Psychic Overlord

The rest of the debrief went quickly as Commander Rourke left it to his assistant while he hurried out to report what Rina shared. This made her scoff even more as it was clear that even the satellite recording of the battlefield had been interrupted to allow Davion to come and do what he wanted incognito.

Maria and Julia bid farewell to Kaizer’s group as they bickered with each other on the way out, while Sophia joined Kaizer and Rina in taking the train to Alpha City in order to return to the academy.

The train ride back to Alpha City was mostly silent.

The consistent hum of electromagnetism from the tracks provided a steady backdrop to the trio’s exhaustion as their cabin was sparsely populated, mostly occupied by business travelers, late-night workers, and a handful of students dozing off in their seats.

Kaizer sat with his head tilted back and arms folded, his breathing slow and steady as he relaxed significantly.

Sleep outside of a safe area like his home or the academy wasn’t something he indulged in often, but after the debrief and the relentless pace of their missions, his body demanded rest.

Rina sat across from him, idly scrolling through her phone with a placid expression while Sophia stared out of the window at the vast wilderness stretching between Beta and Alpha City.

Outside, the scenery had long shifted from the urban sprawl of Beta City to vast and scenic mountains.

The train was now moving across a long bridge, suspended between two towering cliffs, with a violent river rushing far below.

The structure was reinforced, designed to withstand both natural disasters and potential sabotage, but even the strongest steel had its limits, and this was quickly proven the next moment.

BOOM!

A deafening explosion tore through the train, sending a shockwave cascading through the cabins.

The force hurled passengers against the walls, shattered windows into razor-like shrapnel, and filled the air with a deafening roar.

Kaizer’s eyes snapped open just as the world around him twisted into chaos.

The train shifted violently to the left, its frame screeching in protest as the entire structure derailed.

The car tilted at a dangerous angle, its wheels scraping against the edge of the bridge, teetering on the verge of plummeting into the rapids below.

Flames erupted from the middle sections of the train, spreading rapidly as smoke filled the air.

For Kaizer, time seemed to slow down at this moment as his brain entered overdrive, his mind seizing control of the chaos around him.

His psychic domain expanded to its full 500 meters, covering the entire train in a split-second field. He immediately created an invisible psychic shield that pushed back the roaring flames and suppressed the shockwave, preventing them from tearing through the train’s compartments.

"RINA! SOPHIA!" Kaizer roared as he stood up forcefully despite the shifting.

"I know!" Rina also shot up, her hands weaving through the air as death energy coiled around her, destroying any stray debris away from panicked civilians.

Sophia, already on her feet from the start, flickered from one side of the cabin to another in bursts of void energy, grabbing dazed passengers and teleporting them before they could be thrown out of the broken windows.

Kaizer’s attention focused on the bridge that the train had been on.

The explosion had severed part of the rail, and the train was now hanging precariously off the edge, the front cars already plunging forward, their weight pulling the rest of the train towards the abyss.

One could even see sparks and metal fragments as they rained down into the raging river below, which carried them away, smashing against rocks and jagged protrusions cruelly. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

Kaizer threw out his hands, unleashing a gravitational force to halt the train’s fall. The entire weight of the train pressed down on his mind like a thwomp smashing down, but he gritted his teeth and held firm.

The metal groaned under the strain, but it barely slowed down. Kaizer could feel the train’s balance slipping as his own mental endurance was rapidly drained. If he hadn’t suffered nearly two months of the Dean’s hellish training... if he hadn’t killed all those espers and soldiers at Al-Rafid... he would have fainted the moment he felt this weight.

More passengers screamed as gravity worked against them, sending them tumbling towards the broken windows. Kaizer couldn’t hold everything at once as his new limits were being tested, and they were rapidly approaching.

"Rina! Help me stabilize it!" He called out, since Sophia was not fit for this part.

Rina planted her feet, her death energy wrapping around the metal framework, reinforcing Kaizer’s hold. It wasn’t much, but it bought them some time that they desperately needed if they were to rectify this disaster.

Sophia appeared beside Kaizer, her hand gripping his shoulder. "We need to evacuate them, now!"

Kaizer scanned the train with telesthesia and saw the countless children and families that were going to perish if something was not done.

He exhaled sharply. "Fine, I’ll buy you time. Get as many as you can!"

With a grunt of effort, Kaizer redirected his telekinesis from merely stabilizing the train to anchoring the remaining intact rails, creating a tenuous connection between the train and the bridge that was assisted by the electromagnetic connection.

It wouldn’t last long, but Kaizer didn’t need to.

"Move!" Sophia vanished in a flicker of void power, reappearing throughout the train, grabbing as many passengers as she could and teleporting them back onto the bridge.

Rina, meanwhile, used her power to form makeshift tendrils of death energy, grabbing people from the falling compartments and flinging them onto the stable parts of the bridge without killing them as she had this much control after her own training.

Kaizer gritted his teeth, sweat dripping from his forehead as he was forced to his knees, his arms trembling from the sheer force he was exerting by holding tons of metal aloft with nothing but his mind.

But then came the second explosion.

KRAKOOM!

A deeper rumble echoed from beneath the train, signaling that whatever sabotage had been planted wasn’t finished yet. It made sense in a cruel way, knowing of Kaizer’s telekinesis and telesthesia, the attack had to be both undetectable by domain scan and something that could push his telekinesis to the limit with no hope of recovery.

Kaizer’s eyes widened as the entire bridge collapsed, train and all falling towards the water with nothing to stop it.

He tried to grasp the train in mid-air, but his nose spurted blood the moment he tried, and his eyes became bloodshot as a part of his brain became damaged, akin to what would happen to a person if they tried to catch a falling wardrobe head-on.

Immediately, Kaizer felt the shock on Sophia’s face, the terror Rina displayed, and the situation of all the passengers as they slowly fell through the air to their inevitable deaths, trying to cling to anything they could reach.

Kaizer, in a half delirious state, tried to reach for his box in which the talisman to summon the dean was located, but he knew that he would not have enough time to use it before everyone hit the water.

Even if Rina, he, and Sophia would survive, none of these innocent civilians would—people who were forced into an undeserved calamity in order for his enemies to utilize the morality in his heart to weaken him further before killing him.

Everything had clearly been calculated from top to bottom, showing that the person who planned this had an extended character profile of him, his personality, and his thoughts, especially on his allies. Even if Maria and Julia had been present, the plan would likely have been adjusted to deal with their presence and their power.

Kaizer was tired.

But more than tired, he was furious.

From Carla’s random attack, to the slaughter on Summit Hill University, to the explosion on the bridge, and to the attack by Davion, all of these scenarios were overwhelming events that hit him from nowhere, causing not only danger to his life, but also to that of countless innocents.

He was not a hero of justice, but couldn’t the bastard behind all of this even consider human life for one second? They knew he would suffer a mental burden if these people died, but they themselves sent to sleep peacefully despite causing such chaos?

How was this fair? Why could they do this?

Just because there was no one in the seat of strongest who could intimidate them like Reaper? Someone with absolute power that could decide life and death so easily that no one dared to cross the line?

Fine.

Since it was the absence of such an entity that allowed these nonsensical attacks on him and those around him, then he, Kaizer, would climb into the position of strongest and press down cruelly on the esper world, making sure anyone who even dared to think of something like this suffered a fate worse than death.

Channeling the fury raging through him that surged into his mind, Kaizer stood up with blue eyes that shifted into a mixture of silver and purple as a wave of psychic power mixed with something else exploded from him.

"STOP!"

Time came to a halt.