Is this guy an alien? Ren asked, and Kelsey replied, yes.
This guy is John Ericsson. He is a Karnai.
By the way, if you are wondering why he has a normal human name, it is because his original name cannot be pronounced with the human tongue, so we gave him an Earth name. Also, he is a visitor not from a group but he came to earth as an individual.
Earth has been aware of aliens for a long, long time now. Their history with them is quite complicated, but the main point is: none of the contacts humans ever had with aliens were technically official. And good thing it wasn't.
Because all alien species that have reached the stars and successfully contacted other ones have one thing in common: they are all under one ruling body. Either under one king, one queen, or one government.
No species that made it to the era of the stars before that is still divided survived.
Why? The answer is very obvious when you look at Earth. Earth is quite divided by its countries and other things like racism. If humans really have such a hard time coexisting with each other, how could they ever possibly coexist with an entire cluster of different species?
So whenever a species that is still divided makes it to the star era, they get broken down because countries make alliances with different alien species. That causes internal wars—and wars in space between aliens—and in the end the only ones benefiting from this are the aliens that interfered with the divided species, because they can take the leftovers of that species.
So that's why it's good humans never had any official contact with aliens for a long time… until Star Island came along.
They are the only group on Earth that is allowed to have any official contact with aliens. That is mainly because they are not any sort of government group, and they have connections to aliens strong enough to make contact safely—mainly thanks to Starborn—so Star Island can make contact with aliens and make sure nothing dangerous is coming towards them.
Now that they have access to information from beyond the stars… but that doesn't mean they have access to alien technology or anything. At least, not a lot. Again, this is only a simple contact where they can do things like allow aliens to visit Earth—and maybe do the opposite and send a human to space—but that is under special circumstances.
And with that, Kelsey left them alone to talk.
They sat in silence for a moment, until Ren decided to speak.
"So… how about we all introduce ourselves? I'm Ren Dover."
From the side, Kai spoke. "I'm Kai Mercer."
"I don't care," John simply said.
"Wait, what—" Ren started, but John cut him off immediately.
"Look. I left my planet because in my culture there's a tradition where if a child reaches a certain age, they have to wander the land to become stronger. Even with the modern age on my planet, that tradition died a bit, but it isn't fully gone. My family still celebrated it."
"And since my home planet is fully explored, and there's not any new challenge that anyone could find there, so that tradition changed to wandering space. So I came to Earth because I heard it was quite dangerous."
John's eyes narrowed.
"But ever since I came here, I wasn't allowed to leave the island unless it was with special circumstances, or after a certain amount of time. And I had to waste even more time learning the language and waiting to join SIED. I just had to wait over and over again."
He exhaled sharply through his nose.
"But I get why I had to do that, so I wasn't really that mad about it."
Then his expression hardened.
"But now I'm mad. Because I have to mentor two people that are clearly weaker than me. That's so waste of time that I cannot accept at all."
"Especially since I can't access any dangerous missions without enough experience. And since a lot of it depends on the team—with teamwork and performance—having the two of you is already a burden."
John's words started to anger Kai immediately.
But Ren still managed to stay calm, because he expected something similar to happen if they got stuck with an arrogant kid from a hero family—even though this isn't the same, it's still similar.
"I hope the two of you have some useful powers," John said coldly. "So what are they?"
Ren gave Kai enough time to calm himself down by going first.
"I can make shadow tendrils from shadows… or from my own body," Ren explained.
He demonstrated by creating some.
"I call them shades."
Then came Kai's turn.
"I can create a fire sword," Kai said, demonstrating his power. "Other than it's made of fire, it can block and deal more damage than I can do with an ordinary sword."
He looked at John directly.
"Also, I can throw it."
John just looked at them with a cold gaze. "Your abilities suck," he simply said.
And with that, Kai couldn't hold his anger anymore. Ren was trying not to get angry, but it didn't work anymore.
"How dare you look down on us, you fucking bastard? Just because you're an alien you think you're superior to us, is that it?" Kai said.
"You know, I have been trying to be a nice person by not complaining about your attitude, but you keep crossing the line, you fucking prick," Ren said in anger.
John heard them and started to get angry as well.
"You know, if the two of you don't calm down, I might have to teach the both of you a lesson. Do you get that?" he said with a threatening tone.
But Ren and Kai weren't afraid at all.
"You know what? We might as well fight. I would enjoy beating the living shit out of you," Kai said.
John gritted his teeth. "Well, a fight would help me release some stress, and it will put both of you in your place… so let's go. We can fight in the training hall and do that."
John left the room, and the two of them followed him along.
During the walk, the three of them were tense to the point that the students and adults who tried to greet them out of friendliness didn't, because they could feel how tense the air around the three of them was.
Eventually, they arrived at the training room.
It was large, with training equipment all over the place, and there was a large space in the middle for sparring. It wasn't like a boxing ring or anything. It was just a mat large enough for multiple people to fight at the same time.
Ren and Kai went into the middle, waiting for the fight to start.
But John didn't go to the middle. Instead, he went to one of the corners of the training hall and opened a giant drawer to see what was inside: weapons, more specifically wooden weapons like swords, bows, spears, and axes.
He was staring in particular at a bow and a sword, like he was choosing which one to pick.
Eventually, he picked up the wooden long sword and walked in front of Ren and Kai, ready to fight.