Chapter 405: Taking Cissel As a Hostage

"I bet this wasn’t your initial plan, right?"

Despite the storm of rage swirling inside him, John didn’t instantly jump into action.

He knew Mark’s true objective: it wasn’t just about crushing his new club, or even wounding his friends. Mark wanted to force John’s hand to expose what he gained from the pocket trial.

He wanted to expose John’s unique powers, the alien towers, and the high-tech cannons in front of the entire academy and the world. He wanted to expose the things that didn’t belong to the human world, marking John as a target for every Paragon and their affiliated forces.

As he realised this, and armed with the bitter experience of handling that cyborg teacher in the infirmary basement, John decided to buy time.

He needed to let Nikolas think about a proper way to counter the trap, find a way to flip the tables. This was easily done by just sending someone to check on Cissel, save her and then all the chips in Mark’s hands would be burnt down.

If Nikolas couldn’t find a way out of this, then John would simply accept the challenge. In worse case scenario, he would initiate his backup plan, the one that involved a total scorched-earth policy.

"What makes you think so?" Mark’s words, coming through the female cyborg’s lips, were dripping with an overconfident smirk. He was too certain of the success of his trap to feel a shred of worry. He took the bait, settling in to hear John’s deductions, which played right into John’s hands.

"That’s because today in the morning, I shoved clean every single black fog particle you left in her body," John snorted.

"It seems your initial plan was much more subtle. You were going to wait till you took control over her mind, then let her come to our club base and issue a Club War on our behalf, weren’t you?

Doing that would have ensured we wouldn’t be able to escape the confrontation, and you, or rather, the Black Ares Club, would have been blameless in the eyes of the academy higher-ups. Instead, we would have looked like the aggressors."

John let a mocking smile play on his lips. "Yet all that changed the moment I dug that black fog out of her. Your pathetic control over her is gone, and that forced you to take the initiative yourself. You’ve had to handle the situation in this crude, noisy way because your master plan was gone by me."

"John," Nikolas suddenly interrupted, his voice tight and strained. He was holding his communication device, his eyes wide with a growing horror. "Cissel... She isn’t in the infirmary anymore! I just got word from the surveillance monitors!"

"What?!" Luke roared.

"But we just came from there a couple of hours ago!" Elena shouted, called forth her sledgehammers, prepared to fight at an given moment. "How can this happen within the department? Where were the teachers?"

Everyone got anxious the moment they heard Nikolas’s words. The panic was infectious, spreading through the ranks of the RBM Club. Yet, John kept his silence. He only narrowed his eyes slightly, while his mind calmly thought this through.

Mark, as expected, had come prepared. Now they were truly being forced to play along with his game.

"The teachers in the medic department there are all dead," Nikolas roared lowly, his aura flaring with subtle lightning arcs. "The teachers I sent are investigating and looking for Cissel. We just need more time, John. We can’t agree to this war while the culprit is standing right in front of us, mocking us..."

"No, she isn’t the culprit," John shook his head, his voice surprisingly calm amidst the chaos. "Mark is. And that bastard can easily control cyborgs throughout our world. There’s no guarantee where the cyborg who took Cissel is right now."

John was actually lying. The moment Nikolas said that Cissel wasn’t in the infirmary, and John instantly opened his map. Within a heartbeat, he had pinpointed the location of his girl.

To his immense relief and growing suspicion, Cissel was still in the infirmary. As for what Nikolas had heard over the comms, it was either another illusion trick from Mark, or whoever had contacted Nikolas was themselves a mole, or another cyborg.

John paused, deciding to zoom in further, pushing his vision to the absolute limit.

’As expected,’ John thought, glaring down at the female cyborg in front of their club gates. ’Cissel is fine. She’s still sleeping like a baby in that recovery room. So it’s an illusion, or Nikolas’s source is compromised.’

In either case, Cissel wasn’t entirely safe as long as she remained in the infirmary. John wasn’t actually feeling any pressure from the Club War threat. In his eyes, as long as he was prepared, nothing could stop him from winning a head-on collision.

Mark’s aim was exposure. He wanted to turn the students and teachers into witnesses, wanted to widespread the news of John’s obsession of alien tech, to become public enemy number one.

Yet John could only sneer when he realised how foolish Mark’s plan really was. ’How could you expose me without actually forcing me to lift a finger or do anything myself?’ John inwardly laughed. He shifted his attention back to what really mattered: Securing Cissel’s safety.

She was the only variable he couldn’t perfectly control in this confrontation. He tried to zoom in closer on the recovery room, scanning the surrounding hallways for hidden threats. Nothing looked out of the ordinary in the immediate vicinity of her room.

The medic teachers were indeed scattered on the ground, but they weren’t dead, just in a deep sleep.

’Tsk! If you want to play this game with me, Mark, then I’ll gladly shock the entire board and crush you beneath the weight of your own arrogance,’ John decided.

John’s eyes flashed with a cold light. He could read the battlefield better than anyone. Mark was operating on a razor-thin timeline. The cyborg needed to force a conclusion and trigger the requirements of the Club War before the Headmaster or the Board of Deans could arrive to suppress the situation.

"What are the rules of this club war thing?" John asked, his voice steady. He was playing on Mark’s greatest weakness: the ticking clock. By feigning curiosity and dragging out the dialogue, he was forcing Mark’s hand to slip.

"You can’t be serious, John!" Nikolas blinked, his face pale. Below, Mark’s cyborg laughed with a chilling, theatrical amusement.

"Told you he would accept, hehehe," the female teacher boomed, her voice echoing off the club walls. "He can’t risk anything bad happening to his precious girl. Love... How adorable, how pathetic, hehehe!"

"So...?" John ignored the cyborg’s taunts entirely, turning his full attention to Nikolas. The seasoned teacher looked like he couldn’t grasp why John was walking into such an obvious trap.

"If it’s Cissel you’re worried about, then don’t be," Nikolas said, trying to steady his own anxiety. "Once the Headmaster is officially informed of a hostage situation, no one in this academy can escape his grasp. He will protect her."

"I don’t like making bets with people’s lives on the line, especially if they are precious to me," John said with a casual shrug. "Plus, what’s there to actually worry about? Are you implying we will lose? Do you honestly think the people standing on this wall could actually lose against that lot of losers?"

John’s words hit Nikolas like a bucket of ice water. For a moment, the veteran teacher realised he had fundamentally misread the situation, driven by his rage for bringing out this taboo subject.

He had been looking at the situation through the lens of academy politics and student safety protocols. He had forgotten who John was. He had forgotten the unstoppable force this group had become in the pocket trial.

John, Ricky, Luke, Elena... Even the newly empowered Mond and Ben... They weren’t normal students anymore. A numerical advantage of thirty to six meant nothing when the six were monsters in human skin.

"Well..." Nikolas looked at the fierce, determined faces of the RBM Club members, then let out a long, weary sigh.

"If you want to play it this way, then fine. The rules are simple: at least two clubs must agree to the war. Once triggered, the war only ends when one club perishes or surrenders.

The victor absorbs the defeated club’s belongings, their rights, their territory, and their members. To win, you must fight your way into the opponent’s base and raise your banner over their central command."

"This simple?" John raised an eyebrow. He was genuinely surprised by how direct the rules were.

"It’s not that simple," Nikolas warned, his voice grim. He didn’t feel empathy for the Black Ares students; he was starting to feel a cold dread for what John was about to do to them.

"Killing is allowed. High-tier weapons are allowed. Even making alliances with other clubs is allowed. The most important rule is the Non-Intervention Clause: once the war starts, no teacher may take part. No one can intervene to help any side, not even the Headmaster."

"In other words, once this starts, the Headmaster won’t stop it... And he won’t be able to stop me, hehehe!" the cyborg laughed.