I feel bad for barrier guy... but he also did a lot of things poorly because he was arrogant:
- First, the whole deal with the "compulsory" test, he already knew that the opponent had a power to "cut through stuff", it is ok to have confidence in your skill, but he could think a bit about it before bothering some random unknown guy.
- Second, why making you the target to cut?... again, he is against a target with unknown capacity and you put yourself as the target?, why not a tree trunk?, a dummy, some random animal?... you know, something that can be lost if the barriers break?
Now either he was overconfident or the authorities are all based on you believing that your power is absolute?... if that is the case, then for sure he lost because he seemed to be more on the scheming side, more brains than MC... If your power relies in blind faith... then "don´t mind" is actually a power up, the more you think, the more you could second guess yourself about your own capacity... the second you think about a "what if?" you loose your power