Chapter 199: Can You Handle It

Even Professor Henry raised an eyebrow at that, shifting his balance as he looked at Lynx, curious to see how the boy would react.

Lynx didn’t get angry. He didn’t stand up. He let out a low laugh, a soft, genuine chuckle that shook his shoulders slightly, shaking his head as if Julian had just told a particularly stupid joke.

"Julian, Julian... you really don’t get it, do you?" Lynx said, his voice still soft, still amused, but now with an edge of pity in it. "I haven’t released my actual aura in a very long time. Not to you, not to the crowd, not to anyone, blessed or unblessed. You haven’t felt even one percent of what I carry. What you’re feeling right now? This is me holding my breath."

"Bullshit!" Julian snapped, his voice cracking as he stepped forward, emboldened by the fact that Lynx hadn’t attacked him. "An aura is tied directly to your soul and your affinity concentration. You can’t just hide ninety nine percent of it casually while standing in a room. That’s not how it works, except you’re a super strong being, which although you’re strong, you aren’t that super strong. Stop making up stories to sound like a god. You think we’re all idiots?"

Before Lynx could speak, Lira stood up from her seat beside him, her movement sharp and sudden. Her green eyes flashing with cold fury as she glared at Julian. Lira was normally quiet, observant, but when it came to Lynx, her loyalty was absolute, almost violent.

"Shut up, will you?" she said coldly, her voice cutting through the enclosure like a knife.

"Lynx is telling you the exact truth. If he actually released his real aura right now, every single one of you would pass out on this stone floor. You couldn’t handle his bloodlust for two seconds, let alone his pressure. You’d shit yourself and cry for your mother."

Julian sneered, turning his anger on her, looking for an easier target. "Oh, of course his girl takes his side..."

"Peter," Lynx said smoothly, cutting Julian off without raising his voice, without even looking at Julian anymore.

He glanced over his shoulder at Peter, who was sitting silently near the back, trying to make himself invisible behind a pillar after all the humiliation he had been through. The boy who used to walk like he owned the academy now looked like he wanted the stone to swallow him.

"Tell him," Lynx said.

Peter stiffened instantly. His face went pale, white as paper, his body freezing under the collective gaze of the entire enclosure. The murmurs died. Every Year 1, every Year 3 and 4, even the Professors turned to look at him.

He gritted his teeth, his knuckles turning white as he gripped his thighs so hard his fingers trembled. Sweat began to bead on his forehead despite the cold wind blowing through the arena.

"It’s true," Peter muttered, his voice tight, barely audible over the distant roar of the crowd from the other trial grounds.

"Speak up so the back can hear you," Lynx said softly, raising an eyebrow, his tone gentle but carrying an absolute command that no one dared disobey. "Go on. Tell them what happened that morning."

Peter swallowed hard, a drop of cold sweat running down his temple, dripping off his jaw and onto his crisp uniform. He looked like he was about to be sick. He wasn’t looking at Lynx. He was looking at the floor, as if reliving it frame by frame.

"Two months ago," Peter started, his voice shaking now, louder, forced. "In the dorm block. Block C. Early morning. Around seven."

He took a ragged breath.

"Daniel and I... we confronted him. I was complaining that I couldn’t sleep because of... because of noise from Lynx’s room the night before. Lynx had Eira in there. We argued. I told him not to do it again. That I preferred my sleep."

A few students snickered. Peter grimaced.

"He told me never to threaten him again. He stepped closer. He was smiling. That... that smile that isn’t a smile. I talked about my family. I told him I’d kill him if he ever mentioned my sister."

The enclosure was dead silent now. You could hear the loud noise filling the place, from the spectators on the arena.

"And then he did it," Peter whispered, and his shoulders caved in slightly, his eyes glazing over as he remembered. "He said something in his head. I didn’t hear it, but his eyes... flared. The silver mark on his forehead lit up like it was burning. And then the air dropped."

He shuddered visibly.

"He didn’t move a finger. He just let go of whatever he was holding back. In less than five seconds, both me and Daniel were on our knees. Daniel was gasping, clutching his chest. I couldn’t keep my head up. My forehead was almost touching the tiles. It was like the world decided to sit on our shoulders. Like the air turned to lead and was poured straight into our lungs."

His voice cracked.

"Blood started leaking from our noses at the same time. Thin lines. My ears were ringing. I couldn’t hear Daniel screaming anymore. I genuinely thought my heart was going to burst inside my chest. If it was more than a minute, we would have been crushed."

He looked at Lynx then, a flash of old, primal fear swimming in his eyes, pure and undiluted, the same fear from that morning in the dorm.

"He told us he was moving out that night. And told us never to threaten him again. That we were just... guys living off our family names."

Peter slammed his mouth shut and sat down heavily, staring at his boots, refusing to look at anyone. His whole body was trembling. The boy who had been doing perfect push ups that morning two months ago looked completely broken.

The enclosure was dead silent.

Then Lira stood.

She nodded quietly beside Lynx, her voice calm, matter of fact, as if she were confirming the weather. But her pale green eyes were serious, and there was that familiar worship in them that everyone had started to notice.

"Peter is not lying," she said. She looked around at the crowd, not nervous at all. "And his was not even the full thing."

She turned to Kira and Emily who were sitting a few rows ahead, then back to the crowd.

"Months ago, after he came back from the for... isolated place he went, he told me, Kira and Emily where he had been. No one believed him at first. Emily laughed. Kira thought he was lying. I believed him."

She took a small step closer to Lynx, unconsciously.

"He said time runs differently there. That one month here is a year there. That he had spent a whole year there alone. We asked him to prove it. He said he couldn’t tell us how he got there, but he could let us feel a fraction of his aura."

Lira closed her eyes for a second, remembering.

"He told us to use every bit of our power to resist. He closed his eyes. At first, we could already feel something leaking from him even when he was suppressing it. It just made him more charming, we thought. Then he said, ’Ready?’

And he let go. Just a tiny percentage."

Her breathing got a little faster.

"The air got heavy instantly. The birds in the trees around us went completely silent. No wind. No insects. Just pressure. But to us he didn’t look scary. He looked like a god. Calm. Perfect. Untouchable. Like something you shouldn’t be allowed to look at directly.

Our knees buckled. All three of us. We were Blessed, we were using our full power to stand, and our knees still buckled. He opened one eye and said we were taking it better than he thought. Then he increased it."

She looked directly at Peter now.

"He said fifteen percent. Just fifteen percent of his aura. Polished by the year he spent remaking himself in the isolated place he went during the month he disappeared from the Academy."

She shivered, but smiled.

"The pressure tripled. The entire academy felt it that day, you all remember. Windows rattled three courtyards away. Students in other buildings stumbled. A professor dropped his tea. We were right in front of it. We were sweating, shaking, we couldn’t breathe. Our vision went white at the edges."

She paused.

"Five seconds. Only five seconds at fifteen percent. Then he pulled it back. He apologized. He said ’I’m so sorry’ and we all fainted. Even students who weren’t near us had staggered. He had to turn invisible and carry all three of us to Kira’s room. Kira and Emily on one bed, me on the other."

She looked at Lynx with absolute devotion.

"Peter felt his aura when he was still holding back everything. But we felt 15 percent of it, it still wasn’t bloodlust, He said if he ever unleashes that... even we wouldn’t survive it. It doesn’t feel like an academy student’s power. It doesn’t even feel human. It feels divine."

She sat down.

No one spoke a word.

Professor Henry frowned, stepping forward, his boots thudding against the stone. He was a pragmatist. "Enough of that talk," he said gruffly, his voice trying to reassert authority.

"Don’t go bringing gods into a tournament discussion. We have rules and limits here.

Aura suppression to that degree is theoretically impossible without damaging your own channels. Except you’re as strong as the Headmistress, there’s no way you can suppress your Aura if it’s that strong completely."

Raven tilted her head, looking at Lynx’s face from a few inches away, her eyes had curiousity in them. She reached out and lightly touched his forearm, her fingers cool against his skin.

"Then what is this light weight we feel around you all the time? Is this just you suppressing everything? Because even now, sitting here, it feels heavy. Like sitting next to a sleeping dragon."

"This?" Lynx chuckled softly, looking down at her hand on his arm, then back at the group.

"This is just my normal presence. My actual aura, and my bloodlust or killing intent, are suppressed tightly. I keep a tight leash on it. What you feel right now is just me existing. If I let go, even a little, this whole arena would feel it."

The students around them exchanged uneasy glances. The passive pressure radiating off Lynx was already heavy, steady, and suffocating to be around for long periods.

It was the reason no one wanted to sit too close to him for too long, except for his girls who had grown accustomed to it. The thought that it was just a tiny leak, a rounding error of his true self, was hard to process.

"Show it to us," one of the Year 4 students blurted out from near Eleanor. He was a boy with a thin mustache and a family sword at his hip, his face flushed with a mixture of fear and desperate need for reassurance.

"Show us a bit of it. If you’re really that far above Void’s team, let us see it so we know we aren’t walking into a slaughter for nothing. We need to know!"

"Yeah," another student muttered, "At least then we’ll know you actually have everything under control like you keep saying. Please."

Lynx looked at the student, leaning back, his arms still spread over the bench, his expression unreadable.

He looked at Eleanor, who gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod, her own curiosity overcoming her royal decorum. He looked at Professor Henry, who, after a long moment, gave a stiff, reluctant nod as well.

Lynx let out a long sigh and shrugged his shoulders. "Fine," he said. "But don’t say I didn’t warn you."

He closed his eyes for a second, took a slow breath, and unlocked a microscopic fraction of his raw, unadulterated killing intent and spiritual weight and let it drop.

He didn’t release it outward. He just let it exist.

BAM.