Chapter 983: Your Genius Is Showing

"Ok... Where am I?" I muttered to myself, confusion taking hold. My head was spinning and I felt nauseous.

On my little solo walk, I found a hallway. There was nothing that looked out of the ordinary about the hallway. However, I had a strange feeling in the back of my mind that something was amiss about it.

I went walking down it to investigate and it didn’t take long to realise I was walking in a loop of some sort., but not a normal loop, some type of freaky loop where the hallway kept resetting itself.

I was about to call out for an adult, as I was lost and a little bit scared, out of nowhere, a door suddenly opened to my left from the centre of the hallway and from it emerged,

"Oh hey, you two. Are you here to rescue me? Also, where did you just come from?"

"Apollo? What are you doing here? How did you get into this hallway?" Nerissa asked, baffled, curious and pleased to see Apollo.

"Are you alright, Apollo? You haven’t been in the loop for long I pray?" Rhapso asked, as Nerissa began pressing some gems on her armour.

"I’m fine. I just felt something weird about the hallway and maybe hanging out with Nymphs has rubbed off on me as I became curious. As for how long I have been here? Not long, about five minutes."

"Five minutes?" Nerissa and Rhapso parroted me, shock in their voices.

"Problem?" I asked, but didn’t receive verbal clarification for a minute until Rhapso let out a breath of relief.

"Oh, Phew. Thespius just marked you and took you off the security alerts as you have been causing alerts constantly."

Nerissa then followed up. "That explains why no one came out to get you, simply put, our defences are ghosting you. Still, how did you manage to come down the hallway? Humans aren’t supposed to be able to."

"They aren’t? I did feel this tingling at the back of my head, but I just ignored it as it made me curious." I admitted, prompting Rhapso to giggle.

"Hehe. Well, there are expectations to the rule, isn’t there Ness-bear? Certain ’people’ are naturally allowed to enter our barracks."

From context, I had a feeling what type of ’people’ she meant and decided to change the subject as I could feel Nerissa’s thoughts whirring up.

"Well, it’s nice to see the both of you, are you coming to the party now? Or are you still busy?" I asked.

"We are finished with our tasks. We were successful. We were just coming to find you. Though we didn’t expect you to be at our front door. We should probably leave before another Praetorian sees you." Rhapso suggested and I shrugged my shoulders.

"Fine by me. I should probably get back to the event room before I cause another wild goose chase in regards to my location."

...

After the trio left, a figure uncloaked themselves and walked to where they were previously standing.

Argyra looked at the depth Apollo had breached the hallway. Even with the loop resetting, he had done well for five minutes of walking. He was basically knocking at the front door.

Though that didn’t interest her all that much, what really interested her was what Rhapso had said about certain ’people.’

Argyra couldn’t help but smirk. ’I knew they knew something. Such cuties think they can hide stuff from me? So silly.’

Though she knew why they were keeping the secret and not telling their brothers and sisters. She would also keep the secret.

’Apollo has taught me a very nice song after all, it would be outright rude of me to blab his secrets... Especially when he himself asked me not to.’

She recalled the other day on the ship, the aura... It made her shudder in delight thinking about it.

She then shook her head. ’Goodness, I think I am getting infected too. I best stay clear of the man. for now. ’

She then smirked and walked away, whistling her new favourite tune.

...

A few hours later, the drinks had continued to pour well into the night. Not that it affected me in any way apart from that light tingle.

Hecate and Circe had finally returned to us and we had finally begun discussing Psionics like she promised.

"Apollo! You are drunk! I am not talking out of my ass. It’s perfectly reasonable to assume that, with enough precautions, entering one of those Psionic realms is perfectly feasible with a corporeal body."

I waved my arms up into the air. "For the last time, Apollo is not drunk! Apollo is merely pointing out that while we are able to extend our Minds into the Psionic plane to create an avatar. Our actual bodies in there would be like drawing a moth to a flame. Precautions or not, the dangers alone are not worth the risk! Ladies, back Apollo up! Tell this witch she is wrong!"

"WITCH!?! Why you little miscreant!" Hecate readied her Psionics, she was about to teach this drunk pupil of hers a very important lesson about respecting their elders, but before she could, a gauntlet hand grabbed her shoulder.

"I strongly advise against that, Hecate. You are already on probation with our order. Don’t make us act by attacking a guest of the palace." Nerissa declared while Rhapso had her hands out to the side, I could feel the Psionics beckoning to be released from her fingertips.

Hecate and I then glanced at each other and I spoke." Ness, it’s fine. Teacher and Apollo are just very passionate about Psionics. No harm no foul. She isn’t going to attack Apollo, right Hecate?"

Hecate put on an innocent and ethereal smile. "No, of course not, my darling pupil. I would never. This was just a spirited debate. Nothing more. Perhaps we should change the subject matter."

Half of the group around the table let out sighs of relief hearing that. They were too drunk, or didn’t know enough about Psionics, to care about the duo’s ramblings about Psionics they had no clue about.

That relief was short-lived though, as I asked. "So, how is your wormhole research, Hecate? Have you figured out the other half of your problem since we last spoke about it?"

After Hecate let out a breath of relief, feeling Nerissa’s gauntlet pull back, she replied. "No, unfortunately. As I have stated, I am at a block in my research. Plus, with my recent teaching ban, I have not had time to brainstorm with the rest of the class. Circe has suggested some interesting theories funnelling my power with her raw energy, but. Why don’t you tell him?" Hecate spoke to Circe, who was excited to finally chime in.

"Well, my energy is pure, raw Psionics so if we used that in her wormholes, it might become powerful enough to break additional universal laws, but the energy required as he hastily found out is just too vast to output safely. Both for myself and even teacher. So for now, we are slowly going through records about time manipulation, but there really is not much that is useful. It could be at least a century until we pass this hurdle, so it’s best to focus on other things for now. Like getting stronger and expanding our knowledge elsewhere."

Hecate smiled at her student. She really did choose the best and brightest. She then turned back to Apollo and suddenly her face turned serious. Apollo was not looking at them. He was lost in his thoughts.

...

Hecate felt the hair on the back of her neck prickle up. She knew Apollo was a genius. That his potential was limitless. Had he thought of something.

"Apollo are you-" Kathrine attempted to speak.

"-Shut. Up. Now!" Hecate said threateningly. "Let the man think." She said as she gaze continued to linger at him.

Nearly five minutes passed before he looked back up.

...

Looking back up from my daydream, I realised everyone was staring at me. "What? Is there something on Apollo’s face? Kat, get it off!"

"Glady~" Kathrine said, pushing her face into mine and began kissing my cheek over and over, causing me to smile.

I was allowing myself to get lost in the kiss storm before Hecate spoke. "Apollo, it looked like you were in deep thought just now. What were you thinking about?"

’Thinking about something? It’s not really anything, but if she wants to hear it, sure.’

"Nothing really. Circe and her raw power and our talk about Psionic sub realms had me thinking. The former Duke Xy’oi’la’py’re mentioned that time does work differently in the Psionic plane. So if you channelled your wormholes directly through a portion of the Psionic plane infused with an abundance of Chronokinetic power or something like that, you might be able to influence your wormholes in new ways and perhaps make time travel feasible...

But then you would have to figure out how to anchor your portals in stable time as Apollo imagines just being near time related Psionics can have pretty devastating side effects if not used carefully."

I then shrugged my shoulders. "Like Apollo said, it is nothing."

The table was suddenly very silent and everyone was staring at me again. I was about to ask Kathrine to clean my cheeks properly this time, but I suddenly smelt a whiff of something that made my mouth water.

"Is that Pizza?!? Be right back."

...

After Apollo left the table. Circe turned to Hecate swiftly and asked. "Is that feasible? Can you do that?"

Hecate gulped. "I... I don’t know. I have never thought about doing it that way before... It would take years to do the math and research. Perhaps years more to find said such a Psionic pocket. But my gut tells me it is feasible."

Hecate then turned to the Praetorians, who had conveniently pulled back from the table and were now talking to one another. She then turned to Apollo who was at the buffet, a large slice of pizza raised above his head as he was slowly funnelling into his mouth. She felt her heart flutter.

’My little genius, we are going to have so much fun together going forward, I just know it. So much that I will magnanimously forget that you called me a witch... Maybe.’