Su Qiangwei, Liu Huadie, and He Nanguang looked dazed, their expressions changing rapidly.
Sadness, joy, pain, hatred, fury, relief...
Nearly every emotion humans could express surfaced one after another in a short span of time.
Ma Ran remained composed, merely observing from the side in silence.
Why did they have to pass a test before awakening their superpowers?
Had Director Huang been bored and decided to add another step just to put everyone through the wringer?
The answer was clearly no.
The danger contained within the Victory Encounter Stone was far greater than that of the alien mask used as a testing tool!
The moment someone lost themselves, their mind would shatter, and they would turn into a puddle of blood and flesh on the spot.
This was a conspiracy laid out by the people of LX93.
Those who failed to meet the requirements would be judged defective by the Victory Encounter Stone and be unable to become a "signal source." As a result, they would be "eliminated."
Those who met the requirements, meanwhile, would awaken superpowers—but would also become tools used by the people of LX93.
In reality...
Every successfully awakened superpowered individual was essentially equivalent to a signal transmitter!
This had nothing to do with whether the awakening was natural or artificially induced.
Was so-called natural awakening truly "natural"?
No!
It wasn't!
Ma Ran knew very well that so-called natural awakeners were merely bait laid by the people of LX93 to hook the fish!
There was no fundamental difference between the two.
The reason not to destroy these Victory Encounter Stones was the same as the reason to preserve the Black Rock Stele—who could guarantee that other countries would destroy every one of these things as thoroughly as you did, without leaving a single one behind?
If that couldn't be guaranteed, then such actions would be meaningless.
"..."
Ma Ran noticed that, after several breaths, four Victory Encounter Stones had re-formed inside the octagonal ancient well.
From this perspective, the Victory Encounter Stones were inexhaustible and would never be completely depleted.
Yet the range in which they could exist was limited to within three meters of this ancient well. Once they exceeded that range, they would automatically dissipate.
Under Director Huang's instructions, the three exhausted reserve ability users withdrew from the area around the octagonal ancient well.
Only then did they have time to experience and understand the superpowers they had just obtained.
"Flight..."
He Nanguang closed his eyes. A vortex of air formed beneath his feet, and his entire body slowly rose into the sky, bobbing up and down three meters above the ground.
"It really is flight!"
He Nanguang had yet to master his newly acquired ability. Overcome with excitement, he fell from the air.
Thud!
A muffled sound rang out.
Because he possessed the cultivation of second-stage inner energy, He Nanguang wasn't injured despite taking a hard fall.
He sprang to his feet and focused his gaze on Ma Ran. "So... Limited Precognition is real!"
He Nanguang felt as though his worldview and understanding had both been overturned.
Flying with the physical body, without relying on external force!
This had been humanity's dream for countless years!
And today, he had successfully realized that dream!
What was the principle behind this?
It was completely incomprehensible!
"Can you hear my voice?"
Liu Huadie's voice suddenly rang out in the depths of He Nanguang's mind.
He abruptly turned around, only then noticing that the leader of Fulan Academy hadn't opened her mouth.
He Nanguang realized that what Liu Huadie had just expressed was entirely different from the way ordinary people spoke.
It hadn't traveled along the normal route of sound waves—auricle—external auditory canal—eardrum—tympanic cavity—ear lymph—nerve impulses—auditory cortex.
Her voice had appeared directly in the depths of his mind!
"Just as Ma Ran predicted."
"My ability is called Telepathy."
"Anyone whose appearance and name I know can receive information from me unilaterally, regardless of distance."
Liu Huadie's voice rang out in the depths of everyone's minds.
"However, I haven't mastered Telepathy yet. Sending information to ten people at once is already my limit."
"The more people there are and the farther away they are, the greater the price I have to pay."
Liu Huadie didn't directly explain what that price was.
After transmitting her voice, Liu Huadie's lips took on a dark purple hue, and her eyes dimmed slightly, as if she had been greatly drained.
Yet the look she gave Ma Ran was exceedingly complicated.
Liu Huadie's understanding of the world had been overturned.
Precognition truly existed!
Ma Ran paid no attention to the gazes of those present.
He seemed distracted, his unfocused gaze fixed on a strange point.
Within Ma Ran's field of vision, a mass of reddish-bronze metallic liquid suddenly appeared and slowly forged itself into the shape of a medal.
With a slight concentration of attention, he immediately learned the medal's name and function.
Fragment Prophet!
At the same time as he obtained the medal, Ma Ran also acquired its corresponding enhancement ability—Precognition!
However, this precognitive ability differed slightly from the persona he had created.
It had no side effect of consuming his lifespan, but its effects were correspondingly weaker.
At this stage, by paying roughly half his inner energy and stamina, he could randomly capture one or two fleeting glimpses of the future.
Ma Ran wasn't particularly concerned about this.
He was a Reborn One, after all, and already possessed foresight. Unless a butterfly effect occurred, this new ability could only serve as icing on the cake for now, helping him correct mistakes.
Now that the medal had appeared, he only needed to find a way to upgrade it later.
That wasn't what he was primarily focused on at the moment.
Ma Ran narrowed his eyes slightly.
Before his rebirth, he had believed that the enhancement abilities gained from playing a role had a simple direct-proportional relationship with the number of people who acknowledged him.
Later, he discovered that things weren't so simple.
Precognition was a superpower involving the domain of time!
Even Fragment Prophet, which didn't sound particularly impressive, was by no means some low-level ability!
How many spectators had acknowledged his performance so far?
Even counting all the members and staff of Caolu Academy and Fulan Academy, there were no more than a thousand!
Ma Ran had initially thought this performance would need considerable time to build momentum before it could bear fruit.
But now...
The medal and enhancement ability known as Fragment Prophet had truly appeared before his eyes!
"Perhaps it's also connected to acting skill and the effectiveness of the performance?"
"Hm?"
"My line of thought was wrong!"
Ma Ran's face remained expressionless, but his thoughts flashed incessantly like Lightning Flash. "Those things do have an influence, but they aren't the decisive factors."
With the Scholarly Demon medal bolstering him, his thoughts raced, and every memory from his past and present life surfaced before his eyes.
Each performance became an option for comparison.
In less than three seconds, Ma Ran reached a conclusion.
The greatest influencing factor was the individual differences among the "audience"!
Each audience member had a completely different value in the judgment of role-playing abilities.
People around him, such as Huang Weiguo, Su Qiangwei, Wu Di, Liu Huadie, and He Nanguang, should have extremely high value as "audience members."
Of course...
This was only a hypothesis. More practical tests were needed to verify it.
"Phew..."
Not far away, Liu Huadie let out a deep breath.
She was too exhausted and temporarily lacked the energy to use Telepathy.
She turned her head toward Su Qiangwei and asked directly, "The Nation Supporter level superpower Ma Ran mentioned..."
"What exactly is it?"
A new day begins with this chapter!!
Before you continue