Luke carried the chubby man's two-hundred-plus-pound body down to the competition platform.
The chubby man still looked shaken. He looked up at Luke. There was nothing remarkable about this man's face, yet right now he found it terrifying. "Put me down!" he cried.
"How the hell am I supposed to put you down?" Luke snapped.
He had underestimated what an ordinary puff of air could do. It had blown a man weighing over two hundred pounds into the sky. Afraid the man would fall to his death, Luke had rushed to save him without hesitation.
But touching the man had left them stuck together, glued by the slick mucus coating his body.
Only then did the chubby man realize what had happened. Fortunately, he could control the thickness of his bodily secretions. He thinned them until they were about as runny as sweat, then pulled free of Luke's arms.
Luke's performance astonished the entire audience, even the judges. He looked utterly ordinary, but he was apparently an extremely powerful wind-type Esper.
They had come to that mistaken conclusion because the move Luke had just used clearly looked like a wind ability to them.
In the matches that followed, Serizawa and Sugar Baby also won with ease. Overall, the second round in California gave the audience plenty more surprises. Some contestants the crowd had favored proved their strength again, while other matches delivered unexpected thrills.
Those thrills came with a touch of regret.
The surprise was that California had produced someone as powerful as Young Man Crash Boy, a contestant bound to shine even in the Finals. The regret was that his opponent, Psykos, had been incredibly strong too. To see such a clash so early in the tournament left the audience feeling sorry for her.
After the second round ended,