newbobooks Chapter 708 Stabilizing the Situation!
Chapter 708 Stabilizing the Situation!
Matteo was initially stunned, but once the training actually began, he realized what the words "cooperative combat" meant here.
The instructor on the sidelines only said one sentence: "Thirty seconds to adapt, simulate scenario number three, begin."
The next second, three obstacle walls of varying heights suddenly rose from the ground at the other end of the training field, with two high-speed rotating target drones simultaneously launching from their tops. The black-haired girl moved first; the ring of rubble beside her suddenly scattered, not randomly, but precisely forming a network of interference in mid-air, forcing the drone on the left to deviate slightly from its trajectory. In the same instant it deviated, the student who had moved at high speed had already flashed behind the obstacle, almost as if he had turned through thin air, kicking a small launcher hidden in a blind spot away.
"Top right!"
Someone in the room whispered.
The boy with the electric shock raised his hands, and the arc of electricity seemed to be twisted into a thin bundle, shooting straight up through the gap left by the black-haired girl with the gravel, accurately striking the bottom of another drone. The drone paused, lost its balance, and was about to fall when the seemingly most inconspicuous student flicked his wrist, and an invisible force forcefully changed the direction of the fall, avoiding the other two people in the arena.
Meanwhile, the tall boy with the metal outer shell had already carried a newly raised simulated bunker into the center line area, pushing forward despite the rubber bullets spraying from the ground. He wasn't charging blindly; the black-haired girl's pebbles provided temporary cover half a step in front of him, while the student behind him with the thrusting ability constantly adjusted the angle of impact to a direction he could withstand.
The entire sequence takes less than twenty seconds.
No one stood still shouting, and there were no exaggerated, deliberately cool pauses like in movies. Everyone's abilities were in motion, but they weren't working independently; rather, they were linked together like a chain: interference, changing course, cover, pressure, correction, and finishing.
Matteo stood on the sidelines, completely dumbfounded.
“…Fuck.” He muttered under his breath, not caring about his choice of words.
Mira stood to the side, seemingly used to the reactions of freshmen seeing this scene for the first time, and calmly said, "This is the basic collaborative class, not the advanced group."
Matteo turned his head sharply: "You call this the basics?"
“Yes.” Mira looked at the field. “You’ll find that individual ability is very eye-catching, but what can really stabilize the situation is often teamwork.”
The pace of the training ground quickened. The simulation shifted to its second round, and several red zones suddenly lit up on the ground, representing high-risk detonation points. This time, the black-haired girl didn't use stones to block the net; instead, she directly compressed the rubble into several low-altitude, high-speed arcs, forcing the "enemy's" trajectories to uniformly deviate towards the center line. The high-speed movement trainees no longer charged forward but instead focused on pulling their teammates away from the edges of the red zones. The tall, metallic-looking boy acted as a nail, repeatedly pushing the launch points back. The trainee who knew thrust remained unnoticed, yet consistently managed to deflect the rubber bullets by half an inch at the most dangerous angle.
Half an inch.
That half inch determines whether the person in front is hit squarely in the chest or just brushes past.
Matteo felt a chill run down his spine just looking at it.
He had seen many "good fighters" before, people with guns, people surrounding others, people chasing each other through sewers. He had always thought "strength" was simple: whoever had the hardest fist, whoever dared to strike, whoever made others afraid, was strong. But the people in front of him didn't follow that logic at all. They might not even have had the most ferocious-looking individuals, yet they controlled the entire situation like machines.
His Adam's apple bobbed, and he asked in a low voice, "Have they always been this...steady?"
Mira glanced at him: "No. You've only seen the present."
"And before that?"
“I’ve had all sorts of things before: falls, chaos, accidental injuries to teammates, blowing up the field, being harmed by my own abilities,” Mira said calmly. “Do you think anyone knows when to let go and when to hold back from day one?”
Matteo remained silent.
The fifth round on the field ended quickly. The instructor blew a short whistle, and the five people stopped, stood firm, and though their breathing was rapid, no one broke formation. The instructor only said a few words, pointing out two coordination delays, one misalignment of vision, and one obvious over-output issue. The trainee who was called on nodded, showing no signs of being annoyed by being criticized in public, as if he was already very familiar with this rhythm.
Matteo stared at them, a sense of awe slowly mingling with a very specific sense of disparity.
Last night, he was still carrying a broken steel bar by the barbed wire fence, thinking that as long as he was ruthless, fast, and reckless enough, he could carve a path through. But if you threw him into that kind of coordinated situation, he probably wouldn't even know where to stand, let alone control his crystalline structure that could grow erratically at any moment. Others know what they can do before deciding how to coordinate; what about him? He doesn't even know if he might accidentally injure the people next to him first.
That kind of disparity doesn't feel like being directly humiliated; it's even more painful because it's so real.
After the training session, Mira asked him, "Would you like to go in and try out the most basic sensory response?"
Matteo answered almost instinctively, "Yes."
So ten minutes later, he stood in a smaller section on the edge of the training field.
It's called "the most basic," but it's not easy at all. The instructor only gave him a very brief explanation: there will be low-speed projectiles and simulated ground vibrations ahead. You're not required to attack, nor are you required to make it look good. The only thing to see is whether you can detect the starting point of your internal reaction when under pressure, and whether you can prevent your ability from exploding as soon as it emerges.
“It sounds simple,” Matteo said defiantly.
The instructor glanced at him, didn't refute, and simply pressed the start button.
In the first round, three slow rubber balls bounced towards him from different angles. Matteo instinctively raised his hand to block them, his movements quick enough, but the problem was that his tension caused that familiar stinging pain on the back of his hand to immediately rise from under his skin. Transparent crystals crumbled outwards, and he subconsciously tried to press them down, but he used too much force, resulting in uneven hardening of the outer side of his right hand. He blocked one ball, but another, due to its unbalanced angle, bounced directly back to his chin.
"Hiss—damn."
A soft chuckle escaped from the few trainees who had just finished training and hadn't gone far.
Matteo's face instantly darkened.
"Continue," the instructor said calmly.
In the second round, the ground suddenly shook, simulating an impact from behind. Matteo reflexively turned around, but the crystal reaction was faster than him, climbing up his wrist. He panicked and tried to shove the crystal back, but instead, the edge of the crystal cracked with an irregular bulge, causing him to lose his balance and almost trip over himself.
This time, no one laughed. They could probably tell that he wasn't just clumsy, but genuinely unfamiliar with his own reaction. But precisely because no one laughed, his embarrassment was even more obvious.
The third round was even more extreme. The projectile came from the left, and the ground tremors started from the right. Before he could even distinguish the priorities, the crystals had already sprouted on both sides simultaneously, resulting in one side being thinner than the other, like a hastily pieced-together broken protective sheet. He tried to steady himself like the tall boy with the metal outer layer from before, but he didn't grasp the essence at all. He only managed to freeze for a moment like a glass sculpture that had suddenly grown crooked.
The instructor finally raised his hand to call a halt.
Matteo stood there, his ears burning, his breathing heavy. He wasn't actually injured, but the feeling of being "easily manipulated" was more direct than being punched. He had just watched others coordinate like a machine from the sidelines, but when it was his turn, even the most basic reactions were a mess.
His face was grim, and he gritted his teeth without saying a word.
The instructor took a few steps closer and looked at the light, translucent crystalline layer that hadn't completely faded from the back of his hand and wrist: "How did you usually press it down?"
Matteo muttered, "Press it down hard."
"No wonder," the instructor said. Those two words weren't heavy, but they seemed to instantly bring out all his disheveled state.
Matteo suddenly looked up: "What do you mean?"
“It means you’ve always treated it as an enemy.” The instructor looked at him. “When it shows up, your first reaction isn’t to guide, divide, or slow it down, but to go all out. This might suppress it in the short term, but it will only make it more chaotic next time.”
Matteo's Adam's apple bobbed, but he didn't make a sound.
"Let's do it again," the instructor said. "This time, don't think about blocking first. First, feel where it gets hot and where it pricks first, and fix the area first."
"What if it can't be fixed in place?"
"Then keep learning," the instructor said flatly. "Otherwise, what are you doing here?"
Matteo was speechless, his face turning even darker, but he couldn't utter a single word in rebuttal.
Before the fourth round began, he subconsciously glanced at the sidelines. The trainees who had just finished training were still there. Among them, the black-haired girl was watching with her arms crossed, her expression not mocking, but rather as if she were observing a typical freshman scene. The tall boy with the metal-plated jacket directly gestured to him, "Don't fight yourself."
Matteo was taken aback, not expecting the other party to do this.
"Focus," the instructor reminded him.
This time, as the rubber ball bounced towards him, he forced himself not to immediately raise his hand and strike hard, but instead focused on that familiar trigger point. Sure enough, the first area to heat up wasn't his entire hand, but rather a small patch extending from the base of his right index finger to the back of his hand. He gritted his teeth, not pressing down immediately, but instead relaxed his shoulder a little, slowing down the outward movement of his force. Transparent crystals still appeared, but instead of exploding wildly like before, they formed a thin layer, unsightly yet at least intact.
The rubber ball hit it with a "smack," but less force than he had expected.
He was stunned for a moment.
"Okay, keep it up, don't be greedy," the instructor said immediately.
The second ball came right away. Matteo wanted to repeat the feeling from before, but because he was excited, his shoulder tensed up again, and the edge of the crystal layer immediately became unstable. The ball still grazed the outside of his elbow and hit him.
The tall boy on the sidelines whistled from afar, not laughing, but as if to say, "At least it's starting to look decent."
Matteo's chest heaved violently, his inner resentment and desire to win surging within him.
Over the next twenty minutes, he stumbled and fell many times in that small area, and also managed to block a few times. Most of the time it was chaotic, but occasionally there would be a moment when the crystals seemed to finally stop opposing him and actually emerge in accordance with a clearer intention. That moment was very short, but it was enough to be addictive.
By the end of training, his arms were incredibly sore, his forehead was covered in sweat, and only a faint trace of the transparent crystalline layer on the back of his hands remained. The instructor told him to stop, and he realized he was breathing as fast as if he had just finished a long run.
"That's all for today," the instructor said.
Matteo was still staring at his hands, as if unwilling to let it end like this: "Did I... the second time, count as controlling myself a little?"
The instructor glanced at him for a second: "Count as half a time."
"Half a time?"
"You want to hear a lie?"
Matteo ground his back teeth: "...Fine, half a time it is."
The black-haired girl next to him walked over, bent down to pick up a rubber ball that had rolled to the side, and casually tossed it to him: "New here?"
Matteo instinctively caught it: "Mm."
“My name is Evie.” She pointed to the other people in the arena who were already collecting their equipment. “That big guy is Devon, the fast one is Luke, the one with the thrust is Sammy, and you probably saw the one with the arc, Eli. Your crystallization just now was quite typical, like an inductive exfoliation. Don’t go all out against it right away.”
This is the second person to say something similar to him today.
Matt's face stiffened: "Do I look that obvious?"
Devon happened to walk over and chuckled upon hearing this: "It's as if the words 'I want to win' are etched on your forehead."
"That's still better than lying flat."
“Of course.” Devon glanced at the back of his hand. “Winning is no problem, provided you know what you’re betting on to win.”
This statement eerily overlapped with something Lynn had said on the way. Matteo didn't catch on immediately, but simply bent down and tossed the rubber ball back. The ball traced a short arc in mid-air before being caught by Evie with one hand.
They didn't chat much further and went to wrap things up. But those few words were enough for Matteo to realize that this place was unlike any circle he had ever been to before. No one was making fun of his earlier embarrassment, and no one was deliberately trying to boss him around. Talented people are talented, but talent doesn't mean they have to put you down when they talk.
This disparity left him even more bewildered than the training itself.
When he returned to his dorm that evening, he was still in a state of shock and resentment. The room wasn't big, but it was quiet, and he could see a small light still on at the training wing in the distance. He tossed his bag onto a chair, sat down on the edge of the bed, and stared blankly at the back of his hand.
There was nothing left to see there, but the image of that group of people training together kept replaying in his mind.
Stones sealed the line, electric arcs pierced the air, thrust was redirected, and the metal cladding pushed forward against the impact—every step was swift, every step was steady. He had seen many "powerful" people before, but never anyone like this. It wasn't that one person stood out and instilled fear, but rather that several people combined their abilities, and the situation truly changed.
He recalled the ten or so minutes he had stood inside.
I was hit on the chin by the ball the first time.
I almost tripped over myself the second time.
The third one looked like a piece of glass that had grown crooked.
How embarrassing.
He wiped his face, muttered a curse under his breath, then brought his hand to his eyes again, his fingers slowly closing. Without the stimulus of a sample, without the threat of death, he could now feel the reaction lurking deeper, like something shimmering beneath his skin—not as intense as last night, but not exactly docile either. (End of Chapter)