The duels didn't stop after mine. They followed one another without pause or transition. Victories came as quickly as defeats—sometimes clean, sometimes brutal, but always revealing. Some dominated effortlessly, others resisted as best they could before yielding, and a few rare confrontations gave rise to real, tense exchanges where every decision mattered.
I watched without really seeing. Sitting on the side, elbows resting on my knees, I stared at the arena without truly following what was happening. The movements, the impacts, the reactions flashed before me without sticking. My body was still heavy, my muscles slightly numb, and a dull pain lingered in my jaw and ribs. But that wasn't what stayed with me.
It was the defeat.
Not just any defeat.
A domination.
I clenched my teeth slightly as the tension returned. And the worst part was that I knew I was going to lose even before it really began. I hadn't been surprised. I hadn't been overwhelmed by something incomprehensible. I had simply been inferior. Slower. Less precise. Less effective. Less everything.
A simple observation.
But hard to accept.
The thought came back once again, clearer than the others. If I had used my Controller abilities, the fight would have been completely different. I replayed the key moments from another angle, as if the entire fight could be broken down into manipulable variables. The openings, the micro-imbalances, the moments where a simple intervention on the movement vectors would have been enough to break his rhythm.
I turned my gaze away slightly.
I could have won.
No.
I should have.
I ran a hand over my face and exhaled slowly. Thinking like this served no purpose—or rather, it served too much. Because the more I thought about it, the more the idea became logical, almost obvious.
The session ended without me really noticing. The students began to leave the room gradually, some still discussing their fights, others silent. I eventually stood up and left the area as well.
As soon as I stepped out, a vibration triggered on my wrist. An email. Academy — Performance Evaluation.
I remained motionless for a second before opening it. The interface appeared before me, cold, structured, without any unnecessary emotion.
Profile: Ymir Hôjlünd
Type: Mentalist — Level 1
CPI: 1.32 — slightly above the level average
MSC: 0.81 — instability under pressure
MPI: 0.76 — lack of precision in execution
MTR: 1.00 — standard single-target
DCL: 0.42 — insufficient influence
I continued reading.
The following lines detailed my errors with clinical precision. Over-analysis leading to decision-making latency. Difficulty maintaining cognitive coherence under stress. Lack of adaptation in dynamic situations.
Everything was accurate.
And that was exactly the problem.
I closed the interface before the end. I already knew this diagnosis. The word that came up most often was simple: over-analysis.
I resumed walking without any clear direction, lost in my thoughts. Why do I limit myself?
The answer was obvious on paper. The government, the great families, the control of abilities, the rules imposed on Mentalists and Controllers. But that wasn't all. There was also that more diffuse, less concrete weight—the implicit consequences, the known trajectories of those who had crossed certain limits and had never truly returned to the normal system.
I changed direction and headed toward the Mentalists' room.
The place was already active. Several students were connected to neural stations, some motionless, others slightly tense under the cognitive load. The atmosphere was silent, heavy, almost saturated with concentration.
I took a free station and settled in.
Activation of NeuroScan 360. Initialization.
The connection happened immediately.
The first sensation wasn't visual but mental. A brutal expansion of perception, as if my mind was suddenly exposed to more information than it could naturally handle.
The data began to organize around me. Cognitive flows, processing speed, attentional stability, decision-making latency. Everything was measured in real time.
The first exercise started.
Abstract structures appeared in my mental field. They were unstable, shifting, impossible to pin down. The objective was simple in theory: identify patterns in the chaos.
But every attempt to stabilize made the system evolve.
My mind first tried a classic approach. Immediate failure. The shapes changed as soon as a hypothesis appeared.
I then deliberately slowed my thinking. I stopped looking for a fixed form and began analyzing the variations themselves. The partial repetitions, the micro-structures, the incomplete cycles.
Little by little, an emergent logic appeared. Not a definitive solution, but an exploitable tendency.
The system partially validated it and immediately moved on.
A mental combat simulation triggered.
A virtual opponent appeared without transition.
The objective was prediction and cognitive neutralization.
The fight started instantly.
Too fast.
My first reflex was a direct reaction, and I took a simulated impact that disrupted my concentration.
Bad choice.
I stopped immediately to analyze.
This isn't a brute attack.
It's a reaction test.
I deliberately reduced my thinking pace.
This time, I stopped enduring the flow and began to anticipate. The mental trajectories became more readable. I no longer reacted—I predicted.
The system validated the sequence.
But cognitive fatigue increased immediately.
Without pause, I left the Mentalist station and moved to the Controller zone.
The environment changed instantly.
The data was no longer abstract but physical. Vectors, forces, angles, trajectories.
An object was projected toward me.
I extended my hand and applied a vector correction. The object deviated cleanly.
A second one came faster.
I reacted too late, and the simulated impact struck me lightly, disrupting my breathing rhythm.
I clenched my teeth.
I started again, this time without excessive analysis. Just direct action. Correction. Clean deviation.
But the mental load continued to rise.
The two systems began to superimpose in my mind. Mentalist and Controller. To understand and to impose. Two incompatible logics that forced my brain to operate in overload.
And despite the fatigue rising, I continued.
Because the defeat was still there.
And because one idea was becoming harder and harder to ignore.
If I master both systems at the same time, I never lose like today again.