"That's enough," said Miss Leywin, stopping the training session.

Stella, Chase, and Isaac stopped attacking Delta and stood on the opposite side of the room. The three of them had several bruises, were bleeding from different places, and were breathing heavily.

On the other hand, not a single scratch could be seen on Delta and he had barely moved from his initial position.

"That's all for now Delta, you can leave," Miss Leywin told Delta.

"Thank you for your time," said the three cadets simultaneously while bowing their heads.

Delta bowed his head to Miss Leywin and then turned to leave. He walked silently through the hallways for some minutes until he arrived at a white door on one side of the hallway.

He put his hand on a screen next to the door that scanned it and unlocked the door.

Everything inside the room was completely white, from the walls to the furniture, contrasting with Delta's black uniform. He finally took off his mask as well as his hood before sitting down on the bed. He looked like he was in his twenties, he had short black hair, and his eyes looked like a pair of rubies.

He sat on the bed for a while, staring at the ground while lost in thoughts.

'I hope this is the last time you make this mistake, am I clear?' he remembered the conversation he had had with Executioner Leywin before, as well as the disgusting feeling of her ability wrapping around him.

"Tsk," he gritted his teeth in fury. 'Those 'defective' worshippers, hypocrite f*ckers. As if they cared about the life of useless trash. So what if I disappear some of them? I'm just doing the world a favor. The defectives are nothing more than a plague to this world,' he thought.

However, on the outside, he still had the same thoughtful look. Besides his gritted teeth, it was impossible to tell what he was thinking. This was something common to all Black Guards, as stated by their principles, they should not show any emotion at all. Plus, Delta's thoughts were extremely dangerous since insubordination could be punishable by death, so hiding his emotions on the outside was the least he could do to ensure his own safety since he couldn't completely suppress them.

'And that executioner, I don't care how powerful she is, how does she dare use that disgusting ability on a Black Guard operator,' he thought. 'Once I'm the most powerful esper, I'll make sure to exterminate all those defective trashes and I'm going to start by that executioner. I'm going to wipe that disgusting ability off the face of the earth,' he thought with an internal smirk. That thought made him calm down, then he took out a ring from his pocket. The word "Corwin" could be seen engraved on the ring.

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'I'll make sure the name of our family goes down in history,' he thought as he looked at the ring before slipping it into his pocket again.

Then he took out a tablet and browsed through some data, and after he was done he went to sleep.

The next days went by faster than expected for everyone. Every day, Delta would go to the Control Room to check on the status of the first phase, then he would help Executioner Leywin in the training of the new Black Guard cadets during the afternoon. And suddenly, the final day arrived.

That morning, when Delta entered the control room he noticed that Executioner Leywin was also present to hear the final report about the tournament's first phase. After noticing her, Delta entered the room and stood behind her.

As expected, the big screen at the end of the room was already showing the data related to the candidates.

[Number of days passed: 7

Disqualified participants: 8570

Remaining participants: 1024

Participants having 10k points: 643]

"What's the extraction status?" asked Miss Leywin.

"Teleportation will be ready in an hour and a half," answered a man from his post.

"What about the participants?"

"We are expecting around 675 participants to be extracted today and the next to be extracted in the remaining days. Our projections show that of the remaining participants only around 20 of them have a high chance of getting disqualified," answered a woman from her post.

"What about their points count?"

"The current average among the remaining participants is 9452 points," answered the same woman.

"Stages?"

"Of the qualified participants, 539 of them are on the latter half of the Integration stage and 102 are on the first half," answered another woman from her post.

"641?"

"There are two exceptions, one of them is on the first stage of the Manipulation stage…" the woman suddenly stopped, unsure if the data was right.

"What about the other one?"

"He's… he's a non-awakened esper," the woman said doubtfully.

Miss Leywin couldn't help but smirk internally, she already knew who that participant was.

"Show me his information," asked Miss Leywin and the profile of a participant appeared on the big screen at the end of the room.

[Participant name: Seth Bayard

Academy: Knox Academy

Point count: 10125

Qualified 1 day ago]

'Well done kiddo,' Miss Leywin thought to herself as her internal smirk widened while on the outside he had the same unreadable look.

Meanwhile, behind her, Delta was raging on the inside.

'This is outrageous. I should have killed that defective when I had the chance. If it wasn't for this damn Executioner,' Delta thought filled with rage. Yet, he didn't show any reaction on the outside.

"What about the Manipulation stage esper?" Miss Leywin asked and the information about another appeared participant on the big screen at the end of the room.

'Qualified 5 days ago…' she thought as he read the information displayed on the screen. 'He must have defeated two class A and B thirios if he was able to make it that fast.'

"Show me the information about the first five qualified participants."

On the screen appeared the information of five participants. All five of them had been incredibly fast to reach the point mark, however, unlike the fifth one who qualified on the fourth day, the first four participants to qualify were absolutely outstanding, having qualified on the second day.

'There surely are incredible candidates this year,' Miss Leywin thought.

However, even though those four participants had exceptional performances everyone in the control room, even Delta, could only think about one participant, the non-awakened esper. It was the first time that a non-awakened participant passed the first phase without needing to awaken their ability. The records even showed that he was able to defeat more than one class B thirio, which made everyone wonder what would happen if he actually awakened his ability.

'A sleeping monster,' everyone thought.