Everything changed about the atmosphere the moment the lady declared.
Northern felt himself pressed upon by a heavy force, only that there was no visible heavy force. Whatever this was, his guess was that, it was the lady’s talent ability and he had to deal with it somehow.
But how?
He was impressive thus far, he had learnt a lot and even managed to several times outsmart those kids back in the countryside who were newly awakened.
Other things he had learnt from several practice duels from his father, but he didn’t take any class on dealing with talent. More importantly, he had never thought about a talent like this one.
If her talent allowed her to instill fear in her opponent, under what type would it be? Scholar? Hunter?
No. The entire prejudice was wrong. She was clearly a hunter class from the way she spoke about spiritual release.
Northern gritted his teeth as he tried to resist.
The way the lady looked, her brute appearance, the scars and and her feral face – she gave off the vibe of someone that would be more powerful than his own father.
He came out once and he already met two people that could be far stronger than his father – to think his father was actually the strongest in the countryside.
Northern could be missing a lot staying hidden in that place and he was beginning to realize it.
“What?” The lady clicked her tongue. “A moment ago you were looking very cocky, now you can’t raise your head anymore?”
Northern was struggling with the effect of the pressure upon his head, it was incredibly had for him to resist the domineering force that pressed him down, and it was even harder to breath in her presence.
There was no way out…
Almost.
Northern narrowed his eyes to a slit as a possibility occurred to him. Currently, the lady’s talent ability was solely focused on him.
What if she had the ability that enabled her to target a person and not an area?
‘…that should change everything right…’
All he just needed was one second of relapse and for him to get it, he needed an element of surprise.
A devilish smile formed on his face, even though his head was bowed and being pressed down. The woman could feel that the young kid was happy about something.
The pressure on Northern suddenly increased. He fell to his knee and coughed out blood.
The lady raised a brow as she saw him, her countenance broke apart, pity filling in. She lifted her hand to stop it but frowned the next second.
“Gotchya…”
She swung her face to the side – it was too late for her – her feral face was met by the flying punch of another Northern whom she had no idea where he had come from.
Northern smiled and slowly rose up. To her shock… the Northern in front of her shattered and become a dust. A tense frown covered her face, she didn’t understand what was going on.
“I’ve been fighting a clone all the while?”
Northern had managed to land a punch but he wasn’t having a good time with it at all. The lady’s face was unscathed, unfazed. When he landed the punch, it was like he punched into a metal wall. A jolt or breaking pains ran through his hand.
Till now, as the woman turned and asked the question, Northern was still dealing with the pain, swinging his hand voraciously.
“Hey! Brat! I’m talking to you.” The lady grabbed and lifted him by the wrist of the hand that was paining him.
Northern stared deadpan at her, sighing lamely before speaking.
“It was before you even came. I wanted to test out something with my talent ability so I decided to place a clone at the counter while I check around the place.”
There were several reasons for what he did. The main reason in fact wasn’t because he predicted a fight with the woman.
Northern wanted to know how cloning work, the thing he was most concerned about was the amount of information that the clone could receive. How information was perceived and whether he could pass a mental command.
To his surprise, everything was better than he had thought. The clone was able to perfectly mirror the things that went on in his head.
For a fact, Northern felt like the clone was a better fighter than he. The informations he passed to it were executed instantaneously. There would have been an element of ‘almost’ if he was the one in the fight.
He seriously was considering pushing the clone to battle all the time. But then he wasn’t a lazy natured person.
All this was just a coincidence, he had no plan to enter into the fight from the beginning, which meant even though he was required to do so, he wasn’t going to use his talent.
But some things began to spiral out of his speculations.
One. He thought the fear being instilled in him was the woman’s talent ability. If it was why was the system not asking if he wanted to copy it?
Two. His clone was doing an amazing job containing the whole situation but was a few seconds away from breaking apart.
And he could feel it vividly in his own body. When the clone shattered and dissipated, it felt like a small part of himself had returned.
And that was the summary of all that had happened.
“Yes…”
Yet, the whole scenario from the woman’s point of view was different.
She clenched her teeth, her brows furrowed viciously.
“You dare to deceive me?!”
“It was not my fault that you didn’t notice that I have been using my talent since the beginning. Fine let’s say, I played too smart for you to catch onto… you were so focused on using your talent ability to deal with me that you couldn’t detect an attack from behind.”
Northern continued coldly.
“Trust me, if I was half as strong as you are. You would have died twice… firstly, when you decided to use spiritual release and didn’t attack me for real because, I most definitely would have seen it coming. Secondly, just now.”
The boy’s words were annoyingly right.
Annette was a very strong awakened, she was feared even amongst her peers and was an experienced hunter who had even lost one of her eyes to a rift raid.
She was strong enough to be recruited and given special treatment by the Headmaster of the public citadel of Crowndor city even though she had a lousy character and was an unredeemable drunkard.
She was special and it wasn’t just because of her strength, the complications and speciality of her talent ability also contributed to it.
And someone like her was outsmarted by a kid?
“How? How did you do it?”
Northern replied hee with a bored look, saying nothing.
“How did you sneak up behind me?!” She yelled at him.
A frown fell on his face, “what a nice way to ask for guidance.”
The lady repelled her head, her brows frowning unbelievably.
“There was no trick to it. You were focused on him, I just needed to make the timing be when you were more focused than usual. Which happened the last minute. I crawled all the way, then last minute, I jumped with my punch… which was pretty much useless as you can see.”
He pointed dully to the hand she was holding.
To think she’d been had with such simplicity…
‘Did I loosen up too much because there was nothing to worry about or have I just gotten rusty since I lost my eye.’
Annette sneered and released his wrist.
He threw her an irritated scowl before caressing the poor wrist.
While he was doing that, Annette brought out a piece of paper and scribbled a few things then tucked it back in. The life in her expression had died since Northern finish giving his explanation.
She turned unceremoniously and said as she walked away.
“Follow me… we’ll be conducting the second part of the test indoors.”