The Town Square of the capital city was a bustle of trade. Merchants sold spices, silks, and artifacts. In the center stood the Academy of the Golden Stool, where the city's youth were taught the orthodox ways of Ubuntu and Ase manipulation.
Standing at the gates was Master Olabisi.
Phenotype: Consanguine (Brown wooly hair, caramel skin).
Role: Headmaster of the Academy.
Vibe: A man who follows the rules and hates fun.
Olabisi saw Senan approaching with his three disciples and scoffed. "Senan! The fraud returns from his smoke-filled hut," Olabisi shouted, drawing a crowd. "I heard you rejected the curriculum. You are teaching the Noble Heirs 'Esoteric Arts'?"
"I am teaching them Truth," Senan replied calmly, leaning on a staff he found earlier.
"Truth?" Olabisi laughed. "Look at them! Young Diallo is slouching! Young Mensah looks like he has a fever! And Young Patel is staring at the sky like a lunatic!"
Olabisi stepped forward, his Ase flaring. A golden aura surrounded him—classic, refined, controlled Ase usage. "I challenge you, Senan. Let my top student spar with your disciples. If they fail, you return the advance payment and leave the city."
Jamal's heart hammered. Fight? I can't fight! I have the durability of a wet paper towel!
"I will not fight children," Senan said dismissively. "My disciples will demonstrate."
Olabisi snapped his fingers. A muscular student, Kofi, stepped forward. Kofi held a wooden training sword infused with standard Earth Ase. He looked strong. Balanced. Normal.
"Who goes first?" Kofi sneered.
Senan looked at his three broken experiments. "Jomo. Go stand there."
Diallo Jomo walked forward. Thud. Thud. Thud. Each step shook the dust.
"Defend yourself!" Kofi yelled, lunging with a textbook strike to the chest.
Jomo didn't dodge. He didn't block. He simply remembered the lesson: I am a Black Hole.
Kofi's sword swung. As the wood entered Jomo's personal space, the Power Scaling System kicked in.
[Event Horizon Active: Gravity x50.]
The wooden sword didn't hit Jomo. It suddenly became incredibly heavy. The tip of the sword was pulled violently downward by the gravity well Jomo was generating. CRACK. The sword snapped under its own weight before it even touched Jomo's skin. Kofi, holding the hilt, was yanked forward by the sudden shift in gravity, face-planting into the dirt at Jomo's feet.
Jomo looked down. "I did not move."
The crowd gasped.
"Sorcery!" Olabisi roared. "He used a magnet!"
"Physics," Senan corrected. "Next."
"Rameses!" Olabisi shouted. "My student will race you!" Another student, a nimble girl, stepped up.
Senan sighed. "Rameses. Don't run. Just... accelerate your fist."
Mensah Rameses stepped up. He looked at the girl. He felt the Ase in his blood boiling. Thermodynamics. Heat is motion. He threw a punch at the air, ten feet away from the girl.
[Kinetic Overdrive: Thermal Release.]
His fist broke the sound barrier. The air in front of his knuckles compressed and ignited. A shockwave of superheated air—a literal sonic boom—blasted forward. BOOM! The girl was blown backward by the wind pressure alone, tumbling into a fruit stand.
Rameses looked at his smoking hand. "I... I punched the air, and the air punched her."
"Shockwaves," Senan noted. "Area of Effect damage. Useful."
Olabisi was turning purple. "This is not Ubuntu! This is chaos! Patel Zola! Step forward! My student will challenge you in a duel of Wits and Logic!"
A third student, a scholar, stepped up holding a complex puzzle box. "Solve this, Scion Patel. It takes the average mind one hour to—"
Patel Zola looked at the box. But he didn't see wood. He saw the geometry. He saw the friction coefficients of the sliding mechanisms. He saw the Ase holding the lock together. Ase is code. Code can be debugged.
Zola didn't touch the box. He reached out with his mind and found the variable: lock_state = true. He mentally changed it to false.
Click. The box sprang open in the student's hands.
"Lag," Zola muttered. "Took me 0.4 seconds. I need to upgrade my RAM."
Silence descended on the square.
Senan (Jamal) walked up to the terrifyingly confused Olabisi. He patted the man on the shoulder.
"You teach them to swim in the river of Ase," Senan whispered, his voice echoing for effect. "I teach them to drink the river dry."
He turned to his disciples. "Let's go. I'm hungry."
As they walked away, Jamal wiped sweat from his forehead. Ain't no way! That actually worked. I'm going to be rich.
[System Notification] [Reputation with Elite Families: Revered.] [Reputation with Academy: Hostile.] [Hidden Quest Unlocked: "The First Glitch." Zola has seen something he shouldn't have in the code of the world.]