Lord of Annihilation

Chapter 41: Charm.

After cleaning himself in the bath and Lucius went on to his classes. He majored in the subject of 'Interstellar Mechanics' and was an honor student.

Every since he was young, Lucius could easily understand the matters pertaining to space. Complicated topics like Quantum Mechanics or Interstellar Study, could be easily grasped and understood by his brain. It almost felt like his body was born to do this.

Coming into his class, Lucius noticed that the professor had not come yet. He surveyed the classroom to find a seat for himself. 'Interstellar Mechanics' was one of the most complicated courses in the academy. Most of the research into this field was theoretical, with physical evidence being very low. Therefore not many students wished to choose this subject, with his class only containing 50 students.

The classroom was in the shape of an hemispherical dome, with the center area containing an elevated floor. This area was the teaching platform. Many seats were available and, holographic screens projected out of them.

The classroom could seat around 120 students and with less than half the number being present, a lot of empty seats were available. Lucius looked around was randomly picked an empty seat. As he walked towards the seat, his soul power picked up a series of emotions directed at him.

The emotions consisted of disgust, loathe, scorn, condescend and many other unkind emotions.

Lucius simply ignored all of these looks placed upon him and gradually sat down on his seat. He did not cover from their gazes nor did he evade. Lucius simply did not care. After all, why does the opinion of a dead person matter to him. Hell, even the opinion of people who were living did not matter to him.

Lucius was calmly staring ahead while inwardly thinking of a completely different matter.

'Alex Hellwig'

' Son of the Hellwig military family, one of the top 5 influential families. He is the eldest son of the Family Head and it's only successor.'

This much was common knowledge that everyone in the Alliance knew about.

'A born commander and soldier, with exceptional skill in strategy. A genius second to none in the field. He is also an excellent fighter and mech user. Joined the academy 2 years ago, he will be graduating this year.'

This was commonly known among the students and teachers among the academy.

'He is one of the most popular male students, with a somewhat indifferent temperament. He usually does not like to hang around with other students and is not closely associated with anyone either. He cares a lot about his close family and works really hard to assist it's growth. If he succeeded the position of the Family Head, the family would rapidly flourish, being at its peak.'

Leaning back into his seat, Lucius gradually sunk into his mindspace. He was looking through his memories, to try and remember more about this person.

Since Lucius knew the name, it meant that he was fairly important to Humanity's Causality.

'Alex? Alex? Hellwig? Hell..... ' as he pondered upon the name, it suddenly struck him.

'Alex Hellwig, commander of mankind's allied forces to fight in the Great War.'

'He stabilized the internal chaos post 'that event' and using his family's influence took the mantle of 'Great Commander.' He personally led and fought in hundreds of battles, systematically prolonging humanity's chances at survival, thus living up to that title.'

'If Reyna Snowden had given humanity a chance at survival with her invention, Alex had fought to realize that chance.'

'Alex... first human to break through into Stage 3 of his soul cultivation. Admirable, even from my standards.'

This was one of the exceptionally rare moments, where Lucius did not condescend the other person .If Ka'lor'ah was here, she would have made a fuss about this, going as far as to say, books had to be written recording this moment.

Then he suddenly shook his head, 'Shame, that he died 27 years into the Great War. Humanity rapidly lost after that before eventually going extinct in mere 3 years time.'

'So such a person has gotten his hands on my crystal, huh? Was it by accident or another ploy by Ka'lor'ah?' Lucius deeply thought. As he was thinking further, his brows suddenly furrowed.

His soul power noticed, multiple people coming in his direction. Opening his eyes, he saw that 3 students were walking up to him with a unkind expression in their eyes. Their backs stood straight and their eyes filled with arrogance.

Walking up to Lucius, one of them used his hands to hit hard on the table before Lucius.

BAAM!

The loud noise reverberated and all the eyes turned in this direction. Upon seeing what was happening all of their eyes brightened up, eagerly waiting for something to happen. They clearly knew Lucius was being picked on and bullied by another student, yet none of them had the intent to standing up to help him.

Clearly in their eyes, this 'commoner' did not deserve to sit in this academy with them. That fact that Lucius was clearly the best student among them, further intensified their unlike towards him.

Skipping classes was heavily punishable in the academy. No student was an exception to this rule and generally the families also let this pass. After all they believed that this would teach their children the meaning to responsibility and discipline. Now looking at Lucius who was seating here after not showing up for weeks in a row, all of the others were clearly dissatisfied.

'So what if he is a genius. His he greater than the families. What allows him to avoid punishment?' this was the common thought amongst all the students here.

Going back. the teacher did give Lucius a warning and some light punishment. He looked highly upon Lucius' intellect. With 'Interstellar Mechanics' being a mostly theoretical study with no scientific evidence available, he believed that someone with Lucius' skills might possibly change that in the future. So while he clearly meant good, it was currently having a negative effect.

"So, Classmate Lucius, how did you enjoy your vacation?" one of the boys sitting upon the table before Lucius asked. His tone was clearly sarcastic.

While his sentence had nothing wrong with it, everyone here clearly understood what he meant.

Lucius calmly looked up and into the boy's eye. He infused his soul power into his gaze and used 'Charm'. A tiny hint of red, appeared in the depths of Lucius eyes.

Charm was an ability that was not derived from Lucius' [Killer] soul. In fact, this ability was unique to Lucius. Calling it 'Charm' wasn't exactly appropriate. This ability allowed Lucius to influence a person's mind to a certain extent such as asking for information or giving them a simple task. Complex actions and commands like 'kill yourself' did not work since it triggered the brain's emergency response system. It also did not have the effect of erasing their memories or rewriting it.

Therefore, people under its influence remembered their actions, albeit a little late.

Still while he did not understand why he could use this ability, it was quite useful. Though it was completely useless on people who surpassed Stage 1 of their soul cultivation.

Clearly the boy in front of Lucius was not a character of such great value. He was just a common thug, who had come up to create trouble for Lucius.

Upon meeting Lucius' gaze, he realized he could not pull his eyes away and quickly fell into the 'Charmed' state.

Lucius then calmly gave out a command, "Firstly, Stand up."

Whoosh!

The boy who was sitting arrogantly on the table, stood up without any hesitation.

"Raise both hands and turn around." Lucius spoke in a low tone, such that only the boy in front of him could hear it.

"Slap the both of them in front of you and howl loudly." he continued.

The boy who had turned around with his hands raised immediately complied. Before the ones who came with him could even understand what was going on, they were immediately slapped hard on their face.

SLAP! SLAP!

"AWOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"

Two extremely loud sound sounds echoed ,followed by a loud howling noise

The rest of the students were shocked. Their brains could not process what was going on and simply froze.

"Undress yourself and start dancing." Lucius continued. He had a rarely seen smile on his face.

'This useless ability does have its moments.' he thought to himself. When he first looked at those 3 'monkeys' come towards him, Lucius wasn't angered or annoyed. He suddenly felt like humouring them and made one of the them carry out such ridiculous tasks.

While Lucius was thinking to himself, the boy in front of him had already started to carry out his commands. His healthy, white body was exposed for everyone to see and he boldly started dancing while howling loudly.

Just as Lucius was about to continue with his commands, faint footsteps were heard heading in this direction.

"Kill yourself." Lucius quickly spoke.

With that command the brain's emergency response kicked in and the boy hurriedly snapped out of the control.

He suddenly shook his head and saw a scene of shocked students gazing at him.

'What happened?' his brain was currently feeling quite sluggish. Just as his brain slowly replayed the scenes of his earlier actions, he suddenly understood.

His face turned very red and he was greatly angered. He turned around and screamed at the top of his lungs, "LUUUUUUCCCCIUSSSSSS!!"

"WHAT'S HAPPENING HERE?!" an equally loud sounding noise intervened.