The roar of the crowd was a constant backdrop to Arthur's days.
The Vytal Festival was in full swing, and the matches were a spectacle of semblances, Dust, and raw fighting prowess.
But while everyone else was focused on the flashy battles, Arthur's attention was split.
He was observing, planning, and subtly, almost imperceptibly, meddling.
His current target: Team CMEN,
Cinder's pawns, particularly Mercury and Emerald. They were skilled, no doubt, but their reliance on deception and underhanded tactics made them predictable to Arthur.
He knew Cinder was pulling the strings, using them to sow chaos and distrust.
He decided it was time to give them a taste of their own medicine.
It was the second round of the tournament, the duos matches.
Mercury and Emerald were up against a team from Vacuo, a pair of burly, no-nonsense brawlers.
Arthur settled into a quiet section of the stands, a subtle smirk playing on his lips.
"Hmm, let's see how well your illusions hold up when your focus is… elsewhere,"
Arthur murmured to himself, his gaze fixed on Emerald.
He channeled a tiny, almost undetectable thread of mana, weaving it through the ambient energy of the arena.
He wasn't going to directly interfere with the fight, not yet.
That would be too obvious. Instead, he would simply distract.
As the match began, Emerald activated her Semblance, creating a perfect illusion of one of the Vacuo students stumbling, causing the other to hesitate.
It was a classic move, effective in confusing opponents.
But then, as Mercury moved in for an attack, Arthur subtly nudged a few stray wisps of Emerald's own mana.
Not enough to disrupt her illusion, but just enough to make her mind feel… itchy.
Emerald flinched, a tiny, almost imperceptible twitch of her eye.
"Ugh, what was that?" she muttered under her breath, her concentration momentarily wavering.
Mercury, sensing her slight distraction, barked,
"Focus, Emerald! They're still standing!"
The Vacuo students, though initially confused, quickly recovered, their Aura flaring as they launched a counter-attack.
Emerald tried to re-establish her illusion, but the itch lingered, a subtle buzzing at the back of her mind.
It wasn't pain, or even discomfort, but a constant, nagging irritation. It made her illusions slightly less crisp, her movements a fraction of a second slower.
Arthur chuckled quietly.
"Just a little tickle, dear Emerald. Nothing you can put your finger on, but enough to make you doubt."
Later that day, during another match, Mercury was facing a student from Haven.
Mercury, known for his kick-based fighting style, was quick and agile.
Arthur watched, formulating his next subtle interference.
Mercury landed a powerful kick, sending his opponent skidding back. He smirked, confident.
"Too slow, kid. You're gonna have to do better than that."
Arthur, still watching from the stands, channeled a tiny, focused burst of kinetic energy.
Not enough to move Mercury, but just enough to make him feel a momentary, almost imperceptible shift in his balance, as if the ground beneath him had vibrated for a split second.
Mercury's next kick, though still strong, was a fraction off.
He compensated quickly, but the moment of hesitation allowed his opponent to land a solid hit, knocking him back.
"What the—?"
Mercury grumbled, shaking his head.
"Did the platform just… wobble?"
He glanced down, but the arena floor was perfectly stable.
Arthur suppressed a laugh.
"Just a little phantom tremor, Mercury. Enough to throw off your rhythm."
He wasn't trying to cause them to lose, not outright.
He was simply trying to disrupt their carefully constructed composure, to inject doubt and frustration into their minds.
Cinder's plan relied on precision and control, and Arthur was introducing variables she couldn't account for.
Cinder, watching from her private box, noticed the subtle changes in her team's performance.
She saw Emerald's momentary lapses in concentration, the fleeting frustration on Mercury's face.
"Are they getting sloppy?" she muttered, her eyes narrowing. "Or is someone interfering?"
She scanned the crowd, her sharp gaze sweeping across the faces, but found nothing out of the ordinary.
She dismissed it as tournament pressure, for now.
But a seed of suspicion had been planted.
Arthur, after messing around with them for a day, continued his more pressing work.
He spent his evenings meticulously refining his new schematics for Penny. He was no longer trying to "build" a soul, but to create the perfect "soil" for it to grow.
His focus was on creating a stable, receptive energy matrix within her artificial body.
He laid out intricate diagrams of mana pathways, like a map of ethereal veins and arteries.
He sketched delicate energy converters, designed to transform raw life force into a gentle, nurturing current.
At the heart of it all was the central resonance chamber, a complex design of crystal and interwoven mana, pulsating with a soft, warm glow in his mind's eye.
"It's about resonance," he mused aloud, sketching a complicated array of crystals that would hum with a particular frequency. "Like a tuning fork, it needs to be perfectly calibrated to receive the spark."
He remembered a lesson from Great Red, about the "flow of existence," the subtle river of life that ran through everything.
He was trying to tap into that river, to divert a small, pure stream into Penny's vessel.
"Not a dam, but a well," he corrected himself, erasing a line on his schematic and drawing a new one. "A conduit, not a container."
He knew the journey was long. He'd need to test each component, each energy flow, with extreme precision.
He needed to understand the precise frequencies and energies required to encourage, not force, the growth of a soul.
It was like tending a rare and delicate flower, providing just the right amount of light, water, and nutrients.
The image of Penny, truly alive, truly sentient, danced in his mind.
He saw her laughing, crying, making her own choices, unburdened by the cold logic of programming.
He imagined her experiencing the full spectrum of human emotion, not just mimicking it.
That vision, vivid and compelling, fueled his every late-night session, every moment of intense focus.
The Vytal Festival continued its vibrant, distracting course.
But beneath the celebratory façade, the shadows were indeed lengthening.
Cinder's plan was nearing its climax, and the air crackled with a subtle tension.
Arthur knew he was fighting on two fronts: the visible war against Cinder's machinations, and the hidden, profound battle to bring true life to Penny.
He would be ready for both.
...
Craze: 60 more chapters on www.p@treon.com/phelio 50% discount on going. FFVII Arc was going to end soon.