Divine Celebrity 105 (Patreon)

“As you wish, the sooner we finish, the sooner I can go back to actual important work,” I said as  I looked at him, not even bothering to answer. 

At this point, the Intent that the event was generating had turned into a tickle. I wasn’t the only one that noticed it, as I noted most of the camera crews already gathering their stuff, ready to leave, showing the ratings were already showing a drop. 

I didn’t bother holding back my smirk as I noticed Professor Argus noticing the same detail, desperately moving forward to talk with the camera crews. They were too far for me to hear, but I could see the Professor getting increasingly agitated. The camera crew continued to collect their stuff,  but he continued arguing.

Then, another wave of presence burst out of him. It felt even weaker at a distance, but it was enough to change the minds of the first camera crew, and they started setting up once again. 

Two more blasts, and the rest of the teams decided to stay, and the professor walked back, smug, yet showing signs of exhaustion. 

Each emotion was interesting in its own right. Exhaustion was interesting, as it gave me a hint of his potential abilities. He might be able to use magic, but his limits were clearly not particularly impressive, not enough to be a direct threat. 

Interestingly, the smug expression on his face made me doubt the threat he consisted of even more. Yes, he managed to keep the cameras in the venue, but at this point, their presence meant very little without the TV channels not showing.

The amount of Intent, turning into a mere trickle from the earlier flood, showed that the ratings were long depleted, the earlier display more than enough to give the viewers their fill. His effort was literally pointless. 

“Do you want to start first?” I said to my opponent, but most of my attention was still on the Professor, curious if he had anything else in his mind. Still, I noticed that the board we were using was different. Not one of the standard sets, but something fancier. 

“Go ahead and start white, I don’t want any excuses,” he delivered smugly. I just shrugged and started playing, not even bothering to taunt him. 

I turned my focus on the Intent — particularly the fact that I wasn’t the only one that was devouring it. I felt a slight flicker, and the intent split into two streams, a larger one flowing to me. 

The smaller one flowed to my opponent. 

Interesting, I thought even as I tried to process the feeling. It was different than what my guide had been doing to receive her own fill. Her intervention was more like a dam, hungrily devouring the flow. 

In comparison, the current was more natural, like the intent was flowing on its accord, pulled by them in the first place. Surprising in many ways.

And those ways didn’t include their ability to get any kind of Intent — the spells earlier showed the old German as not someone ordinary. 

One of the surprising facts was the timing. Only after the game started, they started receiving intent, which was an interesting development, even without the game started, people had been paying attention to the game itself. 

Another surprising thing was the flow of the direction. The intent didn’t flow directly to my opponent or the professor. First, it flowed toward the chess board, and from there to my opponent, then to the professor. 

After those steps, the intent the Professor was able to get was … greatly diminished. Yet, his expression wasn’t frustrated due to limited gains, but smug due to the intense flow. 

The difference wasn’t limited to that as well. The intent they were getting was different than mine also in terms of flavor. 

At this point, I could differentiate Intent somewhat, especially in terms of main differences. The anger felt different than Jealousy, and the awe triggered by a physical achievement had a different tinge to a mental feat like chess.

And, I could sense that the intent they were receiving was somewhat pure, just the more isolated respect for the achievement, emotions isolated. 

I focused on the process, carefully observing the changes to understand the source of the difference. Why was the Intent that the Professor was receiving differed intensely from mine?

Pinning the source of the difference didn’t take long. At the initial split, the Intent they received wasn’t dissimilar to mine, emotions mixed with general awe, even though their emotions were markedly more hostile — understandable considering they were battling against the most recent hero of the city. 

The first major divergence happened on the chessboard. As it passed through the board, most of the emotional content had been cleansed and dispersed uselessly, and only the purer, achievement-related aspects touched my opponent. 

No wonder we were playing with a different board. It actually had a function like that. Only after focusing deeply, I noticed the board had some kind of magical ability. Soft and almost impossible to notice, but still magical.  

I noticed that my opponent didn’t actually absorb anything as well, but functioned as another layer of purification. Some of the impure aspects were stuck on him temporarily before dissipating, and the purer aspects were devoured by the Professor. 

“How fascinating,” I murmured as I made a move, locking the game into a frustrating defensive scheme that was near-impossible to break. I chose that, not because I was afraid of my opponent — he was good, but not magically enhanced good — but because I wanted to extend the game as I examined how their tricks worked. 

All I had was one question. Why they were bothering with such a complicated pattern. I decided to extend the game even more, playing a defensive style that not only frustrated them, but also made it look like I was going to lose the game — at least to a casual observer. 

Just like that, the Intent they were receiving increased in Intensity, with some interesting results. The chess pieces started to get warmer, slight enough to avoid the notice of my opponent who seemed unaware of what was going on. 

And, soon, he started sweating as well, showing signs of distress as the impurities that he needed to filter continued to increase. 

Even the Professor started to show signs of distress as he tried to absorb the sudden flow, his eyes widening. Yet, his gaze was not on me but on his player,  not giving even the slightest sign that he was aware of my subtle manipulations. 

The situation was interesting enough for me to test even more, letting him attack more and more desperately, only to react by just tightening my defenses, leaving him two options. Either start delivering a long, complicated attack that would slowly dismantle me in about fifty moves, or chose a complicated chain of gambits, hoping to come on top. 

They chose the second, but with a twist. A line of magic rose from the Professor, parallel to the flow of the Intent, and touched my opponent. And suddenly, my opponent got much stronger, and his moves much more insightful. 

Too bad that the sudden boost he showed was barely as much as the benefits of Tactics and Pattern Recognition combined, both barely at the second stage. The change was not negligible. If he was playing Masters level earlier, his game quality suddenly jumped to Grandmaster, a progress that required several years of dedicated study. 

As his attack got more intense, so did my defense. My face showed a great sense of struggle just like both my opponent and the Professor, even more, intense than theirs. 

Unfortunately for them, unlike theirs, mine was completely fake, just bait, suggesting that their victory was certain … if only they could struggle a bit more. 

He attacked, only for his attacks to fall into tactical quagmires, locked, unable to move, their sense of struggle getting thicker and thicker. 

I didn’t extend the game because it was enjoyable to make them struggle — though that was certainly a nice bonus — but because I wanted to get a sense of their capabilities. How much they could empower, how much Intent they could handle… 

And most importantly, how was the professor empowering his student, one that had the potential to solve the biggest problems I was facing. 

I was glad for my little discovery with the stones, using the same trick — spending Intent to increase my Perception to some kind of supernatural X-ray, giving me a real-time examination — allowing me to decipher how his little trick worked. 

Not enough to immediately copy it, but sometimes, having a general direction was more than enough. 

I defended relentlessly until that flow suddenly stopped, along with the capabilities of my opponent. “That’s enough playing with you,” I declared mockingly as I started taking his stones one by one in a merciless counter-attack, his desperate attack leaving him vulnerable. 

“I surrender,” he declared a moment later, toppling his own king and walking away. 

As he stood up, I made sure to give a display of exhaustion, enough for the Professor not to miss. The more they underestimated me, the better. 

Before they could leave, the reporters already surrounded me, interviewing me about the games —  very briefly — before they started asking questions about the upcoming game. 

“We’re going to crush them, of course,” I declared, then smirked. “As long as our dean decides to stop sabotaging us just to make his favorite donors happy,” I added, more than happy to leverage the chaos that surrounded the mess. 

The sports director tried to make me stop, but thanks to their own spectacle, it was a hopeless job. Soon, he left as well, leaving me with the reporters interviewing me.

The interviews stole two hours of mine, which was annoying as I wanted to go and experiment rather than cater to the reporters, but I wasn’t an idiot. So I spent the next two hours giving an exaggerated breakdown of how the Dean and Coach Spencer ruined any hope of victory for our team due to their fragile ego.

I didn’t tell any outright lies, but there were a lot of misdirections, accusations, and questions one might deliver without relying on an outright lie — especially since the subject in question was Coach Spencer, whose whole existence relied on nepotism in the first place. 

When I had managed to slip away from the reporters, everyone else was already gone. My ‘teammates’, the dean, opposing college members, Professor Argus. Everyone.  

Including Lauren, I assumed, until I checked my phone and saw a message from her. A short one. 

A room number.