It was nighttime. The Addams mansion was completely silent, with only the occasional strange noise echoing through the halls, as if the house itself were haunted.
In one of the many rooms, Luke was sleeping soundly. His breathing was slow, steady. His body relaxed.
The room was dim, the curtains closed and not a single candle lit.
Everything seemed calm.
Until, suddenly, his eyes snapped open.
“Tsch,” Luke clicked his tongue, and in that exact instant, his figure vanished from the bed in a flash.
BOOM!
A bolt of lightning struck the mattress, disintegrating it completely in an explosion of electric sparks and twisted springs.
Luke reappeared on the other side of the room, crouched and ready to counterattack, his gaze lit with irritation.
“Again, Fester?! That’s bed number thirty-two you’ve destroyed this month!” Luke complained.
But he didn’t have time to keep complaining, the door burst open, a blue flash lit up everything.
“You must always be on alert, boy!” shouted Fester as he hurled himself forward like a human projectile wrapped in electricity, eyes bulging with manic excitement.
Luke reacted instantly, tilting his head just in time to dodge the electric punch that grazed past his face, illuminating the darkness with crackling blue sparks.
Residual energy crackled in the air, but didn’t reach him.
It wasn’t like in the past.
When he had faced Elliot Spellman, another electricity user, Luke hadn’t been able to dodge his close-range attacks.
Elliot’s fists crackled with such intensity that even if Luke avoided the direct impact, the current would envelop the area around his body and reach his skin.
Back then, his telekinetic defenses weren’t strong enough to block the electric field.
Now, it was different.
With the training he had received, Luke had developed a more solid and reactive telekinetic shield, capable of activating within fractions of a second and holding up long enough for him to retreat or counterattack without taking immediate damage.
Plus, with his newly trained aura, his regeneration had improved significantly. He could afford to take a few hits, knowing his body could heal itself.
With a quick step, he channeled his energy and pushed Fester back with a burst of invisible force, gaining some space.
“At least warn me before blasting my face with electricity,” said Luke, spinning on his heel, ready to flee. He was tired, and he knew that damn bald man wasn’t alone.
Fester just laughed like it was a compliment.
“If you can predict it, it’s useless as training. Your clairvoyant aura is getting more and more annoying.”
The training with Gomez, Fester, and Stanley had completely changed Luke’s perception.
Now his clairvoyance was passive, like a sixth sense that buzzed even in his dreams.
A slight hum in his mind, a pressure at the back of his neck, a tingling sensation on his skin that woke him up a split second before danger struck.
And he needed it.
Because his trainers were demented monsters.
Fester attacked him at random hours, with electricity, homemade traps, and screams loud enough to wake the dead.
Gomez forced him into near-death duels at any time of day.
And Stanley… was exactly what Luke had imagined.
Behind that kind, grandfatherly façade was a military-obsessed control freak.
He taught Luke how to enhance his green aura and master techniques typical of its users, but if Luke made even the slightest mistake, Stanley corrected it with a cane to the ribs.
And then there was what Stanley called real experience.
According to him, true growth only came through adversity, by pushing both mind and body to the limit.
That’s why he not only approved of Fester’s surprise attacks… he joined them.
Even Gomez, just for fun, and to help Luke learn to overcome the unpredictable—would join in on what he called “tests.”
Peaceful sleep had become a luxury Luke no longer knew, not in the three months since Wednesday had left for Nevermore.
Thankfully, tonight he had one thing going in his favor: Gomez wasn’t home.
His role as head of the Demon Extermination Department kept him away most of the time, especially now that the society of outcasts was waging a silent war against the Spellmans.
A covert war of betrayals, selective assassinations, and political maneuvers beneath the surface.
Luke shot out of the room at full speed, lifting off the ground without even bothering to touch it.
He flew through the air using his telekinesis as propulsion, gliding down the hallways with increasing precision.
He knew he couldn’t beat Fester in raw speed.
His telekinesis still wasn’t powerful enough to match the electric acceleration of the bald man, who moved like lightning through the narrow hallways of the mansion.
He could use Shambles, his teleportation technique, to instantly gain distance.
But there were rules.
Ever since training began, it had been established that he could only use Shambles to teleport up to a maximum of fifteen meters inside the mansion.
Otherwise, it would be too easy to escape.
And that was the whole point: not to escape.
To adapt. To endure. To overcome.
As he flew at full speed through the east wing, Luke’s goal was clear: reach the lobby safely.
A room where none of his trainers were allowed to attack him.
He could stay there for thirty minutes at most, a time during which he could rest, heal… or even sleep, though it was barely enough and far from comfortable, since there was no bed.
But getting there was the real challenge.
An electric discharge hissed behind him, striking an old painting that exploded into splinters.
“Faster, boy!” Fester shouted from behind, wrapped in lightning.
Luke spun mid-air, activated Shambles, and vanished just before being hit, reappearing at the opposite end of the hallway.
‘Son of a bitch… if you were alone,’ Luke thought, clenching his jaw.
With his current abilities, he was confident he could face Fester in a one-on-one.
He wasn’t the same as before.
He had killed Elliot Spellman, patriarch of the Spellman family, one of the strongest psychics in the outcast society.
Elliot was from the same generation as Fester, just a few years younger.
And yes… some factors had worked in his favor that time.
In fact, Elliot had killed him for a few seconds.
And he only survived thanks to awakening his green aura, and the fact that Natasha had been fighting Elliot at the same time.
Since then, three months of intensive training had passed.
Three months of physical, mental, and energy refinement.
And now, facing someone like Fester didn’t intimidate him.
The problem was that this wasn’t a fair fight.
Stanley was nearby, lurking like a predator, waiting for Luke to lose his temper and go all-in out of frustration so he could land his strike.
Luke wasn’t afraid to face Stanley or Gomez one-on-one either.
The issue was when two of them, or worse, all three, teamed up.
Adding just one to the equation turned it into a losing battle from the very first second.
And beyond their individual strength, there was something else to consider: they were cheaters.
No rules, no honor.
They’d use dirty tricks, ambushes, whatever gave them the upper hand.
And all of this… while Luke trained like a madman during the day.
‘Almost there…’ Luke thought.
He kept flying toward the lobby, but something felt off.
His danger sense buzzed, a warning that made him activate his future vision.
He caught a glimpse of the next few seconds.
Stanley bursting through a wall like a missile, shattering it to pieces, launching the sole of his foot straight at Luke’s face with devastating force.
The old man’s body had been pushed to its absolute limit by the green aura. He possessed strength, speed, agility, endurance, and regeneration.
Luke estimated that the bastard had strength exceeding thirty tons. If he relied only on his telekinesis to dodge or block, it would be useless.
He had to use clairvoyance, predict his attacks and react with inhuman speed. Just as he expected, the wall shattered like paper, and a kick came straight at his face, but he was already ready.
As seen in his vision, the wall gave way a second later, like tissue.
Stanley shot forward, spinning in mid-air, and delivered a crushing downward kick.
But Luke was prepared.
At the exact moment, he unleashed a controlled telekinetic burst beneath his body, an unnatural, serpentine motion that propelled him backward just in time.
Stanley’s foot slammed into empty ground. The floor cracked, then exploded into a crater a meter wide, shards flying in every direction.
Stanley straightened with calm precision, perfectly balanced.
“Good reflexes,” he said in a neutral tone. “You used your future sight well. But if you think you’re going to make it to the safe zone, you’ll have to do more than just see what’s coming.”
“I know,” said Luke, smiling slightly.
And in that instant, his body seemed to vanish.
A cloud of white smoke enveloped him, and his silhouette scattered as if it were mist.
A visual illusion.
Stanley, unsurprised, narrowed his eyes. The entire hallway filled with thick, white smoke, completely obscuring visibility in all directions.
However, the old man simply shook his head.
“Useless. I don’t need to see. Your scent is enough,” the old man murmured calmly.
He took a firm step forward, guided by his sense of smell, honed by decades of training.
But just as he was about to lunge in Luke’s direction, something changed. From the far end of the hallway, a blue electric flash lit up the fog.
“I’ve got you, bastard!” Fester shouted, bursting onto the scene with a manic laugh, his eyes wide as his body crackled with energy.
Before Stanley could warn him, Fester was already lunging toward him with a concentrated electrical punch.
“Tsk…” Stanley frowned.
He turned just in time to see Fester’s face lit with excitement, convinced he was looking at Luke.
Another one of Luke’s illusions: he had altered Fester’s perception to make him believe Stanley was him.
The old man raised his wrapped fist and met the electric punch head-on, creating a brutal explosion in the middle of the hallway.
The smoke partially cleared from the shockwave as both fists clashed.
“Fester! I’m not Luke,” snapped Stanley, pushing back hard.
“What?! But you have his face and his scent,” said Fester, confused, still pushing.
“It’s an illusion…” said Stanley.
“You should be able to tell, but your mental stability is questionable…” he muttered to himself.
Fester looked around, disoriented, as the rest of the smoke began to fade. He clicked his tongue and muttered, “Too many auras are such a pain.”
Stanley looked down the hallway.
There was no trace of Luke. It was already useless to chase him, he’d had enough time to reach the lobby.
“He’s getting better,” said Fester, laughing and rubbing his hands, a little disappointed by how little of a fight he got.
“Yes, too much for his age,” said Stanley, unable to hide his surprise.
He had trained his beloved granddaughter, Veronica, the next heir of the Umbrio. The pride of the family.
He had taught her with discipline, yes, but also with care. Veronica had been treated as what she was: the princess of her lineage. Her training had been demanding, but never as extreme as Luke’s.
It would be dangerous for any teenager’s psyche, even for an outcast.
Luke, on the other hand, was being pushed to the limit. And the most unsettling part… was that he endured it.
Not just endured it, endured it under this level of constant pressure, calculated aggression, and relentless attacks day and night. Most teenagers, even among outcasts, would have broken under that kind of burden.
They would have lost their minds or collapsed. But not Luke.
Every day, with every extreme training session, every ambush in the middle of the night, it sharpened him further.
And Stanley saw it in his eyes.
It wasn’t just training.
Behind his defensive moves, the escape strategies, the shields and feints, the quick counterattacks… there was something more.
A hidden intent. Luke was waiting. He wasn’t just surviving the training, he was waiting, holding back for the right moment.
When he could catch them separately.
One by one. To pay them back.
And if he did it with four auras, along with his adaptability and the fact that he had killed Elliot at sixteen, be dangerous.
“We’ll have to keep an eye on him,” said Stanley, looking at Fester.
“Mm, yeah. It’s gonna be fun when he starts paying us back for real,” said Fester, an innocent gleam in his eyes, eagerly awaiting that moment.
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