Chapter 76: Making plans.
During the following days Lee became certain that the so called competition was nothing but a scam. In fact, if it was his choice, he would've done it the same way the higher-ups did.
The kids trained harder than ever and showed off their limited abilities despite the poor odds most of them had. Unfortunately the three squads, or – the eighteen people, who were about to receive the fire sparks were already decided.
The idea to let the trainees to have an illusion of competition was a solid one, though. It forced them to work harder and become stronger quicker.
Of course, they were only children and were easily hoodwinked. First of all there wasn't an organized event where the squads were supposed to compete with each other in a direct confrontation.
Everyone's performance was judged by the instructors, and no one apart from them had a clue what the criteria for winning was supposed to be. Obviously, the naive trainees never even had a thought in this direction, not that anyone would ask for their opinion.
After returning to the fortress, the next morning, Potato came over and reminded Lee to not let his squad win. The usually haughty guy did get upset when Lee pointed at the obvious scheme, but quickly realized he had to change tactics himself. Potato's squad was one of the strongest and he had to make sure they never won.
Judging from his green eyes, Lee already guessed that Potato had ignited a wind spark, and faking absorption of a fire spark was impossible. Nevertheless, he tried to provoke his new acquaintance to reveal more about the subject, but this time didn't get much out of him.
The only thing Potato said was, "Even if I hadn't ignited my own, I had to be a complete retard to absorb a beast's spark, much less two. Not only it'll ruin my current life, I'll fuck up the following reincarnations no matter how many times I'll try starting over again."
The new information was upsetting, but there was nothing Lee could do about his current condition. More importantly, he was long used to not take anything anyone said as a rule set in stone.
A year ago he thought people couldn't have their own sparks, and few lifetimes ago, according to his understanding, the superhumans existed only in books and movies. There were too many things he didn't know yet and could verify what the others said only with time.
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