Haven Ring

The room was quiet, and yet, the silence was suffocating.

Agbes sat across from Namor Vortan, and despite his posture being relaxed, with one leg crossed over the other, chin resting on his hand, she felt as though every move she made was being scrutinized heavily. Behind him stood two of his subordinates. They were second years, surprisingly, and they both stared at her with sharp, unblinking gazes.

It was nerve-wracking, but Agnes had come here, and she didn't intend to be sent back due to a few hardcover books.

"I'll be blunt," She began, breaking the silence first. Her voice was steady, but her clenched fists in her lap betrayed her. "I want in on your little hunt during the excursion."

Hunt.

Among certain circles in their school, it was made known that Namor intended to hunt a certain student. The reason being? He didn't want anyone to get in his way during it.

As for who the student was?

Mike, naturally.

Namor's lips curled into something that wasn't quite a smile. His violet eyes studied her like she was an unwanted insect in his parlor.

"Oh?" His tone was soft, almost bored, but the undertone was anything but friendly. "And why should I allow that? From what I recall, you already lost to him once. In public, no less."

Heat rushed to Agnes' face, and she wanted to refute him, to tell him that it was due to her taking it easy that Mike had gotten the jump on her. But she stopped herself. Anything she said to defend herself would make her already bad image in his eyes worse.

"That's exactly why. He humiliated me, and I cannot let that stand. You want him gone, and so do I. Our goals align." She said.

Namor gave a humorless chuckle, and even his subordinates smirked slightly, but they kept silent.

"You misunderstand, Agnes," He said cooly. "I don't WANT him gone. I intend it. Whether you stand with me or not doesn't change the result." He leaned forward, and Agnes felt her throat suddenly go dry.

"The only question is whether you are useful enough to justify standing in my shadow." The words made her nails dig into her palms. She wanted to snap back, but she was well aware of her position in this conversation. So, instead, she bowed her head and said reluctantly. "Then... use me. I'll do whatever it takes. I just want to see him suffer." She admitted.

For a moment, Namor just stared at her, and the silence stretched until it was borderline unbearable. Then he leaned back again, his expression unreadable

"Very well. You can tag along. But remember this–" His eyes turned cold. "When the time comes, keep in mind, it is MY hunt, not yours. You'll get your scraps, but Mike is my prey, and he will fall by my hand."

Agbes exhaled shakily, relieved, but also bitter. She had gotten what she wanted, but at what cost?

***

As Mike was preparing to enter his training room, he suddenly felt his body shudder, making him pause and frown.

It was a feeling of unease, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't place its source. But whatever it was, it wasn't something simple, that's for sure.

Sadly, he couldn't tell where it came from, so he could only shake his head and enter the room.

Yesterday, after learning about Kris's shocking ability to permanently manifest his chains and sell them for a lot of credits, the trio spent the rest of the day just doing whatever.

Despite his closed-off behavior, Kris was more than happy to pay for whatever they wanted to do, and they ended up having a lot of fun.

Eventually, though, evening came, and the group separated, which is when Mike realized that Kris didn't stay among any of the normal dorms.

He wanted to ask about it, but Theresa just told him to leave it.

After that, Mike almost threw a fuss due to Theresa needing to go to her own room, but he managed to stave off his intense instincts and let her go.

When he woke up the next day, he felt a lot better and pondered the side effects of letting his ferocity rise.

It wasn't exactly dangerous, but it could be inconvenient, both if there was someone he was close to and even worse if there wasn't anyone he was close to around, because Mike knew that he would get irritable and short-tempered if that was the case.

'I guess it's not something I can use casually. That said, ferocity is pretty weird. I can use my partial transformation with no side effects, but I become a needy puppy after raising my ferocity past a certain point.' Mike shook his head as he sat down cross-legged.

After his fight with Kris, he realized something else.

He needed a defensive skill.

Sure, his body was naturally durable, but thinking about it now, tanking attacks with his bare body all the time probably wasn't a good idea.

It was the same reason why he would prefer to get gauntlets whenever he went on Fighter's.Inc, granted, he wasn't using his aura whenever he did so.

Anyway, while his aura made him pretty durable, especially when the primal part came into play, attacks of a certain level could still break through his defenses and hurt him.

After thinking for a while, Mike had settled on three options.

Option 1. Say fuckall and throw the majority of his stat points into endurance, making him a walking tank.

Option 2. Get armor.

Option 3. Learn a defensive skill.

Option one was immediately off the list as Mike didn't intend to specialize just like that. Moreover, even if he chooses a specialization, endurance wouldn't be his priority.

Just because he could take lots of hits didn't mean he liked getting hit. That's why he had Predator's Foresight.

Option 2 was also off the list for a simple reason.

Mike was broke.

He'd looked at getting equipment before, both custom and mass-produced, and even the lower-end stuff cost at least 15,000 credits, which he didn't have.

He'd also asked Jonathan about it, and he said that even if it was low-quality, custom stuff still goes for pretty high prices. So unless Mike figured out some way to make a large amount of credits, that option was out of the window.

Hence. He settled on option 3.

He could only thank the universe for making Aura-type abilities naturally versatile, as the number of defensive techniques tailored to Aura-type abilities available was quite a lot, and after getting on the virtual library, Mike had found quite a few that interested him. But after narrowing things down, he saw three techniques that caught his interest.

Haven Ring

Hedron

Aura Buffer.

The first technique allowed the user to create rings using their Aura. The rings could either surround the user, and depending on the mastery of the skill, they could draw in incoming attacks while preventing them from harming the user.

The second technique pretty much created something akin to a dodecahedron around the user, allowing them to deflect all sorts of attacks coming from different directions.

The last technique essentially made it so that the user could use their aura like cotton, making it so that incoming attacks would slow down significantly to the point of either stopping or dealing negligible damage.

Of the three, Haven Ring and Aura Buffer were the two he liked the most as he felt like they suited him greatly.

In comparison, Hedron, while nice, required him to stay still, and as a pretty active fighter, Mike doubted he'd get the chance to do that a lot. Still, if he was in a situation where he got surrounded, it was a nice technique to have.

After setting his mentality, Mike got up and closed his eyes.

By now, his control over his Aura had gotten significantly better, and he was confident in achieving the initial stages of mastery in these techniques, and he decided to start with Haven Ring.

He exhaled and held out two fingers. Then, he slowly started to spin.

His movements were slow and could easily be followed by anyone, but what mattered was what trailed his outstretched fingers.

As he spun, he activated his aura and set its output to be moderately low. Then, he concentrated quite a bit of it in his fingertips.

As he rotated, a translucent blue line followed along his fingers.

As he did so, he concentrated on making the line of aura strong.

The technique required him to infuse his will into his aura to make it durable enough to sustain the technique. Mike assumed that meant willing it to be durable, and he did just that.

As he spun, he constantly told himself that his aura was durable, and it was going to stay durable, with the image of an impenetrable ring filling his mind.

He kept at it until he completed a full rotation, and as soon as he did, the ring was complete, and there was a faint resonance as the ring was fully formed.

Mike heard a faint ding in his mind, but he ignored it as he started drawing another ring.

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