Transcendent Gene
Chapter 241: Growth [5]

Chapter 241: Growth [5]

The First Institute was a very large academy. It housed thousands of students and hundreds of teachers on a plot of land big enough to be called a city of its own.

Gio’s track record within the academy was very good. He was a topic of conversation amongst the teachers who knew of him and even the Headmaster was watching his moves. There were many 2nd years who saw how he fought and worked and saw him in a respectable light.

There were also those who were jealous. After all, he seemed to get everything he wanted without much struggle. His strength seemed to come from nowhere, and some people felt that his progress was unfair to them.

However, even the scope of those praises and complaints was small, barely leaving the classes he was in.

First year students as a whole barely knew Gio’s name. The second years who felt a way about him didn’t feel strongly enough to talk about him frequently.

For the most part, he’d been living a very easygoing life despite his father’s warnings that people would make attempts to ruin him.

But that would only last for as long as he was unknown.

His name was already spreading. The Simulated Riftworld incident caused quite a stir, as there had never been a case of students being removed from the class for being too knowledgeable.

The name "Gio" spread first, as that was what he was called. However, by the time people had done their research and word spread into the ears of those related, they were using his full name.

"He goes by Gio? It sounds lowly. Expected from someone of ’that’ heritage, though."

A girl sat with her legs crossed as she calmly sipped from a cup of tea and looked over the documents in her other hand.

"Have you heard of him? He’s the first from that clan to show his face in public since ’that’ happened, and he doesn’t even want to claim the name his parents gave him. Funny, isn’t it?"

She looked over at a boy sitting nearby. He had dark hair and a cold expression on his face. He held in his hands the same documents she was looking at, but he wasn’t nearly as jovial.

"This is hardly a laughing matter," he said.

"That boy is doing well. He is doing too good to be the spawn of a ruined clan. Do you understand what that means?"

"What, you’re saying they’re trying to make a comeback?"

The one who answered was a girl whose hair was a mixture of orange, yellow, and red like the sun.

The three of them were sitting together in a courtyard outside the dorms where they could see many other students doing various things.

The barrier around them prevented them from being seen or heard from the outside, but it didn’t stop them from perceiving the world.

Gio was among the crowd. Currently, he was leaving the dorms with Neriah.

He had been training with her, Shiro, and sometimes Serene for the past several weeks. They didn’t try to make a scene, but a gathering of talented students was always bound to gather attention.

The four of them were training hard. Anytime someone saw them training for the outside, they wondered what they could possibly be preparing for. A question so deeply rooted in curiosity was bound to spread and create rumors.

Those rumors were precisely what drew this group’s attention to him.

"Whether or not they want to make a comeback, any good he does will reflect on them. The problem is that he’ll give them a platform. You know what we’ve always been told about the Atmos Clan," the boy said.

"Snakes," the girl drinking tea responded.

"Snakes that’ll jump out of the grass to bite the moment you give them a chance."

"Exactly."

To say the Atmos Clan was hated by the Ten Great Clans was a lie. However, of those ten, there were several that viewed them in a negative light and three that wanted them wiped from the face of the Earth.

These three came from those three clans.

"He’s not doing that much right now. I can’t be bothered to touch him until it becomes more fun."

The girl sipping tea was Eyris Elven. The Elven Clan was known for its control in business sectors. Eyris seemed lazy, but she was more of a snake than anyone else could be. She was the exact same as the description she used for the Atmos Clan.

"What are you talking about? It’ll be more fun to put him down before he gets up. You remember the kid from last year?"

The grinning girl with flaming hair was Janette Solaris from the Solaris Clan. They were big in the energy and power industries. Subordinate companies they owned were in charge of the power grids all across Arcadia, including Celestelle.

"My gut tells me to wait. Let’s observe for a while longer. If we want to strike him within the school, we have to wait for the First Years’ Competition in February, regardless."

And finally, Damon Zaracross from the Zaracross clan, known for their influence in the military. Many of the world’s smartest strategists and generals came from their ranks.

Among the first years, these three were the ones who truly had a reason to want Gio gone.

Their clans would be directly impacted by the growth of the Atmos Clan. In fact, despite the latter being a fallen clan by this point, they were still taught to be wary of Atmos. They were told from birth that the Atmos Clan was meant to be buried.

It didn’t matter if they’d only heard of Gio for the first time. He was their first opportunity to make their parents proud and execute the orders they’d been given.

Naturally, they started making plans against him.

However, with the majority opinion being to wait and watch for a bit longer, Gio was guaranteed at least a little bit of extra time before he had to worry about another annoyance.

He knew of their identities. He wouldn’t come to this school without understanding the students who would be a possible threat to him.

However, they were far from his mind at the moment. He was far too focused on having fun.

Well, he would consider it "fun," but everyone else around him would say otherwise.

Neriah and Shiro experienced a side of him that they could only call hell, and when Serene accidentally got herself roped into it, she was forced into it as well.

He wasn’t kidding when he said he was going to train them. He gave Shiro a deadline and a challenge, but he decided to take a more direct approach to the boy’s growth.

He and Neriah had immense potential hidden inside them. They would be able to bring it out naturally as they grew in this academy, but he could accelerate that process.

So, he did exactly that. For three weeks, he put them through a kind of training that the school legally could not subject them to. They felt like they were going to die several times, but neither of them backed out.

There were two reasons.

The first was that they could feel the improvement in their bodies and control.

Gio’s body training exercises were like military drills of the highest order that acted upon the idea that breaking the body would rebuild it in a better state. It was easy to understand how they benefited from training muscles they didn’t even know existed.

However, his energy control exercises were the real boon. They both questioned why it was necessary to learn such precise control of pure energy that wasn’t being used to empower a Sequence, but that only lasted a week.

They started to realize that using Sequences was becoming much easier. When using Sequences became easier, they could do much more than ever before as well.

While they marveled at their improvements, they also looked at the person who was putting them through such brutal training.

That person didn’t sit somewhere and watch them train. He was on the floor with them and doing everything he made them do.

As he told them, he only made his daily training routine a little bit stricter to promote faster growth.

They couldn’t use any excuses when he was showing them that everything he wanted them to do was absolutely possible.

Serene fell into the cycle during the second week. Gio was only partially considering adding her to the group he’d take on his next expedition, but she took the initiative in training with them after realizing the efficacy of his methods.

There was no reason to withhold an opportunity from someone with spirit like that.

So, a month passed. With Gio and without him, his comrades got stronger. He also focused on improvement until that final day came.

"Huu..."

Gio woke up and took a deep breath on the 1st of October. He looked out his window at the sun on the horizon and nodded.

’They should start observing it today. It’ll start anytime in the next week.’

The only thing left to do was check the progress his comrades had made, and then...

It was time to explore another one of the world’s mysteries.

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