Eo moved his head to the side. The rock embedded itself into the wall behind him.
"Uh, can you calm down a bit?!"
Eo started circulating his essence using the advanced technique he had pioneered himself, using thought-gel.
"Wow!" Exclaimed Wifjad. "New boss never got to prove his strength! This will be a spectacle!"
Jimean clearly had an earth affinity. Metal and Earth: The two groups with the most rivalry between them. Especially in the academy.
Eo slowly created a metal dagger. He was still irritated at the fact that it took a couple seconds to synthesize, which was usually too late in most life-or-death situations.
Eo then deflected the next few pebbles in the rock rain summoned by Jimean. He then slowly synthesized a chain attached to the hilt of his dagger.
Eo kept running and dodging. Soon, Jimean had started synthesizing pillars of rock from the ground, slamming upwards in unpredictable patterns.
(This dude is pretty good.)
Eo was slightly ticked off. This dude had exuded his essence from the floor like it was nothing.
Essence naturally started rapidly disintegrating when too far from the gate marked by the tattoo, and as expected, was extremely costly to maintain when in this state. This is why Eo had desperately experimented and succeeded in finding out how to bring the essence out of his body: by using the thought-gel he had managed to generate. However, this dude just had so much essence spilling out of him that he could actually spread it all over the floor to synthesize stalagmites upwards.
(Ugh. Either this dude is an essence reservoir or he's just careless about exuding too much too fast.)
Unfortunately it seemed to be the former. A whole minute had passed and Jimean was still shooting off rock spikes like nothing. By this time however, Eo had generated a total of 4 daggers with chains.
Eo timed his jumps to coincide with the rising of the metal spikes. On the next spike, instead of getting himself impaled on it, Eo used his essence extrusion technique to reach out and coat his shoes in metal.
Eo rode the spike upwards and jumped off. Coming in from a completely unexpected angle, he threw his dagger-chains.
They both nailed his pants right next to his feet. Jimean was half stuck, but could still flail around his arms. Eo threw the last two dagger-chains at once. Jimean managed to deflect one with a stalactite (he had managed to get some essence on the ceiling!??) but the other one nailed itself into the sleeve right under Jimean's left arm.
Jimean was right-handed and started to synthesize a stone blade. Eo grumbled in exasperation.
"You can't use the same trick twice on me! You only have one blade left!"
Eo covered the deflected dagger-chain in thought-gel and threw it.
Jimean slashed at the dagger with his stone blade but… dagger suddenly turned right under Jimean's blade and impaled itself deeply into his other arm's sleeve.
Thought-gel spread to the other chains and the daggers drove themselves even further, securing Jimean into his own room's wall quite nicely.
The other former Red Jacketers stared at Eo incredulously.
"What was that?!"
"I've never seen anything like that before…"
"Truly amazing of new boss!"
Eo sighed and slammed his foot onto Jimean's shoulder. Jimean stared at Eo with saucer eyes.
"UNFAIR!" He screamed.
"Uh… yes fair." Eo replied. "You're now part of my gang, which is called the Essov."
Jimean looked down and sulked.
"Fine. I hate you."
(Is this really how all gangs operate??)
Eo pulled the blades out and stepped back.
"Finally."
Eo walked away from the door. He left the half-destroyed room and walked down the hall.
That's when he heard the announcement that would seriously excite him for the first time in months.
"All available Mercenaries in the Academy, please report to Meeting Room A-1 for the briefing of an anti-horde incursion."