Chapter 71 - Baiting Charles The next morning Gustav woke up at his regular timing. He still couldn’t forget yesterday’s events but miss Aimee’s assurance made him feel less cautious. He still went for his usual neighborhood watch last night even though he knew mixed-breeds were unlikely to show up and truly none showed up. Gustav got prepared for school and left with Angy once again. Several minutes later he had arrived at the school and headed for the kitchen to start his morning job. Boss Danzo had noticed the changes in Gustav. Him growing colder and colder by the day. Although he never showed boss Danzo that side of him, boss Danzo was vigilant enough to notice this. He decided he would talk with Gustav one of these days. - During the school activities, the students were paired in the training hall to spar with one another due to the upcoming exchange event. Gustav was paired with a student of class 3 d and who also happened to be a D-grade mixed-blood. The spars were for the purpose of training them and it started last week. Gustav had been revealing a bit of his prowess since last week. He had been drawing attention to himself for some reason which was unknown to everyone. He would never use any bloodline abilities when sparing but he would dodge every single attack from whoever he was sparing with causing them to feel humiliated about not being able to touch him. Although he didn’t reveal much, this was enough for him to draw attention to himself since a mixed-blood below F-grade was able to avoid attacks of other higher graded mixed-bloods. Everyone was busy with their sparring partners. There were many small circles in the hall. Everyone faced the sparring partner they were paired with, inside the circles. The small circles were barricaded by a blue glow that blocked the attacks from phasing out of the space so it wouldn’t hit another person by mistake. There were hundreds of this small circle and each one was as spacious as a boxing ring. Gustav was also within one, positioned at the west corner of the hall. Swoosh! Swoooshhh! Gustav swerved left and right as he dodged the circular balls of energy that were being sent at him. Swoosh! He sped towards the left side of the student he was sparing with. The student reacted by covering his right hand in a glow of blue energy before punching towards Gustav. Swooosh! Gustav dashed towards his back causing the student to miss him. The student turned around and swung his hand towards the back, hoping to hit Gustav but he was still too slow as Gustav dodged him. Gustav dashed towards his front again. The student was already starting to get frustrated so he summoned a lot of blue energy balls. Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! Twenty of them appeared in mid-air and surrounded him. He sent them towards Gustav with speed. Each energy ball was the size of a fist. Swhiii! The balls traveled towards Gustav crackling with a force that could easily tear a hole through a person. Five of them appeared in front of him at the same time only leaving small gaps between one another. Gustav moved towards the middle with speed as turned his body sideways. Since he didn’t want to make use of dash, his normal speed was only a bit faster than these balls so trying to dodge all of them seemed pretty impossible. ’Size manipulation,’ Immediately after Gustav said this in his mind his body suddenly deflated. His chest and back seemed to be caving in like a balloon that was being deflated. He became so flat that he could be mistaken for plywood. Doing this, while his body was turned sideways allowed the balls to miss him and keep flying forward. The student’s mouth was wide open after seeing Gustav’s performance. ’How was he able to do that?’ He wasn’t the only person that saw Gustav do that, two more people whose circle happened to be positioned on their right saw him. "Time to change partners," Their instructor voiced out. The one on the left side was glaring at him with a weird look. "Hey, Gustav why don’t you spar with me this time," The male student proposed. He was about 6’2 and had short orange-colored hair. He had a slim body but a very confident look that was very similar to a prideful one. His eyes were sharp and brimming with life. This student was the person Gustav had been aiming for since, reasons unknown. He wanted to spar with him to check out something but he needed him to be the one to propose the spar. Charles Yeman. Gustav stared at him for a bit before answering. "sure." Gustav walked towards his circle while the student that was sparing with Charles earlier walked towards Gustav’s former sparring partner. "Huhu, Gordon watch how it’s done... It’s pathetic that you can’t land a single hit on him," Charles said with a look of contempt as he stared at Gustav’s former partner. Some of the students around had left forgotten that they were supposed to be sparring right now. They decided to watch Gustav’s spar with Charles. Gustav not receiving a single hit since this training started was already ticking off some people but they didn’t have the guts to go meet Gustav and ask for a sparring session with him, due to fear of being humiliated. Now that they were seeing that Charles and Gustav were about to spar, they believed Gustav would receive his retribution today. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞 The blue glow barricaded the circle and they were surrounded by it. The same happened in the other circles but some of them seemed to be focusing on Gustav’s and Charles circle instead of sparring Surprisingly their instructor who happened to be watching from afar didn’t say anything about the students not minding their business. "You seemed to have gotten quite stronger recently, huhuhu, that won’t help you in this situation," Charles laughed like a maniac as he stared at Gustav. "Is this speech necessary? Don’t waste my time with it!" Gustav voiced out with a look of boredom. Charles’s face twisted upon hearing that. "Then I won’t show you any mercy," Charles spoke with a dark look and dashed towards Gustav. Red electric snakes danced around his body as he arrived in front of Gustav after taking only a single step. Gustav swerved towards the side dodging him by only a small margin. Charles noticed that he missed. He reacted by raised his hands and conjuring red electricity in between his palms before extending them out towards Gustav. A thick snaky line of red electric charges blasted towards Gustav. This was when Gustav finally activated dash. The speed of the snaky electricity was extremely fast and he had already predicted this so he activated dash before Charles was able to send it out. Gustav turned towards the right causing the red electricity to miss him by only a few inches but that wasn’t all that happened. Gustav could feel a force from the electricity that was pushing him backward. He distanced himself more from the electricity charge while dash was still activated and felt the force decrease. If not for his activation of dash that practically slowed down everything around him, that force would have knocked him backward.