After that night, I became very, and I mean very, attached to Charlotte. The only time I did not think about her was when I was thinking about Robin and Kylie; at least with them, the thoughts were happy. On the bright side, worrying about my best friend wholly suppressed that weird feeling.

  Her life was so opposite to mine and yet so simir that it was not even funny. She was another once in a generation like myself.

  It turned out she was something called a star child, identified by that starlike quality in their hair. People usually had magic inside them; I had so little that I did not emit the magical particles in the air but absorbed them, which gave me the title of null. On the other hand, she had so much that her body was destroying it from the inside out.

  Humans knew of star children from elves, one of the other sentient races. Elves were gifted with a lot of magical potential, but humans did not. Elves supposedly had a gem that could regute the excess magical particles in their bodies.

  It was said that if a person reached maturity, around age 16 to 18, they could handle the excess. This was because the magical particles were more in flux when they were children; when they matured, they stabilised. For normal people, this meant they gained far better magical control from that age, at the cost of slower growth.

  For a star child like herself, it meant survival. However, the magical energy in her body was already very hard to control. At the minimum, she needed to live two more years, which was nigh impossible as the magical particles would only grow exponentially to the point where there was nothing modern magic could do to stop.

  I became one of the few people who knew about her secret and how she could act so normal everywhere.

  It turned out she was taking a medicine that suppressed the magical energy in her body while strengthening her physique. It was all her family could do to stem the inevitable.

  The first thing I did was maximise my suppression ability around her. One trick I learned to fight Pop was to weaken his magical skills, which might have helped.

  But if the great doctors she talked about could not cure her, what chance did I have? I did not know, but at least I had to try.

  But my mood was foul for a while. My mom noticed immediately, and when I answered that it was a secret, she borrowed it from me, using the magic all moms had over their sons.

  Afterwards, however, she helped me deal with it. She even helped me with Robin and Kylie, who noticed the change but could not break through like mom.

  Dad was the next to notice because I got worse in our training matches. When you went out at odd night hours and spent so much energy using one of your more intense abilities, it affected your performance.

  But he could not figure out why and only pushed me harder and harder.

  “Why so weak? You usually beat me once in a while but you haven’t beaten me in a month! What’s the matter, love make you soff?”

  I knew he was just trying to rile me up, but it still made me angry.

  On the other hand.

  “Come one, Simon. It is not a big deal; everyone dies. My… time is just slightly quicker than everyone else.”

  As someone who became very aware of her, I knew how hard it was for her to say. I was the same, but at least I had an easy way out. What could she even do?

  The stress between my oblivious father and my morbid friend kept building and building. It reached a point where not even Mom, Robin, and Kylie could keep it under control.

  I snapped and did something horrible. Pop was doing his usual teasing when I could not take it anymore, so I did something new and idiotic.

  One of my abilities was to enhance my physical abilities. It was always active and cost me nothing. However, I could focus on that ability only to improve a specific aspect, like the toughness of my skin, or enhance only one arm to multiply that effect.

  It was the first ability I earned, putting me on an equal pying field to Pop’s magically empowered body. Another one I had could rapidly accelerate me. This one did drain me a bit every time I used it, which allowed me to move at extreme speeds or accelerate my limbs for a quick and strong hit.

  It also created leverage that allowed me to move in the air. Before earning this one, Pop would regurly throw me in the air to stop my ability to dodge.

  Why was learning about both of these important?

  Simple, somethin I could not do before but learned and use on the spot as Pop was to finish me off to conclude another victory was fusing these abilities together.

  As he was about to hit me with the ft side of his iron sword to knock me out, I threw a punch so fast and so hard that it created a *boom* as it made contact with the bde.

  What happened next was both the most amazing thing I had ever seen and also the most terrifying.

  For half a second I saw Pop coated in a burst of primastic blue energy before being flung at the roof of our house with such speeds that he smashed through it and vanishing behind it.

  The sword in his hands shattered and flung into him as he flew.

  I cried from the extreme shock and… the intense pain.

  See, Pop was not the only one who suffered a catastrophic blow.

  I fimly believed that everyone in my right arm and my left should was broken and that was not even the worst part.

  My fingers and half my palm were simply gone.

  That attack would have really crippled me for life, well maybe not given that Charlotte was able to make a mansion in a day. However, she was not responsible for what happened next.

  I earned my seventh ability at that moment: Regeneration.

  Before my very eyes, I was bone, flesh and sinew knit together at a speed that would have been very arming if I was not in such shock. But in a few seconds my hand was as good as new.

  And, not a moment too soon because the commotion… the damage to our house made the three women in our house rush out to see what was happening.

  I would have been dead if mom saw what I did to my hand.