Chapter 134 Constellations
"Yugo!" a light blue-haired girl shouted from afar. It was lunch break before the second round of fights in the pool. "I missed you so much~."
Yugo was with the others, waiting for their lunch at the canteen. When he turned around to see who was shouting his name, two large watermelons slapped his face. "How have you been?" She hugged him tightly, choking him with her large breasts.
Kye looked at the situation from the side and remembered the girl. She had commented on Yugo's fight earlier in the morning. She was pretty, that's for sure, but she also seemed to have quite the personality. She was a high level as well, so he didn't really want to associate himself with someone like her.
However, Kye could see that his best friend's face was losing color, so he decided to step in.
"Excuse me, can you please stop what you're doing? He can't breathe because of your breasts."
"Huh?" She raised an eyebrow. "What do you want, you shitty level 3? You have a problem with me hugging my fiancé?"
"Your what?"
"Fiancé?"
"Yugo, you bastard, since when?" Kye, Lidi, and Ven said, respectively. They were all shocked by her statement and took a step back.
"Gaya, stop messing around already." Sylvia shook her head and sighed.
"Yugo has already rejected you a hundred times now. Why do you keep pestering him with that?" Enzo added.
"You guys know her?" Kye asked, and they both nodded.
"She comes from a branch family of the Pendora family, and they've known each other since childhood." Sylvia explained, letting Enzo continue.
"From what we understand, Gaya has developed some romantic feelings for him. But Yugo has always rejected her. To be honest, it was so funny that I laughed a lot when it happened when we were still kids."
"Come on, who got rejected?" Gaya said as she took a step back to let Yugo breathe. "He always accepted my advances, so don't make false assumptions."
"I never did, Gaya. Leave me alone already."
"Oh? Why are you acting like this in front of your friends? You don't want them to know me?"
"Shut up, Gaya. You know very well how I don't like you. Quit assuming things on your own and just go away."
"Why are you saying that?" Gaya said with teary eyes. However, Kye activated his angel's eyes and could clearly understand that what she was saying was all false. There wasn't an ounce of truth in her statement from earlier. "I'll tear up if you say that."
"Cry then." Yugo turned around, but Gaya wasn't ready to let him go. She tried to pull his sleeve to stop him from going away, but Kye intercepted her arm.
And as he did that, Gaya's expression made a 180° turn. Where she had a sad face earlier when talking, she now looked angry, as if someone had just humiliated her.
"How dare you-"
"Just leave him alone," Kye cut her short. "He doesn't like you, so stop chasing after him. He'll never accept you if you act like this anyway."
"You-..." Gaya gritted her teeth and activated her ability.
Constellations suddenly appeared around her and slowly took shape. She only summoned two of them, as it was already taxing to do that.
And two people suddenly appeared by her side. One looked like a humanoid man scorpion, while the other looked like a beautiful female mermaid. Both of them looked down on Kye and were waiting for the order of their master.
"Gaya, you-..." Yugo shouted when he sensed the energy Gaya was releasing, but he didn't have time to finish before she gave her order.
"Beat him up!" she stated coldly. However, what happened next shocked not only her, but everyone around the scene, whether they were Kye's friends or spectators.
The handsome scorpion-man and the beautiful mermaid didn't do anything. On the contrary, they kneeled in front of Kye, who looked at them with a puzzled expression.
"Your highness, we're sorry for our inappropriate behavior. We should have greeted you sooner."
"What?" Kye and Gaya said at the same time. While Kye was shocked, Gaya was scared. It was the first time such a thing had happened in her whole life.
"Kill him already!" Gaya yelled at the top of her lungs, but the two constellations just ignored her. They kept kneeling and looked at Kye with smiles on their faces as if they saw someone they had been missing for a decade, or maybe even longer.
"Who are you?" Kye asked after collecting his thoughts. He didn't understand what was currently happening, but he knew for sure that it wasn't normal. The look on Gaya's face said it all.
"We're part of the Twelve Great Constellations," the beautiful mermaid said. "And our duty is to serve the one who can manipulate what people can't understand. In other words, what you would call outer space or the cosmic space."
Kye looked at them as if he didn't understand a thing of what they were saying. But in reality, he was just thinking as hard as he could. His brain was working at full capacity to understand this situation.
And after a few moments of silence, he finally managed to grasp what they were talking about.
"Is this what you were talking about?" Kye asked as he created a very small black hole. It was the next thing he had been working on recently, but it was proving to be difficult to make it bigger than a baby's thumb.
"Yes, that's it," both constellations nodded.
However, the surprises didn't end there. Now it was his friends' turn to be amazed.
"Kye, you can make a black hole?" Ven asked, clearly the most surprised in the group.
"Nope."
"But-…" Ven began to protest but decided to let it go for the moment.
"You two, go back now!" Gaya shouted as the both of them disappeared. "You son of a bitch, just you wait. I'll make you pay!"
The crowd slowly went away as well, minding their own business, leaving the group of friends alone once again.
"Does someone know what just happened?" Surprisingly, it wasn't one of the others who asked this, but Kye himself, the one who was supposed to have the answers.
"Do you mean that you don't know what happened?" Enzo asked for confirmation, and Kye nodded.
"Yeah. How could I even understand what happened? I don't even know this girl, much less those two entities." Kye had never paid any attention to fields like outer space. It was like another dimension to him, so how could he even know about constellations?
It was only because he had received his cosmic ability that he had slowly started searching for information about this topic. But he had never once thought that constellations were real. They were only stars to him, and nothing more.
'Now that I think about it, I can do anything that's related to outer space, right?'
"Well, I guess it's normal that you don't know about what happened," Sylvia explained with a sigh. All this situation had given her quite the headache. Gaya wasn't someone who was very kind, so just having her around for five minutes was annoying. "Gaya is known for her very rare ability, which is to call upon the manifestation of the twelve constellations. So the constellations we just saw were Aquarius and Scorpio. They are the only constellations she has, since the others are with the head of the family and his trusted allies."
"Does that mean that if someone is strong enough, they can call upon all twelve constellations at the same time?"
"In theory, yes," Enzo continued for Sylvia, "but the energy consumption would be way too big to even think about doing that. Because it's one thing to call upon the constellations, but it's another to keep them in our world with their astral form."
Kye nodded as he smiled internally. "Then do you know why those two constellations bowed to me, even though their master was Gaya?"
"Well, how could we possibly know that?" Yugo chuckled. "I'm sure that it's the first time in Gaya's entire family tree that such a thing has happened."
Everyone chuckled as they agreed with what Yugo had said.
"Still, I think that it's something plausible actually," Sylvia theorized. "Constellations have feelings of their own. They are like humans and wish to be treated kindly, especially by the person who calls upon them to fight for them. But as you all saw, Gaya isn't the kindest type. So if they had even a slight reason to go somewhere else, I'm sure they would do so without remorse."
"Still, isn't the constellation and the one who calls them linked by a contract where only death can separate them?" Enzo asked as the whole group turned their heads toward Kye.
"What are you guys taking me for right now?" He shook his head with a sigh. "I'm not a murderer, you know? And why would I even want to rob her of her constellations?"
"Because they think you're their king?" Lidi said as everyone agreed with her. "They bowed down and called you 'your highness'. So shouldn't you free them from their oppressor? Isn't it your duty as their king?"
"Why are you guys even nodding to what she's saying?" Kye asked when he saw everyone nodding their heads in unison. He felt a bit strange hearing all of that. "And what nonsense is that? I'm no one's king, nor do I have any duty to save anyone except you guys."
"Ohhh, how cute~" Ven patted his head with a proud smile. "But still, they clearly reacted to your cosmic ability, so I don't think you can brush this matter off forever. One day, you'll have to take every constellation under you, I guess."
"You too, Ven?" He looked at them surprised. "I told you I can't be anyone's king. And it's not an ability that'll make my thoughts change."
"Well, maybe not now, but as time passes, you'll have to make choices." Enzo said with a smile. "And at that time, I'll be here to support you."
"Come on, Enzo, I was the one who wanted to say that!" Yugo clicked his tongue, and so did everyone. Enzo just stole what they wanted to say since earlier.
"Well, thanks, I guess." Kye chuckled. "I'm glad I'm friends with all of you guys."
"And so are we~."
He was once again reminded how lucky he was to have supportive friends.
***
The day continued normally after that without any odd thing. Both pools finished fighting their first few matches, and tomorrow would be the start of the second competition-like exam.
Kye's group all managed to watch Gaya's fight, and they could easily see that she was angry. She was shouting and yelling atrocious words to her constellation so that they could walk on their opponent.
Both Aquarius and Scorpio complied without saying anything, but it was also clear as crystal water that they were annoyed to have such a master.
Their old one was kind, and they could still remember how strong she was, even though the flow of time had erased most of their memories. Whereas now, their new master was no more than trash in their eyes. She couldn't defend herself without them, nor could she actually fight without them. She didn't have a weapon to fight with or even use to defend herself.
No need to say that they were even disgusted with themselves for treating such a person as their master.
However, now their grim days came to an end. Someone with their old master's ability appeared right in front of their eyes, and so they were waiting for him to break their contract with Gaya and form a new one with him.
After all, no ordinary person could master the cosmic ability, even if it was just a little bit.