Chapter 698: Ungrateful Hearts
The darkness was lonely tonight. The sky seemed empty, and even the two moons sat in a somber mood, their radiance dimmed, causing the night to be thicker than others.
The sound of the night was soft and almost non-existent, which was why Northern needed not to shout or raise his voice before the other four individuals standing five meters away from him could hear him.
"The reason I assembled all four of you here today is simple."
All of them had a guarded demeanor around them. The air around Northern was somewhat heavy; it was almost as if their hearts could feel the tension he was exuding. The only problem was, he wasn't exuding any tension. Northern just stood there.
"I want to teach the four of you how to work with me."
They looked at each other, exchanging glances and mutterings. In the silent night, Northern could hear them clearly.
"What is he saying?"
"Work with him how?"
"Does dude think he's special?"
All of them had something to say except Aster, who just gulped and swallowed intermittently. Northern's brows creased into a subtle frown, darting across to him.
"I thought I asked you to go for the weakest?"
The three of them suddenly faced Northern, their fangs bared with a feral look on all their faces.
"What?! You think we are weak?! Seriously, this guy!"
"Don't think because you helped us get stronger you can talk to us anyhow!"
"I'm full of you! Calling us weak just because you did a few tricks is unfair! Anyone could have done the same thing to us if they knew the trick!"
Aster tensely gritted his teeth. He hesitated for a moment then faced them with palpable wrath.
"What the hell are you saying?! How can you be so rude to someone that helped you? Simmon, even you too."
The third boy with an ashen bowl cut looked away.
"Well, he started by calling us weak. If he is so strong, why is he in the non-combative school? It's like a kettle calling pot black."
Aster frowned.
The other guy with brown tousled hair said, pantomiming.
"Asterman, it's better for you to stop sticking yourself to a glue with this guy. It's going to keep making him feel like he did something special. If you think about it, it has to be a trick of his ability, because in the end he is weak. Perhaps he is the kind that can only foster others' abilities."
Aster's expression was broken, cracks of sadness spread across his face. He couldn't even come to articulate a response. How could they be so ungrateful?
Even if he had an ability like that, shouldn't they be grateful for his help?
"How can-"
Northern's laughter suddenly bolstered into the cold wind, abruptly cutting his voice short.
The ominous laugh rose and fell a couple times before finally coming to a galloping end. Then Northern contorted a small smile on his face and said:
"You guys are what I needed you to be. I was wondering if I had to be breaking a couple of good kids. But I won't."
All of them went silent, curious and lost by his words.
He shifted his gaze to Aster.
"The only reason why you are here is to watch yourself, even though you know what happens when you do something I asked you not to do, or when you think you are sentient enough to make a decision in my team. You guys exist to fill the quota of numbers, nothing else aside from that, understood?"
"What nonsense!" The brown-haired kid retorted. "Rather than not participate as a team, I will just join another team."
"Yeah, we will join another team," the third with a low cut and slightly sleepy eyes added.
All three of them were about to leave the training ground; however, all of a sudden, their legs felt heavy.
Before they could each register what was happening, pearls of sweat began to form on their faces. Their limbs-all their limbs-trembled. Despite it being one hell of a cold night, there had been no such reaction prior to now.
'No, this is not the cold...' one's mind was intelligent enough to inform.
But what could it be? What could be so oppressive that made fear creep into their hearts, and the atmosphere suddenly became so heavy, as if a mountain was about to fall on them and there was nothing they could do about it?
The air was charged with a terrible sense of dread. It made their hearts quake, unable to bear so much despair that siphoned through the air, made their souls weaken, wills being bent to nothingness and thus making Northern's optical ability usable.
For the first time, Northern used the Chaos Eyes for something besides seeing the chaos in the future and seeing in four compartment views.
The two eyeballs burrowed into the soul of each individual like a sword of dread piercing through a fat man with sumptuous flesh.
As their gazes met, goosebumps rose on their bodies. The surrounding was obscured by a strange and dark fog. Each step Northern took echoed in it but somehow stifled outside the
fog.
Four vicious eyes glowed with a primal light, asserting their dominating presence.
And their souls were being bent and burned by the dangerous light exuding from his eyes.
There was no physical explanation for how exactly it worked; Northern just knew he had to stare with the intent of what he wanted to do.
The glow was slightly different from when he wanted to just use Chaos Eyes-which was just azure blue-this one had an almost whitish light burning in the depth of his eyes.
It was like a light so bright it would melt metal.
And that growing light was altering the shape of their souls, bending, breaking, and putting
them back together.
Until their wills were completely shattered.
"You bunch are fools with ungrateful hearts. You are lucky, what I needed were dummies."
When he was done with them, their trousers were wet, eyes widened and pooled with tears
that slowly streamed down, faces paled.
He turned to Aster and coldly said:
"Bring them tomorrow and the next. I need to be sure they are never motivated to do something stupid."
Frowning for a bit but trickles of sweat tingling his skin, Aster belatedly responded.
"Y-yes, sir."