Psychic Overlord

Elise wasted no time as with a flick of her wrist, gravitational pulses surged across the field, distorting Roland’s surroundings with enough force to bend metal.

Roland’s foot gently tapped the floor once.

Thumm!

The pulse bent... and then faded, its frequency inverted into harmless silence.

Elise narrowed her eyes and raised both palms. "Crush."

The space around Roland began to condense with crushing pressure as Elise clenched her hands harshly.

"Woah, clam down there Darth Vader." Rina commented as she leaned forward.

However, while his coat fluttered and his hair billowed, Roland himself didn’t move, just flicking his fingers with lazy precision.

Fwwwhum!

The mist around him pulsed outward in soft concentric rings and in the next instant, Elise’s field broke apart in a stuttering dissonance, her gravity flow destabilized by counter-vibrations that made her power collapse in on itself like a broken speaker stack.

"What-?!" she staggered, thrown off by the auditory pressure slipping under her skin.

"Sorry, you’ve got a good rhythm... but your beats are too rigid." Roland said, voice smooth as a low sax solo.

He raised his hand and snapped his fingers, causing the arena to pulse once more, this one being low, deep, and wide.

Elise braced, but her balance wobbled.

Roland walked forward now, weaving through the shifting gravity zones with the lazy grace of a male model in slow-motion, his every step tuned to a frequency she couldn’t catch.

Then he stopped and thrust one hand forward gently.

Fwwaaaap!

A focused vibrational wave surged outward, like a directional tremor, causing Elise’s knees to buckle under the pressure. She clenched her fists to counter but Roland stepped into her zone and dispersed it again with another twist of his fingers, turning her crushing grip into a weak grasp.

Finally, he crouched low and tapped the ground twice.

Thum! Thum!

A harmonic pulse echoed beneath her feet and her gravity field turned against her.

Elise rose off the ground, her weight destabilized as if her own ability had betrayed her. Before she could reassert control, a final, upward shockwave surged from beneath, launching her into the air like a skipping stone.

She crashed back into the floor moments later, alive and uninjured, but totally overwhelmed.

DING!

"Winner: Roland Hayes! The Wave rides on!" Lysandra declared, laughing into the mic.

Roland straightened and adjusted his sunglasses.

"Always nice to tango," He said with a casual salute before strolling off the field, hands back in his pockets.

Kaizer smiled slightly. "This fellow..."

Rina grinned. "Tsk. Show-off."

Match 7: Rina Lunin "Death Goddess" (S+ Class) vs. Naira Hoshigaki "Dream Walker" (A-Class)

The crowd was already murmuring as the arena began to shift again.

From the right gate emerged a tall, ethereal figure clad in an opalescent silk robe. Her silver hair flowed like liquid moonlight, and her eyes were glazed over as though she were staring through the world rather than at it.

This was Naira Hoshigaki, the A-Class esper known as Dream Walker, wielder of a deeply rare mental ability: the power to entangle enemies within layered dreams and warp their perception, even while awake.

From the left gate came the Death Goddess.

Rina stepped into the ring like she was walking into her backyard. Her boots tapped faintly against the stone while a lazy expression hung on her face, one that hid amusement and a hint of hunger.

"Wish I brought more snacks..." She muttered sullenly.

The announcer didn’t even get to finish her name as a wave of dark energy pulsed from her body when she crossed the halfway mark of the platform, and half the spectators instinctively held their breath.

Lysandra’s glanced at Rina with reproach, and spoke: "Match 7. Begin."

Naira reacted first, her eyes flaring with a pale blue light as she raised both hands and the environment bent.

Rina blinked once and suddenly, she was alone in a field of roses, the crowd, the arena, and her opponent gone. The sky above was swirling with stars and nebulae while somewhere in the distance, a chime echoed.

But Rina only yawned to cover the growl of her stomach.

She lifted her hand and shattered the dream with a pulse of death energy so pure that it caused the illusion to rot away like wet paper.

The roses blackened, the stars bled and everything collapsed inward like a dying galaxy.

Back in the arena, Naira staggered, her nose bleeding while blinking rapidly in shock.

Rina didn’t move.

"Cute trick. If you’re Kurenai, my big bro is Itachi. Genjutsu of that level wont work on me." She muttered, brushing imaginary dust from her shoulder.

Panicked now, Naira launched her second phase, layered dreams. Reality folded like origami around Rina as one moment she was trapped in a childhood memory, the next locked in a coffin, then drowning in a sea of her own fears.

The transitions were seamless and powerful, but they were all still dreams.

However, death... now that, was real.

From the center of each illusion, Rina’s presence bloomed like a black flower as she walked through every false memory, decaying it with every step.

In the crowd, few telepaths who could view the scene could barely keep up with what was happening, with only Sophia and Kaizer, both seated in the VIP zone, remaining locked in.

Kaizer because he was overlooking the entire mental fight from a position akin to the Watcher in Marvel, and Sophia because she hitched a ride along with Kaizer by asking nicely.

Rina finally reappeared physically behind Naira, who gasped in horror not because Rina was there...

...but because she hadn’t sensed her approach.

"Dreams don’t work..." Rina said softly, placing two fingers on the back of Naira’s neck.

"...if you’re already marked for death." Rina finished coldly.

The ground beneath Naira turned black as veins of necrotic energy spidered outward.

Her body seized and her legs buckled.

She fell unconscious before even hitting the floor, her mind overwhelmed by the predatory force of Rina’s death energy, not even an attack.

Even Kaizer was always suppressed by that menacing aura, and Davion had been beaten away by it. There was no way Naira could withstand it at her level.

The arena lights flickered as the dreamscape fell apart, leaving only cracked stone and silence.

Then came the roar of the crowd even though they did not really understand what happened. However, what they saw was Rina casually walking over and incapacitating her foe with two fingers, which was enough for them.

[Match 8: Sophia Rochester "Void Walker" (A-Class) vs. Zev Lume "Bladed Rain" (A-Class)]

After the wild cheers from Rina’s instant demolition of Naira, the crowd had barely begun to settle before the stage began to shift again.

This time, the field expanded into a circular stone platform suspended above the ground.

Zev Lume was already on the field, his hands casually tucked into a black trench coat that flared with each movement.

His white hair was slicked back, jagged in shape, and his crimson eyes scanned the platform like a predator.

Two short swords hung loosely on his back, but they weren’t his main weapons. His true arsenal came from the sky.

"I’ll make this quick," He muttered confidently, then raised one hand skyward.

The clouds churned unnaturally and with a deafening hiss, it began to rain.

Not water too, but blades. Thousands of thin, high-velocity slivers of sharpened energy dropped like rain across the platform.

The infamous Bladed Rain, each drop able to pierce reinforced steel.

Then came Sophia Rochester.

One moment, the gate opened and she was behind the veil of light and the next, she was simply there, already on the arena floor, calm and upright.

Her auburn hair had been slicked back into a tight twist, and her dark violet jacket fluttered slightly from the ambient pressure.

The audience leaned in as Sophia lifted a hand and spoke one word.

"Fold."

Space rippled as the first wave of Zev’s blade rain never touched her. Instead, it warped sideways as if miscalculating her position, landing five meters behind her and slicing into the stone uselessly.

Zev’s eyes narrowed. "Voidspace distortion..."

He thrust his hand again and rotated it midair. The blades shifted pattern, spiraling now in a vortex of sharpened energy that targeted from all angles.

Sophia didn’t move but instead drew a line in the air with one fingertip.

The line glowed, then tore open a paper-thin rift in space.

The blades vanished as they entered it.

Gone. Deleted. Reduced to atoms even.

"That was attempt two, but you don’t get a third." She said coolly.

Zev frowned and blurred forward, drawing his twin short swords. He had fought teleporters before, but this was something else.

Sophia didn’t blink around the battlefield, she folded it.

She even folded him too as every time he stepped, the world distorted and redirected him half a meter off, causing his footing to stutter and his angles to twist.

But Zev was no rookie as mid-charge, he exhaled sharply and activated a Rain Bloom, which was a high-speed omnidirectional burst of micro-blades aimed to saturate the entire field within ten meters.

Sophia raised her hand again and This time, her fingers curled inward.

Crack!

A ripple of pressure split the arena like glass as a void trap activated, which was a spatial sinkhole formed just beneath Zev’s feet, collapsing gravity in a five-meter zone and tearing momentum out of his body like a black hole.

He crashed into it with a grunt, tumbling sideways as his blade storm backfired, with many of the projectiles sucked into the trap.

And then... she was behind him as Sophia reached out and gently tapped his spine with a flick of her index finger.

Fwump!

The trap detonated in reverse, spatial compression rebounding all at once. Zev was flung like a ragdoll into the air, his body warping through three consecutive directional folds before slamming back-first into the arena wall.

He slid to the ground, coughing violently while dizzy.

The match was long over before he could stand.

DING!

"Winner: Sophia Rochester! The void claims another." Lysandra commented with interest.

Sophia dusted her gloves lightly and turned, walking off without a word.

In the stands, Roland let out a low whistle. "She really is the Dean’s daughter, huh."

Kaizer leaned back, faintly amused. "Trust me, she didn’t even try."

Rina gave a casual shrug. "I told you. She’s terrifying when she’s in a good mood."