Gabriel had known Nero for a year, since he moved to Aetherpeak. In that year, the teenager had proved himself to be a meticulous, insightful, dedicated and focused person with an inhuman drive pushing him forward towards his goals.
In their school, fighting and sparring were held regularly, though they were often divided between unawakened and Neophytes. After all, it would be unfair to ask an unawakened to fight a Neophyte. Just the mental pressure from facing a foe who could wield aether and control an innate ability while you could not would leave most trembling with fear. But Nero was the top in their class, undefeated among the unawakened and the Neophytes!
Gabriel still remembered how he had looked at Nero derisively when he first saw him challenging Neophytes. He had considered him a country bumpkin, and thought him a fool. He also clearly remembered how shocked he was when Nero kept winning, fight after fight, week after week.
In fact, he was improving drastically, so even if the new Neophytes became more accustomed to their abilities, they still could not match up to him.
That is how Gabriel viewed Nero: a fearsome, ruthless, and utterly focused machine striving towards the death of his enemies.
That was exactly why he had such a difficult time reconciling himself with the scene he was seeing now.
Nero's shower had been very long, but that was understandable. No matter how composed he appeared, he had survived a terrorist attack and so deserved some time to unwind. But when he came out of the bathroom, he looked completely distracted.
He sat down at the study table and began writing stuff down on a paper with a pencil, before crossing it out. He kept muttering to himself, and if Gabriel tried to talk to him or peer at what he was writing, Nero would give him the death stare.
Ultimately, he gave up, and turned his attention to his own matters.
Nero kept staring at the piece of paper in front of him, which had listed down the traits of his innate ability. But instead of listing its strengths, it was listing down its potential weaknesses and drawbacks. The problem was, almost all of them had been crossed out!
When he was in the shower, Nero finally felt like he had some free time, so he began experimenting with his innate ability a little. He knew that there would be time to test it out tomorrow, under the guidance of a teacher, but he wanted to test it out, anyway.
Water did not seem to affect the flame. It only absorbed some of the water's temperature as it passed through the fire, making it larger. As the flame grew larger, though the growth was minute, it could affect more water, which only fed it more, allowing it to grow even more, thereby creating a loop.
But the water was falling too fast and did not get turned into ice, which was something he noted down. After all, the effects of the flame were not instantaneous.
Another thing he learned was that the effects of the flame were not affected by its size, but the larger it was, the more area it covered and therefore was able to absorb more energy.
He tested out his control of the flame a bit and learned that his aether did not mostly go into sustaining the flame. No, after the initial consumption of summoning the flame, his aether went into controlling the flame. The larger the flame, the more aether it took to control, but that was it. That basically meant that the flame could be self-sustaining.
It was around that point where Nero realised how incredibly broken his ability seemed to be. But no, that shouldn't be possible. So he started making a list of all potential drawbacks and flaws of the Cryoflame, but the only one that he could keep was that if the flame grew too big, controlling it would be a massive burden on his aether reserves.
Not allowing himself to get too excited, Nero calmed down and thought about it logically. HIs ability was just like his moms, so he should be able to do the same things as her. But then it struck him. The small difference in how the ability presented itself, meaning as a flame rather than a snowflake, had made all the difference.
Although the effect seemed the same, it was far from the truth. The effect of both the abilities appeared to be the same, but the underlying principles were different!
Nero himself maintained total immunity from the effects of his flame, which would absorb heat, and grow larger as it absorbed more and more energy. That meant that, straight out of the gate, Nero had complete supremacy over anyone with a flame or heat based ability.
Unless the ability somehow overwhelmed his Cryoflame, all other flames and heat sources were just fuel for his flames!
But that was easier said than done, as Nero had yet to discover a way for his flames to go out besides putting them out himself!
He kept trying to stop his expectations from rising too high as it did not make sense for an innate ability to be so strong from the get go. He probably couldn't discover its flaws because he had limited experience in this field. Yes, that was it.
There was no reason to become arrogant. He needed to stop imagining himself freezing his enemy's weapons until they shattered, destroying their hopes of defeating him, before he froze them too!
After he spent an hour just writing down ideas, he decided to give up. He picked up the piece of paper and lit it aflame with his ability. The ominous blue light immediately attracted Gabriels attention, who for the first time finally saw his partner's ability. The stronger Nero was, the more beneficial it would be to his plans. Likewise, the better Gabriel performed, the more beneficial it would be to Nero.
The piece of paper hardened instead of turning to ash, yet the flame continued to burn. The flames released a cool, minty smell, almost reminding Nero of menthol.
Heh, the flame even smelled cold.
As Nero was cracking jokes in his mind, the piece of paper shattered, turning into a million tiny pieces, forever hiding their contents.
Gabriel's eyes narrowed as he tried to make sense of what he saw, while Nero smiled. Yes, he could learn to like this ability of his.
Tidying up everything, which basically only meant putting the pencil away and sweeping the dust shards of the shattered paper, Nero finally climbed into bed. Despite getting plenty of rest at the hospital, it had been an exhausting day. Tomorrow promised to be just as exhausting, if only a little lacking in near death experiences as today - hopefully.
Nero did not remove the knife that was strapped to his leg, but he did remove his shirt before slipping into the blankets. He had done so purposefully, because…
"What's that on your back?" Gabriel asked, surprised to see the massive tattoo on Nero's back. He refused to believe he had developed an artistic side. Nero was too single minded for anything like that.
"Preparations," Nero only said, not elaborating further. It was important to keep Gabriel in the dark about some things, while it was also important to maintain a mysterious image in his eyes. He could not let Gabriel get a complete read on himself. After all, the redhead had an incredibly mysterious background that Nero could not look through.
Although they were helping each other, Nero could not completely trust him. It was important to keep some contingencies.
Silence filled the room for a while as the two teenagers simmered in their own thoughts. Eventually, Gabriel broke the silence.
"Nero?"
"Yeah?"
"Good night."
"You too."
Sleep came quickly, as it always did, and if Nero had any dreams, he did not remember them.
Before he knew it, the alarm on his phone began to ring, jerking him awake. He slammed his hand on his phone, as he always did, before slowly opening his eyes.
For a moment he was startled. Nero did not recognise where he was. Then memories came, and he remembered that he was in the hostel now.
He groaned, and was about to set up a second alarm so that he could sleep more, when he heard the sound of something shattering. He looked down and saw a blue flame in his hand that covered the phone, which was now in several pieces.
"Dammit," Nero exclaimed as he put out the flame, but it was too late. The damage had been done. He would need to buy a new phone again!
"That happens a lot the first few days," said Gabriel from his bed as he looked at Nero's hand with interest. "Everyone loses control of their abilities when they're taken by surprise. But eventually you get used to it, and learn how to control it."
Nero frowned, but then sighed. There was nothing he could do about it other than train. He wasn't upset over the loss of control, but rather his inability to predict it. It seemed his vigilance was slipping. He had allowed excitement and anticipation to cloud his mind.
Nero climbed out of bed and looked through the blinds in their room. The sky in the distance was light blue, and the sun had not yet emerged from behind the mountains.
It was much too early for regular classes, but Nero began preparing to head to school anyway. He put on his shirt and shoes before going to the bathroom to wash up.
His other three roommates still seemed absent, but that was for the best. He wanted to meet them when he had pants that weren't literally falling.
Nero waded through the empty hostel halls till he exited, then began to make his way towards his school, which was joined to the hostels.
Normal classes, such as language, history, mathematics, science and aether studies all began at 9 am and continued till 3 pm usually. All students would have to attend a portion of those classes and needed to maintain a minimum score in them. But the requirements weren't too tough, as there was an entire set of classes operating alongside these, and they were focused on cultivation and learning how to use Eldrim cards.
These classes all happened at different times, which also explained why his three other roommates had classes at night.
When Nero entered the school he started seeing more students, all of varying ages. Most would not take more than the mandatory classes, but some highly motivated students filled their free time with extra classes to better prepare themselves for the troubles that lay ahead.
Nero walked up to a counter near the entrance of the school and looked at the bored teacher sitting there.
"Hi, I'm a new Neophyte. I would like to sign up for the introductory classes. By the way, I need new uniforms."