Beast Gacha System: All Mine-Chapter 175: Telekinetic Mastery

Although Oathran didn’t relish the idea of spending their precious, dwindling time on Cecilia’s magical boot camp under Baswara’s tutelage, he had to concede a hard truth.

Every piece of advice, every unorthodox principle the old man drilled into her was not just applicable to this fabricated world’s magic system, it was a key Cecilia had been missing in the real world.

It filled gaps in her self-taught, survivalist methodology with structured understanding.

"This world’s magic system is very... sophisticated," Oathran observed quietly as they watched Baswara limbering up across the training ground.

He stood close to Cecilia, his voice low. "I am very shocked to realize that a lot of the knowledge and memory your mysterious power planted in my brain is groundbreaking for the standards of our real world."

Cecilia gave a slight nod. She had long since realized the same. The System hadn’t just dropped them into a cheap parody, it had given them access to a refined, logically consistent magical framework their own world lacked.

But even this superior system, they both knew, held no answer for the curse ticking in Oathran’s veins.

"The old man has a lot of tricks," Oathran said, his gaze on Baswara softening with a reluctant respect.

"But you can handle them. I believe in you." He leaned in, pressing a gentle, lingering kiss to her forehead, his smile tender before he reluctantly stepped back, giving her space to focus. "Don’t hold yourself back."

Cecilia offered him a small, confident smile in return, then turned to face her initiator. Baswara had finished wrapping his fists with strips of heavy leather, his movements brisk and efficient.

"I didn’t know you were this close already with my boy, Cecilia," Baswara remarked, his sharp eyes noting the easy intimacy, the perfect, trusting distance she kept from Oathran even as she prepared to fight.

Cecilia shrugged, a casual gesture. "I met him for the first time when I was eight."

Baswara’s bushy eyebrows shot up. "Huh?! So you just met again at school a couple of days ago?" he asked, incredulous. A slow smile spread across his face. "Such a small world..."

"Yes," Cecilia nodded, her gaze steady on his. "It is a very, very small world."

The sentiment held a weight he couldn’t possibly understand.

Clang!

Serayu rang a brass bell, the clear sound cutting through the morning air.

Cecilia moved instantly, her body lifting from the ground in a smooth, silent levitation. Simultaneously, Baswara’s clenched fists ignited, wreathed in coils of concentrated, roaring flame.

Battle Mage Shion Baswara was a different beast from Professor S. Baswara. Cecilia knew that.

She wouldn’t be just facing a teacher, she faced the retired headmaster, the veteran warrior, the all-rounder generalist who had forgotten more about combat magic than most would ever learn.

She spread her awareness thin, weaving her mana into a vast, sensitive net across the entire battleground and beyond, mapping every ripple of energy.

Baswara lunged, a comet of fire and focused kinetic force. Cecilia twisted in mid-air, not just dodging, but layering sheets of tightly-woven telekinetic force in his path, trying to snare and deflect.

"That won’t be enough to stop a Force Master, Cecilia!" Baswara’s voice boomed. He didn’t break through her barriers so much as he absorbed the impact and used it, kicking off the very resistance she created to propel himself faster, closing the distance with terrifying speed.

Cecilia danced back through the air, but evasion alone was futile. Baswara was blindingly fast, yet each movement carried the weight of a mountain.

Her mind flashed through her limited experience with true flight. The first time had been in Oathran’s arms, a sensation of safety and awe. The second, on the back of his dragon form, was raw, majestic power. The third, in the heart of a volcano, had been a desperate, self-taught survival lift.

But Baswara, he didn’t use wings, or wind, or even pure telekinesis on himself. As he chased her upwards, he simply created a shimmering thin platform of solidified mana under his foot, kicked off it, and created another higher up. It was like watching a man sprint up an invisible staircase.

That—

"The Staircase to Heaven," Cecilia breathed out, recognition dawning, "described in scripture as God of War Caledfwlch’s preferred way to ascend and descend the sky—"

"BWAHWAHWHAHWAHAHAHH!" Baswara’s laughter roared down from above her, rich with delight. "Reciting scripture now, Cecilia?! Save it for the library!"

He lunged again, a piston-drive fist aimed straight for her center of mass. This was his fastest attack yet, a blur of heat and intent.

"Cecilia..." On the ground, Oathran’s entire body tensed, his knuckles white as he forced himself to remain still.

But Cecilia didn’t dodge.

Instead—

Baswara’s eyes widened mid-strike. "This girl..."

—she did the same.

She focused her will inward, compressing layers of telekinetic force not around objects, but around her own body. Around her fist, her skin, her muscles, her bones, forging an instant, full-body augmentation.

A perfect, mirrored answer to his Force Master technique.

She wasn’t just proving she’d learned his lessons, she was declaring she could meet him on his own terms, with the very tools he’d given her, no matter how recently acquired.

After all, this was a test.

BLAM!

BLAAAAAAAAAST!

CRACKLE—

The collision was a concussive meeting of two concentrated fields of will-made-mana. The recoil hurled them apart like dolls. The air between them cracked, a miniature vacuum forming that ionized the atmosphere with a sharp, ozone tang.

Cecilia tumbled through the air, but a cushion of pre-placed mana caught and steadied her. Across the field, Baswara rose from a small crater in the earth, brushing dust from his shoulders, a broad, genuine smile on his face.

Both were unharmed.

"You are more talented than I thought, Cecilia," Baswara called out, his voice carrying approval and a new, sharper interest.

"But I think you don’t need to focus on showing me you’ve mastered what I taught you." He clenched and unclenched his fist, the flames around it dying down to a simmer. "Show me what you will do if we’re in a real fight, and you just need to defeat me."

"That is enough, Professor," Oathran interjected. "The previous display is enough for her to win her certification."

"That is true," Baswara conceded with a nod, the smile not leaving his face. "You have certainly passed the initiation now." His eyes, however, held a challenge. "But don’t you want to show me all you got, Cecilia?"

Cecilia looked at the old professor, her own smile softening with real gratitude. "Professor, thank you for holding back your power for me."

"Ha!" Baswara barked, the sound halfway between a laugh and a scoff. This girl—this arrogant, brilliant girl!

Then he moved again. But this time, it was different. Entirely different!

He didn’t run up stairs of mana. He simply... floated. His body relaxed into the air as if it were water, his movements becoming sinuous, flowing, impossibly free.

He swam through the sky.

Cecilia’s eyes widened, and her smile returned, wider now, filled with awe. Incredible!

Even here, in this fabricated reality, the core of him bled through. Baswara was, and would always be, the Sea Dragon. The dense mana around him now mimicked the crushing, buoyant depths of his true domain.

BLAST!

BLAST—BLAST—BLAST—

His attacks transformed. They were no longer fiery punches, but projections of immense, directional pressure, like deep-sea currents given violent purpose. They hammered towards her from all angles.

Cecilia gritted her teeth, twisting and deflecting, but the assaults were relentless, suffocating.

Thud! A blow glanced off her shoulder. Crack! Another impacted her thigh. A third numbed her foot.

"Cecilia!" Oathran took an instinctive step forward, ready to vault into the fray.

A slender, strong hand settled on his shoulder, holding him back. Serayu stood beside him, her violet eyes calm. "Calm down, boy," she murmured.

Oathran shot her a glare of frustrated fury. In the real world, none of these dragons would dare stop, touch or order him around like this!

Cecilia, high above, was cornered. No technique Baswara had taught her was advanced enough to counter this. This raw, environmental mastery of a dragon in his element.

But Baswara had said not to limit herself.

A new idea sparked. She stopped trying to match his power. Instead, she reached out with her will. Her hand traced the flow of his movements in the air, and she began to gently, subtly destabilize the very mana he was swimming in.

Baswara faltered mid-stroke. The ocean of mana around him churned unexpectedly.

"HAH!" His roar was pure, undiluted exhilaration. "YOU’RE TRYING TO HIJACK MY MANA, CECILIA?!" It wasn’t anger, of course, it was the cry of a master witnessing a student attempt the audacious and nearly impossible.

Cecilia’s mind supplied the parallel. "Goddess of Beauty, Morgen, took control of all the mana on earth... to stop the invading army of the Ten Evil Overlords... and prevented the planet’s magnetic field... to flip—"

Again, she drew from scripture, but this time she was applying its mythical logic as a tactical blueprint.

Baswara’s eyes widened as the flow of energy around him began to stutter, then shift. Cecilia wasn’t forcing it against its nature with brute telekinetic will. That would have shattered against his control.

Instead, she was directing it. Reading its inherent characteristics, the heat from his earlier fire, the crushing weight of his water-pressure technique, the solidity of his platforms, and coaxing it, redirecting it like a master hydrokinetic manipulating a raging river, using its own momentum against it.

Baswara felt like a shark trapped in the stormy seas.

He felt it, a disorienting, dizzying loss of purchase. The mana, his medium, his weapon, his very body in this fight, was no longer wholly his. It swirled and eddied against his senses, muddying the precise feedback of a lifetime. It was like trying to balance in a whirlpool.

Could it be, because she was controlling pure mana, it affected and dulled all his years of experienced and honed mana sense?

Incredible. Incredible!

"Cecilia! Fine! Fine, let’s stop!" he bellowed. He waved a hand, the majestic swim turning into an ungainly tread. "This old man has vertigo! Put me down!"