NOVGO.NET Chapter 758: Opening Move
Chapter 758: Chapter 758: Opening Move
“Now,” Professor Mires said, tone flat, fingers clutching the projector remote. “Let’s talk about the plan we’ve come up with.”
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The next day…
The roar of the crowd drowned out everything.
A thousand banners shook in the stands. National flags, college crests, and hastily printed posters with faces of student idols all waved under the golden arena lights. The announcers’ voices blurred into background noise as cameras panned across the stage.
The final match of the day. The one everyone was waiting for.
Dark Moon versus First Celestial.
The match that would determine if First Celestial will keep its winning streak going, or if the usurpers, Dark Moon, will take the crown for the first time in over a decade.
The arena buzzed like a charged wire.
Theo Mindshade emerged from the tunnel with unhurried confidence, not a single bead of sweat on his brow. His hands were tucked loosely in his jacket pockets, expression unreadable.
He stopped at the center of the stage.
Seeing that calm, almost lazy posture, the Dark Moon supporters erupted into cheers. For a team whose odds had been buried by nearly every national analyst, the crowd clung to any signs of composure. Maybe they really did have something up their sleeve.
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Flashback…
“We send Theo first,” Mires had said the night before during the group debriefing session.
The lights in the hotel strategy room flickered just once like they too were punctuating the importance and gravity of what was about to be said next. Everyone was seated. Everyone had been tense.
“Out of the five of you, he has the highest resistance to illusion-type interference. And given that Sevra is the most likely opener for First Celestial, we need a clean counter.”
The screen behind him showed a paused image of Sevra Len’Torien’s cold, pale face. Her silvery-blonde hair was braided tight against her head, her eyes sharp and bright with barely veiled condescension.
“If we let her take down one of our fighters or mentally exhaust them early on,” Mires continued, “we lose tempo before the match even starts.”
He turned toward Theo, eyes firm. “You’re the only one who won’t be thrown off your rhythm.”
Theo gave a slow nod. “Because of my Gift?”
Mires didn’t smile. “Because of your grandmother.”
There was a moment of silence. A weight. A familiar pressure that came from being the grandchild of one of the most well-known 9-star beast-tamers in the empire.
Seraphina Mindshade. 9-star. The absolute peak of mental-attribute skills and contracts in the Empire—maybe even the world.
“You’re her grandson. You’ve been trained in high-quality mental resistance techniques since you could walk. Your grandmother has even bragged about you playing with a juvenile Mind Eating Wraith as a toddler. I trust you not to get led around by the nose.”
Hearing that, Kain couldn’t help his eyes widening in shock and choked on his drink. “I—sorry. What?” Were there no child protective services in this world?!
Theo blinked. “It was supervised.”
Doesn’t matter if his guardian is a 9-star beast-tamer. A Mind Eating Wraith?!
“Supervised?!” Kain stared. “Even short exposure to it melts higher brain function! Geniuses can spend 5 minutes with it and come out vegetative!”
“Usually,” Theo replied calmly. “But she wanted to test my mental fortitude.”
Kain looked horrified. “And nobody tried to take you from her? A caring elder”
“They tried,” Theo said. “Didn’t go well for them.”
Serena looked deeply disturbed. Jade looked oddly impressed.
Mires cleared his throat. “The point is—he won’t break.”
Theo’s expression sharpened. “It would be disgraceful if I did. Especially with her watching.”
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Present—Back on the Field
Sevra stepped through the opposing gate, her expression was unreadable. The cheering crowd felt disconnected from her, like she’d stepped into a plane of existence only she could perceive.
Mental-type tamers often did.
Her eyes flicked toward Theo—and lingered.
She knew exactly who he was. The grandson. The heir. The undeserving heir.
To her, Lady Mindshade was everything. A living divine. And yet Theo was born into her favor like it meant nothing. No battles fought. No recognition earned.
It burned.
If she was going to be seen, this was the moment.
She summoned all six of her contracts in a single motion. First time she’d done so in the tournament.
If she was going to show the world who the true mental prodigy was—it’d be now.
Crystalline illusions pulsed outward from her Reflection Wraith, spreading across the stage like spiderwebs of cracked glass. Mirrors rose and folded, bending sightlines and creating a prism-like battlefield.
Theo didn’t move.
Then slowly, he closed his eyes.
When they opened again, a soft violet glow shone in his irises.
From his perspective—the illusions were gone.
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“He might not win,” Mires had warned yesterday. “Sevra fought Jade and walked away unscathed. But if anyone can force her to burn through contracts, stamina, and focus—”
“It’s me,” Theo finished.
He wasn’t arrogant when he said it. Just… certain.
“I’ve had half the mental-attribute prodigies in the country try to take me down,” Theo had added. “Because they want what I have. The training. The reputation. The access…to my grandmother”
He looked toward the projection of Sevra’s face.
“She’s no different. I saw it in her eyes during Phase One. She doesn’t care about this match. She wants to beat me—to prove like all the others before her that I don’t deserve anything I’ve been given from birth. And that she is somehow more deserving.”
He tilted his head, voice calm.
“I’ve lost battles before. But the mind is my homeground. I’ve never lost against another specialist in the mental attribute before.”
His fingers tapped the table once.
“And I don’t plan to start now.”
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Present
Kitsu shimmered into being beside Theo, six tails flicking with anticipation. With each upgrade, it produced a new tail, and so was clearly a blue-grade spiritual creature.
Then appeared his remaining lineup:
A sleek lion-like beast with a mane of shifting sigils and three glowing eyes—one solid white and seemingly blind, one inverted, one trailing mist. Its tail ends in a quill-shaped stinger–Omenveil Manticora
Next was a was a serpent with segmented plating and crystal-like spines that hum with suppressed frequencies—Dreamshackle Basilisk
Fourth was a long-bodied, low-crawling predator with a ridged back of that seemed to be composed of large neurons and neural tendrils and antennae that pulse like sonar. Quite ugly in all honesty…but Kain recognized it as a Cerebrym Echojack
And then came his two green-grade contracts: a centipede-like insect cloaked in soft blue feathers that shimmer like candlelight; and a small, winged quadruped with folded vine-like ears and shifting, inkblot patterns across its back.
Theo fielded 4 blue-grade and 2 green-grade contracts in total. A couple of which were being seen for the first time by tournament goers, and even his teammates!
The audience looked at what Sevra had summoned across the cracked illusion field, created by the familiar transclucent humanoid creature called a Reflection Wraith—which had been the cornerstone of her previous battle strategies.
Following it was the Mirrorglint Viper, a translucent snake with reflective scales that refract light and misdirect enemy targeting. Can split its image into three mirages when threatened.
Along with a moth whose wings pulse with rippling light patterns that scramble enemy depth perception and orientation—Glassweaver Moth.
Next was a sleek, foxlike body with long feathered ears and a soft mane; emits thought-hallucination pulses through feather ruffling on its ears—Plumethought Jackal.
Her remaining two contracts were green-grade—one resembling a stork and the other a deer.
But it didn’t matter.
Theo didn’t see any of them.
His mind was already elsewhere. Focused. Anchored. Watching the ripple patterns, not the surface effects.
Every motion she made broadcasted her intentions—subtle pushes of mental suggestion trying to bend his instincts and senses.
He didn’t let them.
And then, slowly, he stepped forward.
The illusion shattered underfoot—not literally, but perceptually. Her terrain warped in real-time, trying to adapt to his non-responses. His spiritual resistance layered over his surroundings like a calm fog, muting the distortion.
Kitsu surged forward with a ripple of energy.
The battlefield erupted into pulses of flickering psychic interference—Sevra’s last-ditch attempt to pull him into her mental web.
It didn’t work.
Within five minutes, three of her contracts had been rendered unconscious. One had been consumed by its own confused hallucination and ran headlong into the barrier at the edge of the arena.
Her Wraithe was forced to retreat, its illusory field cracking as it used it to ward off Kitsu’s tail strikes.
The last two contracts flickered once, tried to reposition—
—and Theo caught them.
With a calm pulse of spiritual pressure and a soft word under his breath, his contracts worked together to build an even stronger illusion over the battlefield..
For the first time, Sevra blinked in confusion.
Then horror.
She was inside his illusion now.
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By the time the final horn sounded, Sevra lay slumped in a kneeling posture, her contracts strewn unconscious around her.
She blinked slowly, still unsure what had gone wrong. What had been real. What hadn’t.
Theo stood over her, arms crossed.
Unbothered.
Unmoving.
The announcer declared Dark Moon the winner of the first match.
Theo turned and walked back to Dark Moon’s side of the stage without another word. He was riding high and still felt like he could take down more of the opposing lineup.