The matches continued on for the rest of the day, occurring in several different venues. Feeling bored, Shun Yin decided to go look around and watch the other matches instead of staying at the same arena for the entire day.
"…hmm?"
One of the matches caught his eye, not because it was particularly entertaining but because it was completely one-sided.
"That's…!"
Recognizing Charles Porter immediately, Shun Yin froze for a moment. He watched as he punched a pink-haired girl across the face, flooring her and sending her skidding across the floor with a groan.
The girl didn't give up, however. With tears in her eyes, she slowly rose to her feet and glared at her opponent, gripping her sword tightly.
"Ha ha ha! You're quite the feisty one, aren't you?"
Charles laughed as he hit her before she could parry the blow, his fiery daggers streaking past in a crimson blur and cutting her uniform. Angry red burns flared up on her skin, cauterized wounds visible as she shrieked.
Even so, Charles mercilessly kicked her in the stomach, sending her flying. She hit the floor and rolled, but slowly staggered to her knees.
"You…" she gasped, but Charles didn't wait for her to finish her sentence. He slammed a knee into her face, breaking her nose and causing blood to spurt out. With another slash from his fiery daggers, he tore open her blouse, revealing injured patches of her once pale skin.
The girl stubbornly retaliated with a riposte from her sword, but he merely parried her blade before ramming the side of her head with his elbow and grazing her temple. As blood flowed downward and impaired her vision, he kicked her.
Shun Yin cursed as he hastened his stride toward the arena. The match was so one-sided that Charles could end it at any time, but he chose not to, all so he could toy around with her opponent. The girl was hanging limply as Charles lifted her up and pressed his burning dagger to her chest, causing her to scream in agony.
"Stop!"
The teacher who was refereeing the match grabbed his shoulder and shoved him back. Shun Yin rounded on him angrily.
"The match is over! Why haven't you declared it over yet?! That girl clearly can't fight any longer!"
The teacher merely stared at him coldly. With a sudden understanding, Shun Yin realized that the teacher was under the payroll of the Porter clan.
And Charles was one of the heirs to the Porter clan, the fiancé of Angelica Porter, the future leader of the Porter family. They couldn't go against him.
"Fuck this!"
Shun Yin swore under his breath and headed toward the arena, only for the teacher to yank him back roughly.
"If you intervene, you'll be disqualified along with that girl."
"Who cares about this stupid tournament?!" Shun Yin yelled. "If you allow that bastard to continue his abuse, that girl might die! Will you take responsibility if that happens?"
"All students sign an indemnity form when they enroll. We are not responsible for the deaths of normal students."
Shun Yin bristled at the callous tone. Gritting his teeth, he resisted the urge to smash the teacher's frosty face in, and instead tried to break free of his grip.
"Go ahead and disqualify me. I don't care."
After all, Shun Yin intended to be a hero. He didn't care about tournament rankings or prestige or strength. He only cared about protecting the innocent and the vulnerable. And right now, a helpless young lady was being beaten up in front of his eyes.
He had to save her, or he would never be able to forgive himself.
However, before he could reach the stage, someone else beat him to it.
"!!!"
"…eh?"
Voices of surprise resounded from the spectators, who had been enjoying the excessive smack down this entire time. No one had protested or shown any dismay or disgust at Charles beating up a girl one-sidedly, particularly because of his background. Those who were revolted by the display of arrogance and violence had left long ago, particularly because they couldn't do anything about it. Shun Yin didn't blame them – they were shackled by the system, and by the abuse of authority. He was more furious at those who enjoyed the spectacle and reveled in the flouting of such power.
Even so…he wasn't the only one who had resolved to resist the system, the so-called authorities.
"That's enough."
Angelica had managed to sweep up the girl in her arms and carry her away before Charles could slash her with his daggers again. Her fiancé froze for a moment, stunned by her sudden appearance, and then he broke into a smile.
"Hey, hey! Darling, even if it's you, breaking the rules and interfering in a match like this…don't you think it's an abuse of your position as the Porter clan's next leader?"
Angelica ignored him and instead turned toward the dumbfounded teacher, who was still restraining Shun Yin.
"The match is over. Why haven't you declared it yet?"
"Uh…right! Sorry about that, Lady Angelica. The match is over! The winner is Charles Porter!"
"What?! How boring." Charles sulked, his eyes narrowing into a glare. "My opponent can still fight, you know? She hasn't given up yet. How dare you take away her chance at victory…"
"Disgusting." Angelica silenced him with an icy stare of her own. Even Charles found himself taken aback by her cold fury, faltering for a moment and involuntarily taking a step back. He tried futilely to suppress a shudder.
"Cheh!"
Clicking his tongue, he whirled around and stepped off the stage. Angelica didn't follow him for much longer and instead descended.
"Where are the medics? Bring this girl to the infirmary."
"Yes, Lady Angelica!"
The teachers in charge of ferrying injured combatants to the infirmary showed up and took the girl from Angelica. They then quickly disappeared in the direction of the school building.
Shun Yin continued to watch Angelica, but her beautiful face remained a mask of emotionless iciness. He kept his distance, knowing that he was in no position to approach her. Besides, he didn't need to. As much as he was grateful to her for her assistance, he didn't do anything. And she wouldn't appreciate him thanking her.
They were worlds apart. She was the next leader of the Porter clan, a prodigy in her family and their generation. He was an outsider, a normal mage who worked his way up the ladder, had no wealthy or influential background. Approaching her would only hurt her reputation and spark gossip among the other students.
So he stayed where he was.
If Angelica was disappointed, or noticed his presence, she didn't show it. Instead, she turned slightly to glare in the direction of the retreating Charles Porter. To Shun Yin's amazement, he could see the naked fury and outright disgust in her emerald eyes. He felt a chilling premonition, almost as if he was staring at the wintry embodiment of death itself.
That couldn't possible. Why would Angelica want to kill Charles? As much as he was a bastard, and despite her position and status as the heir to one of the ten great families of the Global Federation, they were still bound to the laws of that very Federation they served.
However, Shun Yin didn't get to observe Angelica further. She turned to disappear somewhere, and he didn't follow her. He couldn't, not in front of everybody, and somehow he knew that he wasn't supposed to. Angelica probably wanted to be alone for now. Besides, what was he going to say to her? Thank her for saving the girl?
It wasn't his place to express his gratitude.
"Oh, wow…what a big fuss."
Glen Porter showed up beside Shun Yin, but the former's presence didn't surprise the latter. He had sensed him approaching from a mile away. Glen wasn't even trying to conceal his presence in the first place.
"That Charles…he really goes too far." Glen was shaking his head in disapproval. "He let that engagement go to his head and now he's acting like he's some big shot."
"…Lady Angelica, she doesn't seem happy about it."
"Of course she isn't. Her father arranged the marriage against her will, and it's quite obvious that she hates the guy. Nonetheless, Charles is from a prestigious lineage with quite the pedigree. That's why he was adopted into the Porter clan…because of his pure bloodline and affinity with fire magic. Speaking of which, don't you have affinity with fire magic too?"
Glen turned to regard Shun Yin, who stiffened immediately.
"Hmm, the only problem is your family background and lineage. My father being the obvious exception, most Porter people would look down on you for not being born into a renowned bloodline. They only care about the stupid purity and strength." Glen folded his arms with a scowl. "I'll never let anyone decide my wife for me. Good thing my dad is around to help me. My mom is surprisingly receptive to that too…then again, she's the one who chose to marry my dad against my grandfather's wishes. Heh, that's probably the best decision Mom ever made."
"…right." Shun Yin nodded neutrally. He couldn't imagine being a parent, but if he did indeed become one, he saw absolutely no reason to decide his child's spouse on his or her behalf. His parents, particularly his mother, would probably nag him in the future about getting married and having a family, but otherwise they wouldn't care who he ended up with.
The people from the great families or noble lineages had their own problems to worry about. Sighing, he shook his head and turned away, having lost interest in the rest of the tournament. Even though it was more practical to stick around and watch the other matches to get a bigger picture of what kind of opponents he might be facing tomorrow, he had lost his stomach for watching the duels after Charles's overly aggressive and violent display.
He vowed not to show that bastard any mercy if he did indeed meet him in the arena tomorrow.
For now, he decided to drop by the research division. Fortunately, Glen decided not to follow him, instead choosing to stick around to watch more matches. Relieved, Shun Yin went straight to the research building that the high school division shared with the university and headed for the laboratory where Tenshi and the others were in.
"Oh, Shun Yin. You're here. How's the tournament?"
Tenshi looked up when she caught sight of Shun Yin stepping into the laboratory.
"You didn't crash out, did you?" Gabriel asked in a teasing manner. Not one to take jokes, Shun Yin merely shook his head and gave a serious reply.
"No. I'll be competing in the next round tomorrow. But before that, I thought I should drop in and see how you guys are progressing."
"Sorry, Shun Yin." Rebecca looked apologetic. "Even though we made all those promises, we still haven't come close to developing a method for binding the spirits temporarily into our material universe. We were hoping to come up with something for you to do a trial run, but the spirits have proven elusive so far. We just can't…grasp them."
"They are too ghostly, for a lack of a better word." Gabriel shrugged. "Too intangible, too insubstantial, too incorporeal. They just can't physically manifest in our world and exert any significant form of influence or change."
"But we did manage to communicate with at least one of them." Tenshi smiled and gestured for Shun Yin to draw closer to her. In front of her was a gigantic holographic screen that displayed some sort of weird signal and graphs on a 3D plane, but yet didn't look anything…solid or material. Shun Yin didn't understand what he was looking at. Seeing the bewilderment on his face, Tenshi quickly pointed at the weird wavy lines. "We believe that's a spirit."
"…huh?"
"They don't translate visually in our dimension. How do I put it…?" Rebecca paused to ponder for a moment, gazing at the huge holographic screen in wonder. "I think a simpler way to put it is that we simply lack the senses to perceive their existence. The machines also aren't very effective in translating their…existences into a form we understand. This is the best the AI can come up with when trying to…uh, describe the spirits' form or essence to us."
"That's right. We think that the spirit or spirits are trying to communicate with us, but we simply lack the tools or devices to translate their language. If language is even the right word. For all we know, the concept of language or words might not even exist for the spirits." Tenshi was gushing excitedly now. "We still don't quite understand how they communicate, but that's obviously because they are non-terrestrial and would of course develop their own form of communication that we humans…or anything living on Earth cannot imagine."
"They are very different from monsters," Rebecca added. "Even though both spirits and monsters are from another dimension…biologically and conceptually, the monsters are much closer to us in form and function, existence and essence, than the spirits. It's really fascinating, really. We should have realized that the monsters being similar to us might be an aberration, a coincidence that two dimensions, out of an astronomical amount of possibilities, happen to be so similar to each other."
"We don't know if the spirit dimension is the exception," Gabriel protested cautiously. "We don't have enough data or evidence to say which is normal and which is the exception. We haven't found other dimensions yet…for now."
"True," Tenshi conceded, but she was still smiling brightly. "Even so, can you imagine the various possibilities? If we can finally understand what the spirits are communicating with us, we might someday be able to open up the door to an infinite number of other dimensions!"
"I hope they aren't all as hostile and dangerous as the monsters' dimension," Rebecca muttered darkly.
Tenshi ignored her. "We are getting closer to figuring this out. Once we succeed in communicating with the spirits and discovering a way to trigger an Emergence event to bring them to our world, we'll contact you. We'll probably need you to cast the summoning spell or the spell to trigger the Emergence event."
Shun Yin scowled, not liking the use of "Emergence event." However, he was committed to this project. He realized that he was disappointed that he still wouldn't be able to summon any spirits against his opponents in the tournament. At this rate, if he were to meet Glen Porter and his White Tiger in a match, he would be at an overwhelming disadvantage.
"Let me know."
"Sure!" Tenshi clasped his hands gratefully. "We really need your help! I'm sorry for taking so long, and I really appreciate your patience. But I promise you, we will succeed!"
"…yeah. I believe you."
Swallowing, Shun Yin glanced at the holographic display. Even as he watched the undulation of the waves and curves, he felt a sense of uneasiness crawl through him.
Just what are we trying to bring into this world?