I about to die by a human? Think, Michael! Teleportation, but only to your location—meaning he is tracking your position. Heavy force means he's a strength and space type, but every power has a law...
Before Michael could finish his deduction, Zion appeared not behind him, but above him, smashing his hands straight down onto Michael's head. The ground—reinforced to be unbreakable—shattered beneath Michael's boots as blood spattered from his scalp.
Elizabeth watched in sheer terror from the stands. The other twenty students stared with utmost seriousness; to them, Michael was a walking anomaly. There was no way he would lose. And they were right: Michael was a human anomaly.
Fangs lengthened from his gums, his eyes bled a dark crimson, and his muscles bulged violently. The human they had all looked down upon twisted into a beast. The Emo core inside Michael, which previously looked like a small lightbulb under X-Ray, expanded rapidly until it swelled to the size of a cannon.
As Michael stared up at Zion—who was still relentlessly hammering down on him, screaming, "DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE!"—Michael smiled.
"Disgusting."
Michael intentionally collapsed to his knees, letting Zion commit the entirety of his downward momentum into empty space. Seizing the opening, Michael drove his knee straight upward into Zion's jaw. The generated force cracked Zion's skull with a sickening crunch.
Eimar made a move to step in, but Zion snapped his head back, his eyes wild. "STAY AWAY!" he roared in a voice so cold it defied his dying state.
"GORILLA, ELEPHANT, WHALE, STACK!"
It finally clicked. Zion was stacking the biological traits and physical attributes of existing organisms, allowing him to perform feats that defied natural law. Right now, he was stacking both weight and crushing force from three of the heaviest mammals on earth. Michael was currently pushing against twenty tons of compressed mass, but Michael refused to stop.
"Humans, you disgust me," Michael muttered, blood pouring down his face, his internal heat radiating like a dying star. "Every time you're in my way, every fucking time. Forget it. I thought you were just stained—no, you all wanted to be stained. My only goal is to revert the world to a time where it shall be clean, to a time where people won't suffer or be judged by the pathetic norms of humanity!"
The classmates weren't even paying attention to his monologue anymore. Michael's core radiated blinding heat, and his bones kept fracturing and resetting under the monstrous pressure of Zion's blows. But Zion wasn't faring much better; his skull and rib cage were visibly caved, his head looking like a deflated balloon as he desperately cycled through his stacked adaptations.
"SNAKE SENSE, SPIDER SENSE, ELEPHANT WEIGHT, LION BITE FORCE, EAGLE FLIGHT, JELLYFISH REGEN!" Zion shrieked, his ability practically rewriting biology, layering every animal trait he knew onto his physical frame.
With every punch Michael managed to return, Zion answered back tenfold. Michael leaped backward, his eyes entirely inhuman, screeching instead of shouting as he charged forward. Zion rushed him simultaneously. Michael soared into the air for a crescent kick, but Zion lunged forward, sinking his teeth straight into Michael's leg. Blood sprayed everywhere. Eimar still held her ground, knowing that intervening prematurely on either combatant would prove fatal.
Losing a limb didn't stop Michael. Before his severed leg could even hit the ground, he caught it, drove his broken femur straight through Zion's shoulder, and head-butted the opposite end to anchor it.
Zion didn't care. "I WILL MAKE SURE YOU DIE TODAY, EVEN IF I MUST DIE!" he roared, his jaw unhinging as his weight doubled again. His Emo core was rapidly depleting, burning out under the strain.
Watching from the stands, a terrified student turned to Eimar. "Aren't you planning to stop this?"
Eimar's radiant green eyes stared back coolly. "Will the unknown stop for you?"
Zion's arms bulged so violently his uniform shredded away. Michael's leg wasn't healing fast enough, but he felt the volatile energy pooling deep within him. Gathering every drop of blood and stray energy into his chest, Michael prepared a final, devastating breath. Zion did the exact same, their combined cores glowing blindingly red like twin fusion reactors.
Right before the catastrophic final clash, Eimar flickered. She appeared directly between them, waving both hands in opposite directions and releasing a sharp, concussive pulse of energy.
Thud.
Both Michael and Zion collapsed instantly, plunging the training cube into dead silence. The class stared in stunned disbelief—they hadn't even seen her move. Michael had caught a blur of her motion but lacked the speed to react. Zion was completely out cold.
Elizabeth sprinted down from the stands to reach Michael, while the rest of the student body warily divided themselves. Emox was a prison, and the prisoners naturally stuck to their own as they checked on the two fallen fighters.
"Class dismissed," Eimar's voice echoed through the empty-feeling room as she vanished into thin air, leaving the two boys unconscious on the blood-soaked floor. "Tomorrow, you will learn Emo disruption, because clearly, these two monsters need to be put in their place."
All that remained were the bewildered students, puddles of fresh blood staining the training cube, and deep, jagged cracks splintering across the walls and ceiling.