Chapter 72: The Perfect Awakening Condition for Vector Control

Chapter 72: The Perfect Awakening Condition for Vector Control

10 p.m., Coastal District, Starbearer Association · Deep Blue Branch · Office Building.

Boom!

In mid-September, the weather in Deep Blue Metropolis was fickle and unpredictable.

A bolt of thunder tore through the sky above the sea, and although the Coastal District had basked in bright sunshine during the day, a light rain began falling at night—growing heavier by the minute.

Splash—

Gohn’s black leather boots stepped into a puddle as he walked toward the main entrance of the branch office building, holding his umbrella.

Different from his rather bizarre getup when he was around Tendou and the others, this time, Gohn was not only without that ridiculous husky mascot helmet—even his clothes had changed. He had swapped out the rustic referee uniform for a sleek, raven-black, form-fitting Starbearer Association suit.

Gohn looked up at the man-made raindrops streaming down from the sky and muttered under his breath:

“Even though we’re literally in the middle of the ocean, they still insist on playing with this troublesome weather system. What, do they think constantly changing the weather makes things feel more ceremonial?”

He shook his head in exasperation, folded up his black umbrella, and placed it into the umbrella stand by the entrance.

After patting off the droplets clinging to his shoulders, Gohn walked straight into the brightly lit building.

Even though it was already after working hours, the branch office was still full of staff busy with paperwork.

And the moment they saw Gohn wearing the iconic Starbearer Association uniform—along with the emblem on his chest—they all instinctively paused their work and bowed their heads in greeting.

Gohn did not act arrogant. He politely nodded back at each of them.

His gesture not only surprised many of the staff—it also filled them with excitement, their breathing growing faintly rapid.

After all, to ordinary clerical workers, a second-order Starbearer like Gohn was practically the embodiment of strength and mystery.

He was someone they admired and aspired to be like.

And receiving a response from an idol was something worth getting excited over.

Under their admiring, envious, or thrilled gazes, Gohn walked through the lobby, heading straight for an old-fashioned elevator.

As his fingers traced over the emblem on his chest, the seven engraved stars lit up—two of them glowing faintly white.

In the next moment, the octopus statue perched above the elevator suddenly opened its eyes, shooting out a cone-shaped green beam that scanned him from top to bottom.

Ding!

[Identity verification complete]

[Starbearer Association · Deep Blue Branch welcomes the esteemed second-order Starbearer, Mr. Gohn Petar]

Accompanied by that mechanical voice—a tone Gohn was sick to death of hearing—the old elevator doors slid open.

He stepped inside; the doors closed at once.

Without him pressing any buttons, the elevator began to descend on its own, plunging into the unknown darkness below.

Inside, Gohn stood before a polished mirror, tidying his appearance.

In the reflection, the 25-year-old Gohn had a tall, upright frame, roughly 1.85 meters in height.

His clean-cut black buzzcut, paired with sharp, well-defined features and a serious expression—

He looked every bit the composed, disciplined, righteous Starbearer. Not a trace of frivolity or showiness could be seen.

It was a stark contrast to the goofy, comedic persona he showed around Tendou and the others.

Because this—this serious, dependable image—was the persona Gohn had worked hard to maintain in the Association and in all public settings.

But in truth, all of it was nothing more than a façade.

His true personality and way of doing things were exactly what Tendou and the others had seen—a little rebellious, a little willful, someone who lived entirely by his own rhythm.

The drastic contrast between Gohn’s public persona and his real temperament came from two sources: his Star Origin: “Referee”, and the ideals rooted deep in his heart.

As a Trait-Type Star Origin centered on “fairness,” Gohn obtaining the Referee Origin and even successfully awakening it once—reaching the level of a second-order Starbearer—proved that he indeed possessed a powerful sense of fairness.

However… Gohn’s understanding of “fairness” was something uniquely his own.

In his view, the so-called fairness upheld by mainstream society—including the Starbearer Association—was not fairness at all.

It was actually the greatest form of unfairness.

Because what they called “fairness” was nothing but a web of tedious rules meant to limit and restrain the strong—forcing the swords of the mighty back into their sheaths, letting their armor gather dust, and ultimately turning them into something indistinguishable from ordinary people.

Gohn held utter contempt for that kind of “fairness.”

True fairness should never be about harshly restricting the strong while endlessly favoring the weak.

True fairness was allowing the strong to unleash their full power—to carve paths through the thorns with overwhelming force, and lead the weak toward a wider world.

And the reason Gohn believed this was simple: those who hid behind the strong had no right to point fingers at the ones standing in front, nor did they have the right to make rules for them.

Of course, Gohn was fully aware of how extreme and unorthodox his ideology was in the modern New Federation.

Thus, even though he held deep dissatisfaction toward many of the Association’s rules, he still did his best to follow them and to maintain the image of a “just” Starbearer in the eyes of the public.

Because in front of the colossal entity that was the Association… Gohn himself was undeniably a weakling.

He had neither the strength nor the qualification to criticize its rules.

At least—not yet.

He couldn’t change anything now, but that didn’t mean he never would.

Gohn believed that one day, he would reach the position where he could change everything.

And when that day came, he would bring sweeping reforms to the Starbearer Association.

He would grant every Starbearer true fairness.

That was the ultimate ideal and ambition within Gohn, the one bearing the title of “Referee.”

Inside the elevator, after straightening his collar and buttoning the cuffs of his sleeves, Gohn let out a sudden sigh.

“Sigh… After today’s match, I should’ve been just five victories away from fulfilling the ‘perfect awakening’ condition of a hundred straight wins. But instead, all my effort ended up being for nothing.”

“If those words about ‘perfect awakening’ hadn’t come from that old geezer of a Grand President himself, who the hell would keep suppressing their own power and refusing to break through?”

“But…”

The elevator came to a stop. The doors slid open.

Expression calm and unreadable, Gohn stepped out into the true grounds of the Starbearer Association Deep Blue Metropolis Branch—the Tidesong Hall.

“If I want to break these rules and bring true fairness to this world, then some sacrifices are unavoidable.”

Just as Gohn walked out of the elevator, a young Starbearer who had been waiting for him hurried forward.

“Vice Captain Gohn, the envoy from the headquarters has already arrived in the conference room.”

“Except for you, the Branch President and all the other special-operations captains and vice captains are also on their way. Please follow me.”

Gohn gave a light nod, signaling her to lead the way.

On the way to the conference room, he casually asked,

“Did the envoy mention what the purpose of his visit is?”

The female Starbearer guiding him shook her head.

“No. The only thing he said was that this operation requires us to transfer one full special-operations squad to him.”

“Other than that, he didn’t reveal anything.”

“Oh? An entire special-operations squad?”

“It seems the task our esteemed envoy brought isn’t going to be easy.”

The female Starbearer responded with a troubled expression.

“Tell me about it… Our branch only has three special-operations squads in total, and that envoy just opens his mouth and demands one whole squad?”

“If he can’t give a compelling reason for this, I doubt the Branch President will ever agree to such an unreasonable request.”

“After all, this is the Deep Blue Metropolis, not the Luminous Ark. We don’t have that many free Starbearers lying around to accommodate him!”

Gohn nodded.

“Exactly. A branch isn’t the HQ—we don’t have that much manpower to spare.”

“We’re here, Vice Captain Gohn. This is today’s conference hall.”

“Alright. Thank you.”

“You’re too polite, Vice Captain Gohn.”

. . .

At the same time, in the villa district of the Deep Blue Metropolis Coastal District.

Tendou was half-lying on his bed, quietly staring at his own fingertips.

A small, peculiar Dark Grey orb was hovering and gliding around his fingertips.

What made this Dark Grey special was that it was unusually tiny and carried almost no killing intent—completely different from the Dark Greys he usually released.

After watching the strange Dark Grey for a moment, Tendou murmured to himself:

“Perfect Awakening… I originally thought this wouldn’t get a proper explanation until the second season, Stellaris: Glimmer, aired.”

“Didn’t expect it to appear in detail this early.”

Before meeting Gohn earlier today, Tendou actually didn’t know much about Perfect Awakening.

The only reason he recognized the term at all was because it appeared briefly at the end of the original season one.

The one who spoke those words was a High-level fourth-order Starbearer from the Luminous Ark, the headquarters of the Starbearer Association.

And because of that person, Tendou learned something important:

Besides the standard first to fourth order Starbearer ranking system, the Association had another system for distinguishing the power gap between Starbearers of the same level.

That system consisted of:

Low-level → Middle-level → High-level → Perfect

Although the High-level fourth-order Starbearer never explained in detail how these “same order levels” were defined, his statement calling the Doctor a “Perfect third-order Starbearer who achieved a second Perfect Awakening” clearly revealed the core idea:

These same order levels were determined by the completion level of each Star Origin Awakening.

This was somewhat similar to cultivation novels with tiers like:

Low-grade Golden Core, Mid-grade Golden Core, High-grade Golden Core, Perfect Golden Core.

Before today, Tendou already knew that Perfect Awakening existed.

But he had no idea how to achieve a Perfect Awakening for his own first awakening.

However, after Gohn casually mentioned his obsessive pursuit of a 100% win rate… Tendou began to form a faint but clear hypothesis about the nature of Perfect Awakening.

If his guess was correct, then for a Starbearer to achieve a “Perfect” rating during their Star Origin Awakening, in addition to meeting the two hard requirements—sufficient base star energy, and 100% development of their current Star Origin level—they must also fulfill an additional, extremely special Awakening Condition.

This Awakening Condition, however, differed depending on one’s Star Origin.

Take Gohn, for example—Tendou believed that Gohn’s Perfect Awakening requirement was to maintain a 100% win rate across a sufficiently large number of matches.

Only by doing this could Gohn achieve a Perfect Star Origin Awakening.

And this neatly explained a question that had puzzled Tendou earlier.

Because at the time, he clearly sensed that Gohn had been holding back a significant portion of his true power.

If Gohn went all-out, Tendou wouldn’t lose, but defeating him would definitely take time.

Looking back now, Gohn had likely worried that if he truly fought at full strength, he might lose control over the instinctive urge of his Star Origin to break through.

And that would ruin the Perfect Awakening conditions he had spent so long preparing.

That was why he’d rather pay Tendou for a tie than fight him seriously.

Thinking this far, Tendou couldn’t help but mutter to himself:

“Since Gohn’s Referee Star Origin requires a long streak of perfect victories… then what about my Vector Control? What kind of condition does my Perfect Awakening require?”

“And another thing—Star Cores originate from Starbeasts, but in essence, they’re still a type of Star Origin. The only difference is that a Star Core’s power is partially fused into a Starbeast’s bloodline and genes, instead of remaining in its pure form like a Star Origin.”

“If Perfect Awakening exists for Star Origins, then it should logically apply to Star Cores as well.”

As this thought surfaced, Tendou’s mind began to race.

Moments later, unable to contain his curiosity, Tendou suddenly jumped off the bed and forcefully crushed the Dark Grey in his hand.

The shattered Dark Grey scattered into countless points of light and silently dispersed into the room.

He looked toward the rainy courtyard outside the window.

“No point sitting here overthinking it. I might as well go try it now—practice is the fastest path to truth, after all.”

With that thought, Tendou immediately left the room and headed alone into the rainy courtyard.

At the same time, Caroline—who had been planning something in her room—heard Tendou walking downstairs.

She quietly set down her tablet, moved to the window, and from that vantage point she could clearly see Tendou stepping into the courtyard.

Under her gaze, Tendou first activated Great Aegis, shielding himself from the falling rain.

Then he summoned five miniature Dark Greys, each only one-fifth the size of a normal one, and had them orbit around his body.

Caroline had no idea why Tendou was doing any of this.

But she knew Tendou never acted without purpose.

So if he was out here, alone, in the rain, in the middle of the night… He must have realized something important.

Yet what she didn’t expect was that Tendou would stand there from a thunderous rainy night until clouds parted and dawn arrived.

When the faint glow of morning appeared on the horizon—Tendou, who had kept his eyes closed for a long time, suddenly opened them and threw a punch.

At that exact moment, the five Dark Greys orbiting around him snapped into motion, converging instantly toward his wrist.

They dissolved upon contact and completely fused into Tendou’s right hand within an instant.

BOOM!

A burst of black light exploded from the point where Tendou’s fist struck.

The grassland before him seemed as though it had been swept by an invisible shockwave, instantly blasted into a massive gouge five meters wide and fifteen meters long.

And this was merely the result of Tendou striking nothing but empty air.

Had that punch actually landed on a Starbearer, there was an eight-or-nine-out-of-ten chance that the unfortunate target would have perished on the spot.

Although Tendou’s punch was indeed formidable, his hand had not come out unscathed.

The five fingers of his right hand were visibly swollen, and the back of his hand as well as his forearm were already rapidly turning a deep, purplish bruise.

For someone like Tendou, who possessed Vector Control, such injuries were exceedingly rare.

His Vector Control allowed him to twist all forms of energy and completely divert them away from his physical body. Thus, he was seldom injured.

Yet someone who so rarely suffered harm had now managed to injure himself merely through a single training exercise.

This made it evident that Tendou had not enveloped his right hand in a vector field just now.

Instead, he had concentrated all the energy ordinarily used to form such a field directly into his arm, and then expelled it all in an instant through that punch.

Only then could one explain why Tendou unleashed a single punch yet ended up injuring himself.

Despite this, although his body was hurt, a never-before-seen excitement gleamed within Tendou’s azure eyes.

For through this experiment, he had become certain that he had discovered the perfect awakening condition for Vector Control.

And at the core of this condition was space.

A “vector” was defined as a geometric entity possessing both magnitude and direction.

His “Vector Control” allowed him to take such abstract geometric constructs and manifest them as concrete vector targets in reality.

For example, a truck speeding down a road was a vector target that Tendou could observe and manipulate.

If he wished to change the truck’s direction, he would need to alter the motion of the vehicle as a whole—akin to exerting force to push the entire truck, forcibly redirecting its trajectory.

Doing so naturally consumed a considerable amount of star energy.

However, if he were to divide the “truck” as a vector target into thousands of smaller components, then to alter its direction he would only need to adjust the angle of the front wheels—or directly twist the steering wheel inside the driver’s cabin.

In this way, he could achieve the same effect with far less star energy.

To accomplish the latter, however, his Vector Control had to fulfil two conditions simultaneously:

1. A greater Vector Control distance.

2. A smaller Vector Control unit size.

At present, his maximum Vector Control distance was at the millimeter level, with an upper limit of nine millimeters.

His minimum control unit was at the centimeter level, namely one cubic centimeter.

According to his calculations, the typical awakening path of one’s Vector Control would lie in extending the control distance.

As long as their maximum control distance approached the boundary between the millimeter and centimeter levels, their Vector Control could undergo a Star Origin awakening.

As for the grade of this awakening, Tendou believed it was determined by the size of this boundary point.

The closer the maximum distance was to the centimeter level, the higher the awakening grade—up to the level of “High-level.”

But if one wished to achieve a “Perfect” awakening, control distance alone would not suffice.

The minimum Vector Control unit would also need to reach the millimeter-level threshold.

Only in this way could this one awakening of the Star Origin, “Vector Control,” successfully break through to the higher tier and reach the legendary state of perfection.

And Tendou’s speculation happened to match Gohn’s exaggerated obsession with both “fairness” and “maximum win rate.”

Because if one looks deeper into Gohn, they would discover something very interesting.

What is the standard for a qualified referee?

Is it absolute fairness, or perfect control over the flow of the match?

The former is easy to understand… but if it’s the latter, then the referee must find a perfect critical point between “fair” and “unfair.”

Only by appropriately breaking fairness can a referee achieve perfect control over the pace of the game.

And that critical point is undoubtedly what Gohn has been desperately searching for.

It is also the necessary condition for him to achieve a perfect awakening.

Based on this, Tendou increasingly felt that his own “Vector Control maximum range” and “Vector Control minimum unit” were the two essential requirements he needed to meet to complete a perfect awakening.

But before Tendou could think further about how he should accomplish these two points, Caroline suddenly appeared behind him and, clearly angry, smacked him hard on the back.

Feeling the impact from behind, Tendou broke out of his thoughts and turned around in confusion.

Caroline’s extremely dark expression instantly entered his view.

Before Tendou could ask what happened, Caroline spoke first.

“Tendou, I understand your determination to get stronger, and I acknowledge all the effort you’ve put into it.”

“But I beg you—next time, before you try something this dangerous, could you at least tell me in advance and let me prepare for it?”

“Uh…”

Tendou raised his uninjured left hand and scratched his head awkwardly.

“W-well, I—I just got too excited and couldn’t resist trying it right away. Besides, I was thinking about calling you, I just thought you were asleep, so I didn’t go.”

It was a clumsy excuse, and he sounded far from confident.

Because it wasn’t that he didn’t go call Caroline—he didn’t even consider the idea!

And Caroline clearly understood this.

So she didn’t forgive him just because of his flimsy excuse.

Instead, she glared at him fiercely, then grabbed his swollen, purple-tinged right hand without waiting for his consent.

“Hiss! Oww, oww, oww—gentle! Caroline, be gentle!”

“Hurts, does it? Funny, I didn’t see you feeling hurt just now!”

“If I hadn’t called you, I bet you would’ve kept standing there, letting your injury get even worse!”

“Come on. I still have some candies I got from Liuli in my room. Eat one to ease the injury first, then I’ll bandage it properly.”

“Hiss! Caroline, you can talk without squeezing my hand! It really hurts!”

“Hurt? I want you to feel pain. Otherwise you’d never realize you were wrong!”

“Okay, okay! I get it! I really get it this time! Stop squeezing—please!”

“Shut up! How else am I supposed to know whether you fractured anything, or how much damage your muscles and blood vessels took? Don’t move. Sit properly!”

“O-okay…”

Inside Caroline’s room, Tendou—mercilessly scolded—could only sit obediently at the edge of the bed while she carefully examined his injured right hand.

The Doctor always said Caroline was his tool.

But Tendou felt that he was more like Caroline’s tool.

After all, in the more than two years they’d spent together, the one being lectured and disciplined had always been him!

Though, to be fair… he didn’t really mind.

. . .

PS:

Vector Control units: centimeter (cm), millimeter (mm), decimillimeter (dmm), centimillimeter (cmm), micrometer (μm), nanometer (nm)

【Pre-emptive explanation: I know these are just units of length, not spatial measurement units, but writing it this way is easier to understand. So please, accuracy purists, don’t roast me—this is a novel, not an academic paper!】

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