Chapter 313: Change
All eyes shifted toward Warren. He remained leaning against the stone balustrade, his arms casually resting on the cool stone.
"Edmund’s right," Xander chimed in as well, swirling the sparkling liquid in his glass.
"You’re sitting there looking like a retired general.. It’s creepy, Warren, even by your standards. I remember the time you almost fried Draco Dark for looking at you the wrong way. And now...you’re the epitome of calmness..."
Cassius grinned darkly, taking a swig of his drink.
"Did Levi Arclight siphon out your remaining drop of youthful joy? Or did you somehow attain enlightenment? All hail the great Buddha..."
Warren remained silent for a few moments. The cool autumn wind brushed through his dark hair, ruffling it slightly as he stared into the distance.
Levi didn’t waste time on joy," Warren said softly, his voice maintaining its usual low, measured cadence. "Or pain, for that matter."
"So he beat you up until you stopped smiling. Got it," Cassius grunted, taking a long drink from his own glass and resting one arm over the balustrade.
"Classic Praesagius hospitality."
"No," Warren replied, finally looking away from the plaza to face them.
"He didn’t beat me up. In fact, for the first three weeks, he barely let me use any of my offensive abilities at all."
"Wait, seriously?" Anthony asked, raising an eyebrow while absentmindedly touching the slight bruise forming on his arm where Amanda’s lightning had zapped him earlier.
"They sent the Quadra-elemental prodigy to the most elite training facility in the hemisphere, and they taught you...restraint?"
"Well, I wouldn’t put it like that..."
Warren’s eyes subtly turned darker.
"Before my training at Praesagius, whenever a threat appeared, I did what anyone with my ability would do—I simply overwhelmed it."
"If earth didn’t break through, I backed it with flames. If my fire was smothered, I used wind to ignite it, or water to alter the terrain. I was using raw strength to force solutions."
And Levi didn’t like that?" Samantha asked.
"He called it an expensive habit," Warren said, a faint, almost imperceptible twitch touching the corner of his mouth.
"After those three weeks, he put me in a simulated urban environment on the lower end with dense physical obstacles, three automated defensive drones targeting a non-combatant dummy behind me."
He smirked, his eyes glinting with a sinister light.
"Of course, he gave me one rule: I wasn’t allowed to destroy the drones."
"Not allowed to destroy them?" Kelia frowned. "In a defense drill? That defeats the point."
That was the point," Warren corrected quietly. "If I used my flames, the heat from the flames would fry the civilian dummy’s respiratory sensors."
" If I raised a wall of earth strong enough to stop high-caliber kinetic rounds from the drones, the weight of it would cave in the road beneath our feet."
"Fire was too destructive, Earth was too heavy, Water was too slow, and wind...the wind just scattered the shrapnel. Needless to say, I couldn’t use my lightning without frying the dummy."
Xander grinned, leaning his shoulders back against the balustrade.
"Let me guess. You blew up the dummy."
"Fourteen times in the first six hours," Warren admitted without a shred of embarrassment.
"Levi didn’t even yell; he expected it... He just reset the simulation matrix, handed me a fresh water bottle, and told me to try again. He forced me to realize that controlling four elements isn’t simply about raw output."
Elaborate," Lucian said, his eyes fixed on Warren.
"Instead of directing four separate elements, you can simply transition one into the next," Warren explained, raising his right hand slightly, palm up.
He activated his elemental ability, drawing a thin current of air that gently spiraled around his fingers, a subtle current that distorted the light.
"If an enemy attacks with force, raising a solid wall takes too much effort and creates debris."
Warren’s lips curled into a dark smile.
"But get this, if you flash-freeze the air with a burst of compressed water and wind, you create a temperature drop that alters the projectile’s trajectory by several degrees."
"That small fraction is all it takes for a fatal shot to miss your shoulder."
He closed his hand, and the air current vanished seamlessly as he ceased manipulating the atmosphere.
"He taught me to stop choosing the strongest element and start choosing the lightest application of my Talent that solves the problem," Warren concluded.
Silence hung over the group for a brief second as they processed the explanation.
See?" Xander threw his hands up in theatrical despair, turning to the rest of the group.
"What did I tell you? They turned him into a walking tactical manual!
A few chuckles rippled through the group. Even Amanda permitted herself a small, amused huff, leaning back against the cool stone.
"Sounds exhausting," Cassius said, though there was a look of genuine respect in his eyes. "I’ll stick to hitting things until they stay down."
"And that, my savage friend, is why you are a glorious brick, and Warren is an instrument of precision," Anthony declared, striking a dramatic pose before smoothly stepping back out of striking distance from both Cassius and Amanda.
"Though personally, I prefer precision with a bit more flair."
A round of chuckles erupted once more on the terrace.
Samantha looked down at her hands.
She flexed her fingers against the chill of the evening air, feeling the faint, invisible resonance of her umbralis-infused spear against her palm.
Pyreptar was not Tenebris.
Out here, tactical thought existed. Growth existed. People learned, adapted, and built things instead of just desperately holding onto their lives.
"He’s right, though," Edmund spoke up, his voice calm as he stepped forward to stand beside Warren.
His eyes were fixed on the far eastern quadrant of the academy, where the massive central spire of the Student Council building glistened under the evening light.
"You’re more...composed, Warren. It’s a good change."
"Composed is one word for it," Xander chuckled, taking another sip from his glass.
"Unshakeable is another. But hey, speaking of people coming back from grand transformations... Edmund, you’ve been staring at the gates every five minutes since we got up here. Are you by any chance expecting someone?"
Edmund didn’t flinch, but his jaw tightened slightly before he smoothed his expression into one of polite indifference.
"From what I’m told, the transit schedules are congested today due to the incoming delegations. I’m simply monitoring the traffic."