Psychic Overlord

Eleanor floated mid-air, her tome wide open, eyes glowing with ancient glyphs as six elemental runes rotated behind her. Each symbol pulsed with power, chained to the Book of Merlin that hovered by her side like a living thing.

Water, fire, wind, earth, light, and dark. She had all six in full harmony, and her casting rhythm was perfect. To the crowd, it looked like Kaizer was about to be overrun.

But he wasn’t worried.

Kaizer’s feet skidded across the stone as he dodged a spear of molten flame. His psychic domain expanded ever so slightly, just enough to brush the surface of Eleanor’s thoughts.

Not deep enough to read them fully, not yet. Just enough to hear the rhythm, the pulse of her mind as she cast.

Her next attack came sharp and layered, a chain of water needles wrapped in wind. A good move that was hard to counter.

Kaizer didn’t block it as he conjured wind himself, mimicking her glyph rotation using elemental control. His wind slipped around hers, disrupting the current, causing her attack to scatter into mist.

She blinked in surprise while he advanced.

Eleanor Seltzer switched to earth, sending pillars to crush him from above and Kaizer simply mirrored the pattern. His own earth glyph appeared, summoning spikes from below to intercept.

The arena shook, but the attacks canceled out.

Then Kaizer spoke in what seemed like just a whisper but his lips hadn’t moved.

’Your binding sigil is off-center.’

Eleanor’s eyes twitched and her next fire rune flared too early. She covered the mistake quickly, but Kaizer was already in motion, sliding past the blast and hurling a telekinetic force punch straight at her flank.

She blocked with a shadow veil, but the timing was off again.

Her breathing picked up as she clearly couldn’t understand what was happening. The tome flipped rapidly again, its pages glowing while she began chanting in what sounded like high elvish.

Kaizer didn’t stop her, rather his ’voice’ sounded again.

’You skipped a line. Fire will override light.’

She flinched and the spell misfired. A burst of flame twisted sideways, detonating to her left and shredding one of her defensive rings.

Now he had her.

Kaizer moved like water, each step timed to her faltering rhythm. His attacks weren’t just reactive anymore, they were predictive not based on vision, but cognition. He was listening to her brain process spells in real-time.

She tried to launch an ice barrier but that insidious voice sounded again.

’You fear being outshone, especially by Rina.’

Eleanor gasped and the glyph shattered.

Kazier didn’t press further with words.

Instead, he let the pressure build as each time she formed a rune, he shifted his mental influence just enough to brush her subconscious.

A suggestion here, a doubt there and her spellcasting slowed while her formations lost sharpness.

A little trick the Dean had taught him during his seclusion, something he himself mastered with very little help from his mentor, surprising the Dean.

However, Kaizer simply explained that he already had a perfect visualization for this ability, and that was the famous jedi mind tricks.

The version in the movies was not explained well, but Kaizer read the books and played the games, and those developed more on the ability.

Against Eleanor who had mental guards, it was best to make subtle influence so she wouldn’t detect it, though Kaizer’s superior psychic power could easily brute force his way through if need be, but that would reveal his telepathy.

Another fire rune came, this one stronger. Kaizer mimicked it again, forming a spiral of blue fire that clashed with hers, but his stayed stable while hers cracked.

She flew back, landing hard on a fractured platform, her breathing shallow now as sweat ran down her face. The tome still hovered in front of her while glowing, but her calm and calculative eyes were different.

Eleanor Seltzer was confused.

Kaizer took one slow step forward. "I told you I didn’t need you to hold back."

His voice was calm, but every word landed like a hammer. "I never needed to overpower you."

His eyes glowed. "Just outthink you."

Eleanor’s breath hitched.

Her runes were cracking, her formations jittering in mid-air, refusing to lock properly and every chant now echoing with a tremor of slight hesitation.

She tried to raise a new glyph—light fused with wind—but the circles stuttered at the edge. Her fingers twitched, mind racing to compensate, but it was slipping.

Kaizer hadn’t moved, just standing there with that calm expression, his eyes steady. He was not smug, did not mock her, but was entirely focused on her next move.

And that made it worse for Eleanor.

Because he actually didn’t need to crush her, he just needed to exist and her power seemed to become unstable on its own!

The Book of Merlin floated close, flipping pages on instinct, trying to sync with her mental state, but it was no use. The more she cast, the more she doubted, and the more she doubted, the more Kaizer’s influence sank in.

She could feel it now.

Something in her thoughts, contaminating her spells before she even finished forming them. The moment she registered it, she tried to resist, locking her mind like her tutors taught her.

But the suggestion had already been made.

’You should’ve stopped when he beat Tyrron.’

The rune broke mid-cast.

In the instructor’s booth, Madam Sylvia closed her eyes.

"She’s spiraling," She said quietly.

Dean Rochester nodded once, arms folded. "He’s not even using full telepathy. Just the minimum required to steer her off course."

Carlisle let out a long whistle, tossing away the last of his jerky. "Damn, that’s dirty! Your kid is a telepath? How evil, just like that old bastard George."

"It’s surgical and effective." Lysandra corrected, glaring at Carlisle who raised his hands in surrender.

Sylvia sighed, fingers tightening on her fan. "She’s a control-type caster. Her entire spell system depends on stability and rhythm. Once the tempo breaks..."

"She can’t adapt, she’s not used to losing composure." the Dean finished.

On the field, Eleanor was breathing heavier now, sweat trailing down her neck. She launched a full barrage—light, fire, and shadow—but Kaizer stepped through it like mist, matching each element with a mirrored counter.

His hand moved in perfect sync with her own, his flames matching her angles, his shadows negating her phantoms.

It was infuriating and terrifying for her.

But most of all, it was calm.

Eleanor screamed, raising the book high as she unleashed every rune at once. Six full elemental rings—her trump card, leading to the ancestral spell ’Chrono Vortex’, which was a cascade of destructive convergence that few could block.

Kaizer simply exhaled and focused his power as blue light flared from behind him in a calm spiral.

Then he raised a single hand, and everything stopped.

Eleanor’s runes froze, but not from outside interference like time stop, but from within her own mind. Her mind locked itself, uncertain whether to activate or delay.

Before today, she had never doubted her magic and her judgment.

In the end, she hesitated, the vortex shattered, and so too did her heart of magic.

She collapsed to one knee, gripping the book like it was the only thing holding her up.

Kaizer walked forward, coming to loom over his foe with a casual demeanor, his hands in his jacket pockets.

"You lost the moment you started reacting," He said evenly.

Eleanor didn’t respond. Her mouth opened to refute, or to agree, or to even insult, but no sound came out.

Because deep down, she knew he was right.

She... was beaten.

.........

The scent of chalk dust and burnt paper filled the air.

A young Eleanor, no older than nine, sat cross-legged before a five-ringed casting circle, her hands trembling slightly as she tried to keep her mana flow steady.

One mistake, just one misaligned glyph, and the entire circuit would collapse.

Again.

"Reset the entire circuit. You paused too long between the second and third rings."

Her grandmother’s voice was sharp, clipped like a blade honed on criticism. The elder matriarch of the Seltzer clan stood tall in dark robes embroidered with platinum glyphs, her eyes cold and unreadable.

"But I—" Eleanor began in protest.

Her Grandmother did not have it. "No excuses. Reset."

A flick of her cane and the chalk erased itself instantly, the mana-infused dust scattering back into the floor like it had never been drawn.

Eleanor bit her lip and tried again.

Around her, marble pillars rose like the ribs of a dragon, the ancestral training chamber hidden beneath the family’s estate. Dozens of portraits lined the walls, each one a former prodigy, each one marked with titles and accolades from wars and centuries past.

Failure had no place here, in the noble Seltzer Clan.

"You will not be average, you are not allowed to be." Her father had declared once, placing the Book of Merlin in her arms when she was barely tall enough to carry it.

So she studied when others slept and she practiced when others laughed in joy from leisure. Every spell had to be perfect, every rune balanced, every chant seamless.

The Seltzer name was synonymous with control and she was to become its living embodiment.

Her grandmother loomed closer.

"Again." Her voice infinitely cold.

So Eleanor cast again.

And again.

And again.

Until her fingers bled, her mana cracked and she fell asleep on the cold stone, still whispering ancient words in her dreams.