《DOOMED TO BE A VILLAIN》


 Chapter 1 CHAPTER 1: TRANSMIGRATION… AGAIN

    ?"...Tch, it happened again." groaned Davies as his eyes fell upon young, white-skinned arms, that were not his merely seconds ago.


    "¡­It''s the fourth time this is happening, yet it still hurts like the first time¡­ which idiot said pain tolerance increases with experience." He barely whispered while holding onto his aching head.


    He slowly rose from his sleeping position and moved his feet to the floor beside the bed while slowly sorting out the memories that had just appeared in his head.


    Slowly, the ache in his head faded away and his blurry vision became clearer as he looked around the room to see a chair by the bedside and a television a bit farther away¡­ or at least it looked like a television since it had a prettyrge screen.


    Davies stood up and walked towards the huge screen to see his reflection on the screen where a short white-haired, bespectacled green-eyed, 6-year-old boy with puffed-up eyes was looking back at him.


    ''...after fainting at his parents'' funeral, I somehow took over his body¡­'' Davies shuffled back to thetest memories of "Davies Lake" that were just drilled into his head as he looked at his obvious grieving appearance in the mirror.


    "Well¡­ too bad his parents won''t be getting a revenge story... I don''t owe him or them anything," He thought with a self-deprecating smile until something strange suddenly appeared in his vision.


    "...What''s this¡­?" He eximed as he looked at the ck screen that seemed to move around along with his vision.


    Davies put out his hand to touch it, but his hand felt a cold screen-like matter for a just split second before his hand phased through it like it was ethereal.


    "...Interesting¡­" He continued trying to touch the ck screen thingy and a couple of minutester he found out he could only touch it by actually being willing to, otherwise, his hand just went right through it like it was ethereal.


    Just as he figured that out, he heard the sound of footsteps. He turned to face the only door in the room and soon enough, the door opened up to reveal a middle-aged man with an especially vigorous and wild aura.


    ''Hagen Lake¡­ head of the Lake family and League head of the Mad Lions¡­ also, my uncle,'' Davies recognized the face of his visitor from the memories he had just received.


    "Oh¡­ you''re awake." came a deep gruff voice as the middle-aged man eyed the scrawny-looking kid in front of him.


    ''He seems to have been crying his eyes out.'' Hagen thought as he looked at Davies''s puffed-up eyes behind his sses with tear stains still on his face.


    ''Those eyes¡­ he''s appraising me,'' Davies realized as he saw Hagen''s cold scrutinizing eyes, as they literally scanned him.


    "Yes, Uncle¡­" Davies meekly responded, immediately mimicking his predecessor''s shy attitude and way of speaking.


    "... I don''t know much aboutforting people, but you have to stay strong for your parent''s sake." Hagenforted as he knelt before the young Davies and patted his head.


    "... Yes Uncle¡­" Davies whimpered and shed a few tears, going along with his uncle''s acting.


    "...So, dry your tears and man up¡­ never let your enemy know the true depth of a member of the Lake family," Hagen told him sternly.


    Davies quickly wiped his eyes with his sleeves and tried to put on a brave face, but he still looked pained and pitiful.


    "Good¡­ Now rest up, tomorrow is another day." Hagenmended as he stood up and turned away towards the door while thinking to himself, ''weak little thing¡­doesn''t seem like he suspects anything¡­ but what did I even expect from a six-year-old.''


    As the door shut behind Hagen, Davies''s pained and tear-filled expression immediately disappeared from his face.


    ''Doesn''t seem like he can see this screen thing,'' he pondered as his attention went back to the weird ck screen that now had some words written on it in gold color.


    "Fated Viin System," Davies read aloud the words written on the screen.


    "Seriously¡­ I had to get a system in my fifth life¡­ wasn''t the saying ''Third time''s the charm''¡­"


    "Tch¡­ that idiot was also wrong," Davies clicked his tongue at the absurdity of his situation right now before going ahead to touch the characters on the screen.


    The words exploded into a shower of golden lights that went on to rearrange themselves around the screen, creating an borate golden design around the edges of the screen before other words began popping up on the screen.


    [Stats]


    [Abilities]


    [Shop]


    [Inventory]


    "Oh¡­ Now we''re getting somewhere" Davies was more than a bit excited at this unexpected power-up, so quickly stretched his hand toward the screen and tapped [Stats]¡­


    But nothing happened¡­ He then touched [Abilities]¡­


    But nothing happened as well¡­


    "What the hell is this¡­!?" He eximed, confused at the current situation before carefully examining the screen only to notice that every other word, but [Inventory] was discolored and faded in color.


    Davies then tapped on the [Inventory] option and the screen changed to show rows and columns of empty squares filling up the whole screen.


    He tapped one of the squares but it widened suddenly and his hand went into it withouting out the other side, greatly shocking him as he quickly removed his hand. He looked at his hand and noticed that there didn''t seem to be anything wrong with it, so he went ahead and touched another one of the squares and his hand was swallowed into it as well.


    "... Hehe¡­" Davies chuckled in embarrassment at his reaction after seeing that it wasn''t harmful at all and then continued putting his hand into the squares, simply ying around.


    [Stop acting like a retard], He suddenly heard a childish girly voice say.


    "Who!?" Davies reacted sharply, quickly looking around.


    [Stop looking around like an idiot, you look even more retarded now], The voice came again.


    Davies paused for a moment and then asked, "Wait¡­ are you sounding from inside my head."


    [...Yes¡­], The voice replied.


    "...Oh my God¡­!!!"


    "I have a weirdo inside my head!" Davies wailed as he grabbed his head in exasperation.


    [You''re the weirdo, idiot! Now stop acting stupid and let me do what I have to do!] The voice responded angrily.


    "You''re the weird one for sounding from inside my head!" Davies retorted.


    [Ok, ok, whatever¡­ now shut up and listen.] The voice sighed.


    "Listen to what¡­ a weird person sounding in my head." Davies continually pointed out.


    [Hey, shut up if you want me to exin how the system works and what it has to do with your current life.] The voice shouted inside Davies''s head angrily.


    [Why are you so irritable anyways?]


    "Well, I did just get killed a few minutes ago by someone who slept with my girlfriend and my sister, so forgive me if I am not in the mood to y games with a weird voice sounding from inside my head." Davies snapped angrily.


    [...Oh¡­]


    [...that did happen.] The voice responded quietly almost in a whisper.


    "...!"


    "Wait¡­? You Know!??" Davies cried out in shock.


    [Well, I''m in your head, so uh¡­ yeah, I know everything about you that you know¡­ for example, you take things apart whenever you''re nervous.]


    "Somebody call the author¡­! Where is my privacy?" Davies shouted.


    (Author picks up the phone: Yeah, uh¡­ sorry about that, but I can''t change it¡­ so uh, deal with it.)


    [Stop calling the author¡­after all, even he knows¡­]


    [...I am inevitable] The voice responded imitating a particr person.


    "Did you seriously just pull out a Thanos line?" Davies asked, bewildered.


    [Yeah, you have a ton of movies and stuff in here that I can''t wait to get back to, so shut the hell up and ask any questions you want to ask before I give you a basic rundown of the system functions.] The voice came again, already beginning to sound irritated.


    "How do I shut up, and ask questions at the same time," Davies asked, confused.


    [Oh, you''ll figure it out. Now hurry up and ask your questions.] The voice replied nonchntly.


    ''Asking questions with my mouth shut huh?'' Davies thought.


    [Yeah, like that.]


    ''So all I had to do was think things up'' Davies thought exasperatedly.


    [Wow, you''re such a genius¡­ now can you ask whatever questions you have.] The voice responded with a heavy dosage of sarcasm.


    ''Ok¡­ First of all, what are you and why the hell are you in my head!!!'' Davies shouted in his mind.


    [...Seriously¡­ that''s your first question?] The voice asked with irritation.


    ''Well duh, what better question than to ask who the foreign element in my mind is.'' Davies answered with sarcasm.


    [Well¡­ if you say it like that it does make sense.]


    "Oi author, are you sure you weren''t scammed to get such a stupid interface assistant." Davies facepalmed.


    (Author: I don''t even know bro.)


    [Well¡­ I am a voice or a consciousness¡­ or something...] The voice finally replied.


    "You don''t even know what you are¡­!? What kind of low-budget fool created you.] Davies asked with irritation and disbelief in his voice.


    (Author: Hey!!! Language! And it''s not my fault I''m broke. I''m still a newbie author without any financial support, okay!)


    [Well, sorry I don''t know what I am, I just woke up in here, okay!]


    [I don''t know much except for the information floating around in your head and in mine right now] The voice answered exasperatedly.


    "...So you are the system?" Davies inquired.


    [Nope, I came with the system and my current function is to exin to you how the Fated Viin System works, and I also have ess to all its current functions,] The voice answered.


    "Ok¡­ So, what does the system do?" Davies asked.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    [That''s ssified ¡­ you have to get "The Blessing of the Cataclysm" to ess that information] The voice responded.


    "Seriously¡­but that''s like four years from now!" Davies eximed before calming down and asking,


    "So, what does the stats button do or show?"


    [That''s ssified]


    "What about abilities?" Davies asked again,


    [ssified]


    "What about the shop, at least you can tell me that?" Davies asked yet again,


    [ssified]


    Davies facepalmed after hearing her response.


    "At least the inventory¡­?" Davies asked after raging in his mind for a while.


    [That is a personalized spatial pocket for you to put stuff in but as it feeds off your energy¡­ and you''re still pretty weak, you can''t just put anything in it] The voice answered.


    "... So let me get this straight¡­"


    "... Others get a system that can do all sorts of cool stuff and I get¡­ an over-glorified backpack." Davies blurted out.


    [...]


    [You know what¡­ fuck you!]


    [I''ll be busying myself watching all these movies and other stuff you have floating around in here.]


    [See you in a few years!!!] The voice raged on,


    [Oh¡­ and before I go¡­ do note that, if you die once more, no more transmigration for you¡­ so do make sure to stay alive.] The voice said before going silent.


    "Huh¡­!? What do you mean I actually die¡­!?" Davies shouted.


    "Hello!?"


    "Weirdo voice in my head?" Davies called out but received no reply.


    "Great, just great," Davies bemoaned.


    Davies had been walking around the room while he conversed with the voice and was now at the back of the television with a screwdriver he had found on one of the windows.


    Davies began to take apart the television as he thought nervously,


    ''ording to all those transmigration and system books I''ve read, when you have a system with a specific name¡­ like mine¡­ you get to have to deal with whatever the name is or the opposite of the name¡­ which means in the future, I''ll have to deal with protagonists or viins¡­ or both.''


    ''I still can''t believe that bastard Aaron killed me because I was supposed to be some kind of evil genius scientist in the future¡­ who kills someone for something they do in the future¡­? Also, how did he even know the future?'' Davies thinks angrily as his hands moved continuously.


    ''Now thanks to that idiot, I''m stuck in this new world that I hardly know anything about and will have to fuck with annoying existences in the nearest future, and all I have as help is a busted system and an annoying voice in my head.'' Davies said to himself as he threw the screwdriver away angrily.


    "FUCK!!!" He shouted out angrily, on the brink of a nervous breakdown, but then noticed something strange.


    He looks down to see the dismantled television that somehow had been perfectly arranged on the floor, screw for screw. Strangely enough, he wasn''t even paying attention to it when he was dismantling it, yet he somehow had the knowledge to put it back together, the knowledge of any ws, and a perfect understanding of how it works.


    "...That''s new¡­" Davies whispers, confused at the situation and the extra knowledge that somehow was now in his head.


    Davies then went to pick up the screwdriver from where he had thrown it and then went back to where the televisionpartments were all arranged carefully and then began to test this new discovery.


    He started trying to put it back together and saw his hands move in a quick, fluid, and efficient motion, putting things back together and screwing them and putting them all together with nothing but a screwdriver, and barely 2 minutester, he was done assembling the whole television again.


    "...Oh wow¡­"


    "...Couldn''t do that yesterday¡­" Davies said as he plugged in the television, saw ite on, and started showing a big blue-gray cat chasing after a brown mouse.


    "Did I just be a genius overnight¡­"


    "...or do humans be smart after dying four times?"


    (Author: Nobody''s going to be helping you test that theory, so focus¡­)


    ''Usually, this is where the system is especially helpful by exining what is happening to me right now¡­ too bad my system is useless.'' He thinks dejectedly at hisck of information.


    [I''m not useless] the voice says indignantly from inside Davies''s head.


    "Yes, you are!!! and didn''t you say, "see you in a few years" and that you were leaving." Davies shouted at the voice.


    [...]


    [I did mention that my job is to answer any question that concerns the system¡­ and you.] the voice responded with a mental eye roll.


    "...Oh¡­"


    [Also, I am a voice in your head¡­ where would I even go to]


    [So smart, yet so stupid¡­ is that a new trend nowadays] she snickered.


    "I''m not stupid¡­ I''m just annoyed at your uselessness," Davies fired back.


    [I''m not useless!]


    "Whatever¡­ just exin what is happening to me," Davies retorted sharply.


    [[Science genius] is a characteristic that you should have had in your previous life, but you died before even being able to ever use it so I''m just as shocked as you are, especially as there doesn''t seem to be any traces of your other past lives abilities]


    [Do remember though, that what you have now is potential to be a genius and not an actual genius.] the voice exined.


    "So, simply saying¡­ I''m a lot smarter now when it concerns a technological aspect." Davies stated.


    [Well, yeah¡­ but like I said potential, so you''ll have to actually learn things] The voice replied.


    "... Okay, you''re pretty useful" Davies responded.


    [hmph¡­]


    "... but just a teeny tiny bit¡­" Davies concluded.


    [Huh¡­!?]


    "Anyway since you''re going to be stuck in my head for the foreseeable future, shouldn''t you have a name?" Davies asked.


    [You''re the only one I know that wants to name a voice in their head] The voice replied annoyedly.


    "Point of correction¡­ a voice in my head that isn''t mine," Davis stated


    [Whatever, idiot.]


    "... hmmm, how about Jarvis?" Davis asked with a pondering expression.


    [What!!! NO¡­ You''ll be sued for copyright]


    "No, we won''t" Davis affirmed,


    [I don''t care¡­ I don''t want that name; it sounds too boyish¡­ and old school] the voice replied stubbornly.


    "...Tch¡­ so touchy" Davies clicked his tongue,


    "...What about¡­ Miya?" Davies asked again.


    [...]


    [...I''ll grudgingly ept that name¡­ ] Miya answered indignantly, but Davies could hear a little happiness in her tone.


    "As if it wasn''t already hard enough having to deal with women in the outside world, now I got a Loli inside my head."


    "What sin did I evermit to deserve this." Davies sighed.


    [Well¡­ you did kill your mother]


    Immediately Miya said this, the air surrounding Davies changed as his face changed to a cold, angry, and unfeeling one.


    "...M.i.y.a" He slowly called out.


    ***In a ne over the city of Yorkshire***


    "Please, fasten your seatbelts as we are about to begin our descent into Yorkshire city." A beautiful air hostess said to a white-haired man who stared out the window, bringing him out of his thoughts.


    "Oh, okay" he replied while shing a charming grin at her as he adjusted his sses.


    [What were you thinking about that you had to make the air hostesse to personally bring you out of your thoughts.] Miya asked.


    "Nothing much¡­ I was just thinking a bit about the past." He replied before looking back outside the window.


    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    (*In the world of Leivandage, during the Great Cataclysm 50 years ago, towers of blessing arose in many various locations and every specie is required to go to one of the towers at the age of 10 to get a blessing, The Blessing of the Cataclysm. The blessing varies from specie to specie but are all alike in the part that they are never random blessings as every blessing given to everybody is very specifically tailored to them or a part of them.


    But just having a blessing doesn''t make a difference as the blessing needs to be activated by some very rare resources and thus not everyone has an activated blessing¡­ that chance is only for the very rich and influential or those with high potential blessings.


    Those with an activated blessing are called "MEGAS". (More details would be providedter in the story or in the auxiliary chapter)

 Chapter 2 CHAPTER 2: NIGHTMARE

    ?*PUCHI*


    A woman was kneeling on the floor with a sword stabbed right in the middle of her chest and barely a few centimeters away was a young man''s figure standing above her kneeling figure with his hand on the hilt of the sword that had just been run into her heart.


    As the man tried to pull out the sword stuck in her, his movements revealed a bunch of weird tattoo-like markings across his wrist. This did not escape the attention of the recently impaled woman who somehow found the strength to grab his wrist to confirm what she was seeing.


    "...Those markings¡­"


    "...the mad blood tyrant body¡­ that means you are Da¡­ *Gasp*" The woman started to say before she began to continuously cough up blood.


    The man had seen all sorts of reactions from different people he had killed over the years¡­ but this wasn''t one of them. Somehow, he couldn''t find the strength to push her away and finish her off.


    For once his normally cold and stoic face revealed a trace of emotion as he saw a tear run down her cheek as she breathed herst and closed her eyes, her grip on his arm loosening.


    For a few minutes, he just stood there, rooted to the spot, not moving a single muscle until he felt something running down the right side of his face.


    His right hand slowly moved to his face¡­ as he touched his face, he saw something he hadn''t seen in years¡­ his tears.


    Seeing his tears scared him and brought out all the feelings he had been keeping bottled up for years as he reacted sharply and dashed away from the location, leaving his sword still stabbed in the woman''s now dead body that was now lying on the floor.


    With a full moon shining brightly above his head he ran and ran in any direction he could until he fell into a stream of fast-flowing water. The water seemed to have shocked his senses awake, as he stopped running and tried to wash away the blood away from his body.


    In reality, he had washed away the blood off of his pale white skin after more than five minutes of continuous washing, but in his vision, he could still see her blood all over his hands and he continually tried to wash her blood off his hands.


    ''Why¡­ Why does killing a random woman make me feel all this¡­'' he wondered as he continually washed his hands.


    After a few minutes more of washing his hands, his raging emotions had calmed enough for him to think straight and stop washing his hands continuously. He then sat in a shallow part of the stream, water running along his body as he psyched himself and tried to put it all behind him, the people he had hurt, the people he had killed, the pain he had caused. He tried to forget it all and look forward and hope for a brighter future where he wouldn''t have to do all this.


    This was supposed to be hisst mission for the Demon birth hall yet somehow this mission hit him the hardest and the reason why was totally unexinable to him. He had killed people before, so why did he feel different today¡­ the thinking wasn''t getting him anywhere, so he stood up from his sitting position, his face reverting to his usual cold, stoic, and unfeeling face.


    He leaves the stream and retraces his steps to find his way back to the demon sect and he then goes to report to the Demon sect leader.


    As he entered the throne room where the demon sect leader was, along with other high-level members of the demonic sect, the young man walked down the throne room and knelt down before the demon sect leader who seemed to be shrouded in the darkness as he looked down at the young man.


    "I havepleted myst mission and finished your trial, sect master." The young man said to the demon sect leader with his head bowed.


    "Hmmm¡­ You were quicker than I expected, butter than we expected." A deep voice, full of power, came from the demon sect leader as he responded to the kneeling young man.


    "..." The young man stayed silent while still kneeling as he pondered the demon sect master''s words.


    "... Tell me¡­" the demon sect leader started to say, his voice taking on a mischievous tone,


    "... as you killed her¡­ did you feel anything?" The demon sect asked.


    "...!¡­" The young man flinched as he heard this question, not expecting this question from the sect leader.


    "Oh, you did¡­ hehe..." The sect leader had noticed the young man''s muscles tightening at that moment.


    "... Well, you should have¡­ after all, she was your¡­"


    *Gasp*


    Davies woke up sweating, despite the air conditioning in the car he was currently being driven around in.


    As he breathed heavily and tried to calm his breathing, he heard Miya ask,


    [You had the nightmares again, didn''t you?]


    "Don''t worry about it¡­ I must have been especially tired." Davies answered quickly, brushing off her question as he rubbed his forehead and pinched his brows.


    [...]


    Miya was about to speak when a voice came from the driver''s seat of the car that Davies was being driven in, "Sir, we''ve arrived," a young almost feminine voice came from the young-faced driver that was driving.


    "Oh, Daniel¡­ We''ve arrived at thepany?" Davies asked the driver.


    "No¡­ I took the liberty to take the decision on your behalf toe to the mansion, as you were sleeping," responded Daniel as he came down and went ahead to open the door for Davies.


    "Oh¡­" Davies said as he stepped out of the car and looked at the glorious modern-style mansion that was spread out in front of him.


    He first took a few seconds to appraise the mansion before turning to Daniel and pulling his cheek, "I get that you''re my driver, butler, bodyguard, and personal assistant, but next time, don''t make decisions for me." He said as pulled Daniel''s cheeks.


    "Yesh¡­" Daniel sounded weird, as his cheeks were being pulled by Davies.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "And also, nice work with the mansion." Daviesmended as he let go of Daniel''s cheek and started walking towards the mansion.


    "Yes sir¡­" Daniel replied with a tearful expression while rubbing his cheek as he followed after Davies as they walked towards the mansion.


    As they entered the mansion, Davies called out to Daniel before he set to exploring his new home,


    "Call Arnold and tell him I''ll being to thepany in a few hours, also prepare an outfit for me and a car that I can drive¡­ something faster than that thing you drove me in."


    "Alright sir, anything else?" Daniel quickly responded.


    "Nothing much¡­ I''ll probably be going to sleep for a little while," Davies replied while Miya said in his head,


    [Hopefully without nightmares.]


    ''I told you, I''m fine.'' Davies retorted in his head while walking towards a direction that he hoped was the bedroom.


    A few hourster¡­


    Davies stepped out of the bathroom after he just finished having a shower and walked over to where Daniel had ced his prepared outfit and began wearing his clothes which consisted of a ck shirt with white stripes, a pair of trousers, and a ck overcoat.


    After dressing up, Davies walked over to the mirror to look at himself in the mirror. There staring at him in the mirror was a 6ft2 tall, handsome, white-haired, and pale-skinned man with enchanting emerald-green eyes.


    ''Damn! Just too fresh¡­ but something feels off,'' he thought narcissistically before bringing out his sses from his inventory and putting them on,pleting his look,


    "Much better¡­," he said as he wore the sses.


    Davies then began to walk out of the room, all the way through the house until he got to the main door of the house that he came in from. He then stepped out the door to see a ck Plexus LFA sports car parked on the driveway and Daniel standing alongside the car, both waiting patiently for his arrival.


    Davies walked towards Daniel before stretching out his right hand,


    "Keys¡­?" He requested with a smile,


    "...I told you I was driving¡­" Davies said as he collected the car keys from Daniel who reluctantly handed them over.


    Davies and Daniel got into the car and Davies pushed the button to start the car. The car came to life with a soft humming sound.


    Inside the car, Daniel quickly put on his seatbelt before turning to Davies and asking,


    "I don''t mean to be disrespectful¡­ but do you even have a driving license," Daniel asked suspiciously.


    "...Nope¡­ But then what does that matter," Davies replied with a huge grin before quickly putting the car into gear and mming down on the elerator.


    The car tires quickly spun as they burnt some rubber before the car began to move, quickly increasing in speed as it drove down the driveway and drifted out of it.


    "Whooooo¡­ really gets your blood pumping doesn''t it," Davies said to Daniel with his hand on the steering wheel, but Daniel was tightly grabbing onto the seatbelt trying his best not to scream.


    "Hahaha¡­ We''re Megas yet you''re scared of driving at high speeds¡­ now that''s a joke." Davies chuckled as he still drove at high speed and drifted around a corner.


    "Okay, talk to me¡­ what do I have on my schedule today¡­?" Davies asked Daniel who still grabbed tightly to the seatbelt.


    "...Uhm¡­ w-well you''re going to thepany right now." stammered out Daniel.


    "Tell me something I don''t know¡­" Davies retorted.


    "Well after your meeting with thepany today, they''re organizing a wee party for you this evening." Daniel continued.


    "Oooh, a party¡­ that may be a little interesting¡­ what else?" Davies asked.


    "... well¡­ the Lake family has also called to set up a meeting with you as soon as possible¡­" Daniel said cautiously.


    "...Oh, them¡­ Ignore them¡­" Davies said as drove through a well-guarded gate without pause and into the premises of arge industrial area. He drove for a few more minutes before finally pulling up in front of an extremely tall andvish-looking skyscraper.


    Just as Davies was about to grab the door handle toe down from the car, he heard Miya''s voice in his head,


    [Protagonist aura detected.]


    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Please vote powerstones...

 Chapter 3 CHAPTER 3: "TITLE AT END"

    ?***In the lobby of a particr building¡­***


    "Hey¡­" a blonde woman dressed in receptionist work clothes tapped another woman dressed the same as her.


    "Hey, did you hear that the boss ising back?" She began to tell the other receptionists who had been attracted to the conversation.


    "What boss¡­? Isn''t Mr. Arnold in his office on the 137th floor right now?" Another receptionist asked, confused.


    "...Not him, but the real boss¡­ the founder of Imperium Technologies, Davies Lake¡­" The first receptionist dropped the hot piece of news and looked around for their shocked reactions, which came as expected.


    "What!!!" one of the gossipers eximed.


    "The same Davies Lake that invented the first powerstone engine at the age of 8, invented an artificial powerstone harvesting machine at age 9 and founded Imperium Technologies before the age of 10," another of the gossipers listed in awe.


    "I heard he also received at least one S-grade blessing when he went for his Cataclysm ceremony," Another one of them stated.


    "He''s probably a mega now after activating his blessing¡­ I wish I was that lucky¡­" Another one said dreamily.


    "Hmmm mm¡­ He''sing here¡­ today," The first receptionist said, once again drawing all attention to her.


    "NANI!!" all the listeners eximed.


    "But no one''s even seen or heard of him in the past 12 years¡­"


    "I wonder, did something happen to him to make him stay away from society?" One of the gossipers asked.


    "I don''t know¡­ his parents did die when he was 6 years old, but you can never really tell with geniuses." The first receptionist answered with a thoughtful look.


    "The real question here is¡­ How do you even know all this." One of the listeners around asked.


    "Hehe¡­" The first receptionist chuckled,


    "I may not have had enough resources to activate my blessing, but my ears can pick up any interesting piece of news from miles away." She said as she proudly rubbed the tip of her nose.


    "EEEEHHHHH" All the listeners hailed,


    "Elsa the storyteller, tell us how you got this story?" They requested her, as she smiled while rubbing her nose.


    "Okay, okay¡­ I''ll tell you guys," Elsa said jubntly as she gave in to their request.


    "There I was, picking some files from Mr. Arnold''s office like he had requested me to when suddenly a call came in, interrupting our work¡­" Elsa paused to look around and was pleased to see everyone engrossed in her story, so she continued.


    "Mr. Arnold seemed less than pleased to be called at that moment and picked up his phone to hang up the call, but he froze when he saw the caller ID¡­"


    "Who called? Did you see? Someone asked.


    "I''m getting there¡­" Elsa said and didn''t answer the question as she was trying to build up their anticipation.


    *DING*


    The sound of an elevator reaching the ground floor disrupted the ongoing conversation as they all looked to see who wasing from the elevator.


    As the door opened, a tall beefy man who seemed to be in his mid-50s stepped out of the elevator wearing a ck suit. He seemed hurried and tensed and was less than pleased to see his workers crowded around each other, talking, instead of at their stations, working.


    "What are you doing loitering about instead of working!"


    "To your stations now!" He yelled at the gossip crew, who quickly began to move back to their working stations.


    "And you, Elsa¡­ Just follow me." He said as he turned and began to walk quickly towards the door.


    "Yes, Mr. Arnold¡­" She quickly responded as she followed after Mr. Arnold.


    Meanwhile¡­


    A ck Plexus LFA sports car had just pulled up in front of a skyscraper with the letters, IT, drawn boldly on the side of the building.


    As Davies turned grabbed the door handle to open the car doors and let himself out, he heard Miya say in his head,


    [Protagonist aura detected.]


    ''What!? Where?'' Davies asked quickly, stunned at this discovery.


    [I can''t pinpoint the exact location, but somewhere in that building] Miya said as she directed his eyes to the skyscraper that stood proudly in its location.


    ''... But¡­ that''s mine¡­'' Davies said to himself as he looked at the headquarters of Imperium Technologies.


    ''... Are you trying to tell me that the first protagonist I''ll meet in this world, probably works for me¡­'' Davies chuckled to himself.


    [Well, better get moving, you won''t find him sitting in here] Miya reminded him to get a move on.


    Davies unlocked the doors and pushed his door open before getting out while Daniel got out as well. Davies had just started moving towards the doors of the building when they were pushed open to reveal a tall beefy man who revealed a bright weing smile as soon as he saw Davies.


    "Sir Davies, Wee back¡­" He said with a smiling face and weing gesture as soon as he got close enough to Davies who walked towards the doors with Daniel just behind him.


    "Good to be back¡­ Hugo." Davies simply said as he walked past Hugo Arnold, the current acting CEO and Chief Financial Officer of Imperium Technologies.


    Arnold paid it no mind that he was almost basically ignored and followed after Davies with a smile as he tried to get upfront and lead Davies inside the building.


    "If you had given me an earlier notification about your arrival, we would have prepared a wee for you, sir," Arnold said as soon as he caught up to Davies who was almost at the doors of the building.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "The evening wee party should suffice, I suppose¡­ shouldn''t it, Daniel?" Davies stopped and turned to Daniel, who nodded in affirmation.


    Davies then turned towards Arnold, " Just make sure it''s interesting enough to be worth my time." He said as he smiled and pushed the main doors of Imperium Technologies open and walked inside.


    ''What now, Miya?'' He asked Miya.


    [I can''t sense anything strange on this floor¡­] Miya replied.


    ''Tch¡­ nothing.'' he clicked his tongue as he looked around at everything and everyone, carefully observing them just as much as they were observing him.


    [I hope you''re not going to go to all the floors and ask me to search for the protagonist] Miya suddenly asked.


    ''Of course, not¡­ this building has 140 floors¡­ I''m not that jobless.'' Davies replied to her, as he turned towards Arnold.


    "Hugo¡­ My office?" He asked with a raised eyebrow.


    "This way please¡­" Arnold requested as he took the lead and went towards the elevator, with Elsa, Davies, and Daniel following closely behind him.


    They entered the elevator and Arnold went to the elevator button pad and put his finger on a finger scanner that was on the control pad. A light shone green from somewhere on the panel as 4 hidden buttons revealed themselves.


    The numbers 137, 138,139, and 140 were on the buttons. The button ''137'' looked no different from the normal buttons on the pad but the ''138'', ''139'', and ''140'' buttons were goldenlyyered.


    "We dedicated the top 3 floors to you, Sir Davies" Arnold exined as he pressed the ''138'' button and the elevator began to move upwards.


    "Oh¡­ Nice¡­ I would have given you a promotion for that thought, but there aren''t any higher positions, Haha."  Daviesmented andughed lightly as they waited for the elevator to reach the 138th floor.


    "I''m ttered, Sir¡­" Arnold replied humbly.


    *DING*


    The elevator sounded and its doors began to slide open to reveal a very wide space that could contain about a hundred people.


    Davies stepped into his office and looked at the extremely luxurious set up with furniture, both for work and rxation spread out around.


    "Wow¡­ there''s even a refrigerator and a game console set up here¡­ and a nice view¡­" Davies said as his eyes surveyed the room while he walked to the ss walls and looked outside at the magnificent view.


    Suddenly Davies turned sharply and faced Arnold,


    "Now let''s get down to business¡­" Davies said with a serious smile on his face as he begins to walk towards a sofa that was close to where he stood.


    "So¡­ What''s been going on around here?" He asked as soon as he sat, hoping for any signs that could point him in the direction of the protagonist as he still didn''t know who that was.


    "We have been following your vision and have grown magnificently in the years you were away with our worth now reaching¡­" Arnold began to exin.


    "Stop¡­" Davies cut in.


    "I know what the numbers say and that''s not what I asked for¡­ What I want to know is what has been happening in thepany¡­ here," Davies exined,


    "Like anything interesting happening or something worth noting?" Davies further borated with an expectant look on his face.


    "Well¡­ everything has been going well inside thepany¡­" Arnold said again.


    "Seriously¡­ nothing I should know?" Davies asked, a bit disappointed at not getting a clue to find the protagonist.


    [He''s a pretty high-up official¡­ it figures that he won''t know much about some minor issues in thepany unless they affect thepany majorly] Miyamented.


    "... We do need to fill up a vacancy for the position of the Chief Operations Officer," Arnold said after some thought.


    "...Oh? ¡­ And this isn''t something I should know?" Davies asked with slight irritation.


    "Sorry sir, it must have skipped my mind." Arnold quickly apologized for his blunder.


    "But what happened to the former guy¡­?" Davies asked, his interest now piqued.


    "... H-He died¡­" Arnold replied hesitantly.


    "How did he die though?" Davies asked immediately, as he noticed Arnold''s hesitant reply.


    "...Asphyxiation¡­" Arnold said almost in a whisper.


    "He was killed. And isn''t this information something I should know¡­!" Davies concluded and asked loudly.


    "...No sir, he wasn''t killed¡­ he died of suffocation from¡­"


    "From what!!!???" Davies asked with an annoyed tone, his voice rising.


    "¡­Suffocation from Boobs."


    "..."


    "I wish I died like that¡­"


    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    CHAPTER 3: SUFFOCATION FROM BOOBS.

 Chapter 4 CHAPTER 4: THIS DAMNED SYSTEM

    ?"..."


    "Mpmh¡­ Pffffft¡­Hahahahahahahahah¡­" Davies burst intoughter after trying to hold it in for a second while Daniel and Elsa who stood by the elevator door covered their mouths and tried their best not tough out loud.


    "hahh¡­ So he died a man of culture then¡­" Davies said as he wiped away a tear from his eye.


    "May his soul rest in peace¡­" Davies put his hands together in a silent prayer for this fallenrade who had gone out in glory.


    "Anyway, since I don''t have much to do¡­ let me see them?" Davies requested after he finally stoppedughing.


    "... Them?" Arnold asked, unsure of who "them" was supposed to be.


    "The short-listed choices for the operating chief officer or whatever you called it." Davies borated.


    "Ah¡­ of course sir¡­" Arnold quickly answered as he turned towards the elevator.


    "Oh¡­ and get me something to drink." Davies called after him.


    "Of course Sir." Arnold replied and then gave instructions to Elsa to get refreshments as they both entered the elevator.


    ''So what do you think, Miya?'' Davies asked internally.


    [He''s shifty] Miya responded.


    ''Not about Hugo¡­ about the location of the protagonist,'' Davies rified.


    [I don''t know his exact location, but like I already said¡­ he is in this building] Miya replied to his questions.


    ''... he¡­ so it''s a male protagonist huh¡­ anything else you wanna tell me,''  Davies inquired.


    [Nope]


    '' Ohe on, in all those viin transmigration novels the viin at least gets the storyline of the protagonist or some fate value counter¡­ or something,'' Davies tried to plead with Miya.


    [For starters, I don''t know the future and for the fate value counter thingy¡­ you''d have to upgrade the system to ess that.] Miya stated bluntly.


    ''So how do I upgrade the system?'' Davies quickly asked as this was the first time Miya mentioned this matter.


    [By killing a protagonist and harvesting his fate points and then using the fate points to upgrade the system.] Miya answered.


    ''...wait¡­ so I can already just kill him?'' Davies asked in surprise.


    [No¡­ you have to drain him of his fate value first or heavenly cmities will befall you¡­ you are trying to kill someone chosen by fate after all.] Miya responded, dampening his excitement.


    ''... so, what is his fate value?''


    [The system doesn''t have the facilities to measure fate value yet, upgrade it first] Miya replied.


    ''Ok, hold up, let me get this straight¡­''


    ''I have to deal with a protagonist''s antics and thenter kill him¡­ without any tools or even information and I also cannot kill him too early or who knows what type of heavenly cmities would befall me,'' Davies listed out.


    [Yup¡­ that about sums it up] Miya confirmed his statement.


    Davies sat back and sighed while pinching his brows, ''...Remember the time I used to call you useless¡­''


    [Yeah¡­ You were so cute back then] Miya said as she remembered that far-off past.


    ''... You''re still useless¡­'' Davies stated clearly.


    [Wha¡­ you hateful¡­] Miya whined.


    ''Whoever created a system with these kinds of protocols is extremely stupid as well.'' Davies further added.


    ''But I guess it isn''t all that bad¡­ at least it''ll be a bit challenging,''


    ''...Breaking him mentally and emotionally before going physical on him¡­ I''ll make sure to take my time to make him suffer¡­'' Davies said to himself as his face morphed into an extremely devious smile.


    [...]<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    [You''re already nning how you''re going to kill someone you''ve never even met¡­ What if he turns out to be a nice guy] Miya asked, a bit taken aback by Davies''s morbid thoughts.


    ''... I was also a nice guy once upon a time¡­ but after being killed three times by protagonists I can dly say, all''s fair in love and war¡­ it''s his bad luck he has me as an enemy.''


    ''...Plus I''m pretty sure there will be a reason for us to butt heads.'' Davies thought to himself.


    *DING*


    The elevator rang again as Elsa came out of the elevator carrying a tray that contained carefully baked pastries and a pot of tea.


    Elsa brought the snacks and tea to a table ced in front of the sofa on which Davies sat and poured him a cup of luxurious-smelling tea.


    As Davies took up the cup and took a sip of the tea, the elevator sounded again, signaling Arnold''s arrival.


    Arnold stepped out of the elevator with three people following after him, two men and one woman. They followed after Arnold who walked towards where Davies sat.


    As they stopped in front of Davies, Arnold was about to start introducing them to Davies when,


    "...aren''t they a bit too young¡­"


    "Hey, Hugo¡­ are you ying with me¡­?" Davies questioned with a slight iciness in his tone as he sipped on his tea, not even bothering to give them an overall look.


    "Please don''t be offended by their age¡­ I assure you that they all are extremely capable and have been specially groomed for this sort of position," Arnold pleaded with Davies.


    "...Hmmm," Davies raised an eyebrow as he looked at the people that stood before him, his eyes slightly pausing for a second on the ck-haired beauty among them.


    Davies put down his cup of tea and looked at them sharply, "I''m sure some of you just thought, ''he''s younger than us, so why is he acting all high and mighty¡­"


    Davies paused beforeying back on the sofa into a morefortable and overbearing posture, "Well, you see¡­ I have the right to¡­ I''m a genius... and you''re all idiots,"


    "...Idiots, who work for me," Davies proimed as he looked at them with a belittling smile.


    One of the men who had been brought along with Arnold opened his mouth in a bid to say something, but the temperature in the room dropped immediately and he felt a chilling stareing from Davies, causing him to shut his mouth immediately.


    "I don''t know who you are or what you want to say, but in my presence, don''t talk unless I ask you to," Davies said with a chilling re.


    "The same goes for both of you as well¡­" Davies said as he looked at the remaining two behind Arnold.


    "I will be making a decision out of my own discretion about who would be seeding the position of Chief Operations Officer and I don''t care what backings you have or what they''ve promised you,"


    "but here at Imperium Technologies, I''m the god¡­"


    " so whatever backers you have here all work for me."


    "If you think that your qualifications arecking or you arecking in some area¡­ you have until tomorrow to impress me." Davies said with a wicked grin.


    "...Now, you can leave." He said again as the wicked grin on his face gave way to a brighter smile as the temperature of the room began to return to normal after his aura stopped leaking out.


    The employees scampered out with the brte being thest of them to leave, but before she left, she turned towards Davies and looked at him with a determined look on her face.


    As the elevator doors slid shut, Davies said with a smile, "I like that one¡­" while he asked Miya inside his head, ''Miya, are you sure you felt some of the protagonist''s aura from her.''


    [Yes¡­ She''s not the protagonist, but she has quite a high fate value as well¡­ I''m guessing she''s one of the protagonist''s futurepanions.] Miya replied.


    ''That means, it''s probably better to let her stick around so I can find the protagonist when hees running by. I''m pretty sure he''s still a lurker at this point.'' Davies thought.


    "...Sir, you didn''t notify me that you''ll be the one making the decision concerning the vacant position," Arnold said hesitantly,


    "...And?" Davies asked with a raised eyebrow,


    "...Do you have a problem with my decision?" Davies asked with a "bright smile".


    "Oh, not at all sir." Arnold quickly responded as cold sweat ran down his spine when he saw the smile that wasn''t a smile.


    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Please vote powerstones...

 Chapter 5 CHAPTER 5: JESSICA ROME

    ?At the wee party on the 69th floor¡­


    The party to wee the returning CEO and founder of Imperium Technologies, Davies Lake, had been on going on for thest three hours, as he was continuously weed back by various employees and even a few other big bosses from other affiliates and otherpanies either came or sent their regards¡­ with gifts.


    Davies had been continually toasted and greeted for hours and was now a bit tired of it, and also quite annoyed that even though the protagonist should have been one of the employees of Imperium Technologies¡­ somehow, he hadn''t been at the wee party for the returning CEO, Davies himself.


    ''Is he one of the more mobile workers or one of the affiliatepanies'' workers who just happened to be around when I arrived¡­''


    ''...Or he simply didn''te?'' Davies wondered as he downed another ss of wine.


    ''...  Tch¡­ If he''s not gonna end uping, then this is a bit of an annoying situation.'' Davies thought as he put down his wine ss and decided to go and seat in one of the private rooms on this floor, as it was modeled after a club¡­ for leisure activities.


    Davies excused himself from thepany of people and began walking towards the biggest private room that was reserved for him in the first ce.


    Davies walks along towards the room when Miya suddenly said,


    [I just detected the aura of the protagonist]


    "... Finally¡­ Where?" Davies quickly responded as he had been waiting for this statement all day.


    [Go left and head down that corridor] Miya gave directions to Davies who quickly followed them, changing his destination and heading down the corridor after the aura of the protagonist that Miya had sensed.


    Davies followed Miya''s instructions and even ended up going to another floor but ended up at a restroom without finding the protagonist.


    ''I know I''ve been drinking continuously for thest three hours, but I didn''t ask for GPS navigation to a restroom, Miya.'' Davies says with a bit of irritation now beginning to show up in his tone after being led on a wild goose chase.


    [... I''m sorry¡­ I thought I sensed himing here¡­] Miya apologized in a low tone.


    "... If you want to know why I call you useless very often¡­ well here''s an example¡­" Davies stated and he went ahead to wash his hands and his face.


    [... And if you want to know why I call you hateful, that''s why¡­hmph.] Miya replied annoyed.


    "Hahahaha."  Daviesughed at her annoyed reaction as he came out of the restroom, distracted by their conversation until¡­


    "Umph¡­"


    Davies collided with someone just outside the door of the restroom, bringing him out of his thoughts as he caught the purse he saw falling down.


    The ck-haired woman that had just collided with Davies unexpectedly looked to the ground to pick up her purse before facing whoever she just collided with and giving them a piece of her mind.


    "...Here," She heard a man''s voice say as she looked towards the ground, searching for her purse.


    She looked up at who was calling for her attention and the moment she saw his face, the flurry of words she had nned to unleash, disappeared from the back of her throat.


    "Sorry¡­ Sir," she apologized meekly as she saw Davies looking at her with a raised eyebrow.


    "...Your purse¡­" Davies said as he held up her purse to her, snapping her mind into action as she quickly collected the purse.


    "Thank you," she said still looking at his face.


    "... You''re one of the shortlisted people for the chief operations officer position, right?" Davies asked as he remembered her face.


    "Yes sir."


    "Can I get your name¡­?" Davies asked again as he thought,


    ''she''s here as well¡­ Oy, Miya don''t tell me it was her aura we followed here.''


    [Of course not, I''m not that dumb¡­] Miya replied indignantly.


    ''... but you are dumb¡­'' Davies stated with a slight smile, ignoring her obvious angry reaction.


    "It''s Jessica¡­ Jessica Rome, Mr. Lake" Jessica hesitantly.


    "Oho¡­ from the Rome family¡­ quite interesting you choosing to work at apany headed by someone from the Lake family," Daviesmented with a raised eyebrow.


    ''Now I see why she''s probably one of the protagonist future''spanions¡­ Let me guess,


    ''¡­ I, #fated viin gets into a battle between the two families and then the protagonistes in and eats all the cake, right Miya¡­?'' Davies asked in his mind.


    [I already said I don''t know the future, but yes... I think so as well.] Miya answered.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    ''... then it''s best if I bring her along and use her to draw out that lurker.'' Davies concluded as Jessica opened her mouth to exin why she was working in hispany, but she quickly found a finger on her lips, shushing her.


    "Shhhhh¡­ It would be quite an interesting story, but it is really no concern of mine¡­ goodbye," Davies said as he withdrew his finger from her lips and made to walk away, but his path was immediately blocked by Jessica.


    "... What do you want¡­?" Davies asks as he looks down at her face.


    "... Will you allow me to pour you a drink¡­ Mr. Lake." Jessica managed to say.


    "Hmmm¡­? Quite bold of you¡­" Davies''s right eyebrow rose again as he looked down at Jessica''s face, as she was literally shivering under his gaze,


    "...I like your boldness¡­ and your face, let''s go." Davies finally said as he began to walk past her.


    ''He likes my face?'' Jessica thought with a pink blush slowly beginning to appear on her cheeks.


    "Come on, let''s go." Davies turned and said to her as after walking forward a bit, he noticed she wasn''t following him.


    "Yes, Sir!" Jessica hurriedly responded as she ran after him.


    "... Do try to not be so slow in the future¡­ I hate it," Davies chided without looking towards her when she finally caught up to him.


    "... Yes¡­" she responded meekly.


    Davies walked back towards the elevator with Jessica walking closely behind him. They got on the elevator and went back to the 69th floor. The elevator doors opened and brought the sound of loud musicing from the party.


    After getting off the elevator, Davies made his way towards the private room reserved for him, with Jessica in tow. On the way towards the room, he was continuously being toasted and some of the women there tried to get a bit frisky with him, but Davies waved them off¡­ for now.


    They finally reached the private room, and Davies pushed the door and went in, Jessica following him inside. Just as the door was closing by itself, Daniel appeared out of nowhere and held the doors, stopping them from making noise by mming shut and instead shut the door quietly before standing guard outside the room, preventing anyone from entering.


    Davies went to sit on the main chair and then looked at Jessica, who stood awkwardly, unsure what to do. His face must have scrunched up a bit as he looked at her, as Jessica quickly became aware of herself and moved to the bar to pour him a drink.


    She then brought the drink to Davies who looked at the ss, swirled the cup a bit, and then downed the drink in one gulp. He then put brought the cup away and looked her in the face with a not-so-amused look,


    "¡­ You''re too boring¡­"


    "If you''re pouring someone a drink, you''ve got to make conversation or find a way to keep their interest in you, high¡­" He went on with a bemused look.


    "... sorry¡­" Jessica replied, barely in a whisper.


    "... You know what¡­? Let me start¡­"


    "What do you enjoy doing when you''re not working for me?" Davies asked with a smile as he stood and went to the bar to pour himself another drink.


    He poured whiskey into two sses and then went back to where she was and handed one of the cups to her while he started slowly sipping from his ss.


    Jessica took the ss and then poured it all down her throat in one gulp, shocking Davies who looked at her, wide-eyed,


    "... Wow¡­ are you just copying me or do you normally drink a lot." He asked with interest written all over his face.


    Jessica, now emboldened by her drink replied, "I used to go partying with my girlfriends while we were in university¡­ It was a way to get rid of some of the stress of university, I also learned to make drinks and cocktails and all the sort."


    "Now you got me interested in one of those drinks¡­ Come on, we got a bar, you can whip something up," Davies urged her.


    "... Okay¡­" Jessica gives in and goes towards the bar again, picks a couple of bottles and some sses, and started mixing and stirring with practiced ease, when she finally finished preparing the drinks, she was about to take them to Davies when his hand came from just right behind her and picked up the ss, startling her a bit as she didn''t know he was just behind her.


    Davies picked one of the sses and took a sip, "¡­ wild¡­" He said with a refreshed sigh.


    "What I want to know is¡­" He started as he started moving even closer, his eyes glowing emerald in the dim lighting,


    "... Are you as wild elsewhere..." Davies continued as he blocked her way and pressed up against her at the bar, his face continually inching towards hers, which was blushing heavily.


    *KNOCK* *KNOCK*


    "You have important visitors, Mr. Lake," Daniel''s voice rang out from behind the door.


    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Please vote powerstones...

 Chapter 6 CHAPTER 6: THE SEVEN WINGS

    ?"... Are you as wild elsewhere¡­" Davies continued as he blocked her way and pressed up against her at the bar, his face continually inching towards hers which was blushing heavily.


    *KNOCK* *KNOCK*


    "You have important visitors, Mr. Lake," Daniel''s voice rang out from behind the door, putting an end to all "illegal activities" going on behind the closed doors.


    Davies pulled away from Jessica and she quickly scampered out of his range with a blushing smile on her face. Davies watched all this with an amused look on his face as he walked back to therge sofa and sat on itfortably before calling out to Daniel.


    "Send them in¡­"


    The doors were swung open by Daniel for the visitors, a couple of purple hooded figures. On their purple robes was an interesting seven-winged crest showing outstandingly on their chest areas.


    "... The Seven Wings¡­ To what do I hold the pleasure of your visit?" Davies asked, almost politely with a surprised tone in his voice.


    "We were sent by the Golden Wing, to wee "The Greatest Genius of the century" back to the city of Yorkshire." One of the two hooded figures answered politely, stating their reason for being there.


    "The Golden Wing¡­!" Davies whispered, shocked,


    "Please, do send her my regards and tell her that I have received her greetings with joy in my heart." Davies finally responded to the emissaries after a few seconds of shock.


    "The Golden Wing also said to tell you that she looks forward to working with you in the near future." The second emissary said this time, shocking everyone in the room that heard these words.


    "It''ll be an honor to work with anyone of the Seven Wings." Davies politely responded to the second emissary as well.


    "We''ve received your greetings and response and shall give your regards to the Golden Wing." The emissaries replied together as they both raised their hands and started moving them strangely, creating strange patterns in the air until a reaction urred with the space in the middle of the patterns turning to a purple void.


    The Seven Wings emissaries stepped into the portal that they just opened up and then disappeared with the portal closing behind them.


    Davies sighed as he stood up and went to the bar and grabbed the cocktail prepared by Jessica and downed it in one gulp before sitting down and letting out a sigh.


    "Greatest genius of the century huh?" He chuckled dryly.


    "If I knew all this would happen then I would not have invented that powerstone machine."


    "Now I''m getting attraction from annoying people that are only going to make my life more of a mess¡­ "


    "... Drink¡­?" Davies said to himself before noticing that there was nothing in his ss and calling out to Jessica to make him another drink.


    Jessica hurried back to the bar, "Was that really the Seven Wings?" she asked with awe in her tone.


    "Do you think, anyone would impersonate one of the most powerful and mysterious organizations and thene to meet me, a Mega with my worth in the billions and a hugepany to my name only to deliver that kind of message?" Davies asked with a stupefied expression on his face as he looked at her.


    "... Seriously, what is it with girls and dumb questions?" Davies grumbled as he picked up his ss and drank a newly mixed cocktail.


    "Hey! I was just shocked at the fact that the wing golden of the Seven Wings sent emissaries to meet my boss," Jessica said loudly as she put down her own now empty ss and began to pour another set of drinks together.


    "Pffffttt¡­ hahahahaha" Davies almost spat out the drink in his mouth as he startedughing at her, "It''s "Golden Wing and not wing golden, Jessie." He managed to say betweenughs to the now embarrassed Jessica.


    "¡­ Whatever," Jessica said as she rolled her eyes at him, trying to hide her embarrassment.


    "The Seven Wings has 7 top heads that they call wings, unfortunately almost nothing is known about them apart from the fact they are all signified by their wing color that differs them from the other, not even their gender or race is known. They truly are the most mysterious organization as even most of their important members are not known and the few members that are known are all big and powerful people that normal people can''t even touch. So, it''s a bit worrying that they''re looking for me." Davies exined,


    "Hey, it can''t be all that bad, maybe Imperium Technologies could end up working with the Seven wings sometime in the future," Jessica said gleefully.


    "True, but that won''t concern low-level employees, so you don''t need to worry about it," Davies said with a smirk as he sipped on his drink.


    "It is quite nice what has happened around here in the years I wasn''t here." Davies sighs as he puts down his ss.


    "A lot of people actually want to know why you literally disappeared from the face of the earth for 12 years." Jessica suddenly asks.


    "... You included?" Davies looks at her with a smile,


    "... Yes, me included¡­" She replied.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "First of all, ¡­ I didn''t actually disappear from the face of the earth, otherwise how else would thepany run. Who did you think keeps inventing the stuff you guys sell." Davies says with a chuckle,


    "As for why I seemed to disappear or where I was or what I was doing, maybe I''ll tell you on another day when you''re not half drunk," Davies states as he noticed her reddened face.


    "I''m not half drunk!" Jessica responds loudly.


    "Tell that to your red face, haha." Davies chuckles at her reaction.


    "I. am. not. drunk." Jessica says again slowly.


    "Yeah right, where do you live so I can get someone to send you home?" Davies ignores what she is saying and asks.


    "No," Jessica said firmly.


    "...Huh? Where you live is called no?" Davies looked at her confusedly.


    "What? No, I''m not telling you, my address," she replied.


    "Must be drunker than I thought¡­ no matter, we do havepany records." Davies stands up and starts walking towards the door to call Daniel, but Jessica grabs his arm as soon as he walks past her.


    "Hmm¡­" Davies looks down at Jessica who was holding his arm while looking at the floor.


    "Take me¡­" she mumbled inaudibly.


    "Sorry what?" Davies bent down to ask, as he couldn''t hear what she said the first time but was shocked out of his mind when Jessica suddenly lurched forward and kissed him.


    Davies''s eyes widened in surprise, ''Oi, oi, oi¡­ when did female leads get this bold¡­'' he thought,pletely shocked at her boldness and straightforwardness.


    After a few more seconds, Davies pulled away from the kiss as he was contemting this new, and quite strange advancement as he didn''t expect her to be the one to make the first move and he definitely didn''t expect it as early as tonight, but as he looked at her breathtaking appearance, with her face rosy from all the drinking and the kiss they shared just a few seconds ago, all his n devising went straight out the window,


    "Well, what the hell," he breathed out before smashing his lips against hers in another long breathtaking kiss. Jessica reflexively tried to push him away, but Davies grabbed her two hands and ced them above her head and then held them there with one of his hands as he pushed her back on the chair while still kissing her. They continued kissing in his position for a minute before Davies suddenly pulled away again, surprising Jessica who had long since stopped resisting.


    Davies stood up and smoothed his hair and then stretched a hand that Jessica grabbed and got pulled to her feet, still confused.


    "While this is the 69th floor, I''d prefer to do my 69 somece else... preferably my ce," Davies said with a mischievous smile.


    "Also, you''re a surprisingly good kisser, is it experience?" Davies continued as he began to walk towards the door with Jessica''s hand still in his.


    "...No¡­ you''re my first kiss," Jessica said in a very low voice that Davies only managed to hear because of his enhanced physical ability.


    "So, you practice with your pillow then," Davies said yfully.


    "...!?" Jessica opened her mouth in surprise and wanted to say something, but Davies goes on to say, "All girls do it, so don''t be so shocked that I know."


    Davies opens the door to meet Daniel standing right in front of the door.


    "Daniel¡­ I''m leaving now." Davies called out to Daniel.


    "Will you be driving aga¡­ oh." Daniel was saying as he turned around but paused mid-sentence.


    "Take one of the spare cars from thepany garage and use that to get home, I''ll be¡­ busy tonight," Davies said quickly and started to lead Jessica toward the elevator.


    They got into the elevator and Davies pressed the button to take them to the 1st floor, the doors closed, and the elevator began descending the building. The doors to the elevator opened when it reached the 1st floor and Davies stepped out with Jessica holding onto his arm.


    They start walking toward the door that led outside when Miya''s voice suddenly rang out in his head,


    [He''s here, the protagonist is here on this floor]


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    Please vote powerstones...

 Chapter 7 CHAPTER 7: FIRST PROTAGONIST AND UNTAPPED FATE POTENIAL

    ?[He''s here, the protagonist is here on this floor]


    ''Hmm¡­! Where?'' Davies asked a bit startled at this sudden revtion but managed to keep hisposure and kept walking toward the door.


    [He''s not inside]


    ''Huh, I thought you said he was on this floor?'' Davies questioned, bewildered.


    [... we are on the ground floor, idiot... Greatest genius my ass]


    ''... In my defense, I''m only the greatest genius around technological stuff.'' Davies mumbled in response.


    [What''s that you say¡­ you''re stupid everywhere else?] Miya replies annoyedly.


    ''Whatever, where is he¡­?'' Davies asked irritably,


    [Outside the building¡­ he seems to be waiting for you]


    ''... waiting for me?'' Davies wondered at Miya''s answer as he continued walking towards the door and then pushed them open.


    Standing beside the Pexus LFA was a young Asian man in a valet suit waiting with the key in hand, for Davies.


    ''Would you look at that¡­ the first protagonist is my valet.'' Davies chuckles lightly as he looked at the young Asian man who stood by the car with an obviously forced smile on his face.


    ''Are you sure he is the one though, Miya?'' Davies asked to confirm.


    [Well, you don''t see anyone else standing and waiting here, do you?]


    ''Tch¡­ would it kill you to just answer nicely for once, Miya.'' Davies walked toward the car and then went on to open the door for Jessica to get in, before going over to the other side and collecting the keys from the young valet.


    "What''s your name?" Davies asks with a smiley face.


    "Lee Jung, my name is Lee Jung."


    "Lee Jung huh¡­ well good job, you had really perfect timing¡­ but well, if you didn''t you would have lost your job, Haha." Daviesughs.


    "Too bad I don''t really have anything to tip with¡­ and I''m really running out of time here, I have to hurry up and eat up the delicious meal sitting in my car right now."


    "Maybe an increase in sry could work," Davies purposely says all this to infuriate Lee Jung and is watching him out of the corner of his eyes to see if he''d snap at this provocation, but apart from the slight hardening of his expression, Lee Jung didn''t react and kept his smile on his face.


    "Good night, uhm¡­ Lil Dung," Davies says with a straight face as he opens the door of the car and gets in.


    Davies starts the car quickly and drives away slowly. As the car moves away, Lee Jung''s smiling face disappeared as he looked at the car with an angry expression, thinking, ''He must have forced her into going along with him.''


    ''That bastard...! Where''s he taking my miss Jessica!?''


    ''If only I was a Mega. Maybe I can still stop it if I make an anonymous call to the Rome family. They should be able to save her from his clutches,'' He thinks as he quickly turns and runs back towards the workers'' station, where he left his phone.


    ***


    As Davies drove away, he looked at his rear-view mirror just in time to notice Lee Jung running away.


    [Awwn¡­ You annoyed him so much; now he''s running back to his mommy] Miya taunted.


    ''Come on¡­ I wasn''t that bad.'' Davies replies as he continues driving.


    ''You knew, didn''t you?'' Davies asks Miya a sudden question.


    [Knew what?]


    ''You knew who the protagonist was before we even entered the building, didn''t you?'' Davies repeats himself more clearly.


    [Wha-What do you mean? Are you saying I was lying?]


    ''That''s exactly what I was saying. You really need to up your lying game, if you''re going to try something like this with me again.''<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    [What makes you think that I was lying?]


    ''Well for starters, you made it seem like your ability to sense the protagonist''s aura was weak and very limited¡­ yet you could pick up a trail that led me across quite a few floors. Secondly, now that I know that the first protagonist was obviously a valet, it stands to reason that he has nothing to do in the main office building and was probably in some sort of workers'' station that wasn''t in the main building, yet you told me he was in the main building, on one of the floors.''


    ''I don''t know your reason for doing all that, but I could infer from all your sneaky moves was to make sure I had a bumpy start with the protagonist.'' Davies affirmed.


    [What if I made a mistake and what I was sensing all this while from the main building is that girl that''s sitting down beside you? We both know that I can only use features from your system and we also both know that your system is pretty buggy.]


    ''I''m pretty sure it was not a mistake on your part because you told me immediately, we got to thepany that the protagonist was in the main building, effectively diverting all my attention to the main building and away from anywhere else, and even after we got inside and met Jessica, you could have confirmed that she wasn''t the protagonist and that you sensed wrongly¡­''


    ''...but instead, you went on to tell me that while she wasn''t the protagonist, she had some heavy fate value on herself as well, indicating that she would be one of the protagonist''s futurepanions, meaning you could already distinctively tell who had a heavier fate value, so I''m pretty sure the system is not as buggy as you say¡­''


    ''... Not to mention the fact that I already saw Lee Jung before I even entered the main building.''


    [Wait¡­ You also saw him?!]


    ''No, I didn''t, but your response tells me all I need to know.''


    [...]


    [...Smartass]


    ''Why did you do it though?'' Davies asked.


    [Well, I wanted to kick start your non-harmonious rtionship with the protagonist because immediately I sensed his fate value, I noticed that while it was heavy, it was also untapped.]


    ''What does that even mean?''


    [That means, that he hasn''t even experienced his first fated opportunity¡­ He''s literally an unripe fruit and is useless to us as he is now, so we have to find a way to kick start his first fated opportunity into existence.]


    ''You could have just told me¡­ this is one of my specialties you know¡­ making enemies.''


    ''... I mean¡­ I''ve been a viin in all of my lives.''


    [...well¡­ leave the system to do system-like things and you do your viin things.]


    ''Nope¡­ we''re together in this, no time for distinction now. I''d prefer your full transparency on these kinds of situations still.'' Davies pointed out sternly.


    [Alright, Alright¡­ Now you''ve performed your yboy magic and you have sessfully reeled in one of the protagonist''s futurepanions and in so doing annoyed the protagonist and has potentially kick-started the protagonist''s fate, what next?]


    ''What do you mean, "what next?"'' Davies asked, confused.


    [What are you going to do with the girl?]


    ''Oh¡­''


    ''She''s one of the things I can use to take down the protagonist, so it''d be better to keep her around as long as she''s usable¡­''


    ''Plus, she''s already in my car¡­ so I''m going to eat her up,'' a smile appears at the corner of his lips.


    [...]


    [...what did I even expect¡­  you know, for someone who''s been betrayed by women in literally all your lives, it''s pretty shocking for me how you still like ying around and sleeping with them, continuously chasing skirts.]


    ''...Not chasing skirts¡­ chasing the wrong skirts,''


    ''Miya¡­ I trust you''ve been in my mind long enough to realize that to a true man of culture¡­''


    ''Boobs is life.'' Davies replied and stepped on the elerator, zooming off towards his house as he was hungry now, but not for food.


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    Please vote powerstones...

 Chapter 8 CHAPTER 8: CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER

    ?Inside a dark room, two peopley on a huge bed, covered in nkets and bed clothing. They were deeply and peacefully asleep now, but the clothes strewn all across the room told a different story of a tryst happening in the room barely a few hours ago.


    The man''s eyes suddenly shuttered open and he looked up at the ceiling, yawning. He looks over at the beauty sleeping beside him and a slight smile appears on his face, but he didn''t try to wake her up and instead got up from the bed and began to walk towards the door of the room picking up a bathrobe that was on the dressing table and putting it on his naked body.


    Davies then walked out of the room, silently shutting the door and moving towards his bathroom to have his bath.


    30 minutester, Davies walks back into the bedroom with a wet body and a short towel covering only what was just below the waist. He looks around the room and shockingly Jessica is still asleep.


    Davies looks around, finds his underwear and trousers on the floor, picks them up, and then puts them on. He then holds up his hands and ps sharply twice, causing all the windows in the bedroom to open up as they worked with special motion and sound sensors, letting in the early morning sunshine and waking up Jessica.


    "... Good morning sleepyhead." Davies greeted with a smile.


    Jessica sits up with a grumble and her eyes fall on Davies bare chest that she had been straddling and kissing just a few hours prior, causing her face to turn blushing red, she quickly makes a hurry to hide back in the nkets shyly, but that was a bad move as she felt slight pains from all over her body and a sting from between her legs, that reminded her even more of the wild night she just had.


    "Ouch¡­ I don''t think I can walk¡­"


    "You say that now, but you were literally bouncing on me just hours ago." Davies smiles cheekily.


    "You!" Jessica picks up the nearest pillow and throws it at Davies who dodged and came closer and kissed her deeply for a few seconds, " Better now," He asked as he withdrew from the kiss.


    "I don''t want to go to work today," Jessica whimpered.


    "Oh no, that won''t do¡­ we can''t have our new Chief Operations Officer miss her first day of work,'' Davies says with a mischievous grin, causing Jessica''s face to brighten up in shock and surprise, "Really!?" She squealed and hugged Davies.


    "Yes, really¡­ as long you keep in line and keep me happy, you''ll be protected by me and get whatever you want¡­" Davies said with a loving voice but then his voice changed abruptly to a cold and unfeeling one, totally devoid of emotion and the temperature of the room began to lower as well with ice beginning to form across the windows and across some other objects as well, "¡­ But¡­ there is another side to every coin¡­" making it clear that he wasn''t some idiotic teenager that was head over heels deeply in love.


    Davies face reverts back to his smiling one and he picks up his shirt that was on the bed and stood up, put it on, and left the room without looking back at Jessica, leaving her looking confused and a bit panic-stricken, but she still managed to get up from the bed and found a bathrobe and she quickly puts it on and began walking toward the door.


    Jessica opened the door of the bedroom, but someone was standing in front of the door, a young golden-haired man in a ck suit stood waiting for her, "This way to the bathroom, Miss Rome¡­" Daniel pointed towards the passage down the left and began walking in that direction, not bothering to look behind him to even check if she was following him.


    Jessica seemed a bit stunned at Daniel''s cold behavior but quickly followed him, "I didn''t quite catch your name?" She tried to make conversation.


    "I didn''t tell you my name," Daniel replied bluntly, still not looking back.


    "Well, can you tell me your name¡­ also where is Davies?" Jessica asked again, not giving up on striking up a conversation.


    "My name and Mr. Lake''s current location is none of your business, Miss Rome¡­ also are you always this chatty?" Daniel responded coldly and stopped in front of the bathroom door and tapped the door, "here''s the bathroom."


    "The dining room is the other way, down the stairs¡­ go there after you are done bathing and dressing up¡­"


    "... make sure to hurry, Mr. Lake does not like to be kept waiting," Daniel stated bluntly and then began walking in the direction of the dining room that he had just pointed at, not bothering with Jessica''s reaction to his instructions and directions.


    Jessica was taken aback by Daniel''s attitude towards her, but she still got into the bathroom quickly as she remembered that wasting time here meant keeping Davies waiting.


    ***


    *Half an hourter¡­*


    Jessica stepped into the dining room, or the dining hall because the ce was huge. Davies sat at the head of the table, wiping his mouth with a napkin after finishing his breakfast just before Jessica came in.


    "Oh, you''re here, Jessie." Davies puts down the napkin onto the te as Daniel came to pack up the dishes. Davies stood up and walked over to her, "Why the long face?"


    "I don''t think he likes me¡­" Jessica says quietly,


    "Oh, Daniel¡­? of course he doesn''t like you, after all¡­" Davies paused mid-sentence,


    "After all what?" Jessica asks.


    "Doesn''t matter, let''s go," Davies says and takes her hand into his, and begins to walk down another corridor that led to the main door.


    "Why do you always do that?" Jessica asks as they walk,


    "Do what?" Davies looks her in the eye and asks as well,


    "Start a sentence and not finish it¡­"


    "..." Davies chuckles,


    "Cuz it''s fun¡­ to leave people hanging."<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    They get outside and surprisingly; Daniel is already there waiting for them. He hands Davies the keys to the Plexus LFA and Davies and Jessica walk over to the car where all the fun began yesterday. Davies opens the passenger door for her and then goes over to sit in the driver seat and then starts the car,


    "You¡­ don''t n to wear that to work today, do you?" Davies says as he eyes her outfit, which consisted of a simple sweatshirt and a short suit skirt.


    "What''s wrong with what I''m wearing?" Jessica asks self-consciously.


    "Well¡­ It is quite sexy and all¡­ but for your first day as a C executive, it is a bit¡­ hmm¡­ whatever is wrong with it doesn''t matter, you''re changing it." He stated firmly, his tone domineering.


    "Where''s the nearest mall," He asks as he begins to pull out of the driveway,


    "Cocoa mall is probably the one closest to here, but do I really need to change my clothes? I mean, you''re only wearing a shirt and trousers too¡­" Jessica asks as looks into the side mirror to check if there was something wrong with her dressing.


    "I don''t think you understand how this works, baby doll¡­ I own Imperium Technologies and can wear pajamas there and no one canin about it¡­ but you still work for me, and I''m telling you to change into something more¡­ delicious to my eyes." He answers with a cheeky grin and opens up the map on his dashboard, and selects "Cocoa Mall" before zooming off along to the directions.


    They get there and Davies makes her change to something more delicious to the eyes and pays for it with thousands of powerstone currency.


    Then, he drives to thepany and stops in front of the Imperium building and there, they both get down. Surprisingly, Lee Jung was the valet that came to take the car.


    ''I thought the Rome family said they''d take care of it. Why is she still with this bastard?'' Lee Jung raged internally as he saw Daviesing out of the car with Jessica, but he kept his professional smile on his face, though it was now a bit strained.


    ''He''s still here, Miya.''


    [I also don''t understand it¡­ does something more drastic need to happen for his fate to be activated?] Miya also wondered,


    ''Oi, don''t tell me he''s an idiotic MC that thinks nothing happened between me and his crush¡­ or even worse, a pervert that gets turned on by this kind of thing,'' Davies shivered.


    [Can that type of MC even exist?]


    ''Trust me, you''ll be shocked by how weird MCs can be... there are a lot of mentally challenged authors out there that create the weirdest shit¡­ Why am I even exining this to you, you have my memories, I''ve already met one, remember?''


    [Oh¡­ that creep¡­ I thought it was a horror NTR movie when I saw that memory, I can''t believe he¡­]


    ''STOP!''


    ''I don''t need you refreshing my memory with those kinds of images,'' Davies and Jessica walk into the Imperium building, turning heads as they walked in.


    "Elsa!" Davies called to the receptionist he saw with Arnold yesterday, she seemed to be having a conversation with her co-workers gathered around her.


    "Yes, Mr. Lake," Elsa quickly came forward as soon as she was called,


    "Tell Hugo that I want him in my office in the next five minutes, along with those other guys from yesterday," he tells her as he walks towards the VIP elevator along with Jessica.


    He gets into the elevator and puts his finger on the elevator button pad, bringing out the four hidden buttons and pressing on the 138th floor button.


    They reach the floor and Davies walks in, pulling Jessica along and into hisp as he sat on the sofa, "Wah... mmph¡­" Jessica wanted to say something, but whatever words were on her lips, got lost, as Davies''s lips ended up on hers, drawing her into a deep kiss.


    They made out until Jessica heard the sound of the elevator and quickly pulled away out of embarrassment.


    "Haha¡­" Davies chuckled at her embarrassed reaction as he licked his lips.


    *DING*


    The elevator door opened, and Arnold and the other two chosen ones came into the office and walked over to the sofa where Davies sat leisurely, "Good Morning, Mr. Lake," Arnold greeted Davies, who just responded with a nod.


    "I''m sure you know why I''ve called you here," Davies said to the two other applicants as they lined up in front waiting eagerly for Davies'' decision, each of them expecting to be chosen. Unfortunately for them, the ball was no longer in their court as Davies had already made the decision.


    "Miss Jessica Rome would be the new Chief Operations Officer from today," Davies stated with a clear voice as he looked over at Jessica who was also standing in front of him with a very happy smile, as the position she had been vying for had been confirmed. Sure, she had sold herself to Davies for this kind of benefit, but she didn''t really mind as she was very ambitious, and he wasn''t a bad choice. After all, he was rich, young, handsome, and could make her go crazy in be¡­ we''re going a bit off topic here, but the point was she didn''t mind giving herself to Davies, especially with the way he was currently treating her.


    While Jessica was standing there with a happy smile on her face and a bit lost in her thoughts, one of the other shortlisted employees was looking at her and managed to notice a hickey on her neck, and with that, he put 2 and 2 together, "Horny Bastard¡­" he said under his breath as he turned back to face Davies, but how could Davies'' enhanced ears not pick up his voice.


    The cup of tea that he was holding immediately froze over as he turned towards the culprit behind the unsavoryment.


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    Please vote powerstones...

 Chapter 9 CHAPTER 9: FAMILY COMES CALLING

    ?The cup of tea in Davies'' hand immediately froze over as he looked at the culprit behind the unsavoryment. The room immediately went quiet as even though they did not hear what the culprit had said, it was obvious that Davies'' mood was soured, and he was currently looking at the likely culprit.


    Davies put down the frozen teacup on the tray and stood up,


    *STEP* *STEP*


    His dress shoes echoed as he walked over to the guilty party and stopped right in front of him, looking at his face with a frosty smile. Davies could hear him gulp and sweat began to appear on his brows even though they were in a fully air-conditioned room, not to mention the cold from Davies''s aura being released currently.


    "What did you say¡­?" Davies asked him with iciness flowing from his voice.


    "I apologize for my rudeness, Sir¡­" the employee blurted out shakily, shivering from being this close to Davies, whose aura was leaking slightly, due to his annoyed mood.


    "... mhm mhm, I asked for what you said?" Davies repeats while shaking his head, as his smile went from frosty to wicked.


    "I''m sorry for what I said, please pardon my slip of tongue¡­" the employee said while looking down at the floor, not daring to look Davies in the eye. He wished he hadn''t made the mistake of blurting out what was on in his mind due to losing the position he so dearly coveted, he hoped someone or something would intervene and that this matter would be put to rest, but no one wasing to his aid as firstly they were all still not clear on what he had done and secondly, no one was going to risk their neck to interfere in Davies''s matters.


    "...Slip of tongue?" Davies asked with his eyebrow raised,


    "... Hey, I don''t know if you know, but Imperium Technologies belongs to me and only me¡­ hell, I founded it when I was just 9 years old¡­ what was your dumbass doing at 9 years old other than being stupid, huh?"


    "I have every damn right to pick whoever I want, for whatever position I want, in mypany, and I don''t expect someone that lives off me¡­ to let his tongue slip," Davies said and turned to Hugo,


    "I''m disappointed in you, Hugo, for bringing in such trash and not being able to determine who is worth grooming for these important positions," Davies made his feelings clear on the matter as he turned back and returned to his seat.


    "I need to make some time to check things around here, who knows what else you guys have messed up¡­" He rubbed his forehead as he sat in the chair.


    "... But Mr. Lake¡­" Arnold tried to say,


    "No excuses, Hugo. You have no excuses for slipping up and hiring trash!" Davies snapped.


    "I''ll be starting with the League¡­ arrange for their next dive soon... I''ll being along to personally inspect their value to mypany,"


    "Set up an appointment with the first squad for now,"


    "Make it soon."


    Arnold was going to try to protest/apologize but Davies didn''t seem to be ready to listen to anything he had to say, so he turned and began to walk to the elevator, already bringing out his phone to begin making the necessary arrangements.


    [Really?]


    [We both know you''re not as angry as you acted, so what brought this up,] Miya questioned.


    ''Well, for one, I may have been gone a little too long and it seems that they are already used to not having my presence around¡­ I can''t have that,''


    ''I don''t need idiots messing up mypany,''


    ''And also, since I can''t do anything to the protagonist until he at least gets his first fated opportunity, I can spend my time beating up monsters,''


    ''That way things wouldn''t end up too boring.''


    [... So, because you were bored, you ended up going into a mock fury and threatening your employees?]<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    ''...''


    ''Why do you always do this¡­'' he asked while rubbing between his brows.


    [well, I learned from the best¡­ you] Miya replied smugly.


    ''Normally, I''d be ttered but not when I''m the target of the roast,'' Davies shook his head slowly in exasperation.


    [hahahaha]


    ''Tch¡­ whatever,'' Davies grumbled inwardly as he stood up and decided to get a move on. He used the elevator to go back to the ground floor again and as he stepped out, he saw Lee Jung pulling up with his car.


    He was walking over to collect the key from the protagonist when,


    "You think you''re some big shot now, huh?" A loud voice that sounded quite familiar to Davies came from behind him.


    Davies turned behind him to see a particrly annoying red-headed idiot. The idiot had zing hair, a mildly handsome face, and was quite burly with a condescending smile on his face.


    "If it isn''t the one and only son of the Lake family head¡­ To what do I owe this pleasure of your visit," Davies asks with a smile on his face, but with the heavy sarcasm dripping from his tone, it was obvious that he was less than pleased to see the new visitor.


    "Why haven''t you responded to the summons from the family?" Joshua Lake asked with a frown.


    "...What summons?" Davies asks with a bewildered look on his face as if he had never heard the word "summons" ever in his life.


    "You know damn well what I''m talking about!" Joshua answered him, his tone rising.


    "No, I don''t¡­ Daniel did I receive any summons from the Lake family¡­" Davies asked Daniel who stood a few meters behind him.


    "Now that you mention it, sir¡­ No, you didn''t¡­"


    "See?"


    "But you do have an appointment to see the Lake family¡­ but there isn''t a fixed date for that yet," Daniel continued with a shrug.


    "Oh¡­ that¡­" Davies pped his forehead lightly as if he made a blunder.


    "Now you remember huh! Why haven''t you answered the family yet!" Joshua said with an annoyed tone.


    "..."


    "You see¡­ I''ve been busy¡­"


    "So, I ignored it," Davies said with a taunting, unapologetic smile.


    "... You bastard!" The sound of Joshua grinding his teeth was suddenly covered up by the roar of mes as mes burst forth from his fists angrily.


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    Please vote powerstones...

 Chapter 10 CHAPTER 10: MAKING ENEMIES

    ?Joshua''s fist burst into mes as he rushed forward at Davies in anger, but before he could even cover half the distance between them, a wall of ice suddenly formed up in his path, effectively barring him from moving forward.


    "Don''t forget where you are, Joshua," Davies, breathed out white mist from his mouth as he said this, his right hand stretching forward and covered in blue-colored mana.


    "Don''t give me that crap!" Joshua said through gritted teeth,


    "Father sent me here to make sure that you attend the family meeting, and I will make sure of that, even if I have to drag you there with you kicking and screaming."


    "Drag me there?" Davies asks with a raised eyebrow and a look of total bewilderment.


    "Are you getting scared now?" Joshua asked smugly as he thought Davies was scared of him.


    "What happened to all your attitude?" Joshua added as a smirk appeared on his face, the mes around his fists beginning to burn more brightly and fiercer as he used more mana, he was obviously enjoying intimidating Davies, or at least he thought he was.


    Davies on the other hand was looking at this idiot standing in front of him and wondering, ''He''s annoying¡­ should I just kill him?''


    [Maybe¡­ he is annoyingly loud] Miya responded,


    [But it may be better to go with him and just deal with this kind of matter now instead of having it be more annoyingter]


    ''True¡­ I don''t really have anything to do right now,'' he thought and then looked at Lee Jung who was hiding behind the car, ''dealing with this idiot right now is impossible anyways.''


    "Are you so scared you became mute?" Joshua asked domineeringly as he saw Davies not replying to his threats.


    "The only way I''d be scared of you, was if I was some harmless puppy, but even then, I wouldn''t be bothered by your insignificance," Davies responded clearly.


    Veins bulged out of Joshua''s head in anger as he roared,


    "YOU BA¡­"


    "Zip it,"


    Davies snapped his fingers and ice instantaneously formed over Joshua''s mouth, effectively shutting him up.


    "You don''t have to shout like a barbarian, alright¡­ I get your point, you hate me and would like to shove my ice down my throat while giving me the beating of my life,"


    "But try to have a brain before attempting all of that," Davies said soothingly with a cultured tone, but his words were not soothing at all.


    The ice on Joshua''s mouth melted off quickly, turning to steam immediately it melted.


    "Oops, careful you don''t melt off your brain¡­ or whatever little is left of it¡­ if you ever had any in the first ce," Davies called out when he noticed what Joshua was doing.


    Davies''s words continually shot arrows into Joshua and at this moment he was about to explode in anger, ready to attack him, no longer giving a damn about his father''s orders to bring him along without any friction, but Davies''s next words brought him back to his senses a little.


    "Alright, alright, don''t get your pants in a twist, I''ll being along."


    "Huh???" Joshua couldn''t believe what he was hearing. If Davies was going to go agree this easily to go to the family meeting, then why did he need to annoy him all this while?


    "Didn''t you hear me the first time, I guess you really did melt the rest of your brain cells earlier¡­ I said I would being to the family meeting, so do your job as a trusty messenger and go tell my uncle that I''ll be there in a while," Davies repeated himself, not forgetting to throw in more insults.


    "Don''t kill him, don''t kill him, don''t kill him, don''t kill him¡­" Joshua began to mumble under his breath as if he was chanting some mantra to control his anger.


    "Are you actually praying? ¡­ by the gods, do you actually need to pray before you can decide what to do since you don''t have a brain?" Davies asked with a questioning tone as if intrigued by his behavior.


    "FIRE FIST!!!"


    Joshua snapped and sent a wave of fire at Davies, swallowing the wall of ice in his path in a split second and still moving at high speed toward Davies. Davies though had expected him to snap long ago and easily maneuvered his ice to aid his movement, sliding out of the way of the attack.


    The me of wave continued in its path,pletely unbarred until it collided with Davies''s Plexus LFA that was parked and blew up the car.


    *BOOM*


    Joshua turned around, his anger all but extinguished, and left the ce before Davies annoyed him even further, enough for him to lose all reasoning and get into a full-fledged fight. He got into his car and quickly zoomed off, not bothering with all the attention gathered from the ruckus he had caused.


    "What a lousy fellow," Daviesmented as he watched him leave, but then he sensed Daniel''s mana being activated as a bright golden glow began to shine around his body.


    "What are you doing?" Davies asked.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Going after him?" Daniel quickly responded and was about to charge after Joshua''s car,


    "Don''t bother," Davies suddenly said,


    "But he attacked you? As your bodyguard, I can''t just let tha¡­" Daniel protested.


    "I said... don''t bother," Davies repeated himself, his voice borderline cold, seemingly a bit angered.


    Davies turned back to his exploded car, seeing it swallowed by mes, "I really liked this car though¡­" he said with a sad tone and then turned to Lee Jung who had been thrown a bit aback by the force of the explosion of the car as he was quite close to the car when it exploded.


    "Hey, you¡­ You''re fired," Davies said to Lee Jung who was still coughing from the smoke.


    "Huh¡­ why?" Lee Jung asked with a surprised voice.


    "Why?" Davies asked like it was the most stupid thing he had heard today,


    "You''re the valet that was entrusted with my car and now look at it?"


    "My car is gone, destroyed, blown up like a bubble gum¡­ what else do I need to make clear," Davies stated.


    "But¡­ but that''s unreasonable, your car was blown up by that red-headed Mega!!! How is it my fault that the car was destroyed!!!" Lee Jung shouted.


    "Well, you could have driven it somewhere else, or better yet, you could have protected my car with your body, at least that way you''d get a good burial and be known as the person who protected the genius''s car," Davies said like it was a matter of fact.


    "But even a Mega like you had to get out of the way of the fire!!! How could I have stopped the car from being destroyed!!!???" Lee Jung cried out.


    "What is it with all the stupid people I keep on meeting today," Davies sighed as he facepalmed,


    " Like I just said¡­ protect the car with your body and at least you can be of a little use, vermin!"  Davies said, his voice cold, his eyes devoid of emotion, and his cold mana flowing out, scaring the living daylights out of Lee Jung.


    "But you can just buy another car," Lee Jung still managed to say.


    "That doesn''t change the fact that you''re still fired," Davies responded quickly and then turned around, beginning to walk away, leaving a dumbfounded Lee Jung still sitting on the floor.


    "Ahh¡­ before I forget, don''t bother with severance pay, you don''t have any¡­ I would probably use it to feed a few homeless dogs as I don''t have a habit of paying useless people."


    "Nice talk¡­" Davies concluded and walked back towards Daniel. Lee Jung looked at his back as his mood changed continuously, from confusion to resignation, to non-eptance, and finally to rage.


    ''This bastard!!! Just because he was born into a good family and with good talent, he''s probably never had to suffer his whole life,'' He raged internally. If Davies knew what he was thinking right now, he''d cough out blood in anger,


    What good family? ¡­ they killed his parents,


    What talent? ¡­ the kind of work he had to do to reach where he was, was totally unimaginable,


    As for never suffering his whole life¡­ let''s not even mention that because nobody could cope with the things, he has gone through in all of his lives and stay sane, as even he didn''t stay sane.


    [You weren''t kidding when you said you were good at making enemies¡­] Miya said in astonishment, as she had watched all of Davies''s actions.


    ''Hey, it''s not my fault that those guys can''t tolerate a joke or two,'' Davies scoffed.


    [If that was a joke to you, then I can see why those protagonists you met in the past made sure to kill you in the worst way possible]


    ''Ouch¡­ Am I really that bad of a person to you?'' Davies asked with a mock sob.


    [Yes!]


    ''Hahaha¡­ those things don''t matter now,'' Daviesughed lightly as he neared Daniel.


    "Prepare another car, let''s go see what the Lake family has to say¡­"


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    Please vote powerstones...

 Chapter 11 CHAPTER 11: A LITTLE HISTORY

    ?80 years ago, an event now known as "The Great Cataclysm," urred on a little blue called Leiven.


    No one knows what or who caused the Great Cataclysm to happen¡­ all that was known was that one day, continuous seismic waves hit the whole earth, causing a global earthquake and other types of natural disasters to ur everywhere around the globe.


    The earth began to crack apart and all sorts of world-ending phenomenons urred in less than the span of an hour everywhere around the globe. In that one hour, Leiven had lost almost 10% of its total poption, animals, and nt included.


    It seemed apparent that the world was about to end¡­ nobody knew what to do as it had happened so unexpectedly and in very quick session, that there was little to nothing they could do but pray or wait for the knife hovering over their necks toe chopping down.


    Just as thends began to get torn apart from each other, stranger things began to happen,


    Space began to crack in some specific areas and unknown gigantic masses ofnd began to appear from the cracks in space and fell onto the earth, fitting into the torn-upnds like some deity was fixing a jigsaw puzzle with Leiven as the surface of the puzzle.


    Such strange urrences were happening all over the globe¡­ unidentifiable seas and mountains were appearing, appearances of new species of flora and fauna were apparent all over the earth, appearances ofnds covered by some sort of thick, coiling ck fog, and finally the appearances of strange towers in some specific ces around the world.


    Overall, it seemed the earth had just done a major glow-up, even increasing in size.


    And then every strange thing happening stopped¡­ what humanity thought to be the end of the world was in fact not the end of the world, but an ushering of a totally new era.


    But that was when the first signs of an arduous future showed up, the world had changed, and it was fair to say that humanity was no longer the dominating specie on this¡­ after all, so many new things had just popped up and there were still so many unknowns.


    The had been torn apart and stitched up, so the human countries were separated from one another and could not band together against the new threats. Long-distance transportation was impossible as the natural disasters before the reformation of the earth had all but destroyed every means of long-distance transportation, and even if there were still means of transportation, the world had just been reshuffled so the previously used maps were all useless now.


    More dangers had now started popping up around the new world, in the form of sealed dimensions that housed monsters; they were known as gates,


    And some of the new species of flora and fauna that had appeared during the cataclysm were predators that didn''t mind feasting on humans.


    Humanity was in a more perilous situation than ever¡­


    ¡­But that was when they appeared¡­


    Some of the braver humans had let their curiosity get the best of them and they ventured out of the safety of their homes to try and see what this new world had to offer. Some of them entered the strange towers that had appeared when the world was going through reformation and got bestowed with different types of abilities called "blessings of the cataclysm."


    Powers beyond the scope of human imagination, things that could only happen in dreams and movies, and abilities that would ensure humanity''s survival. It was like some higher-ranking being(s) had taken pity on the humans and decided to help them by sending these blessings to specific people who would help humanity to get back on its feet. The people with these blessings were called ''MEGAS''.


    The abilities granted to these blessed ones weren''t onlybat-oriented, some were supportive blessings while others were geared towards something else entirely.


    Due to these special people''s support and protection, many human settlements were able to pick themselves up and start functioning again.


    Yorkshire city was one of those settlements that had gotten ''MEGAS'' to protect and support them as they picked themselves up and began to function well again. There were 4 groups of people that had worked together to help Yorkshire City to get back on track after the ''GREAT CATACLYSM'', these 4 groups of people wouldtere to be known as the 4 great families of Yorkshire city, namely; The Lake family, The Rome family, The Santos family, and The Lecroy family.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    The Lake family was a warrior family that had taken up arms to protect Yorkshire city just after the Great Cataclysm urred, luckily some of them had managed to get a blessing from the tower, and with that, they had protected Yorkshire city along with the other families, all the while establishing themselves as a great force, literally as well as in the view of the people. As time passed, they also formed a ''LEAGUE'' that they called ''The Mad Lions'', which had the job of diving into the ''GATES''.


    For anybody that had lived in, or visited Yorkshire city, he/she would admit that the Lake family was one of the hegemons that stood in Yorkshire city. They were not to be messed with or provoked, and whoever dared to try would cease to exist¡­ at least the weak ones.


    This was the same Lake family that Davies was born into, and the same Lake family that requested his presence¡­


    *****-----------********


    Davies sat in the back seat of the Ventley Conraverse that Daniel drove him in as they headed for the Lake family estate,


    ''What do they want this time¡­?'' Davies sighs thoughtfully, as he looked outside the window at the moving scenery, the car seemed to eat up the miles as it traveled at high speed.


    [Who knows¡­]


    [Maybe they just want to see how you are, after all, you did go off-grid for twelve years without seeing anyone]


    ''Nah¡­ that can''t be it,''


    ''I already have a bad feeling¡­ this is going to be quite an annoying meeting,'' Davies thought as he began to rub his forehead, already feeling tired just thinking about whatever annoyances awaited him back at the Lake family.


    [...]


    Davies began to make himself morefortable in a bid to try and get some rest as he hadn''t slept much overnight due to¡­ the interview he was conducting, but before he could even begin to doze off, they had arrived at the entrance of the Lake family estate.


    "Goddammit, this better be quick," Davies grumbled as he realized that they had arrived at the estate.


    Daniel who was driving the car, slowed to a halt at the gate at the entrance to the estate as it was shut tightly for security purposes, he brought down the window of the car to talk with one of the men who were dispatched at the gate as the security.


    After a few minutes of conversation and the security checking their logs to see if Davies was to be allowed in, they opened the gates and let Daniel drive in. Daniel drove in at a minimal pace into the Lake family estate, slowly maneuvering the Ventley down the roads of the estate.


    It took another ten minutes to get to the Lake central hall used for family gatherings and meetings as the Lake family estate was a pretty big ce and was almost a self-contained town on its own, but it was to be expected, knowing the Lake family''s standing in Yorkshire.


    "Well¡­ let''s get this shit over with¡­" Davies with a tired sigh as he alighted slowly from the Ventley.


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    Please vote powerstones...

 Chapter 12 CHAPTER 12: THE LAKES FAMILY "HELP"

    ?Davies walked into the central hall, leaving Daniel behind with the car. An old man wearing a suit came up to him as soon as he got through the doors, "Young master Davies, the family head asked me to lead you to the hall," he said with an impassive face.


    ''Did he really have to do that? I still remember the way,'' Davies thought inwardly but maintained a straight face as he nodded to the old man. The old man turned around and started walking further inside the building at an unhurried pace while Davies followed him without a single word. They walked in absolute silence through the building until they came to a morously carved door leading to the meeting room.


    Davies paused for a bit as he stopped at the door without going in yet, he wasn''t nervous or anything, but on the other side of those doors were his uncle and a few other members of his family and going from his past experiences with this kind of situation, they were probably going to end up annoying him greatly¡­ again.


    "Ah shit, here we go again," He muttered as he pushed the door open and walked into the meeting room of the central hall. The ce looked like a mini colosseum, there was an open space in the middle of the room that he was walking into while the rest of the room was heightened and that was where the other people sat.


    ''Whoever designed this ce had watched too many animes¡­'' Davies thought annoyed as he walked into the middle of the room with unwavering steps, not seeming to care for everybody who was looking down at him from their high seats.


    The elder members of the Lake family, including the current family head, Hagen Lake, looked down at Davies as he walked into the room like he owned the ce without bothering to show the slightest bit of respect. His attitude annoyed them, but they kept silent and did not point it out because of their ns.


    ''So, you''re finally out of your hiding ce huh? Little rat,'' Hagen Lake thought scornfully as he looked at Davies, he wouldn''t have entertained this meeting if not for the pressure from the other family members and also his greed.


    "This feels like a trial," Daviesmented as soon as he stepped into the middle of the room while staring straight at the elders.


    "Of course not, why would we put the greatest genius of the Lake family on trial, especially when he hasn''t done anything wrong," One of the elders said with a smile on his face and many of the other elders concurred with his statement as they gave their opinions and responses to Davies''s statement.


    "Hahaha, he truly is our Lake''s family genius," another of the elders said,


    "I wish the other youngsters had even just half of his talent," another of the elders added,


    "Right, I always tell my grandson that he must be like you and then I will be able to die happily," an elder concurred.


    The elders tried to warm up the atmosphere, but Davies could see through all their half-heartedments and even their crappy attempt at ttery and as he didn''t especially care to listen anymore, nor did he have the slightest bit of respect for any of the people in this hall, he interrupted their charade,


    "Stop buttering me up, what exactly is it that you want from me that you had to interrupt me for this dead clown show?" Davies said calmly,


    Veins popped out on the heads of the elders that were speaking earlier and some of them almost coughed up blood in anger at Davies''s biting words, but they managed to keep their cool as Hagen spoke up for the first time since Davies walked in,


    "Don''t be like that, they are just happy to see you again after all these years," Hagen put an amiable smile on his face as he tried to lighten the mood.


    "Oh¡­ is that so¡­ well, good to see you guys then, I''ll be going now," Davies said nonchntly and turned around to leave.


    "Eh¡­?"


    Hagen and the rest of the elders were dumbfounded at this development, but Hagen quickly shouted,


    "... Wait!!!"


    Davies paused and turned back, "what is it now¡­ I already gave my appreciation at your wanting to check on me, right?" he said with a raised eyebrow and annoyance written all over his face.


    "We''ll have someone bring you a seat so we can discuss," Hagen was saying, but the temperature of the room suddenly lowered as Davies released some of his mana to form an icy throne that he sat infortably and ced his head on his fist as he looked at them coldly,<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "No need, what is it you want to discuss?"


    At this point, almost all the elders had issues keeping their smiling faces at Davies, since all he had done since he hade here was y around with them.


    He had not only not shown them any form of respect, but now his haughty look as he looked at them as if they were beggars, infuriated them to no end, but they still did not snap, though their smiling faces looked extremely ugly.


    "We could not help but notice that thepany that you had set up back then has grown quiterge and now it requires a lot of hard work and attention from you,"


    "So, we thought to help you take on the burden of running thepany as we think that you as a young man should not be tied down by such obligation and should be able to enjoy your youthful life," Hagen Lake proceeded to say, self-righteously.


    [... Hey Davies, are your family members idiots?] Miya asked incredulously,


    [Or did they forget that you''re not the same 10-year-old Davies Lake, that they used to know 12 years ago]


    ''...I don''t even know,''


    ''¡­ I mean, there''s stupidity... and then there''s that,'' Davies also couldn''t believe what they said.


    "So, what you mean to say is err¡­ I should sign over my multi-billion worthpany to you guys, so I can do¡­ youthful things," Davies said like it was the most stupid thing he had ever heard, but the Lake family elders seemed to not have picked up on the heavy sarcasm dripping from that sentence as they were nodding their heads meaningfully.


    "Yes, leave the hard work to us older generation and you can focus more on enjoying your youthful life," Hagen Lake said, still sounding very self-righteous like he was willing to go through heaven and hell just so Davies can "enjoy his youth".


    [Yup, they''re idiots]


    [With a family full of idiots like this, where did your smartnesse from¡­ oh wait, you''re transmigrated] Miya was saying in his head, but Davies ignored all herments.


    "Do you guys'' care for me that much?" Davies asked with a touched look on his face as if their "good intentions" were clear to him.


    "Of course, as a family we mu¡­" Hagen Lake began to say, thinking they had gotten through to Davies,


    "16 times" Davies cut in.


    "Huh? 16 times?" Hagen asked, confused at what Davies was saying.


    "16 times, that was the number of attempts made at my life¡­ and that was after 24 attempts to kidnap me after I began to be called a genius when I was just 8 years old," Davies said coldly.


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    Please vote powerstones...

 Chapter 13 CHAPTER 13: AN ANNOYING DAY

    ?"16 times, that was the number of attempts made at my life¡­ and that was after 24 attempts to kidnap me after I began to be called a genius when I was just 8 years old," Davies said coldly.


    "I survived through all those attempts to kill or kidnap me¡­ but did you guys even know how?"


    "Did you make any attempts to protect me from all those dangers?"


    "Did you even try to help or better my living conditions after my parents "supposedly died"?


    "You wouldn''t even be bothered about my existence if you didn''t have anything to gain¡­ unfortunately for you,"


    "I have nothing to give people who already have one foot in the grave," Davies said condescendingly,


    "You insolent brat!!!" one of the elders shouted,


    "Also, I don''t really know how stupid you''d have to be to ask me to hand over mypany," Davies ignored the elder''s rant and continued with a sneer,


    "And the funniest part is that you actually expect me to hand it over,"


    "Does being half dead make you braindead, because I really can''t understand what made you resort to such a stupid way of trying to acquire Imperium Technologies¡­


    "... I mean, to actually ask me to just hand it over, did you run out of ideas, or your brain can no longer produce ideas,"


    "ENOUGH!!!" Hagen shouted as his pressure came down heavily on Davies who sat on his icy throne in the middle of the room.


    "You ungrateful bastard, is this how you pay back your family after taking care of you?" another one of the elders shouted at Davies who was being pressed down by Hagen''s pressure,


    "Huh, grateful to you? Are you not only senile but deaf as well?" Davies questioned as if Hagen''s pressure on him nothing was but a light breeze.


    "YOU!!!" the elder raged,


    "Don''t expect me to respect you if you don''t even respect yourselves," Davies said as he stood from his icy throne and began to walk out of the room as the charade had gone on too long already in his opinion,


    As he reached the door of the room Davies turned and said, "From now on stay out of my business, or else!" a burst of killing intent filled the room, shocking everyone in the room at the amount of killing intent that he possessed.


    *SLAM*


    Davies left the room before anybody could notice that he was shaking slightly, as he shut the door, he almost stumbled and almost fell, but quickly used the wall to stabilize himself.


    [Are you alright?] Miya questioned, concern evident in her voice.


    ''I''m fine, but it seems my uncle has be really strong in the years I was away,'' Davies said as he took out a handkerchief from his pocket to clean his nosebleed as the pressure of Hagen Lake on him had done more damage to him than he had thought it would. The only reason why he hadn''t sumbed to the pressure while he was in the presence of the elders was that he didn''t want to show weakness, otherwise, they''d take advantage of it, his being already seated as well helped.


    [It seems he''s already very near awakening] Miya stated her observation.


    ''... that could end up being really troublesome,'' Davies sighed as he began to make his way out of the building.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Davies got out of the Central Hall and walked over to where Daniel had parked the Ventley and got in quickly, "Drive,"


    "Huh? How was the meeting, sir?" Daniel was a bit surprised at Daviesing out quite quickly and tried to ask how the meeting went, but Davies wasn''t in the mood for it,


    "Just drive," Davies repeated, a bit sternly this time, and Daniel quickly started the car and started driving, not inclined to annoy Davies with any more questions.


    Daniel drove out of the Lake estate and decided to drive to the mansion as there was nothing else on Davies''s schedule for the day, and even if there was, it didn''t seem like Davies was in the mood for it.


    They were halfway to the mansion when suddenly a Cerrari overtook them at high speed, but instead of speeding off into the distance, the car blocked their path, forcing Daniel to m on the brakes and bring the car to a quick stop to prevent an ident. This jolted awake Davies, who was in the backseat already half asleep.


    "What the heck is it this time!?" Davies was already quite annoyed from the day''s annoying events, but now he couldn''t even rest in peace. He almost lost it when he saw the crazy driver that almost caused an identing down from his car without the slightest look of remorse on his face.


    "Fucking Joshua¡­ stay in the car, Daniel," Davies said without waiting for a reply as he pushed open the door of the Ventley and stepped out.


    "What is it this time?" Davies asked as he walked towards Joshua who was also walking towards him as well.


    "You were called back to the family at the request of the family elders?" Joshua began.


    "And?" Davies asked as he didn''t understand what Joshua was getting at.


    "You actually dared to insult them!!!" Joshua shouted as he sent his mana to his fists and lunged at Davies with his fists bursting with mes.


    "...!" Davies quickly jumped out of the way of Joshua''s fists before forming an ice ball and throwing it at Joshua with great force.


    Joshua managed to block the ice ball, but he ended up pushed back a bit by the force of the attack.


    "Say, are you an idiot?" Davies asked, surprised at the reason for his actions,


    "You really do have a big mouth huh?" Joshua ignored Davies''s question and sent a wave of mes at Davies which ended up just crashing into a wall of ice that Davies conjured and melted it.


    "The Lake family must just be really good at training dogs," Davies was getting really irritated at this idiot''s actions.


    The day had started for him on a great note, he had gottenid the night before and everything was going well until this idiot popped up the first time. He had ended up going to meet the Lake family at the request of this fool and he had gotten even more irritated and now the idiot was back to make his day even worse.


    Suddenly Davies noticed Joshua going through a minor transformation as his fingernails turned into ws, his teeth grew sharper, and a white fur began to grow on his outstretched arms with ck stripe markings.


    "Oi, it''s one thing if you annoy me, but when you begin to make direct attempts at my life¡­" Davies''s voice sounded colder than the ice that he fought with, and his eyes showed no emotions but promised hell to the idiot standing in front of him.


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    Please vote powerstones...

 Chapter 14 CHAPTER 14: DEALING WITH AN ANNOYING DOG

    ?After the great cataclysm, there were a bunch of humans that got blessed when they went into the towers that had appeared during the cataclysm, gaining powers that had surpassed their imagination and they used this power to get humanity back on the right track.


    What they did not know was that the blessing they had gotten for free was not free for everyone¡­ frankly speaking, they were given some sort of newbie package of sorts, as others that came after them were able to get blessings as well, but with a catch...


    The newly blessed ones would have to activate their blessings personally, unfortunately, the materials needed to activate the "blessing of the cataclysm" were very rare and could only be found in dangerous ces and by killing rare and dangerous monsters.


    As for how they knew this information, well that was what was stated on the status screen that mysteriously appeared to the humans that had gotten "blessings of the cataclysm", thus only the rich and/or the powerful were able to acquire and ess these materials and the distinction between the first awakeners who already had a stable organization, and the new awakeners grew.


    Thus, it was agreed that once a year, every ten-year-old would gather at the towers and undergo a blessing of the cataclysm ceremony where each of them would receive their blessings, and those with higher ranked blessings or strategically useful blessings will be recruited by the already existing organizations and great families and would be helped to activate their blessings, but this opportunity wasn''t meant for all.


    Out of the human poption, only about 30 percent of the total poption would get a blessing, and out of that thirty percent, only about 10 percent of the blessings would be high-ranking or strategically useful, thus only ten percent or less of the children would get to have their blessings activated.


    Thebative blessings are split into 3 major types; The Weaponizers whose blessings are in form of a weapon they can manifest, The Elementals who could control various elements of nature, and The Transmorphers who got powers with beast characteristics and could eventer transform fully into those beasts.


    All three groups generally had three power levels,


    The Weaponizers - Aura, Aura de, and Domain,


    The Elementals - Gaseous Mana, Liquid Mana, and Mana Zone,


    The Transmorphers - Bestiality, Possession, and Full Transformation.


    There is another realm after these three power levels called "Awakening".


    ***--------------------------*********


    Davies swept a hand through his hair, fully exposing his handsome but currently extremely frightening face due to the totalck of emotions present on it as he looked at Joshua who was using the bestiality form of his blessing.


    "Scarlet me Tiger Beast mode," Joshua growled with slight steaming from the corners of his mouth as he finished his slight transformation. His fingernails had sharpened into ck ws and his canines could be seen protruding slightly from his lips, thin white fur with ck stripes had grown over his forearm and biceps and the temperature around him began to rise.


    "Maybe after spending a few weeks looking at your broken face in the hospital mirror, you''de around and think better about epting the family''s proposal," Joshua growled as he began to walk towards Davies haughtily.


    "... Man, you people really look down on me that much?" a slight smile of surprise appeared on Davies''s face as he heard Joshua talking big.


    "You may have been able to escape my previous attacks, but now that I''ve been forced to use this form, there''s no ce for you to run," Joshua said, still talking haughtily.


    "... well, discovery requires experimentation, so let''s test that theory," Davies said as he stretched out his right arm as if to grasp something from midair and formed an ice sword that he took a tight grasp of, as other ice shards began to form behind him.


    Davies waved his left arm toward Joshua''s direction, sending the ice shards at Joshua before running after the ice shards he just sent. Joshua quickly reacted to the attack by sending mana to his ws and sending a w-shaped attack formed of mes at Davies''s attack of ice shards.


    The attacks collided and the fire melted the ice sending a wave of steam into the surroundings.


    The steam wave suddenly burst apart as Davies''s ice sword shed against Joshua''s w, Joshua tried to push Davies''s sword away, but Davies''s arm stayed firm, not giving the slightest chance for Joshua to use his raw power to push him away.


    Joshua quickly sent mana to his ws again, heating them and beginning to cut through Davies''s ice sword. Joshua looked up at Davies''s face expecting to see rm and fear, but all he met was a nk stare that didn''t seem to care that his weapon was being cut through.


    Joshua''s w finally cut through Davies''s ice sword, but Davies used that moment when Joshua''s arm was swinging forward after cutting his sword and left the sword, swiftly twirling on the spot and dodging Joshua''s w while at the same time hitting him with his elbow to knock him off bnce.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    That slight moment that Joshua sumbed to Davies''s attack and was knocked off bnce was his undoing, as Davies quickly formed a thin ice spear and drove it through Joshua''s right thigh.


    "Arrrrrghhhhhhh!" Joshua screamed in pain as he fell to his knees, but Davies wasn''t done as he formed another ice spear and drove it through his left thigh as well, rendering him immobile.


    Before Joshua could even think about his current situation, Davies''s right leg whipped across his face, sending him flying sideways until he crashed into a Cerrari that was parked on the road.


    "Urrrgggghhhhhh," Joshua groaned as he pushed himself away from the car but ended up stumbling back to the ground due to the pain in his legs.


    "All that talk, you managed to sessfully rile me up¡­ and yet you ended up going down without evensting a minute," Davies began as he slowly walked towards him, his steps sounding like the march of the grim reaper as his killing intent was unleashed, forming a red shadowy figure behind him with nothing but mad ughter in its eyes.


    "Urgh, you bastard¡­" Joshua grabbed the frame of the Cerrari and tried to use it to pull himself up, but before he could even manage to do that,


    *BOOM*


    "Urrrkkkk"


    Davies had arrived before him at high speed and kneed him in the face, before grabbing his hair and pulling him up, and then hitting him three times in quick session, leaving Joshua''s facepletely swollen and bloodied.


    "You are nothing but an annoying dog whose only use is to bark," Davies told Joshua as he held him up by his hair, his tone unfeeling.


    *Spit*


    Joshua spat in his face before starting tough in a mad voice,


    "You won''t get away with this you bastard, my father is going to kill you!!!" Joshua shouted while stillughing madly, expecting Davies to act scared, but¡­


    "Seems you still need a lesson," Davies said as ice began to form around Joshua''s body that was still being held up by Davies. The ice spread around Joshua''s whole body, binding him and holding him up.


    "Since you''re family, I can''t kill you right now¡­ but I can leave you an inch close to death," Davies said as he turned away from Joshua and began to walk away.


    "Hey!!! Where are you going!? You can''t just leave me here!!!" Joshua shouted at Davies''s back as he walked away.


    "Ice Explosion," Davies said, almost in a whisper as he walked away without looking back.


    The ice surrounding Joshua, binding him and holding him up, burst in an explosion, the tiny shards formed from the ice explosion rushing forcefully into every part of Joshua''s exposed body.


    "AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!" Joshua screamed in pain as he fell to the ground, before slowly beginning to lose consciousness, his blood beginning to pool beneath him.


    Davies walked back toward his car, not bothering to look behind him as he pulled out his handkerchief and began to clean away the blood on his hands and then finally cleaned Joshua''s saliva off his face.


    He got to the car, but before opening the door, he froze the handkerchief and then let it drop before opening the door of the Ventley and getting in, the handkerchief falling to the floor and shattering into icy dust.


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    Please vote powerstones...

 Chapter 15 CHAPTER 15: BAD DAY GET’S WORSE

    ?*Davies POV*


    "Was it really wise to beat him up like that?" Daniel asked as soon as I stepped into the car.


    "Don''t worry about it. Megas have a very strong life force, he''ll live," I said whimsically as I sat down and settled in before shutting the door.


    "I meant; wouldn''t the Lake family make more trouble for you after this?" Daniel asked again as he put the car in gear and began to drive away from the location of the fight.


    "I don''t really care about that right now, but make sure to call them and tell them to pick up their dog¡­ while Megas do have a strong life force, he''s definitely going to die if no one takes care of his wounds,"


    "Just make sure that nobody else but the Lake familyes to disturb me about this issue," I said as I went back to looking outside the window at the scenery.


    "Yes, sir," Davies acknowledged my orders and took out his phone to begin to make the necessary calls.


    "More importantly, schedule a gate for me immediately, releasing my killing intent twice already today has made my hands quite itchy. I need to punch something," Iined as Joshua was a total waste of a punching bag, he couldn''t even take a few hits.


    "Arrange it with the League from thepany, tell the main squad to meet me at the reserved gate, might as well see their worth and look for anybody interesting," I sighed as I thought it through.


    ''Since today is already messed up and I can''tze around, might as well get some work done while killing monsters.''


    *1st POV*


    Isekai Night club, one of the more famous chill spots known to many people, weebs and otakus alike, is well a famous recreational spot regrly visited by influential people like Truck-kun, was currently abandoned and almost devoid of people.


    The reason for that was the pulsing mass of green-colored mana (the gate) that hovered about forty centimeters above the ground in the car park just behind the club.


    Around the gate had be a ce as rowdy as a construction site as different sorts of people stood a little distance away from the gate. The gate cleaners were present; they were the people that took care of bringing out the gate inhabitants(monsters) that had been killed, there were also the miners whose job was to mine out any precious stones or crystals that might be found in the gate, even the press was present as the gate''s appearance was quite recent, or more specifically, it only showed up barely an hour ago, yet it was already booked for clearance by the Imperium Technologies affiliated league, The Imperium Troops.


    Out of the whole crowd of people, a particr group of 7 stood out among the rest, they were the Megas that had been dispatched to take care of the gate and now they were just waiting for the person who had requested their presence here, Davies himself.


    "Is it true that the big boss of Imperium Technologies would be following us into the gate?" a ck-haired boy with a smaller-than-average physique named Arnim, asked the rest of the group.


    "That is what we were told, but it seems he originally requested the A-squad, but since they were already in a gate, we were sent here instead," another member of the group replied Arnim, this time it was a brown-haired, busty beauty in long robes that weren''t able to hide her shapely figure. Her name was Teresa.


    "I don''t know what he wants to get into a gate for¡­ he better not drag us down." This time it was a 6ft burly man with golden blonde hair that spoke.


    "It is rumored that he has at least one S ss blessing, so he''s probably stronger than you think¡­ and even if he wasn''t, he''s one of the richest people in Yorkshire and he''s the one bankrolling our League, one word of his could end you... literally,"


    "So be careful with what you say around him," cautioned Teresa as she listened to herrade that didn''t sound pleased with Davies following them into the dungeon.


    "I wonder what he looks like?" a beautiful girl with blue hair so dark it could be considered ck asked, she was a 5ft 6 Asian beauty, and she also wore big round-rimmed sses.


    "Is that the only thing you should be thinking about?" Arnim asked with a wry smile,


    "Of course, he could be Tisha''s knight in shining armor," the blue-haired sses girl replied indignantly with a pout, referring to herself.


    Herrades were about to reply to her when they noticed a limited edition Vently Conraverse driving into the car park beforeing to a halt.


    **Inside the Ventley**


    "We''re here, Mr. Lake," Daniel said to Davies who still sat in the back seat while looking at the situation outside.


    "I was not able to get the first squad of the league as they were already in a gate, but the B-Squad of the Imperium would be following you into the gate instead," Daniel told Davies.


    "The B-Squad huh? Aren''t they the ones being specially groomed to be able to match up with the first squad?" Davies asked,


    "If so, they must have quite the talent," he continued.


    "Yes, you could check to see whichever one catches your eye," Daniel said as he sent a file containing their information to Davies.


    Davies used his car''s inbuilt holographic system to disy their files, "First, the healer is this kid," Davies said as the picture of Arnim came up,


    "He has the B-rank blessing "Re-do of a healer", though despite the skill being only B-rank, it''s quite the healing skill as he has a manageablyrge mana pool to boost its healing capabilities," Daniel recited from memory as he already read their files.


    "What about this one?" Davies said as he waved his hand, and a picture of Teresa came up.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Teresa Markovic, she has the elemental type A-rank blessing, "Sylph''s kiss", she can control winds and is quite versatile in her usage of her blessing," Daniel replied.


    "Well, she is quite the beauty, I''ll keep an eye on this one¡­ and this one?" Daviesmented before switching the picture once again and this time it fell on the burly guy with golden blonde hair.


    "Anthony Joshua, A-rank weaponizer type blessing, "Rising of a Shield Hero", he can take a lot of hits and fulfills the role of the tank very well, he is also the captain of the B-squad," Daniel continued briefing Davies.


    "Sakura Kyojuro, A-rank weaponizer type blessing, "Cursed Sword: Muramasa", she has a very great talent for the sword," Daniel continued as Davies changed the picture to a pink-haired girl.


    "Damn¡­ she''s t¡­" Daviesmented as his eyes wandered to unspeakable ces.


    "Focus, Mr. Lake,"


    "Next is Jack Ryan, B-rank weaponizer type blessing, "Jack the Ripper", he''s very agile and is good at sneak attacks," Daniel continued exining after Davies switched to another picture of a member of the B-squad. Jack was a green-haired teenager with a creepy smile on his face.


    ''He looks crazy¡­'' Davies thought inwardly but didn''t voice it out loud as he instead switched the picture again to the next person. The next person was another guy who looked to be in his early twenties with ck hair and ck eyes on his mildly handsome face.


    "Jonas Edge, B-rank Transmorpher type blessing, "Lightning cat", he''s fast, and he''s dangerous," Daniel stated bluntly.


    "Finally, thest one," Davies sighed as this status report was taking too long in his opinion, but he still decided to listen, as nothing can beat information, ''¡­ someone once said, know your enemy and you do not need to fear the oue of a hundred battles¡­ but even though I always made sure I knew my enemies, I have always lost¡­ until now,''


    ''... but it''s still better to have information than to be ignorant¡­'' he sighed again and waved his hand switching to thest member of the B-Squad.


    The picture changed and a girl''s picture appeared next; a beautiful dark blue-haired Asian beauty. Standing at 5ft and 6 inches, she had a perfectly proportionate body where her assets weren''t oversize, but the perfect size for her body and perfectly shaped as well, she wore a slightly dumb but innocent smile on her face.


    "Cute¡­" both Davies and Daniel said at the same time as their eyes fell on the picture of the girl.


    "Oho¡­ did my little Daniel fall in love at first sight?" Davies said with a smirk as he looked at Daniel''s stupefied face.


    "Huh¡­ No! What do you mean?! I''m not g¡­" Daniel began to stammer as he heard Davies''s remark.


    "Don''t worry about it, I''m not judging¡­" Davies cut in with a knowing smirk.


    "Whatever¡­" Daniel calmed himself down and shrugged off Davies''s attempt to tease him.


    "Anyway, she is Tisha Nancy, S-rank blessing. Her blessing falls somewhat in the categories of an elemental type, but since she doesn''t control an element per se, it''s more a special type blessing." Daniel began to recite what he knew about her to Davies.


    "What exactly is her blessing?" Davies asked, his interest piqued.


    "The blessing is called "X", and the abilities are something like telekinesis and barrier creation of sorts, but there seems to be more to her powers than that," Daniel further exined.


    "Well, I wouldn''t find out anything by staying in here, right?" Davies pushed open the door of the car and got out, before turning in the direction of the B-squad of Imperium Troops, and making his way toward them, not caring for the press that began to take pictures of him as soon as he got down from the car.


    Davies walked up to the group and stopped right in front of them before asking, "Who''s your captain for today?"


    Though the question was quite a bit unexpected, Anthony Joshua answered, "I am the captain of this squad,"


    "Wrong answer," Davies said as soon as Anthony stopped talking, and then turned towards the gate before continuing to speak,


    "For today, I''m the captain of your sorry bunch¡­ please mess up," Davies said as he turned back to them with a smile on his face, but that smile sent shivers through everyone that was watching.


    "Now, let''s go," Davies turned towards the D-rank gate and began walking towards it. The B-Squad watched him, still in a stupor as they watched his back, but Tisha''s voice brought them back to reality,


    "Yahoo let''s go!" she shouted in a happy voice and began to follow after Davies. The rest of the group followed suit and soon all of them disappeared into the gate.


    But as soon as they entered the gate, the mana flowing from the gate spiked as chains materialized and wrapped themselves around the gate, blocking the gate.


    "Oh shit! It''s a mission gate!"


    "Fate really is a bitch huh?" Davies said irritated as the status screen of everybody who had entered the gate with him, materialized.


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 Chapter 16 CHAPTER 16: MISSION GATE

    ?Gates; one of the many things unnatural things that had appeared after the great cataclysm. It is an entrance to small, fragmented dimensions that houses different types of living beings that are hostile to humans.


    There are two types of gates; the dungeon-type gate that requires killing the boss monster present in the gate for it to copse (they are ranked from SSS to F) and the mission-type gate.


    The mission gate required the Megas that entered it toplete an objective or die trying¡­ there is a third option of killing every single monster in the dungeon to force the dungeon to copse, but it was not a highly rmended idea (they are also ranked from SSS to F, with SSS being the highest rank and F being the lowest rank).


    The gates were one of the things that could throw the world into ruins at any moment, they could appear anywhere, and at any time, and if they weren''t dealt with within a month of their materialization, then the inhabitants of the gate could break out ande into the world of Leivandage to wreak havoc.


    Yet, the presence of gates was one of the main reasons why Leivandage hadn''t plunged into war. After various research and continuous gate clearings, all the inhabitants of the world (both new and old) realized that the gates had a deeper threat than they seemed to let off. A threat so mysterious, yet so seemingly dangerous, they couldn''t afford to be caught in a war of hegemony over the new world and thenter be caughtcking if and when the threat decides to strike.


    That, and many other things, is why the world hadn''t descended into a mad free-for-all war among all the various intelligent species now present in this new world of Leivandage.


    **--------------------------------**


    "Shit," Davies sighed as he realized what happened as he saw his status screen pop out.


    "What''s happening?" Arnim''s voice came from behind Davies, he sounded a little freaked out at the chains appearing on the gate and locking it up, preventing their exit.


    "It can''t be right?" a ck-haired, ck-eyed boy by the name of Jonas Edge, asked, unsettled by their situation.


    "Shit, it''s a mission gate," Teresa also realized their situation, and it didn''t look good for them.


    "Mission gate or whatever, I can take on all the monsters here without breaking a sweat," Anthony Joshua said boastfully.


    "... err, what is a mission gate?" Tisha, the enthusiastically smiling blue-haired girl asked with a pondering look on her face as if she had never even heard those words in her life.


    "..." everyone in her group looked at her with shocked eyes before their faces changed to realization as if it were to be expected.


    While all this was happening, Davies was still lost in his thoughts, with his back turned to them, ''Just as I thought this day could not get any worse¡­'' he thought as he rubbed between his brow, his eyes darting around at the snow-covered area all around them, as even though he was deep in thought, he hadn''t dropped his guard.


    [Fate really doesn''t like you at all, or is it your luck that is shit?] Miya said, but even she was shocked at this turn of events. Mission gates were so rare that the number of mission gates that humanity had found out about wasn''t up to a hundred in the eighty years since the cataclysm.


    Though the number of mission gates that had appeared was probably more, as humans could not explore every single gate that had appeared, not to mention that humans only upied a small part of Leivandage, and gates appeared in othernds that belonged to other species.


    ''That doesn''t matter right now, can you sense the new rank of this gate?'' Davies ignored her question and asked as he needed to know the new danger level as even though he was quite strong and was able to easily defeat Joshua,pared to the more dangerous existences in Leivandage, he was an ant that could be easily swatted to death, so he didn''t dare to underestimate anything or anyone that could be a danger to his life.


    [The rank of the gate has elevated from D-rank to a B-rank] Miya told him after sensing the mana in the atmosphere of the gate.


    ''B-rank huh? It''s not that bad, while I can''t say it''s as easy as slicing through butter with a hot knife, it''s not dangerous enough for me to fear for my life¡­ unless the gate''s mission is annoyingly unreasonable,'' Davies thought deeply, bringing his hand to his chin,''


    ''The only problem is the kids, I wouldn''t mind leaving them to their own devices while I focus on the gate''s mission, they could die for all I care, but¡­ since they are a part of the Imperium League and by extension work for me, it''d be a waste to let them die uselessly here,''


    ''Can''t have my investments wasted,'' Davies thought as he turned to look at them as they argued among themselves, forgetting that they were in a gate.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "I don''t know whether to be impressed by the fact that you are not pissing your pants in this situation, or to be stunned by your idiocy," Davies said, loud enough for them to hear, thereby interrupting their conversation.


    The B-Squad looked over at their "new captain" after hearing his words,


    "Be impressed," Jack Ryan said with a bold smile, earning silent appreciation from hisrades for being able to talk back to Davies.


    "Nah¡­ I think I''m more stunned at your stupidity," Davies replied with a nk stare.


    "You guys are presently in a B-rank mission gate, and while we can argue that this was unexpected, you didn''t bother to survey the area to look if any enemies are in the vicinity,"


    "You didn''t bother to check the mission that you''d have toplete to leave this ce, neither did you even bother to consider your surroundings'' current climate as I fail to see how you n to survive just a few hours at a temperature below zero in those clothes,"


    "...and worst of all, you even began to cause a racket, virtually attracting any monster that is around this area to yourselves while you are not even prepared," Davies stated all their major mistakes, but didn''t bother going into more details as now wasn''t the time for such lessons, not to mention, he wasn''t really all that interested in babysitting the little group.


    Their faces turned ugly as they realized that everything, he said was right, but they didn''t get the time to ponder much on his words or even make corrections as their status screens rang out.


    Gate mission#


    Kill 10000 monsters.


    "Ah shit, fate really is a cold-hearted bitch¡­" Davies felt a headacheing as he read those words.


    **Meanwhile, outside the gate. Somewhere in Yorkshire city**


    Inside a rundown house in a terrible neighborhood, Lee Jung could be seen raging around inside the self-contained room that he hadn''t managed to pay the rent for in thest 3 months, "How dare that bastard fire me for something that wasn''t even my fault,"


    "How could he be so unreasonable to expect me to use my body to protect his car¡­"


    "Ahhh¡­ I''m not reconciled! He is even forcing Miss Jessica to go out with him,"


    "I wish I had the power to go against people like him,"


    "I''ll trample on him¡­" Lee Jung was in the middle of his ranting fantasies when a sudden voice from inside his head interrupted him,


    [System binding to host]


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 Chapter 17 CHAPTER 17: INSIDE THE MISSION GATE AND DAVIESS STATUS

    ?**Inside the B-rank Mission gate**


    Gate mission#


    Kill 10000 monsters.


    The whole B-Squad took a deep breath as they saw the mission on their status screens.


    "It''s just killing monsters, I can kill them all without breaking a sweat," Anthony said boastfully while at the same time trying to rile up his teammates and lift their moods.


    "Y-Yeah," Jack stammered a response, trying not to look scared and it seemed to have lifted the mood a little as the rest of them started asserting themselves, but Teresa stayed silent as she was pondering their situation. Tisha also stayed silent, but no one could tell why or what she was thinking.


    Teresa was about to voice her thoughts out to herrades who were behaving a bit immaturely even in this situation, but Davies''s cold voice mentioned everything she was thinking about, but not able to confirm,


    "I don''t think you guys understand the gravity of the situation you''re in," came Davies''s cold voice, interrupting their charade,


    "What don''t we understand? It''s just monsters, we''ll kill them all," Anthony said brazenly, still not seeing the bigger picture.


    "What an idiot," Davies sighed as he looked at Anthony like he was the greater fool to exist,


    "Your beautiful shapely friend over there probably gets it but let me exin it in a way that even an idiot like you can understand," Davies sighed again as because of this muscle head, he had to do more exining,


    ''Hopefully, they don''t fall into despair from realizing their situation¡­ urgh I hate exining things,'' Davies thought before taking a deep breath and beginning to exin,


    "What is the highest-ranked gate your group has everpleted?" Davies began by asking,


    "We''ve cleared a C-rank gate before¡­" Jonas answered before anyone in the group.


    ''Oh¡­? Not bad, I thought it''d be worse,'' Davies thought internally but did not show anything on his face as he moved on to his next question,


    "And what was the rank of this dungeon?" he asked as he folded his arms.


    "It is a D-rank dungeon so killing the monsters would be a piece of cake," Anthony said light-heartedly, still missing the point.


    "... You said "was", what do you mean by "was"?" the pink-haired t chested Sakura Kyojuro noticed the disparity in Davies''s words.


    "Exactly what it sounded like, "was" ... the rank of the dungeon has changed, or more frankly, it was never a D-rank gate," Davies cleared up, as he heard the "smart" ones in the group swallow hard as they realized the situation may be worse than they thought.


    "What rank is the gate now?" Teresa asked, Davies could see her gripping her mage staff very tightly as she feared his answer,


    "... B-rank, we have to kill at least 10000 B-rank monsters before we can get out of here," Davies stated, but without even giving them a second to digest this information, he continued,


    "Worse still you have to do all that in this weather condition,"


    "Well, you don''t have to worry for worry for water, you can eat snow I guess as long as you don''t mind turning to icicles in a few hours," Davies concluded and watched the reality set in for the B-Squad as they finally saw that their situation wasn''t good at all.


    [What are you ying at this time?] Miya asked Davies as she couldn''t understand Davies''s attempts at pressuring them mentally,


    [Isn''t it better for you to encourage them and try to lift their spirits if you want them to survive.] Miya advised.


    ''Nah¡­ every human reveals their true self when faced with certain death and that is exactly what I want to know about them, so I can see which one of them is actually worth something,''


    ''I do need some people that would do a little dirty work,'' Davies exined his reasoning to Miya,


    ''And besides, I should be able to pass this mission myself, though it wouldn''t be that easy, so there isn''t really much of a threat of death for them,''


    ''Pull up my status screen Miya?'' Davies asked Miya,


    [Aye Aye captain] Miya replied yfully and showed Davies his status,


    [Name: Davies Lake<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Race: Human Tribrid


    Age: 22


    Power status: Manazone(early stage)


    Blessings of the Cataclysm:


    Ice Dragon Emperor (SSS rank)


    Ice Dragon Heart (SSS rank)


    Reversion (Ex rank)


    Blessing skill series:


    Devastation; Ice Fury


    Ice Dragon''s Rage


    Nilfheim''s rain


    Icy aura(passive)


    Ice Explosion


    Snowfield Sensing]


    ''I guess the shop is still locked huh?'' Davies asked Miya,


    [Well duh, you have to upgrade the system to be able to use the shop]


    Davies suddenly starts walking towards the B-Squad without replying to Miya. He walks until he stands directly in front of Tisha,


    "First lesson for today, stay alert at all times," he said as he stretched out his hand and caught something that was flying toward Tisha''s head at high speed.


    *Crack*


    Davies caught and broke the icy spike that had almost taken out Tisha without her ever noticing,


    "Snow lizard, B-rank," Davies muttered as he looked at the monster that had shot the spike. It was a white lizard that was as big as a Komodo dragon with ice spikes all over its body that it could shoot at its enemies as a long-range attack. It was hiding in in sight in the snowy field, and it would have managed its sneak attack if not for Davies''s skill, "snowfield sensing".


    After seeing that its sneak attack had failed, it came out of hiding and let out a loud screaming sound. Immediately after letting out the screaming sound, more snow lizards appeared from inside the snow and Davies and the B-Squad were surrounded.


    "We''re surrounded! Get into formation," Anthony shouted and quickly summoned his shield and held it in front of him as the rest of the B-Squad also got into formation behind him.


    ''It is unnecessarily morous,'' Davies thought as he looked at Anthony''s white-colored shield with gold adornments and studded with different types of precious stones.


    [I thought he stole a giant''s bling but forgot to take the chain] Miya snickered, causing Davies to smile.


    "Well, take care of this one, guys¡­" Davies said as he used his ice to make awn chair that hey down on.


    "If you can''t even take care of this one, then you have no ce in the Imperium League," he said as he closed his eyes to take a nap.


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 Chapter 18 CHAPTER 18: DEALING WITH SOME MONSTERS

    ?"This fucker," Anthony cursed under his breath as he saw Daviesy down on his ice-madewn chair and close his eyes, seemingly asleep, but he didn''t have time to dwell on that, and even if he did, there was nothing he could do about it.


    Changing focus, he nced behind him to see if his teammates had gotten in formation and breathed a sigh of relief as they had.


    Since they were surrounded by the snow lizards, they couldn''t get into the conventional formation where the tank stayed in front with the damage dealers behind him and then the mages/long rangers at the back of the line, so they got into a circr formation instead with Anthony, Jonas, Sakura, Tisha, and Jack forming a circle of their own and Teresa and Arnim staying within the circle so they can be protected by theirrades.


    One of the snow lizards lunged towards the group but met a stone wall in the form of Anthony as he had gotten there in time to block the snow lizards'' charge.


    "Graaaaahhhh!"


    Anthony didn''t give the snow lizard any time for it to change its attack tactics as he used his strength to push against the lizard, making it lose bnce and fall over on its back. Without wasting any time, Sakura and Jack lunged into the air and came down fast on the poor snow lizard, skewering it with their des and putting it out of its misery.


    On another side of the circle, Jonas used the bestiality form of his "lightning cat" blessing as his nails became sharper and his hair stood up as lightning began to arc around him. He used the speed from this form to lunge at another of the snow lizards and in a swift motion, disposed of its eyes, plunging the snow lizard into a world of darkness.


    "Screeeeeee!!!" the snow lizard screamed in pain as its eyes were put out ofmission.


    "Wind Scythe!" Teresa formed a sharp de of wind and sent it at the blind lizard, but the lizard managed to sense it and wanted to jump out of the way only to find out that its body was rooted to the spot by Tisha''s telekinesis ability.


    *Schwinng*


    Another snow lizard was sent into the hands of Hades due to the team attack of the Imperium League B-Squad.


    After they grouped up again, Teresa created a huge whirlwind that was powerful enough to lift the snow lizards into the air. Some of the snow lizards tried to run away from the whirlwind but they got knocked back in by Anthony''s shield and Tisha''s telekinesis, and when they were finally all being thrown around in the whirlwind, Sakura and Jonas prepared to attack.


    "Cursed Crescent,"


    Sakura said as she got into a sword stance and swung her sword, sending a wave of sharp cursed energy at the whirlwind, on her side, the lightning strikes arcing around Jonas started to be thicker and longer,


    "Kiri¡­ Ahem, Killing Thunder!" he shouted as he gathered the lightning and shot it up into the air with a loud bang. The condensed lightning flew a little distance into the air before rushing back downwards towards the whirlwind.


    The cursed energy and lightning struck and connected with the whirlwind at the same time forming a cursed lightning whirlwind, electrocuting and corroding the snow lizards that were being swung around inside the whirlwind.


    Davies who was still lying down on his custom-made icywn chair opened one of his eyes to look at the status screen to know how many snow lizards they had killed,


    ------------------------------


    Gate mission


    Kill 10000 monsters.


    No of monsters killed: 9


    --------------------------------


    [They''re actually quite impressive]


    ''Inefficient¡­ and loud,'' Davies replied to Miya immediately.


    [Eh? ¡­ what do you mean?] Miya asked, intrigued.


    ''While their attacks are very effective and they managed to kill all the B-ranked snow lizards without even a single scratch, they''re wasting too much mana¡­ though they don''t really have that much of a choice if they want to survive in this gate, but they seem to have forgotten that they have to kill 10000 monsters and not a few snow lizards which brings us to my second point,''


    ''... you don''t think such a ruckus would go unnoticed by other monsters, do you?'' Davies asked Miya and true to his words, his senses picked up multiple monstersing towards their location.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    The B-Squad, however, hadn''t noticed anything and were happilymenting among themselves about how they made quick work of the snow lizards. They weren''t aware of the pack of Snow-White wolves rapidly closing in on their location, neither were they aware of the Snow-white wolf that was ahead of the pack and was slowly sneaking towards them.


    The wolf was already close enough to attack, but instead of attacking the weakest looking person, the wolf decided to attack the most exhausted looking person, since they wouldn''t be able to resist, after deciding that, the wolf lunged towards the sexy looking wind mage.


    No one was able to see the wolf until it was toote, and it was toote for anyone to stop it or for Teresa to block or even dodge the wolf lunging toward her with its mouth open wide, showing teeth sharp enough to end her life in less than a second.


    "TERESA!!!" Jack and Sakura shouted.


    *Krrrr¡­ Schwing* an ice spike suddenly shot out of the snow filled floor, stabbing into the wolf''s head and killing it just before it could reach Teresa.


    "Shut up¡­ loud mouths," Davies said irritated at their screaming,


    "I just told you idiots to pay attention to your surroundings¡­" Davies''s irritated voice rang in their ears as he stood up and began to walk towards Teresa.


    Davies didn''t stop walking even after moving past Teresa, he continued forward not bothering about the dead wolf on the ice spike, or even bothering to look at Teresa who looked at him with stars in her eyes. Davies only stopped in front of Tisha and then bent his face to her level,


    "You¡­ why are you holding back your strength?" Davies asked her with an intrigued tone.


    "I- I don''t know what you''re talking about," Tisha stammered and then looked away with a slight pout. She tried to look angry but only ended up looking cute and increasing Davies''s interest.


    "With a blessing like yours, you could be dominant in your battles and be the decisive factor of this team, but instead you only focus on controlling the enemy''s movement so that your teammates could kill them instead," Davies continued.


    "My blessing isn''t that strong," still looking away, Tisha tried to deny.


    "Nilfheim''s rain," Davies used his skill without even looking back, using snowfield sensing to target all the monsters in the vicinity that he could sense.


    A thousand ice swords formed in the sky, and then came raining down on all the monsters that were closing in on their location and skewering them to pieces.


    ------------------------------


    Gate mission


    Kill 10000 monsters.


    No of monsters killed: 379


    --------------------------------


    All the members of the B-Squad couldn''t believe their eyes as they saw that Davies had just killed 370 monsters with just one move.


    "You could do the same¡­ but with your barrier constructs instead of ice," Davies said with his eyes gleaming as he looked at her with a slight smile,


    "So, why don''t you?"


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 Chapter 19 CHAPTER 19: NEED FOR ANSWERS: AIR CHASE

    ?"So, why don''t you?" Davies asked her with a slight smile on his face, but without waiting for an answer he turned towards the others and asked,


    "And you guys¡­ why the hell are you using an RPG formation in real-life battles?"  Davies asked them as well,


    "Because¡­" Anthony tried to answer but Davies cut in,


    "Because what¡­ because you''re a tank or a damage dealer, or a long ranger or a mage¡­"


    "Wake the fuck up!"


    "This isn''t some systematic game with some systematic spells or systematic attacks. How you use your blessing is up to you so stop following the belief that because your blessing is geared towards one direction, you can''t be anything else or do anything else."


    "Truly your teamwork flows fluidly, and you were able to hold out, but you''re condemning yourself to only one way of battle¡­"


    "Have you ever stopped to wonder if you were alone, how would you fight,"


    "You have to graduate from fighting as an organization,"


    "... to fighting as an organism."


    "Okay, good talk¡­" Davies said nonchntly and began to walk towards the snow-covered forest in the distance.


    "If you guys want to wait there until the scent of blood attracts more monsters, you''re wee to stay there," Davies said without turning back as he walked away.


    "Uh? ¡­ wait for us!" Tisha shouted and ran towards Teresa to help her up,


    ''With him, we should be able to survive long enough toplete the mission,'' Sakura thought as she also began to go after Davies, she didn''t want to say it out loud, but they would probably die before they could even kill a thousand B-rank monsters, nobody spoke about it because they didn''t want to bring down their morale and put more pressure on themselves so they tried to act cheerfully as ifpleting the mission would be a breeze, but with the power Davies had shown,pleting the mission had be a possibility.


    [Nice speech, I almost believed you actually cared about those guys]


    ''I do care¡­ about what use they can be to me,''


    ''If they don''t break out of their current mindset, then they can''t get strong enough to be useful to me quickly enough,'' Davies replied to Miya as he continued towards the forest.


    The B-Squad had caught up with Davies as he walked towards the forest, but as they walked, he noticed them shivering because of the cold though they tried to hide it.


    [At this rate they''ll die from the cold before they can be of any use] Miya said to Davies,


    "Tch¡­" he clicked his tongue in annoyance.


    "Here," Davies summoned the inventory and put his hand inside, and began to bring out winter jackets from his inventory and threw them over towards them.


    ''They''re lucky, I just changed locations, so I was hauling a lot of things around,'' he thought as he also brought out a cloak from his inventory for himself and put it on.


    "Thank you," Teresa said as she walked faster to catch up to him and was now walking by his side.


    "I''m impressed that you guys didn''t lose it when you found out that the gate was B-rank," Davies said to her, ignoring her words of appreciation.


    "It''s because we are thought to never lose our cool in the gate as many unexpected things can happen,"


    "If you don''t have a clear mind in such situations, then you''re already half-dead," Teresa exined, hoping to draw Davies into a conversation.


    "Well¡­ at least they got that part of your training right," Davies replied half-heartedly.


    "Hey what did you mean by following systematic spells and attacks?" Teresa asked again, not giving up on getting into conversation with him, but Davies just stopped in his tracks and gave her an incredulous look.


    ''... Did she actually never even think about it?'' Davies thought as he looked at her clueless face.


    ''Wind is the most versatile element, she could use it to attack, defend, control, or even to fly, and yet she''s only thinking of being a ss cannon that only attacks with big skills¡­''


    ''... This world is full of idiots,'' Davies thought as he facepalmed, confusing Teresa who asked the question.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "You can''t follow the same path that someone else already followed and expect to arrive somewhere else," Davies simply said and turned to Tisha who was just behind Teresa,


    "You didn''t answer my previous question," but Tisha suddenly started levitating and began flying towards the forest instead and she turned to shout at Davies,


    "Catch me if you want an answer, bleeeh," she said with her tongue out in a childish manner.


    ''You''ve got to be kidding me,''


    ''The one with the most versatile use of her blessing is not attacking to kill,'' Davies thought as he rubbed his forehead.


    [Fate or destiny, I don''t know which one of them is running things, but whoever is... doesn''t like you¡­ like at all] Miya snickered.


    "Is she always like this?" Davies asked the rest of the B-Squad who were walking behind him, but he could already tell by her their wry smiles what the answer was.


    "Ah, shit¡­" Davies turned back towards the direction that Tisha had flown in and began to run after her. He could tell that Tisha did not have the ability to fly but was using her telekinesis to carry herself in the air and while it may seem extremely easy, it required a great deal of control that could only be gotten if one was in the Mana zone stage, and for her to be in the mana zone stage at her age, she wasn''t just talented¡­ she was a monster.


    Also, he would never say "No" to a challenge from a girl as cute as she was. With that in mind, Davies created a tform of ice that he jumped on and used his mana to shoot into the air as he was sent airborne after the yful girl and began the "Need for Answers: Air Chase".


    Davies jumped towards Tisha to try to catch her as soon as he got close enough to her, but she cleverly used her telekinesis to move herself out of the way, dodging Davies''s attempt to catch her. Davies had to create another ice tform to stop himself from falling to the ground and then once again went after her but every time she managed to dodge his attempts to catch her.


    [It''s no good, she has the advantage in the air¡­ you wouldn''t be able to catch her unless you can fly, which you can''t] Miya told Davies as Tisha dodged his attempt to catch her the 5th time.


    ''Heh¡­ I almost forgot,''


    ''The viin doesn''t have to y fair,'' he replied to Miya. Unknowingly he had a smile on his face as he went after Tisha once again.


    Davies moved towards Tisha, who looked at himing towards her with a cheeky smile as she had dodged every one of his attempts to catch her but unluckily for her, this time Davies wasn''t going to y fair.


    As Davies flew towards her, he outstretched his hand and made huge hands of ice that nked her from both sides and tried to use them to catch her, but Tisha managed to stop the hands from grasping her by making barriers to block the hands just before they managed to block her.


    Tisha''s cheeky smile widened after she stopped Davies''s new attempt to try to catch her but,


    "Ice explosion," Davies said with a smiling face as he had gotten her exactly where he wanted her to be. She was barely using her telekinesis to keep herself afloat while also using her barriers to stop his ice hands from grabbing.


    *Boom*


    The ice hands blew up and broke Tisha''s barrier while the ice that blew up blocked her view.


    "Checkmate," she heard as Davies appeared from inside the ice powder that clouded her view as he dove towards her and grabbed her before she could make any moves.


    Davies crashed into her, and they fell towards the ground and into the snow.


    *Plooosh*


    "Now¡­ about my¡­ question," Davies said, gasping for breath as hey on the snowy floor as he had fallen first, and she had fallen directly on him.


    Davies was expecting an answer to his question, but what he got was a feeling of her lips against his as she kissed him all of a sudden. Before he could respond to her kiss, she pulled away from him with a red face and ran away.


    "O¡­ kay,"


    "What the hell was that?" Davies wondered, confused by her behavior.


    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


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 Chapter 20 CHAPTER 20: NO WAY IN HELL

    ?Davies sat up in the snow and looked at Tisha who was running back toward her teammates after kissing him unexpectedly,


    "What the hell was that?" he said aloud as he removed his sses and wiped them clean of the snow that was blurring his vision.


    [Another girl bites the dust]


    [Seriously, how do you just get girls to keep falling for you?] Miya asked incredulously.


    "I didn''t do anything, she''s just weird¡­ and fun,"


    [*Gasp* Oh my, Lil D, did you fall in love?] Miya asked with a yful tone.


    ''Not in a million years¡­'' Davies replied almost immediately,


    ''... Also, stop calling me that!'' he snapped at Miya.


    [Oops, sorry, not sorry, what can you do about it?] Miya said with augh.


    ''...You¡­ sometimes you''re just a pain,'' Davies just let the matter slide with a tired sigh as he picked himself up from the floor and waited for the B-Squad to catch up.


    ''Well, I can at least take advantage of the fact that she likes me to push her in the right direction¡­ my direction,'' Davies said to Miya.


    [Is that the only reason though?]


    ''Yes, it is¡­ she may be fun to y around with, but I am not sleeping with underage girls, she''s still 17 for crying out loud,'' Davies said with a protesting look.


    [You mean, 17 with one month left till she''s 18]


    ''Doesn''t matter, why are you even so on my case about this,'' he asked Miya.


    [Because you smiled]


    ''I did what now?''


    [When you went along with her game¡­ you smiled genuinely for the first time in forever]


    ''That''s¡­ not right, it must have been a spur-of-the-moment thing,'' Davies said, but his tone sounded unsure.


    [You do know we are connected mentally right¡­ I can your every genuine thought and I''m telling you, you smiled] Miya replied knowingly.


    ''...So, what¡­ what does it matter if I smiled,''


    [*sigh*]


    [You and I both know you are not doing very well mentally and that''s putting it mildly]


    [More frankly speaking, you''re messed up¡­ big time, it''s a wonder you can even go on with your everyday life without doing anything that would get you locked up in an asylum, though you owe most of that to your "Ice Dragon Heart" blessing]


    [But it won''t hold forever¡­ You may not have noticed it yet, but it''s already losing control of keeping your mental state in check, if things keep going on like this, you''ll¡­]


    ''So, because of that, I should let myself go and try something as stupid as falling in love with someone that can help me heal,'' Davies snapped.


    ''You must have read too many CEO romance novels from my memories to actually believe that kind of thing,''


    ''¡­ there''s no way in hell I''m doing that,''<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    ''You seem to have forgotten what put my mental health into such a state,''


    [But¡­]


    ''No buts!''


    ''That''s final, I''ll find another way to keep my mental state in check, but I''m not doing it,''


    ''Love is a dream that I''m not meant to experience because it always turns into a nightmare¡­ it''s always happened and this time wouldn''t be any different,''


    [But things are different now, you have a system and me now, you have a goal and a direction, you''re no longer being dragged blindly by fate towards your demise¡­ give yourself another chance]


    [... You deserve another chance]


    [Especially after the hell you''ve been through]


    ''... It doesn''t matter whether I deserve another chance or not¡­ I''m not doing it,'' Davies stated firmly.


    ''...I''m not going through all that again,'' he muttered to himself.


    [...] Miya didn''t say anything else. Her role was to help him take advantage of the system and give him advice on anything that she thought he needed to know, she wasn''t able to do anything more than that, even if he refused her advice or attempts to help.


    Davies put that out of his mind and refocused on the matter at hand, he still had to survive in this dungeon,plete the dungeon mission, and also work on turning the B-Squad into useful minions for him.


    He could use his authority as the literal owner of their league to put them to work for him, but then they''d only obey the orders out of a sense of duty, there would be no loyalty involved. He wasn''t trying to do something as dumb as creating brotherhood because he more than anyone knew how much bullshit things like that were, but instead he wanted to build something more primal with respect and fear as the building block of their rtionship, then he''d add in benefits to keep a tight hold on them as his pawns.


    ''So¡­ carrot and stick approach it is¡­ for everyone, but her,'' he said subconsciously as his eyes fell on the blue-haired girl that had just kissed him a few minutes ago but was now back with her group and having a lively conversation with them as they made their way towards him.


    ''... Yup, she''s too dumb for the carrot and stick approach¡­ she''d probably eat the stick and y with the carrot,'' he sighed woefully as she was quite a huge variable in his ns for the B-Squad. Dominating people like her with fear would end up being counter-effective as she already had a weak mindset, otherwise, she''d not be so hesitant to kill monsters.


    [Is this much nning really needed though?] Miya asked Davies as she couldn''t understand why he was making so many efforts on nning how to turn a bunch of weaklings into his loyalckeys when he could simply force them to do things, after all, they worked for him.


    ''Yes, it is¡­ ''


    ''Due to their high potential blessings, they have a deep-rooted subconscious pride, or conscious in some people''s case,'' he nced at Anthony as he began his exnation.


    ''Since they think they are worth their weight in gold as they could potentially grow strong enough to one day step on people like me, they wouldn''t willingly allow themselves to be pushed around so I have to establish a figure in their mind,''


    ''...A figure so powerful, so scary, so out of reach... that surpassing me, is not a thought that would ever dare to appear in their heads¡­ only then can they be fully obedient and be useful pawns,'' Daviesid out his n to Miya.


    [... So¡­ you''re going to be showing off] Miya stated.


    ''... well¡­ yeah¡­ I''d have to use a different method to deal with sses girl though,'' Davies replied.


    "Did a little warmth make you think that you could stroll about in a gate like it was your backyard, conversing among yourselves without a care in the world," Davies scolded, his voice taking on a harsher tone than normal, as he stared at them, jolting them out of their conversations and once again reminding them that they were in a perilous situation inside a gate and not on a walk in a snow-themed park.


    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


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 Chapter 21 CHAPTER 21: INTO THE SNOWY WOODS

    ?"Did a little warmth make you think that you could stroll about in a gate like it was your backyard, conversing among yourselves without a care in the world," Davies scolded, his voice taking on a harsher tone than normal, as he stared at them, jolting them out of their conversations and once again reminding them that they were in a perilous situation inside a gate and not on a walk in a snow-themed park.


    "You owe me answers, sses girl¡­ a lot of them," he said to Tisha specifically and continued towards the snow-covered forest in the distance.


    "What did you do?" Teresa asked Tisha in a low voice, but Tisha only shook her head and said nothing, turning her blushing face away from Teresa and the others.


    ''What''s wrong with her?'' Sakura wondered at Tisha''s strange behavior but didn''t bother to ask her as she continued following Davies''s lead as they continued onward toward the forest.


    After another few minutes of walking, they came to the edge of the snowy forest. The trees were very tall, and the leaves were very thick, forming a huge canopy that kept most of the light froming in, overall, it looked very dark and eerie.


    "A-are we supposed to go in there?" stammered Arnim as he looked at the creepy-looking forest, it didn''t take much thinking for anybody that saw his face to know that he didn''t want to go in there.


    "Yes¡­ you''re scared?" Davies replied and asked.


    "O-Of, course not," the healer tried to sound brave and firm, but his voice and trembling hands were failing him.


    ''Wimp,'' was the only word that crossed Davies''s mind as he saw the trembling mess that was Arnim.


    [Looks like you got your work cut out for you] Miya mentioned.


    ''Tch¡­ am I cursed to be surrounded by ipetent idiots or is someone messing with me?'' Davies wanted to pull his hair out as he simply couldn''t fathom something more stupid than this at the moment.


    ''Why, as a mega, and a man would you be scared of a little darkness¡­?'' Davies thought as he began to walk in between the trees and entered the dark, snowy forest.


    [I think you should have started your restructuring at the recruitment department] Miya stated,


    ''... For once I agree with you, whoever is heading the recruitment department in Imperium no longer has a job the moment I get out of this gate,'' Davies thought with gritted teeth at his subordinates'' ipetence. A subordinate he had never met, neither did he even know the name of said subordinate, but nobody who works under the banner of "Davies Lake the Great," should disy such ipetence as doing so is considered heresy¡­ at least in Davies''s view.


    They continued walking into the forest until they reached a clearing where Davies stopped,


    "We''ll rest here and also make this ce our first base we cane to if anything goes wrong when we are trying toplete the mission," Davies stated with a voice full of experience as if he had done this a hundred times.


    "You must have quite the amount of experience inside gates like this?" Teresa asked with a slight smile.


    "Despite how I sound, this is actually my first time inside a gate," Davies confessed as if it was the most normal thing in the world.


    "Huh!!!!!!!???????" Every single member of the Imperium League B-Squad couldn''t believe their ears after hearing what Davies just said.


    ''That can''t be right, he couldn''t have this much experience on this kind of thing, nor could he kill monsters the way he did if that was actually true,'' Anthony wondered. Unknowingly they had begun to respect Davies unconsciously and respected his skill.


    "Then how do you know all this; how could you kill monsters like you did?" Teresa put into words the question going through everyone''s mind but Davies''s and Miya''s.


    "It''d actually be extremely naive for you to think that danger only existed inside gates," Davies said with a scary smile,


    "The real monsters aren''t the ones in the gates,"


    "They''re the ones outside, walking amongst us¡­" Hepleted with a slight chuckle and began to use his ice to make a huge mound of snow to make a good old-fashioned igloo.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    [Is this supposed to be your base?] Miya asked with an incredulous tone.


    ''Of course, isn''t she a beauty,'' Davies replied as he looked proudly at his work of art.


    [It sucks and the person that made it sucks balls] Miya said with a judgmental tone.


    ''Fuck you,''


    Davies turned towards the Imperium B-Squad who were still silent as his words sunk into their heads.


    "Don''t waste your time thinking too much, get some rest for now¡­ you''re going to need it," Davies said to them and began to walk towards two trees that were especially close to each other.


    "What do you mean by we''ll need it?" Sakura asked as she suddenly had another sense of foreboding from Davies''s tone.


    "Living beings obviously need rest, don''t they?" Davies asked as he used his ice to make an ice hammock that hung from both of the trees.


    "That wasn''t what you meant?" Sakura did not give up on asking him what he actually meant as her sense of foreboding wasn''t going away.


    "Tch¡­ Do I really have to exin everything," Davies groaned as he climbed onto his newly made creation and made himselffortable lying face up,


    "Don''t you think it''s been a little too quiet for a gate where we have to kill at least ten thousand monsters," he said nonchntly as he closed his eyes.


    "Oh, shit,"


    It was true, after their first and only battle so far, they hadn''t met any other monster even though they had walked such a distance without making the slightest effort to hide themselves or their tracks. The fact that they weren''t attacked could mean one of two things.


    First, they had some kind of crazy luck and there wasn''t a single monster in the vicinity, or,


    They were being watched and they''d probably be a surprise attacking their way soon.


    [Why didn''t you tell them everything though]


    ''What''s there to tell?'' Davies replied nonchntly.


    [You and I both know that only monsters that are A-rank and above have enough intelligence to control monsters into setting up traps and using different tactics which wouldn''t make sense since this is a B-rank gate]


    ''...''


    ''They''re here,'' Davies''s snow sense had picked up movement.


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    I promised to post two chapters today, but I''m not sure if I''ll be able to make good on that promise, and if I don''t, then I''ll just post two chapters tomorrow instead.


    Don''t forget to vote powerstones so we can move up the rankings, guys... I''m counting on you...

 Chapter 22 CHAPTER 22: SURROUNDED

    ?"They''re here," Davies muttered as he immediately rose from his ice hammock and jumped to the ground, surprising the B-Squad as he had just gotten on the hammock hardly a minute ago.


    "Well¡­ If you have an appointment with Hades that you must keep, keepying down,"


    "But if you still have ns to stay in thend of the living, then get off your asses, we''ve got monsters iing¡­"


    "... a lot of them," he told the B-Squad


    Every member of the B-Squad groaned tiredly but still got up as they obviously had no ns to meet with Hades yet, "I haven''t even had a chance to touch a boob yet," Arnim thought almost tearfully as he also stood up quickly with the rest of his group.


    If Davies could hear his thoughts, he''d tell him, "Wimps don''t deserve big boobs¡­ you can have the washboards," but fortunately or unfortunately, Davies couldn''t hear his thoughts.


    Davies stood still as he used his snow sensing to try to determine the number of monsters, but the numbers kept on rising as more monsters entered the range of his skill, ''At least one thousand monsters, and the number is still rising,''


    "We''re surrounded," he muttered,


    [You being in this forest is quite troubling, you won''t be able to make the best use of any big skill as your element is not very destructive]


    "I know that¡­ " Davies sighed,


    "Take over sensing for me," he said as he began to make a spear of ice,


    [Okay] Miya said as she began to use her Davies snowfield sensing skill to map out the area and the monsters around as they closed in.


    [30 degrees to the left, 80 meters, B-rank monster, snow bear] she called out to Davies,


    "Thanks," Davies replied as he fired the ice spear he just made in the direction that Miya just pointed out,


    ------------------------------


    Gate mission


    Kill 10000 monsters


    No of monsters killed: 380


    --------------------------------


    "Today is the worst day, I''ve had in a while," Davies muttered to himself as an ice sword formed in his grasp and he pointed it at the monsters,


    "The devil better pray that you''re not all bad guys otherwise he''s going to be getting a lot of new inmates soon,"


    "...well, I''m sure he wouldn''t mind though," he said to himself as he turned towards where the direction of the most monsters.


    "Don''t make me have to save your sorry asses, because I won''t," Davies told the B-Squad as he began to run toward the monster.


    [You''ll still save them if they''re in a pinch, right?]


    ''Maybe I will¡­ maybe I won''t,'' Davies replied to Miya as he arrived in front of a scaled humanoid creature with extremely sharp ws and jagged teeth that could tear wood off trees.


    Though Davies had said that he might save the B-Squad if they were in a pinch, Miya knew better than to believe that he would save them.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Davies wasn''t the type of person to do something like saving someone out of the goodness of his heart, and if he determined that they were useless, then they better hope they don''t get in a pinch, because not only would he not bother to save them, but he''d also even get some popcorn and watch how they struggled and fell into despair before they died.


    [It doesn''t concern me either way] she thought as she watched Davies dodge the lizard-like creature''s sharp w that swung towards him before cutting off the monster''s arm.


    *Shrieeeek* the monster screamed in pain after losing an arm, but it soon went silent as Davies''s ice sword found its way into its head, putting it out of its misery.


    Three ice wolves quickly pounced towards Davies while his sword was still in "the lizard''s" head, but the poor wolves didn''t manage to get halfway towards him when they ended up having a meeting with the business end of ice spikes that had shot out of the floor and impaled them.


    Davies let go of his ice sword and quickly conjured more ice spears in the air and started sending them at various monsters, switching to a long-range battle style instead of continuous close-range battles that would end up tiring him out.


    An ice armadillo, a creature that looked like a mega-size armadillo with especially thick skin came rolling towards Davies at high speed. Davies shot more ice spears at the ice armadillo, but they couldn''t pierce its back''s shell as the armadillo continued towards,pletely undisturbed by Davies''s ice spears.


    Davies quickly jumped out of the way of the ice armadillo and did a barrel roll to quickly get back on his feet as he looked at the ice armadillo that was turning towards his direction and once again rushing towards him.


    ''Its defense is quite high,'' he thought as he jumped out of the way of the armadillo once again,


    ''Ice explosion wouldn''t be able to do anything as it wouldn''t be able to get through its defense, I need something heavy or strong enough to smash it to bits¡­ maybe I should use that,'' he thought as he continually evaded the ice armadillo''s attempts to him turn him to roadkill, but while he was thinking of how to deal with the ice armadillo, he had ended up putting too much focus on the armadillo and forgot about the other monsters around him for a second, but that was enough for an ice werewolf that had been watching and waiting for Davies to make a mistake. It quickly charged at his open back in hopes of pulling off a sneak attack.


    [Behind you!] Miya''s voice rang inside Davies''s head causing his self-protective instincts to re up and, in an instant, he spun quickly on the spot while creating three daggers of ice and grabbing the first one,


    "One to the heart," he muttered as he stabbed the werewolf that appeared behind him right in the heart, bursting his heart open and causing blood to ssh out, but Davies didn''t bother about that as he grabbed the remaining two daggers and stabbed them into the abdomen of the werewolf.


    "Two to the lungs," he recited almost unconsciously and turned the daggers that he had stabbed into the lungs of the werewolf, further rupturing its lungs and stopping its airflow.


    He then jumped up and created two more ice daggers that he threw into the eyes of the werewolf, using them as a foothold, he kicked hard at the daggers, plunging them further into the head of the werewolf and at the same time using it as a spring to push himself out of the way of the armadillo that was rolling in their direction,


    *SQUELCH* the sickening sound of flesh and bones being crushed, filled Davies''s ear as hended on the snowy ground, but the gory sight of the blood and the squished body with its innards all over the ce did not even cause him to flinch, as he had seen and even done worse in his past life, back when he was still called "The Mad Blood Demon Tyrant", but that''s a story for another day.


    Davies looked over at where the B-Squad members were fighting and luckily it seemed they would be able to hold out against the monsters,


    ''So, they''re notpletely useless,'' he thought and turned back towards the armadillo that was already rolling towards him once again.


    "This is getting old," he muttered as he activated his mana zone (an ability that can only be achieved by being able to tap into the surrounding mana and bend it perfectly to your will, forming aplete affinity with the mana in the range of your mana zone. When activated, it increases the activation speed of any skill/spell with mana and increases the power of the skill/spell depending on your mastery and understanding of the ability. It is the elementals equivalent of the weaponizer''s domain)


    Davies began to gather and condense mana until it became visible and began to flow around like water,


    "Let''s finish this," he said as he jumped towards the ice armadillo and turned the condensed mana into a huge ice hammer,


    "UNITED STATES OF¡­"


    *SMASHHHHH*


    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


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 Chapter 23 CHAPTER 23: SUSPICIOUS PENGUIN

    ?*SMASHHHHH*


    Davies smashed the huge ice hammer on the ice armadillo, causing cracks on its back and allowing Davies''s icy mana to seep through. Davies''s icy mana ran through the ice armadillo and began to freeze its insides,


    "Ice explosion" Davies used his skill to explode the ice that had formed inside the armadillo, thus killing the ice armadillo.


    "How did you do that?" Tisha, who had appeared behind him out of nowhere, asked, intrigued.


    Davies wasn''t surprised when he heard her voice as he had already sensed hering in his direction a while ago, but he was surprised that she didn''t know what mana zone was,


    ''Shouldn''t she be able to use the mana zone already since she could fly¡­ or could it be that she isn''t at the mana zone stage yet and her control over her blessing is just that good,'' Davies wondered as he looked at her with a stupefied look on his face,


    "I''ll tell you about itter, for now, focus on the monsters and help out your friends," he finally said as he formed an ice spear and shot it towards an ice wolf that bared its teeth at Davies.


    "You promise?" Tisha asked with an innocent look on her face, aplete contrast to the surrounding of the forest.


    [Oh my God¡­ sooo cuute¡­ ah she''s glowing cuteness¡­]


    [Ahhh¡­ my eyes, so bright] Miya ranted inside Davies''s eyes about Tisha''s bright and innocent look.


    ''Shut up, you chatterbox!'' Davies screamed at her internally.


    "I promise, now leave me alone," Davies replied to Tisha after Miya had quietened down.


    "Yayy!" Tisha pumped her fist in the air and then started to hop and skip back toward the rest of the B-Squad.


    "Don''t forget!" she turned back towards Davies and shouted before continuing her hopping and skipping, not bothering to increase her pace as she continued towards her group.


    ''Who trapped a kid''s mind and put it in that kind of body,'' Davies thought to himself as he watched Tisha continue her hopping and skipping, but still kept an eye on his surroundings.


    [I don''t know who did¡­ but he did a banging job of it] Miya answered.


    "Whatever," Davies replied as well, and he created another batch of ice spears that he began to shoot toward the monsters that kept flooding into this ce.


    ''Hey, Miya¡­''


    ''Is it still there?'' Davies asked Miya about something that he had asked her to keep an eye on.


    [Yeah, it''s still there, just observing the battle, as well as you guys] Miya affirmed.


    What Davies and Miya were talking about was a very suspicious acting monster, namely a frigid penguin; a penguin monster that lived only in very cold ces and just like its normal counterparts, they couldn''t fly, but unlike their more normal counterparts, they had extremely sharp teeth, hidden inside their beak.


    This particr frigid penguin had gotten here along with the first wave of monsters, but it had only been observing the battle while staying hidden, yet even though the other monsters were being killed continuously, its penguin brethren included, it did not make any moves to join the fight. That wasn''t normal behavior for monsters below A-rank who only acted on instincts, not to mention the frigid penguin that was only a D-rank monster, so Davies had told Miya to keep a watch on the penguin while he continued fighting with other monsters.


    [I thought you said there would only be B-rank monsters in the gate?] Miya asked confused as Davies killed a C-rank monster with a spear of ice and exploded the ice spear after it stabbed through the monster.


    ''Are you really that dumb?'' Davies asked her as he dodged an attack from an ice spike-tongue chameleon, then cut the tongue of the chameleon before sending an ice spike into its head.


    ''There obviously cannot only be B-rank monsters in a B-rank gate, otherwise, what would happen to the ecosystem inside the gate if all the monsters were strong enough to kill each other,'' he exined to her as he jumped over two ice wolves that hade rushing towards him and while he was still mid-air, he formed another two ice spears that he sent into their bodies from above.


    [...oh¡­]


    [... then why did you tell those kids that they had to kill ten thousand B-rank monsters¡­ oh] she was going to ask, but then realized that Davies said it either to scare them or rile them up¡­ or both.


    [It''s shocking how they''ve not realized it yet] she wondered.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    ''Or they already did, but it doesn''t matter at this point because this number of monsters is enough to overwhelm them, even if the monsters were only D-rank,'' Davies stated.


    [Uhm¡­ Davies¡­] Miya called.


    ''What is it this time?'' he asked.


    [The frigid penguin is leaving]


    ''¡­ shit¡­ I need to follow it,'' Davies thought but as he looked around at the monsters that were still attacking, it was very clear that if he left to follow the penguin, the B-Squad''s bones wouldn''t even be salvageable by the time he came back.


    Davies began to run toward the B-Squad while killing the monsters in his way.


    ''Create a barrier around yourself and your teammates!'' Davies told Tisha as soon as he arrived near them.


    "Uh, why?" Jack who had been cutting through a snow lizard, asked.


    "Just do it!" Davies repeated to Tisha, ignoring Jack''s question.


    "Okayyy," Tisha replied in a sing-song voice and put her blessing to work, creating a huge barrier that surrounded and protected the B-Squad.


    "Mana zone¡­" Davies muttered activating the ability once again on the snowy battlefield.


    "Frigid ice¡­" He mmed his palm into the floor and created a wave of his mana that he sent around the battlefield in every direction with him as the center. His mana rushed around the icy forest, freezing everything it touched into ice statues.


    After his icy mana had stopped freezing monsters, Davies stood back up and turned towards the B-Squad,


    "Don''t die before I get back¡­" he told them and began to run in the direction of the frigid penguin.


    "Ice Explosion¡­"


    *BOOOOOOOM*


    All the monster ice sculptures created by Davies''s icy mana exploded at the same time as he used his skill.


    ------------------------------


    Gate mission


    Kill 10000 monsters


    No of monsters killed: 1986


    --------------------------------


    All the members of the B-Squad gulped as they looked at the destruction caused by Davies''s skill and then at his disappearing back as he ran into the forest after the frigid penguin.


    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Here''s the second chapter I promised to upload...


    Ahh, soo tired... gimme powerstones to energize me... pleeeassseee *snore*

 Chapter 24 CHAPTER 24: AMBITIONS?

    ?Davies raced after the frigid penguin as he didn''t want to lose its trail, but luckily, he hadn''t taken too much time in hisst attack to take out as many monsters as he could, so the penguin hadn''t gotten far.


    Davies ran at top speed to get as close as possible without rming it and after that, he just followed after the penguin that slid on its belly through the snowy ground of the forest.


    [Hurry up, don''t let skipper get away!] Miya called out to him.


    ''Skipper? This isn''t penguins of Madagascar, what are you talking about?'' Davies mused confusedly at Miya''s statement.


    [Well, what do you expect me to call a weird and sneaky penguin that moves around by sliding on its belly?] Miya asked like it was the most obvious thing in the world.


    ''...''


    ''Good point,'' Davies admitted when he couldn''t find anything against her argument.


    [Where do you think it''s going?] Miya asked.


    ''I don''t know, why do you think I''m following the damn bird?'' Davies scoffed at her annoying question.


    [Hey, do you think they have a base¡­ maybe a secret base]


    ''... It''s a bird¡­ birds don''t have secret bases¡­ this isn''t some cartoon world, Miya,'' Davies shook his head.


    [So what type of world is it?]


    [People in animes and web novels always transmigrate into a game world, or a novel world, so which is it?]


    ''... I¡­ don''t know,'' Davies didn''t have an answer as he had never thought about it, and even if he did think about it, it made no difference. What mattered was that he was here and he''d fight till hisst drop of blood to not be killed by any fated protagonist. He''d had enough of being pushed over.


    ''It doesn''t matter anyway,'' Davies finally answered Miya.


    [So unambitious!]


    [Don''t you wanna take over the world or something?] she asked.


    ''Who cares about taking over the world¡­ that''s the dumbest shit that I''d never even consider doing,''


    ''Like, why would I do so much work to take over the world only to be swamped in more work when I take it over,''


    ''That''s condemning myself to a life of suffering¡­ I''d rather sleep all day,'' Davies scoffed at the idea.


    [But isn''t there something you want to do? Or don''t you have any ambitions?] Miya asked again, but her tone was softer this time.


    ''I don''t have any glorious ambition¡­''


    ''...I just want to live without fearing for my life or my emotional state, but I can''t even do that because some bastard decided it was a good idea to constantly transmigrate me through different worlds where the only thing waiting for me was pain,'' he answered with a self-deprecating smile, but Miya could hear the anger in his voice as her question had caused him to touch his sore spot.


    [Well, you can at least try something like having 700 wives and 300 concubines] she tried to liven up the mood.


    ''Nope, not doing that?'' Davies rejected that idea quickly.


    [Why? Don''t you like girls?]


    ''I indeed like girls, but I''m not a pokemon collector,''


    ''... also, having that many women would suck me dry,'' Davies concluded as he returned his focus to the frigid penguin when he noticed that they were already out of the forest.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    As they left the forest, they came to a cliff made from ice and rocks. The frigid penguin made its way down a path that led down the cliff, but this time Davies didn''t follow the penguin because he was pretty sure he''d found what he was looking for.


    After the cliff, everywhere as far as the eyes could see was covered in white. There was ice everywhere.


    ''I''ll be damned¡­''


    [Who was it that said that monsters didn''t have bases?] Miya asked smugly, but Davies didn''t answer immediately because he was in a daze at what he was looking at.


    Ahead of them, in a wide open space of icynd, an ice fortress that was forged with ice so clear that it looked like crystals, stood tall. To say it was big was a huge understatement and to say it was huge was an understatement... it was ginormous.


    ''Okay, I''ll admit I was wrong, but who would expect monsters to have bases?'' Davies said while still looking stupendously at the ice fortress.


    [Not to mention one as beautiful and morous as that] Miya added, as even she was a bit overwhelmed at what she was seeing.


    ''I know right¡­ I want one,'' Davies was almost drooling at the thought of having something like it.


    [...Wait¡­]


    [... a hidden ice fortress in the middle of an icynd¡­]


    [... It can''t be what I think it is, right?] Miya said ominously as if she just remembered something very important.


    ''... What¡­ is it?'' Davies gulped audibly as he heard Miya''s ominous line of questioning.


    [It''s superman''s base]


    [... or maybe he helped them design the fortress] she announced as if she had just discovered the greatest secret in the world.


    ''... Idiot¡­'' Davies facepalmed.


    ''I should have known better than to expect something even remotely smart from your mouth,''


    [Hey! What if I''m right!?] Miya protested indignantly.


    ''Superman doesn''t exist in this world, and even if he did, he wouldn''t work with monsters, talk less of going around ying architect for them,'' Davies affirmed.


    [So how do you exin the ice fortress?]


    ''How do you expect me to know?''


    ''I didn''t go to school to learn monster architecture 101,'' Davies replied tiredly as he was fed up with her constant annoying questions.


    He ignored any further questions and looked for the penguin that he was following just a minute ago. He found it had already reached the bottom of the cliff and was already making its way toward the ice fortress in the distance.


    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


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 Chapter 25 CHAPTER 25: INSIDE THE ICE FORTRESS

    ?Davies watched the frigid penguin as it made its way toward the ice fortress in the distance, but he couldn''t just follow it inside as he didn''t know what was inside the fortress and it was too far away for his snow sense to sense anything. Since he was here to find information about the potential A-rank or above monster that was here in a B-rank he couldn''t just barge in guns zing like an idiot protagonist¡­ not that he had any guns though.


    [How do you n to follow Skipper in there?] Miya asked him.


    ''I don''t know yet, even though I can''t sense anything from here, I''m willing to bet that that ce is crawling with monsters,'' Davies replied half halfheartedly, deep in thought.


    [Since you can''t sense anything, how can you know that the ce is crawling with monsters?] she asked again.


    ''How big do you think the ice fortress is?'' Davies replied with a question.


    [It''s huge, I guess]


    ''Huge enough to amodate over five thousand monsters?'' Davies said in a questioning tone.


    [What makes you think you''ll meet up to five thousand monsters in there?]


    ''Well, you don''t exactly see the rest of the ten thousand monsters that we''re supposed to kill roaming about here, do you?''


    [Agh¡­ how do you n to enter then?]


    ''It seems I''ll have to use that,'' Davies replied as he watched the penguin move ever closer to the ice fortress.


    [That???]


    ''One of the skills I''ve been developing,''


    [Which one?]


    ''Elementalization,'' Davies replied and began to spread his mana into every part of his body, fully saturating himself in his mana and then beginning to convert his mana-saturated flesh into ice. Davies''s body began to turn as white as snow until he became a snowman.


    ''Unfortunately, this move is still iplete, and it still has many limitations,'' Davies thought as most of his concentration was focused on controlling his ice transformation.


    He was right, this move was still limited in many ways. It limited his speed, and he couldn''t fight in this form. Also, his defense in this ice state may seem good, but in reality, he can''t afford to get any part of him blown to oblivion as he hadn''t developed the skill until it reached the ice-healing state. He had gotten the inspiration for this skill from an anime where they ate tattooed fruits that tasted like horseshit, but his skill wasn''t able to disy half of the ability it should have.


    ''At least it should get me in there unseen,'' he thought to himself as his body began to break into snow that hovered above the ground, looking like it was being swept around by the wind.


    [Pretty neat trick] Miyamented as he turned into snow.


    ''Please keep yourments to yourself, I''m trying to concentrate here,'' Davies replied irritably, as it was taking all of his concentration to just keep his new snow body from being blown away by the wind and dying before even beginning his story.


    Davies finally managed to bring his snowy body under control¡­ if it could even be called a body, at this point he was just a moving cloud of snow and icy dust.


    Davies began to head down the cliff by carrying his icy form through the air by using his mana to keep himself afloat and with this technique he could pull off flying short distances. He began to follow the penguin again and soon they reached the ice fortress and were about to enter.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Davies stayed close to the snowy floor where nobody would be able to distinguish the difference between his snowy body and the snow on the ground. As they entered the fortress,


    [Damn, you were right] Miya said with a sour tone, but you could still hear the surprise in her voice.


    ''How did we not sense anything?'' Davies wondered as he looked at the monsters that filled up the area.


    [I hate it when you''re right] Miya grumbled, but Davies did not pay her any attention as he followed after the penguin that has started going towards the deeper area of the base.


    Even as he followed the penguin through the base, the number of monsters didn''t decrease and this was beginning to worry Davies because having this many monsters in one ce was a very troublesome issue, especially for them as they had to fight and kill ten thousand monsters to be able to leave this gate, but Davies''s thoughts didn''tst long as they soon got to an extremely morous and beautiful door.


    Even inside the ice fortress, where every living structure was made of ice, this door easily stood out. It was ginormous.


    ''Looks like a boss room,'' Davies wondered as he looked at the big, beautifully carved ice door.


    [Well duh]


    [Maybe it''s Superman behind the door] Miya replied to him.


    ''You''re still on that, I told you he doesn''t exi¡­'' Davies began to exin but was cut off by the sound of the door grating heavily as it slowly began to be opened.


    Davies quickly began to rise towards the ceiling of where he was hiding and began to follow the penguin into the room from the ceiling because the moment the door of the room began to slide open Davies sensed a powerful aura and quickly took action to avoid being detected, he came here to look for information after all, not to get into stupid fights.


    Davies entered the room from the top of the door and quickly found a good position where he wouldn''t be noticed by whatever or whoever was inside the room, only then did he look down,


    ''What the hell!!!'' Davies''s eyes widened and his mouth fell open.


    Inside the room was a huge ice spike bear, a B-rank bear-like creature that stood at an average of 12ft and had a huge and strong body, along with dangerous ice spikes on his back and also at the back of his paws. It was a very strong monster, worthy enough to be the boss of a B-rank dungeon and even capable of giving Davies a hard time if he fought it, but that was not what caused Davies''s eye wideness and opened mouth symptoms.


    A figure sat on an icy throne in the corner of the room. Due to the shadows in that corner of the room, the figure''s face was not visible, but he wore a tight blue spandex suit and had a red cape roiling down his back.


    [Who was it that said Superman didn''t exist in this world] Miya said with aughing tone, happy that she had one-upped Davies this time.


    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Sorry for not posting a chapter yesterday, but I''ve been swamped with work and was not able to write a chapter yesterday.


    I''m not done with all the work. but I''ll try to avoid this situation from now on.


    Please don''t forget to vote powerstones to support this work.

 Chapter 26 CHAPTER 26: SHOCKING INFORMATION

    ?''What the fu**!!!''


    [Who was it that said that Superman didn''t exist in this world?] Miya asked with a victorious tone.


    ''Nah... it can''t be him...'' At first, Davies was quite rmed but then calmed himself even though just the thought of fighting a Kryptonian sent shivers down his spine.


    [What if it really is him?]


    ''It''s okay... one of Superman''s weaknesses is magic and I got plenty of it,'' Davies said to Miya, but it was more of a way of psyching himself.


    ''But if even that doesn''t work...''


    ''... then we''re dead,'' Davies added as he watched the frigid penguin waddle past the bear and move towards the shadowy figure sitting on the ice throne. The frigid penguin stopped a little distance in front of the shadowy figure. The figure stood up from the ice throne and began to walk towards the frigid penguin, finally revealing his facial features.


    [Eh... (£þ^£þ)]


    [... who is this Superman lite?] Miya asked disappointedly as she saw the wannabe Superman was nothing but a pale figure with white skin, white hair, and long ears and was simply wearing a blue spandex suit with a flowing red cape hanging from his back.


    ''Not Superman, but an ice elf that does cosy,'' Davies had to resist the urge tough at her question so as not to give himself away.


    ''... but he is strong though,'' Davies thought as he felt the manaing from the cosying ice elf. This guy was making no effort to hide his strength as he allowed his mana to flow unrestrained.


    [You''re right, he''s S-rank but it seems he just became S-rank, his mana is a bitcking] Miya informed Davies as they kept on watching the monsters.


    The ice elf walked over to the frigid penguin and grabbed it by the head and raised it up,


    "Let me see what the intruders can do?" he said and began to suck the life out of the penguin as the penguin began to lose body mass, turned into a bag of bones, lost all vitality, and when the ice elf released the penguin, it fell to the ground, dead.


    ''Seems like some sort of life drain that also has the ability to take the memories of its target,'' Davies mused internally.


    [He''s an evil Superman... he killed skipper] Miya cried out inside Davies''s head.


    ''... So?''


    [You must get revenge for skipper] Miya said shamelessly.


    ''Err, No.''


    ''Rule No.6 of cowardice... if you meet an enemy stronger than you, run,''


    ''May the cowardice be with you,''


    ''Amen.''


    [(£þ^£þ)]


    [But you can defeat him, right?]


    ''If I use "Reversion", I''d squish him like a bug, but you and I both know why I can''t afford to use it,''


    [Then don''t... just YOLO your way to victory] Miya cheekily replied.


    ''...''


    ''Are you sure you''re an intelligent system interface assistant or a death mine of stupid and suicidal ideas,''


    [*gasp*]


    [I''m hurt by your impression of me] Miya said in a voice filled with mock sadness.


    ''Whatever...''


    ''The point is, I can''t beat him easily, so no fighting unless absolutely necessary,''


    [Then... why aren''t you running away already?]


    ''*sighs*''<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    ''... we came here to get information, remember?''


    [But what more information do we need?]


    [You already confirmed the presence of an S-rank gate inhabitant that is probably the...] Miya began to ask but stopped when she noticed "Superman lite" beginning to walk towards another corner of the room where a huge block of ice stood.


    [What do you think he''s doing?] Miya asked Davies but Davies didn''t reply.


    The ice elf stopped in front of the huge block of ice that was as tall as he was and as wide as 4 grown men put side by side.


    He put his hand on the block of ice and the ice began melting away selectively until a rectangr ice mirror was all that was left of the huge ice block.


    [Eh?]


    [Did he do all that to make a mirror so he can admire himself?] Miya began but, ''Just keep quiet and watch, okay,'' Davies interrupted her.


    Suddenly the ice mirror began to glow and then an image appeared on the ice mirror.


    Another ice elf''s face was disyed in the mirror. An oppressive force was sent around the room causing Davies to gasp for breath at the sudden disy of strength from just the image of this ice elf.


    ''Just his image caused this kind of reaction,'' Davies thought, startled.


    "Superman Lite" knelt before the image of the ice elf on the ice mirror.


    "Did you manage to scout the target area? Khal Ed," the new ice elf asked "Superman lite". His voice sounded regal and cold.


    "No, my liege," Khal Ed replied as he knelt.


    "Hmmm? Why?" the ice elf on the mirror asked with a raised eyebrow.


    "Some human blessed ones entered the small world before we could even note anything and now the portal that leads to the outside world is locked up by what seems to be chains made of pure mana," Khal Ed answered his Liege''s questions.


    "It became a mission gate huh? the ice elf muttered to himself, but everyone on Khal Ed''s side of the mirror could still hear his voice.


    "Then why aren''t the humans dead yet?" the regal-sounding ice elf''s voice took on a slightly oppressive tone as he asked Khal Ed.


    Khal Ed''s body shivered as he quickly replied, "Unfortunately, they''re quite strong and unless I personally go into battle against them, I don''t think they will be killed... and even then, one of them gives me a very ufortable feeling".


    "Oho..." The ice elf seemed intrigued about the humans that were messing with his ns, and for a second, Davies thought he nced his way.


    ''I must be imagining it,'' Davies whispered to himself.


    "Change of ns... make your way to another small world and continue your mission to prepare the monsters for the attack on section 2487, known to the humans as Yorkshire..."


    "We can''t afford to have you suffer losses on this kind of small world... it isn''t much anyway,"


    "Above all, the mission remains the same, we are going to take the world by storm in a year as a gift to the Evil Lord of Devastation upon his reawakening, and there I nothing a couple of ants can do about it,"


    "... don''t you think so, blessed human?" the ice elf on the mirror said as his eyes turned towards Davies who was staying camouged as snow on the icy ceiling of the boss room.


    ''Shit...! So I wasn''t imagining it,'' Davies thought with a wry smile.


    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Sorry for thete chapter guys... I''m having issues with my bank ount so I had to spend most of the day at the bank... frankly, I''m still there, but I did this chapter from my phone while waiting in line, so there may be a few typos.


    I''ll make it up to you guys by releasing an extra chapter to you guyster today, or if I can''t, then tomorrow will be a double chapter day.


    Don''t forget to vote powerstones andment aboit anything you find interesting, or even any ideas you have.


    Finally, a question for you guys? What do you think Davies''s Ex-rank blessing "Reversion" does???


    Answer in thements and if you''re right... who knows what''ll happen.o(¡¨£Þ¨Œ£Þ¡¨)o

 Chapter 27 CHAPTER 27: TO PURSUE OR NOT

    ?''Shit¡­! so I wasn''t imagining it,'' Davies thought with a wry smile as he realized that his cover was blown.


    "A human!?"


    "Where!?" Khal Ed looked in the direction of his liege''s gaze in surprise and confusion. After looking at the direction and using his senses to the fullest, he was barely able to sense some manaing from Davies''s direction. He still wasn''t able to spot out Davies''s elemental state which was almost perfectly camouged on the icy ceiling of the room and the only thing that gave Davies away was the slight mana that wasing off from him, but it couldn''t be helped, it was still an iplete skill after all.


    "How insolent!" Unlike his liege who seemed to be finding this situation amusing, Khal Ed was less than pleased that a human dared toe into his base and even got into the same room as him without being detected, not to talk of displeased, he was infuriated.


    ''Looks like that''s my cue,'' Davies saw the look on Khal Ed''s face that was screaming for him to get the hell out of dodge, and that was exactly what he nned to do. He began to use his elementalization to melt into the icy ceiling, but as he began to do that, he saw Khal Ed''s eyes beginning to glow blue.


    Just before he meltedpletely into the ice ceiling Khal Ed shot a ray of blue light that raced toward his location. The blue ray collided with the icy ceiling, exploding with freezing power that formed huge ice spikes on the icy ceiling. Luckily Davies was able to melt into the ice before the ice ray touched him.


    [Shouldn''t it be heat vision and ice breath?]


    [Why does he have ice vision?]


    ''That''s why he''s a light version and not the original,'' Davies replied as he began to move through the ice that the whole fortress was made of and began to make his escape.


    **Meanwhile back in the boss room¡­**


    Khal Ed was even more infuriated when he realized that the human that crawled into his base like a rat was also slippery enough to escape from his attack. If before he was infuriated, now he was fuming. He quickly wanted to chase after Davies, but his liege had different ideas.


    "Don''t bother Khal Ed," the ice elf on the other side of the ice mirror called out to him before he could begin to charge after Davies in pursuit.


    "But¡­?" Khal Ed tried to protest.


    "I said¡­ don''t bother," his liege repeated himself as the oppressive force in the room increased slightly, pressing down heavily on Khal Ed and forcing him back to his knees.


    "Apart from the fact that he is quite an interesting human, don''t forget that he was able to get this close to you without you even managing to notice,"


    "Meaning that even if he is not as strong as you, he is probably not far off¡­ and also, unlike any normal human, he was extremely decisive even after I mentioned that we would be attacking the humans'' settlement, he didn''t lose his cool, nor did he even seem in the slightest bit uneasy¡­"


    "People with such decisiveness and confidence are dangerous¡­ I can''t afford to have you dying or even suffering losses from a profitless battle," the ice elf gave his reasons for dissuading Khal Ed from pursuing Davies.


    "But he found out about our ns, and he will tell the humans and they can begin making preparations to counter us when we begin to attack them," Khal Ed stillined, not prepared to let Davies get away.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Even if he manages to survive in this small world, there will be little credibility to his words, and even if the humans do listen and begin making preparations, we already have contingencies for that¡­" his liege replied, leaving him confused.


    ''Contingencies? When? How don''t I know about them?'' Khal Ed thought and was about to ask, but controlled himself while thinking to himself, ''if he didn''t tell me, then there must be no reason for me to know''.


    To be honest he didn''t quite agree with his liege letting the humans go. After all, they were trapped inside the gate and couldn''t get away from him if he decided to attack them along with the aid of the other monsters in the gate, but his master had given him other orders and while he didn''t understand his reasoning it was not his decision to make, so he didn''t need to think too much about it.


    ''How could that human even defeat me?'' he thought pridefully.


    His master could of course realize his thoughts as he wore them on his face, but he only smiled wryly and didn''t bother exining further. Power wasn''t the only thing that decided a winner in a battle. Khal Ed was only unwilling to admit that he could lose to a human, after all the humans were the weakest humanoid race. They were so weak that without the blessing from those weird towers, they wouldn''t have survived more than a year after The Great Cataclysm.


    "Make your way to the next small world and continue the preparations, this small world''s inhabitants are not of much value, neither are they worth making any effort to save," he began to give orders to Khal Ed,


    "I don''t want to find out you did otherwise," his eyes narrowed as he said this, the oppressive force in the room bing even heavier, making it clear that Khal Ed should not try anything contrary to his given orders.


    "... Also, when you get back, we''ll need to have a discussion about your¡­ choice of dressing," the ice elf said and eyed Khal Ed''s clothes with distaste evident in his eyes. Immediately after these words, his image disappeared from the ice mirror and the ice mirror shattered to pieces.


    "Phew¡­" Khal Ed breathed a sigh of relief as he felt the oppressive pressure on his body ease away.


    ''My liege really is scary,'' he thought as he rose and looked in the direction of the door. He knew that the human that had just gotten away had probably not gotten far, also he knew where the rest of the human''spanions were previously, but unfortunately, his master had told him not to fight against them.


    He was about to begin his preparations to leave this small world when his eyes fell on the huge ice spike bear sleeping on the ground of the room,pletely oblivious to everything that had happened in this room in the past hour.


    "Master said I can''t go after him¡­ but if the ice spike bear goes after him, then it has nothing to do with me, right?" he muttered with a crafty smile, his eyes gleaming evilly.


    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    My chapter uploading schedule has been really irregr the past couple of days, but there shouldn''t be any more issues.


    Also, I didn''t forget about the extra chapter I promised you guys... I may upload itter today, or tomorrow.


    Don''t forget to support me by voting powerstones and make sure toment any ideas you have about the story.

 Chapter 28 CHAPTER 28: BLIZZARD

    ?Davies moved through the ice until he came to a safe distance away from the boss''s room while still inside the ice fortress. He came out of the ice and deactivated the elementalized state, turning his snowy body back into one with blood and flesh.


    After changing back into his normal form, he began to run forward, following the same route he followed the now-dead frigid penguin through.


    [I think you''re going the wrong way] Miya called out when she noticed the direction he was running.


    "No, I''m not, what makes you think I am?" Davies questioned.


    [The ce you''re going towards is crawling with monsters]


    [I don''t think even you can take out that many monsters before that ''Khal Ed''es after you] Miya reasoned.


    "True¡­ but we don''t know any other way out, and going exploring right now is not a very good idea," Davies replied as he kept running.


    [Then why aren''t you using your elementalization¡­ at least that way you''ll be able to get away without being detected by the monsters]


    "I can''t do that right now¡­"


    "Elementalization uses a lot of mana and causes a lot of mental strain, and I can''t afford to be out of mana or tired right now,"


    "... especially since that guy may being after us," Davies replied to Miya.


    Of course, Khal Ed couldn''te after them since he has been given different orders from his master, but neither Davies nor Miya knew that, so Davies could only do his best to get away from this ce as quickly and as efficiently as possible.


    *ROOOOAAAAAARRRRRRRR*


    Davie had just reached the outer area of the ice fortress when an extremely loud and terror-inducing roar came from behind him.


    [... that, doesn''t sound good]


    "No it doesn''t," Davies responded as he rounded a corner and came face to face with the thousands of monsters in the outer area of the ice fortress. They had been riled up by the extremely loud roar that came from the inner areas and were looking around warily, and when they saw Davies, they all went into a frenzy as they began to charge toward him.


    "This looks even worse," he muttered as he saw the wave of monsters that began to charge toward him, threatening to drown him in their saliva and rip him apart.


    Davies quickly began to run towards the nearest wall as he thought about how to get out of this ce in the shortest time possible. He couldn''t take his time fighting them as he may end up being overwhelmed by their numbers, and even if he didn''t end up being overwhelmed, it would still take him too much time to kill enough monsters for him to escape.


    Luckily, he didn''t have to go down that route thanks to his ice element. Ice wasn''t the best at offense or defense, but rather it excelled at controlling abilities that determined the flow on the battlefield, and it excelled even more against multiple targets.


    After thinking his ns through, Davies changed directions and began to run toward the monsters, and just when they were about to collide, he leaped into the air,<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Mana zone¡­" he muttered as he jumped into the air and quickly formed a huge ice mallet.


    After reaching a certain height, gravity began to do its job to bring Davies back towards the floor and right into the middle of the wave of monsters, but that was exactly what Davies was waiting for as he swung the ice mallet as hard as he could towards the ground.


    *BOOOOMMMM* the ice mallet crashed into the icy floors of the ice fortress, ttening all monsters below it into pancakes in the process.


    Davies began to spread his mana as far as he could as he began to fall towards the floor, doing his best to make his mana contact as much of the ice around him as possible.


    "Ice explosion," Davies said as hended smoothly, causing all the ice that his mana had been able to touch to explode.


    *BOOOOOOMMM*


    Unfortunately, this attack wasn''t able to do much damage to the monsters and all it had managed to do was just spreading the icy dust from the exploded ice to spread around.


    With his mana zone still activated, Davies began to manipte the icy dust as well as all the snow in the surrounding area to start an icy storm filled with snow and ice dust.


    *WHOOOOOOSSSSSHHHHHHH*


    The snowstorm raged against the surroundings and continuously impaired the senses of the monsters. They couldn''t see because of the raging snow, they couldn''t hear because of the sound the storm caused, and they couldn''t smell Davies''s location due to the continuously moving snow not allowing them to pick up his scent.


    Meanwhile, the culprit of the snowstorm stood amidst the monsters at the moment, huffing a bit as he was slightly out of breath.


    Despite how easy it sounded; it wasn''t easy to do everything he just did as efficiently as he did even with his abilities. He had purposely run towards the monsters and jumped right above them so he couldnd in their midst just to get the highest effectiveness of his n. His purpose in forming and throwing the huge mallet to kill a few monsters was to stun the monsters and get himself a few seconds of time the moment hended.


    He had spread out his mana to get into contact with a lot of the icy surroundings and he had exploded the ice to loosen up the snow and ice around so he could easily form the snow blizzard because even for him forming a blizzard as widespread and effective as this from scratch would drain him of both his mana and his mental strength.


    nning and precision was his game, efficient battles was his name.


    This was a mantra that Davies followed to the letter. He couldn''t afford to waste time around in battles shouting and trying to use the ''talk no jutsu'' as those only worked for the good guys and he wasn''t one of them.


    He followed the mantra outside battle as well and made sure to use it in his everyday life, if it was efficient, then Davies would follow that path. He couldn''t afford to waste time and fall behind.


    After all, he was a viin, the biggest and the baddest of them all.


    [A viin that already failed and died thrice] Miya said scornfully, almost causing Davies to cough up blood.

 Chapter 29 CHAPTER 29: BREAKING OUT OF THE MONSTER WAVE

    ?"Fwoooooooohhh¡­"


    Davies took a deep breath as he stood right in the middle of the monsters, but due to the blizzard he had created and was controlling with his mana, he wasn''t being attacked by the monsters¡­ yet.


    Though Davies wasn''t being attacked by the monsters currently, he still needed to get out of this ce quickly because he could not hold the blizzard forever as even now, he was already feeling the strain from creating the blizzard and maintaining it with his mana.


    With that said, Davies quickly formed an ice sword before beginning to use his snow-sensing skill to find his way out of the fortress as he obviously could not see the way out... thanks to the blizzard.


    [You know, you''re lucky] Miya said suddenly.


    ''What do you mean?'' Davies intoned.


    [This ce is like a custom-made yground for someone like you who uses the ice element] she exined.


    ''True¡­ I wouldn''t be able to do things like this otherwise,'' Davies thought as he looked at the blizzard storming all around him.


    After a few seconds, Davies finds a way out, turns toward the entrance, and begins to move quickly. He hadn''t run a few meters when he ran into a snow wolf that quickly charged at him the moment it noticed his presence, but it was quickly bisected by Davies''s sword as he ran and swung his sword, not bothering to give it a second look.


    Davies continued running towards the entrance of the fortress and on his way there he met a lot of monsters that attacked him, but he quickly killed the ones he could kill easily and dodged the attacks of the ones that would take more than one attack to kill.


    Finally, he was almost out of the ice fortress but now he had a different problem. The monsters that he had avoided killing as he ran had ended up chasing him.


    Initially, he didn''t pay any attention to it as their numbers were too small, but after a while, they had ended up umting to be quite a lot, and such a huge movement in the blizzard gave the monsters a direction to follow so the monsters that were chasing Davies began to increase greatly.


    ''This isn''t working,'' Davies thought as he flipped to avoid another monster and looked back at the gradually increasing number of monsters chasing after him.


    [It was a good n, but don''t you know that in situations like this, nothing ever goes ording to n] Miya said.


    "Now is not a good time for your words of wisdom, Miya," Davies replied as he formed an ice spear and shot it into the mouth of a snow lizard that had lunged at him with its mouth wide open, looking to crush him with its jaws.


    [Whatever¡­]


    [What are you going to do now?]


    ''Well, I have two options,'' he dodged an ice armadillo that was rolling towards him by jumping over it and letting it roll behind him to collide with the monsters on his tail. The ice armadillo did end up colliding with the monstersing after Davies, but it barely reduced the number of the monsters by ten when it was overwhelmed and swallowed in the monster wave.


    It had hardly made a dent in the monster wave chasing Davies causing him to click his teeth when he saw the weak oue,


    "Tch¡­"


    ''Back to where I was, there are two options¡­''


    ''For the first¡­ like you so stupidly said earlier, I could YOLO my way out of this one and kill as many monsters I need to, to ensure that I escape sessfully,'' Davies told Miya the first option as he continued running, not pausing for a single moment, as if he did, he''d be swallowed by the monster wave.


    [What''s the second option?] Miya asked, intrigued, as even though the first option sounded extremely interesting and promised her a good show, she still wanted to hear the second option to know if it was an even crazier idea that promised even better entertainment.


    ''...'' Davies stayed silent as he could hear it in her voice that she was enjoying this situation.


    [Say it] Miya asked, but Davies still stayed silent,


    ''...''


    [Come on, say it]


    ''...''


    [Come on, please¡­?]


    ''...''


    [Pleaseeeee] Miya drawled inside Davies''s head with an annoying tone, causing Davies to give in as her constant bickering was annoying him and making him lose concentration on the most important thing right now, his survival.


    ''I''ll do this,'' Davies replied as he burst out of the range of the blizzard he had created and appeared at the entrance of the fortress.


    [Do what?] she asked as she didn''t notice him doing anything different from what he was previously doing.


    "Now would be a good time to do something, sses girl," Davies called out as he stopped running suddenly, but still sliding forward on the icy ground due to inertia.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    He no longer bothered to run, even though the monsters had alsoe out of the blizzard''s range and were now rushing his way.


    [Eh? What are you doing?] Miya almost freaked out at Davies''s decision to stop running, even though the monsters were rushing toward him,


    [Why do you look like you''re embracing death] she rattled off at the speed of a machine gun, totally forgetting that Davies had called out to someone just as he stopped running.


    Just as the monsters were closing in on Davies, Tisha suddenly appeared in the air out of nowhere andnded beside him.


    "Telekic st!" She called out as she used her condensed telekic force into the form of an orb the size of a tennis ball and then shot it toward the monster wave.


    *FWOOOOMMM*


    The telekic st sent the monsters flying back and also sent snow and ice everywhere, almost creating another blizzard. They were lucky they were on tnd, otherwise, that attack would have caused an avnche.


    The snow that was sent flying because of the telekic st did not reach Tisha or Davies because Tisha had used a barrier to prevent the snow from sting against them.


    "What the hell??" Davies muttered.


    [...] even Miya was speechless, and that wasn''t something that happened regrly.


    As the snow and ice dust flying around cleared, the sight that fell upon their eyes was huge devastation to the snowy field and the front part of the ice fortress where the monsters chasing Davies were.


    ''How in the hell does she use that kind of attack, cause this kind of destruction¡­''


    ''... and still manage to not kill a single monster¡­???'' Davies thought with amazement as he looked at the monsters that had been thrown all over the ce yet not sustaining any injuries and then at Tisha who stood beside him.


    [...]


    His eyes fell on a pair of familiar-looking earbuds in her ear that had been exposed by the wind blowing her hair all over the ce, but he couldn''t remember where he had seen it.


    "Hey? How did you know where I was," Tisha asked with a slight pout, her question bringing Davies out of his thoughts.


    "... Well, you have been following me since I left you guys," Davies responded without a change in his cold demeanor, neither his facial reaction nor his voice betraying his inner amazement.


    "... but that was before I hid?"


    "... Do you have a special eye skill that can see everything like the Sharingan?" Tisha asked with stars in her eyes like she did not just devastate a battlefield¡­ even though she didn''t kill any monsters, it still counts.


    [Yeah, how did you know where she was? Even I thought she had left after we could no longer sense her] Miya asked the same question.


    "... I didn''t know where you were," Davies simply said,


    "Eh?" Tisha tilted her head cutely, not understanding his words.


    "I didn''t know where you were and simply called for you¡­ you gave yourself away," Davies stated.


    "EHHHH?"


    ''Someone as curious about me as she is, wouldn''t stop following after she started, so it was pretty obvious that she was hiding somewhere,'' Davies exined to Miya.


    "You could have chosen to stay hidden though," Davies said to Tisha, but the girl just enthusiastically shook her head and said,


    "No way¡­ Tisha will protect and stand beside her knight in shining armor!" she said with a bright smile and her right hand on her chest like some kind of deration.


    [Eh?]


    ''... what nonsense is she saying?'' Davies''s cold face cracked for the first time today as a look of pure confusion and bewilderment was stered on his face.


    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    I promised you guys an extra chapter, a couple of days ago, so you''ll be getting two chapters today...


    Don''t forget to vote powerstones so we can rise up the rankings.

 Chapter 30 CHAPTER 30: NEITHER BIRD NOR PLANE

    ?[Is it a bird?]


    [Is it a ne?]


    [No, it''s Davies being thrown around in the air by a girl] Miya recited inside Davies''s head, much to his annoyance.


    ''Shut up!'' Davies shouted in his head as a blue vein showed up on his forehead, signifying his annoyance.


    **a Few minutes earlier¡­**


    "Tisha will protect and stand beside her knight in shining armor!" Tisha said with her right hand on her chest like some kind of deration.


    "Wha¡­?" a look of pure confusion and bewilderment was stered on Davies''s face after hearing her words.


    "Ah! Forget what I just said!" Tisha quickly shouted as her face turned beet red as she realized what she just said. She turned away quickly and covered her blushing face with her hands, but her ears were still red.


    [... She''spletely fallen for you]


    ''... Nah, she''s just weird, everyone in this world is weird,''


    ''I should have known better than tomon sense in a fantasy world,'' Davies facepalmed.


    "So, why did you follow me?" he asked Tisha.


    "... I¡­ I¡­" Tisha stammered.


    ''Ahhhhhh¡­ he probably thinks I''m a weird stalker¡­!'' she raged internally while resisting the urge to pull out her hair. She was still short of words and did not know what to tell Davies when he suddenly said,


    "We''ll discuss thatter, let''s get away from here first before those monsters recover enough to chase us,"


    ''... and before Khal Ed and that ice spike beare out and find us here,'' he added internally.


    Davies was about to turn around and start running when Tisha said,


    "It should be faster to fly, right?" she asked with a slight tilt of her head.


    "... Unlike you, I can''t fly," Davies replied with a raised eyebrow, wondering what this girl was getting at.


    "I can carry yo¡­" Tisha began.


    "No!" Davies cut in immediately, no way in hell would he allow a woman to carry him as she flew.


    "EH? But why?" Miya questioned.


    "Because¡­" Davies wanted to retort but had no reason other than to preserve his pride, but he couldn''t tell her that.


    "Because I don''t feel like it," he finally managed to say.


    Tisha was a bit confused about Davies''s refusal but after a few seconds she bumped her right fist against her left palm as if she just discovered something, "... Could it be you''re scared of flying?"


    "Like hell, I''d be scared of flying!"


    "Did you already forget that I beat you at your own game and took you out of the skies¡­ speaking of which you still haven''t told me why you kissed me," Davies retorted.


    "That¡­ I¡­" Tisha began to stammer again,


    ''Ahhhhh¡­ he definitely thinks I''m weird,'' she cried internally.


    Meanwhile inside Davies''s head,


    [Just let her carry you] Miya suggested.


    ''Like hell, I''d do that!'' Davies rejected her suggestion vehemently.


    [You don''t have much to stand around and debate all day, and like she said it''s faster]<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    [And she doesn''t have to actually carry you, she can use her telekinesis to carry you along with her] Miya tried to make Davies see reason.


    ''That''s even worse,'' he still rejected the idea.


    [How is that worse?] Miya asked.


    ''Doing something as stupid as leaving myself defenseless to her telekinesis is the same thing as me being at her mercy,''


    ''She''d be able to kill me at any time she wanted to,'' Davies made his viewpoint clear regarding the issue.


    [... I don''t think she wants to kill you] Miya said, thinking back to Tisha''s actions till now.


    ''Yeah right, that''s what I also used to think before ending up with a knife in my back,'' Davies scoffed.


    [This isn''t the same as that time¡­]


    ***ROOOOAAAAARRRRRR***


    The roar of the ice spike bear interrupted Davies''s conversation with Miya as he and Tisha looked in the direction of the ice fortress where the roar came from.


    Slowly they began to hear the thumping sounds of the footsteps of the bear, it seemed to be rushing outside toward them and would be outside the fortress soon.


    Tisha looked at Davies and bit her lip,


    "I''m so sorry!!!" she said suddenly and wrapped her telekinesis power behind Davies and herself and quickly lifted off into the air,


    "Wooooaaaahh!!!" Davies was startled at this development; he had been so focused on the imminent ice spike bear that he had forgotten to wrap himself with his mana to protect himself from external influences and was easily carted away by Tisha who began to fly at high speed in the direction of herpanions.


    **And that brings us back to the beginning of the chapter**


    [Is it a bird?]


    [Is it a ne?]


    [No, it''s Davies being thrown around in the air by a girl] Miya recited inside Davies''s head, much to his annoyance.


    ''Shut up!'' a blue vein showed up on his forehead, signifying his annoyance.


    Davies''s eyes turned to the girl that put him in this situation, but Tisha was purposely not looking in his direction and acted as if her focus was on flying.


    Davies understood her reason for doing what she did, but there was no way he would be okay with being carried around like a sack of fruits without regard for his choice. People making decisions for him was one of the things that annoyed him the most as it made him feel like he was not in control, and Davies hated that feeling, especially because after that feeling usually came, the worst things that had happened to him in every single one of his lives.


    "Oi¡­" Davies''s ice-cold voice seemed to have reached another degree of cold as he called out to Tisha. His voice was so cold that Tisha didn''t dare to ignore it.


    "Let¡­ me¡­ down," Davies spelled out, his voice giving no room for refusal or excuses.


    "...Ok," she answered meekly as she began to descend to the ground.


    ''Why is he so angry?'' she wondered about his cold voice and change in demeanor, as even though his voice sounded cold before, she still felt like she was talking to a person, but now his voice betrayed no emotion and sounded like an emotionless machine that had just discovered the emotion of anger.


    Shended on the ground and released her power of telekinesis from Davies, luckily it seemed like she had flown fast enough that they weren''t far off from herpanions, the other members of the B-Squad.


    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Promise fulfilled... hurray for me.


    Like I said in thest chapter and like I always request of you guys every chapter, please vote powerstones,ment and leave reviews if you want. Let''s interact with one another.


    Also, I wanted to upload a picture for Jessica and Tisha, but then I remembered that my phone that has the picture I already prepared spoiltst week friday... so I wanted to ask you guys if I should find another picture to use for those characters or you guys will wait for me to recover the original pictures I nned to use?


    Pleasement your choice and I''ll listen to the choice that has higher number of votes.

 Chapter 31 CHAPTER 31: CAMP

    ?Tisha releases her power of telekinesis from Davies''s body as they reached the floor.


    "Sorry¡­" she tries to apologize even though she doesn''t understand why he''s so angry, but Davies simply ignored her apology and began to move in the direction of the rest of the camp. Even though Tisha''s apology was rejected she also followed after Davies towards the rest of herpanions.


    **Back at the camp of the B-Squad**


    "Thorny shield!"


    Anthony''s golden shield suddenly had spikes growing on its surface and he charged at a group of monsters and pushed them back continuously, injuring them lightly in the process, then he stopped and used his strength to push them away from him, allowing Sakura and Jack to attack the monsters,


    "Whisper of the ripper," Jack used his skill to appear behind some of the monsters and stabbed them from behind and then quickly got out of the way of Sakura''s attack.


    "Cursed Crescent," Sakura threw a flying sh of cursed energy at the monsters, killing them immediately.


    A little distance away from them, Jonas dashed around, killing monsters before they could even react and leaving trails of blue sparks all over the ce,


    "Bolt," he muttered and his speed increased as he ran even faster and tore through the ice wolves, snow lizards, and yukionnas that were arrayed in front of him.


    "Wind scythe," Teresa swung her staff and sent apressed scythe of wind at a group of snow lizards, quickly killing them.


    "That''s thest of them," Anthony said as his sharp de shot out of the end of his shield and he stabbed it into the throat of an ice wolf watching it as its blood syed everywhere, its eyes grew dim and devoid of life and then it fell to the ground spasming until it grew unresponsive after sumbing to the cold hands of Hades.


    They all let out a sigh of relief and tiredness as they sat down to rest. Arnim quickly began moving around to heal their injuries.


    "Where do you think Tisha and the boss went?" Teresa wondered out loud as she found somewhere unstained by blood to sit.


    "Boss¡­? Why do you call him that?" Anthony asked as Arnim healed his injuries.


    "Well, he is our boss, isn''t he?" Teresa replied.


    "Is he?" Anthony asked again in a disbelieving tone.


    "Urgh¡­ how many times do we have to exin it to you?" Sakura groaned at Anthony''s dumb question.


    "He owns Imperium Technologies and by extension, the Imperium League¡­ so yes, he is our boss," Jonas exined, slightly panting as he sat down beside Anthony and Arnim as he also needed to be treated for his few injuries.


    "..."


    "Haha, you''re such a muscle-head," Jackughed as he sat beside Sakura.


    "It should be pretty obvious that someone who can get the league to listen to his orders at any time like that is obviously our boss," Jack continued.


    "We''re pretty lucky that he''s with us in this gate," Teresa added.


    "What lucky? We can easilyplete this mission gate!" Anthony disagreed with Teresa''s statement.


    "Says the guy that is huffing and puffing after killing a few hundred monsters," Teresa said with a mockingugh.


    "Most of them weren''t even B-rank monsters," Sakura added with augh.


    "As much as I hate to admit it¡­ he is very powerful," Jonas sighed as he remembered Davies''s killing of three hundred and seventy monsters in one attack without breaking a sweat.


    ''If it''s him¡­ I can¡­'' he thought.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Annoying fact, but it''s true," Jack also said with a sigh.


    "Arghhhh¡­ but he''s so infuriating," Anthony groaned causing his teammates to have a bout ofughter.


    As theyughed, they suddenly heard the sounds of footstepsing their way in the snow.


    *Crunch* *Crunch*


    They sprang up to their feet, wary of the footsteps and worried if it was another group of monsters, but instead, Davies''s silhouette came into their view with Tisha trailing after him.


    *Pheew*


    They heaved a collective sigh of relief when they realized that they didn''t have to bother with fighting again and were about to sink back into their seats when Davies spoke,


    "Let''s go," he said as he stopped.


    "Huh???" they almost couldn''t believe their eyes at his bluntness. He hadn''tmended them or even told them where he went or anything of the sort and he was already giving orders.


    "We obviously can''t stay in a ce reeking of blood that will only end up attracting more monsters," Davies said with a raised eyebrow.


    Annoyingly, he was right and because of that, they couldn''t protest against his decision.


    ''What a ve driver!'' they all thought collectively as they were all tired after their constant battles and movement and they hadn''t yet managed to have any rest.


    "Urrghhhhhhhhh!" They groaned in annoyance, but Davies didn''t bother with how they felt or how tired they were as he was already walking away.


    They groaned again, even louder, and began to follow him. Tisha went to Teresa and walked together with her and they began to have a conversation in hushed tones, though it was mostly Teresa doing the talking as she noticed that Tisha seemed down.


    As they left their former camp, they didn''t notice that their footsteps were being erased as they walked further into the snowy forest. It was Davies that was erasing their footsteps and also at the same time, moving the snow around in a way that would cover their scent and make them untraceable. He wasn''t stupid enough to leave obvious evidence of the direction they went in if he was trying to hide away from the monsters¡­ and Khal Ed, if he ended uping after him.


    After walking for about 45 minutes, they reached another clearing and Davies decided that this was the best ce to set up camp, as even he was tired, but he''d never admit that out loud.


    "Let''s stay here," he said and it sounded like music to the ears of the B-Squad as they were almost ready to just fall on the snow and sleep.


    He created a 3-story building from the ice as he thought,


    ''If monsters can live in a castle, why should this handsome brother live in an igloo,'' he thought narcissistically as he built the building with ice and even made sure to put in details.


    After the building waspleted the jaws of the B-Squad dropped as they looked at the ice building,


    ''So he could create something like this before?'' they thought with their mouths opened wide.


    "What are you waiting for? Get in," Davies said to them and walked inside the ice house.


    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Sorry for thete chapter guys, I had to write through a headache...


    Hopefully I''ll be better soon

 Chapter 32 CHAPTER 32: UNDER THE NIGHT SKY

    ?It was a dark night inside the gate. The presence of thousands of stars shone through the bluish-ck cover of the night sky, a beautiful sight to see, undoubtedly.


    Unfortunately, the humans, who were the only living beings in the dungeon currently with the capability to appreciate such a sight were stuck in a snow-covered forest where the leaves that prevented any light froming from above were the only thing they could see if they looked¡­ if they could even see anything at all in the dark forest, especially now that it was nighttime.


    But in the forest tonight, maybe due to the new human presence, there was a sight you didn''t see often, if ever even seen at all. The rare urrence was a house in a clearing in the woods, and not just any type of house, it was a 3-story-building made from ice, and despite the worry of anyone that saw the building, it held strong even though ice was not inherently used as a construction material for building houses.


    Okay, enough about the house¡­ what we should pay attention to is the young man standing a little distance from the house. He was a handsome person with a beauty that seemed to be even more prominent in the dark, with emerald-green eyes that gleamed behind the lens on his face.


    He was covered in a cloak that blew with the wind, exposing the in-striped ck shirt and trousers he wore beneath the cloak. Despite his thin clothes, he didn''t seem the slightest bit bothered by the cold in his surroundings.


    His hands were in the pockets of his trousers and his view was directed upwards, whether it was the leaves of the trees, or his vision could somehow pierce past those leaves to look up into the mystical sky above, or maybe his eyes were looking at something unseen to the normal vision, nobody knew, but his concentration was broken by the sound of a twig breaking.


    He looked in the direction of the noise without the slightest bit of caution with a face that seemingly knew what wasing and knowing it presented no danger to him¡­ not because of its intentions because even he couldn''t read minds¡­ but because he knew there was no threat to him whatsoever, not with that level of power.


    "Teresa¡­" he muttered, white air present around his mouth as he breathed out warm air while looking at the cause of the noise. It was a beautiful brown-haired woman with a mature charm.


    "... Why aren''t you with the rest of your kiddies'' squad?" he decided to ask, as he truly wondered what her presence outside the house entailed, they were supposed to be resting after all¡­ him as well.


    "Kiddies squad?" the woman asked with a raised eyebrow, confused at his choice of words but still walking towards him.


    "... whatever, what do you want?" Davies wasn''t interested in exining why he called her and herpanions the kiddie''s squad, as it was a waste of time and saliva, and he preferred to keep mute.


    "I just wanted to talk," Teresa replied as she arrived next to him, and then looked upward to see if she could see whatever Davies was staring upward for so intently a few seconds ago.


    "What about?" Davies proceeded to ask, confused at her act of looking upwards with such intent, it was just a bunch of boring ol'' leaves up there.


    "Tisha has been acting weird and she looks down after she came back with you from wherever it is you went," Teresa stated her reason foring to meet with him.


    "Ahh, ying the dutiful elder sister, I see," Davies says with amusement.


    "I do think of her as a younger sister if that''s what you mean," Tisha answered, not understanding the underlying meaning of the statement.


    "So, you''re one of the "onee-san" types, eh?" Davies replied with a raised eyebrow.


    [She''s more of the MILF type] Miya suddenly adds.


    ''Nah, she''s not that mature, but she does fit the bill,''


    ''She thick¡­'' Davies thinks to himself as he ogles her curves that her robes did little to hide.


    [Thicker than the plot] Miya added.


    ''... I can''t say you''re wrong,'' Davies replies with a chuckle.


    "Ehh? What''s that?" Teresa asks, genuinely confused by what "onee-san" should mean, it seemed she was totally ignorant of this topic.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "How cute¡­" Davies says with another chuckle.


    "What is?" Teresa asks.


    "Your ignorance¡­ and your face," Davies says with a slight smile.


    A pink blush threatened to break out on Teresa''s cheeks as receiving apliment from anyone is enough to please a woman, talk less of a handsome male specimen like Davies, but she reigned it in and asks again about the reason she came here in the first ce.


    "Ahhhhh¡­ don''t confuse me," she replied disgruntled, with a small pout.


    ".¡­as I was saying, about Tisha?" she went on to ask.


    "Ohhh, about sses girl," Davies voiced with a tone like he forgot about the matter.


    "Beats me¡­ she is pretty weird," Davies said and sat on a log that was nearby.


    "She has a name you know," Teresa says with a displeased voice.


    "I call anybody any name I damn please, woman!" Davies almost snapped, but stopped himself at thest second, though his tone still came out sharper than normal.


    "You''re lucky I''m not calling you any names¡­ I''d rather save it for when we''re in bed, that way we''d be saying each other''s names,"


    "Though you''d be screaming mine," Davies says with a cheeky but predatory grin.


    This time Teresa could do nothing about the blush that broke out on her face even as she stared at Davies with her jaw dropped at his total bluntness.


    "Y¡­Y-You, what are you saying," Teresa stammered as she looked away to hide her blush, she only had a mature look and aura, she actually didn''t have that much experience, hence her exaggerated reaction, though the reaction would have stayed the same for any woman who was on the receiving end of Davies''s words.


    Though shocked at the bluntness of Davies''s words, she took it as Davies making a joke, and with that in mind, she calmed herself¡­ if only she knew that Davies doesn''t make such types of jokes¡­ but that is a story for another day.


    Davies after seeing the reaction his words was happy with his progress with the "delectable meal" that he nned to end up eating, but on another day as doing anything like that inside a gate was borderline "No" for him, so he chose to do the next most intriguing thing on his mind currently and that was to find out more about "the weird sses girl", Tisha Nancy.


    "Speaking of which, I''ve been meaning to ask about her anyway,"


    "What''s her deal with her not killing monsters, and why does she wear the selective ear-blocker buds?" he asked Teresa who wasing out of her blushing reverie, with his eyes glowing curiously.


    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    I''m better now, Thanks for asking... though nobody did, but it''s all good,


    Expect more chapters tomorrow, and don''t forget to vote powerstones andment on anything you wish to.


    Also, I will soon begin implementing the reward system depending on the number of votes of powerstones and other what-nots... further details will be toldter.

 Chapter 33 CHAPTER 33: TISHA NANCY (A TRAGIC TALE) I

    ?"The knight fought against the dragon that had kidnapped the princess for 7 days and 7 nights¡­"


    "It was a long and arduous battle, but the knight came out on top in the end,"


    "... bloodied as he was, he still made his way over to the tower where the princess was kept prisoner and freed her, breaking her chains with nothing but raw strength,"


    "I promised to be your knight in shining armor, and I''ll continue to fulfill that promise for the rest of my days," the knight whispered lovingly into the ears of the princess as he carried her back to her pce,"


    "And from there they lived happily ever after," a dark-blue-haired woman finished reciting the story to a younger blue-haired girl thaty on a bed beside her.


    "Wow¡­ he must be really strong!" the young girl eximed after hearing her mother finish the story.


    "He was," the older woman said with a beautiful, motherly smile gracing her face as she looked at her daughter who was in awe at the story she had just told her.


    The younger girl looked to be about 8 years old, with dark blue hair like her mother''s and a pair of sses that she had yet to remove even though it was already her bedtime.


    "Hey, mum, will I find my own knight in shining armor?" the little girl asked her mother excitedly, she was still at the age when these types of bedside stories could influence her thoughts easily.


    "Of course, you will," her mother responded softly while chuckling at her daughter''s antics.


    "How will I know who my knight in shining armor is? Will he be wearing shining armor?" the girl fired off questions at the rate of a gatling gun.


    "..."


    "... you will know in your heart when you meet him, just like I knew when I met your father," her mother said with a reminiscing smile after a slight pause.


    "That you will, I didn''t wear armor to make your mother fall in love at first sight with my handsome visage," a man with dark hair and a schrly look said narcissistically as he walked into the room while carrying a baby in his arms.


    "Who fell in love with you at first sight¡­ I remember you always blushing like an idiot and chasing after me," the older woman fired back at her husband who just came in as she took the baby from his arms.


    "Ah¡­ well," the man was lost for words as he scratched his cheek and looked away, his face slowly turning red in embarrassment.


    The woman and her daughter burst intoughter at the man''s behavior, and after a few minutes, the man joined in and even the baby began to make happy gurgling sounds.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    They truly were a happy family, but just like any happiness in a fantasy world, it alwayses before a tragedy.


    The harsh smell of smoke and the loud noise of people screaming suddenly interrupted their harmonious atmosphere.


    "What''s going on?" the woman asked worriedly as her husband moved to a nearby window to look outside at what was going on.


    Upon pulling apart the curtains, what came into the man''s view was a huge fire that had spread to many buildings and people running helter-skelter all over the road like headless chickens, but upon taking an even closer look, he realized that it wasn''t the fire that caused such wide panic, rather it was a bunch of humanoid shaped figures, but with a few unnatural characteristics that weren''t present on the human body.


    "We''re being raided by the beastmen bandits," the man whispered to his wife who was now beside him as he closed the window stealthily and cautiously.


    A look of fear appeared on the woman''s face at her husband''s words, but the man himself paid it no mind as this wasn''t the time forforting, but the time for action. He moved quickly and began to turn off the lights everywhere in the house and brought out his phone to begin to dial the Mega Protection Association (MPA).


    Even as he dialed, he didn''t stop moving and went to every door and window and locked them tightly, not taking any chances at trying to run away with his family in tow as he knew that it''d probably fail, so he nned to stay holed up with his family while they waited for the MPA officers to arrive, and even though it was not really a much better idea, it was the better of their options.


    He told the MPA their situation and their location and ran back to where his wife and children were, locking every door after him. He made a detour to take a couple of kitchen knives as he ran to his daughter''s bedroom where his family waited and locked the door of the room as well.


    "It''s going to be alright; I already called the MPA, they should be here any minute and would take care of the situation," he said tofort his family as he could see the worry on their face. Even though she didn''t know the exact situation, she could see the worry on her parents'' faces, so the little girl did not ask or demand anything so she wouldn''t bring them more worry at the moment.


    It was at this moment they heard a loud crashing from not very far off,


    *BANG*


    ''Shit!'' the man thought as he heard the loud crashing sound that came from the front of their house, even without anybody telling him, he realized that the front door of their house was already under attack from intruders.


    His worry shot up, but he did his best to stay calm and not plunge his family into more worry by freaking out. Luckily, due to previous urrences of bandit attacks, he had known to prepare a little for the unexpected, and he would be using that preparation now, he decided quickly as he couldn''t afford to waste time pondering in this situation.


    He quickly began to pull the rug on the floor to reveal a trapdoor that led to a secret room just below the house,


    "Get in!" he whispered harshly as he pulled open the trapdoor.

 Chapter 34 CHAPTER 34: TISHA NANCY (A TRAGIC TALE) II

    ?"Get in!" he whispered harshly as he pulled open the trapdoor. He was tense and could no longer act as coolly as before. To be honest, it was a wonder he held up this long under the pressure as apletely normal human who knew that certain death approached him and his family.


    His daughter didn''t ask any questions, nor did she seem even the slightest bit annoyed at his harsh tone and she quickly moved into the secret room without question, but internally she was in a turmoil of emotions.


    Despite her young age, she was smart enough to know that something was happening, something serious enough to warrant her parents'' troubled actions and she didn''t want to add to their worries, which was why she stayed quiet in this situation.


    "Good girl," he praised his daughter''s prompt action, and he managed to get a hold of himself due to her actions, calming himself a little bit.


    *BANG*


    Unfortunately, the bandits at the door were extra determined to get into the house even though it gave off no impression of wealth or importance.


    "Hurry up!" the noise of the door of his house almost crashing down motivated him into hurrying his family into hiding themselves, but his wife handed his baby over to his daughter and turned her face over to him.


    One look at her face and he knew that she knew what he was nning to do.


    He knew that they could not all hide inside the secret room, otherwise who would hide their tracks¡­ they''d be lucky if they didn''t get found out in less than five seconds of the intruders entering, so he had made up his mind to wait outside and close the trapdoor, cover up the trapdoor and then find a way to hold out until the MPA officers arrived to take care of the bandits, but it didn''t seem like his wife would agree to his idea.


    He was thinking of what words to use to convince her when she told him firmly, "I''m staying with you," her tone gave made it clear that she wouldn''t ept any objections from his side, but he still tried to reason with her.


    "But the kids?" he asked with a troubled tone.


    "We''ll protect them together," she answered firmly.


    Her words gave him an instant headache, but at the same time warmed his heart. The woman quickly turned back to their daughter who still stayed quiet even in this situation,


    Tisha, promise me you''ll take care of your brother," the woman said to her daughter with a serious tone, referring to the baby boy she had handed over to her daughter to hold on to for the time being.


    For some reason, the woman''s request caused her daughter''s heart to shake strongly, and she suddenly had an ache in her heart that she didn''t understand, so she asked her mother with worry beginning to seep into her voice,


    "What about you, mother?"


    "... Me?" the older woman was lost for words and didn''t know what words to use so she could at least reduce her worry,


    "I will protect and stand beside my knight in shining armor," she chose her words carefully and said with a deep smile as she turned over to look at her husband,


    "You should do the same too¡­ one day," she continued as she turned back to face Tisha,


    "... but for now, no matter what happens, stay here quietly, alright? She gave Tisha her final instructions as she took a hold of the door in a bid to shut it,


    "We''lle to let you out when all this is over," she finished in a reassuring tone just before she shut the trapdoor.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "You promise?" Tisha asked with a hopeful tone just before her mother shut the door,


    "We promise," the man and the woman said together and shut the trapdoor.


    As the door to the secret room closed shut, Tisha hugged her baby brother tighter in an unconscious bid to ease the ufortable feeling in her heart, but in the end, she decided to just do as her parent said and wait quietly. Luckily her baby brother was asleep so there were no issues with


    doing that.


    *BANG* *CRASH*


    The loud banging sound came again, but this time it was apanied by the sound of something crashing. Tisha didn''t know what that sound was or what it meant, but she did exactly as her parents asked of her, stayed quiet, and took care of her little brother while waiting patiently for her parents to open the door to this ce and let them out,


    "Mum and Dad will open the door soon, so I must wait," the little girl murmured to herself to stave off the fear of staying alone in a dark room¡­


    well, not alone, but sleeping babies don''t count.


    ***In the room above***


    After shutting the door of the secret room, the man and the woman quickly set off, dragging the rug over the trapdoor to cover it once again and


    removing any obvious traces that could lead to the kids being found out, while they did that, they heard their front door finally break down as it could no longer hold out the intruders and upon realizing this, their hearts sank as it meant that they would soon be found out.


    ''Arrrghh¡­!!! When are those MPA officers going to get here!" the man screamed internally, but outwardly he picked up one of the kitchen knives he had gotten from the kitchen and handed the other over to his wife for self-protection in case of any unforeseen circumstances.


    His wife had a bitter smile on her face as she collected the knife from him, but she said no words and the silenceforted them especially since they knew that they were in a dire situation.


    The banging sounds began toe more frequently, and with it came crashing sounds and with each bang, the noise got closer, until¡­


    *BANG*


    The door to their room flew away from its hinges with a loud bang.


    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Sorry for not posting a chap yesterday... I had and still have a muscle cramp on my right bicep, so typing right now is kinda hard... I''ll do my best to make up for missed chapter,


    Don''t forget to support me with powerstones,ments, reviews and the likes.

 Chapter 35 CHAPTER 35: TISHA NANCY (A TRAGIC TALE) III

    ?*BANG*


    The door to their room flew from its hinges and whizzed past them before crashing into the wall behind them with a loud bang.


    Cold sweat ran down their back as the man and his wife recalled the speed at which the door had flown past them, just narrowly missing them. Under normal circumstances, they would be thankful that they had just escaped a near-death experience, but the fact that they were now exposed and at the mercy of the beastmen bandits that currently stood at the door of the room covered whatever happiness threatened to bubble up from escaping death.


    "Hahahahaha," maniacalughter filled the room as one of the intruders stepped in with a crazy look on his face,


    " I smell humans," he sang creepily in an eerie voice.


    "Scared humans¡­ the scent of their fear is so strong," another simrly creepy voice came from just outside the room as another shadowy figure stepped inside the room.


    "So strong, so delicious, and we haven''t even done anything yet," a third voice came and another figure stepped into the room.


    Due to the absoluteck of a light source inside the room, the man and his wife couldn''t see any more than 3 shadowy figures with glowing green eyes, but then all of a sudden, a strong wind blew and pushed away the window blinds allowing moonlight to illuminate the room and what the man and his wife saw didn''t help them feel any better.


    There were 3 simr-looking humanoid figures, but they were as far from human as they could get. They had grey with ck spotted hyena fur covering their bodies instead of skin, dog-like ears and tail with the same color as their fur, and sharp teeth and ws instead of nails, but the scariest parts were their glowing green eyes that only showed crazy chaos inside of them.


    "This is gonna be so much fun," they all said at the same time with crazy smiles as they eyed their prey.


    "Please take whatever valuables you want,"


    "Don''t hurt us," the man tried to reason with the 3 hyena brothers by acting like he had given defending, but inwardly all he was trying to do was to buy enough time for the MPA officers to arrive and take care of the situation.


    "We don''t care about all of that," the first one spoke nonchntly,


    "We just want to see you bleed," the second spoke with his lips tilting upwards even further into a wider but creepier smile,


    "Especially after making us break through all those doors to get to you," the third one spoke with anger in his tone, but then they all said together with drool beginning to drip from their mouth and their ws elongating,


    "All we want is to see you bleed," they made it clear that even though their temperaments seemed different from the other, they had one thing inmon, their crazy lust for blood.


    ''They''re crazy!!!'' the man was able to quickly arrive at this conclusion due to their words, yet one look at his wife who was shivering beside him and unable to say a word, put him into even more of a tense predicament as he didn''t know what to do.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    ''Why don''t those MPA motherfuckers just arrive!'' he screamed internally when he saw them beginning to circle around him and his wife.


    Suddenly one of the hyena brothers stopped and began to sniff strongly with his nose in the air,


    "Hey, bros, there are two extra scents here," he called out to his brothers after sniffing strongly for a little while.


    For the first time since the 3 hyena brothers entered the room, the woman flinched and then quickly reacted as she felt a threat to her children''s safety. With her motherly instincts taking over, and in a bid to protect her children at any cost, she began to run toward the hyena brother that had noticed her children''s scent with her knife poised for a strike.


    "MARTHA, NO!!!" the man shouted immediately he noticed her course of action but was unable to do anything as she was already out of his reach.


    Undoubtedly, it was a brave move, but at the same time it was an extremely stupid move to make, as the beastmen were people with enough strength to swat her out of existence like a bug, but her motherly instincts didn''t care about that as all she wanted to do was to terminate any threat to her children''s existence.


    As expected, the hyena beastman sent her flying with one swipe of his ws. She flew backward until she crashed into the walls and then fell face-first to the ground, no longer getting up as a pool of blood began to pool beneath her body.


    "NO!!!"


    "MARTHA!!!"


    "ARGHHHHH!!!!" the man seemingly lost it and began to run toward the same beastman that had sent his wife flying.


    This time, one swipe of the hyena''s ws didn''t send the man flying, but the arm that held onto his knife was cut clean from his body sending great pain through his body, but he didn''t give up trying to attack the beastman and quickly grabbed amp and tried to m it into the beastman, but was sent flying by a hit from behind.


    He flew forward and fell to the ground, but he was still alive, heavily bleeding and a bit winded, but alive. It seemed like the attack wasn''t meant to kill him, he thought as he staggered back up and looked behind him at his attacker.


    Another of the hyena beastmen seemed to have been the one that had hit him from behind and sent him flying,


    "You already broke one of the toys, let us have our fun as well," that beastman that had hit the man from behind said with a displeased tone to the one that had killed his wife.


    "...Toy¡­" the man said with disbelief with tears beginning to drop from his eyes,


    "BASTARDS, THAT WAS MY WIFE!!!" he screamed in rage as he picked up the knife from his dismembered hand that happened to be beside where he had fallen and began to run towards the beastmen fully intent on killing them or dying while trying to.

 Chapter 36 CHAPTER 36: TISHA NANCY (A TRAGIC TALE) IV

    ?He charged at the beastmen with almost inhumane speed, his rage being the fuel that was keeping him alive and spurning him on to attack and try to surmount this insurmountable wall, but he did not keep any of those thoughts in his mind and simply charged with the intent to kill¡­ seemingly.


    After reaching the beastmen he swung his knife at whichever one was closest to him and attacked, but he kept getting fended off and his attacks were ineffective, not managing to injure or even get the hyena brothers to take him seriously.


    A couple of minutester he was back on the floor, winded after another lightning-fast attack, only this one was from right in front of him, yet he was unable to avoid it.


    "This one seems more interesting than thest one," one of the 3 hyena beastmen said with a huge grin on his face as he watched the man struggling to stand up even after losing so much blood from his injury.


    "Why do you think he keeps standing up to attack,"


    "Could it be because of that broken toy over there?" another of the beastmen asked with an intrigued smile as he pointed backward with his thumb at the woman''s body that hadn''t even twitched after she fell to the floor, it was obvious she had long given up the ghost.


    "Doesn''t matter, let''s have more fun with this one and show him true despair,"


    "It should be fun to gouge out his organs and y with them," thest hyena said with a blood-crazed smile on his face as he eyed the man who had managed to stand up again and poised to attack them.


    "I WILL KILL YOU BASTARDS!!!" the man shouted as he began to charge at the beastmen once again for the umpteenth time.


    "Should we just destroy his throat, he''s loud," the beastman being attacked asked his brothers with a nonchnt tone as he dodged and then swiped at the man with his ws, just barely enough to nick his thigh and give him a light wound causing another source of leaking blood to appear on the man''s body.


    "Don''t do that, that can kill him too fast¡­ plus, he has to have a voice if he''s going to scream in painter¡­"


    "¡­gives me goosebumps just thinking about it," another of the hyena brothers replied as he used his ws to attack the man from behind, ripping his shirt and leaving w injuries on his back, but he made sure not to give him any deep injuries.


    At this point, the three hyena beastmen were just ying with the man and sending him around to each other, but leaving a new injury on his body every time they passed him on to the next and soon enough, he was spent. He fell to his knees, unable to move another step.


    His rage and desire to hurt the beastmen had kept him going for a long while but it seemed nature had finally caught up and his strong mind and desire could no longer force his almost dead body into moving another step, and so, he fell.


    Tears fell from his eyes as he realized that he had reached his limit and did not even manage to leave a mark on the fuckers that had attacked his home, sent his children into hiding, and killed his wife.


    "I think he ran out of steam," the first hyena brother said as he looked at the man that was now no longer able toe after them.


    "Humans¡­ so fragile,"


    "They just can''t keep up¡­ and when it was finally getting fun¡­" the second mused disappointedly.


    "We''ll no matter, we can just move to the next game," the third said with an eerie glint in his eyes as he walked over to the kneeling man and raised his w to sh him, but stopped his attack midway as he noticed the unrelenting re in the man''s eyes.


    "... You¡­ don''t seem to be scared of death or pain," the hyena said as he brought his w to the man''s face and scratched it leaving a deep wound, but the man did not even flinch from the pain, and this displeased the third hyena brother.


    "I can''t have that¡­" his eyes suddenly regained their glow as if he had thought of a great idea.


    "Since you don''t fear death or pain¡­ I wonder what can make you despair," he said in a smiling voice as he turned his head towards the dead woman''s body across the room. The man also followed the man''s sight and saw what the man was looking for, immediately his heart sank¡­


    "You wouldn''t dare," the man growled in anger.


    "Oh, but I do dare," the beastmanughed and walked over to Martha''s body, grabbed it by the neck, and held her up, facing her husband,


    "Normally I wouldn''t y with broken toys, but for you, I make an exception," he said with a smile like he was doing the man a favor.


    "Hey, hurry up and do it, I want to hear his screams of despair already," one of the hyena brothers said with a look of crazy anticipation on his face.


    "Ah, right¡­ let''s begin with detachment," he said with a wide grin and grabbed one of Martha''s limp arms.


    "No¡­ don''t do it," the tears that had stopped running from his eyes reappeared again when he saw what the hyena beastman was trying to do.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Please!!!" he tried to plead, but¡­


    *RIIIIPPPPP*


    With a great show of exceptional strength, the beastman tore off Martha''s right arm from her body.


    "NOOOO!!!" the man screamed, his heart in pain.


    Theck of response and theck of spraying blood from where her arm was torn off only cemented the fact that she was dead and wouldn''t feel any pain from the beastman''s actions, but that information wouldn''t make her husband feel any better as he watched his wife''s corpse being desecrated.


    The beastman brought Martha''s torn-off arm to his mouth and took a bite of her flesh and chewed it,


    "Tch¡­ it''s no longer warm,"


    "This is why I hate broken toys," he said with distaste and threw the severed arm to the side.


    ''@#$%**&%@#$''


    At this point, the man couldn''t even think coherently anymore and whatever words appeared in his mind was gibberish and all he saw was red.


    Due to this, he found a source of hidden energy within him, and he forced himself to his feet and shot off at the beastman holding his wife.


    But to his dismay, the beastman was smiling widely at him with a wicked grin,


    "Finally, I see the despair in your eyes," he said and threw the woman''s body at the man.


    The sudden appearance of his wife''s body flying at him, caused the man to slow down and try to catch her body, but the next moment, the hyena arrived in front of him and cut through his wife''s body and cut him across his chest with his sharp glowing ws.


    *SPLURT*


    Blood shot out of the new injuries on his midsection as he fell to the ground with a thud, his wife''s pieces falling beside him.


    This time he was down for the count.


    Even though he was still alive, he knew it was not for long¡­ but he was not prepared for the horror that was yet to befall him before his eventful death.


    "Come on bros¡­ It''s time to eat," the beastman that had put him and his wife in this state called to the remaining two hyena brothers with a satisfied look on his face as he looked at his "handiwork".


    "Bro, you''re too good at this," one of the hyena beastmenmended as he arrived beside his brother.


    "Of course¡­ only despair-filled flesh tastes good after all," the culprit that put the man in his current state answered proudly.


    Even down and out, his eyes still widened as he heard their words,


    ''It can''t be right?'' this was the thought that crossed his mind¡­ and secondster he was proven right as the teeth of the hyena beastmen found their way into his body and tore pieces of flesh from him.


    His screams of agony filled the room as the beastmen began to eat him while he was yet alive.


    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    I was going to put a disimer warning as this chapter was quite morbid and dark... but then I thought, ''Y''all did see the R-18 tag after all,''


    Lol... anyway, I put in extra effort to describe this scene, so reward me with powerstones... Please

 Chapter 37 CHAPTER 37: TISHA NANCY (A DYING MAN’S THOUGHTS)

    ?The room was eerily silent, and there were only two people left in the room¡­ or at least the pieces of the two people, as neither of their body parts wasplete.


    The woman had been split into two and the upper part of her body had deep w marks across it and her right arm had been severed, but it was on the floor a little distance away.


    The man''s body was also in a just as terrible state, his hand had also been severed, and his body had flesh missing from all over it¡­ he looked like a half-eaten meal that had been discarded.


    All in all, it was a gruesome sight that shouldn''t be seen by anybody as it could easily give even the bravest of men nightmares. Yet even in this gruesome sight, something moved. Surprisingly it was the man''s head that moved, it seemed that even after all the trauma that his body had experienced, his soul simply wouldn''t rest until it confirmed something.


    Simply put, he was a man on a mission.


    The man''s eyes fluttered open and his head moved slightly, but that was the end of his movements, his body had been too badly damaged to do any more and the fact that he was even still alive spoke of the extreme willpower that was able to push him to go after enemies that could easily swat him aside when he was still far from death and that same willpower was what kept him from letting go of thest sliver of life in his hands¡­ for now, as even he couldn''t stave off the embrace of death for much longer.


    His eyes quickly darted around the room as he looked for any sign of the presence of the culprits that had put him in this state, but theck of their presence and the sound of what seemed likebating from outside the house''s windows told him that they were gone.


    Upon noting that the culprits were gone and were seemingly being apprehended somewhere outside the house, he breathed a sigh of relief and visibly rxed, his body beginning to lose its tension and he began to ease closer to the darkness called death, but for him, it didn''t seem so bad.


    His wife was also on the other side, and he would be able to tell her when they met, that he had protected their children with every breath in his body and with every ounce of his strength.


    One would ask¡­


    How did he protect his children?


    After all, the only thing he did was to charge ragefully at the ones who had killed the mother of his children, and even then, he wasn''t able to leave a single scratch on their skin¡­ or fur in their case.


    But the man that was slowly approaching death would respectfully disagree.


    He hadn''t just been prancing around and swinging knives like some trained assassin while shouting in rage because his wife had just been killed before his very eyes¡­ or he had, but his thoughts were not as simple as a mindless revenge-starved buffoon.


    Despite showing extreme physical abilities just moments before his eventual defeat, this man had always been smart. It could be seen from his previously schrly look that he used his brain to bring food to his table and not his physical strength.


    He always knew that he wasn''t able to defeat a beastman, not to mention defeating three extremely dangerous and bloodthirsty individuals of the species, yet he attacked them as if he had lost all reason even though he knew that he would not even be able to touch their heels, especially as apletely normal human, a smart one, but a human nheless.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    There were two reasons for his actions, of which the first was to buy time. He had already called the authorities responsible for taking care of this kind of situation, namely the MPA, and he knew that it was only a matter of time until they arrived.


    Unfortunately, it seemed the MPA was feeling very inclined to take their sweet time to get off their asses ande and save a society in need and this leads us to the second reason.


    A distraction and diversion¡­ these may seem like two extremely simr reasons, but for him, they weren''t the same.


    Previously, just before the beastmen made a move, one of them had noticed two extra scents in the room, and why wouldn''t he?


    This was the children''s bedroom after all. The calling of attention to the scents had prompted his wife into frantic action, as for the two of them they didn''t need to hear it a second time to know what that beastman was referring to.


    Unfortunately, his wife ended up dead due to her frantic actions, leaving him behind with the burden of protecting his children''s safety at all costs. This was what had prompted him into action and spurned him to attack the beastmen, as a way to distract them from continuing to find out about the two extra scents that would inevitably lead to his children being found and dragged into this mess.


    Of course, his rage at his wife''s death helped him with the courage to attempt this suicide n with such brevity.


    After losing one of his arms in less than one exchange between him and only one of the beastmen, he realized that even his ingenious idea wouldn''t matter if he died in less than ten seconds. He also couldn''t take his chances at trying to dy his death while hoping for the MPA officers to arrive.


    He scoffed at the mere thought, he wasn''t one to put his children''s lives into the hands of mere strangers, even worse was when they didn''t seem to be reliable at all.


    Suddenly he came to a realization¡­


    Since it was already a given that he''d be dying very soon, as the beastmen didn''t seem the type to let someone go out of sympathy, he decided to use thest bits of his body and thest moments of his life to protect his children by not allowing them to be found, and the answer to that was in front of him all along.


    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Like always my people, I beseech thee, shower upon me your stones of power and elevate me to a position of higher ranking on the charts.


    Thank you for your gracefulness.


    The next chapter is the end of Tisha''s story and from there we shall be returning back to the huge dungeon battle, anticipate and vote...  who knows, you may loosen my hold on a few extra chapters.

 Chapter 38 CHAPTER 38: TISHA NANCY (BROKEN PROMISE)

    ?The hyena beastmen were able to detect the scent of his children because of their excellent sense of smell, so what would happen if he marked everything in the room with another scent¡­ the scent of his blood.


    And so, he yed along with their whims and slowly got covered with injuries that caused his blood to flow freely. He pranced around the room under the guise that he was attacking whichever one of them was closest to him, and with this deception, he was able to mark almost everywhere in the room with his blood, but after a while, his body failed to keep up and he fell to his knees.


    The human body couldn''t continuously lose that much blood and expect to still be alive, not to mention functioning and he owed the fact that he was still alive to his extraordinary willpower, born from deep within him to protect his children at any cost.


    After that, the eventful happened, he tried to stay strong but was mocked, his wife''s corpse was mutted and she was cut apart in a bid to injure him, and then his flesh was torn from his body while he was still very much alive and conscious. The pain had caused him to faint in the end, but now he was able to awaken onest time to confirm whether or not he had seeded and luckily, he had.


    He had protected his children with thest of his very self. Even his soul had been scarred due to the traumatic experience, but all that didn''t matter as he had seeded and fulfilled his God-given and self-imposed mission to protect his children at all costs.


    He was proud of himself, as this was a story that he could tell proudly to his wife on the other side. His only regret was leaving his children alone in this world.


    As his vision began to blur and his eyes began to close, his vision noticed the rug slowly being raised. It seemed his daughter could no longer stay in the secret room and decided toe out.


    He wished his daughter wouldn''t have to see his and his wife''s terrible state and end up being traumatized by the sight, but whichever being he had made his wish to did not care much for a dying man''s wish¡­ perhaps he should have prayed instead, this was thest thought that crossed his mind as everything went dark.


    ***Inside the secret room, a while earlier***


    Tisha''s parents had told her to stay in the little dark room under her room that even she didn''t know about. If she knew about it, then this was where she would have hidden during the ''hide and seek'' games that they yed regrly.


    They had also handed her brother over to her to carry. This was very strange, as in Tisha''s memories they never allowed her to hold her little brother, always telling her she was too young,


    "A baby cannot carry a baby," they always said, and Tisha always vehemently disagreed.


    ''Which part of her was a baby¡­ apart from her slightly chubby baby face'', she always thought as she fumed from her parent''s decision to not let her hold little "Romero", yet now they had handed him over to her and they had put them in this dark room and told her to stay quiet no matter what.


    As she was a good girl, she had done exactly what her parents asked of her, even though the little dark room was scary since she couldn''t see anything but ck.


    She stayed quiet even though the booming noises came closer every minute, and she stayed quiet even when it sounded from right above her startling her, but she didn''t fret too much and held on tightly to Romero, who shockingly, was still asleep, even after all the noise.


    She couldn''t hear any clear voices as all the sound that managed to get into the room was muffled and sounded weird, but she heard voices from above her, then she heard a bang followed by a shout that sounded like her father screaming her mother''s name.


    This was where her unease had begun to build up as she couldn''t help but wonder what was wrong, but after that nothing but sounds of movement and the asional shout came from above, so she was able to calm down for a bit.


    Things were like that for a while until she began hearing constant screams of agony from above her.


    At this point, her unease was at its peak and she barely stopped herself from pushing open the door anding out, but something told her that her parents wouldn''t want her toe out at this moment and so she held it in and stayed, continually tortured by sounds of screams and what seemed like something being torn apart, but it didn''t sound like paper.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    It sounded wetter and more disturbing¡­ she tried to cover her ears to shut out the sounds, but she couldn''t. Tears streamed down her face as the sounds from above continuously tortured her mentally, because every time the tearing sound came, it was followed by a scream of pain.


    After what seemed like forever, the noises stopped, and she heard footsteps running out of the room in a hurry but didn''t know why.


    What followed after was torturous silence. Everything happening above seemed to have stopped, yet her parents did note to let them out.


    She waited impatiently, but her parents still hadn''t opened the door to let them out¡­ and when she had finally had enough, something dripped onto her arm.


    Due to the darkness inside the room, she couldn''t see what it was, but this was the prompt that pushed her into making a move, she no longer cared if her parents would be angry with her foring out even though they had told her to stay put.


    She could always tell them that she was scared of the dark and they wouldn''t get mad. She thought all this to herself and pushed against the door to the secret room, and it began to move upwards.


    Luckily it seemed her parents never locked it. The door was quite heavy, so she set herself against it and pushed hard, all the while shielding her little brother with her body.


    The door moved upward but was obstructed by the rug, which was quite heavy, but Tisha didn''t give up and continued pushing until she finally pushed the door open and was able toe out.


    Upon stepping out, she was hit with a weird metallic scent that filled the room, but she paid it no mind for now and turned to look at the room.


    "Momm¡­" she was beginning to call for her mother when her eyes fell upon an image that would continue to haunt her for the rest of her life.


    If the torturous sounds of tearing and screaming caused her to cry uncontrobly, then this image stunned her into silence.


    A horror so great she could not even scream in fear and pain because she couldn''t understand.


    They had been ying together earlier today after all. Her mother had told her a bedside story and her father had acted like he always did, and theyughed together after.


    It wasn''t even an hour ago... Yet...


    From now on her mother would never be able to tell her any bedside stories and they wouldn''t be able tough together like they always did in the past.


    Her parents wouldn''t scold her for not obeying their instruction to stay in the little room¡­ because they no longer could.


    They had broken their promise.

 Chapter 39 CHAPTER 39: HIDDEN CONDITION

    ?"Ever since then¡­" Teresa paused, not knowing the appropriate words to use after telling Davies of Tisha''s past, but the words did not need to be said.


    It was obvious that due to the trauma of her parents'' lives being ripped away, she had an aversion to killing.


    This was probably the reason why she wore the selective earbuds. The selective earbuds as the name suggests, were earbuds that could block out selective sounds; they could be calibrated to block a particr person''s voice or a particr type of sound.


    Of course, the reason why Davies recognized them was that he was the one that invented them.


    Tisha probably used it to block the sounds made by the flesh of any monsters attacked by her teammate.


    Teresa thought all this as she looked at Davies''s figure as he sat on the log, seemingly deep in thought after hearing Tisha''s story.


    But in reality, Davies was scoffing inwardly,


    ''What a noob,'' those were his first thoughts after hearing about her tragic past.


    It wasn''t that Davies hated her for being mentally weak after such a past. It was that he was no longer capable of something like sympathy.


    Sympathy was something that the weak felt when they heard about an experience that they could not imagine themselves going through¡­ unfortunately Davies had gone through worse, so this kind of situation felt like a walk in the park.


    Not to mention that for someone who had gone through the things he had gone through some of their emotions must be either messed up, dampened, or dead, and in Davies''s case, sympathy was one of the first of his emotions that died.


    It was not something he could change, though he wished it was some of his other emotions that had died instead¡­


    Now, if Davies wasn''t feeling sympathy, then why was he so deep in thought?


    Naturally, it was because his curiosity had peaked even further,


    ''If she has such an aversion to the sound of tearing flesh, then why doesn''t she seem to mind looking at blood?''


    ''Also, if she has such an aversion to killing, why is she even bothering to enter gates?''


    ''And, who the hell recruited her for this kind of job when she doesn''t even bother to kill monsters?''


    All these were the questions going through Davies''s mind as he sat, deep in thought. Thatst question especially gave him a headache.


    ''Who the hell was recruiting weird people who seemed unsuitable for their jobs!?''


    As Davies sat there wondering about all these things and trying to decide on whether he should ask the busty wind controller or if he should do a more detailed investigation of Tisha when he got outside the gate, Teresa began to speak again, it seemed she still had something left to say.


    "The strangest thing is her powers go up another notch when shees into contact with blood¡­"


    Davies''s head immediately shot up when he heard that,


    "What was that you said?" he immediately asked, barely managing to keep his excitement from appearing in his voice.


    "Her abilities seem to increase in power whenever shees in contact with blood, though it always makes her go berserk," she repeated her previous statement with more rity.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Also, she hatesing into contact with blood for obvious reasons though she can cope with looking at it from a distance," she continued, but Davies was no longer listening to her as his thoughts were going crazy.


    Not many knew about this matter, but some Megas have some type of hidden conditions in their blessing that can cause their blessing to increase in rank if they can find it and solve it.


    Why find it and solve it?


    Though humanity did not know the reason why, all the blessings given to a specific person had a very close tie to either the person''s personality or the person''s past experiences or even something much deeper.


    There was no such thing as a wrong blessing as every blessing was perfectly fitted for its bearer''s nature.


    It was why every human with a blessing had a naturally high affinity with their blessings and it was easy for them to learn how to use it after activating it, but even though every Mega had a high affinity with their blessing, the affinities still varied and some were higher than the other, allowing for even easier use of their blessing''s abilities.


    Davies had a perfect affinity with his blessings so controlling them was as simple as breathing, but it was not the same with everyone.


    What made Tisha''s situation special was that, if a blessing had a hidden condition, then it was not at its full capacity and was being held back by something that gued its bearer, and if it was solved then her blessing would increase in rank and so will her affinity with her blessing.


    This was a golden egg!


    After all, her blessing was already ranked S-ss, so even if it increased by only one rank, then it would be an SS-rank blessing.


    But despite that fact, Davies had a bitter smile because he knew it was a nigh impossible task.


    ''It really is a bad joke,''


    ''It just had to have something to do with blood,'' he thought bitterly.


    Davies knew that unlike a lot of idiots made it seem like, getting over trauma was not a simple walk in the park. He was living proof of that, though he did not show it.


    It was one of the reasons why he still had nightmares. Of course, one could argue that his experiences were way worse than hers, but that didn''t make the job any easier.


    But since he already found out about this, he wasn''t just going to let such an opportunity go, so he decided to ask all the questions on his mind so he could at least have a better knowledge of the situation.


    "Why does she even do this kind of work in the first ce?" he asked Teresa.


    "Well, you pay a lot, boss," Teresa said with a chuckle but continued,


    "After losing their parents, Tisha and her brother were brought to Yorkshire and dumped in one of the so-called orphanages by the MPA officers,"


    "I''m guessing I don''t need to tell you about the living conditions of those ces, so the moment she awakened her blessing, and the Imperium League scouted her with promises of high pay and such, she took the offer of a better life for her little brother,"


    "I don''t know what she did earlier today, but please don''t be too hard on her," she finished and began to head back inside the house.


    ''Someone with a past like that, yet still believes in things like happiness and humanity and not even thinking about revenge or anything along that line,''


    ''She really is a noob,'' Davies sighed heavily as he also began to move towards the icehouse, he''d deal with this matterter, when there weren''t over 6000 monsters for him to kill.

 Chapter 40 CHAPTER 40: STIFLING FEELING

    ?It seemed to be the break of dawn, but the people in the icehouse couldn''t tell as the trees were doing a very good job keeping the light away.


    The current inhabitants of the icehouse were still sleeping as they were quite exhausted from fighting monsters the day before.


    Surprisingly, sleeping inside the icehouse was quitefortable and the ice didn''t feel extremely freezing to the touch while at the same time, keeping the cold outside froming in so they were all sleepingfortably¡­ or at least, most of them were.


    Davies was already awake since a while ago and was standing outside the house while looking around for any traces of any unwanted visitors, but so far, he hadn''t found any.


    Apart from the usual cold look on his face, there was an additional frown on Davies''s face currently, and the reason for that was the bad feeling he had been having since he woke up.


    It felt stifling, like someone was after his life yet he did not know who. This was why he was currently checking around for any traces of foul y.


    [You''re sure it''s not you feeling bad about that girl''s story or something like that?] Miya asked, seeing his unease.


    "Miya¡­ you of all people should know that for someone to be able to awaken an ounce of sympathy in me, he/she needs to have died at least ten times, been betrayed ten times, been NTRed fifty times, been raped and tortured over a hundred times, or should have experienced every one of those things at least ten times," Davies replied half-heartedly with a frowning face, still looking around cautiously for any traces he may have missed.


    [...]


    [What if the person lost everyone that matters to him?]


    "Doesn''t count. That''s noob-level shit," Davies replied immediately.


    "Why am I even arguing with you right now," he groaned in annoyance after seeing that he was going off track.


    "More importantly, why the hell are those idiots still sleeping," he was less than pleased that while he was feeling like he had a reaper on his back, some noobs had the gut to be sleeping so peacefully inside a mission gate.


    Davies began to head back towards the icehouse.


    [You seem to keep forgetting that not everybody can do the things you do or deem as natural, be gentler with them] Miya''s words echoed inside his head.


    "Oh, I''ll be gentle alright," he scoffed as he arrived before the icehouse and snapped his fingers,


    "Ice explosion," he said as he activated his ice explosion skill on a very low scale, just enough for the ice to turn into powdered ice without damaging the people inside the house.


    With a low booming sound, the icehouse turned to snow powder, plunging all the sleeping beauties into the cold snowy floor of the forest before raining snow powder on their heads.


    "Wakey wakey," Davies called out to the people who had just undergone a rude awakening, thanks to him of course.


    If looks could kill, the stabbing eyes of the B-squad members would have ripped Davies apart into many pieces as they red daggers at Davies.


    "Now that you''ve all graciously decided to wake up, let''s discuss our ns for getting out of here,"<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "... Actually, it''s not a discussion, it''s more of a, I make the ns, you listen, or you get your asses handed to you,"


    "Are we clear?" Davies said with a smile that wasn''t warm¡­ at all.


    As if the cold outside wasn''t enough, Davies''s aura which was being released from his body because of his annoyed state was making the surroundings even colder, causing every single member to begin shivering tremendously.


    They quickly pulled their clothes tighter around their bodies and slowly got up from the snow. They obviously weren''t happy with this tough love treatment that Davies was dishing out, but they no longer daredin, especially as they could see that he wasn''t in the best of moods, and so they got up grumpily, but quietly.


    Just as they stood up, Tisha''s stomach rumbled quite loudly causing an embarrassed blush to appear on her face as she quickly looked away, feigning as if it wasn''t her direction that the rumbling came from.


    Like a chain reaction, every other member of the B-squad''s stomach began to rumble loudly, almost causing Davies to burst intoughter at this unexpected but confusingly funny situation¡­ almost.


    Unfortunately, the bad feeling that he had been getting didn''t leave him with enough ease of mind to beughing at this situation, no matter how funny it may be.


    "Ah, for Christ''s sake," Davies began to rub his brow as he opened his inventory and put his hand inside, shocking every member of the B-squad as the lower part of his hand disappeared from view.


    In actuality, it didn''t disappear but had gone into one of the inventory boxes, but since the B-Squad can''t see anything of Davies''s system, all they saw was a part of his hand disappearing from view and then reappearing with a pack of potato chips.


    Davies threw the pack at Tisha before putting his back into the inventory and bringing out different types of snacks and packaged foods and throwing it to each of the B-Squad members, not forgetting to give them something to drink as well.


    "Put your mouth to use and eat that since you won''t be talking anyway," Davies said as he began to use his ice to create something.


    The snow from the floor began to rise, then began to twirl around itself, forming something distinctive before solidifying into ice.


    Davies had just created a miniature version of the ice fortress, though it wasn''t a perfect look-alike as Davies hadn''t seen everywhere or been everywhere in the ice fortress, so he used his discretion to fill out the ces he hadn''t seen.


    "This is the ce I found yesterday when I followed one of the monsters back to their base," Davies began.


    The members of the B-Squad though were nearly not paying attention, as they were stuffing their mouths with the edibles that Davies had given them, but whatever they were eating dropped from their mouths as they heard his next words.


    "I estimate that they are over six thousand monsters at the base, which coincidentally is about the same number of monsters we need to kill,"


    "So, we''re going there, and we''re going to kill them all,"


    "Everyst.one.of.them." he spelled out.


    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Hey Peeps, don''t forget to vote powerstones.

 Chapter 41 CHAPTER 41: "STRATEGY DISCUSSION" AND BAD FEELING

    ?*Crunch* *Crunch* *Crunch*


    *Swoosh*


    The sound of people running nimbly through the snowy forest filled the air as they ran continuously, dodging many trees as they ran.


    Davies was in the lead and the members of the B-Squad were just behind him.


    Jonas looked at Davies''s running figure as he recalled the so-called strategy meeting.


    **a Few minutes earlier**


    "I estimate that they are over six thousand monsters at the base, which coincidentally is about the same number of monsters we need to kill,"


    "So, we''re going there, and we''re going to kill them all,"


    "Everyst.one.of.them." Davies spelled out thest sentence especially.


    "W-W-W-Wait, what?" Arnim stammered fearfully, almost choking on the croissant that he was previously chewing on.


    "Do you have a problem with what I just said?" Davies said, his cold smile reappearing on his face, but it was pretty obvious he was ticked by this annoying idiot that acted like a coward.


    "But that''s impossible, we can''t do i¡­" Arnim began,


    "Hey, shut up, you''re not even going to be fighting so I don''t see why you''reining," Davies cut into his bbering.


    "Bu-¡­" Arnim began again,


    **Schrrkkk**


    Arnim had hardly managed to get a word out when an ice spike had shot out of the snow ground and flew past his face, slightly cutting him on the cheek.


    "Shut. Up," Davies said slowly, his eyes beginning to glow like emerald orbs due to his mana flowing out in an intimidating manner.


    *Gulp*


    Arnim swallowed hard,pletely frozen by fear and not even daring to check the cut mark on his face even though it stung.


    Every other member of the B-Squad was also watching the situation, unlike Arnim, they weren''t crybabies who wouldin, nor did they even dare to as they had a measure of Davies''s power level, and it was definitely higher than theirs¡­


    At least most of them knew that, and for the ones who didn''t¡­ like previously said, they weren''t crybabies.


    Jonas especially gulped hard because he was the fastest among the B-Squad yet even he didn''t see the attacking and he knew he could probably not avoid a sudden attack like that,


    ''Damn, he''s scary,'' he thought as cold sweat ran down his back.


    "You''re lucky I don''t want to kill you, so shut up, stuff your mouth, and listen," Davies said while looking at Arnim, but it felt like he was talking to every one of the B-Squad.


    "Anyways¡­ like I was saying, we¡­"


    "Sorry¡­ I mean, you guys are going to be fighting and aiming to kill all the monsters in that ce, while I''ll take care of the boss monster,"


    ''... and also, that elf named Khal Ed,'' but of course, he didn''t say that part out loud.


    "Though I could help you to take care of the other monsters if I feel like it¡­"<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "... But I don''t think I''ll feel like it," Daviesid out his n of attack.


    ''I thought you said you didn''t want to kill us!!!'' All of the B-Squad members screamed internally but didn''t dare to let out a single sound so as to avoid provoking Davies who was obviously in a bad mood, though the bitter looks on their faces told of their true thoughts, Davies wasn''t looking, neither would he care even if he did look.


    Why would he care about the thoughts of scrubs?


    "Is there anything else?" Teresa asked with her right hand raised in the air.


    "Other than the fact that you''re raising your hand like some nerd in high school¡­"


    "No, there''s nothing else," Davies responded and turned around.


    Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tisha almost raising opening her mouth and wanting to call out to him but closing her mouth midway and staying quiet.


    ''What''s her deal now?'' he wondered but didn''t act like he''d noticed and went to sit on the log that he had sat on the night before,


    "You have five minutes to stuff yourselves full before we leave, make it count¡­ who knows, you may not get another chance," those were his final words as he shut his eyes and sat down to wait.


    **Back to the present**


    They continuously ran after Davies as he led them in the direction of the ice fortress.


    Even the less physical fighters like Tisha and Teresa had to run as well even though they could manipte their abilities well enough to fly, this was all in a bid to avoid wasting mana before they even began the battle.


    They had to fight over 6000 beasts after all.


    Luckily, every person with an activated blessing had undergone a slight physique augmentation due to the mana flowing through and enriching their bodies so they were able to run this kind of distance quite easily.


    After running for about thirty minutes, the B-Squad members began to notice the trees bing more spaced and the greenery getting thinner.


    It was obvious that they were about to leave the forest area¡­ but to them, that didn''t matter,


    What mattered was where this demon called Davies Lake was leading them to¡­ and soon enough they got their wish as after they got out of the forest area they got to a cliff and here Davies slowed down, causing them to slow down as well, mirroring his movement.


    After they slowly moved to the edge of the cliff, they saw it¡­


    The huge ice fortress located on the huge sprawl of ice that led to who knows where and the huge ice castle-like fortress that stood out like a sore thumb, its icy blue color standing out very well among the expansive white that dominated the color of the snowynds.


    Seeing such a thing caused their brains to short-circuit for a little while, sending different types of thoughts going through their heads.


    After a few seconds, they had sorted out their thoughts and they now looked towards Davies for further instructions, but that was when they noticed that he had an even deeper frown on his face than before.


    Something was ruining his mood, and this did not bode well for them, so they cautiously took a step back due to the heavy atmosphere surrounding him.


    The cause of Davies''s heavier mood was the heavy mana that he was sensing flowing toward the ice fortress and umting somewhere inside the fortress.


    He didn''t know what exactly was happening in there, but as it seemed to be the source of his bad feeling,


    It probably wasn''t anything good.


    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Gimme powerstones.

 Chapter 42 CHAPTER 42: STORMING THE ICE FORTRESS

    ?''Did I miss something?'' Davies asked himself as he sensed the manaing from the fortress.


    It was so rmingly high that he couldn''t even miss it by mistake and even worse, more mana was flowing in that direction causing the amount to increase even further.


    "Huh?"


    Davies heard different gasps and exmations from behind him as the B-Squad members also noticed the huge amount of mana.


    ''Even those duds managed to notice the mana,'' Davies thought as he nced over his shadow at them, but then they immediately went quiet, leaving Davies wondering why they were so exceptionally quiet today, they were usually annoyingly loud in the one day he had known them after all.


    ''Hey Miya, correct me if I''m wrong, but I don''t think either Khal Ed or the other ice elf said anything about gathering huge amounts of mana, right?'' Davies asked thoughtfully.


    [No, they said nothing about it]


    [But don''t forget that while they mentioned attacking the outside world¡­]


    [... they never mentioned how] Miya replied quickly with her own personal thoughts and conclusion.


    ''Hmmmm¡­''


    ''So¡­ whatever is causing thatrge amount of mana to gather is their attack n,'' Davies concluded.


    ''See¡­ this is what it''s like when you''re actually helpful,''


    ''Two heads are truly better than one¡­''


    ''... actually, two minds in the same head,'' Davies said and chuckled lightly.


    [Hmph] Miya scoffed,


    [Well, whatever you have to do, make sure to do it fast]


    [I''m pretty sure I don''t need to tell you what would happen if that kind of mana is used for anything destructive]


    [... I''d rather not die before I get to watch the final part of the final season of Attack on Titans, so do me a favor and don''t die like an idiot]


    ''...''


    "... Ah, lord, I know that I am a sinner, but nothing I ever did deserves having inside my head," Davies facepalmed and grumbled in low tones.


    [Yeah, you deserve one of those dual cultivation systems that would require you to do nothing but find cock sleeves everywhere you go]


    [Though I''m pretty sure that would have worked well for you, you''re good at that anyway] Miya interjected and then went radio silent.


    After realizing that Miya wasn''t going to say anything else, Davies came out of his thoughts to focus on the current ring problem that needed to be solved sooner rather thanter.


    "Okay¡­ slight of ns," Davies called out with a loud tone to the B-Squad as he turned around to face them.


    "You guys should increase the speed at which you kill monsters while I will still take care of the boss, but I need to find out what is gathering that much mana,'' heid out his new ns,


    "Could it be a blessed treasure?" Anthony called out, causing everybody to look at him while fighting the urge to facepalm. Some of them couldn''t resist though and loud pping sounds rang out in the area.


    "Of course not, you dimwit, what type of blessed treasure gathers mana like that!!!" Is what Davies wanted to say, but he swallowed his words and contented himself with just ring coldly at Anthony, his eyes literally saying,


    "Please shut the f**k up,"<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Luckily, Anthony did shut the f**k up after being on the business end of Davies''s cold re, allowing him to get across his final words to the group.


    "Move smart, hit hard, and don''t die," he said and then turned his back on the group and began to make his way down the cliff, very quick on his feet.


    The B-Squad quickly followed suit and ran after him as he closed in on the ice fortress.


    As Davies got close enough, he noticed a gate made from ice where the opening into the fortress used to be.


    "That wasn''t herest time¡­"


    "... Well, nothing a little knocking wouldn''t solve," he muttered as he ran even faster towards the gate of the ice fortress while simultaneously activating his mana zone and conjuring three huge ice pirs with their ends sharpened before sending them flying at high speed towards the gate.


    "Knock, Knock,"


    *BOOOM*


    The ice pirs crashed heavily into the gates formed of ice and sted them into oblivion with a loud bang.


    "I know I said don''t die, but do try to stay alive," Davies slightly turned and said in the direction of Tisha before jumping and disappearing into the cloud of ice dust and snow flying around due to the ice pirs crashing into the ice gate.


    ''Dynamic Entry!!!'' Davies shouted internally as he came out of the other side of the cloud of ice dust and kicked a snow baboon across the face, sending it flying.


    "Grrrrooooooaaaahhhh!" the monster roared when it was sent flying.


    Who was this human that had destroyed the gate he was guarding and thene flying inside with his legs first and kicking him?


    Did he not even know basic courtesy?


    You''re supposed to greet people you know and meet for the first time with a handshake right?


    The snow baboon''s thinking time was cut short by an ice spear shooting towards its head, unfortunately, since it was airborne it could not dodge the ice spear and the ice spear ended up lodged in the snow baboon''s head, causing everything to go dark for the baboon.


    Davies didn''t have time to involve himself in any time-wasting battles so he quickly finished off the snow baboon and quickly began darting through the monsters in the direction of where the huge mana was being umted.


    The monsters tried to catch him or stomp on him, but Davies showed amazing mobility and dexterity as he made it halfway through the wave of monsters without being drawn into a fight, but it was taking too long, so he quickly activated the iplete elementalization technique and using that, he was able to make it out of the back of the monster wave without being drawn into a fight or even being noticed.


    He looked back in the direction of the gate of the fortress of the monsters, and he was able to hear the sounds of battle, it seemed the B-Squad was already battling the monsters.


    Once he had confirmed that, he dashed off in the direction of the mana. It didn''t seem to being from the direction of the boss''s room, but since he was following a trail of mana he didn''t get lost, and after a while, he finally reached the front of the room where the mana wasing from.


    He readied himself for a surprise attack, (if there was to be any) and opened the door of the room.


    Good, there was no surprise attack. There didn''t even seem to be anybody in this room for that matter. This caused Davies to ease up a bit, but the moment he noticed where the humongous amount of mana seemed to being from, all that ease flew out the window.


    [02:05:16]


    "Ah, shit,"


    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Send those powerstones my way, peeps.

 Chapter 43 CHAPTER 43: UNEXPECTED SITUATION... AGAIN

    ?[02:05:16]


    "Ah, shit,"


    [... That''s a timer, right?] Miya asked hesitantly.


    "I''m d I''m not the only one that can see it," Davies replied sarcastically¡­


    But Miya ignored his sarcasm and continued,


    [Anything that has a timer can''t be good news]


    "Well¡­"


    [I don''t think we should be here when that thing runs out]


    "... For once, I wholly agree¡­" Davies replied and quickly turned on his heels.


    There was no need for any further investigation, he already saw everything he needed to see in those few seconds, after all, he was a technological genius.


    What else could it be but a bomb.


    Only this bomb was a little special since itbined science and mana to create a devastating effect. Davies had never seen anything like it before, but he was able to determine that it would use the mana it umted during the countdown process to detonate the surrounding mana¡­ and with the amount of mana it already umted¡­


    Well, let''s just say, the nuke that destroyed Hiroshima was beginning to look like fireworkspared to this bomb.


    It was a ssic example of aged things are the best things¡­ ''who even came up with an idea where the longer the detonation time, the stronger the bomb,'' Davies thought to himself.


    "Yeah¡­ we really shouldn''t be here when that thing runs out,'' he affirmed as he increased his running speed as he made his way back out of the ice fortress,pletely ignoring the boss room.


    He didn''t have time to be in a long-drawn battle with a boss monster when there was a ticking bomb, strong enough to st him straight to game over.


    He ran as fast as he could, hoping that the B-Squad had at least been able to kill a lot of the monsters because now they were running out of time.


    After a few more minutes he reached the outer areas of the ice fortress and saw the monsters in a frenzy, still fighting against the B-Squad who seemed to have made their stand at the gate.


    Since he needed to make his way through the to be able to reach them, he decided not to waste any time and caused the snow underneath to form into an ice tform that shot him airborne towards the entrance of the fortress where the B-Squad were fighting against the monsters.


    Not nning to waste this chance that he had as he flew above the unguarded heads of the monsters; he quickly conjured a few ice projectiles and sent them crashing down on their heads like ice meteors.


    *BOOOM* *BOOOM*


    The loud booming sounds apanied Davies''snding, making it seem like an action movie where things blow up behind the MC as he does a superheronding.


    Davies did make a superheronding¡­ but he was no hero.


    As hended, he noticed some of them with injuries on their bodies already even though he had barely been gone for half an hour¡­ well, people don''t need half an hour to die, did they?


    Only two of them hadn''t been injured. Arnim because he was the healer and didn''t have to fight any monsters and Tisha because she could keep the monsters and any blood spilled from touching her due to her telekinesis.


    Anthony especially looked quite bloodied as he was acting as a tank to stave off the monsters, but blocking off this many monsters was an impossibility for him, it was even a wonder that he was still alive after going up against that many monsters.


    Luckily, he was now being healed by the sole healer in the squad, Arnim.


    ''Finally, that idiot was being useful,''


    Davies quickly summoned the status screen to check on their progress.


    ------------------------------


    Gate mission<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Kill 10000 monsters


    No of monsters killed: 4468


    --------------------------------


    ''It should take about forty minutes to get to the gate from here if we run at top speed, but we still need to kill over five thousand monsters,'' Davies thought to himself as he tried toe up with a reasonable time frame for their next actions.


    ''... they should be over five thousand monsters, right?'' he asked himself as he looked over at monster wave.


    [You should know by now]


    [Nothing ever goes as nned in this ursed world] Miya chimed in.


    ''...''


    ''...Really, Miya?'' he groaned internally, resisting the urge to facepalm as he recalled this quote was from a certain famous viin character.


    [What?]


    [If you may be dying in the next two hours, let me have my fun] Miya chuckled heartily.


    ''Ugh¡­''


    "Fine,"


    "I''ll do it myself,"


    [Hey, you''re doing it too!] Miyained.


    ''Shut up,'' Davies said and in a few quick motions created a wall of thick ice that surrounded him and the B-Squad.


    The ice walls should be able to hold out the monsters for a few minutes, just enough time for Davies.


    "Listen up, cuz I''m only going to be saying everything once¡­" Davies began immediately after conjuring the ice walls, calling all of the B-Squad''s attention to his words.


    "If you freak out or interrupt me, I''ll p you to kingdome," he continued with a half-hearted tone, but none of the B-Squad members thought he was joking because even if they couldn''t see it in his face, his eyes did little to hide his displeasure.


    After seeing that they were quiet and there seemed to be nobody who wanted to be pped to kingdome, he continued,


    "... There''s a bomb inside the fortress, one strong enough to get each of us VIP tickets to whichever afterlife you''ll be going."


    There was no way this didn''t cause waves in their hearts and questions to appear in their minds, but one look at Davies''s displeased eyes and they didn''t even try to open their mouths.


    Arnim almost opened his mouth to interrupt, but then he remembered what had happened earlier and he quickly shut his mouth.


    While it had been easy for him to heal the small mark on his face, the fact that his life had been threatened made it an unforgettable experience and his hand unconsciously went toward where the cut used to be on his cheek.


    "Due to this unexpected situation, there shall be a slight change in our ns," he began and then turned to Tisha,


    "Tish, create a barrier around your teammates, and the rest of you¡­ stay in the barrier if you don''t want to die," he finished and turned back towards the ice walls that were already beginning to show cracks.


    He cracked his neck,


    "This should be fun," a slight smile began to grace his lips, and a red aura slowly came off his body.


    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Gimme them stones!!!

 Chapter 44 CHAPTER 44: 1 AGAINST 5531

    ?''How much time do I have left,'' Davies asked Miya as he cracked his neck in anticipation of theing battle.


    [ 1 hour, 57 minutes, and 34 seconds]


    [ 1 hour, 57 minutes, and 33 seconds]


    [ 1 hour, 57 minutes, and 32 seconds]


    ''Ok, I get it, shut up!'' he quickly cut her off from droning on inside his head.


    [Tch¡­] Miya clicked her tongue in annoyance.


    Just a bit away from Davies, Tisha created her barrier and covered all the members of the B-Squad inside of the barrier.


    Davies who was the only one outside the barrier, ording to his orders, was wondering about something else.


    Earlier, when he had gone into the ice fortress, he had used his skill; snow sensing to look inside the boss room, but while he had been able to find the ice spike bear, he had not been able to find Khal Ed. He tried looking in other ces inside the ice fortress, but he still didn''t find him.


    With that, Davies was able to confirm that Khal Ed wasn''t in the ice fortress at this moment, but he also didn''t know where he was or whether he''d being back and that was why he was nning on going all out against the monster wave so he could kill enough monsters to finish the mission and leave the gate as soon as possible¡­


    But now, he couldn''t but wonder if that was a good idea. Davies was an unnaturally cautious person and he didn''t want to fall victim to another unexpected situation after using most of his energy to deal with the monster wave¡­ or even worse, while he was dealing with the monster wave.


    "... Ah, fuck it,"


    "Let''s just take things as theye, there''s not exactly much I can do about it now," he muttered to himself as he raised his hands, his mana beginning to roar within him as he cautiously watched the ice walls that were already cracking under the pressure of the various monsters on the other side of the wall.


    Davies didn''t let himself be distracted by the monsters and closed his eyes to focus on controlling his mana, the mana already gathering around him in inhuman amounts, but he didn''t stop and kept on gathering the mana that he was going to use for his attack.


    Finally, the ice wall couldn''t take it any longer and broke down, the monsters spilling inside of the walls and beginning to charge towards the most unguarded person, which happened to be Davies.


    The B-Squad members'' eyes widened in rm at this and some of them were even about to make a move to try and stop the inevitable from happening, but before they could even take half a step,


    Davies''s eyes shot open and an icy cold aura that was filled with murderous intent shot out from his body in all directions, causing every living thing around him to freeze¡­ not literally.


    They were paralyzed by his aura filled with murderous intent¡­ it was so heavy and potent that the B-Squad members began to gasp for their breath as each one of them fell to their knees with their hands around their necks.


    The monsters also weren''t spared from this effect and different scenes of mind-filled frenzy was beginning to showcase itself among the monsters.


    With eyes glowing like emeralds in the sun behind the lens on his face, he muttered,


    "Devastation¡­"


    "... Ice Fury,"


    Upon saying these words, all types of sharp weapons conjured from ice began to appear in the sky above him. There were so many different kinds of sharp weapons from ice that they covered the sky around the ice fortress.


    The murderous auraing off of Davies''s body had lessened enough for the monsters to be able to regain enough control of their body to look up.


    The B-Squad members also looked up to see the sharp ice weapons, hovering above the monster wave, but just as they expected it toe raining down, something else happened¡­


    The ice weapons began to move around in a circr motion, getting faster and faster until the weapons were no longer singrly visible and had now formed a whirlwind¡­


    A whirlwind of death, a rotating shredder that fell upon the monster wave and began to shred every monster it came in contact with to bits.


    Before ten seconds had passed, the whirlwind of rotating ice weapons had already taken on the red color and everywhere it passed through had been dyed in this color as well.


    Of course, the monsters weren''t going to sit down and wait for death and some of them tried to run, but the high speed at which the ice weapons were rotating already brought forth an attractive force so strong that hardly any monster was able to get out of reach and so the ice fury continued to devastate the battlefield leaving nothing but red in its wake.


    The whirlwind continued to pull more monsters into its embrace and then turned them into finely shredded red paint that was syed everywhere.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    After a lot of struggle, some monsters managed to escape the range of the ice fury''s devastation and were running for their lives, but Davies couldn''t have that.


    He quickly employed his sensing abilities to take note of where all the monsters that were still alive were and also the monsters that were trying to run away and immediately he noted their locations he snapped his fingers.


    Immediately, the whirlwind that had been going around, tearing up the battlefield, and the monsters, began to fling out the ice weapons that had now been covered in red, at the monsters that were still alive.


    The ice weapons shot out from the whirlwind at unimaginable speeds towards the monsters and impaled them continuously, turning them into porcupines with red icy spikes impaled all over their bodies.


    After the bloody ice weapons shot outpletely all over the ce stabbing everything and everywhere, Davies''s voice came forth again with another snap of his fingers.


    "Ice explosion¡­"


    *BOOOOOOMMMM*


    All of the bloody ice weapons exploded with great force, tearing up whichever monsters that were still whole and turning everywhere red with the blood and pieces of the monsters.


    Immediately a wave of dizziness and exhaustion hit Davies and he almost stumbled, but he brushed it away and stayed firm on his feet.


    Now that the show was over, all the members turned away to puke out whatever they had eaten just an hour earlier due to the horrible scene before their eyes.


    Even though most of them had killed monsters and all of them had seen monsters being killed before, they had never seen anything like this.


    It was too horrid, too unreal, but the metallic scent of blood and the color of red told otherwise. Everything that had happened was as real as it could get.


    Davies ignored their horrified looks and puking antics and focused on something more important¡­ he was years away from being moved by something like genocide.


    "Status screen," he called out, expecting the mission to bepleted after all the monsters he just killed.


    "Oh, hell naw!" he eximed the moment he saw the status screen.


    [What in heaven''s mercy!?]


    ------------------------------


    Gate mission


    Kill 10000 monsters


    No of monsters killed: 9999


    --------------------------------


    "How the hell are we short of one?" he was grumbling to himself when a deafening roar came from the inner area of the ice fortress, apanied by rapidly increasing sounds of footsteps.


    "ROOOOOOAAAAAARRRRRRR!!!"


    "For fuck''s sake," Davies sighed in anger.


    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Yayyy... we are now contracted guys.??


    Please send your power stones, golden tickets,ments, reviews, and maybe a few gifts my way and help support this book.


    Also, from next week, I will begin to post two chapters daily, so please your support will go a long way in motivating me to continually cook up good chapters for all of us.


    I''m sure you guys love this book as much as I do.??

 Chapter 45 CHAPTER 45: DEAD LOCK

    ?"For fuck''s sake," Davies sighed in anger.


    It was obvious that the boss monster; the ice spike bear wasing, and now due to being short of one monster toplete the mission, he would have to fight it and kill it.


    "Okay, another change in ns,"


    "Get your asses moving, make sure to get to the gate''s portal in the next forty minutes," Davies turned to the B-Squad members who were still in the barrier that Tisha set up.


    "Huh?"


    "What about you?"


    "What about-" they burst into a cacophony of questions that did a good job of annoying Davies even further.


    "Shut up," Davies cut in with a low tone, but it was enough to project his annoyance, as they quickly closed their mouths.


    "I''ll catch up¡­"


    "After I deal with the boss monster," Davies exined,pletely ignoring the sounds of booming footsteps and deafening roars that were getting louder every passing second.


    "But-" Teresa tried to protest.


    "No buts," Davies cut in immediately.


    "I''d rather not have to deal with a blubbering messy bunch while fighting that monster,"


    "... After all, you guys haven''t been very useful thus far," he stated.


    The members of the B-Squad looked away embarrassed because, in the end, he was kind of right.


    While it was true that they had not been totally useless, Davies, as a singr person had done more in this gate than all seven of them put together, so they couldn''t find any reasonable way to protest his words and could only keep quiet.


    "Well¡­"


    "Get moving already, you dimwits!" Davies''s voice came out a little high because he didn''t need them to be quiet and looking around embarrassingly, but to be running towards the entrance to the gate so fast, that their heels should be touching the back of their head as they ran.


    After Davies''s shout, they quickly came to their senses and hesitantly began to move away before increasing their pace and running at top speed toward the gate.


    Before beginning to move, Tisha had looked back at Davies with a determined look on her face, before moving along with her teammates as they ran towards the gate.


    Davies didn''t notice as he had already turned back towards the direction of the ice fortress, his annoyance growing by the second.


    "Whenever I find out whoever is causing my misfortune,"


    "I will stick a rod so far up their ass that their gag reflex will takr effect," Davies promised a world of pain to whoever was controlling his fate right now.


    [...]


    [What if it''s a beautiful woman?] Miya suddenly asked.


    ''...''


    ''In that case¡­''


    ''I''ll use my personal rod for the punishment,'' Davies replied, a meaningful smirk appearing on his face as he replied to her.


    [...]


    [You''re a pervert]<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    ''Well, darling,''


    ''...It is what it is,'' he replied again, the smirk not leaving his face even as the ice spike bear burst out of the ice fortress.


    The ice spike bear on the other hand, stopped immediately after it burst out of the ice fortress.


    What was going on?


    It hade here because it heard the sounds of fighting and it seemed like hisckeys were being killed, so where were they?


    Who was this human standing alone surrounded by the smell of blood and why was everywhere so red?


    Who did the paint job for his house and only chose the color red?


    Different questions filled up the head of the peak B-ranked ice spike bear as it looked at Davies, but it only took note of one thing, after all, its brain could only handle so muchplex information.


    This human was dangerous, so he had to be cautious as he fought him.


    Immediately it raised its paws and mmed down on the ground, sending ice spikes at Davies, who was immediately forced to dodge.


    Immediately after Davies got out of the way of the ice spikes the bear had shot at him, he quickly conjured a few ice spears and shot them at the bear in a bid to counterattack, but the huge ice spike bear just warded off Davies''s attack with its spiky ice skin.


    "Tch¡­"


    Davies clicked his tongue in annoyance after seeing his attack so easily warded off, but there was nothing he could do about it. This was an unexpected situation that he hadn''t nned for after all.


    He had originally hoped to kill enough monsters so he could quickly get out of the gate, and to do that, he had used most of his mana in dealing with all the previous monsters and now he barely had enough mana to be able to defeat this monster.


    This wasn''t in the n at all!


    But like they say, man proposes, God disposes.


    His n had ended in futility with him missing a single monster to kill to be able to leave this gate, and unfortunately, the only monster he could find right now, was the ice spike bear currently in front of him¡­


    Unless the B-Squad could find a monster to kill as they made their way towards the gate''s entrance, but he knew better than to count on them¡­ or more precisely, he didn''t count on anybody.


    His new strategy was to go for a battle of attrition while slowly regenerating his mana to a level where he could kill the ice spike bear and then quickly make his way toward the gate''s entrance and escape the gate.


    This was what he was nning to do, but after a few minutes of fighting against the ice spike bear, he realized that the bear was actually quite crafty.


    It had constantly attacked him from far off, forcing him to dodge or use his regenerating mana to block the attacks.


    Perhaps it was aiming to tire him out, but for Davies that was already exhausted and was trying to regenerate his mana, yet was constantly being forced to dodge attacks and use the little mana he had managed to regenerate to block attacks, it was very frustrating.


    Twenty minutester, Davies had not managed to be able to regenerate a major quantity of mana and was even more tired than when he started the fight.


    The battle had ended up going the only way he did not wish for it to go.


    It had entered a deadlock.


    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


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 Chapter 46 CHAPTER 46: BREAKING THE DEADLOCK I

    ?Davies didn''t like the current situation he was in. It was the only thing he could not afford to have happening to him right now.


    Had it been any other time, he would have continued to chip at the ice spike bear until he could finally break through with a devastating attack and finish off the bear no matter how long it would take, but he could not afford to do that right now.


    There was a ticking time bom-¡­ nuke on his ass, and it would blow up in just a little over an hour from now and he would still need at least forty minutes to make it to the gate no matter how fast he ran, but here he was, stuck fighting against this fu**ing bear.


    The worst thing was he couldn''t run away either. He couldn''t afford to turn his back to this bear, especially in his mana-degenerated and physically fatigued state, he didn''t dare to, otherwise, there''d be no need to wait over an hour, he''d be dead in seconds.


    He hadn''t f**ked a flight attendant yet. How could he bear to die a dog''s death in the first gate he went into¡­


    So, he continued doing what he was already doing, only this time, he made sure to do more dodging than blocking so he could regenerate as much mana as possible.


    It was harder and there were more than a few close calls, he had even gotten a few injuries, but he had finally managed to regenerate enough mana for an attack strong enough to kill the bear.


    The only problem was how to break past the bear''s defense of constant ice spikes flying his way. He needed to get close enough to be able to make a strike deadly enough that it was undodgeable and unblockable, but so far, he hadn''t found a chance yet, so he continued doing his best to dodge.


    It was unknown whether he was too physically tired, or because he was wearing the wrong shoes for an icy ce, but he slipped while trying to dodge one of the bear''s attacks.


    He didn''t fall, but the momentary pause to stabilize himself had left him vulnerable to an attack from the bear.


    Since he could no longer dodge the attack, he decided to block the attack.


    Blocking the attack would no doubt send him flying from the shock wave of the attack, but there was nothing he could do about that. It was either that or being impaled and there was no way he''d voluntarily choose to be impaled when he could do something about it, he wasn''t a masochist.


    He was about to block the attack when suddenly it seemed like the air in front of him solidified and blocked the ice spike attack from the bear before it could reach him.


    ''A barrier!'' his eyes widened immediately as he realized what had just happened.


    ''What is sses girl doing back here?'' he thought as he jumped back while looking around for Tisha, and sure as can be, she had arrived and was slowly floating down towards him.


    "I thought I told you to go to the entrance of the gate?" Davies asked immediately after shended, still not taking his eyes off the ice spike bear in case it made any moves, but the bear also didn''t attack.


    It seemed to be trying to gauge if the new human that just arrived was a threat to it, so it was watching them carefully.


    "We already arrived at the portal, but after we didn''t see any traces of the portal being opened yet, I came back," Tisha replied to Davies.


    "Why would youe back?" Davies asked with a raised eyebrow as he took his eyes away from the ice spike bear because he was surprised that she''de back here.


    "... Because¡­"


    "... I was worried¡­" she said in a low voice, but Davies''s ear still picked it up.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    [Awnn]


    ''What the f**k?'' at this point Davies himself was confused.


    [Hey Davies, tell the truth¡­]


    [Which love potion did you give her?] Miya asked in a shady tone.


    ''Hell if I know what she is on!'' Davies eximed internally.


    What the hell was this love at first sight sh*t.


    While it was true that he was handsome, rich, and powerful¡­ okay, he did tick all the boxes for a Mr. Right, but even that didn''t warrant a love at first sight that was already close to infatuation in such a short period of time without him even doing anything. This wasn''t some CEO romance novel after all.


    ''... but hold on¡­''


    ''... I can use this,'' Davies came to a realization. He was already looking for a way that he would be able to control and use her, especially after finding out about hertent potential.


    She was the most talented among the members of the B-Squad after all and he was trying to figure out how he was going to get her in his grasp, especially since she wasn''t exactly¡­ normal.


    His initial n was to find a way to use the only weakness about her that seemed to be present which was her brother, but that would be using fear to control her, and if she found a chance, betrayal wouldn''t be far off¡­ but with this, he wouldn''t even have to do anything.


    She literally climbed into his own arms and was going to be a very useful pawn.


    This reminded him of the Chinese saying that went like, "after being sold, you still helped the people that sold you to count the money".


    An evil smirk rose up on his face as he thought all this, but Tisha couldn''t see it because he was no longer facing her.


    Davies suddenly was pulled out of his thoughts by ice spikesing his way. He jumped towards Tisha, grabbed her around the waist, and pulled her out of the range of the attack.


    It seemed the bear had not deemed Tisha as a threat, so it continued its attack, but luckily, Davies had seen it just in time to be able to dodge the attack.


    After getting out of the way, Davies put Tisha down, ignoring her blushing face because of all the unscrupulous ces that his hands hade in contact with while carrying her, and asking her,


    "I need you to do something for me,"


    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Please vote powerstones, golden tickets, review and leavements if you wish to... but I hope you do wish to.

 Chapter 47 CHAPTER 47: BREAKING THE DEADLOCK II

    ?Davies requested immediately after he set Tisha down,


    "I need you to do something for me,"


    Tisha didn''t reply but it was obvious from the look on her face that she was listening to what he had to ask of her.


    "On my signal, I need you to use your telekinesis to send me flying as fast as you can toward that annoying bear,"


    "Can you do that?" Davies asked after making his request.


    Tisha nodded, albeit a bit hesitantly as she remembered thest time she had used her power on Davies and how he had reacted afterward, but since he was the one asking for it, there shouldn''t be a problem, right?


    "Ok, let''s go," Davies said after seeing her nod affirmatively. They started to run around the left nk of the monster but still gave it a wide berth with Davies in the lead and Tisha just behind him.


    Davies began to conjure a huge ice spear as he ran around the bear, while Tisha used her barrier to block the ice spike bear''s spike attacks.


    Once the ice spear grew to the size of a car, Davies shot it at the bear and shouted to Tisha.


    "Now!"


    Tisha quickly wrapped her telekic power around Davies''s figure before picking him up and sending him straight at the ice bear at the highest speed she could muster.


    Davies was sent flying at the ice spike bear at high speed after the huge ice spear that he had shot at the bear.


    The ice spike bear stood up on its hind legs to block the huge ice spear as it was too big for it to wave off and it was too slow to avoid the ice spearpletely, but as it did, it noticed Davies zeroing on his location.


    This was the idea that Davies hade up with¡­ divert the attention of the bear and upy its hands and then quickly move in for a lightning-fast attack and the first move in the attack was,


    *PUCHI*


    An ice spike quickly formed from the snow beneath the ice spike bear and shot upwards until it pierced into a weakness present in any animal¡­ it''s asshole.


    [Hidden jutsu; A thousand years of death!]


    "GRRROOOOOOAAAHHHHH"


    The ice bear threw its head backward and cried out in pain from being pierced anally, but Davies wasn''t going to let the bear go just because he tore him a new one,


    He quickly activated mana zone and conjured a huge ice sword above the ice bear and brought it stabbing down towards the bear''s head, but the bear managed to narrowly avoid death instinctively at thest moment.


    Though the bear had managed to avoid death by not letting the huge ice sword stab directly into its head, it had still not been able topletely dodge the ice sword and the sword had lodged itself into its body from its right shoulder causing the bear to lose its grip over the huge ice spear that Davies had first shot at it.


    The moment this happened, Davies mmed into the ice spear at high speed, leg first and pushing the spear into the chest of the ice bear and injuring it gravely, but this still wasn''t the end of Davies''s attacks.


    He used his mana to create two ice projectiles that looked like missiles with extremely sharp ends and shot them into the two eyes of the bear, effectively blinding it and piercing the brain of the bear.


    "Tick tock¡­ boom," Davies muttered as he turned away from the bear and began to walk while at the same time activating the skill "ice explosion and imploding all the ice "projectiles" that had been impaled into the bear.


    The ice blew up, shredding the brain and the¡­ of the bear.


    Overkill?


    Definitely, but Davies was a person that made sure that his enemies stayed deader than dead, he wasn''t a fan of resurrected enemies that had no businessing back to life but still doing it, though, for this poor bear, the chance was minuscule, but Davies didn''t care.


    ''You don''t need an asshole in the afterlife anyway¡­ pretty sure there ain''t nobody gay there, right?'' Davies couldn''t help but wonder, but he quickly put that aside and focused on something more important at the moment which was getting his ass out of the gate before the bomb blew up.


    ''Miya, how much time do we have left?'' he quickly asked.


    [29 minutes and 39 seconds]


    "Shit¡­ can''t make it out in ti-" he was muttering to himself until his eyes fell on Tisha who was waiting with an anxious look on her face.


    "... or can I?" a wry smile appeared on his face and he hastened his steps as he moved toward her.


    "We have to fly¡­ or you have to, and carry me along¡­ it''s the only way," Davies said the moment he reached her and this time Tisha didn''t have any hesitation,


    "Okay," she answered immediately and wrapped her telekic power around him and herself and shot them into the sky at high speed.


    ''Phew¡­'' though Davies didn''t reveal it on his face neither did he say it out loud, he was relieved that Tisha did end uping back for him, otherwise, his story would have ended before he even finished his first arc.


    He looked at the ground below them that whizzed past as they flew along but then noticed something strange.


    ''... huhh, Miya, is it just me, or does the ground seem to be getting closer?'' he asked about the strange urrence that he had noticed.


    [No kidding]


    Immediately he looked up at Tisha who was responsible for their flight and quickly noticed that she was sweating quite a bit and looked tired and winded like she had justpleted a ten-kilometer run.


    "...!" before he could even get a chance to say a word, he felt the warm feeling of being wrapped in Tisha''s telekic force disappear and they began to plunge toward the ground.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Shit!" he quickly used his mana to conjure an ice tform beneath his feet that he used to push himself towards Tisha and catch her before he began to fall as it didn''t seem like she had the energy to do anything to protect herself as she fell.


    *PLOSSH*


    They fell into the snow after falling for about two seconds. Luckily, they weren''t far from the ground and the snow on the ground was quite thick, so it easily cushioned their fall.


    He quickly pushed Tisha away from on top of him and got up as this wasn''t the time to lie in the snow and make snow angels.


    "I ran out of mana¡­" Tisha''s weak apologetic voice reached his ears as he rose up.


    "Figures¡­" for once, Davies didn''t me her as this situation was inevitable and he didn''t have the time to think about it earlier.


    She had fought with her teammates against the monsters, then she had gone with them to the portal to the gate, then she had flown back at top speed towards Davies and helped him with his battle against the ice spike wolf and had then begun to fly them back to the gate and had already flown them more than halfway there.


    It would be stranger if she wasn''t out of mana.


    This was why she was now showing signs of "mana overuse." It happens when any being that uses mana uses enough mana to the point where it interrupts the mana being used for bodily functions and the symptoms that apany it are weakness, temporary paralysis, and many others.


    Unfortunately, Davies was now back to having to run to the gate, but carrying Tisha along would end up slowing him down and was not a feasible option.


    But he''d be damned if he just let go of the pawn he had just managed to acquire, so he quickly picked her up and began conjuring a t tform under him with some specific qualities¡­ he ended up creating a snowboard and firmly setting his feet on the ice snowboard and freezing his legs to the snowboard, he began to snowboard as fast as he could with the help of his ice powers.


    ''How many minutes?'' he didn''t need to borate on the question for Miya to understand what he meant, and she quickly answered,


    [19 minutes, 56 seconds]


    ''Noted'' he nodded slightly and employed his ice powers to go even faster.


    ''...I never thought there woulde a day when I would snowboard in a gate wearing a shirt, trousers, and dress shoes, and have a ticking bomb on my ass,'' he thought wistfully to himself.


    [With a hottie in your arms] Miya added and giggled, but you could hear the unease in her voice if you listened well enough.


    Both Davies and Miya were very anxious, but they''d never admit it and they coped with it through their various means of coping with anxiety. Davies by acting as if the problem didn''t exist and focusing on something else to distract himself and Miya by pricking at Davies at every opportunity.


    Their anxiety though couldn''t match Tisha''s as she was carried along by Davies. She was feeling extremely useless right now, but she didn''t even have the energy to do anything about it as she had already burnt herself out.


    Finally, Davies could see the portal that led out of the gate, and to his utter shock, the members of the B-Squad were waiting at the portal.


    "Ahh, for Chris''s sake¡­"


    "Get in the portal you fu**ing blobs of uselessness!" for the first time, Davies had to shout at the top of his voice at them as he approached.


    What the f*k were they doing waiting for him?


    Who waits around when there''s a nuke that can wipe you out at any time?


    This was stupidity, utter stupidity, there was no other way to exin it.


    [Ten seconds]


    [Nine]


    [Eight]


    ''Shit, shit, shit,'' Davies increased his speed and was finally almost at the gate.


    [Three]


    [Two]


    [O-]


    ''Goddamit shut up!!!'' Davies bellowed inside his head as he arrived in front of the portal, that led outside the gate.


    *BOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM*


    Davies didn''t need an invitation to jump inside the portal headfirst and instantly fall out on the other side.


    Out of the corner of his eye, as he was still mid-air, he noticed that the portal wouldn''t close immediately and would require about three seconds to close, so he didn''t make any attempt tond on his feet and continued falling towards the ground, but not forgetting to shout,


    "Get down!!!"


    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Gimme powerstones... a lot of em.

 Chapter 48 CHAPTER 48: OUTSIDE THE GATE

    ?**Outside the gate¡­ 6 days ago¡­**


    The mana around the gate suddenly in quantity and mana constructs shaped like chains wrapped around the gate.


    This sudden change startled everyone outside the gate and they literally froze in shock.


    Mission gates were just that rare.


    A few momentster, the momentary freeze in shock disappeared as if it never existed in the first ce and a mad frenzy took over.


    The media that was waiting around the gate and had taken a few pictures of Davies and the B-Squad before they had gone into the gate were now shing their cameras at full power towards the gate and taking pictures every second.


    At that moment, almost everyone had forgotten about the people who had just gone into the gate¡­ almost everyone.


    Daniel was just short of panicking, but his knowledge about Davies told him that he should be able to handle a B-rank dungeon, but the uncertainty of what could happen inside a mission gate gued his mind constantly.


    He did manage to stay calm in the end, but he resigned himself to wait here until his boss came out of the gate¡­


    **Somewhere else in Yorkshire City (still 6 days away from present time)**


    Inside a rundown house in a terrible neighborhood, Lee Jung could be seen raging around inside the self-contained room that he hadn''t managed to pay the rent for in thest 3 months, "How dare that bastard fire me for something that wasn''t my fault,"


    "How could he be so unreasonable to expect me to use my body to protect his car¡­"


    "Ahhh¡­ I''m not reconciled! He is even forcing Miss Jessica to go out with him,"


    "I wish I had the power to go against people like him,"


    "I''ll trample on him¡­" Lee Jung was in the middle of his ranting fantasies when a sudden voice from inside his head interrupted him,


    [System binding to host]


    "Huh?"


    "What''s that?" Lee Jung was visibly shocked by the strange monotone voice and the blue holographic screen that suddenly appeared in front of his eyes and he stumbled backward and fell onto his worn-down bed.


    *CREEEAAK*


    *CRASH*


    The poor bed could not take another body m and ended up breaking with a loud crash.


    "JUNG BASTARD!!!"


    "WHAT ARE YOU BREAKING UP THERE HUH!!!???"


    "YOU DON''T PAY RENT, BUT YOU STILL HAVE THE NERVE TO BREAK STUFF!!!"


    "YOU USELESS PIECE OF SH*T, MOTHERFU*KING BAST-" all sorts of obscenities came from the lower floor; obviously the angryndlord was screaming obscenities all while charging up the stairs towards Lee Jung''s apartment''s door.


    It took more than thirty minutes of constant begging and cajoling and promises to pay for everything to be able to make thendlord leave Lee Jung alone and not tear him up to pieces.


    "Phew¡­" Lee Jung heaved a sigh of relief as he closed the tform of rotten wood and peeling paint that was supposed to be his door, shut.


    "Seems he can''t see this thing," he muttered as he slid against the door with his back until he sat on the floor.


    On the blue holographic screen, all that was written on it were three words,<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    [Universal Exchange System]


    "..." Lee Jung didn''t know what to make of this situation, but the feeling of giddiness welling up from deep within him told of his indescribable joy at this moment.


    He had read books that told of this kind of situation and the scene that followed where the main character would start reaching for the top of the world and gathering beauties on the way and he couldn''t believe that it was happening to him at this moment.


    ''It was finally his turn to be great.''


    ''All who had trampled upon him in the past would pay the price in theing future.''


    ''All those women he had his eyes on would fall into his arms readily in no time.''


    All these thoughts ran through his head and his already unreasonable pride rose even further due to these thoughts.


    [Would you wish to ept the system?]


    [Y/N]


    The blue screen asked, and a strange look immediately appeared on his face.


    Why would he even consider letting go of this chance to be the main character that he had always wished he could be.


    ''Only an idiot would refuse,'' he thought and quickly clicked on "Yes"


    [Confirmation Sessful]


    A wide grin popped up on his face when the next thing on the blue holographic screen popped up,


    [Click to Open Starter pack]


    He quickly tapped on the blue screen to begin the process, not knowing that one day he would look back on this moment and wish he never epted to merge with this system because after making this decision, he had put himself on the radar of an undying, untiring and hate-filled character that hated his kind and would stop at nothing to extinguish and exterminate them, but not before taking them through hell first, but this was a story for the future.


    For now, he could only ignorantly enjoy his moments of happiness and further moments of victories but inevitably one day, he would be brought crashing down¡­ hard.


    **Back to Present¡­ Outside the gate**


    "GET DOWN!!!" Davies shouted as he fell to the ground along with Tisha''s limp body in his arms.


    Due to his scream, the B-Squad members who had also juste out of the gate instinctively followed his orders andy down immediately and that was the best decision they had made today, as in less than a second after they got on the ground a wave of highlypressed of fire sted out of the portal of the gate and swept just narrowly over their heads at extremely rming speeds.


    Luckily, the gate closed in another few seconds and the me no longer having a source died out quickly.


    The members of the B-Squad that were on the ground still didn''t dare to raise their heads, their backs were drenched with cold sweat as they thought of the narrow escape they had just now thanks to Davies''s shout.


    As they all finally rose from the ground, they shot him looks of gratitude, but then a bright sh of light shone across them in the blink of an eye.


    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    It''s a new week guys... Time to get on that ranking, pls continue to vote powerstones so we can rise further on the rankings this week.


    We capped at rank 27 of the seasonal powerstone rankings ofst week... I hope we can go even further this week.


    VAMOS!!!

 Chapter 49 CHAPTER 49: OUTSIDE THE GATE II

    ?Just before the first sh from the cameras, an ice mask formed on the lower half of Davies''s face as he stood up so when the cameras started shing constantly, they weren''t able to get his full face on camera.


    Davies didn''t mind the fame, but he''d rather not have every single Tom, Dick, and Harry know his face, his name being famous was enough.


    With Tisha still in his arms, his eyes swept across the area around the parking lot and fell on Daniel who stood nearby the gate, he began to walk towards Daniel with an unconscious and unresponsive Tisha in his arms, it seemed she had finally lost consciousness.


    With a few long strides, he was standing in front of Daniel,


    "I made it out¡­"


    "...You made it out¡­," Daniel''s voice came back, but it sounded quite weak.


    "So¡­ what''s next on the schedule?"


    "Hah? Haha," Daniel''s surprised but weak tone and lowughter was the only response he received.


    Daniel''s body suddenly wavered slightly, but he managed to hold himself up and not fall, but Davies''s discerning eyes noticed it and wondered why he seemed excessively weak at the moment.


    "... Let me first send her to the hospital," Davies said and gestured by slightly raising Tisha in his arms, and without waiting for Daniel''s response he began to walk in the direction of the medical staff that had just arrived with an ambnce.


    A stretcher was quickly brought forth and Davies carefullyid Tisha down onto the stretcher and watched the stretcher being carried away toward the ambnce.


    They probably had some emergency medication or process they had to administer to her with the way they rushed her off after knowing what happened, but Davies didn''t know what it was, his specialty was in taking lives, not saving them.


    Seeing the other members of the B-Squad being surrounded by other medical staff reminded him that he had also sustained some injuries while he fought the bear.


    He hadpletely forgotten about them as he had always been good at handling pain but they were light enough for a little bit of ster to fix, but if even ster wasn''t enough he had duct tape so he didn''t n on getting some medical staff to fuss over his injuries.


    This had nothing to do with the fact that there wasn''t any beautiful medical staff around, nope, absolutely had nothing to do with that.


    As Davies was about to make his way back to the car, he suddenly overheard something interesting.


    "That bodyguard really has such strong devotion and amazing loyalty," one man said.


    "Or maybe he''s being paid too much," another added.


    "... I don''t know what his motivation was, but to stand in the same spot for thest six days without moving a single muscle, just wow," the first man continued, seemingly dazzled.


    "Haha, almost thought he had be a statue," the other man said with a littleugh.


    Davies''s sharp ears picked up this conversation between two men standing a bit far off. They seemed to be a part of the team that was supposed to bring out the useful things inside the gates including but not limited to body parts of the monsters killed in the gates.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    ''Did that happen?'' he thought, and he turned his head to look toward Daniel who was now standing beside the Ventley.


    To say Davies was emotionally touched¡­ would be an absolute lie, but he was definitely impressed by this act of loyalty and trust in him.


    Looking over at Daniel carefully, he could see the weakness that he had tried to hide, he''d probably soon copse if nothing was done, and Davies couldn''t have that happening for some special reasons.


    Letting him be treated by the medical personnel that was around was another thing that couldn''t happen, so Davies quickly began to walk over, while ignoring the call from some medical officers to help him treat his injuries and the annoying, constant shing of the cameras.


    What were they even trying to capture, that those mofos'' kept on shing their cameras all over the ce, there was literally nothing to see but his handsome face, and even that was half-covered by the ice mask he had formed on his face.


    In less than ten seconds he was beside the car and opened the driver''s seat ignoring Daniel''s attempt to open the door for him to get in.


    "Get inside," he said and didn''t even bother to wait to see if he replied, protested, or obeyed, but Daniel obeyed the order and got in the car, the energy to protest had long left his body and the moment his bodynded on the soft andfortable chairs of the luxurious vehicle, he lost consciousness immediately.


    Luckily, the car had an automatic door-shutting feature, because Davies was not the type of person that was nice enough to get back out and shut the door to make sure that Daniel wouldn''t fall out of the car.


    Davies started the vehicle and looked at the time being disyed on the digital disy inside the car,


    [4:07am]


    It turned out it was pretty early in the morning. Since it was dark out, Davies couldn''t really tell earlier.


    He put the car in gear and drove out of the parking lot at a moderate pace, surprisingly.


    Davies wasn''t trying to be considerate of Daniel or anything, but he saw no point in breaking things he could still use, especially when they functioned quite well, after all, there was no benefit in working Daniel to death, especially when he was quitepetent at what he did.


    He drove onto the highway and began to make his way back to his residence.


    After about an hour of driving, Davies pulled up into the driveway of his mansion after passing through the automated gates.


    He came down from the car and opened the backdoor and carried Daniel into the house and dumped him into the first bedroom he found.


    After that he walked towards his bathroom, he needed a bath to wash clean and to clear his thoughts.


    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    More powerstones please...


    For those that read thest chapter already, I ended up changing the number of days that had passed outside the gate to 6 days instead of 3.

 Chapter 50 CHAPTER 50: EARLY HOURS

    ?Steaming water rushed into a wide Jacuzzi bathtub from the taps and began to rapidly fill it up.


    Davies stepped into the Jacuzzi and let the water run across his muscles, soothing and rxing his body.


    "Hahhhhh¡­" he let out a huge relieved sigh as he rested his back on the side of the tub.


    As the water ran across his body, soothing him and rxing him in more ways than one, his mind ran back to the events that had urred inside the gate.


    Contrary to what normal people may think, he wasn''t distressed by finding out that Yorkshire would be attacked in the near future and would probably be overrun due to the surprise attack and may end up destroyed.


    Of course, now that he knew he could begin to make ns and work with the right people to find a way to prevent the inevitable attack from destroying the city, but¡­ why should he do such a thankless task?


    He wasn''t some jobless hero that would go around stabbing his nose in everybody''s business and proiming he wanted to save everyone.


    Even if he did decide to save the city, there was no gain that he could see that would overwrite the cost that he''d have to pay to save the city, and if his gain wasn''t something heaven-defying, then he had no interest in such a tiring task.


    Something like the fame that woulde if he were to save the city, were things that he could do without.


    Now that he had decided, the next option was to leave the city, though this was going to be a fair bit annoying as he had a lot of assets in this city.


    He would have to find a way to move them to another ce, and though this would take some time, he luckily still had the leisure of time.


    He nned to take his time with moving his assets as he still had a fair bit of time before he had to leave and also¡­ he had a leek to harvest in this city before he went anywhere.


    With all these thoughts running through his mind, Davies began to formte a n along with many fail-safe ns, because he had seen enough in thest few days to know that well-thought-out ns never went smoothly as long as that sonofabitch called "Fate" is involved.


    One thought of his stood out among all his other thoughts,


    ''If I''m going to make any foolproof ns, I need to finish "that",'' he thought to himself as he rose from the tub, water dripping off of his body.


    He stepped out carefully and dried himself with a towel before putting on a bathrobe and walking out of the bathroom and moving toward his bedroom.


    After getting to the room he opened his wardrobe only to meet empty air and hangers. He then remembered that he still hadn''t had time to go to get himself some clothes ever since he returned.


    Luckily, there were about five days worth of clothes in the suitcase he had brought along with him, the only problem was they were all casual, and he was about to head to thepany building, but one secondter, that thought disappeared.


    He owned the ce anyway, so no one could tell him what to wear anyway, so he pulled the suitcase out, set it on the bed, pulled open the zipper, and began picking out clothes.


    In the end, he settled for a white inner shirt, a baggy multi-colored sweater, baggy cream-colored cargo pants, and white Nike air force 1s.


    After wearing the clothes, he wore two silver neck chains, one earring on his left ear, a custom-made watch, put on his sses and then slid in front of the mirror,


    "Mirror mirror on the wall,"<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "I ain''t too tall, ain''t too short, Damn if I don''t have it all," he recited with a narcissistic smile as he checked himself out for a few seconds while rubbing his palms together.


    After admiring his face and his handsome figure for a few minutes he turned and began to walk out of the room, making his way to the dining room.


    He had already reached the dining room, hungry for food when he remembered that Daniel was in no condition to take care of his meals.


    "Well damn," he muttered but then looked outside the window and realized that the sun was already out and he could probably find breakfast to eat somewhere on the way to thepany, so he quickly looked at his watch to verify the time.


    [7:17am] he calcted the time from the long hand and short hand of the watch that gleamed in the morning light due to the beautiful design and precious stones that were iid into it.


    He picked up the keys of the Ventley and began walking outside to where he had parked the car earlier. He got pulled open the door and got in started the car and began to drive down the driveway.


    The automated gates pulled open and he drove through and got on the main road, the car picking up the pace as the engine roared louder when Davies pushed harder on the elerator.


    As soon as he was on the main road he double-tapped a screen on the dashboard and an emotionless voice rang out,


    [Good morning Mr. Lake]


    [The time is 7:20am, and the weather forecast for today is sunny and cloudy]


    [Determining route¡­]


    [Traffic level; low]


    [How may I help you?] the inbuilt AI system asked.


    "Call Lina," Davies requested keeping his eyes on the road as he drove with one hand on the steering wheel.


    "Calling Lina," the mechanical GPS-like voice answered back and began dialing the number of the person named "Lina"


    *Ring* *Ring* *Ring*


    *Click*


    "Hello," immediately after the third ring, a low-sounding and seductive voice that was full of womanly charm rang out from the inbuilt speakers inside the car.


    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Please don''t forget to vote powerstones...

 Chapter 51 CHAPTER 51: A PERSON NAMED LINA

    ?*Ring* *Ring* *Ring*


    *Click*


    "Hello," a low-sounding and seductive voice that was full of womanly charm rang out from the inbuilt speakers inside the car.


    "Hey Lina," Davies greeted from inside the car, doing his best to ignore the voice that was seductive enough to cause excessive blood flow to some specific parts of the male body.


    "I need you to go check on El¡­"


    "At my house¡­ I''m pretty sure you know where it is," Davies continued without waiting for a reply.


    "What happened?" the seductive voice came back with a tinge of worry now added to it, it seemed the woman on the other end of the call wasn''t making her voice seductive, but it was more her natural sounding voice.


    "Nothing much, don''t worry about it,"


    "Just check whether there''s a need for extra medication and figure something out,"


    "You''re good at that anyway," Davies replied as he swiftly turned the steering and rounded a corner while keeping his eyes peeled for a restaurant, coffee shop, or something¡­ his stomach was protesting this impromptu fast.


    "Ok¡­ I''ll do it," Lina agreed to his request and was about to hang up but then she asked,


    "... Wait, how do I get in?"


    "..."


    "Do you actually expect me to believe you need a key to enter my house," Davies chuckled as he came to a stop.


    "A busted," she answered with a disappointed tone like a deer caught in headlights.


    "You could have just replied like, e and see me to collect the keys," she said, sounding disappointed. Davies imagined that she must be pouting right now.


    "Haha," Davies chuckled lightly,


    "You know we can''t meet up," he continuedughingly.


    "But I miss you," Lina''s voice took on another level of seductiveness as she said this.


    "I don''t," Davies replied immediately, but his body was more honest as something was rising, but it wasn''t the shield hero.


    "Are you sure?" Lina asked in an even more teasing tone and her voice fully took on the tone of an expert seductress.


    "..."


    "Maybe I do miss you a bit¡­"


    "Just a tiny bit," Davies finally admitted honestly.


    "Annn, little Davies misses me," she teased.


    "Who you calling little? Seem like you need another lesson about the big things in life," Davies retorted.


    "I''ll be waiting for your lesson then,"


    "... S.E.N.S.E.I," she spelled out her words slowly and said in a low tone that was like the whispers of a subus.


    "*Isssssshhh*" Davies took in a very deep breath as her words were making the risen tower harden.


    "Just get off my phone you damn seductress," he quickly said and hung up the call before she said something even more stimting.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Looking at the tent that had pitched in his pants, he thought, ''maybe I shouldn''t have called her,'' but he didn''t really have much of a choice.


    He looked outside at the number of people going to their ces of work and starting their day on an energetic note. They didn''t know that there was an impending danger that threatened to crush this ce to dust two years from now.


    ''What a pity," he thought, but he still wasn''t interested in taking up the thankless task of saving the city from its inevitable ruin, these people could go to die, for all he cared."


    He looked out at the shop he had stopped in front of, a quaint-looking shop. It seemed like an old establishment that dealt very well with early morning meals.


    He could tell by the more-than-average number of customers going into the shop.


    After waiting a few minutes in the car while waiting for the awakened dragon to return to its slumber while also making a few purchases from his phone, he also got down and joined the people going into the shop to get something to eat.


    Due to the morning rush of people going to their various ces of work, not many noticed him when he got inside the restaurant.


    [Bogey spotted] Miya suddenly called for rm,


    ''What the fu*k you mean bogey spotted? This isn''t Top gun,'' Davies said with a littleugh at Miya''s choice of words.


    [It''s Lee Jung]


    ''I already saw him,'' Davies replied, his eyes looking at a grey-haired woman sitting at a table in the restaurant and drinking from a cup of coffee and a young Asian man who seemed to be trying to talk to her, but the woman seemed to be ignoring the young Asian man.


    Jessica was the grey-haired woman and she seemed to be ignoring Lee Jung''s attempt to talk to her.


    ''Just to be clear Miya?''


    ''I have to do things like causing the fated protagonists to lose their fated opportunities or steal them,"


    "Or causing him to miss out on establishing great rtionships and also stealing his female lead(s), and then end everything with making him lose reputation to the point where everybody wants him dead,"


    "Only then can I kill him,"


    "Right?" Davies asked so he wouldn''t be shooting blindly and doing some thankless tasks.


    [Yeah, that''s about it] Miya responded.


    ''Ok, good,'' Davies nodded and began to walk towards where Jessica and Lee Jung sat.


    He didn''t know what brought about this current situation where Lee Jung was so brazenly trying to hit on Jessica, but for now, that wasn''t his concern, there was something even more interesting on his mind.


    Davies walked up from behind Jessica and kissed her on her cheek as he slid into the seat beside her,


    "Hey Jessie, missed me?"


    "Huh, who is this b-?" Jessica was startled by the sudden kiss on her face and was about to let out a flurry of words at whichever person had dared to kiss her without her consent, but immediately she saw Davies''s face she couldn''t say a word and her mouth kept opening and closing like a goldfish.


    "Who is this bastard?" Lee Jung was infuriated that the girl he had been talking to was suddenly kissed by another guy while he was right in front of her, but when he saw Davies''s face, he was shocked,


    "You!"


    "When did you get out?"


    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    I''ve been working on the auxiliary chapter where I exin quite a lot of the terminologies to be used in the story and also things about specific characters and even the images of some of the characters.


    Pleasement if there''s anything you want me to borate upon in the auxiliary chapter and as always, please vote powerstones.

 Chapter 52 CHAPTER 52: EKELEBE STUNNER

    ?"Who is this bastard?" Lee Jung was infuriated that the girl he had been talking to was suddenly kissed by another guy while he was right in front of her, but when he saw Davies''s face he was shocked,


    "You!"


    "When did you get out?"


    "... Do I know you?" instead of answering Lee Jung''s question, Davies retorted with a question of his own.


    ''I was your valet 6 days ago until you fired me for allowing your car to be destroyed by a Mega''s attack. Something that wasn''t even my fault!!!'' is what Lee Jung screamed inside his head, but he didn''t say it out loud as his pride wouldn''t allow it.


    Jessica on the other hand wanted to talk about Lee Jung''s identity, or whatever she thought it to be, but as she opened her mouth to speak, Davies''s finger found its way to her lips, shushing her,


    "The only thing your lips should be doing right now is having a lot of physical contact with mine, so no need to say anything," he said to Jessica with his finger on her lips, then he turned to Lee Jung,


    "Seeing how you''re silent, I can''t tell whether we''ve actually met or not so you''ll have to forgive me¡­ I-"


    "I tend to only remember important people," Davies said with an apologetic tone, but his eyes showed no form of apology or respect and only haughtiness as if he was above Lee Jung¡­ and to be fair, he was.


    "Unless of course, if you have some strange intentions towards my "property"...",


    "Then we''re gonna have a problem," he said, not mentioning what this property was, but it was pretty obvious what he meant, both to Lee Jung and to the onlookers who were now watching the early morning drama.


    "Look, look, two guys fighting over a girl," a teenage girl called the attention of her friend to what was happening.


    "Young people of nowadays¡­" an old man sighed as he looked at them from the corner of his eyes and left the restaurant holding a cup of coffee.


    "Jessica is not anybody''s property, she is a free woman and is not own-" Lee Jung began to say but Davies immediately interrupted.


    "Just shut up, okay. Nobody wants to hear a speech about feminism this early in the morning," Davies immediately cut in before Lee Jung could activate his "talk no jutsu" and turn everybody watching the scene into his devout followers¡­ except him of course, that would never work even if Lee Jung could use Kotoamatsukami.


    "..." Lee Jung was stunned into silence at Davies''s confusing way of twisting the conversation into something that made almost no sense, causing him to be lost for words every time they met, but that was to be expected, you can''t expect to win a war of words against someone who had been using his sharp tongue for five different lifetimes¡­ though he died early in all of them, it still counts.


    "Since you have nothing to say, then shoo, shoo," Davies said when he realized that Lee Jung had no words to retort.


    ''He''s still too green¡­ this is boring,'' he thought and decided to let Lee Jung go for now as there was nothing much he could do to him in this situation without making himself the obvious aggressor.


    For the first time hemented at the uselessness of the system because without any information, or special features to help him out, he was literally shooting blind.


    This was on a difficulty of legendary hardcore mode.


    It seemed he needed to put more thought into how he was going to go around this whole thing, so it wouldn''t end up with him wasting time and opportunities.


    With these thoughts in mind, also came a change in his mood as he no longer desired to y around with Lee Jung and it could be heard in a change of his tone.


    "Why should I leave, you don''t own this ce," Lee Jung immediately retorted with a smirk.


    "Oh?" Davies''s eyebrow immediately rose at this provocation, he had already nned to let him go, but now he was going to do something instead.


    "Hey!" Davies called to one of the attendants, a young brown-haired teenage girl,<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "What''s the name of this shop?" he asked with a small smile, but that smile was enough to pry open the mouth of the young girl, even though the question was weird as the name was written on a signboard outside the restaurant, but how was she to know that Davies was toozy to bother standing up to check.


    "The Rising Sun," she replied to Davies''s question, totally entranced by his enchanting green eyes that gleamed behind the lens of the sses he wore.


    "Ok, thank you. Please get me a coffee and anything on the menu," he replied and took out his phone.


    "Any-thing?" the brown-haired girl was a bit flustered, but quickly began moving.


    Davies operated the phone smoothly, tapping on his contacts button and calling someone, then he put the phone on speaker and put it on the table.


    *To copy this tune, press one*


    *Do like Den Rice*


    *Anytime Ie, I go push dem to the curb*


    *Smack them, push them to the corner*


    *Ekelebe stunner*


    *Woze am*


    *Na me be their father*


    *Yes, Trillo tell me say na native be the matter*


    The call tune of the person he was calling rang out and it was loud enough for everyone in the small restaurant to hear it¡­ or more like the people in the restaurant were paying so much attention to the conflict between Davies and Lee Jung that they were silent enough for the sounds of the call tune to reach every corner of the restaurant.


    ''What type of call tune is this,'' Davies fought the urge to facepalm.


    "I leave Abujae ra, I left my mother," some teenagers that knew the song hopped in and started singing the lyrics along with the song.


    "To Addis-Abbaba, them go erect modu -"


    *Click* the call tune was interrupted by the call being picked up on the other side of the call, much to the dismay of the people that had started singing along.


    A confident tone that one could not put together with the call tune that resounded in the restaurant earlier, rang from the speaker of Davies''s phone.


    "Hello Mr. La-" the voice began, but was immediately interrupted by Davies,


    "Do you know a shop called The Rising Sun?"


    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Sorry for thete chapter today guys... me was very tired and couldn''t work up the motivation to do it earlier.


    Don''t forget to vote powerstones

 Chapter 53 CHAPTER 53: UNEXPECTED DEVELOPMENT

    ?"Hello Mr. La-" the voice began, but was immediately interrupted by Davies,


    "Do you know a shop called The Rising Sun?" Davies asked.


    "The Rising Sun?"


    "I''ll have to check," the voice came back and then they heard different soundsing from the other sides of the phone.


    Lee Jung and the onlookers still didn''t know where this was going and they were a bit confused, but they waited to see what Davies was trying to do.


    "Oh, I found it,"


    "It''s a small restaurant somewhere on third avenue, just behind wall Rose and not too far away from wall Maria," the man seemed to be reading out the information from somewhere.


    "Oh, you found it?"


    "Good¡­ now I want you to buy it, or buy thend it''s standing on¡­"


    "Right now,"


    "I''ll be expecting the results soon," he said in aid-back tone and hung up the call immediately.


    "Pfffffff, hahahaha," Lee Jung burst intoughter, and he was not the only one. Everywhere around the restaurant, different people began tough at Davies''s attempt to show off¡­ or so they thought.


    "What a braggart, and he''s so handsome," a young woman in a business suit managed to say betweenughs.


    "So what, that just makes him a handsome braggart," the man sitting at the table with her said as he alsoughed at Davies.


    "I know that you have a bit of money, but thinking you can do anything you want just because of that, haha,"


    "hahahaha, when did buyingnd in the business district of Yorkshire city be so easy," Lee Jung continued to throw jabs at Davies as heughed at him.


    To be honest, they were right.


    Buyingnd in a world where most ces had be too dangerous to be used or inhabited was already difficult enough, not to mention a prime location somewhere near the middle of a well-protected human settlement and smack dab in the middle of the business district with its many advantages of better protection, higher human traffic and all.


    Buyingnd here was almost an impossibility for even well-established businesses, not to mention a single individual.


    Lee Jung would have not beenughing if he actually had any information about Davies. All he knew was that he belonged to the Lake family and was somehow affiliated with Imperium Technologies.


    This was one of the annoying things about fated protagonists, they never bothered to get any meaningful information about anything that could be a threat, this could be seen by how Lee Jung didn''t even know that Davies was the founder of Imperium Technologies, where he used to work.


    All he knew was that Davies had said that he was fired after his car got blown to bits and when he had gone into thepany toin, the order was emphasized by Arnold Hugo, the acting CEO of Imperium technologies and he was fired.


    Fated protagonists were the type of people that dealt with every problem that appeared before them with either their fists or their contacts, and never their brains.


    Lee Jung was also like them in that aspect, but how was he to expect that Davies had the bigger fist, more and even better contacts, and a working brain that thought up solutions all day long, to both his current problems and even the problems that were yet to arise.


    Inside the restaurant, only three people were notughing at Davies.


    The first person was Davies himself and all he did was smile gently as he watched and waited.


    The second person was Jessica, she did notugh because she knew how capable he was and that something like this should be possible for him¡­ but even she didn''t know the full capacity of the name "Davies Lake."


    The third person that wasn''tughing was the brown-haired teenage attendant that had juste from the kitchen bringing Davies''s order. She wondered why everyone wasughing, of course, but it was not her ce to ask, anyway it seemed like the people were enjoying their time in the restaurant.


    Davies the recipient of the mockingughter grabbed the cup of coffee and took a sip of the coffee,


    "It''s surprisingly good¡­ it''ll be really sad to close this ce down," Davies sighed after tasting the coffee, which was actually quite good.


    "You''re still bragging, why don''t you give up on this act of yo-"


    *BANG* Lee Jung had not managed toplete the sentence when a door that led to the staff''s area flew open and a man that looked to be in his sixties, still wearing chef whites'', rushed out trying to leave the restaurant while also continuously dialing numbers on his phone.


    The man''s sudden distressed appearance startled many people. For the regrs and old customers of the restaurant, they knew that despite his current distressed and roughed-up appearance, he was the owner of this restaurant and he had been running it sessfully for over thirty years.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Boss!?"


    "What''s wrong?" the brown-haired attendant that had just delivered Davies''s order quickly rushed toward her employer.


    The old man had stopped after the brown-haired girl stood before him and asked what was going on,


    "Something big just happened,"


    "Someone bought this ce!" the man said with hurried breaths as he panted slightly from overexerting himself by hurrying around.


    "Someone bought the shop?" the brown-haired attendant asked as she couldn''tpletely understand the man''s statement.


    "No not the shop, it''s not for sale¡­"


    "... he- he bought thisnd, thend where the shop is standing on,"


    "Someone by the name of Davies Lake,"


    Everyone listened with unabated breaths as they listened as if they couldn''t believe their ears.


    "I have to call him to ask permission to continue being able to use this ce¡­" the man continued speaking, but nobody but the attendant was still listening to him right now as their eyes turned over toward the white-haired man drinking his coffee.


    *Siipp*


    The sound of Davies drinking his coffee seemed to have been enhanced as everyone could suddenly hear it loud and clear as if he stood right beside them.


    After a few seconds, Davies put down the coffee cup on the table and looked up at Lee Jung who was looking at him with a bewildered look on his face,


    "Well, now I own the shop, so I''ll say it again,"


    "... shoo,"


    "Or I''ll make you¡­ unfortunately, this ce doesn''t have security, so I would have to do it myself," he said calmly, but his unfriendly tone and aura made it clear that he wanted Lee Jung gone from his sight, even if he had to do it himself.


    Luckily, Lee Jung was not stupid enough to believe that he could defeat a Mega like Davies in battle right now as while it was true that he had a system now that was helping him, there was little he could do against people like Davies who could kill him without even looking at him, so he got up begrudgingly and left the restaurant, moved into the car park and got into a Ce sports car and drove away quickly.


    Suddenly a ding sounded inside of Davies''s head and his system showed up in front of his eyes without him willing it to appear, and on it was written,


    [Sessfully face-pped a fated one and caused him to lose 20 fate points]


    ''Hmmm?''


    ''Interesting¡­'' he thought as he wondered about this new development, but then his phone rang, bringing him out of his thoughts.


    "Hello," Davies answered the call.


    "We havepleted the purchase procedures of thend,"


    "What are your ns for the ce, sir?" the voice from the other end asked.


    "Hmmmm¡­ for now, I don''t really have any ns for thend," Davies replied.


    "What about the restaurant, The Rising Sun that is currently upying thend?" the voice asked again.


    "Oh, the restaurant?" he repeated, then a wicked grin appeared on his face as he answered,


    "¡­ Burn it down."


    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Gimme powerstonessss...

 Chapter 54 CHAPTER 54: UNREASONABLE

    ?"Hello," Davies answered the call.


    "We havepleted the purchase procedures of thend,"


    "What are your ns for the ce, sir?" the voice from the other end asked.


    "Hmmmm¡­ for now, I don''t really have any ns for thend," Davies replied.


    "What about the restaurant, The Rising Sun that is currently upying thend?" the voice asked again.


    "Oh, the restaurant?" he repeated, then a wicked grin appeared on his face as he answered,


    "¡­ Burn it down."


    "Burn it down? Why?" the voice from the other side came back quickly, shocked at Davies''s words.


    "I don''t think it''s anywhere in your job description to question my orders," Davies replied, his tone hardening slightly as he responded.


    "But I don''t think doing something like that would be allowed, especially right in the middle of the city,"


    "Maybe you could get it demolished instead," the voice replied, his voice more subservient now, but still trying to dissuade Davies from this rash decision.


    "Whether it is allowed or not, do it¡­ I''ll be waiting to see it burn,"


    "If anyone has any problem with that¡­" his grin widened even further, but then he didn''t say anything else and hung up the call instead, not caring about the dilemma the person on the other end of the phone call had been thrown into because of his orders.


    He took up the cup of coffee and took another sip, enjoying the taste and not caring about the looks of bewilderment, shock, admiration, and jealousy he was receiving from the people in the restaurant.


    "This really is good coffee," he could not help but praise again after taking another sip of the delicious coffee, but his coffee appreciation was interrupted by a stammering voice from behind.


    "E- Excuse me, a-are you Mr. Davies Lake?" a shivering stammering voice came from behind Davies.


    Davies frowned immediately as he looked behind him at the old man that was the owner of the restaurant and he wondered how this man knew his name as he hadn''t mentioned it, but then he remembered that his phone was on speaker the entire time and even though his name hadn''t been said, the conversation that had taken ce did more than point to him as the person who had just bought thend that this restaurant was standing on.


    "Yes, that''s me¡­ What do you want?" Davies responded with a question of his own as he grabbed his fork, picked a piece of bacon from the te, brought it to his mouth, and began chewing it slowly.


    "W-well, you see, I couldn''t help but overhea-" the old man began,


    "And so? Your point?" Davies cut in.


    "Hey," he then turned towards the brown-haired teenage girl and called,


    "Did you make the coffee?" he asked her.


    "Uh¡­ yes," she replied hesitantly, not knowing why he asked, but worried that he was dissatisfied with the taste of the coffee.


    "Can you cook?" Davies asked her again while taking another mouthful of the bacon and eggs dish that was before him.


    "... Well, a little bit," she responded hesitantly again, anxious at his questioning and tone that made it feel like she was being interrogated.


    "Well, that doesn''t really matter much," he muttered and then asked again,


    "How much are you being paid¡­"


    "Wait, don''t tell me¡­" he held up his hand to stop her from talking,


    "It doesn''t matter much anyway¡­"


    "Would you like to work for me for ten times whatever you''re being paid here," he made a surprising offer to the brown-haired girl.


    ''Daniel does need somebody to help around the house so he can focus better on tasks I''d assign him¡­ when he wakes up,'' he thought to himself as he made the offer.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    The brown-haired did not even need to think about it as the moment she heard "ten times", she was already pulling off the apron that covered her outfit and prevented it from getting stained while she worked.


    "Thank you for taking care of me all this time boss," she said a bit loudly as she bowed respectfully to the old man.


    "Take this card and call the number on it tomorrow, you''d get all the details of the job then," Davies said as he handed her a card with Daniel''s name and number on it, he obviously was not going to do something as bothersome as sorting out employment issues.


    "Yes boss," the girl didn''t think twice, epted the card, and rushed out of the restaurant joyfully. She was alreadypletely sold on the idea, she get ten times the pay, and she''d get to admire Davies''s handsome face while she worked¡­ she wouldn''t lose anything in this deal.


    Everyone that was watching the situation didn''t even know what to think.


    Froming into the restaurant and fighting with another guy over a girl to buying thend on where the shop stood, ordering the shop to be burnt, and then finally offering a random attendant a job with ten times her current sry.


    Was this how willful and whimsical rich people were, or was Davies a special case even among the rich and powerful, they couldn''t help but wonder in their dazed state.


    Suddenly Davies pushed everything and stood up, he had used more time here than he originally nned to and was already behind schedule.


    "Mr- Mr. Lake, about the re-" the old man tried to say to Davies,


    "Don''t bother, old man, I meant what I said and you can''t change my mind," Davies interrupted the old man before he said anymore.


    "But why?"


    "Why would you do that?" the man fell to his knees and asked in an aggrieved tone.


    Looking at the man that was old enough to be his grandfather kneeling on the ground like he had lost all his reason to live did nothing to shake Davies''s emotions. He simply replied,


    "Because¡­ it''d be fun to watch it burn," he said with a wicked smile adorning his face and began to walk out of the restaurant before pausing midway and looking back at Jessica,


    "Are youing?" he asked.


    "Y-Yes!" Jessica managed to stammer out a response and quickly stood up as well and ran after Davies as they left the restaurant, leaving behind the early morning customers, a broken old man, and a restaurant that was soon to be burnt down.


    To be honest, what Davies had done to the old man''s restaurant was cruel and unreasonable, but he couldn''t care less.


    Things like rules andmon sense were for the weak.


    Buying wine for millions when you could drink water wasn''tmon sense and neither was buying a car for millions when there were cars worth thousands, but who could say anything about it?


    They were even hailed for doing such things.


    Nothing the rich and powerful did ever made sense, but nobody can hold them to it, because they had power and money.


    This was the hard truth of whichever world one lived in, and this world wasn''t any different. It may have been a whim on his part, but it only happened because he had the capabilities.


    Davies got into the Ventley along with Jessica and without a word, he drove in the direction of Imperium Technologies main office building.


    Upon reaching the building, Davies got out of the car along with Jessica and handed over his keys to the valet that drove the car away into the underground parking lot, while Davies walked into the building with Jessica in tow.


    As he walked through the lobby slightly hurriedly, he noticed unnatural looks from the staff in his direction. At first, he thought that they were shocked at his appearance as it had probably been widespread information that he had entered a mission gate without an unclear chance of survival, but after noticing the emotions on the different faces, he concluded that he wasn''t the one that was the recipient of those looks, rather it was Jessica that walked behind him.


    Even aftering to that realization he showed no reactions neither did he try to find the reason for the strange looks immediately, but instead he waited until he had reached his office and sat downfortably.


    "Talk," he said as he looked intently at Jessica.


    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Please vote powerstones...

 Chapter 55 CHAPTER 55: UPHEAVAL I

    ?When Davies had walked through the lobby on the ground floor of the Imperium building, he had noticed different weird looks from the staff as he had walked by.


    At first, he had attributed it to his presence after supposedly being stuck in a dungeon with no clear chance of survival, but soon after he noticed that the looks that he was seeing on their faces weren''t looks of shock or admiration, but rather looks that told a story¡­ a story that he was curious about, but he didn''t mention anything about it until he arrived at his office on the 138th floor with Jessica in tow.


    Upon reaching the office, he first sat himself down at the desk and made himself veryfortable on the extremelyfortable chair,


    ''Are these things really made for work¡­ I could sleep in things,''


    ''... sofortable,'' he thought as he nuzzled and rested further into the chair.


    "Talk," he said as he looked intently at Jessica.


    "... I-I don''t know what you''re talking about," Jessica hesitantly stammered as she waved her hands to indicate that nothing was wrong, but she was overdoing it with her attempts, and it was clear as day that she was lying.


    Davies wasn''t blind, he could see the obvious telltale signs that she was lying, and he wondered why she was lying or what she was lying about.


    ''Come to think of it, she was strangely silent on the way here,'' he mused. He may not have known her for very long, after all, he had only known her for just a week and he had spent six days in a gate, and on the only day they were together he was only interested in her bedroom skills, but even then, she wasn''t this quiet.


    Maybe a little shy or maybe a little overwhelmed by his identity when they had first met, but she was definitely an outspoken person¡­ or maybe he was thinking too much, after all, you can''t know everything about a person in a day¡­ even if you''ve slept with them.


    But it was very obvious that she was hiding something, and it was his job as a strict follower of Sherlock Holmes to solve any mystery that found its way into his attention, and the first method was asking directly as he just did, but that didn''t seem to work.


    Well, now he would just move to stage two of investigation methods, "stern questioning",


    And so, he sat up and intertwined his fingers and ced them on the table and morphed his face into a smile that wasn''t a smile and then asked her again with the scary smile on his face,


    "Jessica¡­ Talk,"


    With Davies''s "smile" and very polite way of questioning, Jessica had no choice but to give in. She sat on one of the chairs across David''s desk and sighed deeply getting ready to tell her story.


    Inwardly Davies was thinking she gave in too early, after all, there were more stages of investigation methods, like physical torture, mental torture, and many other methods,


    ''What I shame I wouldn''t get to try them out¡­''


    ''... wait what am I thinking?'' he quickly shook away that first weird line of thought.


    Why would he even think of doing something like that to Jessica?


    [...]


    After shaking away those thoughts from his mind, he returned his focus to Jessica who was about to start telling him what had happened while he was stuck in the dungeon.


    As he began to listen to the words that came out hesitantly from the luscious pink lips of Jessica, his expression changed slowly and by the time Jessica had stopped speaking, there were no traces of a slightly positive expression on his face.


    Davies was not the type of person that got angry over little issues as his anger was reserved for threatening opponents, but right now his expression was as dark as thunderclouds.


    *Push*


    *TOOOOO*


    Davies pressed a button on his desk that had a function of contacting one of the staff at the lobby so he could give them orders.


    *Click*


    Someone linked onto the call and a secondter a clear voice rang out into Davies''s office from the customized and well-hidden speakers.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "How may I help you, Mr. Lake?" Elsa''s clear voice that rang out indicated that she was the one speaking on the other end of the call.


    "Elsa, tell every Chief Executive official and the Managing officials to be in the meeting room on the 135th floor in five minutes,"


    "... If anyone of them is even a secondte, then he no longer works here," Davies''s cold voice came through the office phone.


    "Huh? Mr. Lake?" Elsa wanted to ask for a few details, but Davies was no longer holding on to the button, so the call was disconnected.


    Elsa was a smart woman, and even though she had not spent much time with her new boss, she was able to tell that Davies''s tone was colder than it usually was and even the message indicated that he was less than pleased right now so she quickly jumped off her seat and began running around to contact the people she had been told to contact all the while weaving a story from the information she had gotten due to the call and order from Davies.


    Back at Davies''s office, he was frowning heavily as he recalled what Jessica had told him.


    ''Seems I''ve been really gone for too long,''


    ''For there to be so many power-hungry idiots and hypocritical assholes in mypany, and not just being here but being the ones in charge of things yet acting like this,''


    ''To actually dare try such a thing¡­''


    "Kekekeke," Davies began to chuckle wryly but soon, it turned to a full-blownughter that echoed across the 138th floor and startled Jessica who sat in the chair in silence after speaking to Davies.


    "HAHAHAHAHA!"


    "Seems some people need a lesson on who is in charge," he muttered as he slowly stoppedughing with his right palm on his face and robbing his brows


    Davies stood up from behind his desk and began walking toward the elevator,


    "Follow me," he called to Jessica as he walked towards the elevator. Jessica joined him in the elevator not shortly after, they were in front of the door that led into the meeting room.


    Without knocking, Davies pushed the doors and walked into the room like he owned the ce¡­


    Why would he knock? He owned the ce after all.


    Upon entering the room, Davies walked to the empty seat at the head of the table without looking around at the faces of the people in the room, but before he sat, he suddenly stopped and with a light chuckle he turned around at the faces of his employees that sat in their ces.


    "With all I have heard that has happened since I entered the mission gate¡­"


    "Anyone cares to exin?" Davies asked with a clear tone, without his voice betraying the slightest bit of his emotions.


    "Uhh¡­ April Fools," a sleazy-looking man replied with aughing tone not taking the situation seriously, as there were no telltale signs that anything was going on.


    "..." everyone in the room stayed silent for a few seconds until Davies''s voice broke the silence,


    "You''re fired,"


    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Sorry there was no chapter yesterday guys,


    I was suffering from a case of pre-resumption depression, so I didn''t write anthing yesterday, but I''ll try to make up for it with an extra chapterter today.


    Don''t forget to vote me powerstones,


    Ciao.

 Chapter 56 CHAPTER 56: UPHEAVAL II

    ?As Davies made his way toward the meeting room on the 135th floor, everything that Jessica just told him ran through his head once again.


    The overview of the situation was like this;


    He had just made Jessica the Chief Operations Officer, one of the five executive positions present in thepany making her under only him, equal to only four others and above everyone else.


    With such a position and his backing as the founder of thepany, she was destined to be a rising phoenix that shot for the stars¡­ or that was how it should have gone.


    But when news came that Davies had ended up in a mission gate that was extremely rare and known for its extremely low chances of survivability, the wholepany was thrown into chaos.


    Jessica believed that Davies should be able to make it out, she didn''t know why she felt that kind of trust in him or his abilities, but she trusted his chances of survival, and with the kind of exploits he had done when he was younger and his status as a genius served more to put her at ease.


    Unfortunately, not everyone felt this way. It took less than a day for the greedy and uncontroble nature of humanity to show itself and it started from within thepany.


    Jessica who had suddenly lost her only backer who had just put her in a highly coveted position began to be harassed by the other executive officers who were backing the other two guys to get the position of Chief Operations Officer, and since Jessica had just taken up the position and had not yet been able to build up any power or contacts, she was thrown around by the other executive officers who had been in their respective positions for years.


    As if that wasn''t enough, even the managing officials who were below the Executive officials refused to follow any of her orders because firstly, she didn''t have any real power and had only just been granted the position, and secondly they were alreadyckeys of the other Executive officials.


    With the harassment on all sides, it was all Jessica could do to bear with the absurd treatment and just barely hold on to her position as Chief Operations officer.


    But this was when the ugly head of the Lake family began to rear its head after Davies''s sudden entrapment into the mission gate. They started extending their reach towards Imperium Technologies and trying to subtly take it over, not caring for the fact that the original owner, a member of the family was currently stuck in a gate, his life or death, uncertain.


    Unfortunately for them, due to Davies''s extreme mistrust of everyone, he had put thepany in his own name and not in the name of the Lake family, so they couldn''t just directly take over thepany even if he was to be eventually confirmed dead.


    Due to this fact, every one of the great families and the other influential groups had their eyes on this matter.


    Every one of them wanted a piece of the cake that was Imperium Technologies.


    Though with Davies now confirmed alive, they would all have to take a step back and put their ns for a hostile take-over to the side for now¡­ or would they?


    Davies didn''t know what would happen in the future, after all, he wasn''t omniscient, but he did know what he was going to do right now.


    He pushed all those thoughts to the back of his mind as he reached the door of the meeting room.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    He pushed the doors open and walked in confidently towards the empty seat at the head of the extra-long table ced right in the middle of the room with the employees already seated around the table wondering what had happened for such a sudden meeting.


    Right before he sat, he suddenly stopped and with a light chuckle, he turned around at the faces of his employees that sat in their ces.


    "With all I have heard that has happened since I entered the mission gate¡­"


    "Anyone cares to exin?" Davies asked with a clear tone, without his voice betraying the slightest bit of his emotions.


    "Uhh¡­ April Fools," a sleazy-looking man replied with aughing tone not taking the situation seriously, as there were no telltale signs that anything was going on.


    "..." Everyone in the room stayed silent for a few seconds until Davies''s voice broke the silence,


    "You''re fired," Davies wasn''t in the mood for anybody trying to be a smart ass right now so he ended the man''s career in Imperium immediately not caring whatever position he held or whatever he had done for thepany.


    "Eh?" the man reacted surprisedly and was about to tell some story of woe, but Davies wasn''t having it.


    The moment the man opened his mouth to begin speaking, a small ball of ice suddenly appeared midair and shot at the man''s forehead at blinding speed and hit him, sending him flying and unconscious.


    At this point, everybody in the meeting room gulped audibly. The boss was back from a gate and it was obvious that he wasn''t happy.


    As for why he wasn''t happy, one look at Jessica who stood behind Davies told them all they needed to know. He must have heard of all the urrences that had happened when he was inside the gate.


    No amount of regret could change what had already urred and what they had done, and the only thing they could do right now was to keep quiet lest Davies turns his attention on them.


    That didn''t stop the Managing officials from swearing internally at the Executive officials that they followed because it was due to them that they were in this mess. Of course, they didn''t dare to show their thoughts on their faces.


    "It hase to my attention that there must be some kind of new weed in town, and you all must be smoking some of it¡­"


    "... Because otherwise, I can''t understand what gave you all the audacity to turn mypany into your personal yground¡­" Davies began, his voice icy, and his cold aura spilling out and bearing down on everybody in the room.

 Chapter 57 CHAPTER 57: UPHEAVAL III

    ?"It hase to my attention that there must be some kind of new weed in town, and you all must be smoking some of it¡­"


    "... Because otherwise, I can''t understand what gave you all the audacity to turn mypany into your personal yground¡­" Davies began, his voice icy, and his cold aura spilling out and bearing down on everybody in the room, even Jessica.


    "To actually push around someone I personally appointed and turn the office into some sort of political game,"


    "Y''all must be high,"


    "Like really high,"


    "Like looking down on me kind of high," Davies continued to speak, his tone light-hearted, but nobody dared to even believe that he was having the slightest positive feelings towards them.


    And to be factual¡­ they were right.


    While Davies wasn''t exactly "angry", he was annoyed.


    He had bigger fish to fry and more important things to do than having to solve kid fights between weaklings who only ran about trying to gain benefits through any means.


    He was above getting angry at normal humans, not to mention that thepany wasn''t all that important to him.


    He had created it to serve a purpose and he''d rather not have idiots running around and destroying over twelve years of his hard work just because of mundane things.


    Another thing he could not stand was their annoying habit of running wild on his property without thinking of the consequence.


    As he was wondering the most efficient way to deal with this issue so he could get to do more important things with his time, his eyes fell upon the empty chair at the head of the table.


    It was a chair meant for the person with the highest position in thepany, which was him, the founder of Imperium Technologies.


    It was equivalent to something like a throne for him, even though he had never actually sat on it because he was never around to sit on it.


    But¡­ why did the chair have traces of having been sat in¡­ and not just once, but countless times?


    At this point, the line of thread that was keeping Davies from not really caring about the situation all that much snapped, and his aura that was already bearing down heavily on the people in the room became even heavier and ice began to form on objects as the temperature in the room delved onto a new low.


    Davies didn''t care about the chair, but the fact that they could undermine his authority this much was not something that he would wave away.


    This was one of his territories!


    Here, he was king!


    And he''d be damned before he let his useless subjects undermine him like this.


    "You really take me as nothing huh?" his voice came out as a low growl, sounding like a whisper of death as he lost control of his murderous aura, filling the room with a suffocating aura of death.


    Davies''s murderous aura was not something that normal humans like his employees could cope with.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Killing intent was released when a person desires to kill another person and the amount released is influenced by how much you want said person to die; how much hate you had for the person and such. Assassins learn to control it and hide it from others, so they can kill without their targets noticing.


    While on the other hand, Murderous aura is an umtion of the intent after killing a living being. It grows depending on how many living beings one has killed and for a person like Davies, whose murderous aura was so strong it could be mistaken for an archdemon''s presence, they were lucky that only a little of his murderous aura was being released right now, but even that little amount was enough to cause them to grasp their necks tightly and struggle for breath as different visions of their deaths began to fill their minds.


    Davies''s emerald-green eyes now had a tinge of red in them as he looked at everyone in the room apathetically,


    ''Should I just kill them all?'' this murderous thought crossed his mind.


    [No!!!] Miya''s voice echoed inside his head.


    [You can''t just kill people and expect there to be no repercussions]


    [Especially since you''re a Mega and they''re just normal humans] She continued to give him reasons to notmit genocide, trying to be the voice of reason.


    ''Nobody would know,'' Davies replied, not really feeling inclined to let them keep their heads.


    [How wouldn''t they know?] Miya protested against his argument.


    [Even if you hide any traces of your involvement in their murder, or disappearance¡­]


    [Other people know that they came to a meeting you called before they disappeared] She continued to be the voice of reason and reminded him of the long-term repercussions of his intentions.


    [... Unless you n to kill everyone in thepany]


    ''... That''s¡­ not a bad idea,'' he responded, the murderous glint in his eyes shining brighter by the second.


    [Get a hold of yourself!] Miya almost screamed in exasperation.


    [I know you don''t care much for things like your reputation, but going through with something like that will pretty much be erasing everything you''ve built and putting you in a very unfavorable position to be able to achieve any of your goals] She continued, still trying to convince him.


    ''... Tch, alright,'' the murderous glint in his eyes began to dim and he reigned in his murderous aura, giving respite to the employees.


    He kicked the empty chair into the ss wall of the building, sent it flying out from the 135th floor to God knows where, and employed his ice into conjuring an ice throne three steps higher than the other chairs in the office.


    He then walked slowly to the ice throne, sat on it slowly and rested his head on his fist, and looked condescendingly at the Executive officials and Managing officials gasping for breath while allying around in extremely miserable states,


    "Now¡­"


    "... What am I going to do with you fools," he spoke softly, but his voice sounded like an imperial decree that could send them to hell at any moment with leisure.


    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Please Vote Powerstones...

 Chapter 58 CHAPTER 58: UPHEAVAL IV

    ?"Now¡­"


    "... What am I going to do with you fools," he spoke softly, but his voice sounded like an imperial decree that could send them to hell at any moment with leisure.


    Davies was a bit conflicted now¡­


    He really wanted to kill them, but it wasn''t a very usible idea, so he didn''t know what to do to them right now.


    It was kind of annoying that Daniel had to be unavable today of all days. If he was around, Davies could have arranged for the males among them to have a new gender by crushing some eggs, but that wouldn''t be happening now since he didn''t want to do it himself as that would mean touching them in their miserable states.


    Davies was a bit of a clean freak and would not touch things he deemed as unclean not to mention the employees that he currently ssified as "dirty".


    "This is a dilemma," he muttered as he looked at them like they were already dead people.


    "As expected¡­ should I just kill them," he muttered to himself, but the employees who heard this and were just managing to catch their breaths were sent into another emotional storm as cold sweat ran down their backs and their hearts beat so hard it felt like it was trying to leap out of their throats.


    [Davies¡­] Miya warned.


    ''Tch¡­ fine, ok, I won''t kill them... maybe,'' Davies hurriedly responded to Miya as he would rather not have her give him another lesson on "repercussions of killing all your employees 101".


    ''Should I just fire all of them?''


    ''Nah¡­ too light a punishment. Also doing that would unstabilize thepany and require me to do more work with the cleanup and find better people to put in their positions,''


    ''I''d rather not have extra work to do right now,''


    ''Maybe freeze them all, and block their urethra with ice¡­?''


    ''Nah¡­ too mild, also not all of them are males,'' Davies continually pondered what he should do with them.


    He had ideas for things that would cause them great pain, the only problem was, all those ideas would either end up killing them or rendering them useless, he was not used to going easy on his opponents after all.


    This particr set of people were too weak to even live through the mildest of his torture ideas, I mean, one of them had died of suffocation from boobs.


    Who dies at the peak of their life like that?


    Definitely not him, he would have grabbed onto the booba and never let go.


    [Ahem¡­] Miya clearing her throat reminded him that he was not the only one that could hear his thoughts, so he quickly threw away that thought.


    ''Unfortunately, something like a ve contract is not possible right now, it''ll take too much time and resources to prepare,'' and Davies was not inclined to spend even a gram of his wealth on these guys.


    Davies''s eyes scanned across the room until they fell upon Arnold Hugo, the Chief Financial Officer and former Acting CEO of Imperium Technologies, who was also gasping for breath while grasping the table to stay upright and not fall to the ground,


    "You disappoint me, Hugo," he said while looking at him disgustedly.


    Arnold Hugo opened his mouth even though he was barely just catching his breath to try and say something, but even after opening his mouth, no words came forth. He was short of words as he did not know what to say, so he ended up shutting his mouth and not saying a single word.


    Even though he hadn''t been among the ones that had run wild when Davies was stuck in the mission gate, he was supposed to be the acting CEO and he just watched everybody going wild and doing their own thing without interfering, so to Davies, he had no excuse.


    Finally, Davies decided, since he was out of ideas on what to do to punish them, he decided to let them go¡­ but with a catch.


    He was going to instill enough fear in them to make sure they could not live a full day being carefree and happy without fearing for their life and for that he needed a scapegoat.


    As he decided this, he asked a question,


    "Who among you is in charge of the recruitment of Megas for the Imperium League?" his question sounded like a summon to hell for the person he was talking about.


    Even though the man himself was not interested in speaking up and iming that he was the one being asked for, his other colleagues quickly betrayed him in the hopes that Davies''s anger would pass over them.


    When he saw the fingers that were already pointing towards him, the man himself spoke up as there was no merit to hiding himself. He only hoped that Davies wasn''t going to be very hard on him¡­ unfortunately for him, his tragic future was already set in stone.


    "I-I am the one in charge, Mr. Lake, S-Sir," the man managed to stammer out.


    "... What is your name and position," Davies asked again, his apathetic eyes showing as little interest in this conversation as possible.


    "V-Vincent Tencent, Chief Human Resources Officer," the scapegoat stammered out.


    "Mhmmm¡­ Mr. Vincent, I believe you''re married, yes?" Davies asked a peculiar question.


    "U-Uh yes," Vincent answered, not sure why Davies asked the question.


    "And you have children, right?" Davies asked another peculiar question that seemingly had nothing to do with the present situation.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Yes, I have two kids, still at preschool," Vincent answered, still not understanding the point of this line of questioning.


    "Hmmmm," Davies slightly nodded his head as he acknowledged the answers of the scapegoat, a devious n already formted in his head.


    "What says the time, Mr. Vincent?" Davies continued his questioning.


    "Uhhh¡­" Vincent quickly looked at his watch still not knowing what to expect from all of Davies''s questions.


    "It''s 8:37 am right now," he told Davies after checking the time on his watch.


    "Mhmmmm¡­" Davies seemed to be deep in thought.


    "If it''s 8:37 right now, then it''d soon be time for your wife to drop your kids off at school, right?" Davies began a slight smile appearing at the corner of his lips.


    "R-Right," Vincent stammered an answer, Davies''stest statement was causing rms to go off in his head, but he was still not very clear at what Davies was getting at.


    Davies nodded slightly and took out his phone and began to dial numbers, the phone beeping as numbers were typed into the keypad.


    Shortly after Davies put the phone to his ear, seemingly making a call to someone. After a few seconds, Davies''s voice rang out in the room,


    "Hello,"


    "I need tomission you for something," Davies spoke into the phone clearly.


    "..." he paused for a moment, seemingly listening.


    "Ah yes, I know your charges," he continued after a pause.


    "I need you to cause¡­ an ident," he made known his request to the person on the other end of the call.


    "The target? Oh, someone by the name of Mrs. Tencent, her husband works as the Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) of Imperium Technologies," he began to give details on the supposed targets.


    "..." he paused again to listen to the other end.


    "Yes, her and her two children¡­"


    "Make sure no one survives," Davies stated clearly, but he had just finished saying this when Vincent screamed loudly.


    "YOU CAN''T DO THIS!!!"


    "Who are you to tell me what I can and can''t do," Davies said, his tone low and his eyes narrowing in annoyance.


    "HOW CAN YOU TARGET MY FAMILY!!!"


    "THEY HAVE NO PART IN THIS!!!"


    "Really now?" Davies said like he was stunned by a new discovery, but a secondter, he waved it away,


    "Well, it''s not really a concern of mine,"


    "Hey someone put on the TV, maybe the ident may make it to the news," Davis said in a jovial tone as if he was in a celebratory mood and had not just sentenced a woman and her two children to death.


    "Y-Y-YOU BASTARD!!!" Vincent lost it and ran towards Davies as he lost himself to his anger.


    *PUCHI* *PUCHI* *PUCHI* *PUCHI*


    Vincent had not managed to move more than two steps in the direction of Davies when ice spears formed mid-air and shot toward him.


    The disturbing sound of sharp objects stabbing and ripping through flesh filled the room as the newly formed ice spears impaled Vincent consecutively from all sides, causing his blood to ssh out in all directions, some of it even falling on the other people present in the room.


    "Vincent Tencent, suddenly ovee by a sudden wave of madness, attacked his superior and was put down," Davies''s voice rand out loud and clear while everyone was still frozen in shock by what had just happened, just a second ago.


    "Now¡­" He continued, his voice sounding like someone who meted out death sentences to the worst of criminals.


    "Who''s next¡­?"


    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Gimme them powerstones.

 Chapter 59 CHAPTER 59: JUST ONE MORE... OR TWO... OR THREE

    ?The disturbing sound of sharp objects stabbing and ripping through flesh filled the room as the newly formed ice spears impaled Vincent consecutively from all sides, causing his blood to ssh out in all directions, some of it even falling on the other people present in the room.


    "Vincent Tencent, suddenly ovee by a sudden wave of madness, attacked his superior and was put down," Davies''s voice rang out loud and clear while everyone was still frozen in shock by what had happened just over a second ago.


    "Now¡­" He continued, his voice sounding like someone who meted out death sentences to the worst of criminals.


    "Who''s next¡­?" he continued his voice sounding like the grim reaper''s.


    "A-A-AHHHHHH!!!" a woman on which some of Vincent''s blood had sshed on her face, lost her nerve and began screaming, much to the annoyance of Davies.


    Davies stretched his hand in her direction and ice formed around her mouth effectively shutting her up,


    "Hush please, I''d hate for another employee to lose themselves to madness and have to be put down,"


    "Don''t you agree, Mrs. Wilson," Davies asked, reading out her name from the id card that hung from her neck as multiple ice spears were formed mid-air and pointed in her direction.


    The woman quickly began to nod in fear of the ice spears that were pointing in her direction. She shook her head so much that it seemed like it''d fall off. Davies was wondering why she couldn''t just answer him but then remembered that he had sealed her mouth shut with ice.


    Davies then sighed as if he was dejected,


    "But still that weed must have been really strong¡­"


    "... For Vincent to actually lose hisposure and attack me because of a joke¡­" Davies continued with a heavy voice as if he was sorrowful about what had just happened.


    As he spoke, he put his phone down on the table, and to the utmost dismay of everyone in the room, Davies''s phone just had a bunch of numbers typed in the keypad and he had never actually called anybody.


    He had effectively goaded Vincent into making a stupid move and allowed him to retaliatewfully with just a little prank.


    Now that they thought about it, the room had been silent, they were able to hear when he typed in the numbers, but they hadn''t heard the phone dial, or even a voice as Davies called, and this was the scariest part of this issue.


    Something so simple that they had all overlooked, had managed to trick one of them into falling for Davies''s scheme and effectively rushing to his death.


    It could have been any one of them, because they all knew that they would have reacted the same way, after all, they had all been fooled.


    At this point, an even greater despair filled the room, and they all felt the scythe of the grim reaper on their neck even clearer than when their mind had been influenced by Davies''s sliver of murderous aura that had filled the room earlier.


    Jessica who was also watching this situation from beside Davies had horror all over her face as well, but she wasn''t looking as bad and feeling as much despair as everyone else simply because Davies wasn''t targeting her with any of his schemes or murderous intent right now.


    Davies also watched the situation carefully as he watched them fall more into despair just as he had nned, but he kept a bored and apathetic look on his face to scare them even further.


    At this point, he was giving extra thought to whether he should do something even scarier or worse to them, but after a bit of thought, he decided to end it here¡­ for today.


    Davies hated troublesome issues, and having more than one person in a high-ranking position in a well-known business organization die was sure to bring unending annoyance.


    He wasn''t scared of repercussions from anything he did as he could easily get away with almost any kind of trouble, but he''d rather not have such annoying issues that would cause a lot of annoying people to start breathing down his neck.


    Also, the press had a way of making things blow out of proportion.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    This was the reason why he had not actually arranged for an ident to befall Vincent''s wife and children. If he had killed Vincent and also arranged for his family to follow him into the hands of Hades, it wouldn''t be hard for anybody to notice foul y and it would have easily been blown out of proportion and would end up disturbing him at critical moments sometime in the future.


    Davies couldn''t have that, after all, he had things to do, and by things to do, he meant killing fated protagonists and enjoying the pleasures of the 69th floor.


    This was not to say that Davies was letting them off. To him, everybody in this room was already dead, except Jessica.


    He was merely allowing them to hold on to their lives for now while he prepared the people that would take over their positions when he was ready to begin exterminating them, one by one.


    With this already thought out he looked on apathetically at the Executive Officers and Managing Officers, while continuously releasing his pressure and murderous aura slightly to keep them mentally pressured and have them second-guessing every moment of their life.


    He made sure to release just enough to not prompt them into doing something stupid like suicide, exposure to a high murderous aura had that effect on people with weak minds after all.


    But as he did this, a wicked thought popped up in his mind,


    ''Should I just kill one more¡­?'' he thought as a wicked and murderous grin appeared on his face, sending shivers across the room.


    [Davies?] Miya called warningly.


    ''Come on, for insurance purposes,''


    ''I don''t want them to get over their head after I let them go, thinking they have escaped my grasp,''


    ''I want them to live every day in fear and anticipation of when I will send someone to reap their lives,'' Davies exined to Miya. As for him sending someone to reap their lives, they didn''t expect him to go around killing small fry, did they?


    [Why do I even bother]


    [Do what you want, not like I can control you anyway] Miya sighed.


    ''In that case¡­"


    ''Let''s kill two more,'' Davies couldn''t stop the maniacal grin from fully stering itself across his face.


    ''... Or maybe three more,''


    [...]


    [''Just say you want to kill them all''] Miya thought.


    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Just wanted to let you guys know that this book will be going premium soon. After going premium, I''ll be posting either a single chapter of about 1.5k words or two chapters of about 1k words.


    Look forward to it, and don''t forget to vote powerstones and golden tickets.


    I wouldn''t mind a few gifts as well, haha...

 Chapter 60 CHAPTER 60: TAKING CARE OF LOOSE ENDS

    ?''In that case¡­"


    ''Let''s kill two more,'' Davies couldn''t stop the maniacal grin from fully stering itself across his face.


    ''... Or maybe three more,''


    [...]


    [''Just say you want to kill them all''] Miya thought.


    "Kukukuku," Davies chuckled slightly as his eyes began to survey the room for the next scapegoats.


    Every person that his eyes fell upon shrunk their necks as if they wished to disappear from the room as it was pretty obvious that Davies was looking for another target and none of them wished to be the lucky person¡­ or unlucky person.


    But unlike what they were expecting, Davies didn''t call upon anyone out and instead stood up and began to walk towards the door of the meeting room.


    With long strides, he reached the door in just a few seconds, but suddenly stopped,


    "Don''t think I let you guys off the hook,"


    "You still have a lot to pay for¡­"


    "Don''t even dare to think that you can escape," he said without looking back and then pulled open the doors and stepped out.


    "Jessica, take care of that mess," Davies''s voice echoed into the room just before the door closed and he began to walk in the direction of the elevator.


    Back in the room, nobody managed to notice the sachet of white powder-like substance that Davies had stealthily thrown into Vincent''s coat as he had walked by his body.


    As Davies walked towards the elevator he pulled out his phone and began to dial some numbers before pressing the dial button, but instead of calling the number a lock appeared on the screen and opened up.


    It was a hidden application on the phone that only appeared after he typed in a particr string of numbers and dialed it.


    The hidden app that opened up was named Hidden Caller, an app Davies specifically created to be able to call without being traceable. There wasn''t even a risk of the call being tapped because he used a different frequency that only worked directly through a hidden satellite that he had sent up into space a few years back.


    It may seem like overkill, but Davies was just that cautious¡­ Also, it''d be a waste of twelve years of preparation if he didn''t even do this much.


    After opening up the "hiddencaller" app, he scrolled down through the contacts that were stored there until he stopped on a particr one,


    "Calling M.I.B.," were the words that showed up on the phone screen after he tapped on the dial button of the contact.


    At this point, Davies was already inside the private elevator that was made only for high-ranking officials of thepany.


    He put his finger on the scanner to scan his finger to open up the secretpartment so he could go to the 139th floor while waiting for the call to be picked up.


    *"Hello,"


    *"You have contacted the Men In ck," a strangely enthusiastic delightful sounding female voice came from the other side of the phone.


    *"We deal in taking care of any dirty work you require taken care of, this includes, assassination, infiltration, torture, protection, and of course, the total extermination of a person''s traces including family members and even frie-"


    "Cut the crap Selina, I know it''s you¡­ also, you''re not a man," Davies cut in before she went on to continue describing morbid things.


    His soft heart could not handle so much cruelty¡­


    But only if he could find the shattered pieces of it.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    *"Aww, busted," Selina droned disappointedly.


    "Tch¡­ you guys are too yful," Davies clicked his tongue at her antics.


    "How did you even know I was the caller?" he asked as he pressed on the button that would take him to the 139th floor after the hidden panel that held the hidden buttons that could take one to the four highest floors of the Imperium building.


    *"Well¡­ Lina did kind of tell me that El is out ofmission for the time being, so I figured you''d call here if you needed anything done for now," Selina answered.


    "Oh¡­ ok,"


    "Uh, you should have some of your members here in Yorkshire, right?" Davies got directly into the reason why he had called in the first ce.


    *"So mean! You didn''t even ask how I am doing," Selina said with a pout.


    "..." Davies just stayed silent at her words.


    *"Tch, fine, I''m doing well, thank you for asking," Selina gave in quickly as she knew there was no way to beat Davies at the silent game.


    *"There are a couple of guys currently in Yorkshire and they just finished a mission request, so they''re free right now," Selina pointed out.


    *"What do you need to be done?" she asked, her voice finally getting serious for the first time throughout the conversation.


    "Just a couple of little things, no hard job really," Davies began,


    "Well for starters, I need them to look for a Mrs. Vincent and her two children and nt nano bombs in them, stealthily of course,"


    Davies''s reason for this was to be able to take care of any stupid attempts of revenge or anything like that from them.


    He highly doubted that they would be able to do anything to him, or if they would even try to do anything to him, but he wasn''t taking any chances.


    This was also the reason why he had made sure to slip some narcotics into Vincent''s clothing as he walked out of the meeting room, and also the reason why he was going to make sure to have some more nted at his house soon, so in case of any investigation, he woulde out totally clean.


    But even with that, Davies wasn''tpletely at ease until he had their life in his hands in case of anything. If he noticed anything strange, then it was "boom bye".


    "Also make sure to nt some narcotics in their house, somewhere slightly hidden," he didn''t forget to mention.


    *"Hmm, ok," Selina answered, the sound of something being written down came through the phone as she wrote down the orders. She didn''t mind the fact that she was being sent to target a woman and her children.


    Of course, Davies''s orders weren''t to kill them, but even if it was she still wouldn''t so much as react, she was the head of an assassination group after all.


    "As for my second request, some people are going to resign from Imperium today¡­"


    "... Make sure they don''t see tomorrow," his cold voice came through the speaker of the phone that she was holding, but she didn''t stop writing.


    *"Any special requests on the way they should die?" she asked after a slight pause.


    "... Make it interesting."


    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    The sentences that have "*" at their beginning are words from over the phone.


    Also sorry for thete chapter.

 Chapter 61 CHAPTER 61: MONEY GRUBBER

    ?"As for my second request, some people are going to resign from Imperium today¡­"


    "... Make sure they don''t see tomorrow," his cold voice came through the phone speaker she was holding, but she didn''t stop writing.


    *"Any special requests on the way they should die?" she asked after a slight pause.


    "... Make it interesting," he replied with a wicked grin.


    Davies had thought it through while he was back at the meeting room, he did not know who to kill to make as an example as to him they all looked the same.


    He had picked Vincent in the first ce because he was annoyed at the recruitment capabilities of that idiot¡­ and well, now he''s dead.


    But when it came to the other Executive officials and the Managing Officers, he didn''t have anything against them other than the fact that they used the period when he was thought to be dead to do as they pleased and if he was going to make an example based off of that, then they''d all be dead immediately, so he changed his thinking.


    Since he didn''t know who to pick, he''d let them pick by themselves¡­ Unknowingly of course.


    After the stunt that he had pulled and even though he had told them that they couldn''t get away from him, he knew that some of them (the stupid ones) would still try to run away.


    They could do it directly by resigning and then trying to get away after that, or they could just run off, and this was exactly what he was waiting for.


    He''d make an example out of those that tried to escape to show those that hadn''t made a move yet that they couldn''t escape from his grasp¡­ ever.


    *"Interesting eh¡­?"


    *"I do have quite a few interesting ideas to send people to the next world," Selina said with a giggle, but her giggle had no trace of innocence and left Davies wondering what sort of methods she was going to use to "Take care" of his soon to be former employees.


    He said a silent prayer for those guys, but that didn''t stop him from feeling a little anticipation.


    "I will be awaiting your results," Davies said and was about to hang up,


    *"WAIT!!!" Selina shouted.


    "What is it now?" Davies asked, annoyed, as he didn''t fancy someone shouting right into his ear.


    *"...Payment," Selina said after a slight pause.


    "Payment?" Davies asked as if it was the most absurd thing he had heard today.


    *"Yes, pay me for the work,"


    *"You''re hiring killers from one of the best dark organizations and you expect not to pay?" Selina continued as if requesting how he could be so shameless.


    "Wha-?"


    "Tch¡­ fine, what do you want?"Davies was about to make an argument but stopped himself in time as he didn''t have the time, or the energy to waste debating with her.


    *"..."


    Davies was met with a long silence over the phone,


    "Oh hell naw,"


    "Nope, not going to happen," Davies began to protest as if he already knew what she was going to ask for.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    *"Ten million Powerstone dors," Selina said as if


    "You money-grubber, you want to charge me ten million for killing a couple of normal humans!" Davies almost screamed into the phone in exasperation.


    "You might as well just ask for a billion," he said with sarcasm.


    "Ok, one billion it is," Selina replied shamelessly.


    "You! ¡­ fine, just ask Lina for the money," Davies gave in with a sigh, he didn''t really want to spend the rest of his morning arguing over prices with her, especially when he wasn''t exactlycking in money.


    Davies hung up immediately after that before Selina could continue to stress him over something else.


    Coincidentally he had arrived at the 139th floor at the same moment he hung up the call. The doors to the elevator slid open and he stepped out into the 139th floor.


    The 139th floor looked like a huge white room with nothing but a holographic supeputer that was ced smack dab in the middle of the room. Though the room looked empty, somepartments were set into the wall that had different types of tools and materials, and all Davies had to do was touch that section of the wall and thepartments would slide out automatically.


    A white line of light began to run across Davies''s body from the crown of his head to the sole of his feet. Davies waited patiently for the scanning to beplete because he knew that despite how harmless this room looked, the security here was top-notch, and it was capable of harming even a Mega like him should he be deemed a threat by the security system.


    [Scanning Complete¡­]


    [Searching Database¡­]


    [Iris scan; Match]


    [Heartbeat scan; Match]


    [Biometric scan; Match]


    [Identity; Davies Lake, confirmed] A robotic voice rang out and confirmed his identity after a number of checks.


    After receiving confirmation from the security system that he was all clear, he moved towards the holographic supeputer that stood in the middle of the room.


    The holographicputer is another machine that was invented by Davies. He had taken inspiration from the many sci-fi series that he had watched and read about back in his original world.


    It was shaped like a cuboid and had a crystalline surface. Its length was 2m, while its width and height were 1m respectively.


    Davies ran his palm across the surface to start it up. Immediately a beeping sound was heard, and an almost silent whirr began to sound from inside the holographicputer as it started up and began booting.


    Booting took only two seconds and a holographic screen opened up above the holographicputer.


    Davies double-tapped his finger on a side of the supeputer and a panel slid to the side showing a hidden space with ports for all kinds of drives. He opened his inventory, pulled out a drive, and connected and plugged it into one of the ports.


    *[Setting up secure connection¡­]


    *[Connecting to satellite¡­]


    *[Connection confirmed¡­]


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    Please vote powerstones...

 Chapter 62 CHAPTER 62: WORDS MAKE UP THE WORLD

    ?*[Setting up secure connection¡­]


    *[Connecting to satellite¡­]


    *[Connection confirmed¡­]


    The drive that Davies had plugged into the holographic supeputer had only one function. It set up a connection between whatever it was plugged into and one of Davies''s satellites that held all of Davies''s technological projects; both the ones alreadypleted and the ones that he was still working on creating.


    There was no way he was going to be stupid enough to leave any of his work anywhere on the of Leivandage, so he kept it hidden in space inside a heavily fortified satellite with the best stealth technology and added a specially created mana bomb that was filled with explosive volcanic mana as ast resort.


    There were too many people after his technology after all, so he needed at least this many safety measures¡­ or maybe it was a little bit of an overkill.


    [Good Morning, Mr. Lake]


    [How may I assist you?] A womanly voice came through hidden speakers in the room and a hologram of a blue-haired woman in ab coat with sses appeared in the room.


    She was Davies''s specially createdb assistant A.I. code-named, "Aida".


    It was no exaggeration to say she was the most developed A.I. in the world of Leivandage as there were no other races that were as technologically inclined as the humans among all the races on Leivandage and among the humans, Davies was the greatest technological mind ever known.


    Yet even for Davies, it took him over five years to create Aida.


    One had to know that it took Davies less than a day to create the first power stone engine when he was just eight years old.


    He built her with processing power that surpassed any known supeputer by at least a thousand times and made her able to interact with humans at a level that one would never think that she was an A.I.


    He was even able to sessfully simte and create emotions and added them to her program, but he never activated it, he didn''t want any robot apocalypse urring because of him, so till now she was still an unfinished product.


    What he had in mind when he was creating her, was to also create a body for her and create the first perfectly functioning artificial human, but due to the unknown variable known as "what happens when you give a robot emotions," he paused her creation halfway and stopped with her just being his A.I.b assistant.


    Aida did anything and everything that Davies would ever need when he was working¡­ except physical things as she didn''t have a physical body.


    "Pull up thest project that I was working on," Davies instructed as he stood looking at the holographic screen.


    "Okay,"


    "Opening project file, "Law of the Human Jungle"," Aida replied, and a file opened up on the holographic screen.


    "Not this one, I guess it was not thest one," he interjected and then gave a new order,


    "Uh open, project file "Words make up the world"," he said to Friday.


    "Order confirmed,"<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Opening Project File, "Words make up the world"," Aida said and another file popped up on the holographic screen.


    The project named "Words Make up the World," was one of Davies''s most worked-on, and top-secret projects, he had been working on it for over eight years and he was finally almost done with it. It was the holy grail when it came to magical technologies and was going to help his future endeavors a lot when hepleted it.


    It was also one of the ideas he did not n to sell for money due to how dangerous it was to him if he wasn''t the one using it.


    "Password required," Aida stated as she looked toward Davies.


    "8 inches," Davies replied, stating his password.


    "Password confirmed," Aida said, and the file opened up on the holographic screen.


    "Come here Aida," he said and cracked his knuckles before making a huge wave of his hand over the holographic screen, causing a keyboard to appear on the surface of the holographic supeputer.


    Aida went over to stand beside him as he began working, his hands dancing back and forth over the keyboard, constantly switching between typing something and then controlling the holographic models while often asking Aida for the answers to some calctions.


    ***8 hourster***


    *DING* came the sound of the elevator as it reached the first floor,


    The doors slowly opened up and Davies walked out while rubbing his sore neck. He had been working for the past eight hours without a single break and now he was pretty tired and hungry.


    Unfortunately, he still had to drive himself as Daniel was still out ofmission. He paid no attention to any of the looks he was getting as he walked through the lobby.


    It was to be expected after all, he had killed someone earlier in the day, and the word of it must have spread by now¡­ but people would probably be finding it hard to believe that he had done so in "self-defense".


    Yet he didn''t care, this was why he had made sure to slip narcotics into "whatever his name was" suit and arranged to have more nted somewhere in his house.


    It''d definitely be a shock to many people when news got out that a high-ranking official of Imperium Technologies had tons of narcotics hidden somewhere in his house.


    It would also serve as a cover for the people that would end up dying tonight, as people would think that whoever was the "mastermind" of the organization that dealt the drugs was trying to take care of loose ends now that their "operation" had been promised" through Vincent going mad.


    At the end of it all, Davies would end up without any suspicions and may even be thought of as a hero that had helped to crack down on a "devious organization" ¡­ at least this was what the general poption would think, but the ones being targeted knew better and their fear of him would be even greater.


    Though Davies didn''t fancy being thought of as a hero, it was better than having to deal with annoying issues.


    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Please vote powerstones...

 Chapter 63 CHAPTER 63: WAY TO THE 69

    ?Davies walked through the doors and out of the Imperium building and waited a bit for the valet to go bring his car.


    A few secondster, the car stopped in front of him and the valet got out and held the door open for Davies, who got in, closed the door, and quickly drove off. He drove out of the premises at moderate speed, but as soon as he got out he picked up the pace and drove faster, looking for a restaurant where he could find something to eat, as he wasn''t sure whether Daniel would have recovered enough to be able to take care of his meals.


    As he thought about this, he remembered that he had given a girl Daniel''s number. The girl may have been calling Daniel all day, but it was unlikely that Daniel would even be able to answer.


    The poor girl must be doubting her choice of resigning earlier by now,


    ''Speaking of which, what was even her name?'' he wondered, but then remembered that he had never asked.


    ''I wonder if the shop has been burnt down?''


    ''If it has, then I missed a good show¡­'' he thought back to the earlier urrences of the day.


    After a little while he drove into the parking lot of an expensive-looking restaurant and got out.


    It took only a few seconds to walk towards the entrance of the restaurant from the parking lot. As Davies walked up to the entrance of the restaurant, a sturdy-looking man wearing some sort of security uniform pulled open the door for him and he walked in at a moderate pace.


    As he walked into the restaurant with the door being shut slowly behind him, he admired the decor for a few seconds until a beautiful waitress walked up to him, greeted and asked,


    "Wee to "Way to the 69 restaurant","


    "Table for two?" a beautiful smile on her face as she spoke.


    "Uh, it''s just me but, I''ll want the table," he replied with a straight face, not bothered in the slightest bit by the strange name of the restaurant, and most definitely not moved in the slightest by the waitress''s beautiful face and set body, or by those hips that swayed sexily with her every movement, or by her soft and tender looking skin that looked like a delicacy.


    Nope, he was not moved at all.


    The waitress also wasn''t moved at all by Davies''s handsome looks. His broad shoulders and slightly muscr arms that rippled under his clothes did nothing to her consciousness, and neither did the aura around him and the way he carried himself affect her in the slightest bit.


    The only reason why she was sneaking nces behind her was that she wanted to make sure that he was following her to the table.


    Yep, that was all she wanted to make sure of as she sneakily nced at Davies again as he followed behind her.


    Of course, Davies didn''t notice, he was busy observing the miraculous motions of the human body as "it" swayed left and right, up and down.


    Davies''s observation session ended when he was brought to a table at a corner of the restaurant as the restaurant was already quite crowded and there was no longer any empty space near the middle of the restaurant, but Davies didn''t mind, he currently preferred to be away from annoying crowds.


    "Please take your time to look through the menu and you can call me or any of the other waiters after you''ve made your choice," the waitress said to Davies with practiced ease as he sat at the table.


    "What if what I want to eat is not on the menu?" Davies asked, not taking his eyes off her.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Hmmm? Could you tell me what it is? I''ll see if I can make arrangements," the waitress asked, still with her professional smile.


    "Ok cool,"


    "I wanna eat you," Davies replied with a teasing smirk at the corner of his lips.


    "..."


    To say the beautiful waitress was stunned by his boldness was an understatement, and it could be seen in how she was stunned into silence with her mouth slightly open and a blush beginning to appear on her face.


    "For now, I''ll take the restaurant''s special and have you for dessert," Davies continued without so much as looking at the menu.


    "... You did say you''ll make the arrangements."


    When Davies hade looking for a restaurant, he was hungry for food, but now he was hungry for not just one type of food, and he showed it through his words.


    The waitress was even more shocked by his direct and domineering approach. He wasn''t even asking, but he was ready to take what he wanted when he wanted it.


    It may seem shameless and rude, but it did kinda turn her on.


    "I''ll make the arrangements," she said with a seductive smile as she regained herposure. This wasn''t her first rodeo, and she was not some inexperienced little girl, so it was rtively easy to regain herposure and continue her work.


    She shed him an even more seductive smile and left to deliver his order to the kitchen, making sure to sway her hips even more after she noticed Davies intently watching her with hunger in his eyes.


    After she got out of sight, Davies rested back into his chair, getting into a morefortable position while waiting patiently for his food to arrive.


    On one of the tables that were near where Davies sat, three wealthy-looking young guys were engaged in a serious discussion. They looked like the typical second-generation young masters and there were beautiful women with each of them.


    "Hey, did you hear?" one of them asked the others at the table.


    "Hear that what?" his two friends asked him as they noticed that he seemed to have a juicy piece of gossip for them. Even their femalepanions were intrigued by the twinkle in his eyes as the first young master had asked.


    "There''s a new racing king in the city, he beat Jordan Lecroy in a race yesterday," the first young master suddenly stated without any suspense.


    "What!!!"


    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Please vote power stones...

 Chapter 64 CHAPTER 64: SYSTEMS

    ?"What!!!"


    Everybody but Davies that was nearby and had heard what the first young master had said eximed loudly in surprise.


    Jordan Lecroy was a member of one of the four great families of Yorkshire, The Lecroy Family. He had dominated the racing scene of the Yorkshire city ever since he started racing and his reign as the Racing King of Yorkshire hadsted for thest five years¡­ at least until yesterday.


    He was an undisputed talent in racing, and no one had ever been able to match him, not to mention overtake him for thest five years, so it was very shocking that such a person had lost.


    "Who defeated him?" one of the many listeners asked the question that was on everyone''s mind the moment they heard that Jordan Lecroy had lost a race to someone.


    "Yeah, answer us, is he someone famous?" another person that was extremely eager to hear the answer, chimed in.


    "Apparently it was a new guy, I''ve never met him before or even heard about him," the first young master answered, shaking his head.


    For the first time since the beginning of this conversation, Davies''s ears perked up at his statement, he still didn''t open his eyes but he found the situation eerily ironic.


    "What was the person''s name? Maybe one of us may have heard of him before," somebody asked.


    "His name was-, uh¡­" the first young master was frowning while racking his brain trying to remember the name of the person that had defeated the Racing King,


    "Lee Jung! That was his name," the first young master finally remembered the name.


    Davies''s eyes shot open at this piece of information that had somehow found its way to his ears.


    [Do you think it''s the same Lee Jung?]


    ''Who else but the fated protagonist would go around defeating geniuses,'' Davies replied with a chuckle.


    ''What I''m wondering though, is how someone whose only contact with sports cars was when he drove them to a parking lot, was somehow able to defeat the undefeated Racing King that has been dominating the racing scene all over Yorkshire for five years?'' Davies monologued internally.


    ''...There''s no other way, that has to be it,'' After a few seconds of thought, Davies came to a conclusion.


    ''He has a system,'' Davies sighed internally.


    [I also came to the same conclusion] Miya said as well.


    ''I wonder what type of system it is?''


    ''It probably was what gave him the driving skills to be able to defeat the Racing King,''


    ''So, it''s probably one of those systems that give crazy skills for almost nothing,'' Davies frowned as he thought hard.


    This could end up being a problem, he''d rather not have to deal with a system that could churn out divine skills like air.


    [I don''t think you have to worry about that for now] Miya suddenly interrupted his thought process.


    [Despite how you think, systems aren''t as omnipotent as you think]<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    [Like everything else, they follow the rules of equivalent exchange]


    [That is why systems never give things to their hosts free of charge, they always want something back]


    [This is because systems are calibrated to harness energy and it is that energy that they turn into rewards for their hosts]


    [Unfortunately, all systems differ, and harness different types of energy]


    [Some systems aren''t really powerful and thus they require their hosts toplete crazy missions and to make groundbreaking achievements so that they can get rewarded, while some other systems already have power but are sadistic beings that want their hosts to do all sorts of perverted and disgusting things before they throw them a bone]


    [You better hope that Lee Jung''s system falls into the first category, or else we have a huge problem on our hands] Miya exined.


    "..."


    ''At least now I know which category my system falls into,'' Davies thought, half expecting Miya to react violently, but contrary to his expectation, Miya didn''t so much as say a word.


    She knew that she wasn''t the system, she was just an interface assistant, so she didn''t really care much if Davies insulted the system directly or not.


    Now that Davies knew what Lee Jung has been up to, he had to find a way to make him lose a race, after all, he could reduce the fate points of Lee Jung by making him lose his reputation.


    It seemed kind of a letdown that this was the only thing he could do against Lee Jung for now, but everyone had to start somewhere, right?


    The only problem was how to defeat someone who was able to defeat the Racing King who had dominated the racing scene for over five years.


    After thinking over it for a few minutes, Davies had a brainwave and his expression visibly brightened up, but first, he had to confirm something.


    "He drove a Ce, right?" Davies suddenly asked, not even turning back to look at the guys that were deep in conversation, but his voice sent waves through the crowd and the first young master quickly answered,


    "Yes, he did, do you know him?" the first young master asked with quite a bit of enthusiasm as he was really interested in finding out more about Lee Jung.


    "You could say I do," Davies replied, still not turning back and he rxed even more into the chair, but now he had half a smile on his face.


    He now had a way to defeat Lee Jung in a race, and this was why his expression brightened up quite a bit.


    As for the method that he would use to defeat Lee Jung. It was to be used at ater date.


    For now, all Davies concentrated on was food and sleep, he was way too tired to be going around looking to race Lee Jung.


    The young masters and theirpanions, as well as the other people involved in the discussion, looked at Davies''s rxed figure and could not help but have different types of thoughts.


    The young masters wondered who he was as he was seemingly full of mystery, yet the aura around him made it clear that he was not to be messed with, but they didn''t know who he was or where he hade from.


    While the women around had eyes on Davies like he was prey, they wondered where a man as good-looking as he was came from.


    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Please vote powerstones

 Chapter 65 CHAPTER 65: FROZEN IN SHOCK

    ?Davies sat back even morefortably into the chair, more at ease due to his things already falling into ce even though he hadn''t done anything.


    He closed his eyes and waited patiently,pletely aware of the different kinds of stares he had been receiving from the different genders present in the restaurant, but he paid it no mind and stayedpletely at ease and unflustered even with all the attention that was currently on him.


    After seeing that he wasn''t making any efforts to rify the matters at hand, the attention of the young masters and theirpanions slowly moved away from Davies''s lone figure, and they got back to their conversations.


    Even with his eyes closed he was aware of everything that was happening. He was also aware of the furtive nces that he was receiving from the young masters panions".


    A few minutester, the beautiful waitress was back, and behind her was another waiter who was pushing a tray that had on it Davies''s meal.


    The restaurant special that Davies had ordered was a 4-course Italian meal that consisted of bruschetta as the antipasto(the starter), risotto as the primo piatto(the first course), Irish roast beef as the secondo piatto(the second course), and some creme caramel as the dolce(the dessert)¡­ of course, Davies also had ns for an extra dessert, but he''ll be eating it muchter from now.


    Usually, the four-course meal would be apanied by coffee but Davies had no ns to drink coffee at almost 5pm, so he had ordered a bottle of Tormaresca Chardonnay as a wine pairing.


    The waiter pushed the tray over to Davies''s table and with quick and professional hand movements he put all the tes on Davies''s table and turned to move away, taking the tray along with him.


    Davies was about to dig in when the beautiful waitress put down a piece of paper on his table,


    "The check," she said and shed him a meaningful smile as she turned and walked away, probably to go and attend to more customers leaving a puzzled Davies behind.


    ''Usually, the check should be given after the customer is done eating, right?'' he wondered, trying to see if he remembered something incorrectly, but even after checking his memories of every high-end restaurant he had ever been at, none of them had ever given him the check before he even started eating.


    ''Either this restaurant was especially strange, or there is something special about the check,'' he thought as he picked up the check, and just as he had thought, the back of the check had some info that had to do with the arrangement of his "second dessert".


    He chuckled at the numbers and words written on the back of the check,mitted them to memory, and then put it aside and dug into his meal, beginning with the bruschetta.


    In just about thirty minutes, Davies finished the meal, paid the bill, and stood up to leave the restaurant.


    On the way out, he didn''t see the beautiful waitress, but he reasoned that she was probably attending to other customers in another part of the restaurant, the ce was pretty big after all.


    Uponing to that conclusion, Davies no longer paid any mind to not seeing her and just continued walking out of the restaurant.


    After leaving through the entrance of the restaurant, Davies made his way to where he had parked the Ventley Conraverse, while reminiscing over what had been written on the back of the check.


    (I get off at seven. Anne) followed by a string of numbers that Davies recognized to be a phone number, probably her''s. That was what was written on the back of the check.


    If Anne got off work at seven, then what was he supposed to do between now and then.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    ''That''s about two hours from now,'' Davies thought with a slight frown.


    He was walking towards his car when someone almost bumped into him as the person walked hurriedly and seemed to be absent-minded as he dragged along a traveling bag.


    Davies barely managed to get out of the way and narrowly avoided a collision, but the other party didn''t seem to notice Davies''s effort to avoid the collision as the person just kept on walking without even looking back or even bothering to apologize.


    Davies was quite annoyed by this behavior from the other party and looked over at the person, but for some reason, he found the man quite familiar, but since he couldn''t see the man''s face and could only see his back as the man hurried along while pulling therge traveling bag.


    The man seemed to be very troubled by something, but Davies honestly didn''t care at all. What he did care about, was that the man had almost run into him but had simply just continued on his way without even the slightest apology or even any form of remorse for his actions.


    Davies was about to do something to solve his grievances when he noticed that the man in his troubled state had gotten on the road, trying to cross the street.


    By all rights, he should have reached the other side of the road that he was trying to cross, but probably due to his anxious mind state, he had forgotten to look up at the road even though the traffic light was red.


    Maybe if he had, he would have seen the white truck that was speeding towards him even though the traffic light was showing red and cars were by no means allowed to cross the red light.


    It didn''t take very long for the inevitable to ur.


    The white truck rushed at the hurrying man at blinding speed and soon the sound of flesh hitting metal resounded heavily on the road as the white truck ran into the hurrying man, ramming him to the side, breaking his bones, sending his blood flying all over and killing the man the instant the truck ran into him.


    The man''s body was flung like a rag doll to the side due to the collision with the truck, but the white truck didn''t stop and continued moving at high speed away from the ident. It seemed whoever the driver of the truck was, he didn''t n on taking responsibility for what had just happened.


    Davies was frozen in shock as he watched it happen.


    He wasn''t in shock because someone had died in front of him, or because he was stunned at the sudden appearance of the truck, but because of something else.


    Though the truck had been moving at blinding speed, in front of Davies''s trained and mana-augmented eyesight, he had been able to see the ident scene very clearly and the reason why he was frozen in shock was rted to that.


    In that split second when the truck had whizzed past him and gone on to collide with the hurrying man, Davies had managed to get a glimpse at the inside of the car, and to his utmost shock, nobody was driving the damn truck!


    ''Did truck-kun just isekai somebody in front of me?''


    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Please vote powerstones and golden tickets...

 Chapter 66 CHAPTER 66: THE TOPIC OF ISEKAI

    ?In the split second when the truck had whizzed past him and gone on to collide with the hurrying man, Davies had managed to get a glimpse at the inside of the vehicle, and to his utmost shock, nobody was driving the damn truck!


    ''Did truck-kun just isekai somebody in front of me?'' he thought with the mostplicated expression on his face as he stood, frozen in shock.


    [Who knew isekai was real?] Miya said with a disbelieving tone.


    ''Oi, are you an idiot?'' Davies asked incredulously.


    [Hey!]


    ''Someone being hit by an empty white truck doesn''t mean the person gets isekai¡­''


    ''... and as for if isekai is real, I am a living example of that in case you haven''t noticed till now,'' he said scornfully.


    [Hmmm mmm] Miya showed her disagreement, and Davies could almost imagine her shaking her head in disagreement.


    [Being hit by the great and mighty truck-kun guarantees an isekai]


    [Also you weren''t isekai''d by truck-kun, so you should be probably somewhere in the category of reincarnators] Miya debated.


    ''...''


    ''... well, I was killed by a Nokia 3310, so I''m pretty sure it counts as an isekai,'' Davies argued.


    [Pffffttttt- hahahahaha] Miya tried to hold in herughter but failed woefully, and soon the echoes of herughter rang annoyingly loud inside Davies''s head.


    [haha, I don''t know why, but every time I remember that your first death was because of a Nokia, I can''t stopughing] Miya said in betweenughs.


    ''Tch¡­'' Davies clicked his tongue in annoyance and continued towards the car, no longer interested in the man that had just gotten taken out by the truck.


    Even though he had found the man a bit familiar, his interest had long waned as he had no reason to care about the dead, more especially a dead person that he wasn''t able to recognize at first nce.


    Even if he recognized him and the guy happened to be by some stroke of magical luck, still alive, he still would do nothing, and live him there to die, unless an ambnce could by some magical miraclee to his aid in time.


    After all, he couldn''t have the luxurious handmade leather seats of his car stained with peasant blood.


    He continued walking until he reached the car, opened it, and sat inside, not paying any attention to themotion urring because of our just isekai''d friend.


    ''Now what am I gonna be doing for the next two hours?'' he asked himself internally, his thoughts running helter-skelter trying to think up a means of entertainment.


    He didn''t want to have to go back to the Imperium building as that was just more trouble than it was worth, and if went to his house instead, he''d just end up sleeping and missing "dessert".


    Going to a gate was a no-go for now. Who knew what type of game fate would y this time, he may not be able to get out for a month this time, and he couldn''t afford to be caughtcking when there was already a fated protagonist with a system and seemingly limitless potential for development.


    About the limitless potential for development, though he wasn''t told by anyone, it was something every fated protagonist was privy to. They were destined to cover the sky with one hand and have the whole universe and beyond in their arms.


    This line of thought did beg a question though. Since this world was destined to have more than one fated protagonist, which one of them was the one that would rise to the highest peak among all the fated protagonists?<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Of course, with him in the way he would make sure none of them survived to tell the tale of how they almost covered the sky with their palm.


    [Hear me, you will forever remember this day as the day you almost, caught Captain Jack Sparrow¡­ wait wrong movie] Miya butted in but Davies ignored her and continued thinking.


    There also had to be some badass viins like him out there¡­ though none of them probably had a system. The point was, it was pretty illogical for a world as vast as this one to only have him as the viin of the story.


    He''d have to find them and pit them against the fated protagonists while he reaped the benefits and when he had squeezed both of thempletely of their benefits, he''d kill all of them.


    [The mantis stalks the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind] Miya chimed in again speaking proverbs like a wise person.


    ''Miya,'' Davies called.


    [What?]


    ''Shut up,'' Davies said coolly, his calm attitude infuriating Miya more than his words. If she had a physical face, it''d be red with fury right now, but she ended up saying nothing and staying silent like she was asked.


    ''Now, back to what I was thinking, what am I going to be doing for the next two hours?'' he went back to thinking about how he would spend his time, but then he suddenly got a brainwave of ideas.


    ''... Wait, why do I even have to wait two hours?''


    ''Can''t I just buy the restaurant and tell her to get off work?''


    ''Or I could-''


    [Or you could use this time to check on sses girl in the hospital] Miya interjected before he thought up something even crazier than buying a restaurant just because he wanted to sleep with a waitress two hours earlier.


    ''...''


    ''... That''s actually a good idea,'' After a slight pause Davies replied with a shocked look on his face as he chuckled lightly.


    [Oi! Why does your tone sound so surprised at me giving you a good idea] Miya squealed at Davies, but in response, Davies had a mocking smile on his face as he asked,


    ''Do you really wanna know?''


    [...]


    [I give good ideas, okay!] Miya said loudly but didn''t say anything else, otherwise, Davies might tear her up with his words.


    "I wonder if she''s woken up?" Davies said smilingly as he pushed the start button of the car and the car came to life with a low hum.


    [So what if she has?]


    "Well then, she''s probably missing me, her ''knight in shining armor''," Davies replied with a smile as he thought of going to visit his new pet.


    [You''re unreal]

 Chapter 67 CHAPTER 67: DAVIES’S VILLAIN CREED

    "I wonder if she''s woken up?" Davies said smilingly as he pushed the car''s start button, and the car came to life with a low hum.


    [So, what if she has?]


    "Well then, she''s probably missing me, her ''knight in shining armor''," Davies replied with a smile as he thought of going to visit his new pet.


    [You''re unreal]


    "Uh¡­ no, it''s something called confidence,"


    "Ever heard of it?" Davies asked with a smirk and mmed on the elerator immediately after putting the car in gear and drove out of the car park, his tires skidding over the surface.


    [No, but I have heard of the one called pride] Miya shot back, not willing to ept defeat this time.


    "Pride?"


    "Is that something you eat?" Davies asked with a mock confused expression as he drifted around a car and still in the drift rounded the corner at a junction, moving into another street.


    [Yeah, it goes especially well if you dip it in betrayal seasoning]


    [And for God''s sake, watch your driving! You''re going to a hospital dammit!]


    [What''re you trying to do driving like a maniac, huh!?]


    "I''m practicing for a race, and why the hell do you care about my driving?"


    [...]


    "You wouldn''t happen to be scared for my life, would you?" he asked with a mocking smile and made sure to do an even longer and more dangerous drift across a sharp bend and in between three cars.


    "Sheesh, I''m surrounded by cowards¡­" Davies grinned.


    [... I-I''m not scared]


    [I just wanted to remind you to buy extra tires and not to get caught for reckless driving]


    "Me?"


    "Get caught?"


    "Impossible¡­ I own the cops," he replied haughtily with a slightugh.


    [Shoulda known you wouldn''t listen¡­] Miya sighed.


    "Girl, this is what being a viin is all about,"


    "Doing whatever the fu*k you want, whenever the fu*k you want,"


    "Fu*k the rules,"


    "Fu*k the consequences,"<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Fu*k everybody,"


    "And if they try to stop you¡­"


    "Make sure to fuck everybody over before you burn out!" Davies recited his viin creed whileughing crazily as he drove and stepped down even harder on the elerator.


    Shockingly though, his creed never had anything to do with winning, but this was because he knew and epted a truth that most viins try to avoid.


    The end of a viin has never been good, in fact, it''s more correct to say that the end of every viin is death.


    It was an uncontested truth. Nowhere in history has the viin won and continued winning all their lives until they died a peaceful death. For Davies, this was a truth he knew and epted because he already lived the truth, after all, he had died as a viin four times already.


    Circumstances may have made him a viin and he may not have had a choice but the moment one was tagged as a viin, irrespective of your say in the matter, your end has already been determined as death.


    He already died four times and it was highly likely that he would die a fifth time, after all, he was now going against things like fated protagonists that were backed by fate and against the god(s) that had sent him here.


    As for how he knew that it was a god''s power that had caused him to transmigrate continuously through different words, well what else but a god''s power could do something so illogical.


    His future was definitely going to be perilous and full of ups and downs, but even this was an understatement.


    His future was more like trying to ascend to the moon by climbing adder with his hands tied behind his back and only having one leg.


    He obviously couldn''t win every battle, but he was definitely going to make sure to fu*k up his enemies really good and make sure that they and their descendants would faint in fear and piss themselves at the mere mention of one of the letters of his name.


    He nned to aplish that and even more, even if he had to die trying. It would be a joke if he couldn''t even do at least that after all that he had been made to go through.


    He was no longer scared of death, after all, he had experienced it four times already. The thing that he was most scared of now is not being able to achieve his lofty goals.


    This was the only reason he still bothered with being alive and the only thing driving him forward was that, everything else had be nd¡­


    [Except finding a new girl to smash] Miya added before Davies''s image of a cold and uncaring person who only cared about ending his enemies'' peace and lives and cared about nothing else, was established.


    "..."


    "Well, yeah, that also," Davies didn''t refute her statement, after all, what could he say, that he was bored?


    It wasn''t his fault that he had a very handsome face and a big di*k. Also, it didn''t help matters that he had lived all of his lives as mostly a teenager and a young adult with a high libido, so he could never get out of the habit of having sex whenever he got the chance, and if he didn''t get the chance, he''d create the chance.


    Also, it did help as a momentary relief. It was kinda like drugs to ease his mental stress, only he wasn''t addicted to it¡­ I think.


    He was pulled out of his subconscious when he realized that he had already arrived at the hospital where Tisha was likely to be¡­ he wasn''t really sure as he had never bothered to find out, but this hospital was owned by Imperium Technologies and the Imperium League worked under Imperium Technologies, so bippity boppity boom, she should be at this hospital.


    Well even if she wasn''t here, he wouldn''t have an issue finding where she was and getting there in a few minutes, all it would take is a few more minutes of him driving like Dominic Torreto and Bryan Connorbined as they raced through a city while dragging a vault that had over a hundred million in it behind them¡­ or maybe he''d drive a tad bit faster, just a little bit.


    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Please vote powerstones and golden tickets...

 Chapter 68 CHAPTER 68: CRAZY

    Davies was pulled out of his subconscious thoughts when he realized that he had already arrived at the hospital where Tisha was likely to be.


    He wasn''t really sure as he had never bothered to find out, but this hospital was owned by Imperium Technologies and the Imperium League worked under Imperium Technologies, so bippity boppity boom, she should be at this hospital.


    Well even if she wasn''t here, he wouldn''t have an issue finding where she was and getting there in a few minutes, all it would take is a few more minutes of him driving like Dominic Torreto and Bryan Connorbined as they raced through a city while dragging a vault that had over a hundred million in it behind them¡­ or maybe he''d drive a tad bit faster, just a little bit.


    [...]


    [You''re more messed up than I thought] Miya was left wondering what kind of host she had ended up with.


    "... You''re actually just realizing that right now¡­?"


    "You''ve been with me all these years, what the hell did you expect?"


    "... that I was sane?" Davies asked incredulously as he couldn''t believe what she was saying.


    "Has any of my actions so far reflected that of a sane person?"


    "Even I know I''m crazy, but since I''m rich and a genius, I can pull off anything without being apprehended¡­ as long as it doesn''t involve blowing up the city sky high,"


    [...]


    [You don''t happen to have ns of doing that, do you?] Miya asked dubiously.


    "Hmmm¡­ I don''t know, maybe I''ll wake up one day and think, ''There are too many clouds in the sky, let''s blow this bitch up!''"


    "... After all, I am crazy," he said with a smile that was hard to read into, as he turned off the engine after finding a good parking spot where he wouldn''t be blocked in by another car. Well, even if he did end up getting blocked, he''d just destroy the car and move out once it was time¡­ he couldn''t keep that booty waiting.


    [''This motherfu**er doesn''t seem to be joking''] Miya thought,


    [Uh¡­ Davies, I think your goal should be the extermination of your already existing enemies and not the creation of more¡­]


    "Rx rx, blowing up a city isn''t gonna harm anybody¡­"


    [EXCEPT FOR THE PEOPLE LIVING IN THE CITY YOU@#$%&^*@#$!!!]


    "..."


    "Wow¡­ you kiss your momma with that mouth?" Davies asked in amazement.


    [I DON''T HAVE A MOMMA!!!]


    Daviesughed lightly as he opened the door of the Ventley and stepped out elegantly, "I think that counts as a win for me," he saidughingly as he closed the door.


    "What are the scores now?"


    [You''ve won 1569 and I''ve won 1199] Miya replied with a sigh of defeat.


    What Davies and Miya were talking about was a game that Davies and Miya yed quite a lot and the format was simply a battle of words. The one who was able to make the other flustered first won the game.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Since Miya couldn''t talk with anybody but he, and Davies himself was not talkative with other people they usually used this to pass the time if they were bored, so the whole conversation that just happened between them on their way here was another battle of words that Davies had undoubtedly won.


    This did not mean that everything Davies had said was a joke, rather he had meant every word, he had only made sure to infuriate Miya as he spoke, after all, he had no reason to lie to Miya who was an existence that lived somewhere in his own body and knew more about him than anybody else.


    Davies was crazy, and he may blow up a city one day if he found out that the city had mosquitoes. It totally depended on his mood; he was the kind of person to act on a whim like that.


    After closing the door of the car and locking it, Davies made his way to the VIP entrance of the hospital, which shockingly the hospital.


    ''Who even thought of something like putting a VIP entrance for the hospital?'' Davies went back to speaking to Miya in his mind. While he was crazy, he''d rather not have people looking at him weirdly when they noticed him seemingly having a conversation with himself.


    [It was probably made for something like emergency treatment for special people¡­ like Megas... like Tisha] Miya answered, unaware of Davies''s thoughts, but she would have agreed if she was aware of them.


    ''Oh¡­'' This assured Davies even more that Tisha was likely to be at this hospital.


    [Hey Davies, I''ve been wondering since earlier, but are you going to go visit someone in the hospital without bringing gifts?]


    [Yunno maybe flowers, or fruits?] Miya suddenly asked.


    Davies suddenly paused mid-step, ''Gifts?''


    ''... is that still a thing?'' Davies asked with aplex look, but if anyone knew his situation they wouldn''t me him, after all, it had been a lifetime ago since he had been at a hospital, and even then, he didn''t have people who cared about him enough to visit him.


    He did have a sister and a girlfriend¡­ but let''s just say, nobody really wants the image of what they were doing with the fated protagonist instead of visiting him in their heads. It would be heavily traumatic to whoever saw such an image.


    Unfortunately, Davies had the pleasure of having that horrifying image imprinted into his mind when he got out of the hospital and back to his house. He died shortly after that and ended up in Leivandage sixteen years ago.


    Anyway, the point was Davies hadn''t been visited at a hospital in all of his lives, and he had stopped watching things like movies and animes where such things happened, so he had totally forgotten about anything of the sort.


    ''Tch¡­ whatever, they should have some sort of store inside where I should be able to buy something.''


    Normally Davies wouldn''t care if he knew, but he was trying to get Tisha to be a useful pawn for some time in the future and the method he was using was to make her fall even more in love with him until she became obsessed with him enough to do whatever he requests of her.


    Putting that issue aside Davies walked on toward the VIP entrance of the hospital and upon reaching there he stepped inside not having to touch the doors as they worked with motion sensors.


    As Davies stepped into the hospital, he expected a clean white scene and the smell of disinfectants and other hospital-like smells to fill his nose, but instead of what he had expected to see and smell, a heavenly scene came into view and a smell that he was mostfortable smelling brushed across his nose, filling them up with heavenly scents.


    ''Uh, Miya¡­ is this really a hospital?"


    ''Or did I take a wrong turn somewhere and enter the promisednd,''


    ''THERE''S BOOBA EVERYWHERE!!!''


    [...]


    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Please Vote powerstones and golden tickets

 Chapter 69 CHAPTER 69: DO YOU CARE FOR SOME 69?

    As Davies stepped into the hospital, he expected a clean white scene and the smell of disinfectants and other hospital-like smells to fill his nose, but instead of what he had expected to see, a heavenly scene came into view and a smell that he was mostfortable smelling brushed across his nose, filling them up with heavenly scents.


    ''Uh, Miya¡­ is this really a hospital?"


    ''Or did I take a wrong turn somewhere and enter the promisednd,''


    ''THERE''S BOOBA EVERYWHERE!!!''


    [...]


    The lobby was a clean white space that was built to be wide to facilitate easy movements of people and useful tools to save people. It was an impressive sight, especially with the beautiful and neat decor and also the presence of different kinds of beautiful and sweet-smelling flowers, but this was not what took Davies''s breath away.


    Rather it was the presence of the extremely beautiful nurses who were wearing a pink-cloured nurse uniforms over their sensual bodies as they moved around doing all sorts of work.


    Even the doctors were extremely beautiful-looking females. They paraded around in their different clothes, but they had the distinctive white coat that was the trademark of every doctor in the medical industry draped over their shoulders, but that only served to increase their enticement value.


    ''This is what heaven should be like!'' Davies screamed inwardly almost crying tears of joy, but that was just him being over dramatic.


    [...]


    ''... Maybe I should have let myself be hospitalized back then¡­'' Davies thought back to when he had refused to be hospitalized because he didn''t want to make a fuss.


    ''Fuck duct tape! I need me some soft fleshy pillows!'' he thought tearfully.


    Davies''s presence at the VIP entrance didn''t go unnoticed as quite a few of the nurses'' and doctors'' eyes wandered over to look at the handsome bloke who stood at the entrance, scanning them with his cold eyes.


    This was one of the after-effects of having gone through too much mental stress from the constant betrayal and deaths of four lifetimes.


    His face and personality were always frozen and impassive, making him impossible to read and his face never showed any expression unless he made a conscious effort to show an expression.


    This was the reason why Miya was so hung up over the fact that Davies had smiled unconsciously when he was with Tisha, back at the mission gate.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Therefore, to the people looking at Davies as he stood at the entrance, he seemed to just be standing there with his hands in his pockets, a cold look and an icy aura as his eyes slowly scanned across the room. This did nothing to diminish his charm but rather made it stand out even more as it fitted perfectly with his white hair and glowing green eyes, he looked like a domineering ice emperor as his emerald-green eyes that glowed with power swept across the room.


    Of all the women looking at him right now, none of them could avoid being enthralled by his looks, and neither could they ward off the risky images that appeared in their heads and yed around in their minds, causing their body temperatures to rise quickly.


    Davies began walking into the lobby after his eyes had taken in all the perfect imperfections of the human body on all the women present and appraising them in his heart.


    He walked inside at a moderate pace and approached the counter that seemed like a ce to make inquiries,pletely aware of the attention he was receiving but not paying much attention to it for now.


    There was nothing he could do about it for now, he already had an appointment for tonight, not to mention the fact that he couldn''t handle all the women looking at him right now, he wasn''t some dual cultivator who could sleep with ten thousand women in one go, that''d kill his little brother.


    It was a waste of the opportunity, but when he remembered that he owned the hospital, he no longer had a reason to stress himself, he could juste back for them anytime, after all, they all worked for him¡­ but if the worstes to the worst, he''d just get himself admitted as well, as though light, he had also sustained some injuries in the dungeon that he had wrapped up with bandage and duct tape.


    [...] Miya just watched her host''s antics and the way he was scheming all so he could get his hands on some booba.


    Davies arrived at the counter where a beautiful redhead was doing some work on theputer in front of her. She was one of the few women who hadn''t looked up when Davies had walked in, she was swamped by work so she had shut out all distractions, but when Davies arrived in front of the counter and simply looked at her without saying a single word, somehow his aura alone had managed to get her attention, so she looked up with a professional smile and look, prepared to deal with whoever had arrived, but the moment she looked up and met with locked eyes with Davies she was stunned by the absoluteck of emotions that his eyes held.


    She had never dealt with something like this before, so she was stunned for a few seconds but quickly recovered herself while she kept her professional look and smile, even when she had been stunned by Davies''s apathetic look that seemed to be bored of everything, it was obvious that her professionalism was no joke.


    "What can I help you with, Sir?" she asked with her every word dripping professionalism. It was obvious that this was not the first time she had asked this question and had probably done it a few thousand times.


    "This ce is where the Imperium League members get treated if they suffer injuries in gates, correct?" Davies got straight to the point.


    The red-haired woman immediately straightened up the moment she heard his question, though his aura had been quite subtle, this question let her know that he was a big fish who at least had a rtionship with an Imperium league member.


    Little did she know that she was speaking not to a big fish, but to the biggest fish in the sea known as Imperium.


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    Please vote powerstones and golden tickets

 Chapter 70 CHAPTER 70: THE PLOT THICKENS

    "What can I help you with, Sir?" she asked her every word dripping professionalism. It was obvious that this was not the first time she had asked this question and had probably done it a few thousand times.


    "This ce is where the Imperium League members get treated if they suffer injuries in gates, correct?" Davies got straight to the point.


    The red-haired woman immediately straightened up the moment she heard his question, though his aura had been quite subtle, this question let her know that he was a big fish who at least had a rtionship with an Imperium league member.


    Little did she know that she was speaking not to a big fish, but to the biggest fish in the sea known as Imperium.


    "Yes, that is correct," the red-haired attendant answered.


    "Good, I don''t have to search somewhere else," Davies muttered.


    "Tisha Nancy¡­ what room?" Davies asked in a t tone, not really inclined towards any small talk at this moment.


    "Please hold on a minute, let me check," she replied and quickly turned her focus to theputer and began operating it to search for the required information.


    A few secondster she began to say some words with her eyes on the screen,


    "Tisha Nancy, 17-year-old Mega, recently admitted after getting out of a gate at 4:05am this morning," she spoke and looked up at Davies to look for any traces of confirmation, but there was no need for that as Davies''s voice rang through her ears.


    "I asked for her room number, not her information, I already know that much," Davies replied immediately with a raised eyebrow, but there wasn''t a trace of annoyance in his tone¡­ yet.


    "Oh, sorry,"


    "She''s at ward F, room 69," the redhead quickly apologized and told Davies the room number.


    ''So, F 69¡­ seriously what''s it with this number 69 popping up everywhere?" Davies thought amusedly, but outwardly he asked the redhead another question,


    "I don''t suppose you have some sort of map for this ce, also if you can point me in the direction of a gift store, that''d be nice." Davies had no ns of going around like a lost puppy looking for directions to a room when he could easily ask somebody, of course, he could ask someone else once he started searching, but he was naturally antisocial and would rather not talk to strangers if he could help it.


    "Uhh¡­ it''s that way, there are pointers along the way that will direct you towards the correct ward," she said as she pointed in the direction of a long hallway that led to the inner areas of the hospital.


    "As for the room, I''m pretty sure you know math," due to being pressed hard at work, she was quite stressed and a bit of her personality slipped out from her professional demeanor, just like the color of her hair, it was quite fiery.


    "Hmmm¡­ quite spunky, are you?" Davies''s eyebrow rose again as he looked at her with slight amazement.


    Normally most people wouldn''t even be able to speak back at him once he was feeling quite anti-social and his icy aura was acting up and making him seem unapproachable, but she was different.


    "I quite like it¡­ now I don''t feel like leaving," the corner of his lips slightly tilted up due to finding another interesting person.


    "But unfortunately, I have to, duty calls," Davies turned away and began walking away.


    This ce belonged to him anyway, he could alwayse back for anything that caught his eye, this was his thought process as he began to walk down the hallway, navigating through the hallways and following the directions that were quite easy to follow as they were at every junction.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Luckily, he had managed to find a gift shop that had both flowers and fruits.


    As he''d rather be caught dead than caught holding something romantic like a flower, he didn''t even spare the flowers a nce and quickly bought a basket of fruits and a card that he stuffed into it.


    After paying for the basket of fruits and the card, he continued on his way toward room 69 of ward F.


    A few minutester, he arrived in front of a door that was as white as everything else in this corridor. Not hesitating, he pushed the door open and walked in.


    The first thing that came into view was an unconscious Tisha as shey down peacefully on the patient bed, the next thing he saw was Teresa who sat on the chair as she went through her phone¡­ or at least she did until Davies came in.


    Finally, his eyes fell upon the third person who sat in the room. It was a cute little kid that had dark blue hair, he was also seated on the couch, but he was using Teresa''sp as a pillow as he held a book above his face and read. He had also looked up to see who had entered the room.


    "Davies darling, you''re handsome again today," she called out with a teasing tone as she immediately recognized him as he came in.


    ''Woman, when did we get so familiar with each other, also I''m handsome every day,'' Davies replied inwardly as he stared at her with an "Are you okay in the head?" face.


    "Who''s the kid?" Davies asked in a t tone, though inwardly, he already knew the answer, after all his appearance was obviously simr to the girl lying unconscious on the bed.


    "This is Romero, Tisha''s little brother," Teresa exined, pointing at the dark blue-haired boy that was using herp as ap pillow.


    Romero was looking at Davies with appraising eyes as he literally scanned him from head to toe, Davies had already noticed this and was doing the same, but not as obviously as Romero, he had more experience after all.


    Davies already had a good impression of the kid due to his cautious attitude, which was abnormal for a kid his age, but then Miya spoke,


    [Strange¡­]


    ''What''s strange?'' Davies asked immediately.


    [The kid¡­ his fate value is unusually high] Miya replied.


    ''Wait¡­ You mean he is a fated protagonist?'' Davies was stupefied at the thought.


    [No¡­ his fate value still falls a bit short of a fated protagonist¡­ but it''s high enough to be a high-levelpanion, almost something like what people would call a second protagonist] Miya exined and dampened down his alertness.


    ''It''s that high?'' he asked as he was still quite stupefied at the thought.


    [Also, just like Lee Jungst week, his fate value is untapped, meaning he has not yet gotten his fated opportunity]


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    Please vote powerstones and golden tickets to support this book...

 Chapter 71 CHAPTER 71: DARK FATE VALUE?

    [Strange¡­]


    ''What''s strange?'' Davies asked immediately.


    [The kid¡­ his fate value is unusually high] Miya replied.


    ''Wait¡­ You mean he is a fated protagonist?'' Davies was stupefied at the thought.


    [No¡­ his fate value still falls a bit short of a fated protagonist¡­ but it''s high enough to be a high-levelpanion, almost something like what people would call a second protagonist] Miya exined and dampened down his alertness.


    ''It''s that high?'' he asked as he was still quite stupefied at the thought.


    [Also, just like Lee Jungst week, his fate value is untapped, meaning he has not yet gotten his fated opportunity]


    Davies had a strong urge to rub his brows, but he stopped himself in time and instead said to Romero,


    "Nice to meet you, kid,"


    "Same," Romero simply replied and went back to reading his book.


    Davies took this chance to go and ce the basket of fruits on the table beside Tisha''s bed.


    All of this was making no sense. If anybody, he would have expected Tisha to be the one to be the likelypanion for a fated protagonist, especially as shepletely fitted the bill of a harem member.


    She fitted the bill so much that his whole n to control her was based on that, but now he was hearing that it was her brother that was a likelypanion for a protagonist.


    All this sudden unexpected information was pissing him off.


    [I don''t know if it helps, but I noticed something strange about Tisha as well]


    ''What is it now?'' Davies almost grumbled out loudly.


    [... her fate value¡­ is dark] Miya said hesitantly.


    ''... what do you mean dark?'' Davies asked, confused at the new terminology.


    ''What exactly is it supposed to look like in the first ce?'' he almost screamed.


    He couldn''t see things as mysterious as fate value and his system was too useless to give him a tool to enlighten him, so he could only work based on Miya''s interpretation of what the system was sensing.


    [That''s the thing, normal fate value isn''t supposed to look like anything, it''s kind of like the formless water vapor that though is always present in the atmosphere and cannot be seen]


    [People with higher fate value begin to be shrouded in a white mist-like aura, and fated protagonists are literally glowing fate value]


    ''But Tisha is none of these and is instead shrouded in some sort of dark fate value, ording to you,'' Davies continued from where Miya stopped.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    ''... and if we put together the fact that a fated protagonist''s value is glowing and Tisha''s is dark, then it''s highly likely that¡­'' Davies''s mind was working at an unparalleled speed as his brain all the new variables.


    [Yeah¡­ she could be some sort of viin]


    "..." Davies had no words to exin the shock he received from havinge to the same conclusion. He felt like hitting his head on something to loosen up his thoughts.


    As he looked at her peaceful face while shey unconscious, he had to admit that he had not expected this, at all, but then it did kind of make some sense.


    He had always felt that it was kind of sketchy when he heard her story from Teresa and found out that, instead of hating monsters and wanting to have some sort of revenge against them, she had instead adopted a no-killing code of conduct and had avoided killing monsters, or even killing anything for that matter.


    He was also willing to bet that her hidden potential had something to do with her likelihood of bing a viin.


    All of a sudden, Davies''s interest in this new pawn of his, increased greatly.


    Things were bing moreplicated quickly, but they were also bing more interesting.


    A wicked smile suddenly broke out on Davies''s face as he was especially hyped right now.


    Davies turned back towards Teresa and Romero. His eyes especially fell on Romero''s rxed figure as hey down on the chair, reading, visibly enjoying thep pillow.


    [You know¡­ he''s likely to have to go up against his sister in the future¡­ and he''s likely to win]


    ''... I know¡­ I might have to kill the kid,'' Davies didn''t want to have to kill a child ever again in his life, but he''d already done it many times before, and he could easily do it again if he had no choice.


    But, since there was no point in making such a hasty move now as he did not know what the future held in store for him.


    For now, he just wanted to while away time, then getid¡­ allplex thinking would begin after he had woken up tomorrow, at the earliest.


    "I didn''t notice before, but isn''t that a patient''s overalls, why are you even admitted to the hospital?" Now that Davies''s mind was cleared of all currently unnecessary thoughts his eyes focused on the clothing that covered Teresa''s body, a blue gown-like clothing that was slightly baggy, but even then, the mountain peaks on her chest couldn''t be hidden underneath the baggy clothing, and Davies''s eyes fell on them.


    "I know right! I told them that it was nothing serious and I only had a few scratches, but the doctor insisted on keeping us here for a while,"


    "It''s so boring justying around," Teresa cried out with a pitiful look.


    This was bullshit. He, who had done most of the work in the mission gate and had almost single-handedly hauled their asses away from certain death, had not even managed to have a single wink of sleep since he came out of the gate.


    Yet the people that he worked his ass off to protect were enjoying themselves just lying around in a hospital full of beautiful women.


    ''I should reduce their sries,'' Davies thought with a face full of ck lines.


    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    (Please do note: Miya is not the system, but an interface assistant that came with the system, kinda like how Siries with the IPhone. She can use the system functions that Davies doesn''t have ess to yet, but can only barely exin the results to Davies)

 Chapter 72 CHAPTER 72: PURPLE-EYED DOCTOR AND THE MAN ON A MISSION

    This was bullshit.


    He, who had done most of the work in the mission gate and had almost single-handedly hauled their asses away from certain death, had not even managed to get a single wink of sleep since he came out of the gate.


    Yet the people that he worked his ass off to protect were enjoying themselves just lying around in a hospital full of beautiful women.


    ''I should reduce their sries,'' Davies thought with a face full of ck lines.


    The door to the room suddenly swung open and a ck-haired woman wearing a white doctor''s overcoat walked in.


    She had her hair tied up in a ponytail and enchanting purple eyes that seemingly glowed beneath the lens of the sses that she wore. Her pink lips looked like sakura flowers in full bloom.


    In one word she was "hot."


    ''... I really need to get admitted into this ce,'' Davies''s attention immediately turned over to the new arrival.


    "Miss Teresa, I''m pretty sure I said that you should not be-¡­ oh," the doctor started speaking immediately she entered the room and noticed Teresa inside the room, but paused the moment she noticed Davies looking at her with icy, but inquiring eyes.


    "Who''s this?" she asked, looking at Teresa for answers.


    "He''s-" Teresa began to try to introduce Davies, but Davies himself cut in.


    "Davies Lake¡­ guess I don''t need to say I''m handsome since you can see it on my face,"


    "I''m twenty-two¡­"


    "... and also, their boss," he said with a slight smile, as he pointed behind him with his thumb in Teresa and Tisha''s direction.


    "I''m Alyssa," the purple-eyed doctor replied as she stretched forth her hand for a handshake,


    "Also, why the lengthy introduction? Your name should have done just fine," she continued.


    "... though you are handsome, and you do look twenty-two-ish,"


    "Ah, you''ll need it¡­" Davies said as he grasped her hand.


    "For my medical fileter," he continued leaving Alyssa quite confused about what he was talking about.


    "Though if I knew I''d end up being patched up by a doctor as beautiful as you, I wouldn''t have mindeding here for treatment," he said as he released her hand.


    "Excuse me?" Alyssa''s brows furrowed in more confusion.


    "Ah, sorry I forgot to mention it, I was in the gate with these¡­ noobs," Davies with a nce towards Teresa.


    "Hey! Don''t call us noo-" Teresa began, but¡­


    "So, you''re injured? Where?" Alyssa''s eyes suddenly shone with an over-enthusiastic glint as she rushed to grab Davies and begin examining him.


    Davies didn''t bother dodging her as he didn''t sense a threat from her, and who was he toin about having a woman touch his body¡­ If possible, he wanted even more.


    Unfortunately, this was not the ce to allow such a "deep and thorough checkup", so he quickly grasped her hands before they could get to work undressing him and searching for injuries.


    "Miss Alyssa, though I feel quite the connection to you even after just meeting you, I think it''s still a bit too early for you to begin undressing me," Davies said as he drew her closer to his face until their bodies were in contact.


    "I''m not undressing you; I''m checking for injuries!" Alyssa replied enthusiastically with an excited glint in her eyes, not seeming to mind the fact that they were in such close contact with each other.


    "Same thing," Davies affirmed, not shying away from eye contact as he looked her straight in the eye, still holding her hands.


    "I''lle back for a check-up tomorrow," he said as he released her hands and move a step back.


    "I''ll hold you to that," Alyssa said, looking like she wanted to pounce on him and strip off all of his clothing to treat whatever injuries he was hiding beneath his baggy clothes, but she held herself in ce.


    "Haha," Daviesughed lightly as he began to walk past her towards the door.


    "Ok then, I''ll be looking forward to it,"


    "Oh, before I forget, make sure those guys are all patched up soon, they have a lot of work to do to pay me back for working so hard to save them," Davies said without looking back as he walked out of the room, the door closing behind him.


    As he began to make his way out of the hospital, he thought back to the beautiful, purple-eyed doctor he had just met with. Honestly speaking, her enthusiasm towards treating his injuries was a bit strange¡­ and scary, but who didn''t like a woman being a little freaky. At least things wouldn''t be boring.


    It didn''t take long for Davies to make his way out of the hospital, as he noticed the clock already moving towards the appointed time.


    He was a man on a mission¡­ a mission to getid.


    A few minutester, Davies was already by the side of the car and quickly opened the door and jumped in at the same quick pace that he had used toe out of the hospital.


    He quickly reached for the start button and pushed it, sessfully starting up the car, but in his slight haste, he had also pushed the button that turned on the radio.


    Before he could even get to put the car in gear, the voice from the radio made him pause in his tracks,<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    *[Reports of a ck Ventley Conraverse being driven like a crazy maniac on the streets between 5th Avenue and Imperium Hospital Street have been constantly streaming in] *


    *[A city-wide hunt has begun to look for the reckless driver who seemed to be driving like it was the apocalypse] *


    "..." Davies.


    [...] Miya.


    "They can''t do anything to me anyway," Davies was the one to break the silence.


    [...] Miya still didn''t say anything, but Davies could imagine her ring at him with an "Are you okay in the head?" look.


    This would be a troublesome issue for anyone else, but not for Davies, who simply pushed open the door of the car and got back out,


    "Inventory," he called, and the familiar ck row of boxes appeared in front of his eyes.


    He began to scroll through the rows of various items and materials until he came upon a small, intricately shaped, but peculiar-looking tool.


    Davies pulled it out of the inventory and ced it on the hood of the Ventley before double tapping it twice. The tool immediately attached itself to the car and sent out pulsing blue waves of light that seemed to scan the outer body of the car as they ran across the body of the car numerous times.


    After a few seconds, the tool stopped sending the blue waves of light across the outer body of the Ventley and instead, a mechanic-sounding voice came from the object.


    [Scanningplete]


    [Vehicle type; Ventley Conraverse, confirmed]


    [Generating random color and license te]


    [Randomisingplete]


    [Generating¡­]


    A white color suddenly spread across the body of the Ventley with the peculiar tool attached to the hood as the starting point of the spreading color.


    A few secondster the car had a new paint job and license number. Davies just went back to sit in the car scoffing to himself.


    [You''re lucky this is an underground garage]


    "Even if it wasn''t, so what?" Davies scoffed as he started the car and began to drive.


    To be honest, he really didn''t need to go through all the trouble as Megas weren''t subject to the same type ofws that normal humans were, so he would never end up arrested or anything like that just because he broke a few traffic rules, but he didn''t want to get annoyed by anybody right now, otherwise he might find it hard to not kill somebody.


    He was so not ready for any bullshit right now, so for their sakes, he decided to rid himself of the annoyance.


    He made his way back to the "Way to the 69" restaurant, but this time he drove like a sane person, and on his way there he made sure to make a reservation for a presidential suite at a nearby hotel, his house was too far away and was currently not suitable for one-night stands.


    After a while, he pulled into the restaurant''s parking lot while already speaking to¡­ what was her name again?


    Anyway, he called her out, picked her up, and headed for the hotel.


    *A few minutester¡­*


    *Bang*


    The door of the presidential suite mmed shut behind Davies and Anne who were already kissing, their lips smashed against each other as no romantic or heartfelt words needed to be shared between them.


    They were both here for sex¡­ it was nothing more than a one-night thing¡­ at least for now, Davies had no ns for more.


    They slowly moved towards the bed while exploring each other''s lips, but it was beginning to take a bit too long to reach the bedroom for Davies, so he pulled back from the kiss and hugged Anne''s waist, lifted her, and threw her onto his shoulder in one swift movement, his swift movements showing his experience in bedroom matters.


    "Aiyaaaa," Anne screamed in surprise from being suddenly being carried like a bag of rice over Davies''s shoulder, but she didn''t say anything to suggest him putting her down and even if she did, he wouldn''t have listened.


    Davies quickly began moving towards the room, while thinking to himself that he shouldn''t have reserved a presidential suite and should have reserved a normal room instead, the damn ce was too big.


    He quickly found the bedroom and threw open the door, before moving inside and throwing Anne harshly on the bed, but by the squeals of excitementing from her, he was sure she didn''t mind.


    They were soon locked into each other''s embrace, once again exploring the depths of each other''s mouths with their tongues.


    It was a true battle of tongue dominance between them, but Anne suddenly began to not be able to keep up due to Davies''s hand, sneaking onto various parts of her body and teasing her all over.


    "Ahhhhnnnn," Anne moaned in delight and surprise as Davies''s hand sneaked into her shirt and grasped and pinched her left nipple.


    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Sorry for not updating for the past couple of days, I''ll do my best to make up for it with extra chapters in the next few days.


    Don''t forget to vote powerstones and golden tickets.

 Chapter 73 CHAPTER 73: EARLY MORNING FLEX

    Davies''s eyes fluttered open to a dimly lighted room and could not help but wonder if he woke up too early, but the digital clock on the bedside disyed the time.


    [7:23 am]


    Those were the numbers on the clock, but if that was the case, then why was it so dark, he wondered drowsily. He slowly rose up from under the nkets and pped his hands twice, expecting the curtains to open up and let light into the room, but to his annoyance nothing happened, leaving him confused.


    Hey back on the bed, his mind still fuzzled from just waking up. Slowly everything came back to him.


    He wasn''t at his house but at a hotel with some chick named Anne, who speaking of which, should be on the bed beside him, but due to theck of lights he couldn''t see much of her in the abundance of bed covers that were present on the bed.


    Now that he had woken up, he had no reason to lie in bed anymore, so he rose up again, stood up from the bed this time, and began making his way over to the curtains that covered the windows.


    He pulled away the curtains, letting the early morning sunshine bathe his body as he looked out the windows at the sunrise while ignoring the cold air that blew against his naked body from the air conditioner¡­ he was impervious to cold temperatures anyway.


    As Davies looked at the beautiful early morning sunshine that brightened up the sky and everywhere else in sight, he also looked at the city and its inhabitants, some of whom had alreadye out and had begun making their way to their various ces of work, previewing the hustle and bustle of the day toe.


    Davies looked at all of this with a hard-to-read expression and began to monologue,


    "Look at all these people,"


    "Thriving, dreaming and striving for their dreams¡­"


    "... It really is a beautiful new day¡­" he began and then finished with,


    "... Whose dreams will I be killing today," he thought with a wicked grin appearing on his face at the end of his monologue.


    Now with one of his weird morning rituals done, he looked behind him at the bed where Anne was still asleep under the bed covers. The light from the early morning sun did little to bother her sleep as she still slept peacefully, totally oblivious to her surroundings.


    Davies could see a few hickeys on her uncovered neck, proof of his various forms of ministrations on her body just a few hours before.


    ''Are my teeth that sharp?'' he wondered while using his tongue to check the sharpness of his own teeth as he looked at the bright red marks on her skin. There was no way that wasn''t visible.


    Whoever saw her would see his marks and the evidence of the wild night they had both shared and for this Davies nodded approvingly to himself, he had done well on this one.


    Shaking all unnecessary thoughts away from his head he began to walk out of the room, not forgetting to pick up his pieces of clothing as he left¡­ he didn''t n toe back here anyway.


    He shut the door of the bedroom silently behind him and began to move through the presidential suite, opening different doors in search of the bathroom, and after opening a few doors he found one.


    He threw his clothes into a drawer that was present in the bathroom and took out a towel and other bathing essentials and quickly began having his bath.


    A few short minutester, he got out of the bathroom and dressed himself uppletely, exactly the same way he was dressed the day before¡­ he had no new clothes with him after all.


    Then he began to make his way out of the suite, but on his way out he pulled out a couple of ear pods from his inventory and connected them to his phone before putting them in his ear.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    The smooth piano music and soft voice of Justin Bieber filled his ears and Davies sang along as he stepped out of the suite and began to make his way toward the elevator.


    "...What if you had it all, but nobody to call, maybe then you''d know me,"


    "Cuz I''ve had everything, but no one''s listening, and that''s just fu*king lonely,"


    "I''m so lo-oo-o-oo-o-oo-onely,"


    "lo-oo-o-oo-o-oo-onely,"


    "I''m so lo-oo-o-oo-o-oo-onely,"


    "lo-oo-o-oo-o-oo-onely,"


    Surprisingly, Davies had quite the voice, as could be heard while he sang along to one of his favorite songs without missing a beat, rhythm, or lyric, perfectly matching with the original singer of the song.


    He especially liked this song, because it expressed one of the few things he could still feel, even though it wasn''t something he was happy to be able to feel, but it gave him the respite knowing that he was still human and not a monster that hadpletely forgotten how to feel¡­ even though the ones he had left weren''t ones he wanted.


    Davies got to the elevator, still singing as he got in, and pressed the button to go to the ground floor.


    Even though the elevator stopped on a number of floors and a few people got on the elevator with him as well, Davies paid no attention to them and continued singing along to the songs he was listening to in a low voice, not caring about the stares he received.


    Somebody else in his shoes may have felt shy or flustered, but definitely not Davies, first he wasn''t doing anything wrong, secondly, he knew his voice was very good, andstly, he was way too emotionally numb to care about people staring at him, whatever the reason.


    "Do you hear me calling," Davies sang as he left the elevator and walked towards the receptionist to make a request for a valet to bring his car from wherever they had parked it.


    The process was swift and without anyplications. Soon Davies was sitting at the back of the wheel, driving towards Imperium Technologies while wondering how many guys had tried to escape and what methods Selina had used to remove the plication."


    "Don''t ever say it''s over if I''m breathin'',"


    "Racin'' to the moonlight and I''m speedin'',"


    "I''m headed to the stars, ready to go far,"


    "I''m star walkin,"


    Davies''s voice rang through the car as it sped towards the Imperium Technologies building.


    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Don''t forget to vote powerstones and golden tickets...

 Chapter 74 CHAPTER 74: A MORNING SHOW I

    A white-colored Ventley Conraverse sped through the streets of Yorkshire city.


    The driver of the car seemed to pay no attention to the so-called speed limit as he drove as speedily as the road would allow him, constantly over taking the other vehicles on the road.


    Luckily even though he was over driving at a speed that was over the speed limit, it wasn''t too far from it.


    In the end the car took a turning that led towards the business district where various tall and impressive looking buildings littered every corner of the streets and after a few more minutes of speedy driving, the unruly car pulled up in front of an especially tall building that seemed to be challenging the heavens with its impressive height.


    The letters IT that were stered on the side of the building was especially impressive to look at no matter whichever angle one looked at it from.


    Davies got out of the car and threw the car key into the hands of the waiting valet before walking past him and making his way to the doors of the building.


    ''Hmmm... what are the things I have to do today anyway?'' he asked himself, not really paying much attention to his surroundings.


    ''Apart from working on "that", he would probably go back to check on Tisha sometime today,''


    ''Hopefully, her brother would be there so he can try to find out something about him and make some decisions... and he''d get to have a little session with the purple eyed doctor, Alyssa,''


    ''... But before all that he had to first focus on the first issue of the day,''


    ''How many of his managing level or Executive employees had gone to the other side,'' heid all his thoughts bare in his mind and was analyzing the best n to go about for the day when suddenly an additional thought popped up in his mind,


    ''Where the hell is that bodyguard/personal assistant of mine?'' he wondered with a little annoyance.


    All this thinking and nning of his day was originally his job and he was just supposed to follow an alreadyid out schedule, but because of his, Daniel''s, absence he had to be using his brain to think of useless things in the morning.


    Thinking of schedules wasn''t something a genius''s brain should be thinking about. A genius''s brain had way more important things to think about and can not afford to have stupid distractions like these in their daily activities.


    "GOOD MORNING, MR. LAKE!!!"


    Davies was suddenly thrown out of his thoughts by an excessively loud greeting just after pulling open the door and entering the lobby of the Imperium Building.


    He was quite taken aback when he saw familiar faces of the Executive officers and Managing officers, as well as a few other employees all waiting at the entrance for his arrival just to greet him.


    "... Uh... good morning?" he replied, but his voice had a slight questioning tone and his usually impassive and unfeeling face could not manage to hide his surprise, though his face made it seem that he was only slightly surprised and not bbergasted like he was feeling internally.


    ''What brought this about?''


    ''Did I over do it yesterday in the meeting room yesterday, or is it something else?'' he wondered thoughtfully, hoping for an answer to his confusion from Miya.


    [...]


    [Don''t ask me... even I don''t know what is happening] Miya replied, just as puzzled as he was.


    Seeing that he probably would not get answers from just staring dumbfoundedly at them he decided to have them disperse.


    "Uhhh... you can get back to work now," he said and began to move along towards the elevator, not waiting for them to begin dispersing, but on his way to the elevator his attention got snagged by the huge screen on one of the walls.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Or to be more urate, to what was being disyed on the screen. The screen was a television, and it was currently tuned to a news channel.


    There were two women anchors who worked together to deliver the news. It looked more like a TV show where they talked about interesting happenings that was happening currently and there also seemed to be ament section where people who were watching the show from their phones on a live website could leave theirments.


    The women were beautiful of course, one of them was blonde and seemed to be in herte twenties with a slim body as she sat on the spinning stool-like chair while the other was more a ck-haired woman with a bob cut and a more mature aura, but they were not what caught Davies''s attention, rather it was the current topic that seemed to be the basis of their discussion.


    *[Strange deaths of Imperium Technology employees]*


    "Eh...? it made the news?" Davies had been expecting dead officials and interesting circumstances, but he had not expected the circumstances to be so interesting that it even made the news and became a topic for discussion.


    ''What the hell did that crazy girl make them do to those guys?'' Davies thought, even more bbergasted than when he had received a surprise greeting just minutes ago, but now he was especially intrigued and curious, so he decided to wait and watch the show to find out more.


    *"Back to where we were on the strange deaths case of Imperium Technology employees," the young blonde said towards the screen as they just came back on after some advertisements


    *"Yes, where were we, Cherry?" the short haired matured woman named Mia, asked the younger blonde-haired woman.


    *"We were talking about the first victim''s cause of death, apparently he got hit while crossing the streets," Cherry replied to Mia''s question.


    *"What''s strange about that?" Mia asked as if she didn''t know the cause of the guy''s death. It was obvious from her perfect facial movements and expressions that she had experience on how to put on a show.


    *"Normally it wouldn''t be strange, unless you got hit by an empty white truck," Cherry said, but it was obvious that she was doing her best to keep herself fromughing because of the strange situation.


    *"Bless their souls," she quickly added while trying to stifle herughter, so as not to seem disrespectful.


    *"Hmmmm... so Callum Wilson, aged 39,"


    *"Cause of death; getting hit by an empty white truck," Mia said with a straight face, but it had the opposite effect on the people who were watching the show and theirments that were popping on the side of the screen.


    ~"DevilDarkness : Bruh got isekaied?!!??¡è¡ê"~


    ~"AsuraSaiyan : All hail truck kun!!????!"~


    ~"Audio_Frowns : No matter where thou shalt hide, truck-kun will allways deliver,"~


    ~"jordan_sarceno : I wanna get isekai''d as well!!!???¡ê"~


    As Davies watched, his mind ran back to remember something that had happened in front of him just yesterday and all that came to his mind was,


    ''No wonder the punk looked familiar.''


    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    To note: the text in italics arements from people watching the show from their phones and the dialogues with ''*'' at it''s beginning are words being spoken from people on the TV.


    Don''t forget to vote powerstones and golden tickets...

 Chapter 75 CHAPTER 75: THE MORNING SHOW II

    As Davies watched the show, his mind ran back to remember something that had happened in front of him just yesterday and all that came to his mind was,


    ''No wonder the punk looked familiar.''


    *"Unfortunately, that wasn''t the only death that urred to an Imperium Technologies employeest night," Cherry said to Mia with a pensive look.


    *"Hmmm, something fishy seems to be going on in Imperium Technologies... but that is not the topic for today," Mia replied,


    *"You''re right, it is not, we are here to discuss the four strange deaths that befell Imperium Technologies employeesst night," Cherry continued,


    *"So, moving on, to the second strange death," she picked up a piece of paper that was on her table. It seemed to have the reports of the cases and was where the content of the discussion wasid out.


    *"Bryan Miller, aged 34,"


    *"Cause of death... Oh,"


    *"What''s wrong Cherry, spit it out," Mia asked, wondering what was on the paper, as she wasn''t the main anchor of the show and was only there as a support anchor, so she wasn''t given the report sheet that had the contents of the report.


    *"Uh-Uh, Cause of death; Uh," she continually stuttered while looking at the paper.


    *"I-I can''t find it in me to say it out loud. Youe do it," she said as she handed the paper to Mia.


    Mia snatched the paper thinking, ''What could be so hard to say in a death case report.''


    She looked for the name of Bryan Miller on the report and began to read out,


    *"Bryan Miller, aged 34,"


    *"Cause of death... Ohhhhhhh,"


    *"Uh, he died of exhaustion... while having sex... with multiple men," Mia said slowly.


    ~"AsuraSaiyan: ... so... he was fucked to death???¡À"~


    ~"PrathameshRana: Bruh be freaky"~


    ~"Nanada_ars: Woulda said, bruh went out in glory... but this doesn''t feel like glory"~


    ~"Daoisty9pBel: Bro died from backshots??¡è¡ê"~


    *"Apparently, he was found in a drug and sex party at his home and he had called some "workers" to satisfy," Mia continued after getting a hold back on herposure.


    *"Seems like he couldn''t handle the satisfaction," Cherry chimed in.


    Davies was doing all he could to stop himself fromughing as he watched the show in the lobby of the Imperium Technologies building, but his body almost betrayed him as he was shaking from just holding on to hisughter.


    *"Let''s quickly move past this to the third case of strange deaths," Mia continued, as she was now the one with the report sheet and she wanted to quickly list out the cases so they could move to the "discussion with viewers" part of the program.


    *"The third case seems to be another strange ident," she began.


    *"Another strange ident?" Cherry asked with an unbelieving expression on her face as she looked at Mia.


    *"Yes, the victim this time, Howard Williams was on the way out of his house, probably to go on a trip as he had a packed bag with him,"


    "He was just walking down the sidewalk when he was unexpectedly hit on the balls with a tennis ball,"<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    *"That''s terrible...!" Cherry had her hands covering her mouth with a shocked expression on her face.


    *"Truly a tragedy as it was what led to his death..." Mia continued with a sympathetic look on her face.


    *"The poor guy couldn''t take the pain and fell to the floor head first, smashing his head against the floor and dying immediately,"


    *"Funny thing is... there wasn''t a tennis court nearby,"


    ~"Adrian_Yiu: le gasp!!!"~


    ~"anime_god_8311: his balls must have been feeling lonely so they attracted another ball,??¡è¡ê"~


    ~"Sphire1707: FATALITY!!!"~


    ~"Kane_Estler: One to the balls, one to the head... how was the poor man supposed to survive?????"~


    Thements came rushing in again.


    Without looking much at thements as she was now in a bit of a rush, Mia quickly moved on to the next case.


    *"The fourth case seems a bit special... Only God knows what the victim had done to be treated like this," Mia said aloud as she read the circumstances of thest guy''s death. It seemed especially terrible.


    *"..."


    *"You''re scaring me with your words, Mia," Cherry said, sounding a little scared, but Mia didn''t respond and instead started reading out the case material.


    *"The victim, Tennessee Williams was kidnapped, poisoned, shot in the head, shot three more times, bludgeoned, castrated, and then thrown into a river to drown..."


    *"His cause of death: Drowning..."


    ~"Manhal_Ali: I don''t know whether to apud or to feel bad... so I''ll justugh"~


    ~"shinydecapod: dude went through all that and ended up dying by drowning... apuse????,"~


    ~"Sir Killington: the real question here is... who did he offend?"~


    ~"Freakyoldman: Somebody help me contact the police, I am a collector of weiners..."


    ~"Jonathan_Souls: FBI, someone upstairs sounds like a criminal"~


    Thement section was as rowdy as always, but Davies was no longer paying attention to the screen and was now looking towards the Executive officials and the managing officials out of the corner of his eyes.


    ''So, that was why,'' he figured that they must have gotten news of the things that had happened overnight.


    Due to four of the high-ranking employees having unfortunate idents, whatever corresponding authorities that were responsible for the investigation of the strange cases had probably contacted them, probably to ask for help with the investigation and to tell them to stay protected as it was obvious that someone was targeting the higher ups of Imperium Technologies.


    As for why he hadn''t been contacted, it was pretty simple... they had no way to contact him. Any information about him was non-existent not to mention being open to the general public.


    He could see the look of fear on their faces no matter how hard they tried to hide it, and he relished it.


    *"Shockingly all of the people involved in the strange death cases have involvement with narcotics and..." Davies thought process was interrupted by the voice of the support anchor, Mia, bringing to light an interesting clue, but Davies just zoned out again after listening to half of what she was saying.


    "Hmmmm... Interesting..." he said with a chuckle as his eyes fell on the "to be killed soon" employees.

 Chapter 76 CHAPTER 76: NEW INFO ACQUIRED

    *"Shockingly all of the people involved in the strange death cases have involvement with narcotics and¡­" Davies thought process was interrupted by the voice of the support anchor, Mia bringing to light an interesting clue, but Davies just zoned out again after listening to half of what she was saying.


    "Hmmmm¡­ Interesting¡­" he said with a chuckle as his eyes fell on the "to be killed soon" employees.


    He had realized that Selina had probably nted drugs around the victims to confuse the investigators that''d be researching their deaths¡­ she especially liked messing with people like them, but he didn''t mind her antics this time as it did not go against any of his objectives in any way.


    With a light chuckle that for some reason sent shivers through the body of everybody in the lobby that heard him, he began to move towards the elevator in a light mood.


    ''Some dreams have already been sessfully crushed today, and it is still morning¡­''


    ''Today has the makings of a great day,'' he thought in his light mood as he got into the elevator and began to make his way to the 139th floor just like the day before.


    *Ring* *Ring*


    Davies''s phone began ringing as soon as he got into the elevator, prompting him to pull the device out of his pocket and look at the caller ID.


    [Sadistic Selina] were the words written in the ce of the caller ID, sessfully informing him of the person trying to call him.


    He put his index finger on the fingerprint scanner of the phone to unlock the phone as he was being called through the hidden caller app and he had to unlock it before he could pick up the call due to the security protocols put in ce.


    After opening the phone and picking up the call, he put the phone to his ear,


    "Did you like the gift?" Selina''s voice came through the phone''s speaker and rang straight into his ears.


    "For ten million¡­ you had to do at least that much, or I''d have toe over there to spank that ass of yours," Davies said with a light-hearted tone, he was still in a pretty good mood.


    "..."


    "Maybe I should have messed up," Selina''s regretful voice came from the phone.


    "Good ideas though," Daviesmended, ignoring her previous statement.


    "Also, when would I get the info?" he asked her as it was pretty obvious that thest person that was reported dead had gone through torture and whoever carried out the job should have gotten some new and interesting info and she was probably calling him for that reason¡­ she couldn''t have called him just to tell him that the mission waspleted so she can get him to praise her¡­ right?


    "Thest guy sang like a bird after a little¡­ persuading, from my men," Selina finally stated.


    "As expected, get your guy to meet up with El'' so I can get the infoter," Davies quickly replied and said his goodbye before hanging up the call and getting off on the 139th floor for another day of work.


    *Six Hourster¡­*


    Davies left the 139th floor after hitting a roadblock on [Project; Words make up the World].


    ''Maybe I''ve been in too much of a rush,'' he thought as he rubbed his aching head and walked out of the Imperium Technologies building before getting into the Ventley that had been brought out of the parking lot by a valet, and driving off.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    ''Perhaps I should focus on something else for now¡­ like dealing with that Lee Jung guy,'' he thought, the slightest hint of a smile creeping up on his face.


    [Yeah¡­ but what are you going to do to him?] Miya asked.


    "Well, when I embarrassed him yesterday at that restaurant, I got a notification that said¡­ uhm, what did the notification say again?" he brought up the system screen and went to look at the previous notifications.


    "Hah, here it is," he said triumphantly and clicked on something,


    [Sessfully face-pped a fated one and caused him to lose 20 fate points]


    Davies read the message again and fell into deep thought, but still kept enough of his attention on the road as even though he wasn''t likely to die from an automobile ident, getting into one would still suck, hence the requirement for his constant attention even if he was focused on something else.


    ''Face pping is the same thing as embarrassing him and making him "lose face" like the Chinese would say, right?''


    [Yes]


    ''So the system follows themon tropes then where I have to embarrass the protagonist and steal his opportunities¡­ and his women, only I don''t get any help in doing these things until I kill one protagonist and upgrade the system,''


    "Damn, this is hardcore!" he suddenly eximed, as no matter how much time passed since he transmigrated into this world and got the system, he still couldn''t get used to the fact that he had to overstress himself for features that were supposed toe along with the system in the first ce.


    [Well¡­ you have a good ce to start] Miya chimed in, notmenting about the system as she was just an assistant interface and there was nothing she could do to change the system''s protocols.


    "Where''s that?"


    [The race track, remember?] Miya reminded him.


    "Oh, that¡­" Davies remembered immediately as he was already making ns for that, he just needed to get a few things sorted first.


    He also needed to find out the location of the race, and a car that he''d use to race as he obviously couldn''t use the Ventley for a race, even though its specs weren''t so badpared to cars used for racing, but the fact remained that it was a luxury car and not a racing car¡­ also, it was kinda weird to be using a Ventley to race.


    All of these thoughts ran through his head, but for now, he needed to get to the hospital first and check on Tisha and hopefully her brother, Romero¡­ he wasn''t going to the hospital because of the purple-eyed doctor''s session, or to feast his eyes on the various eye candies that were present at the hospital... Nope, not at all, those were just minor things.


    [Ahem]


    *Ring* *Ring*


    Davies''s phone suddenly rang out.


    "Look who decided to wake up," Davies said as he looked at the caller id.

 Chapter 77 CHAPTER 77: HIS SHORTCOMINGS

    *Ring* *Ring*


    Davies''s phone suddenly rang out.


    "Look who decided to wake up," Davies said as he looked at the caller id.


    [Daniel]


    "Back to thend of the living, are you?" Davies''s said snarkily into the phone immediately after he picked up the call.


    "..."


    I''m sorry for the inconvenience..." Daniel said meekly, his voice barely above a whisper.


    "You better be, after leaving me in the lurch for the past two days..." Davies continued,


    "...But then, you did stand outside the gate waiting for me for six days... but even then,"


    "It''s not a fair trade, so buckle up, you got a lot of working your way," he said into the phone.


    "I will do my best to atone for the inconvenience I have caused you," Daniel''s voice came back at Davies, sounding more upbeat as it didn''t seem like Davies was very angry with him over his unavability for thest 2 days.


    "Ok then. First, I need you to meet up with some of Selina''s men, they have some information for me,"


    "I need it in front of me yesterday, got that?"Daviesid out his first order for him.


    "Got it!" Daniel replied, determinedly.


    "Good... and oh, check your phone to help meplete the recruitment process for some girl I promised employment yesterday,"


    "Huh? What do yo-" Daniel began, but Davies already hung up.


    Davies threw the phone onto the passenger seat as he continued on his way to the hospital where he can be surrounded by boo- Ahem, find out more about Tisha''s dark fate value and keep an eye out for Romero.


    *VROOOOOMMM*


    The engine roared even louder than it was already sounding as Davies mmed down on the elerator as he wanted to get to his destination even quicker than he already was supposed to.


    After a few more minutes Davies drove into the underground parking lot of the hospital and parked at the same spot he had parked just the day before and got down elegantly after shutting off the engine.


    He locked the doors and made his way to the VIP entrance again and walked in, not forgetting to pause and feast his eyes on the eye candy for a few seconds, just enough so it won''t be considered ogling, then he made his way into the hospital.


    He looked over to the counter and was a bit disappointed to not see the red-haired attendant from yesterday, but he quickly got over it and made his way toward Tisha''s room.


    ''Wait... what was her room number again?'' he wondered as he paused mid-step.


    [Ward F, Room 69, how could you forget your lucky number?]Miya stepped in to remind him but made sure to add a verbal jab after.


    ''69 is not my lucky number, it''s not even my favorite number...''


    ''It''s just a sexy number,'' Davies replied smoothly and continued to walk the same route that he had made his way through yesterday.


    He continued walking at a brisk pace until he reached the front of Tisha''s room. He was about to open her door when he was suddenly hit with an intriguing thought and froze mid-step.


    ''Hey Miya,'' he called.


    [What?]


    ''...Since my system works simr to themon trope where face pping the protagonist and stealing his women and opportunities cause him to lose his fate points...''<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    [Your point?] Miya tried to hurry him up into saying whatever it is he had to say.


    ''...Then why didn''t I get Lee Jung to lose any fate points when I slept with Jessica?''


    ''ording to the fate value you senseding off from her, she is supposed to be one of his futurepanions, right?''


    [...]


    [Oh, shit, you''re right!]


    [Something must be wrong somewhere] She eximed and started trying to think of what could be the reason behind this strange phenomenon... orck of it, thereof.


    But Davies''s thought process was already further ahead of hers by a mile, as he put his thoughts into words,


    ''The fact that the system is not reacting probably means that Jessica sleeping with me costs Lee Jung nothing and has no effect in the grand scheme of things...''


    [But what does that mean?]


    ''... It simply means this was supposed to happen originally ording to this world''s story,'' he said, a dejected tone making its way into his voice


    [Wait, you mean everything we''ve done so far probably follows the original storyline] Miya was shocked at this.


    ''...Yeah, we''ve changed nothing,''


    "Damn!" he had to stop himself from punching the wall in and screaming out loud in anger, and he barely managed to keep it in.


    ''It''s happening again!'' Davies knew the feeling as he was familiar with it. He had tried it before in his previous life, trying to change things, even though he knew nothing about the storyline but everything he did always led to the same ending... his death.


    Luckily, this time, the system was there to let him know where he had gone wrong and he had found out early enough in the story before his death became inevitable.


    He was stupid... he had been so hung upining about the features that the system didn''t have that would make it easier for him to trample on the protagonists and avoid death so much, that he had not paid much attention to using the little resources he had and using the knowledge and survival instinct rued from all his previous lives to go toe to toe against the protagonists like he always did, even before he got the system.


    ''I''ve grown soft...'' heughed lightly at himself after seeing his ring errors.


    He couldn''t hope to survive against beings that defied reality and had fate on their side by going at them this weakly.


    He needed to go against them stronger...


    More cunning...


    More ferocity...


    More craziness...


    Otherwise, he wouldn''t even know how he died.


    From now on he had to pull out all the stops and hold back no reservations in his nning against them. He had to stop treating them like a daily urrence that he could easily deal with... especially as he had never won against a protagonist before.


    Luckily, he had been awakened to his shorings and now knew where he needed to improve. It was time to go against the protagonists in full force, and he knew just where to start.


    He pushed open the door that led to where his new pet and fellow viiny, a new scheme brewing in his mind, and a devious smile on his face.


    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Don''t forget to vote powerstones and golden tickets...


    Also, a big thanks to DaoistmPhOfb for the gifts????

 Chapter 78 CHAPTER 78: 1 FATED PROTAGONIST AND 2 VILLAINS

    Davies pushed open the door to Tisha''s room and walked in to a dejected-looking Tisha who was staring at the ceiling in a daze with boredom written all over her face. She didn''t even bother to look at who was at the door.


    "You know, just staring at the ceiling in boredom wouldn''t make the boredom go away," Davies said as he walked in with his hands in his pockets.


    His voice seemed to have jerked her out of her dazed state, as she turned to look at him and the moment her eyes fell upon his lithe figure, her lively attitude showed itself, with a beautiful smile breaking out on her face.


    "How are you feeling?" Davies asked.


    "Bored," she replied.


    "... I meant how you were doing physically, but I guess you''re fine now if you have the energy to feel bored,"


    "Hmph," she looked away with a pout.


    "Where are the rest of your little kiddies squad," he asked, not caring for her coquettish but cute act.


    "I mean, Teresa and the rest of them," he made sure to add, so as to rify that he still didn''t think much of them.


    "I think they''ve been discharged already, or at least Teresa has," she replied, not continuing to pout.


    "Then why haven''t you been discharged yet?" Davies ended up asking as he couldn''t understand why she was still lying in bed, especially as she had no physical injuries on her body¡­ like at all.


    "Doctor Alyssa said I still needed to rest for a little while," Tisha replied dejectedly.


    ''What''s a little bit of mana exhaustion going to do to the body?'' he wondered but did not bother to think too much about it as he was not an expert when it came to things like taking care of the body.


    All he usually did was p a few bandages and duct tape on his injuries if they were external and rest for a few days if they were internal, but even then, he didn''t spend more than a few hours at a stretch just lying down.


    You can''t afford to spend days on end just lying down when you have a protagonist on your ass.


    Well¡­ since he knew nothing about these medical matters, then all he had to do, was get someone who knew about it¡­


    His team was missing a doctor after all.


    Luckily, he was about to meet one.


    "I''ll talk to Alyssa then," Davies said as he turned to leave, but after reaching the door and pulling it open, he paused mid-step just before stepping out,


    "...You wouldn''t happen to be doing anythingter today, huh?" he asked not looking back.


    "Uh-Uhm, No, I have nothing I''m doingter today," she managed to stammer out a response while doing her best to hold her emotions that were exploding from the situation.


    "I''ll be back in a little while then," Davies said as he stepped out finally and the door shut itself behind him.


    ''D-Did he just ask me out?'' Tisha was a turmoil of emotions as her cheeks turned blushing red just from the thought of spending some time together with the man she liked.


    It seemed he had finally noticed her feelings for him and for now, he wasn''t rejecting it, but rather he was taking the initiative to have a little romantic time between them and develop their rtionship, and for this, she just about wanted to explode in joy, but she didn''t¡­ who would Davies date if she exploded in happiness?


    *In the hallway*<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Davies was walking through the hallways back toward the lobby when he just realized that he had no way to contact Alyssa even though he had made an appointment with her.


    He had not remembered to get her phone number yesterday, so he would have to go back to the lobby and ask whoever was the receptionist how to contact Alyssa.


    [What are you nning now?]


    [I don''t believe you asked Tisha on a date just because you are interested in her]


    ''That is part of it¡­ but I''m nning to take her along with me to find Lee Jung,''


    ''I wonder what would happen if a fated protagonist with a ring fate value and Tisha with a dark fate value meet up,''


    [First of all, that is wrong, secondly, I already know what would happen] Miya interrupted his devious thoughts.


    ''What do you mean?'' Davies asked with a puzzled expression.


    [First, it won''t be between the fated protagonist and someone with a dark fate value, but between the fated protagonist and two people with a dark fate value]


    ''... Wait that means?''


    [Yes, you dumbass, she''s not the only one with a dark fate value, you''re also a viin with a dark fate value]


    [Funnily enough, I never bothered to check it until I saw Tisha''s dark fate value yesterday]


    ''So it''s confirmed then¡­ she really is a viin or is going to be one in the future,'' Davies thought with a hand on his chin, deep in thought.


    ''I wonder what turned her to the viin side in the future?'' he thought trying to sift through the information he had about her but he still could note to a reasonable conclusion, so he decided to put it to the side for now and focus on something else,


    ''Anyway, you said that you already knew what would happen if they met¡­ or we met,''


    [Yes, I did]


    ''...''


    ''... well then, care to borate?'' he asked after waiting for her to speak, but not receiving a response.


    [Oh¡­ yeah]


    [Uh, you guys'' meeting would only end in conflict, like any other meeting between a protagonist and an antagonist, but now that there are two of you, the conflict that is bound to happen would be taken up by quite a notch]


    [You probably wouldn''t even have to do anything and conflicts would still arise between you]


    ''...Oh, wow¡­''


    ''... that sounds like a lot of fun¡­'' he thought a slight smile beginning to appear at the corner of his lips.

 Chapter 79 CHAPTER 79: PERSONAL DOCTOR

    [Uh, you guys'' meeting would only end in conflict, like any other meeting between a protagonist and an antagonist, but now that there are two of you, the conflict that is bound to happen would be taken up by quite a notch]


    [You probably wouldn''t even have to do anything, and conflicts would still arise between you]


    ''...Oh, wow...''


    ''... that sounds like a lot of fun...'' he thought a slight smile beginning to appear at the corner of his lips.


    "People say a man looks the most handsome when he''s deep in thought..." Davies was broken out of his inner reverie by a voiceing from his side.


    He looked in the direction of the voice only for his eyes to meet a pair of purple eyes staring at him with intrigue and interest.


    "You sound like you have a different opinion," Davies replied to the purple-eyed figure that had intruded his thoughts.


    "Yeah, I personally prefer them when they''re covered in blood," Alyssa answered with a smile.


    "... their blood or someone else''s blood?" Davies replied to her with a pretty morbid question.


    "Oohh... that got dark real fast," Alyssa said with a shiver, but whether it was a shiver of excitement or a shiver of fear, Davies had no idea, so he simply replied with a slight smile,


    "Yes, it did."


    "I''m quite intrigued by your way of thinking though," Alyssa responded.


    "... Uh, yeah... about that,"


    "When you''ve lived the kind of life I''ve lived, it bes a normal thing," Davies said with the slightest hint of a deprecating smile appearing on his face.


    "What kind of life have you lived?" Alyssa was visibly intrigued as could be told by the twinkle of curiosity that was so evidently gleaming in her eyes as she asked.


    "You''d have to answer a question of mine first before I answer that," he retorted as he didn''t want to have to answer that question.


    "Ask away," Alyssa quickly replied.


    "Why would you be interested in a man that is covered in blood?" Davies asked with the most questioning look he could muster.


    "Oops... Did I say that out loud?" Alyssa''s pretty hand flew to cover her mouth, unintentionally showing off her beautifully manicured fingers.


    "Yes... yes, you did..." Davies affirmed with a nd look.


    "Uh-Uhm, well," Alyssa was currently short of words as she could not say her original feelings regarding the matter, lest he looked at her as weird.


    "Uh... don''t we have an appointment,"


    "Let me help you check on your injuries before they be worse," she cleverly tried to change the topic of the conversation, but Davies easily saw through it especially as this was what he wanted in the first ce.


    He didn''t want to be seen as holding back information when he was trying to build up a connection with her for future purposes as that would be counter-effective in the building of a longsting rtionship, so he had made sure to ask a question that she wouldn''t wish to answer and force her to end that line of conversation herself.


    "I''ll take a rain check on that... my injuries have healed already..." Davies began.


    "I''m pretty sure you know that even the weakest Megas have a pretty strong life force,"


    "... and I... am by no means, weak," he exined, but the look in his eyes demonstrated the contempt he had for weakness.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    His look visibly said that weakness was something that he would never allow himself to be and he was making good on that and would continue to do so.


    "Oh..." Alyssa could see the contempt in his eyes but didn''t know who or what the look was for, but since it wasn''t her, she didn''t feel the need to worry.


    "I do need a personal doctor though..."


    "So, what do you say? Would you mind being my personal doctor?" he requested with a nk look that showed disinterest.


    "You asking with such an uninterested look on your face is kinda weird?"


    "Also, I kinda already work for you... this is Imperium Hospital, remember?" Alyssa said with a teasing smile.


    "Of course, I remember, I don''t forget about important things, and yes, while you do work for me, the offer I just made is more personal," Davies said, still with a totally nk and disinterested look.


    "How personal is more personal?" Alyssa asked with slightly squinted eyes.


    "Hmmm..."


    "Ignoring everything you''re doing anding to me whenever I call type of personal,"


    "Having my personal support in everything you do, kind of personal,"


    "Andstly, having in-depth sessions where we "explore" the secrets and imperfections of the human body, kind of personal," Davies listed out a couple of conditions.


    "Hmmm... I certainly don''t mind your "personal conditions","


    "So, you agree?"


    "Before that, what do you mean by in-depth sessions?"


    "You''ll find outter... Do you agree or not?" he asked while making sure to keep his look of total disinterest, making it seem like he was only doing this for convenience.


    Women tended to have a fatal attraction for handsome men who acted with total disinterest in them, especially when they were beautiful and were used to receivingpliments and being fawned over, and he was making sure to utilize that weakness of theirs to its full extent.


    Alyssa was a bit annoyed by his nonchnt attitude, but still couldn''t resist the offer.


    Having someone like Davies Lake as a backer was already attractive enough for her to not care even if she was going to be thrown into servitude of him... plus he was kinda attractive, and intriguing...


    She couldn''t resist giving in, and so, she did.


    "Tch, yes, I agree," she said with an annoyed look on her face, trying to look tough so he wouldn''t think of her as soft persimmon.


    Little did she know that she stood in front of a professional yer who could see through all these little antics with a nce.


    Only betas don''t know the heart of a woman... for an Alpha like him, a woman is like a clear stream filled with repetitive motions, motions he had already experienced and memorized... after all, women have no new tricks.


    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Please vote powerstones and golden tickets... I wouldn''t mind a couple of gifts as well????... they do wonders for motivation????.

 Chapter 80 CHAPTER 80: TWO KISSES

    "So, am I gonna sign a contract or something?" Alyssa asked Davies still keeping her peeved look on her face.


    "Contract?" Davies repeated with a raised eyebrow.


    "Maybe¡­ if you wish to, I''m not really big on things like contracts, it''s just a sheet of paper anyway," he shrugged.


    "Oh¡­"


    "In that case, I need to leave, I have some patients to check on," She replied and made to leave.


    "Ok cool,"


    "...But before that, I need to take the little girl upstairs out, so be a darling and settle the discharge procedures, yeah?" Davies suddenly appeared before her and said while pinching her chin.


    "No ca- ummphh," she was trying to say when her words were cut short by Davies''s lips performing the role of word stopper.


    Alyssa almost got lost in his lips as she savored the taste of his lips, but she managed to recover herself in time to push him away before he went further as his hands were already snaking to some sensitive ces.


    "W-What the hell was that!?" she shouted at him with furiously blushing cheeks but managed to keep her voice a few decibels lower than what would disturb the patients.


    "A kiss," Davies said like it was the most normal thing he just did.


    ''Of course, I know it was a kiss!'' she shouted internally.


    "Why did you kiss me!?" she demanded angrily.


    "Oh that¡­ my lips were feeling lonely and it could lead to mental issues for my lips, so I introduced them to yours, and as you are my doctor who is supposed to care about my personal and mental health, here we are," He continued like he was the most righteous man in the world.


    ''This motherfucker¡­'' Alyssa wanted nothing more than to p the shit out of Davies at that moment as she looked at him looking down at her with a holier-than-thou attitude, but as she was looking at him, her eyes fell on his lips that were closed over hers just a few seconds ago and the blush on her cheeks that was beginning to fade returned in full force as she remembered the way he kissed her, the taste of his lips, the softnes-


    "Umpphhh," she was thinking about all that when she suddenly found Davies''s lips on hers again, and this time she wasn''t able to resist.


    She had long gotten lost in the taste of his lips as he fully explored her lips this time.


    She only managed toe to when his tongue was beginning to slip past her lips and move towards her tongue.


    She quickly pushed him away again, blushing even more furiously this time,


    "Why did you kiss me again!!!???"


    "Well, you were kind of looking at my lips with desire like you wanted more, and far be it from me to not grant a beautiful woman the desire of indulging in passion with me," Davies replied shamelessly.


    It was a bit too shameless, even for him as his nk look facade almost broke due to the quiver of his lips and twitching of his eyebrows.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "..." Even Alyssa was absolutely stunned by his shamelessness and was looking at him with an almost disgusted look, but Davies paid it no mind and turned to leave.


    "See youter," he threw a casual goodbye at her as if he didn''t just kiss her¡­ twice, and left her staring at his disappearing back with a dumbfounded look, her brain not able to register what had happened in thest few minutes.


    Davies continued walking like a free spirit with nothing on his mind as he moved back in the direction of Tisha''s room.


    He continued until he reached her room and barged in, not bothering to knock, and walked in to Tisha still just lying down on the bed, but this time instead of a dejected look on her face, a dreamy look was stered on her face.


    "... What are you doing?" he asked as he was pretty sure he had told her he''d be back in a little while after he had gone to get her discharged, which to him meant, "get your ass ready to leave in a few minutes," but here she was just lying on the bed and just looking at the ceiling in a daze.


    "You''re back already?" Tisha was more than surprised to see him back in the room already as he had barely even left for ten minutes.


    "Tch¡­ you''re lucky you''re cute," Davies clicked his tongue,


    "I already spoke to Alyssa and got her to discharge you, so we can go now,"


    "She agreed?" Tisha knew how stubborn Alyssa could be as she knew her from previous asions and the Alyssa she knew would not let out a patient even a second earlier than she deemed as the optimum time, so what was happening here?


    But how was she to know that the big bad wolf had messed with the stubborn, purple-eyed doctor.


    "Yeah, she agreed,"


    "I''m good at¡­ persuading people," Davies, a smirk appearing involuntarily on his face as he remembered the taste of the purple-eyed doctor''s lips.


    [...]


    [You''re the worst of the worst]


    [The worst scum to ever live] Miya spat out.


    ''When did you startplimenting me?'' Davies replied snarkily, not caring about her hurtful words since they were true, but what could he do about it?


    Things happened, and he became the way he was now, nothing could change the past and the future consisted of him doing even scummier things so why would he care about something as minuscule as two-timing¡­ if it could even be called that, as he was doing more than "two" timing.


    "I think there is a carnival going on at the park,"


    "Hurry and dress up if you n to catch it," he said to her and left the room to give her enough privacy for her to change out of the patient gown.


    He was scummy, but not scummy enough to watch an underage girl undress and change her clothing in front of him, he was too old for that shit.

 Chapter 81 CHAPTER 81: CARNIVAL DATE I

    "It''s so thick and long," Tisha eximed as she held the long object in her hands.


    "So creamy!!!" she almost moaned as she licked off the thick liquiding off the thick and long object that she held in her hands.


    "Don''t manhandle it like that,"


    "... Also, stop saying misleading things" Davies chastised as he didn''t want to have to put up with all the weird looks he was getting because of the way this girl was eximing and saying misleading things.


    All she held was an ice popsicle, yet she was making a normal situation seem dirty with her misleadingments.


    Why the hell had he brought her to a carnival in the first ce? He groaned internally.


    Davies had brought Tisha to the carnival that was being held in the Central Park of Yorkshire City, as he figured that taking someone as free-spirited as her to a formal restaurant for something that was equivalent to a first date would put a strain on the way they would rte, as it could end up quite stifling for her, so he had brought her along to the carnival¡­ and we all know how that was going.


    Not to mention, he didn''t like the happy atmosphere.


    Not that he hated it, but he was no longer used to being in such a happy atmosphere and it made him feel ufortable, but he didn''t really have much of a choice here.


    So he geared himself up and prepared himself for a few hours of fun and games with Tisha, as it wouldn''t be much of a date if he stayed rigid throughout.


    ''The things I do¡­'' he sighed internally.


    [... All of a sudden, this feels like a dating sim game]


    ''Tch¡­ I know right,'' he clicked his tongue in slight annoyance at the realization.


    ''Unfortunately, I don''t have much experience dealing with a girl that falls in love with me without me having to do anything about it,''


    [Well after having mostly sex-based rtionships with women for who knows how long, I''m sure it must feel weird]


    ''It does¡­''


    ''Welp, it''s time to get on with #mission; make Tisha obsessed with me (Phase 1),''


    ''Don''t wish me luck, otherwise, all I''d get is bad luck,'' he said to Miya and directed his full focus on Tisha for the next few hours.


    "Let''s go!" Tisha grabbed Davies''s arm and pulled him in the direction of a game stall.


    The game stall was decorated beautifully and an array of prizes were hung up on a shelf at the side of the stall.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    A big white-furred plush bear was the number one prize and that was what attracted Tisha to the game stall in the first ce.


    How did Davies know?


    If the way Tisha was staring at the plushie with literal stars in her eyes weren''t enough of an answer, then he didn''t know what is.


    As he was ying the role of boyfriend(somewhat), he stepped up and asked,


    "Do you want it?"


    "Mhm mhmm," she nodded cutely while looking at him with puppy eyes.


    ''Since the princess wants it, then it''s the job of the knight to get it¡­ I think,'' he wasn''t really sure how fairy tales worked since he had never been in one.


    He went to meet the owner of the stall to ask how he could get the prize and from him, he found out, it was simply a throwing dart game where he got points for the rings he hit and he had to get a particr number to win prizes.


    For every ten powerstone dors he paid, he got ten tries to hit as many points as possible, and after you threw all the darts, the number of points that you umted can be used to exchange for gifts.


    One thing to note was that points could not be umted over rounds to be used to purchase a higher-ranking gift as the points you umte in one round would be reset the moment you buy another ten darts.


    Since what he was aiming for was the number one prize, he had to get 95 points out of 100 points, and considering that you had to hit the red dot in the center to get 10 points, it was going to be pretty difficult for anybody to get 95 points¡­ but that only applied to normal people.


    For someone who had reincarnated in the worst conditions for over three lifetimes, this was a walk in the park, so he simply paid the ten powerstone dors and collected the darts before moving over to the range where the board was.


    Davies picked up the first dart and threw it with perfect precision at the red dot in the center of the board, but imagine his surprise when instead ofnding on the red dot, itnded just mere millimeters away from the red dot.


    [9 points] The electronic board that recorded the points showed the points he had achieved.


    [Pfffttt]


    [Professional who has endured harsh situations my ass] Miya couldn''t and wouldn''t ever let go of a chance tough and make jabs at him and she was making full use of her current opportunity.


    Davies paid it no mind, and instead picked up another dart and threw it again with his full focus on the dart and saw it move in a perfectly straight line towards the red dot, but just before hitting the red dot, it once again veered off target and hit the board a few millimeters away from the red dot.


    ''So that''s how it is,'' Davies finally realized what was going on. He knew there was no way in hell that he''d miss hitting the red dot, even though he wasn''t exactly the best marksman in the world.


    It seemed that the stall owner had not been content with just putting a ridiculously high point requirement to be able to win the number one prize, but he had also made sure that there was no way a normal person would even be able to umte the already ridiculously high number of points.

 Chapter 82 CHAPTER 82: CARNIVAL DATE II

    It seemed that the stall owner had not been content with just putting a ridiculously high point requirement to be able to win the number one prize, but he had also made sure that there was no way a normal person would even be able to umte the already ridiculously high number of points and to achieve that he had yed a simple but very effective trick.


    From the way the dart had avoided the red dot in the middle of the board, Davies could discern that a force was pushing the dart away from the red dot at thest second and that right there, was the ingenious foul y he had noticed.


    He hadn''t been able to sense any mana involved in pushing the dart, and he was even more sure that the stall owner wasn''t a Mega, neither was there any Mega near enough to tamper with the dart-throwing game as he always made sure to check his surroundings constantly, both for any intruding mana or suspicious movements to avoid any, "surprising" situations.


    Since it wasn''t mana, it meant that there was something more basic at y, and as Davies''s fingers rubbed over the pointy-sharp metallic end of the dart he was able toe to a conclusion on what the likely force that was pushing the dart away from the red dot in the center of the board.


    To confirm his thoughts, he sneakily brought out his car key and put it against the dart, and just like he was expecting, the dart stuck to his key like glue.


    [A ma] Miya said in realization.


    ''Yup,''


    ''I''m pretty sure I don''t have to exin to you how he managed to change the direction of the dart with a ma, right?'' Davies asked Miya.


    [Of course not, nobody seeing this is dumb enough to not know how a ma works] Miyamended.


    ''Of course not, they are intelligent¡­''


    ''...I was talking about you,'' Davies replied coolly.


    [...] Miya shut up, realizing she was being trolled, but Davies continued, undeterred by her silence.


    ''You don''t have to say anything, I''m pretty sure I read it in your manual,''


    [Read what in my manual?] Miya asked with intrigue.


    ''That you were dumb,'' he stated nkly.


    [...] Miya didn''t bother after realizing that she had already been trolled twice, and Davies also changed his target.


    ''Now on the other hand,''


    ''That two-faced motherfu*ker,'' he thought as he looked at the sneaky grin on the stall owner''s face as he saw that even though Davies had pretty high uracy, he still could not hit the red dot, due to his "preparations".


    Davies was pretty annoyed at this because, due to the sneaky methods of the unrighteous stall owner to make sure that no one could evene close to winning the grand prize, he would have to put in extra effort to get the prize for Tisha.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    To be honest, Davies didn''t me the stall owner as the grand prize was a beautifully made plushie that cost almost ten thousand powerstone dors and it had obviously been used to attract a lot of customers, but even though he didn''t me the stall owner, his princess wanted the plushie and he was going to make sure he got it for her¡­


    Also, the store owner had challenged him by trying to y on his intelligence with such a cheap trick¡­ a very ingenious but cheap trick, so for that he was going to make him regret it, badly.


    With that thought in mind, he determinedly rolled up his sleeves and picked up the third dart.


    A ma can repel another ma with the same end with a strong repulsive, that is to say, the north end of a ma would repel the north end of another ma, so all Davies had to do was to use enough force to pierce through the repulsive force of the mas, right?


    Unfortunately, this was easier said than done, and doing so would be naturally impossible, especially since he had to do it in a way where he couldn''t tantly use his mana, to avoid making it look like he was cheating, but even then, it was still pretty easy for Davies to achieve.


    ''If you can''t win with pure strength, then use technique,'' he thought as he stepped back slightly and prepared to use one of the martial techniques he had learned in his first transmigration or second life.


    "Spinning Death Shadow," he muttered as he threw the dart with a great amount of force but just before the dart left his hand, he used his index finger to hit one of the wings at the bottom end of the dart, causing it to go into a spin and dash at the board with a frightening amount of speed and a crazy spinning force.


    *Thud*


    A muffled thumping sound rang out as the dart hit the board.


    [+10 points]


    "Yess!" Tisha jumped in joy as she saw the dart safely nestled in the red dot on the board. She was happy that there was a chance at still winning the big teddy bear, while the stall owner couldn''t stop his jaw from dropping to the floor in shock at what he was seeing.


    What was going on?


    Hitting the red dot should be impossible, right?


    But he didn''t dare to make a racket about it to avoid calling attention to himself and risk his tricks being discovered, so he did his best to hide his shocked expression while staunchly believing that it was simply a coincidental case and wouldn''t be happening again.


    Little did he know that this was just the beginning of his nightmare as Davies picked up another dart and pulled his hand back in a bid to throw another one.


    *Whoosh*


    Another dart flew in the air towards the red dot on the board and safely nestled itself on the red dot, surprising the stall owner yet again, but before he could even react in shock, Davies had already picked another dart and was aiming yet again with his hand pulled back.

 Chapter 83 CHAPTER 83: CARNIVAL DATE III

    What was going on?


    Hitting the red dot should be impossible, right?


    The stall owner didn''t dare to make a racket about it to avoid calling attention to himself and risk his tricks being discovered, so he did his best to hide his shocked expression while staunchly believing that it was simply a coincidental case and wouldn''t be happening again.


    Little did he know that this was just the beginning of his nightmare as Davies already had another dart in his hand which was pulled back in a bid to throw the dart.


    *Whoosh*


    Another dart flew in the air towards the red dot on the board and safely nestled itself on the red dot, surprising the stall owner yet again, but before he could even react in shock, Davies had already picked another dart and was aiming yet again with his hand pulled back.


    *Whooosh* *Whooosh* *Whooosh*


    This time Davies no longer held back and continuously picked darts and threw them, even adding a little ir and picking three darts and throwing them at the same time yet still managing to get them to hit the red target.


    After another thirty seconds, the rest of the darts could be seen nestled into the board on the red dot.


    [+10 points]


    [Final score: 98 points]


    "Fwooooh," Davies let out a long breath, ignoring the looks of shock and surprise from all the people around the stall that had ended up watching him throwing darts.


    "Yayyy!" the silence was broken by Tisha''s shout as she ran to grab the big white plushie, not bothering about anything procedural as all that was on her mind was the plushie and how Davies had gotten it for her.


    ''He looked so cool,'' she thought as she grabbed the white teddy bear and buried her face in it to hide her blushing red face.


    "H-How?" the stall owner stammered in shock at what he had just witnessed.


    What had just happened in front of him just seconds ago was impossible by normal standards. The repulsive force of the ma should have been strong enough to push away the darts from ever hitting the red points, but apart from the first two darts, the red darts were safely nestled into the red dot, proving him wrong.


    Just how had this ended up happening?


    Though he repeatedly asked himself this question in his mind, he had already subconsciouslye to a conclusion, and that was exactly the reason why he didn''t dare to act out.


    Someone who could do things that weren''t humanly possible repeatedly could only be a Mega and he would be very definition of stupid if he tried to challenge someone he highly suspected to be a Mega.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    If he dared to even try, he could disappear at the very snap of a finger if he was very unlucky and in a few seconds if he was lucky. It all depended on how strong Davies was, but the end of the matter for him would inevitably be death if he dared to anger a Mega.


    So he kept his mouth shut and didn''t even dare to step up to congratte Davies or Tisha, especially as he saw the kind of look that Davies had on his face as he looked at him.


    Tisha rushed back to Davies who unknowingly had a victorious smirk threatening to ster itself across his face but his natural apathetic look was keeping the smirk in check, making only the corner of his lips rise up slightly.


    "T-Thank You," she said with a red face as she hugged the teddy bear tightly.


    "... Hm," Davies ended up nodding slightly as he didn''t know what to say at this moment and didn''t want to go with the generic "You''re wee", reply. He still had issues trying to replicate a romantic feeling.


    Tisha also was still blushing heavily while thinking about the previous scene of Davies throwing darts and how cool he looked while doing so, she didn''t notice hisck of a very romantic response, and even if she noticed, she wouldn''t make much of it as she hadn''t been in a romantic rtionship and all she knew about romance was what she had read in all those cold CEO romance novels.


    Suddenly getting a hold of herself as she saw another fun-looking game, she grabbed his hand and dragged him through the crowd toward the new game stall that had caught her eye.


    ''What a troublesome n,'' Davies thought as he was being dragged along. Unknown to him, a genuine smile had begun to break out on his face as he was dragged along by Tisha.


    *Three hourster¡­*


    Tisha ended up dragging Davies to many different types of carnival games and Davies ended up winning the grand prize in everypetition he had been dragged into, regardless of what type ofpetition it was. He wasn''t the type of person that would let himself lose without it being a part of a well-thought-out n, and even then, he would only consider it if there was no other way for him to survive.


    All in all, he made sure to win everywhere and had unknowingly started a legend at the carnival grounds of the "Grand Prize Devourer". An entity that went from stall to stall only to take away its grand prize and devour it.


    If Davies ended up hearing such a shameful rumor he would end up coughing blood in shame.


    He was the big bad viin, how could some people dare to tarnish his reputation like this.


    He would rather prefer to be called the Carnival Devourer, or The Master of the 69 ways, than small-time infamy as a grand prize devourer.


    Luckily, he didn''t end up hearing it, otherwise, the whole carnival might end up frozen over in fury, but right now he had a different problem.


    When he had been ying around with Tisha, he had ended up with an actual smile on his face, which had a fatally attractive effect on everyone around him.


    Davies had always been extremely handsome, but due to his apathetic face and his ''don''te near me'' aura, he had been sessful in making sure that he wasn''t treated like a living deity everywhere he went, and unfortunately due to being with Tisha, he had ended up breaking out of character.

 Chapter 84 CHAPTER 84: THE TROUBLES OF AN HANDSOME FACE

    Davies had always been extremely handsome, but due to his apathetic face and his ''don''te near me'' aura, he had always been sessful in making sure that he wasn''t treated like a living deity everywhere he went.


    Unfortunately, while hanging out with Tisha and going along with her whims... which had actually ended up being quite fun, though he''d never consciously admit it first, he had ended up breaking out of his apathetic character and had ended up with the very rare but genuine smile on his face.


    The smile had sessfully changed the aura he was giving off and had unleashed his attractiveness to the extreme, both to the women and to the questionable males, leading to obvious looks of hunger that he was getting from all the women and questionable males around him.


    The unquestionable males, on the other hand just stared at him in a daze as they thought deep and hard about their life and contemted suicide.


    [I never realized, you are actually this handsome when you smile]


    ''Yeah, no shit Sherlock!'' Davies scoffed internally at Miya''s remark about his appearance, but he didn''t stop smiling as he had noticed that his smile had the same fatal effect that it had on others, on Tisha as well as she was looking at him starry eyes, so, even though it was not his nature, neither was it his style, he kept the smile on his face, even though his face was hurting like hell due to how he was not used to smiling¡­ at all.


    ''What a pain,'' he thought as he looked at the crowd that was now paying their full attention to him.


    "I think that''s our cue," he said to Tisha while looking down at her face which was eight inches below his.


    "Uh-¡­ Okay?" Tisha was brought out of her reverie by Davies''s question and just answered half-consciously.


    Seeing that she was still a little out of it, he grabbed her hand and pulled her along with him as he moved to where he had parked his car,


    ''I wonder if I should try to create any charm-type skills?'' he thought as he looked at the effect that his smiling face had on the crowd and Tisha.


    Davies pulled Tisha through the crowd creating a handsome visage of a handsome prince charming pulling his princess along with him, thus breaking the hearts of many young girls in the crowd, but Davies didn''t have the luxury to care about cannon fodder.


    After a stressful few minutes of fighting through crowds, Davies and Tisha finally got back into the car.


    "Can you get your teddy bear''s paw out of my face," Davies grunted annoyedly at the paw of the white bear plushie that was poking against his face.


    "Oh, sorry," Tisha apologized and began to move all her prizes into the back seat. That took a little while as she had gotten quite a number of things at the carnival, courtesy of Davies, of course.


    *Ring*


    Davies''s phone began to ring while Tisha was moving her stuff and Davies quickly picked up the call after seeing that it was Daniel that was calling.


    "Hello,"


    "Where are you, sir?" Daniel asked from the other side of the phone.


    "Central Park of Yorkshire City, but I won''t be here for long,"<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Follow the tracker in my car and find me, I''ll be looking for a mall where I can fill up my wardrobe," Davies replied.


    "Ok, sir. I''m on my way," Daniel said.


    "Just for rity, you''re bringing the car and the things I asked for, right?" he made sure to ask, as those things would be very important ording to his ns of going against Lee Jung¡­ tonight.


    "I have them all ready, as you requested," Daniel replied like the trustworthy assistant he was.


    "Also I''ming with a couple of people that I guarantee you''d like to meet," he continued.


    "... Meeting with anybody for today would have to wait, reschedule it for tomorrow," Davies replied after a slight pause as he didn''t really have any extra time to spend after going over all his ns for the rest of the day.


    "...Ok sir, I''ll do that," Daniel replied just before Davies hung up the line.


    Davies put his phone down and looked over at Tisha who had long finished arranging the prizes in the backseat and had been staring at him as he spoke on the phone.


    "That was my assistant, Daniel. He''sing to meet up with me as I have to buy a couple of things," Davies found himself saying all these as he looked at Tisha curiously staring at him, but it was more because he did not know what they spoke about in this kind of situations, especially as he was new to this whole romance thing.


    "Oh, I don''t think I know him," Tisha replied with a finger pushed into her cheek as she tried to remember somebody like that.


    "You probably don''t¡­ I think," he replied to her and started the car, and put it into gear.


    "Besides that, I didn''t know you could throw so urately," Tisha changed the topic and looked at Davies with admiration.


    "Of course,"


    "I am what you call a boss¡­ both literally and figuratively," Davies replied smugly as he drove the car out of the parking lot.


    They ended up conversing all while Davies drove around looking for a mall that was suitable for a person of his stature to buy clothing from. They spoke of all sorts of things and Davies even ended up telling her about the first stall owner''s repelling ma trick.


    Though as they drove, Davies''s mind ended up wandering back to what he and Miya had spoken about, earlier in the day. Miya had confidently assured that conflicts between him and Lee Jung woulde looking for him because he and Tisha, who were viins with a dark fate value, were together¡­ but so far he had not seen anything.


    In the end, it seemed nothing hade from this experiment, he had hoped for a little fun, but it seemed like fate wasn''t nning on ying into his hands.


    [Be careful what you wish for] Miya''s voice suddenly rang out as he came to a stop in the parking lot of a pretty decent-looking mall.

 Chapter 85 CHAPTER 85: THE MISUNDERSTANDING THAT STARTED A WAR

    As he drove, Davies''s mind ended up wandering back to what he and Miya had spoken about earlier in the day.


    Miya had confidently assured that conflicts between him and Lee Jung woulde looking for him because he and Tisha, who were viins with a dark fate value, were together¡­ but so far he hadn''t seen anything.


    In the end, it seemed nothing hade from this experiment, he had hoped for a little fun, but it seemed like fate wasn''t nning on ying into his hands.


    [Be careful what you wish for] Miya''s voice suddenly rang out as he came to a stop in the parking lot of a pretty decent-looking mall.


    ''What do you mean by that?'' Davies asked immediately but got no response from Miya.


    It seemed she had discovered something and was purposely leading him on without saying anything and he didn''t like it, but he couldn''t do anything about it.


    He and Tisha got out of the car and made their way towards the entrance of the mall but before they could enter the mall, they were blocked by a bald middle-aged man with a round stomach, yet despite these characteristics, he was dressed pretty well in a fancy ck suit and ck dress shoes matched with a fancy watch as well.


    "Wee Boss!" the man greeted in a loud voice while bowing his head respectfully.


    "Wha?"


    "Eh?" Davies and Tisha were equally stunned, though for different reasons.


    Tisha was just surprised at the scene, but Davies was wondering if he had a mall as he didn''t remember creating one or even making moves to own one so he was pretty confused at the sudden greeting, but since he was pretty used to over the top greeting habits and he didn''t actually how many assets he had, his surprised reaction wasn''t didn''t match the confusion he was feeling internally.


    He wondered what was the deal with the sudden greeting as he looked at the man with a raised eyebrow and a confused look, but there was also displeasure in his eyes.


    He didn''t fancy making a racket out of meaningless things but now due to this sudden overboard greeting from this guy who seemed to have quite a bit of influence, eyes were beginning to turn and murmurs were spreading through the crowd around him.


    The bald middle-aged man with his head bowed respectfully had no idea of the blunder he had justmitted.


    It all started when he received the sudden news that a man had just bought over fifty percent of the Olisseum Mall, a very big establishment with branches in many settlements, and the said mystery buyer was going to be visiting the branch that he was in charge of and he had been charged with giving him the best treatment possible.


    All this was quite unnerving but it wasn''t a problem to adhere to the instructions that had been given to him, the problem arose when all they had was a name and a vivid description of the said Mystery buyer of a majority of theirpany''s shares.


    The man recalled the instructions that had been given to him,<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    ''Mr. Lee Jung is a young man, a dragon amongst men, even though you haven''t met him yet, you should be able to recognize him by his bearing,'' that was all the information that had been given to him and he had used the information to pick Davies who stood out from his crowd due to his bearing and demeanor, and also his clothing.


    The untrained eye may not be able to recognize it, but his clothes were customized and expensive brands that couldn''t even be found on the market even if one had enough money to purchase them, especially that watch on his wrist that gleamed due to reflecting light.


    From there stemmed the misunderstanding where he thought that Davies was in fact, Mr. Lee Jung, who had bought over fifty percent of the Olisseum Mall''s shares, and this led to the current situation where two confused young people were looking at a bald middle-aged man who had his head lowered respectfully before them.


    Since Davies had no clear idea of what was happening, he decided to rify things and clear up the confusion, but before he could even open his mouth to say a word an annoyingly familiar but loud voice came from behind him.


    "I always knew you were a proud and pretentious prick,"


    "But I didn''t know that you were a clout-finding bastard and a glory thief as well, Davies," the annoyingly loud and familiar voice rang from behind him.


    "Davies facepalmed in annoyance as soon as he heard those words,


    "It''s him, isn''t it?" he muttered in a low voice with his hand on his face.


    [Yup, it''s your boy Lee Jung in the building with arms packed full of annoying situations and he is here to make a peaceful day into an annoying one] Miya rapped at the speed of Eminem, affirming Davies''s thoughts.


    "Tch¡­" Davies clicked his tongue as he looked behind him at the annoying intruder who was shouting out his name without any care in the world, and sure as can be it was Lee Jung the troublemaker.


    "What?"


    "Cat got your tongue?" Lee Jung asked as he saw that Davies didn''t say a single word but was looking at him with displeasure.


    "Or has that big mouth of yours run out of things to say," he said domineeringly, believing that the reason he had the upper hand in this situation and would embarrass Davies enough to release a little bit of his anger and grievance against him.


    The crowd of people who were moving in and out of the entrance of the mall were beginning to hang around as they were interested in this situation and the murmurs were getting even louder.


    Quite a few members of the crowd were against Davies, who they thought to be someone without shame who was willingly receiving the respect deemed for someone else.


    Even though they didn''t know the full story, nothing stopped them from throwing mud at whoever was on the losing end.

 Chapter 86 CHAPTER 86: THE WAR OF WORDS

    The crowd of people who were moving in and out of the entrance of the mall were beginning to hang around as they were interested in the ongoing situation and the murmurs were getting even louder.


    Quite a few members of the crowd were against Davies, who they thought to be someone without shame who was willingly receiving the respect deemed for someone else just because he wanted to pose as someone he was not.


    Even though they didn''t know the full story, nothing stopped them from throwing mud at whoever was on the losing end. That is the type of living creature that human beings are.


    They take joy in others'' misfortune as long as it had nothing to do with them or the person wasn''t close enough to them to trigger their conscience.


    [Are humans really like that though?] Miya suddenly asked.


    ''Of course, they are, why else do you think something like Twitter exists and thrives,''


    ''It''s basically a ce where people get destroyed every day and othersugh at their misfortune as long as it doesn''t concern them¡­''


    ''Well, I''m human as well, I don''t really care much about other people either, so I have no issues with it being reciprocated, people never really did care about me after all,'' he replied to Miya.


    "Who''s that?" Davies suddenly heard Tisha ask beside him as she looked at Lee Jung who was walking towards them looking all smug.


    "Just a fly, don''t worry about it," Davies replied half-heartedly.


    "... I don''t like flies," Tisha suddenly replied, to his surprise, because ording to Tisha''s normal behavior, this was not something she''d say, but as he looked at her face, he could see an expression that showed that there was no love lost between them, which to him was surprising as they shouldn''t have met much before, less know each other.


    ''Seems that the protagonist and someone with a dark fate value can never have good feelings between them¡­'' Davies noted as he could see that Tisha obviously disliked Lee Jung for some reason and his presence even caused her to act abnormally rude, but after noting that he focused his attention back on the smug acting protagonist.


    As he looked at the smug look on Lee Jung''s face, his annoyance grew even further.


    "Mr. Whoever the fuck you are, I don''t think we''re close enough for you to call me by first name," Davies stated, his tone icy enough to cause the surrounding temperature to drop by a degree.


    "Eh?" Lee Jung was stunned by the direction of Davies''s reply and waspletely thrown off bnce and could only look surprised.


    "Also, in case you are blind enough to not notice,"


    "I and my girlfriend here were just going into the mall when mirror head over there appeared before us," Davies continued while motioning towards the bald middle-aged man, making it clear who ''mirror head'' was.


    The whole crowd burst intoughter at hearing the name Davies had allocated to the poor man.


    ''G-g-girlfriend?'' Tisha''s mind literally exploded at Davies''s choice of words.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    ''Mirror head!? Your father is a mirror head! Your grandfather is a mirror head! Your whole family is a mirror head!'' the bald middle-aged man screamed internally but didn''t dare to say anything out loud as even though he wasn''t sure what exactly was going on, he was able to tell that the man before him(Davies) was not the type of person that he could insult and get away with it, irrespective if he was the mystery buyer or not.


    "Am I supposed to believe you? You''ve always been good at lying," Lee Jung retorted, seemingly having gotten a hold of himself.


    "First of all, I don''t think we''re close enough for you to know whether I''ve always been good at lying or not,"


    "Secondly, Yes, I am good at lying, but you aren''t worth lying to," Davies replied without even taking a second to think as he was used to these kinds of basic wordy.


    "Uhm¡­ which of you is Mr. Lee Jung?" ''Mirror head'' chose this moment to ask, but the moment Davies''s icy eyes turned to him, he wished he never spoke.


    "I am Lee Jung, I recently bought fifty-three percent of yourpany''s shares and came here for an inspection," Lee Jung didn''t know what prompted ''Mirror head'' to speak, but he quickly grasped the opportunity to establish his identity with a smug face, eliciting a wave of oohs and aahs from the crowd that was watching the drama with popcorn in their hands¡­ or maybe not with popcorn in their hands.


    "Oh, and he''s so young," a middle-aged man said.


    "What an impressive young man," an old man said admiringly while stroking his long beard.


    "Look at what your mates are doing, while the only thing you know how to do is give head," a young woman said to her boyfriend who was standing beside her, causing him to smile embarrassedly.


    Davies on the other hand didn''t really care much about this new development, as the Olisseum Mall was not something that couldpare to his Imperium Technologies, and it was easy for him to destroy it with a mere sentence.


    What he was more concerned with was,


    ''What kind of system gave freebies like this to its host?'' this was the only troubling part of this whole situation.


    Davies knew that there was no way Lee Jung had acquired the Olisseum''spany shares by himself, which meant the system had handed it over to him on a tter of gold without him having to do much.


    If that were the case, then Lee Jung''s growth in power and wealth would be quite fast which would cause a bit of a problem for Davies, especially as he was still in the process of making his ns as there were too many things to n for. The monster attack that was to happen a year from now, how to take care of Lee Jung, and many other important things.


    [Don''t be so pent up, it wouldn''t be as bad as you make it sound]


    [I don''t know if I told you before, but no matter how powerful a system is, they all work on the same principle of exchange]


    [That is to say, no system would constantly give freebies without requesting something in return from its host]


    [It has to take before it can give]

 Chapter 87 CHAPTER 87: UNIMPRESSIVE LEE JUNG

    [Don''t be so pent up, it wouldn''t be as bad as you make it sound]


    [I don''t know if I told you before, but no matter how powerful a system is, they all work on the same principle as exchange]


    [That is to say, no system would constantly give freebies without requesting something in return from its host]


    [It has to take before it can give, so it definitely would be giving him some hard-to-pass missions if it wants to give him something equally valuable] Miya suddenly chimed in.


    ''Oh,''


    [There are two more pieces of good news for you] she continued.


    ''What?'' Davies asked as he wouldn''t reject good news.


    [It seems that this system is not the type that is good at generating things out of thin air and majorly resorts to giving things that already exist to its host]


    ''What does that mean?'' Davies wasn''t able to understand what she was saying and asked for rification.


    [It means the system is not that powerful when ites to reality maniption, so it''s probably just a lower or medium level system] she exined.


    ''Oh¡­ what''s the second piece of good news,'' this was undoubtedly good news for him and there was still moreing, so his mood lightened up a little.


    [Lee Jung''s system is more focused on helping him acquire wealth rather than actual power, meaning his personal growth wouldn''t end up being that fast]


    [He still has a long way to go before he will be able to personally threaten your life] Miya stated assuredly.


    This particr piece of news was what Davies appreciated the most as he of all people knew that without actual power that belongs to you, everything else doesn''t matter and can easily be lost. He was able to put his mind at least for at least a little while with this information.


    "Oh, so you''re Mr. Lee Jung," Mirror head quickly used the opportunity to move away from Davies and toward Lee Jung and even began to tter him with all the sleazy words in his dictionary.


    Davies and Tisha watched all this with disgusted looks on their face. It was actually quiteical how the two of them had disgusted looks on their faces but neither of them knew that the other had a disgusted look on their face.


    Lee Jung on the other hand, was having his head swollen due to the ttery he was receiving and was thinking of vindictive things he could do to Davies to embarrass him until he couldn''t raise his head in the future and the idea he came up with to start was to do the same thing Davies had done to him yesterday.


    Since he owned the Olisseum Mall, he was going to kick Davies out just like Davies had done to him at The Rising Sun.


    His head was all up in the clouds so much that he hadn''t yet thought about his situation.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    He didn''t know who he was up against or what he was up against.


    He didn''t know the kind of backing Davies had or how powerful he actually was.


    The fact was, he simply didn''t care because it was not in his nature as a fated protagonist.


    How else would they turn danger into opportunity?


    That was the way protagonists were, they didn''t care about things like this until they actually caused trouble and their lives were in danger. It was only then they started paying attention to things and people that could threaten their life.


    This was the only reason why Lee Jung could act so arrogantly before Davies¡­ because he did not actually know what the name Davies Lake meant.


    If he knew, he would know that he was nothing but an insect that was not dead yet because Davies couldn''t afford the repercussion of killing him immediately¡­ but the way he was acting was definitely going to put him on a fast track to his grave¡­


    "Yesterday, I recall you telling me, and I quote "to shoo"," Lee Jung said with a smirk on his face.


    "I don''t see your point, but yes, I do remember¡­ vaguely. I did tell you I have a problem remembering unimportant people," Davies replied, taking another jab at Lee Jung even though he didn''t understand why Lee Jung was mentioning this.


    Lee Jung swallowed his rising anger and continued speaking, "ording to you if I own the ce I can send away unwanted people,"


    ''So this was what he meant¡­ such low-level thinking,''


    ''Hey Miya¡­ are you sure this is a fated protagonist that is supposed to be a threat to my life,'' Davies asked with obvious disgust for such low-level thinking.


    [If you ask me, who am I going to ask?] Miya retorted, but he could tell from her tone that she was also less than impressed by Lee Jung''s methods.


    ''Why can''t I just kill him? I''m way past ying tit for tat with a low-level protagonist,'' He thought inwardly.


    Davies''s look of disgust made Lee Jung think that Davies was feeling embarrassed by what he was about to do but before he could say anything else a sudden burst of loud revving of some cars that wereing their way drew everyone''s attention over.


    It was a convoy of cars and the car in the lead was a ck Ce sports car and it was followed by three ck vans. Instead of going towards the parking lot, the cars were headed at high speed towards the entrance of the mall, much to the rm of the people there, but before they could even begin to start shouting in rm, the cars showed obvious signs of slowing down.


    The convoy of cars finally pulled up just beside the entrance of the mall and the doors of the Ce in the lead and the doors of the three vans were opened and the people in the cars got out.


    The men in the vans looked intimidating in their all-ck suits and ck shades with only their white shirts standing out amidst all the ck. After getting out they all lined up behind the blonde-haired youngster that got out of the ck Ce, looking very intimidating.

 Chapter 88 CHAPTER 88: PREMONITION

    A convoy of cars with a ck Ce sports car in the lead, followed by three ck vans drew everyone''s attention over as they drove at high speed towards the entrance of the mall instead of the parking lot where vehicles were supposed to go, much to the rm of the people standing at the entrance of the mall, but before they could even begin to start shouting in rm, the cars showed obvious signs of slowing down.


    The convoy of cars finally pulled up just beside the entrance of the mall and the doors of the ck Ce and three vans were thrown open and the people in the cars got out.


    The men that got out of the ck vans looked very intimidating in their ck suits, ck shades, and ck shoes with only their white colored shirts shing against their all-ck outfit.


    As they got out they all lined up behind the blonde-haired youngster that got out of the ck Ce, creating a very intimidating visage. The blonde-haired young man''s face looked so soft and cute that it felt feminine, he was dressed in a white suit with a light blue inner shirt.


    As soon as he got out of the ck Ce his eyes began to survey the crowd, as if looking for someone and immediately his eyes fell on Davies, they visibly brightened up as if they had found their target.


    The blonde-haired youngster began to walk towards Davies while the Men in ck suits followed him as he moved towards Davies. The way they marched towards Davies made everybody in the crowd think that Davies had provoked someone he should not have and the repercussions of his actions had finally caught up to him, but they couldn''t be more wrong.


    The blonde-haired youngster who gave off the vibe of a rich second generation was no one but Daniel, Davies''s bodyguard/personal assistant/butler.


    "Keys?" Davies requested from Daniel the moment Daniel was within a five-meter range of him and much to the surprise of the surrounding crowd watching the show, Daniel threw the keys of the ck Ce towards Davies.


    Before the keys reached halfway towards him, Davies took out the key of the Ventley and threw it at Daniel before positioning his hand and catching the keys of the ck Ce that Daniel had driven over.


    "The rest of what you requested is inside the car," Daniel said after catching the keys to the Ventley and standing right in front of him.


    "Ok, good," he nodded his head approvingly and began to give Daniel his next orders on what to do with the Ventley now that he had given him the key.


    "In the Ventley there are a couple of¡­ stuff that you need to deliver to¡­"


    "Where do you live again?" he turned to Tisha to ask as he had never bothered to ask before. Tisha said her address and Davies looked over at Daniel, hoping he had heard it.


    It seemed he had as he nodded affirmatively at Davies.


    After getting all that done Davies was nning to leave as he was no longer interested in shopping here and having a battle of words with someone as dumb as Lee Jung was making him lose brain cells rapidly, but before he could take a step, he heard Daniel ask.


    "I couldn''t help but notice,"


    "Is something going on between you and¡­ who is he again?" Daniel asked Davies while looking at Lee Jung. Davies had to use most of his will to prevent himself fromughing as he looked at Daniel''s confused face.


    It seemed that Daniel recognized Lee Jung''s face from somewhere but couldn''t put a finger on it as Lee Jung was not exactly someone that important people would take the effort to remember just a week ago.


    Put that with the fact that he seemed to have undergone a makeover and looked more handsome than before, plus he was beginning to have the smell of money on him. It was obvious that anybody in Daniel''s shoes wouldn''t recognize him unless the person had a photographic memory.


    Davies suddenly put his right arm over Daniel''s head and rested his arm on Daniel''s shoulder before pulling him closer suddenly, earning a surprised yelp from Daniel, but Davies ignored it.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "You see, Daniel¡­ now that you mention it,"


    "As I stood there, I had a uh¡­ premonition, of sorts," Davies began, speaking like a wise man.


    *Gasp*


    "... What did you see?" Daniel asked after letting out a gasp.


    "I saw a building with the name of Olisseum Mall, which, now that I mention it, it kinda looks like this one," Davies continued while pointing backward with his thumb at the Olisseum mall that stood gantly behind him.


    "It does? That is quite the interesting premonition," Daniel responded with a hand on his chin, looking deep in thought as if he was trying to visualize the situation.


    "Yeah, it is quite interesting," Davies continued, a knowing smile now appearing on his face.


    "Anyway, I saw the building destroyed overnight,"


    "I don''t know if it was sted to bits or crushed to pieces, but it is quite true that is a very interesting premonition,"


    "... Wouldn''t you say, Daniel?" He finished speaking, but there was a wicked smile on his face as he stopped speaking.


    *Gasp*


    "What if such a thing happened to every building with the name Colisseum Mall on it?" Daniel responded with a wicked smile of his own after letting out an exaggerated gasp.


    "Oh! What a terrible thought, but I must say I like your imagination, it is quite wild," Davies replied with a wicked grin on his face as they looked towards Lee Jung and Mirror head.


    Most of the people around watched the conversation with confused expressions, but the people with wider imaginations who could read through their words were watching with stricken expressions.


    ''Were these people nning arson right in broad daylight?''


    They weren''t even trying to hide it.


    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Please vote powerstones and golden tickets

 Chapter 89 CHAPTER 89: FATE AND A DISAPPOINTING PROTAGONIST

    Most of the people around watched the conversation with confused expressions, but the people with wider imaginations who could read through their words were watching with stricken expressions.


    ''Were these people nning arson right in broad daylight?'' they thought as they looked at Davies and Daniel meaningfully smile at one another.


    They weren''t even trying to hide it.


    Davies looked up at the men behind Daniel and then his eyes fell on the vans,


    "Why are all of these guys here though, I thought I said I didn''t want to see anyone today," Daviesined. He knew they were the Men in ck organization members Selina had sent to help himplete the mission. They were the ones that made Selina''s "interesting" idease alive as they were the executors of the ns.


    They were supposed to have met Danel to give him the information they had acquired from thest target, named Tennessee Williams, who had been tortured before death.


    Davies knew all that, what he did not know was why they were here with Daniel even though he had specifically made it clear that he would not be meeting anybody today.


    Normally he was not one to listen to someone who had clearly gone against his orders, but as he was in a good mood right now after "getting an interesting premonition", he was willing to listen to what Daniel had to say.


    "Ah that, I had them tag along as I remembered that you have nothing in your wardrobe aftering back to Yorkshire. I want them to help in carrying back whatever you buy," Daniel hurriedly exined as he knew Davies''s character.


    "Oh¡­" Davies understood immediately.


    "Hold up though, how many things did you think I was going to buy that you had to bring three whole vans to help me cart away my stuff," Davies said with augh.


    "Welp, I can''t exactly buy anything here," Davies said with a scoff as he looked at the Olisseum with obvious disgust and took a hold of Tisha''s hand with his free hand and wanted to pull her away from the mall.


    At this point, Lee Jung could no longer stand being ignored by Davies and everyone else and he exploded in anger with a shout,


    "You bastard, you think you can just ignore me!"


    "Uh, yeah, nobody cares about you¡­" Davies said half-heartedly while he looked at Lee Jung from the corner of his eye.


    He was quite stunned right now, as he sensed a slight hint of mana from Lee Jung when he failed to control his emotions and erupted in anger while screaming like a professional banshee.


    ''I thought you said he''s still far away from threatening my life personally,'' Daviesined to Miya.


    [He is]


    [Can''t you feel that disappointing amount of manaing from him even though he''s already had the system for a week] Miya replied, trying to dissuade his worries, but Davies didn''t feel his worries going away.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    There was no way a protagonist would be this disappointing. There were only two ways a situation like this could go in a conventional story.


    Either he was ying a pig to eat the tiger(this basically means he was acting weak to be able to sneakily defeat the strong), but due to how disappointing Lee Jung was, both before his opportunities and after his opportunities came, Davies highly doubted that he was acting weak and stupid and was actually weak and stupid.


    The second urrence was the one that Davies was the wariest of, and the most annoying part was that it required Lee Jung to be weak and stupid, which he was. There was no way fate would let its chosen one be someone as weak and as stupid as Lee Jung, so it would constantly begin to arrange opportunities that can make him shoot to the sky in one step, especially if there was a catalyst that could push him to strive harder so he could get as strong as possible.


    Unfortunately, with the way things were going, Davies was already a catalyst that would push Lee Jung to his limits even if he didn''t do anything as they were already on opposite ends and Lee Jung was vaguely aware that he couldn''t defeat Davies in a straight fight.


    Davies didn''t want to be a catalyst for a uselessly disappointing protagonist like Lee Jung, and his murderous aura surfaced with him just thinking about it.


    Even now, Lee Jung didn''t know what was good for him and stepped forward angrily. Shockingly some sort of aura was being released from him and the Men in ck stiffened, unable to stop him from moving towards Davies, but the moment he took another step forward a murderous aura was unleashed from Davies causing every living thing in the vicinity of his aura to stiffen and freeze in their movements.


    Everyone felt an invisible scythe that reeked of death against their necks and did not dare to move as they felt that if they even moved a centimeter and displeased the god of death that was releasing this murderous aura, their lives would be forfeited in the next second¡­ and they were right.


    If they even had the nerve to look up, they would see countless sharp ice projectiles already to fall at a moment''s notice, all it required for all life to cease existing in the area was a mere thought from Davies and the whole ce would be painted red in a second.


    Even Tisha and Daniel weren''t spared of the murderous aura as Davies was thoroughly enraged right now.


    How dare he?


    Who did this F-rate protagonist that was so disappointing that he couldn''t even hold a proper battle of words think he was, that he was trying to pressure him with his weak protagonist aura?


    Davies''s murderous aura seeped into his eyes and his emerald-green eyes were now beginning to have a small tinge of red.


    [Uh, Davies, you know you can''t kill him, right?] Miya asked just to make sure that hadn''t lost his mind due to the murderous aura that was being released from him right now, but Davies ignored her warning and his eyes fell on Lee Jung, looking at him with disgust and scorn like the insect that he was.


    "I dare you to take one more ste-" Davies began, but,


    *STEP*


    Davies hadn''t finished speaking when Lee Jung took another step with a provocative smile on his face. The sound of his foot on the floor as he took the step was deafening for some reason.


    [Ah, shit]

 Chapter 90 CHAPTER 90: MISSION LOOK FOR ANOTHER WAY TO KILL THE PROTAGONIST

    "I dare you to take one more ste-" Davies began, but,


    *STEP*


    Davies hadn''t finished speaking when Lee Jung took another step with a provocative smile on his face. The sound of his foot on the floor as he took the step was deafening for some reason.


    [Ah, shit]


    The moment Lee Jung took the step, Davies stopped speaking and the murderous auraing him immediately stopped flowing, as if he was surprised and in shock that Lee Jung was able to move, but before the people around could regain control of their lotive abilities, an even greater burst of murderous aura shot out of Davies and this time even Lee Jung was frozen in fear at the murderous aura flowing off of Davies.


    [''This idiot!!!''] Miya cursed internally after seeing Lee Jung pushing the red button known as Davies Lake.


    Others may not know how vtile Davies was when it came to situations like this, but how could she not know, she had been stuck with him for almost two decades now and knew almost everything there was to know about him, and from her experiences with him, she could sense a storming¡­ a bloody one.


    Normally she''d let him go on his rampages as it was no concern of hers, especially as she couldn''t stop him anyway, but she couldn''t do that this time.


    He couldn''t afford to directly target Lee Jung''s life right now as it went against their goals and more importantly, it would result in repercussions that he probably wouldn''t be able to cope with.


    After spending almost two decades with him, she hade to like this annoying and heartless scallywag known as Davies Lake, and she''d do her best to prevent him from doing something that would bring momentary pleasure but was undoubtedly a stupid move in the long run.


    She quickly gathered her thoughts and tried to look for ways to dissuade him, but in the end, the words that came out of her mouth were,


    [Don''t kill that idiot!]


    [He''s worthless and not worth staining your hands] Miya shouted in his head.


    ''I''m not gonna kill him,''


    ''I''m just gonna take a leg, or an arm¡­ or his dick,'' Davies replied with a cold and devious smile as he raised his arm, ready to call down the ice projectiles and turn Lee Jung into a dickless porcupine.


    [That''s even worse. You can''t afford to let him live if you do something like that to him, or his plot armor will only get stronger and he''lle back for revenge]


    [You yourself said you can''t afford to leave an enemy alive, especially a wounded one] Miya quickly retorted, still doing her best to dissuade Davies from just killing the provocative idiot known as Lee Jung.


    It seemed that her words had managed to get through to Davies this time as his movements froze, his hand no longering down, as he seemed to reconsider the situation.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    [Don''t you think it''s better to kill someone like him just when he is mere moments from his peak] Miya''s voice came again to Davies like the whisper of his inner demon, reminding him of his deepest, darkest desire which was to humiliate, torture and kill his enemies(fated protagonists and whoever sent him here) in the worst way possible.


    For a second, Davies''s murderous intent at Lee Jung almost disappeared,


    ''It would indeed be more fun to wait for him to almost reach his peak and then slowly take away everything he has from him, before then subjecting him to a fate worse than death and letting him see hell on earth before finally killing him,'' Davies thought.


    He was still contemting it when he suddenly felt hands from different two different directions grab him tightly. Tisha and Daniel had ended up grabbing him tighter when they could no longer cope with the murderous aura he was releasing, especially as they were standing right beside him,


    ''Oh, there were people here,'' It was at this point that Davies remembered that he wasn''t alone right now.


    This was the straw that broke the camel''s back. He didn''t care much about the normal civilians, hell he didn''t even care about the Men in ck, but he did slightly care about Daniel and also did not want to mutte another human being in front of Tisha and on their first date at that.


    Immediately, he withdrew his murderous aura with practiced ease, making it seem like it was never there in the first ce and immediately, collective gasps for breath from every direction filled the air.


    Some people even fell to the ground as they could no longer carry their own weight, while still gasping for breath.


    Davies''s eyes fell upon Lee Jung who was not among the ones that had fallen while gasping for breath, but his flushed face and heavy breathing gave away his obvious difort even though he was trying to mask it as much as possible.


    ''Is there really only one way to kill a fated protagonist without any repercussions?'' Davies wondered annoyedly as he looked at Lee Jung who was regaining a confident look after seeing that Davies ended up doing nothing to him.


    [Regrettably, for now, there isn''t] Miya intoned.


    ''Tch¡­ there better be a juicy reward for letting this idiot live until I sap him of every single fate point that he has,'' Davies clicked his tongue internally and folded his hand into a fist, causing all the ice projectiles that were above the crowd to shatter to pieces with a loud noise.


    *Clink* *Clink* *Clink* *Clink* *Clink*


    Countless ice shards fell on the floor, making people aware of its deathly presence above their heads just seconds ago, causing their faces to turn deathly pale.


    It was at this moment that Lee Jung realized that death was mere meters away from him just seconds ago due to his provocative actions. After realizing this fact, at first, fear befell him as he realized that his actions had put him on a fast track to death and he would probably have died if Davies had not withdrawn his killing intent against him for some reason, but as he realized that Davies had indeed withdrawn from his actions against him his warped protagonist mind came to another conclusion.


    He believed that Davies had withdrawn his actions against him, not of his own ord but because he was scared of him for some reason or because of something he possessed. As he thought that heughed internally to himself that Davies was nothing but a wimp that had tried to scare him.


    He had not learned his lesson and was definitely going to do his best to provoke Davies another time, but for now, his body was more honest than his warped mind as it still shivered in fear.

 Chapter 91 CHAPTER 91: "WHOS THE GIRL?"

    Davies saw the look on Lee Jung''s face and his killing intent red again for a second, but then he calmed down as he realized that Lee Jung''s defiant attitude was going to make things easier for him to constantly push his buttons and make him constantly throw his weight around so that he could always be there to pop his balloons, thus making him lose fate points.


    Though now Davies preferred to look for ways to take a bigger chunk of his fate value as he didn''t want to see his annoying face much longer and would rather it be a distant memory and Lee Jung be six feet under the ground, but he''ll have to find ways to do thatter¡­ probably taking a future harem member of his would make him lose a whole lot more fate points.


    It was at moments like this that Davies''s annoyance for whoever had dumped him in this world with a half-useless system and no knowledge of the plot. If he knew the kind of opportunities that Lee Jung would be privy to then he would have already killed this annoying bastard by now, but since he didn''t, he was left walking on eggshells.


    Davies quickly turned and began to walk away from the entrance of the mall and towards the ck Ce sports car that Daniel had driven over because he felt that if he spent one more second looking at the growing smug look on Lee Jung''s face he wouldn''t be able to resist smashing his head in.


    Without a word, Davies and his group which consisted of Tisha, Daniel, and the rest of the Men in ck left the scene. Davies and Tisha went toward the ck Ce, Daniel went in the direction of the Ventley Conraverse that Davies had left in the parking lot, and the Men in ck got into the very inconspicuous-looking ck vans.


    As Davies was in a pretty bad mood, he said nothing to Tisha as they got into the car, and Tisha knew from experience not to try to talk to Davies if he was in a bad mood, so the interior of the Ce was void of human conversation.


    Tisha had a few things she wanted to talk to Davies about, but as she was able to tell that the mod was not quite right for conversation, an awkward silence filled the air.


    Luckily Tisha''s phone rang due to a notification and she picked up the phone to look through it and ended up chatting with whoever sent the message, leaving Davies to be the only antisocial animal left in the car, but Davies didn''t mind the silence as it allowed his thoughts to flow better.


    Originally he had nned to challenge Lee Jung to a race tonight in the presence of everybody that was on the scene and rob him of his title as racing king while throwing a ''few'' insults at him, but after meeting Lee Jung a few minutes ago, he didn''t just want to defeat him, but to crush himpletely.


    Unfortunately, that would have to wait quite a bit, ''small steps, small steps,'' he repeatedly told himself. He was still in the experimenting stage of trying to find out the ways he could use to cause Lee Jung to lose more fate points, so he couldn''t rush things for now.


    Further ns would have to wait until the night was over and he had defeated Lee Jung in the race and seen how many points he could rake from Lee Jung¡­ if he could rake any at all.


    Luckily, even after what happened earlier, he was sure that Lee Jung still retained enough spunk to not back down on a challenge from him¡­ if he did not initiate it in the first ce.


    "It really is true that protagonists are the best at courting death," Davies muttered unconsciously while wondering what sort of screw had gone loose in Lee Jung''s head that made him able to act smug and confident in front of someone who had almost killed just a few seconds earlier.


    "Huh? Did you say something?" Tisha looked up from her phone and asked Davies who she had heard muttering something.


    "Did I say that out loud?" Davies asked with a slight smile.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Yes you did, but I didn''t hear what you said," Tisha answered.


    "Really now?" Davies asked with a teasing smile.


    "Yesss. What did you say?" Tisha asked curiously.


    "... We may never know," Davies replied dubiously andughed, much to the dismay of Tisha who was now curious about what Davies had said.


    Inside the car, Davies began conversing with each other about different sorts of things, regaining the flow of conversation they had going before they were interrupted by the buffoon known as the protagonist, but outside the car, an impressive scene was taking ce.


    A convoy of cars was moving quickly through the streets and the mere appearance of the first two cars in the lead was enough to cause the people with normal cars to give way for the convoy of cars.


    Davies and Tisha in the ck Ce were in the lead and were followed by Daniel who drove just behind them in the white Ventley Conraverse and they were followed by the three ck vans. They cruised through the streets with Davies looking for a mall where he could get some clothes and other dressing ornaments to fill up his wardrobe.


    "I wonder which rich young masters are ying with their parents'' cars again?" a ck-haired young adult said with his hand over his girlfriend''s shoulder as he watched the convoy of cars drive by on the street.


    "All they like doing is bragging and unting wealth that is not even theirs," the guy scoffed.


    ''At least their parents have cars and are not riddled with debts like yours,'' his girlfriend thought, but did not say it out loud.


    Suddenly the ck Ce in the lead mmed on the brakes and the car skidded to a stop right in the middle of the road, almost causing an ident, but luckily, the other drivers maneuvered their cars expertly and avoided an automobile ident.


    *Inside the car*


    Davies stared at Tisha with a disbelieving expression all over his face as he mumbled,


    "What?"

 Chapter 92 CHAPTER 92: DANIELLA

    The ck Ce sports car that was leading the convoy of cars suddenly slowed down and began to skid to a stop right in the middle of the road due to the brakes being mmed on by the driver.


    Such action should have, by all rights, caused an ident, but due to some transcendent level of luck, all the drivers of the cars following after the ck Ce were able to somehow maneuver themselves and narrowly avoid an automobile ident.


    Daniel and the drivers of the ck vans wondered what could have caused Davies to m on the brakes so suddenly, but before they could even think of getting out of their own respective vehicles, the ck Ce began to move once again, so they quickly put aside their curiosity and quickly drove after the ck Ce, but as they drove off, loud cursing voices could be heard from the various cars that were also affected by Davies''s sudden stunt in the middle of the road.


    There was no way someone''s life could be put into a dangerous situation and the person would stay silent, more especially if it was caused by someone else, and this fact was being proven as all over the road, curses could be heard, but the cause of this whole matter would never get to find out as she was currently in a ck Ce with tinted ss shields so no one from outside the car could even see her face.


    As for how she had nearly caused an ident, it all began when she had asked the person driving the car a pretty normal question. Normally, there was no way a normal question could give birth to such an exaggerated reaction, but it happened to be a question that the driver hadn''t been expecting to hear.


    It all began a few minutes ago¡­


    **Inside the ck Ce, a few minutes ago**


    Davies and Tisha had been conversing freely in the car, though it was mostly Tisha speaking and Davies replying with smartass remarks to keep the conversation going,


    "So¡­ why is Danie cross-dressing as a guy and working as your assistant?" Tisha suddenly asked in the middle of their conversation.


    "What!?" Davies instinctively mmed on the brakes, bringing the car to a stop. He had to do his best to hold himself back from killing Tisha immediately those words came out of her mouth and had to put even more effort to keep his killing intent out of his face.


    "How do you know Danie?" Davies asked slowly, doing his best to keep his killing intent out of his voice, but his mana was already roiling turbulently, ready to strike at any moment.


    "I remember her from my time in the orphanage," Tisha replied hesitantly, quite confused at Davies''s exaggerated reaction.


    "Oh¡­"


    Upon hearing that, Davies took his legs off the brake pad and began to drive forward again, but his mana was still roiling turbulently, ready for him to use at a moment''s notice.


    Davies''s killing intent towards her hadn''t died down, he was just going to give her a chance to exin herself and if her answer wasn''t satisfactory, then the Nancy family would only have one descendant left, instead of two¡­ or maybe he''ll just wipe them all out, her brother was likely to be a problem in the future anyway, so he wouldn''t mind killing him ahead of time.


    "Go on," He prompted her to continue speaking about the issue at hand.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Tisha began to exin how after her parents had died, they were found by the Mega Protection Association(MPA), who had beente to the scene due to some unforeseen situation.


    They had found Tisha holding little Romero and after taking care of the scene caused by the beastmen bandits, they brought them to an orphanage in Yorkshire city that was run by the government and dumped them there.


    The orphanage was full of kids whose parents had met some unfortunate circumstances and thus they were dumped there by adults who couldn''t bother themselves enough to care about the kids. It was at the orphanage that Miya met a little girl named Danie who happened to be eleven years old at the time.


    Danie, like her, was also an orphan. The only difference between them was that, unlike Tisha, she had never gotten to meet her parents at all. With Tisha''s bubbly attitude which wasn''t dampened for very long, even after her parents deaths, she tried to be friendly with Danie, but Danie always ignored every one of her attempts of friendliness and only spoke to her when absolutely necessary.


    Strangely, she disappeared from the orphanage almost a year after Tisha and her little brother were brought to the orphanage. Tisha never forgot Danie''s face because she was the first person that she had not been able to make friends with¡­


    It was a bit childish but due to that Tisha was able to piece Danie''s face together with Daniel''s and was able to recognize her.


    "So that''s how it is," Davies nodded to himself.


    [It sure does sound right up her alley of sense level] Miyamented.


    ''It does, and it fits in perfectly with Danie''s story, though Danie never mentioned her to me,''


    ''But I guess with how she was back then, it makes sense,'' Davies confirmed her thoughts and let his mana go, releasing it back to flow normally in his body as he had now confirmed that Tisha didn''t know anything that she shouldn''t and thus had acquired the rights to continue living¡­ even if she did not know it.


    "So, how did Danie end up working for you and why is she crossdressing as a guy?" Tisha asked again the question that had almost caused her death, but this time there was no exaggerated reaction to apany it.


    "Hmmm¡­" Davies hummed, seemingly in thought.


    "Well¡­ Danie works for me because I pay her to¡­"


    "If you want to know her reasons or the story behind all of that, or why she is cross-dressing as a man, you''ll have to ask her yourself," Davies finally replied, deflecting the situation from him like the professional liar he was.

 Chapter 93 CHAPTER 93: THREE BOYS, TWO APPLES AND ONE STROKE OF THE KINFE

    ?


    "So, how did Danie end up working for you and why is she crossdressing as a guy?" Tisha asked again the question that had almost caused her death, but this time there was no exaggerated reaction to apany it.


    "Hmmm¡­" Davies hummed, seemingly in thought.


    "Well¡­ Danie works for me because I pay her to¡­"


    "If you want to know her reasons or the story behind all of that, or why she is cross-dressing as a man, you''ll have to ask her yourself," Davies finally replied, deflecting the situation from him like the professional liar he was.


    He couldn''t tell her the truth after all, also Daniel¡­ or Danie had a rather interesting identity that he would rather keep secret.


    Danie was a pawn he had coincidentally managed to get his hands upon by nothing but chance.


    She had been a little orphan girl who was hated by the caretaker of the orphanage for some reason that he had never bothered to find out, especially as the caretaker was now dead.


    The caretaker had purposefully maltreated Danie and treated her a lot worse than the other children, abusing her physically and mentally in ways that were difficult for even hard-hearted criminals to cope with, but the caretaker made sure to always heal her body, after abusing her to make sure that no one found out about his callous deeds.


    Danie at that time didn''t know and had been too young to understand why she was going through such things, but that did not stop the caretaker from abusing her. She had grown to be cold to the world and to everyone that she met, without the slightest amount of goodwill towards anyone.


    This was why she had probably paid no attention to the bubbly child who was always trying to talk to her at every opportunity.


    Everything in her life was dull and gray¡­ at least until she had tried to run away one day and had run into a white-haired kid who looked at her with eyes that carried even more coldness than hers, but that was a story for another day.


    Tisha didn''t reject Davies''s offer for her to ask Danie herself as she was still very interested in her for obvious reasons.


    This was also one of the reasons why Davies had deflected the issue to Danie, he would tell Danie to put off on answering Tisha''s question, or better still, tell her an outrightly outrageous story, Tisha wouldn''t be able to know whether it was the truth or not anyway.


    But before that, "Hey Tisha," he called.


    "Hmmm?" Tisha looked at him curiously, wondering why she was called.


    "You can''t tell anybody about Daniel being Danie, it''ll be our secret," Davies said in a mysterious tone.


    "Our secret, like the two of us?" Tisha asked immediately, her eyes sparkling with delight, not even bothering to think about why Davies wanted to keep such a thing secret.


    "Not just the two of us, silly,"


    "Danie as well," Davies replied in aughing tone, rifying things for Tisha who was feeling all happy about sharing a secret with people she liked.


    [She kinda reminds me of Harley Quinn but with fewer screws knocked loose in her head and a lot more thoughtlessness]


    [Just p on a bit of pink and blue dye and boom, you''ve gotten yourself a Harley Quinn] Miya added cheerily whileughing a little at Tisha''s over-enthusiasm and over-bubbly attitude.


    ''Does that make me the Joker?'' Davies askedughingly, ying along with her thoughts.


    [Yeah¡­ only you don''t resort to physical abuse, and you haven''t slept with her¡­]


    [... Yet] Miya replied, keeping the joke going.


    ''...'' Davies did not reply to her words and continued driving.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    ''It is quite lucky that she is the way she is,''


    [If you mean absolutely thoughtless, and madly in love with you for absolutely no understandable reason, then yes, we''re lucky that she is the way she is] Miya added with a sarcastic tone.


    ''Yeah, this way, we can resort to peaceful situations and I don''t have to use other¡­ disturbing methods to force her toply,''


    ''Even though I am a viin, I still prefer peaceful solutions to problems,'' Davies said shamelessly, almost causing Miya to cough up blood in disbelief, luckily for her, she didn''t have any blood to cough up.


    [Yeah right] Miya snorted.


    ''What? You don''t believe me?'' Davies asked with a mock-hurt tone, making it seem like he was hurt by herck of trust in his words.


    [Yes, I absolutely do not believe you, and to prove how I know that you are lying, solve this riddle]


    ''Ok, try me,'' Davies immediately stood up to the challenge.


    [You are given two apples to share equally between three boys. How can you do this with only one stroke of the knife?] Miya told Davies the riddle.


    ''There is a simple and peaceful solution to this riddle,'' Davies began confidently.


    [Oh¡­ please, do tell] Miyamented.


    ''Decapacitate one of the boys with one stroke of the knife and give the two boys left an apple each,''


    ''See, a very easy and peaceful solution,'' Davies said with confidence.


    [...] Even though it was the answer Miya was expecting from him, she was still stunned into silence at the confidence with which he had spoken of his "peaceful solution".


    [What exactly does a peaceful solution mean to you?] Miya asked hesitantly.


    ''I''ll say, one where I don''t have tomit mass genocide, torture, or ckmail somebody,'' Davies listed out.


    [What a fucking surprise]


    [PEACEFUL SOLUTION MY ASS!!!]


    [You were supposed to cut a third of the two apples each in one stroke and then give out the equal parts to the boys, but you instead decided to kill one of them!]


    [How the hell is that peaceful!?] Miya raved at him.


    ''... I gave a peaceful solution and not a boring solution,''


    ''Where''s the fun in your solution?'' Davies asked quizzically as if he couldn''t understand her way of thinking.


    [There is not supposed to be fun in a peaceful solution!] Miya coughed up phantom blood in anger.

 Chapter 94 CHAPTER 94: PALM MALL

    ?


    Davies and Tisha arrived at another mall after a few more minutes of driving around while searching for one.


    ''Palm Mall,''


    ''Hopefully, this one doesn''t belong to an idiot,'' Davies thought as he got out along with Tisha. After getting out of the car, he and Tisha waited for Daniel and the rest of the others to park their various vehicles ande along with them.


    A couple of secondster, Davies was standing alongside Tisha and Daniel while being followed by six intimidating-looking men wearing all-ck clothing with a white inner shirt. They walked toward the entrance of the mall, looking like an intimidating gang to some and a young master surrounded by his people to others.


    Just before entering the mall, Davies checked his watch,


    ''8:17pm,'' he confirmed the time, so he could allocate a time limit for himself at the mall as he still had a protagonist to wallop at a race in a few hours.


    Upon entering the mall, Davies immediately went toward the first boutique that he saw that sold clothes and hopped right in. He immediately looked toward Daniel, delivering his thoughts with his eyes.


    For Daniel who had gone shopping with him before, she knew what his look meant and hurriedly went to pick up a cart, but the others were looking dumbfounded as they didn''t know what to do at that moment.


    "Pick up a cart as well," Daniel exined Davies''s ''eye message'' to the men in ck.


    As his personal assistant/bodyguard/butler she had gone shopping with Davies before and so she knew of Davies''s shopping habits, but since the others didn''t know, she had to exin to them.


    Since Davies was abnormally handsome, he looked good in literally anything he wore, and to top it off, he was extremely rich, so things like a budget or how he would look in selective clothing did not influence his clothing choices.


    Because of this, he tended to pick clothes due to his personal choice, and sometimes on a whim¡­ and Davies was annoyingly whimsical.


    He was the type of person who would buy a ne because it interested him today and blow it up tomorrow because he wanted to see fireworks.


    Luckily he had the luxury to afford his whimsical actions.


    Davies walked up to a hanger of clothes, ignoring the greetings and sales pitch from the salesperson, not caring to even look if the salesperson was a man or a woman, and stretched his hands at the first cloth on the hanger, to another piece of clothing the end of another hanger at another corner of the shop,


    "From here to there, pack them all," Davies said with a nk tone, making it seem like he was just buying a bunch of bananas.


    Everyone in the shop but Daniel stared at him with their jaws dropping to the floor.


    ''Who is this nouveau-riche!!!???'' the manageably good-looking saleswoman who had been ignored by Davies thought with great shock. Even though Davies buying so many things for her shop was good for her, she couldn''t help but feel bitter at not being able to be like him and buy things with reckless abandon.


    The thought of Davies just making a scene and not actually intending to buy anything did not even pop up in her head for a second, as she wouldn''t dare to think that someone as handsome as Davies with as many intimidating followers would not be able to buy a couple of luxury clothes, and even if Davies came alone, she still wouldn''t doubt his ability.


    There was a kind of confidence-stemmed aura around him that made people naturally believe in his ability to do things. Only when he was acting out another role would this aura be hidden¡­ or if he encountered an arrogant to-the-heavens type of protagonist who slights everybody they meet, and every type of protagonist that he had met had such arrogance.


    Daniel and the Men in ck got to work, picking up the clothes that Davies had pointed out, while Davies let his eyes roam about the shop to see if anything else caught his eye.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Aren''t you going to try any of the clothes? What if it doesn''t fit?" Tisha asked him with a look of curiosity and slight anticipation.


    "Girl, with my kind of face, I look good in anything,"


    "Also, it doesn''t matter if it doesn''t fit, I can just burn it," Davies replied, as while it was true that he only picked clothes to wear based on his personal preference, there was no way he would waste hours on end looking for clothes that caught his eye in the shop, he still had other things to do after all.


    That was why he had just pointed out a couple of hangers and let the clothes be packed up, he''d decide if he actually wanted to wear such an outfit on the day he had to wear them and not a day before, and as for the clothes that didn''t manage to catch his eye¡­ well, there were many endings for unwanted clothes.


    As he replied, he failed to notice the slight look of anticipation from all the women around as they really wanted to see what a pretty boy like him would look like in another change of clothes, after all, there was a reason why women liked to y dress up with dolls, and Davies looked like an exquisitely made doll that harbored enough face value to even shake the most celibate woman''s heart.


    Davies''s eyes finally fell upon the beautiful waitress and he was actually quite surprised at how he had subconsciously ignored her as she was quite beautiful. Not to brag, but there was no way a beautiful woman would ever escape his eyesight, as even if he wouldn''t end up ''doing'' her, he still liked to appreciate women''s beauty and their¡­ ehem.


    The waitress had quite a beautiful face and she looked to be in her mid-thirties, but as his eyes began to scan her body and reached her almost non-existent chest, he finally understood why she hadn''t managed to draw his eyes immediately.


    ''How can you look like a MILF and not have huge bonkers, or at least manageably sized ones," Davies almost screamed internally, causing Miya to roll her eyes at the thoughts flying around inside his head.


    His eyes continued their descent and when they reached her hips, his eyes almost popped out at the delectable-looking shape of her hips and her phat ass. What she didn''t have in boobs, she made up for in ass, and his eyes were very pleased with the sort of eye candy that it offered.


    His yboy attitude was about to take over but he quickly restrained himself as he was still with Tisha and flirting with another woman and exchanging contact details with her when he was still on a date with Tisha was pushing it a bit too far, even for him.


    But of course, there was no way he was letting this phat ass MILF escape him without tasting her first, so he looked around for the name of the shop, as a reference for when he woulde back and that was when his eyesnded on a shirt that immediately caught his interest.


    It was a short-sleeved shirt that had a beautifully made design of what looked like a purplish-blue gxy with countless white light dots poking out in the background.


    "I''ll take that one as well¡­" He began,


    "... Matter of fact, I''ll just wear it right now," he said as he began to walk towards the cloth after remembering that he hadn''t changed his clothing today and was wearing the clothes he had picked out yesterday.


    He took off his watch, his two silver neck chains, his sses, and finally, the earring on his left ear, and then, without any form of decorum, he took off the baggy multi-colored sweater first before unbuttoning the white inner shirt and taking it off, fully exposing his upper body that due to good genes and intensive physical training looked so sexy, that the temperature being released from all the females in the shop went up a notch.


    Someone should probably have reminded Davies that there was a dressing room where he could change, but that person would be mobbed by all the women enjoying the sight of a pretty boy with a chiseled body changing his clothes.


    In a few seconds, Davies had on the shirt and was now picking up his essories and putting them back on, starting with his sses this time.


    The beautifully designed purplish-blue shirt would look odd on any other person but with Davies, it instead just went along with his other pieces of clothing and even entuated his other clothing by quite a bit.


    Seeing this Davies decided there was no point in looking for a matching trouser, but the women in the stall were hoping that he would find one that caught his eye. Maybe he would change his trousers out in the open as well.


    After seeing his gorgeous upper body, they were now even more interested in the weight he was packing in his lower body.

 Chapter 95 CHAPTER 95: PRELUDE TO THE RACE

    ?


    After a few seconds, Davies had on the shirt and was now picking up his essories and putting them back on, starting with his sses this time.


    The beautifully designed purplish-blue shirt he had on would look odd on any other person but with Davies, it instead just went along with his other pieces of clothing and even entuated his other clothes a bit.


    The women in the stall were hoping that he would find a pair of trousers that caught his eye, maybe he would change his trousers out in the open as well, as after seeing his gorgeous upper body, they were now even more interested in the weight he was packing in his lower body.


    Unfortunately for the women present in the store, Davies was not enough of an exhibitionist for him to go that far, and he had not managed to find a pair of trousers that caught his eye, so the women''s dream was destined to be unfulfilled today.


    During the time that Davies was dressing up, Daniel and the Men in ck had carted everything that Davies had pointed at and were now having it checked on the counter by the cashier, Tisha was also no longer nearby and had gone to pester Danie who was also at the counter.


    Opportunityes but once, so Davies walked over to another hanger of clothes and gave it a scrutinizing look while checking the tags and all, all the while expecting the phat-ass saleswoman toe and give him a sales pitch on that particr article of clothing.


    Just as he had expected, the moment the saleswoman saw him looking like he was interested in the article of clothing, she quickly made her way over to him. She may have been feeling a little disgruntled about not having the kind of money that Davies had, but that didn''t mean she wouldn''t treat him well as a customer, after all, customers like Davies who almost buy out half of the whole shop were a dime a dozen and it was best to treat someone like him well¡­ also, she was more than a little attracted to Davies''s appearance, and his money, so she wouldn''t say no to trying to be closer to him, maybe even have a fling with him¡­


    "This shirt is made from a hundred percent cotton and guarantees top-notchfort and the design is very pleasing to the eye¡­" She began her sales pitch, but Davies had already tuned out whatever the hell she was saying, after all, he was trying to get into a rtionship with her where the clothese off and not where they came on.


    "I¡­ didn''t pick up even half of what you''re saying," Davies said coolly as soon as she stopped speaking, causing the professional smile on her face to twitch uncontrobly as Davies didn''t even try to sugarcoat his words.


    "But, tell you what¡­ Can I get your number for whenever Ie around,"


    "I''d love to hear your exnations another day, maybe even at another ce," Davies continued smoothly and got her contact details typed into his phone in a few seconds.


    A few minutester, Davies and his group walked out of the first store and entered another. Davies continued his shopping and just kept on picking different types of clothing, shoes, watches, and other dressing essories, he even ended up buying a couple of things for Tisha as well.


    The Men in ck had to make a couple of trips to their vans to drop some of the things Davies had bought as they couldn''t carry it all at once. At the rate that Davies was shopping, one would think he had been infected with the shopping sickness that gued all women, but Davies was just the type of person that would rather buy everything he''d need for the next five years at once than have to make frequent visits to buy more things.


    After about two hours, they were back in the parking lot, where Davies and Tisha were to part ways with Danie and the Men in ck.


    Danie''s group had to go and deliver Davies''s things to his mansion, while Danie herself would have to deliver Tisha''s stuff at her own ce as Davies still had ns for the night and he wanted Tisha to still be with him for now.


    So they parted ways with Danie''s group leaving first, Davies watched as the taillights of the Ventley Conraverse rounded a corner and disappeared out of sight.


    "Where are we going?" Tisha finally asked as Davies started the Ce. She was a bit confused about why he had called Daniel over to change cars and wanted to know where Davies would be taking her.


    "Have you ever tried racing," Davies looked at her, the corner of his lips rising slowly.


    "... I can''t drive," Tisha looked away embarrassingly.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "For today, you don''t need to, just sit pretty and watch me in action¡­" Davies says as he stepped on the elerator and started driving out of the parking lot, his speed slowly increasing with every revolution of the tire.


    ''...As I wallop a protagonist that deserves a heavy walloping,'' he thought inwardly as he increased the speed of the car and turned sharply as he drove out of the parking lot, taking the car into a drift as he drove out of the parking lot of the mall and into the street.


    Suddenly, Davies remembered that he did not know, nor had he bothered to find out, where the races would be happening.


    ''Shit,'' Davies thought, almost face-palming, but he made sure to keep his hands on the steering wheel. Getting into an automobile ident over something like that wasn''t worth it.


    Davies was considering whether to call Danie to ask if she knew or could help him to find out when a red Cerrari suddenly sped past him. He quickly followed after the car as he knew that it was highly likely that someone driving a sports car like that with that kind of ferocity at this time of day was probably going to a racing spot.


    What''s the worst to happen from following the red Cerrari anyway?


    At most he''d end up at the wrong ce, so he threw away his reservations and sped after the car. Whoever was driving the car seemed to have noticed him following and had taken it as a challenge of sorts, so the driver sped up even more, trying to leave him in the dust.


    Was he being challenged right now? Davies wondered with a chuckle.


    He may not be the god of driving skills, but there was no way he would lose to just any racer, otherwise, he wouldn''t even have the confidence to go up against someone like Lee Jung, who had the support of a system that could nt god-like skills in his head.


    With this thought Davies increased his speed and made sure to keep up with the red Cerrari, after all, even though he could easily overtake the red Cerrari and leave it in the dust behind him, there was no point in doing so, as he was trying to follow it to the racing location since he did not know the way and overtaking the red Cerrari would truncate that goal.


    A red Cerrari and a ck Ce wove their way through the low night traffic at high speed, drifting around corners and leaving a lot of drivers behind with their hearts almost jumping out of their chests, but throughout the whole journey, not once did the ck Ce take the lead and it kept in a range of between two to seven meters away from the red Cerrari.


    Davies had to drive for almost an hour behind the red Cerrari before they arrived at an area with very little poption and met many other sports cars along the way. At this point, Davies was able to confirm that he had made the right decision to follow the red Cerrari.


    After a few more minutes they reached a huge space where over a hundred cars were parked. Loud music was ring from speakers and the lights were shing along to the beats.


    Pretty girls of various shapes and sizes were walking around, disying their delectable bodies.


    ''My kinda ce,'' Davies thought with slight glee as his eyes swept across all the various eye candies as he drove slowly into the crowd of cars looking for somewhere to park his car and wait for hisb rat to arrive so he could begin his experimentation while making sure to humiliate him in the process.


    Davies found a space big enough to amodate three cars and he quickly drove his car into the space, leaving enough space to drive out as he would have to race Lee Jungter on.


    The red Cerrari that he had been following for most of the way but had overtaken when he had confirmed the destination, pulled up beside him and parked into some of the remaining space beside the car, causing Davies to look over with interest as whoever was driving the car was not a bad driver, but the car had dark tinted windscreens and coupled with the fact that it was dark outside, Davies couldn''t see who was in the car.

 Chapter 96 CHAPTER 96: PRELUDE TO THE RACE II

    ?


    Davies found a space big enough to amodate three cars and he quickly drove his car into the space, leaving enough space to drive out as he would have to race Lee Jungter on.


    The red Cerrari that he had been following for most of the way but had overtaken when he had confirmed the destination, pulled up beside him and parked into some of the remaining space beside the car, causing Davies to look over with interest as whoever was driving the car was not a bad driver, but the car had dark tinted windscreens and coupled with the fact that it was dark outside, he couldn''t see who was in the car.


    ''Well, it doesn''t really matter anyway,'' he thought and was about to get down when he heard Miya''s voice,


    [Actually¡­ it does] Miya said suddenly.


    ''Hmmm?'' Davies raised an eyebrow.


    [She has quite a high fate value¡­]


    ''So, a futurepanion of the protagonist¡­''


    ''¡­wait a minute¡­ She?'' Davies was a bit stunned as he had expected and thought it was more likely to be a guy that was driving like that, especially with the way she had reacted ferociously to him speeding up after her.


    His money was on a rich young master with a rash, proud, andpetitive temperament, who happened to be good at racing(good thing he didn''t bet)¡­ it was a bit surprising, but it wasn''t that shocking, after all, it wasn''t only men who could be good at things like driving.


    Davies ended up not getting out of the car and decided to wait instead. Since he had confirmed that the woman in the Cerrari next to him was someone with a high fate value, he decided not to stress himself looking for Lee Jung as fate would definitely find a way to pull Lee Jung towards an opportunity nearby and it was obvious that the woman in the red Cerrari was an opportunity.


    Probably a very juicy one as fate would never arrange an ugly woman to be a protagonist''spanion, and since Davies had decided to resort to looking for ways to tear away bigger chunks of fate value from Lee Jung, it was better to wait back and take an opportunity to have contact with the woman and maybe even develop a rtionship with her, he still wasn''t sure what to do yet around the protagonist.


    Davies was brought out of his thoughts by Tisha asking a question after looking around at the various cars and people in the area,


    "When are the races starting?"


    "Are you going to be racing?"


    Davies was hit by a barrage of questions from Tisha that he swiftly began to answer, exining to Tisha that the races hadn''t started yet and that was why they were waiting.


    It was not the whole truth, of course, but it was not like he could tell her the actual reason.


    While waiting, a few minutes passed and then he saw a couple of people beginning to gather a few meters away from the front of his car, so he got out to find what was going on as he couldn''t hear anything from inside the car.


    After getting out, he found out that they were trying to arrange a race and were looking for a couple of racers to join. One of the people arranging the races noticed Davies going back to his Te after finding out what was going on and called out to him,


    "Hey, bro!"


    "Are you interested in a race?" the guy called out to Davies, causing Davies''s head to whip back and look at who was calling.


    Davies''s eyes settled on a dude with a low haircut and a face cap turned back in some sort of swag, he looked to be of European descent or to be more specific, he seemed Spanish as could be seen from his face and could be heard from the Spanish ent in his voice.


    All in all, he looked like a pretty chill guy, but he was destined to be disappointed as Davies simply shook his head, signifying his rejection. He hade here to go up against an annoying protagonist and he''d rather focus on that goal for tonight.


    "No thanks bro," Davies made sure to say after shaking his head to note off as excessively arrogant, he didn''t want any annoying issues toe up tonight, he''d had enough for the day.


    "Of course, you''ll refuse,"


    "After all you don''t really know how to drive one of these at the highest level," an annoyingly condescending loud voice came from behind somewhere at the side.


    ''Ah, here hees, the annoyingb rat,'' Davies thought as he turned his head to look over at Lee Jung''s approaching figure.


    [Looks like he really didn''t learn anything from the earlier tryst between you guys] Miya sighed. It seemed even she was appalled at Lee Jung''s ability to court death after almost dying due to his cheeky actions earlier.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    ''He''s a protagonist, he''s not supposed to learn from his mistakes when he has the river of fate to always cover his ass,'' Davies scoffed at the obvious partiality that the world showed to a select few, making them able to do easily, what others spend more than half their lives striving to be and be, and expect the unfavored ones to ept it like it was a totally normal thing.


    "Meeting you twice in a day,"


    "Is this really a coincidence, or are you stalking me?" Davies asked in an irritated tone. He obviously could not act like he knew that Lee Jung would be here, otherwise, it would seem quite shady and Lee Jung may think that something was wrong¡­ but he highly doubted that Lee Jung would notice anything, especially with that low-level Iq of his.


    "Our stars must really not like each other. That must be why we continuously keep colliding," Lee Jung replied with a smirk.


    [Holy mother of¡­ that was actually a pretty goodeback]


    [Is this what they call ''character development''?] Miya was stunned at how Lee Jung had advanced from his brain literally short-circuiting at every of Davies''s sentences to being able to reply, and with a wittyeback at that.


    "Well, they do say that enemies meet on a narrow road," Davies replied while thinking, ''It''s already happening, huh?"


    Though Davies had said that protagonists didn''t learn from their mistakes, the fact was that he was wrong. They did learn from their mistakes, but they only learned how to make more enemies with even more annoying and condescending behavior.


    At this point, the attention of the crowd that had already gathered beforehand was now ced on these two people.


    Davies happened to be a new face and Lee Jung happened to be the new racing king who had just defeated the previous racing king just a few days ago.


    Seeing this, Davies decided to work on his first assumption that insulting Lee Jung when a crowd was watching and making him back off thereby causing him to lose face would make him lose fate points.


    "Anyway, I''ve been thinking this earlier but you look really familiar¡­ now that I''m looking at you again, I''m pretty sure I remember having a valet that looked just like you about a week ago,"


    "But Damn, I must have been paying you a whole lot for you to be able to buy a car like that," Davies said looking at the blue Ce sports car that looked just like his behind Lee Jung.


    *Damnnn*


    Gasps could be heard from the crowd, as they saw that the mes of the conflict between the new face and the new racing king weren''t cooling down and were instead heating up, so they did like any reasonable person would do, which was to fan the mes of conflict.


    Lee Jung hadn''t expected Davies to mention that, but his mouth seemed to be moving faster than normal now as he quickly replied,


    "I was ying around for some life experience, but your pay was crass so I quit," Lee Jung lied smoothly without so much as a twitch from his facial features.


    *Whooooooo*


    The crowd roiled again,


    "Bro saying, this dude''spany is too broke to even pay valets," one of the guys watching this said with augh to some of hispanions that were confused at why there was such an exaggerated reaction to Lee Jung''s words.


    "Quit?" Davies repeated with a raised eyebrow.


    "Bro, I fired your ass, I don''t make it a habit to keep ipetent people," Davies fired back.


    *Shots fired*


    The crowd was enjoying this war of words very much as could be seen from their reactions, but they knew that the best was yet toe.


    Conflicts between two people here were usually settled on the tracks, so it was very likely that Davies and Lee Jung would end up taking their disagreement to the tracks. Since they knew about the new racing king''s skills, they hoped that the new face would be able to keep up with the racing king to at least be able to entertain them.

 Chapter 97 CHAPTER 97: PRELUDE TO THE RACE III

    ?


    "Why don''t you guys settle this on the tracks, yeah?" the Spanish guy who had asked Davies to a race earlier interfered before Davies and Lee Jung went on with their word battle.


    Davies and Lee Jung looked over at the guy with hard-to-read expressions, but then Lee Jung''s face broke into a confident smile as he actually fancied such an idea.


    He had confidence in himself when it came to racing, or more specifically he had confidence in the god of driving skill that he had acquired from the system.


    Even the previous racing king had fallen thanks to this skill, and he had no doubt he was better than Davies at driving¡­ and funnily enough, he was right. Davies''s driving skill was obviously no match for his and if they raced fairly, he would defeat him by arge margin, the keyword here being ''FAIRLY''.


    Davies was, after all, a viin, so why would he need to y fair when he knew that he couldn''t defeat an opponent through normal means. He was not a fool, he had already determined and made ns for such a situation, otherwise, why would hee here just to lose face after realizing that the protagonist probably had the skills to defeat him.


    He was here to do the face pping, not to get his face pped like a third-rate viin.


    Davies and Lee Jung agreed to have a race, but then came the next issue which was what they would be putting on the line.


    "10 million," Lee Jung immediately called out in a loud voice.


    "10 mill¡­ Eh!?" the Spanish guy was about to say when he realized the huge amount of money that Lee Jung had stated without the slightest sign of hesitance in his words.


    ''It seemed the racing king is really serious about this matter,'' he thought


    The cool Spanish guy wasn''t the only one who was surprised by the amount of money that Lee Jung had stated, it seemed like he nned to leave no way put for the handsome neer.


    ''So that''s how he''s ying it,'' Davies thought amusedly because this move of Lee Jung actually had an iota of what seemed like nning into it. If Davies was a normal person, then this move would undoubtedly be a good move as the price that Lee Jung had just mentioned was very high and would require him to put down an equally high amount of money or put up something of equal value.


    If he had none of these, then he would be susceptible to following an unreasonable condition from the other party, and this was where there would be stupid conditions like "bark and call yourself a dog while you run around the city," or other sorts of crazy conditions¡­ or that was how it usually went in the stories.


    Unfortunately, Davies was anything but normal and could easily match the same amount of money and even more, but for his n, which surprisingly, Lee Jung had yed into, Davies hesitated and didn''t say anything immediately and tried to look deep in thought.


    But after a few seconds of seemingly being in thought, Davies nodded, eliciting a cheer from the crowd, they''d get to watch a race where the stakes were as high as twenty million.


    They were about to move to conclude other arrangements concerning the race when Lee Jung suddenly spoke again,


    "I want to add another condition," Lee Jung said to Davies.


    "Hmm? What is it now?" Davies asked, seeming less than pleased that Lee Jung was nning to add another condition, but in reality, he had expected this to happen and he was proven right by the next words that came out of Lee Jung''s mouth.


    "If you lose the race, I want you to stay away from Jessica," Lee Jung said, sounding very righteous like he had been sent to the world to save it from its fate which ironically is what fated protagonists are chosen to do.


    The crowd also quietened for a second when they heard Lee Jung''s additional condition and finally realized that the conflict between the racing king and this neer probably started due to the woman named Jessica that Lee Jung had mentioned.


    ''Really?''


    ''He truly is just like every other third-rate protagonist. Treating women like objects that he can use in bets,'' Davies thought inwardly while keeping a straight face externally, but as he was nning to infuriate Lee Jung as much as possible before finally defeating him in a race to finish the night, he chose the most annoying words that Lee Jung would infuriate Lee Jung as much as possible.


    "Who''s Jessica?" Davies asked with a confused look in his eyes.


    Lee Jung''s mind almost imploded at Davies''s question which made it seem like the woman he was in love with wasn''t worth remembering and he almost lost his temper right there, but before he could lose his mind and do something stupid, the memory of a few hours earlier shed through his mind and he held himself back.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Anyway, he would be able to defeat Davies at the race, making him lose a lot of money and making sure that he''d never step close to Jessica ever again. That and the power that the system had helped him activate after that event gave him enough confidence to not back down, even though Davies was a Mega, and a strong one at that.


    So, holding back his anger he turned back to his car and brought a bag that contained the ten million powerstone dors that he was going to be putting up for the race.


    "Do you actually carry around such amounts of cash with you everywhere?" Davies was genuinely stunned that Lee Jung would actually have as much as ten million in raw cash with him like he was some sort of drug lord.


    The organizer of the race, the Spanish guy, collected the cash from Lee Jung and looked at Davies, expecting him to do the same, but that was going to be an issue for Davies.


    Unlike the idiot protagonist, Davies never carried that much cash around with him even though he had the inventory as he saw no benefit in carrying huge bundles of paper that would not be useful in a battle, around.


    Nevertheless, such an issue would be easy to solve as he had quite a number of things that cost more than the meager amount of money he had pledged for the race.


    "You don''t mind if I put up something worth around the same amount, right?" Davies said to the Spanish dude, no longer interested in talking to the idiot love-struck protagonist as talking to someone who you had to constantly stop yourself from smashing his head in was quite a chore.


    "Yeah my bro, watches, rings, cars,nd deeds, whatever it is, as long as it is worth ten million or more is eptable," the Spanish guy replied cheerily while wondering why Davies didn''t just do something like transferring the money or writing an IOU for the amount of the money since he didn''t have it in cash, but it was not his ce to ask such a question.


    Davies began to unbuckle the watch around his wrist while thinking,


    ''Why would I give bother with such a troublesome thing when I''m going to be the one to win the race,'' he had recognized the look of confusion on the guy''s face.


    He wouldn''t even have bothered with putting anything down if not for the rules in this ce considering the races.


    After removing his watch he was going to hand it to the Spanish guy, but Lee Jung''s voice interrupted him before he handed it over.


    "I don''t think anyone wants to hold onto your watch for you,"


    *Sigh* Davies sighed heavily, as he once again had to resist the urge to facepalm for the umpteenth time in just thest few minutes that he had been here.


    ''Typical protagonist behavior,'' he sighed internally as well.


    [Well, he is a protagonist] Miya said.


    "Do you only know how to spew nonsense from your mouth?" Davies said with annoyance.


    "At least I''m better than someone that thinks that his broken watch can cost ten million powerstone dors," Lee Jung scoffed, not believing that there was a watch that cost that much, and even if there was, there should be no way that Davies would have such a watch.


    "I don''t know what sort of money missed the road and ended up in your pocket but you seriously really need more information on the world of rich people," Davies said with a condescending tone, making it clear that he was looking down on Lee Jung.


    "I don''t need any information to know that your broken watch cannot cost ten million powerstone dors," Lee Jung said, not seeming to notice that Davies was obviously looking down on him, but Davies was no longer interested in arguing with him and instead ignored him without bothering to retort.


    He turned back to the Spanish guy and wanted to hand over the watch, but someone suddenly grabbed the watch from his hand while saying,


    "He''s right¡­ this watch isn''t worth ten million powerstone dors."

 Chapter 98 CHAPTER 98: FIONA LECROY

    ?


    Davies''s intended to hand over his watch to the cool Spanish guy when suddenly a hand stretched out at inhuman speed and grabbed the watch from his hand. Davies obviously saw the handing and could have avoided it but made no effort to do so as he sensed no threat from the neer and so his watch ended up in the stranger''s hand.


    "He''s right¡­ this watch isn''t worth ten million powerstone dors," a beautiful-sounding voice said.


    "It''s worth more¡­ a whole lot more."


    Davies took a look at the person that grabbed his watch and his eyes fell on a red-headed beauty that was holding onto his watch and inspecting it very thoroughly.


    "The Spatek Phillipe Grandmaster Chime Ref. 6300A-010,"


    "There are only a hundred of these watches avable in the whole of Leivandage and its auction starting price is seventy million powerstone dors," the beautiful red-head exined, causing gasps to flow like rain from the listening crowd and everyone began to gaze at Davies with a look of reverence, obviously differing from the looks of lust, scorn greed and other types of looks that he was receiving just a few seconds earlier.


    "I never expected to be able to see one, much less touch one in my lifetime, but I guess it''s only natural that someone like Mr. Lake can have one," the red-headed beauty said as she handed the watch back to Davies.


    The crowd''s opinion of Davies seemed to have risen even more after hearing that he was from the famed Lake family. The reputation that came with the Lake family was not one that Davies fancied but he was not going to go out of his way to tell the crowd that he and the Lake family were at loggerheads with one another.


    "And who are you?" Davies collected the watch.


    "Fiona Lecroy," the redhead introduced herself and put her hand out for a formal handshake, her neck length was being blown around slightly by the cool night wind.


    "Oh¡­ the Lecroy family," Davies''s eyebrow rose up in surprise, but he still went on to grasp her soft hand as he was quite thankful that she had saved him the trouble of exining about his possessions like an encyclopedia to the people around him.


    [She''s the one]


    ''Hmm?''


    [She was the one in the red Cerrari¡­ the one you stalked all the way here]


    ''Oh¡­ she''s the one with the high fate value¡­'' Davies immediately realized the situation.


    ''Also, don''t make me sound like a creep,''


    [Aye aye captain] Miya replied cheerily.


    ''But, since she''s supposed to be one of the protagonist''s futurepanions¡­ harem member is more likely,'' he thought as he looked very well at her sexy figure that was perfect everywhere.


    Her zing red hair gleamed in the light that was shining from themps and headlights that lit up the ce and her blood-red lips that were just as red as blood looked inviting enough for it to cause a war between two kings¡­ or a viin and a protagonist in her case.


    Her delectable-looking body wasn''t extremely full of "th", but her curves and the shape of her body were nothing short of perfect. They were not as big as one would see in hentai but they were sexy enough to give any straight guy a hard-on.


    [Ahem] Miya cleared her throat to remind him of what was at hand.


    *Cough¡­ sorry, anyway, as I was saying,'' Davies came to from the distraction that was Fiona Lecroy''s body.


    ''Since she is one of the future harem members of this idiot,'' he thought while looking at the idiotic protagonist,


    ''...Then why did she take my side in this argument,'' Davies was curious, but he made sure to not look distracted on the outside, though that was pretty easy with his naturally stoic face.


    "Thank you for exining matters, I prefer to not do something so distasteful and for that, you have my gratitude¡­ and my attention, he said as his apathetic look changed to a gave of a ravenous wolf staring her down at her as if she were nothing but mere prey.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    His look sent shivers down the spine of the one on the receiving end of the look as well as all the other women that were looking at his face at the moment.


    "And since you have both my gratitude and my attention, I will not take up the matter of you grabbing one of my possessions like it was amodity you''d see at an everyday market," his gaze changed again to one of slight annoyance as he continued because he felt that this red-headed beauty, though beautiful and was quite helpful to him just a second ago, she was extremely cheeky as well.


    Davies did not like cheeky people as to him they were no different from annoying people that he wouldn''t mind squashing like a bug if they annoyed him too much. That was why he was pointing out her fault so she can curb her cheeky attitude¡­ around him at least.


    "O-Of course, Mr. Lake," Fiona Lecroy stammered out a response. She had been heavily affected by his charm when he looked at her like she was nothing but a piece of meat that he wanted to devour and was already beginning to feel a little wet down there, but when his look changed to that of slight annoyance, she was thrown off bnce by the feelings she had at that moment.


    She was the main daughter of the Lecroy family and her family had been one of the first ones to find out that the genius of the century was back in Yorkshire city.


    Her father had continuously stressed the fact that no one in the Lecroy family was to provoke him no matter the reason and to do their best to establish a rtionship with him if the opportunity came up.


    Fiona was not dumb enough to undermine someone like Davies especially when she was the most likely one to inherit the position of the head of the Lecroy family as she was the only daughter of her family, so when she met saw him in a mild dilemma due to some annoyingly proud guy that had just managed to defeat her cousin Jordan Lecroy, the previous racing king, she decided to step in and try to help out, but her cheeky nature and love for gleaming objects kicked in at full power when she saw the watch that Davies was going to hand over to Carlos, the Spanish dude that was organizing the race.


    She leaped forward and grabbed the watch at the fastest speed she could muster and quickly began inspecting it. Imagine her surprise as she recognized the watch to be one of the most expensive watches in the whole of Leivandage. A watch that was so expensive and rare that even her father, the current head of the Lecroy family hadn''t even seen one.


    After realizing what she had just done, she quickly exined about the watch and handed it back to its owner while hoping that he wouldn''t take offense at her behavior


    He had first asked who she was to which she had dly told him as it seemed that he had taken no offense from her actions earlier, but due to his impassive face, she couldn''t tell what his thinking.


    ¦Ñ¦Á§ád¦Á---n?¦Ía| §ãom She thought she was off the hook when suddenly his gaze at her turned dangerous, but instead of his look scaring her, it had instead made her aroused and very attracted to him, of course, his devilishly handsome face helped.


    But when his look changed to one of slight annoyance, she was thrown off bnce and could only stutter, hoping she hadn''t blown it, but his next words put her at ease.


    "Anyway, I''ll talk to youter, let me take care of this annoyance first," Davies decided to deal with other matters after defeating Lee Jung and turned back to his own car after handing over the watch to Carlos, who grabbed the watch like his life depended on it for some reason.


    Both Davies began to walk back to his car, ignoring the crowd around him, and got into the ck Ce where Tisha was there waiting for him with music ying from the speakers.


    "Are we racing now?" Tisha asked with sparkly eyes. She had been inside the car with the windows up, so she could not hear anything going on outside.


    "Yeah, we have a race to win," Davies answered her as his eyes turned over to the bag that had been ced inside the car by Daniel.


    He quickly put the car into gear and drove out of the parking space where he was and began to drive towards where the starting line was. Lee Jung''s car was already parked at the starting line while waiting for Davies''s car to get there when he saw Davies''s ck Ce moving towards his direction at high speed.


    Davies purposely drove fast toward Lee Jung''s blue Ce, but immediately he entered a five-meter range of the Blue Ce, he pulled hard on the handbrake and broke into a drift, beginning to drift around Lee Jung''s blue Ce.


    Davies drifted around Lee Jung thrice in a show of well-practiced driving skills before stopping perfectly beside Lee Jung''s blue Ce, eliciting a wave of cheers from the crowd that had seen Davies disy his drifting skills.


    *WOOOOOOOO*


    "Tch¡­ Showoff," Lee Jung muttered inside his car.


    A race girl walked onto the track and stopped in the middle of the track with her hands raised,


    "3, 2, 1¡­"


    "Goooo!!!"

 Chapter 99 CHAPTER 99: THE RACE I

    ?


    A ck Ce drifted around a blue Ce in a full 360 circle three times beforeing to a perfect stop beside the blue Ce on the starting line, while revving its engine.


    "Tch¡­ Showoff," Lee Jung clicked his teeth and wound down the window of the passenger side of the car just as the window of the driver side of the ck Ce wound down.


    The crowd let out a shout as the two cars stood side by side, their engines revving as they warmed up for the race.


    eaglesnov?1,§ão§® A race girl walked onto the track and stopped in the middle of the track with her hands raised,


    "...3," she called out with her hands in the air.


    "You know, earlier, you said I don''t know how to drive one of these at the highest level¡­" Davies said while just barely ncing at Lee Jung for a moment, but his words had caught Lee Jung''s attention.


    "...2,"


    "... I can definitely tell you that you were wrong,"


    "...1,"


    "... After all¡­ I built these things," Davies said coolly.


    "Huh?" Lee Jung was confused.


    "GOOO!!!" the race girl shouts and brings her hands down in fluid motion, and immediately, Davies smashed down on the elerator, using the little time he had managed to buy by confusing Lee Jung with the sudden revtion.


    *VROOOOMMM*


    The ck Ce shot off the starting line, burning a little rubber as its tires spun at extremely high speed while they struggled to grab the ground and push the car forward.


    "Wheeeeeee," Tisha let out a squeal of excitement as the car took off at high speed.


    A secondter, Lee Jung came to and his mind went nk,pletely forgetting Davies''s sudden revtion as he also mmed down on the elerator, quickly following after Davies as they kicked off the starting line.


    Since Davies had sneakily taken the lead due to a little trick, he did his best to make sure that he kept Lee Jung behind him by all means. Whenever Lee Jung tried to find space to overtake him, Davies made sure to block out the space and stop Lee Jung from driving past him.


    The race was being disyed to the crowd at the starting line with the help of well-ced cameras and also with the help of drones that tracked the race full time, so the crowd wasn''t missing out on the excitement while waiting for the cars toe to the finish line but rather were watching the match with avid attention.


    Some were even cing bets while some were drinking and chilling with their gender counterparts while watching the race.


    Back at the race, Davies had been able to keep Lee Jung behind him while at the same time notpromising on his speed, but he himself had to admit that it was pretty hard and he didn''t think he would be able to keep it up for the whole race¡­ but then again, that was why he had made a backup n.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Davies and Lee Jung sped across the road and were soon approaching the first turn on the map, but instead of slowing down so that they could navigate the turns smoothly and steadily, the two of them even increased their speeds even more, much to the rm of the watching spectators.


    They had expected this much from the racing king, but Davies following along with him on this charge towards almost certain death came as quite a shocker to them as even though they had shown him disy some drifting skills, those were tricks that almost everyone here could perform, though not as smoothly as he could.


    ''Was he trying to forfeit his life for a race?'' they thought.


    Of course, the subject of their thoughts, Davies was not just speeding up because he had no regard for his life, but rather because he knew that he couldn''t afford to give Lee Jung an inch of space by even slowing down for just a second otherwise Lee Jung would use this turn to move past him and would most likely win the race as getting past a "god of racing" would be very difficult and almost nigh impossible for Davies, unless they counted his preparations, but it wasn''t time to use it yet, so Davies sped up even more and once he reached the best position, he turned the steering sharply and maneuvered the car into a drift while staying as close to inside edge of the road and not leaving enough space for Lee Jung to overtake him.


    After Lee Jung realized what Davies was doing and realized that there was no space for him to move past Davies''s car, he instead followed Davies into the drift while staying as close to Davies''s blue Ce as possible.


    They were so close that it was mere millimeters that were between the bumpers of the car as they drifted around the edge and back onto a straight road. Immediately after oveing the turn, Davies righted the steering wheel and pulled the car out of the drift before stamping down on the elerator to increase his speed, Lee Jung behind him did the same and took off after Davies, not willing to let up on his pursuit of the lead position.


    The crowd watching the race from the big screen let out a collective gasp, but the gasps held different meanings for each group of people. Some were in awe, some did not even know they were holding their breaths, some were excited and some were anticipating even more fun.


    The ongoing race was just that enthralling, as the beautiful disy of driving skills were enough to light up the heart of most men and even quite a few women, so they paid even more attention as the ck and blue Ce were already approaching another turn, but this time it was a turning in the shape of an arc.


    Even though Davies and Lee Jung saw the uing turn, they still didn''t let up on the elerator, rather, they pressed down on it even harder and increased their speed as they came even closer to the turning.


    Just like at the first turning, Davies moved until he was at the perfect spot and then turned the steering wheel sharply and drifted into the perfect spot where he was the closest to the inner edge of the road, leaving no space for Lee Jung at that side of the road, but it seemed Lee Jung had taken up on a new tactic as instead of following Davies into the drift and following after him into the drift, he instead sped up even more before turning sharply and choosing to drift into the arc from the outer edge at a higher speed, trying to drift around Davies and into the arc at higher speed.


    Davies saw this but didn''t do anything to try to stop it as it would only end up counter-effective and he only made sure to increase his speed to make sure that Lee Jung didn''t drift past him.


    This led to a scene of two Ces, one blue and one ck, drifting around an arc-shaped road. The ck Ce was on the inside road, while the blue Ce was on the outsidene, seemingly trying to overtake the ck Ce, but the ck Ce didn''t seem to be letting up either and made sure to match the blue Ce, pace for pace, so when they came out of the drift, the two cars were abreast of each other with neither in the lead for more than a second.


    Lee Jung shed a provocative grin at Davies, but Davies was not even bothering to look in his direction and was fully focused on the race, truth be told, this race was more than a little straining for him because, unlike a certain protagonist, he didn''t have a "god of driving skill", so it was taking his all to just barely keep up with Lee Jung in this race, even though he was probably a great deal better than any other racer in the whole of Yorkshire city.


    ''It''s a shame, but it seems this is as far as my skills can take me,'' he thought as he just barely nced at Lee Jung''s blue Ce that was inching forward every second, as most of his attention was focused on keeping abreast with Lee Jung and not being left in the dust.


    "Well, at least I got this far against someone with a "god of driving" skill," he murmured to himself, his voice barely above a whisper, but nobody would hear it due to the sounds of the loud winds dispersing his voice before it barely got out.


    Even Tisha who sat beside him couldn''t hear his voice, though he could attribute that to her fully enjoying the excitement brought by the race as they moved at excessively high speed.


    Davies had originally even wondered if she would be scared by the high speed and dangerous situations, like a certain bodyguard of his, but she seemed to be holding on pretty well¡­ or it was more appropriate to say she was enjoying herself thoroughly.


    With that out of the way, Davies''s eyes fell on the bag that had been left in the car by Daniel on his orders and was currently being held by Tisha,


    ''Only heroes y fair anyway,'' he thought with a smirk as his hand reached for the bag.

 Chapter 100 CHAPTER 100: THE RACE II

    ?


    ''Only heroes y fair anyway,'' he thought with a smirk as his hand reached for the bag and pulled out aptop from inside of it. He opened up theptop and pressed the power button.


    Many would wonder why he chose the moment when he was straining to keep up with Lee Jung in the race to open up aptop for whatever reason, but his reason for this was linked to his n to gain an upper hand against Lee Jung.


    Davies''s words to Lee Jung at the beginning of the race were not just to distract him, he was actually telling the truth. Though he did not own an automobilepany, he had been heavily involved in the production methods of quite a few of them.


    The engine he had invented that used mana as a source of energy to run was widely used in a lot of ces and a lot of sports carpanies had upgraded their cars to begin to use the technology as well¡­ after paying him quite a hefty fee of course.


    Davies being the paranoid person that he was, had always left a trap and a backdoor in every of his technology so he could always control it, or even sabotage it remotely, should it ever be used against him.


    As soon as theptop''s screen booted up, Davies put his finger on the finger pad to unlock it immediately and then quickly tapped on an application software at the top right corner of theptop''s screen with his finger, his hand doing all of that in smooth motion before quickly going back to grabbing the steering and changing the gear as they were nearing another turning on the road.


    Davies nced at the screen to see the application had already opened up and had a blue button that said search. Without wasting a second, he tapped on the button.


    [Searching for Imperium Tech¡­]


    [Imperium Tech found¡­ 2]


    [Select which to connect]


    Davies quickly selected the Imperium mana engine that was inside Lee Jung''s blue Ce and watched as the screen lit up with different options, buttons, and sets of information, but still made sure to keep most of his attention on the road.


    ''When I added this feature into my tech, I never imagined that I''d be using it to win a goddamn race,'' Davies thought with a slightly bitter smile, but the bitter smile wasn''t because he was annoyed at having to use this feature to cheat in the race, but rather because of the big red button that was on the side of theptop screen.


    As previously said, Davies had left the backdoor in every one of his technology so he could always control it remotely and even sabotage it if it were to be used against him¡­ but the red button on the left side of the screen did neither of those. Instead, it was the trigger for self-destruction for his technology should he ever wish to cause an "ident" to whoever was in possession of said technology.


    The self-destruction mechanism in all of his technology had enough power to destroy a three-story building, and even its foundation wouldn''t be left unscathed after the st, so it definitely had enough power to st a normal human like Lee Jung to kingdome¡­ even though he was not so normal anymore.


    Davies had to do his best to not squash the bug in his palm¡­ or blow it up in this case and instead tapped another part of the screen that showed information about the tech''s performance and a sliding pad-like button that could control how effective the tech would be, which in this case would be how fast the engine could make Lee Jung''s car, go.


    "What are you doing?" Tisha asked confusedly as she wondered why Davies had brought out aptop even though he was currently racing.


    "Oh, this?" Davies asked back with a smile while motioning towards theptop screen,


    "I''m ying a game," he lied. Tisha couldn''t see the screen of theptop as it was facing him, but she quickly tried to look at the screen of theptop in curiosity after hearing that he was ying a game.


    "What type of game is this?" she asked confusedly as all she saw were a bunch of intelligible words and numbers and a big red button that looked to be inviting her to press it.


    "What''s this red button?" she asked, but her finger was on its way toward the red button on the screen.


    "NOOO!!! Don''t t-touch it," Davies managed to get the words out just before her hand reached the screen. He had also reflexively used his mana to form a small ice barrier that prevented Tisha''s finger from moving any further and touching the screen.


    ''... Wait?¡­ did I just end up saving that sucker''s life?'' his eyes widened at what he had just done.


    ''Ah, the irony¡­,'' he thought as he used the sliding pad button to reduce the performance of the engine inside Lee Jung''s little by little and soon enough it began to show its effect as Davies''s vehicle slowly began to take the lead again.


    Lee Jung in his own car could not understand what was happening but he did his best to catch up with Davies by doing his best to increase his speed, but it seemed all for naught.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Soon, they were at another turning, and just like before, both Lee Jung and Davies drifted around the corner to maneuver their way around the turning.


    Aftering out of the drift and getting back onto mostly straight roads, Lee Jung''s Ce was even further back than before and the distance between them was widening even more as Lee Jung''s engine Davies had lowered its performance could no longer perform at the level required to keep up with Davies ''unmodified'' Ce anymore.


    Inside Davies''s own Ce, he had already stopped reducing the performance level of Lee Jung''s car as he felt that just reducing it this much would aplish the effect that he required and was just enough tampering for him to be able to defeat Lee Jung without drawing any suspicious eyes to how Lee Jung''s car was performing below par.


    Davies didn''t mind getting caught for something like cheating, but as he was trying to do something to damage Lee Jung''s reputation, getting caught while doing so would not have the same effect he wanted it to have.


    Since all preparations for his win wereplete, Davies immediately closed theptop and put his full focus back on demolishing the unfortunate racing king in this race. He began to drive even faster and made more ferocious turns around all sorts of corners.


    Lee Jung was putting his ''god of driving'' skill to full use, but even then the space between them kept widening, yet he kept on in hot pursuit of Davies''s vehicle not understanding the reason why he was unable to catch up to Davies''s vehicle.


    It was actually quite simple. No matter what kind of god of driving was behind the wheel, there was no way he could win against an average racer who drove a Bugatti if he was driving a Toyota. It was simply impossible to make a car go faster than it actually could no matter how good one was at driving.


    Davies knew that and that was why he only decreased the performance of Lee Jung''s engine by a quarter. He knew he would be able to make Lee Jung bite the dust with just that much of a decrease in performance in his car and that was exactly what he did.


    Just as he thought and had expected, he was currently in the lead and the gap between them was only widening further.


    The difference between them didn''t show up in turnings where more skill was required than vehicle performance, but the moment they were back on straight roads, Davies''s vehicle ate up the space while slowly but surely making Lee Jung bite the dust as he sped after him doing everything possible to catch up, yet it was all for naught and the space between them only kept widening.


    ¡­ 2 meters


    ¡­ 3 meters


    ¡­ 5 meters


    They drove through another turn and the distance between the shortened to 4 meters, but the moment they got back to straight roads, the distance began to increase once again,


    ¡­ 6 meters


    ¡­ 7 meters


    Soon enough, the ending of the race was in sight as they rounded thest corner and sped up toward the finish line. Davies now maintained a lead of ten meters away from Lee Jung, but Lee Jung wasn''t giving up and was madly chasing after Davies, pressing the elerator as hard as he could, but even with how hard he was trying to catch up, the distance wasn''t decreasing and yet it seemed to be increasing even further.


    He couldn''t understand it, how was he losing even though he had the ''god of driving'' skill? Especially since they were using the same type of car.


    Did that mean that Davies had surpassed god-level driving skills?


    Different thoughts were flying around in Lee Jung''s head as Davies finally crossed the finish line and won the race.


    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    We''re finally at a hundred chapters. Hurray for me and thank you guys for your support till now.


    Please don''t forget to vote powerstones and golden tickets... and you could also send me a few gifts as a celebration... ??

 Chapter 101 CHAPTER 101: VICTORY

    ?


    Lee Jung''s mind was in a mess after Davies''s ck Ce sped past the finish line and he could only drive to the finish line dejectedly, knowing he had lost the race. His mood worsened even further when he thought about the things he had on the line.


    The loss of ten million was nothing much to him since he now had a system, but the loss of his reputation from losing the race, and the fact that he hadn''t been able to beat Davies even after going to so much effort to provoke him, only served to fan the mes of his fury.


    Somewhere in the depths of his mind, his instincts screamed desperately at him that something hadn''t been right during the race and that there must have been foul y somewhere, as it waspletely abnormal for someone like Davies to be able to defeat him at a race, especially as he had the "god of driving" skill.


    Unfortunately, there was no evidence of foul y that he could see so he could only keep quiet and try to look for the evidence of foul y himself. He almost lost control of his irrationality, but luckily he managed to hold on and didn''t get out of the car and start shouting at Davies and using him of cheating.


    He had already learned from previous experiences that Davies didn''t take lightly to excessive annoyances and he didn''t want to be at the business end of sharp ice projectiles again today, or any day for that matter.


    Since he had already handed over the ten million that would be given to Davies who had won, he had no reason to step out of the car or to meet anybody.


    He''d rather not have to see Davies celebrating his victory over him. The very idea of doing such a thing angered him to no end, so he began to drive away angrily, no longer caring about the racing scene.


    ''It''s time to focus on that mission,'' Lee Jung thought to himself as he drove away. He had gotten a mission which uponpletion, the system would help him to activate his blessing of the cataclysm. His mind gradually filled up with the thoughts of what he would do to Davies after activating his blessing and bing a Mega like him.


    e¦Áglesn?¦Íel **Back at the Race Track**


    Davies had just driven past the finish line and won the race when he noticed Lee Jung''s car pass the finish line and drive past him. It seemed he was heading away from the racing scene and didn''t want to have to deal with the after-effects of his loss to Davies.


    ''Too bad,'' Davies sighed to himself. He wanted to try to see if he could make him lose more fate points by rubbing his victory in his face, but Lee Jung ran away before he could do so.


    [Sessfully face-pped a fated one and caused him to lose 70 fate points]


    [Sessfully caused a loss in reputation of a fated one and caused him to lose 200 fate points]


    [Sessfully interrupted the opportunity of a fated one and caused him to lose 1000 fate points]


    Three notifications from Davies''s system rang into his ear and jumped into his line of view, ensuring he saw his actions'' effects.


    ''Huh?'' Davies raised an eyebrow in shock and surprise, there was also a confused gleam in his eyes.


    The three sudden notifications were quite unexpected and harvested more fate points from Lee Jung than ever before, but even though they were unexpected, they weren''t the reason for Davies''s shock, surprise, and confusion.


    Davies''s surprise, shock, and confusion stemmed from the fact that he didn''t know when he had interrupted an opportunity of Lee Jung. Also, it seemed the opportunity must be quite big for it to cause Lee Jung to lose that many fate points from just having the opportunity being interrupted by Davies and not from him outright stealing the opportunity.


    At first, he still didn''t understand what the opportunity could be, but after thinking for a while, he concluded that the opportunity probably had to do with the cheeky redhead with high fate value, Fiona Lecroy.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Since she had enough fate value to be a future member of Lee Jung''s harem and was also from the great Lecroy family, she was the only likely person that could hold an opportunity that would affect Lee Jung''s fate value that much¡­ unless there was another person among the crowd that held such an opportunity, but he doubted it.


    These kinds of plots were usually straightforward and usually had no such mysterious twists.


    What he thought to be the correct scenario was that Fiona Lecroy had probablye over to the racing for some reason(he obviously didn''t know her reason foring), and would have ended up watching a scene where Lee Jung triumphed over him in a race, and would have been impressed by him and would try to get closer to him, and from there, fate would do its magic and make her fall uncontrobly for him and from there, anybody with half a brain could guess what would happen next¡­


    But, since he had tampered with things a bit and ended up winning the race, Fiona probably had a better impression of him than Lee Jung, and coupled with the fact that Lee Jung just drove off, not bothering to ept his loss or try to make amends, her impression of him had dropped even lower.


    It had dropped to the point that it was considered that their fate with each other had been shaken and that was what he was his system had recognized as interrupting an opportunity.


    This was what Davies thought, but as an overly paranoid person who didn''t trust even himself to be right, he asked Miya to scan the vicinity for anybody with an abnormal fate value. Whether it be a higher fate value than normal or an abnormal dark fate value, he wanted to know to be sure whether his thoughts had been correct.


    A few secondster, Miya had scanned as far as she could but did not detect any fate value different from the norm, so she reported her findings to Davies, easing his mind.


    Now that Davies''s mind had been eased off of his worries and he had been able to conclude the various things that had happened in thest few seconds, his attention now went to Tisha who was doing a weird dance movement as she sat while singing,


    "We won, we won, we won," she sang with her two hands outstretched forward and clenched in a fist. She threw her fisted hands and moved her upper body in a circr motion as she sang happily.


    Davies just watched with his mouth slightly open as he didn''t know what to make of the situation. One would think she had a grudge against Lee Jung with the way she was doing a dance that seemed mockful for some reason as she chanted happily.


    What Davies didn''t know was that Tisha did harbor a slight grudge against Lee Jung. She disliked him because he had thrown himself into their matters twice today, making sure to annoy Davies and put him in a terrible mood, disturbing their time together.


    In the end, Davies didn''t interrupt her little victory dance, even though she had very little contribution to the victory. A slight smile even appeared on his face as he pushed open the door of the car and came out.


    The loud cheers from the crowd reminded him of his first victory against a protagonist, and even though it was just a small win in the whole grand scheme of things, he stood tall and didn''t demean himself or try to dampen his good mood.


    After all, one had to start from somewhere, right? Even Rome wasn''t built in a day.


    Tisha also came out of the car and jumped on him, hugging onto his body like a ko as she somehow felt his mood be lighter and knew this was one of the few times she could get away with jumping on him, so she didn''t waste the opportunity and held on tight to him.


    Davies was a bit surprised at her proactive actions, but due to his light mood and the feeling of her soft mounds pressed against his body, he decided not toin about it. It was mostly because of his light mood and not really about the soft shapely lumps of flesh that he was feeling on his skin that he made no movements to pry her away from his body.


    ''It seems she likes being cuddly,'' he thought as his hand slowly came up and towards her back and finally went to her hair, he slightly patted her head, slowly running his hand along the surface of her hair.


    As they had their moment, Davies noticed a few peopleing towards him, one of which was Fiona Lecroy. Her ming red hair slowly rustled due to the wind, bus as she walked towards him, he noticed a slight hint of a frown on her face, which left him a little confused as he wondered the reason for the frown.

 Chapter 102 CHAPTER 102: NEW SYSTEM FUNCTION

    ?


    Davies''s hand slowly ran across Tisha''s hair as she held tightly onto him while he waited for the people who were walking toward him.


    Three people walked to him as he stood in ce, waiting patiently. The ming redhead Fiona Lecroy, the Spanish organizer, Carlos was also walking along towards Davies while holding onto a bag that held the money that Davies had won from Lee Jung, and finally, a good-looking young adult who looked to be just about twenty years of age that Davies didn''t recognize.


    "You were fire bro!"


    "With skills like that, it''s a wonder I haven''t seen you around here much amigo," Carlos said in his overly enthusiastic as soon as he got close enough for Davies to hear him, literally overflowing with friendly vibes.


    "I just got back though. Haven''t really been around for a while," Davies couldn''t help replying to Carlos. He preferred dealing with people that didn''t make him have to always keep his guard up and the chill, enthusiastic, and overly friendly Carlos ticked all the boxes on that list.


    "Oh, so that''s why," Carlos came to a realization from Davies''s words.


    "Well, I hope to see you around more homie," he continued with a friendly tone, stretching his hand forward for a fist bump which Davies epted with a fist. They bumped fists and Carlos held up the bag and Davies''s watch for him to take.


    "Who''s the cutie?" Carlos asked his eyes on Tisha who was holding onto Davies without caring about the presence of either the crowd or the three people who were in front of them.


    "Oh, this is Tish, my-" he began to say as he collected his watch and the bag filled with cash from Carlos when he was interrupted by Fiona who finally spoke even though she had arrived at the same time as Carlos.


    "Congrattions on winning the race, Davies," she said with a slightly over-familiar tone and a smile on her face, but Davies could see her lips constantly twitching as if she had difficulty maintaining her smile.


    "... Uh, thanks, Miss Lecroy," Davies replied, slightly hesitating as he wondered what the deal was with her forced smile.


    "It seems you were just ying with me while we raced on the way here," Fiona said with a sigh and a bitter smile. She thought that Davies had simply seen her as nothing more than an amateur driver and had simply let her run wild while he followed closely behind her only to take the lead and leave her behind when they had gotten to the racing scene.


    She knew that with the way he drove while racing Lee Jung, he could obviously have left her in the dust, yet she didn''t know his reason for not doing so, little did she know that the only reason why Davies didn''t overtake her and leave her in the distance behind him was that he was actually following her and not racing her, but of course, Davies wouldn''t tell anyone that lest they thought him to be a creep.


    "Huh¡­ oh that," Davies realized what she was talking about in a split second, but didn''t say a word and only smiled wryly.


    Davies''s wry smile made Fiona really feel like she was being looked down on as an amateur by Davies, but, what could she do about it?


    Who told her not to be better at driving?


    Moreover, she didn''t dare to slip up and question him, even though she felt there was much more to it than that, especially as Davies hadn''t said anything.


    Since she was trying her best to be careful around him lest she displease him she couldn''t say much regarding the situation, so her eyes fell back on Tisha who was hugging onto Davies''s body and a frown threatened to break out on her face.


    Fiona couldn''t say she wasn''t impressed by Davies, after all, he was handsome, rich, talented, powerful, and probably lots more. All in all, he represented everything that could pull a woman into his arms, and Fiona wasn''t an expression.


    While she hadn''t gone as far as to fall for himpletely, she was more than a little impressed by him, but before she could even blink her eyes, another woman was clinging onto his body like he was her personal property.


    Fiona didn''t know who this vixen was, but she didn''t take lightly to someone touching things that she was even mildly interested in, so her original fiery personality constantly threatened to break out every second he spent looking at Tisha holding on to her personal property.


    If Davies knew of her thoughts, he would definitely teach her a lesson by cooling off that fiery temper of hers and making it clear that he was not anybody''s personal property, but unfortunately, he didn''t know of her thoughts¡­ for now.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Davies saw Fiona''s eyes fall on Tisha with aplicated look on her face and he wondered what it was all about, but before he could think further into it, he heard a ding sound followed by another system notification popping into the corner of his view.


    [Sessfully caused a heroine to have an interest in you]


    [Check the rtionship level tab to see the level of development of your rtionship with heroines]


    "Eh¡­?" Due to his surprise, he blurted out a surprised sound, totally forgetting about his environment.


    "Eh," Carlos also was surprised at Davies suddenly having a sudden look on his face.


    "Eh?" Fiona was now surprised and confused at Davies and Carlos reacting surprisedly and she also blurted out a surprised sound.


    "What happened?" Fiona asked curiously.


    "I don''t even know," Carlos replied with augh while also looking at Davies curiously.


    "Don''t worry about it, I only saw something interesting," Davies said after seeing their curious looks. He didn''t lie anyway, he had truly seen something interesting, only he was the only one who could see this interesting thing¡­ well, maybe not only him, as Miya could see it too, but she didn''t count.


    "What was it?" Fiona asked and quickly took a nce around out of curiosity, but she didn''t see anything interesting enough to warrant a surprised reaction like the one Davies had just shown. All she saw were cars and people¡­ yep, just in, boring things around, she thought to herself.


    "You wouldn''t understand anyway," Davies chuckled at her curious actions.


    Fiona half expected him to say something like that, what she didn''t expect was that he would Davies looked even more handsome with a smile on his face.


    Even though the smile on his face was nothing but a slight upward movement of his lips, it still had the function ofdy killer and Fiona was almost blown away and would have beenpletely blown away if not for her temperament and also the fact that she had a bit more experience when it came to handsome faces, but even then her heart began to race and she could feel it thumping loudly in her chest.


    ''Holy mother of¡­ what kind of karma did he have in his previous life to be born this handsome,'' She thought as she tried to control her blood pressure from rising any further by taking deep breaths.


    "Anyway, who''s he?" Davies quickly took the opportunity to change the subject of conversation from him to the nearest scapegoat, who happened to be the handsome guy who came along with Fiona and Carlos¡­ also, he did not actually know the dude, so in his case it was a good topic of conversation.


    "I''m Jordan," the handsome guy with a slightly haughty look on his face took the opportunity to introduce himself without waiting for either Fiona or Carlos to introduce him. He was already beginning to feel left out earlier and did not have a way into the conversation, neither did he want to interrupt the conversation as Fiona had warned him about who Davies was and not to stupidly provoke him, but now that Davies had given him the opportunity, he made sure to grab onto it and he quickly introduced himself.


    Normally, Jordan was a pretty proud person and why wouldn''t he be? He was a young master of the great Lecroy family after all.


    For most of his life, there were only a few people who could enter his eyes and even lesser people that he had to pay respects to and that was why there was a naturally proud and haughty look on his face, but before the monster known as Davies Lake, even he had to act submissive.


    He didn''t even dare to introduce himself with his full name, lest Davies take it as him trying to pressurize him with his family name of the Lecroy family, especially with the naturally proud expression that he knew he always had on his face.


    "Jordan? Where have I heard that name?" Davies wondered out loud with a ruminating expression on his face as if he was trying to remember something.


    "Oh, right. You must be Jordan Lecroy," he eximed after ncing at Fiona who he hade with. It was the only possibility, after all, Only the Jordan Lecroy who was the previous racing king would know both Fiona Lecroy and Carlos the race organizer.

 Chapter 103 CHAPTER 103: RELATIONSHIP TAB

    ?


    Jordan Lecroy was the previous racing king before Lee Jung came and knocked him off his throne. Davies remembered hearing his name from a group of young masters while he was at some restaurant,


    ''What was the name of that ce again?'' He wondered as for some reason he couldn''t remember the name of the ce, all he remembered was it had a pretty weird name.


    [...] Miya remembered the name, but there was no way in hell she would be saying those words from her mouth.


    "Yes, I''m Jordan Lecroy," Jordan confirmed Davies''s guess. He was a bit surprised that Davies knew his full name, but he knew that finding out something as simple as his name was pretty easy for someone like Davies, so he didn''t bother himself.


    After the introductions were over, Fiona told Davies that Jordan was her cousin and they discussed some other things but it was mostly basic matters before Davies began to think it was time to call it a night after which he ended their conversation with the promise to meet up with Fiona and Jordan at ater date.


    Carlos also had forced a promise from Davies to visit the racing zone again and even managed to get his contact details. One had to know that Davies doesn''t give out his contact details willy-nilly, not even to the greatest of beauties.


    Carlos''s personality and character were just that likable and somehow, was not irritating to Davies like many other people''s.


    After giving out his contact details to Carlos, and by chance Fiona who happened to hear and typed it into her phone, he got back into his Ce and drove off, amidst cheers from the crowd who were still hyped from watching his race with Lee Jung earlier.


    Davies drove away from the scene and back towards the main areas of Yorkshire City. The racing zone was closer to the outskirts of the city than the center of the city, hence the over one hour of travel time even when he was driving at quite the high speed through town when he followed Fiona to the racing zone.


    It took almost two hours to get back to the major areas as Davies wasn''t driving at high speeds tho time and took the time to deepen his rtionship with Tisha by talking about different sorts of things, though he somehow made sure that he was never the subject of discussion, after all, talking about himself was not something he would do with another person willingly.


    After a while, a ck Ce drove into a nice-looking neighborhood and stopped before a modestly sized but expensive-looking house.


    "Here''s your stop," Davies said with a nce at Tisha.


    "Will I see you tomorrow?" Tisha asked with high expectations.


    "Nope, you''ll see me when you see me, but..." Davies began but then snatched her phone from her hand and inputted his contact details,


    "... You can call me whenever you feel like it," he said with a smirk and saved his name as ''The Dark Knight'' on Tisha''s phone, before handing it back over to her, while thinking to himself that, he had already given his number to Carlos and Fiona by extension, so wouldn''t it only be fair to do the same for Tisha as well.


    "Okay," Tisha was visibly disheartened that she wouldn''t get to be with Davies the next day, but she brightened up when Davies told her she could call him anytime.


    Tisha''s hand moved towards the button to open her door and pressed it. She was about to get down when a daring thought appeared in her head and she acted on it immediately, her head turning quickly and shooting towards Davies''s face, immediately capturing his lips with hers.


    Davies''s eyes widened in surprise as he hadn''t expected this surprise attack on his lips, but a secondter his surprise disappeared and he decided to punish this girl for being so bold as to snatch his lips without warning.


    Davies''s lips became aggressive and his tongue shot out like a wriggling snake and snaked its way into her mouth, surprising Tisha who immediately tried to pull away, but the moment she tried to, she felt his vice-like grip on her waist and couldn''t even move a centimeter away.


    She soon gave up on trying to pull away as she became swept up in Davies''s kissing skills, but that was when he decided to go even further, his hands began to snake towards the hills and valleys present on her body, eliciting an unwilling moan from her because of his enthralling hand movements.


    Just as his hands were about to reach the promisednd, thend flowing with milk and honey...


    [FBI!!!]


    ''Oh for fuck''s sake,'' he groaned internally as he pulled away from Tisha who was now heavily gasping for breath and wondering why he had stopped, but as soon as she realized what she was doing just a few seconds ago, her skin turned beet red.


    Tisha''s face gave new meaning to the words ''tomato head''.


    She immediately grabbed her phone and ran out of the car in embarrassment before Davies could grab her again to continue their unrighteous activities.


    Davies watched her run away from the car with a red face and licked his lips.


    "Tastes like strawberry," he murmured while licking his lips as if he could actually taste her lips still on his.


    If Tisha heard his words, her head may have actually blown up in embarrassment.


    Davies just closed the door from his side and zoomed off, quickly leaving the neighborhood in a few seconds.


    With his inner racer awakened, he sped through the streets, driving past the speed limit and drifting around corners as he made his way toward his house.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    On his way home, he remembered the new system function that said something about his rtionship with the heroines.


    ''Rtionship tab... Was it?'' He thought to himself as he called up the system screen, and sure enough, there was a new tab that said,


    [Rtionship Tab]


    ''Interesting...'' he thought as he tapped on it to see what it showed.


    [Rtionship Tab]


    [Fiona Lecroy** ]


    [Level of rtionship: Avid interest]


    ''So she is interested in me,'' he thought. He finally understood why she seemed to have been giving Tisha the stink eye, but to avoid displeasing him, she had tried to hide it.


    ''"Wait a minute though,'''' something suddenly popped up in his mind.


    "Who has the higher fate value between Fiona and Jessica?" he was quite interested in this piece of information due to some previous urrences.


    [Jessica does...]


    [Why do you ask?] Miya answered him and asked a question of her own.


    "Since that is the case, then it stands to reason that she is also a heroine, right?" He stated.


    [Yes, she is a heroine]


    "Then why isn''t she on the rtionship tab..."


    "I mean, I already slept with her," a thought was brewing in his mind the moment he realized that Jessica''s name somehow wasn''t on the rtionship tab.


    [Well... That''s because...] Maya then proceeded to tell him the criteria for a heroine to be shown on the rtionship tab.


    After her exnation, the mood in the car went down and the air became chillier than any air conditioner could make a car, and a grim look appeared on his face as he began to ruminate on what he had just heard.


    "Interesting... Very interesting..." he mumbled in a cier-like tone, a murderous look on his face.


    He drove to his house in silence and after a few long minutes, he reached his mansion, drove his car in, and parked his car directly in from of the main door, making no effort to park the car well, and got out at a slightly hurried pace and walked into the house.


    He saw Danie immediately after he entered. She had probably beening out to meet him, but because of the pace at which he had moved, she didn''t even get to reach the door when he came in.


    "Begin to make preparations, we will be moving bases from Yorkshire soon," he said unhurriedly, which was a contrast to the pace at which he moved.


    Danie was more than a little surprised at this order, after all, they had juste back to Yorkshire City, but she knew better than to challenge his orders or even ask for an exnation, especially with the look on his face right now.


    She was sure he would tell her his reasons at ater date... If he had any intentions to ever do so in the first ce, and if he did not wish to do so, she couldn''t pry it out from his mouth.


    "How soon is soon, Davies?" She asked, wanting to know how much time she had to carry out his orders.


    "At thetest, four months from now," He replied


    eaglesnov?1,§ão§® "How many of our forces and powers should we move?" She asked again.


    "Everything... I don''t want a single thing that belongs to me in Yorkshire four months from now," he stated bluntly.

 Chapter 104 CHAPTER 104: THOUGHTS

    ?


    How many of our forces and powers should we move?" (Danie)


    "Everything... I don''t want a single thing that belongs to me, in Yorkshire four months from now." (Davies)


    **


    As Daviesy on his bed with his eyes wide open and looking at the ceiling in a daze, he recalled the scenes from when he had gotten back to the mansion in the very early hours of the morning.


    He had given Danie orders to begin the process of moving everything that belonged to him from Yorkshire City. Of course that only pertained to the things that were moveable, and not things that were stationary and couldn''t be moved, like buildings.


    The moveable things would be moved and the stationary things would be sold. He didn''t n on taking the slightest bit of a loss when the monsters came charging down on Yorkshire City.


    Of course, doing something like that wasn''t possible to be done stealthily, and sooner orter, people''s attention would be drawn to his actions but it wouldn''t really change much.


    After all, it was up to him to answer any inquiries from anyone if they asked what his reasons were for doing so. Nobody would ever find out that he was leaving a sinking ship, months before it sunk without even trying to save the ship.


    ording to Davies''s line of thought, saving things was the heroes'' job, those stupid fuckers that have fate behind them, guiding them down every path and spoon-feeding them with opportunities that other people have to break their necks to barely get a glimpse of, not to mention grabbing them.


    If not because the monster attack was too far away from the present and he didn''t n to leave Lee Jung alive for that long, he would have made him die in the monster attack.


    Making him experience despair from a monster wave and then throwing him into the pathway of the monsters and making him know what it was like to be torn, limb from limb, was a thought that made Davies almost salivate, but Lee Jung''s stars were a bit too unlucky... So he would have to experience worse.


    Now that Davies was feeling motivated to not lose out to the monster wave, he would have to find a way to kill Lee Jung in a very artistic way.


    As for what method he would be using, he wasn''t going to think about it for now as things had a way of falling into ce as long as one took the right actions, or out of ce if one took the wrong decisions.


    As he had no way of knowing whether he was going right or left path, he didn''t think much about it and left the matter for when it''d happen.


    "Now what do I have to do today?" He asked himself out loud as he put away all distracting thoughts so he could focus on the present.


    He could go to the Imperium building to continue working on the project that was to be his trump card, but he had been doing that for thest two days so he was feeling bored of it for now, so he decided to put that to the side for now as he was almost done with it anyway.


    He also thought of looking for Lee Jung to make trouble for him, but the idea wasn''t really enticing to him as dealing with the current Lee Jung was even more boring than working all day long on project ''Words Make Up The World''.


    Going to a gate was another enticing idea, but when he remembered how he was trapped in one not too long ago, an involuntary shiver ran through him. He couldn''t afford to be out ofmission, thereby giving Lee Jung excess power to develop. Even the most useless of protagonists could be dangerous if given enough time, so Davies had to stay on Lee Jung''s neck all the way, from now till he was squeezedpletely dry of any form of usefulness.


    He finally got off the bed after remembering that he had to speak with the Men in ck to find out what information from torturing... Whatever his name was.


    A few short momentster, he was done bathing and was now in the process of picking out clothes to wear. <novelsnext></novelsnext>


    He settled for a simple white shirt where he left a lot of the upper buttons open, which allowed his well-chiseled chest to be seen, and light blue trousers along with blue leather shoes.


    A singr earring on his left ear and a wristwatchter, Davies left his bedroom fully dressed and made his way to the huge dining room in the mansion. On the way to the dining room he checked his watch only to discover that the time was already past 9am.


    Since he hade back prettyte and was probably more tired than he thought, he had overslept, and even after waking upte, he had spent more time thinking about various things, hence the time.


    Davies pushed open the doors into the dining room and went to sit down at the head of the table. He made no effort to call for Danie as he was pretty sure that she already knew where he was and he would soon be attended to so, he rested his head back onto the headrest of the chair and waited with his eyes closed.


    Soon enough he began to hear footsteps that made their way towards him aftering through a different door from the one he came through. The owner of the footsteps moved towards Davies, but immediately Davies noticed something wrong.


    He had noticed that the footsteps sounded lighter than Danie''s, and immediately his mind went into fully alert mode.


    ''Could it be an assassin?'' He wondered as he readied his mana, and slowly but stealthily began to form a thin, but extremely sharp ice de around his index and middle finger together, prepared to strike first the moment the threat came into range, but then another thought popped up into his mind.


    ''There''s no way an assassin would be so bold, and stupid as to walk up to their target without even trying to hide himself,'' but even though he thought this, he still didn''t reduce his vignce, but instead had heightened it even further as he knew there were a lot of weird people out there with lots of weird powers. Powers so weird, it was a stretch to call them blessings.


    As soon as the footsteps reached within a meter of him, his eyes shot open, but before he could even begin to move his now-ded hand, he recognized the owner of the stranger''s footsteps.


    It was the waiter at the restaurant he had met Lee Jung who happened to be pestering Jessica at the time.


    ''The Rising Sun... Was it?'' He barely remembered the name of the ce, all he remembered was that he had bought it and ordered for it to be burnt down... Speaking of which, he hadn''t bothered to check if the ce had been burned down as per his instructions. Seeing the waiter, whose name he didn''t remember from the shop he had ordered to be burnt down reminded him, but he couldn''t be bothered to check unless he actually had something to do at that location in the future.


    The waiter-turned-employee held a tray that held a prepared cup of coffee that she had brought to Davies as per the orders of Danie, who she knew as Daniel, as that was the identity that she was using. Tisha finding out her original identity didn''t mean she was going to stop using the identity of Daniel, as her original identity was very sensitive and needed to be hidden.


    It was also one of the special cards that Davies had prepared for his future goals, and he couldn''t have it revealed right now, no matter the reason. This was the reason why he had reacted violently at Tisha knowing Danie''s identity and would have killed her if not for her potential to be an equally valuable card in his hands.


    Davies took the cup from the tray without a word after releasing his mana and making the ice de disappear. He took a sip from the cup, and only after tasting the coffee did he remember why he had allowed her to be hired in the first ce.


    "Good coffee," he said and no longer paid any attention to her as she wasn''t a threat to him in any form.


    The new employee let out a sigh of relief after hearing what Davies had to say about her coffee. He hadn''t shown any excessive interest in her, but at least he didn''t dislike her coffee enough to fire her and kick her out on the first day, otherwise, she wouldn''t even know where to cry.


    She quickly left the dining hall as silently as she came in.


    Shortly after, Davies had his breakfastid on the table before him, courtesy of Danie, who was now standing behind him, and a man in all ck clothing except for a white shirt, standing before him.


    It was time to find out what gave the people of hispany the confidence to try to take over his things.

 Chapter 105 CHAPTER 105: THOSE THAT STRETCHED FORTH GREEDY HANDS

    ?


    "So¡­ what do you have for me?" Davies asked the man who stood in front of him while taking a sip of his coffee.


    The man in an all-ck suit, ck shades, ck shoes, and a white shirt was named Q¡­ or at least that was his code name as he obviously couldn''t use his real name for these kinds of activities.


    "While following Miss Selina''s orders to capture the targets, we were also given the orders to extract as much information as we could, should we be given the chance, so we used our discretion to pick one among the targets to interrogate, and after using a few, persuasion methods, he willingly spoke," Q said to Davies.


    [To call kidnapping, poisoning, shooting someone in the head, then shooting him three more times, bludgeoning him, castrating him, and then throwing him into a river, as simple persuasion methods¡­ I wonder what he considers as actual torture?] Miya said in Davies''s head, but Davies paid her no mind as he was more eager to find out the information that had been acquired through the simple persuasion methods.


    "Tennessee Williams, the one we persuaded to speak, told us that the infighting in thepany and the attempts to try to share the pie that is Imperium Technologies, wasn''t just the idea of the executives but rather that of the powers behind them," Q continued.


    "Hmmm, interesting¡­" This elicited a surprised look from Davies as his eyebrow rose in proportion to his interest in this.


    "And who are these powers behind them?" Davies asked curiously.


    "Two of the great family as well as a few other hidden forces, but we couldn''t manage to find out as even he didn''t know who they were," Q responded to Davies''s questions.


    "So those fuckers couldn''t keep their paws to themselves in the end," Davies said with a littleugh. He didn''t need any further exnation to understand the whole situation.


    He knew that Imperium Technologies was a hot cake, a hot cake that attracted envious eyes far and wide, and there had never been a shortage of people who wanted a piece of this cake, but Davies had always kept a hold on thepany and didn''t allow for anyone else to be able to invest or buy shares, thus not allowing anybody but himself to reap the benefits of his hard work.


    Due to his status as a once-in-a-lifetime genius and the fact that many of the greater powers of the human race were enthusiastic about his development, he could hold every single cent that belonged to Imperium Technologies. Of course, it wasn''t for free, he also gave them benefits that other people couldn''t have ess to.


    The 4 great families of Yorkshire had always had their eye on Imperium technologies for different reasons known only to themselves, but the undisputed fact was that they all wanted to have it in their grasp, thereby elevating their status and rising above the other great families present in Yorkshire.


    They had probably started reaching for Imperium Technologies when Davies had disappeared for twelve years, but it seems they lost themselves to their greed immediately they heard that he was thought to be dead¡­ or at least some of them had.


    Davies was kind of surprised that only two out of the four great families were involved in trying to take over Imperium Technologies during his short absence, and not all of them. He was also curious about which of the families had actually stretched their hands toward his property, so he asked Q,


    "Which two families are we talking about here?"


    "It was the Lake family and the Santos family,"


    "They had¡­ they still have some of your C-level executives in their pocket and had been giving them support and pushing them to try to fight for thepany,"


    "We were also able to discern that they probably had been supporting them before they got to their current high-level positions," Q reported the acquired information as well as some of his thoughts to Davies.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Hmm, so they probably picked them when they were still quite low on thedder, and then supported them all the way up, creating the perfect spies and espionage agents that could help them get information and also cause problems on the inside,"


    "Interesting¡­" Even though the information he had just received was shocking, the smile on Davies''s face didn''t wane but grew even brighter.


    He always knew that the Lake family was a bunch of shameless assholes who didn''t care for anything but their benefit. He had seen their hypocrisy firsthand just over a week when they thought of him as an idiot who would hand over Imperium Technologies at their mere request, but who would have known that they weren''t as stupid as they made themselves look?


    They obviously had been preparing this kind of move for quite a while now and requesting him to hand over control of Imperium Technologies to them was more like an afterthought.


    His rejection of their offer may also have been a result they were expecting, so why had they even bothered making the attempt? Davies wondered but couldn''t see through their motives for such a stupid move.


    e¦Áglesn?¦Íel On the other hand, the Santos family seemed greedy and wanted to get their hands on Imperium Technologies by any and all means. He had always known them to be beyond greedy and even more unreasonable.


    They always wanted everything to go their way, and if they couldn''t acquire whatever they had their minds on, they didn''t mind destroying it.


    Davies was actually quite happy that they were among the ones that had made a move at him, otherwise, he would have forgotten that he had a few scores to settle with them, after all, they were among the sets of people that had tried to kidnap him when he was younger and had just revealed his promise and excessively high talent, and after not managing to kidnap him they had switched to trying to kill him and had put him in death''s path more than once, so it could be said that his animosity with them was at an all-time high.


    He hadn''t bothered to deal with them till now because he had been busy with a lot of other more important things, but now that they had brought their necks forth for him to slice down on, wouldn''t it be a shame if he simply forgave them and let them go like some sort of buddha.


    Davies wasn''t a monk, he had lots of hair, so he was going to have lots of revenge.


    He would show them not to reach for things beyond their low level of thinking.


    Truth be told, Davies didn''t really care that much for Imperium Technologies, but it was part of some of his preparations for dealing with situations. He would dly toss it aside if it helped him to achieve any of his goals, but for now, it was still his property and he had to show people what would happen if they dared to touch a dragon''s treasure, even if it wasn''t all that important to the dragon.


    It was a battle of pride that Davies hated the most but had to partake in to avoid any annoying situations in the future where people think they can step all over him because he usually wouldn''t react.


    ''It would be easier if this were a battleground, I''d just have to kill a few people to make a statement¡­ oh wait, I already did that,'' Davies was thinking to himself when he remembered that he had already set an example for some of his enemies by allowing them to watch the Morning Show, though it probably had only a little deterring effect on the bigger powers supporting the idiots in hispany.


    "Something of that level shouldn''t scare them much," he murmured while thinking to himself that he needed to look for a way to begin suppressing the Lake family and the Santos family¡­ or just wipe them out altogether, but this would only be ast case scenario, whenever they became too annoying, and he no longer wanted to waste his energy just suppressing them.


    With that all decided, his mind reverted to the other two great families who had for some reason not made a move even at the most opportune moment, neither did it seem like they had prepared anything to help them to take over Imperium Technologies. He had a few thoughts about why the Rome family that Jessica was from, was not making a move, but he had no idea why the Lecroy family had seemingly stayed out of the fight to im Imperium Technologies.


    ''Well, I can always find out the reason after I make more progress with Fiona Lecroy, who speaking of which, I should meet up with,'' Davies thought as he picked up his phone that was blinking lights and vibrating to call his attention.

 Chapter 106 CHAPTER 106: DRIVING THRU

    ?


    At the darkest hour of the night, The Batman prowls around the city of Gotham, looking for who to unleash his fury upon, but Davies personally preferred to cruise around in a luxurious sports car during the day whenever he didn''t know what he wanted to do, and that was exactly what he was doing right now.


    After finding out everything that Q had managed to worm out of Tennessee Williams and figuring out who he was up against, Davies was in dire need of some thinking and nning time.


    It wasn''t that he was in an unfavorable situation and needed some time to gather his thoughts, no, quite the contrary. Davies usually took his time to think about these kinds of things due to a force of habit from one of his past lives.


    He usually tried to get a whole grasp of his current situation inside of his head and then arrange it into a sort of board game and then n out all his moves. Most of the time however, his nning goes to waste, and he has to create another n on the spot because things never stayed constant, nor did they happen like they were expected to, but Davies never gave up the habit because it was also a form of rxation for him.


    After finishing his breakfast Davies had gone to the garage present in the building as Daniel had told him that his favorite, personally customized Lykan Supersport had been brought over and was now waiting in the garage for him.


    In the underground garage, there were a few cars already parked that all belonged to Davies. The Ventley Conraverse, the ck Ce, and a few other cars were present in the garage, but Davies ignored them all as his eyes fell on a sleek, red-colored car with elegant gold and ck designs running across its beautiful body.


    "..." Davies said no words, but the lightening of his expression and the way his fingers ran across the smooth, lovely, body of the car, was enough to indicate how much Davies loved this car. He loved it so much that he had personally customized it with the best materials to further entuate its beauty and had even taken extra time to personally tune the car to his liking and even named it "Sierra".


    He brought out the key of the car and opened the doors before smoothly getting in and shutting the doors of the car. Before starting up the engine of his beloved "Sierra" he ran his fingers across the interior to look for any uneven surfaces or dents. Luckily for some people, he did not find any, otherwise, whoever had brought his car over would be drinking soup for the rest of his short life.


    After inspecting Sierra''s body and not finding any problems, Davies pushed the start button, and its engine came to life with a loud rumbling sound that indicated that the engine of this car was definitely no joke.


    Once again, Davies''s inner racer had appealed to him immediately he took to the streets, and he had not resisted being taken away by the flow. The engine revved as Davies''s foot pressure on the elerator increased and the speed of the car steadily increased as he dashed across the streets, not paying any attention to traffic signals, speed limits, or anything of the sort.


    Davies had let himself go as he sped through the streets, not bothering to think things through as he had originally nned, but had just enjoyed the rare moment of silence¡­ of course, the silence was only on the inside of the car, the outside of the car was loud with sounds of tires skidding and the loud rumble of the engine of his car as he sped through the streets and drifted around sharp corners, there was also the apanying shouts of cuss words at whoever was the crazy maniac driving through the city like he was driving through an apocalyptic town.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    It hade as a surprise to Davies when he had noticed shing lights in his mirror. He looked carefully at the mirror to get a clearer view and lo and behold, there was actually a police car on his tail.


    Of course, Davies paid it no mind and continued enjoying his moment of peace as he sped up even more and took on even more dangerous drifting turns, after all, what could a singr police vehicle do to him?


    Even if it managed to catch up to him, he wouldn''t be pulling over, and even if he did pull over and was arrested¡­ well, let''s just say that he was practically immune to any form of crime, so it made no difference if he was to be arrested, at most he''d take a trip to the station.


    Davies continued doing his thing, no longer caring about the police car that may or may not have disappeared from view due to how fast he drove, Davies couldn''t be bothered to turn his neck to check the mirror to see if the car was still there, so it came as a shock when,


    *BANG*


    Davies felt something hit his car from behind, stunning him and almost making him lose control of the car and crash into another car that was nearby, but he quickly managed to regain control of Sierra and avoided crashing into the nearby car, but Davies wasn''t happy or relieved that he had managed to avoid crashing into another car but was livid about something else,


    "I know, somebody did not just hit me from behind right now," he raged, but before he could try to check who was the bastard that had hit him from behind, he heard a loud bang and then a sharp piercing sound.


    *BOP!!!*


    Before his brain could manage to register what could have caused such a noise, he heard a loud bursting sound and immediately realized from the way the car immediately spiraled out of control that he had lost one of his back tires.


    asionally missing content, please report errors in time.

 Chapter 107 CHAPTER 107: A BITCHY POLICEWOMAN

    ?


    *BOP!!!*


    Before Davies''s brain could manage to register what could have caused such a noise, he heard a loud bursting sound and immediately realized from the way the car immediately spiraled out of control that he had lost one of his back tires.


    Luckily, he had enough driving skill to manage to bring the car to a stop without crashing into anybody or anything, but now Davies was beyond livid. The murderous aura that beganing off him was almost palpable.


    Without a word, he opened the door and stepped out of the car with an icy smile frozen on his face. It was a smile that looked like a smile but felt scarier than a murderous look.


    "For some reason, some idiot seems to be courting death, and as an emissary of death, I should fulfill this¡­ idiot''s wish," Davies said in an icy tone as he turned back after getting down from the car only to realize that whoever had rammed into him from behind and had also shot one of his tires was whoever was inside of that police vehicle.


    [... I don''t know how to tell you this¡­] Miya suddenly spoke inside of Davies''s head.


    "What?" Davies asked icily.


    [You can''t kill her] Miya suddenly said, causing Davies''s already smoldering mes of rage to almost burst out in a bid to incinerate the annoyance that was in front of him.


    "Why can''t I kill he-¡­ wait, her?" Davies was about to ask when he realized a sore spot in her words,


    "Don''t tell me¡­ oh hell naw," his eyes widened in realization as he thought of the only situation that would not allow for someone who deserved death by his standards, to die by his hands


    "Fate must be fucking ying with me right now and enjoying it all forughs," Davies was thoroughly infuriated at the thought of having to let someone who had dared to not only ram into Sierra but also burst one of her tires, live.


    "Put your hands where I can see them and get down on your knees!" A loud womanly voice came from the speakers that were inbuilt somewhere in the police car, but Davies wasn''t having any of that.


    He wasn''t the type to follow orders from anybody, not to mention someone whom every fiber of his being was itching for him to kill.


    Whoever this bitch was, she wasn''t satisfied with just ramming his beloved Sierra and denting her, not to forget, she had also blown one of his tires, forcing him to a stop, and now she was telling him to get down on his knees with his hands in the air.


    Like hell, he was going to do that!!!<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    He purposely put his hands into his pocket after her orders, just to spite her, whoever the bitch was. Sure enough, when the bitchy police heroine realized that Davies didn''t care enough to follow her orders, she pushed open the door of her own car and stepped out quickly while using her door as a cover and pointed a golden gun at Davies.


    Davies could see a beautiful face framed by fairly short midnight-ck hair. He couldn''t see the rest of her body as it was covered by the door, but he could tell from her face alone that she had the makings of a heroine.


    She was extremely beautiful, but no amount of pretty face would be able to save this bitchy heroine when he got his hands on her, in fact, the only reason why she wasn''t dead yet, was because Miya had told him that there could be terrible consequences from killing a heroine as their fate value was linked up very tightly with the fated protagonist''s.


    "Put your hands where I can see them and get down on your knees!" the short-haired bitchy policewoman shouted at Davies again, this time her voice wasn''t aided by the speakers of the vehicle so it wasn''t as loud and allowed for the charm in her voice to show, but Davies was totally ignoring whatever charm the bitch had and still not taking his hands out of his pocket and gazed at her with a condescending look present in his eyes as if he was looking down at her, and in reality, he was actually looking down at her.


    But more importantly, he was looking carefully at the golden gun in her hand that she was currently pointing at him. He had detected manaing off of the weapon and also some mana from the bitchy policewoman herself and with this he was able to determine that she was probably a Mega, a weaponizer to be more specific.


    ''Now what would a Mega be doing patrolling around in uniform?'' Davies wondered, not paying much attention to the policewoman, and that ended up leading to a very dangerous situation.


    "Precision Shot!"


    *BANG!!!"


    Because Davies wasn''t paying much attention to the bitchy policewoman, he only managed to notice that she had fired her gun at him when he heard the loud banging sound. He quickly and reflexively tried to get out of the way, but he was still hit, though he had been lucky enough to move his vitals out of the way and only ended up with a heavily bleeding hole in his shoulder.


    *Drip* *Drip* *Drip*


    Davies watched his blood drip to the floor in a daze, he had not expected her under any conditions to even dare to shoot at him, so he hadn''t had his guard up against her. That was his mistake, and now he had an injured and heavily bleeding shoulder to show for it, but now, fuck all the consequences, he was going to kill this bitch.


    Only blood lust filled his mind as his murderous aura burst out fully, illuminating the surroundings with a red, dense aura of blood and filling the air with a sense of suppression. The suppression aura should have been even stronger but most of Davies''s murderous aura was directed at the bitchy policewoman right now and it could be seen to be working as her hands trembled violently until her hands no longer held the strength nor theposure to hold her weapon and it fell right out of her hands.


    Davies slowly began to walk towards her, his murderous aura that was pressing on her, increasing in density with every step that he took towards her.

 Chapter 108 CHAPTER 108: DIFFERENT POVS

    ?


    *Drip* *Drip* *Drip*


    Davies looked at the blood dripping onto the floor and immediately one thought took over his mind, and he didn''t give a damn about whatever consequences would arise from it¡­ he was going to kill this bitch, painfully.


    His murderous aura burst out immediately and filled the surroundings with a red and dense suppressive aura. His murderous at the moment was so thick that it became almost palpable, but that was not all.


    His mana burst out as well, filling the air with a mighty and regal presence, and increasing the suppressive aura in the surroundings even more. A vivid shadow of a huge reptilian monster with gleaming blue scales and a bloodthirsty look appeared behind him as well, fully indicating that the beast in him was fully awake and it wanted blood.


    At this moment, the bitchy policewoman heroine had lost most of her bitchy attitude and was barely doing her best to reduce her trembling body, but she was failing to do even that much as her weapon fell out of her trembling hands and onto the floor.


    Davies began to slowly walk towards her, the suppressive aura billowing out from him increasing in density with every step that he took in her direction.


    **


    A few tens of meters away, there was a red Cerrari that could be seen parked by the side of the road, but by the rough parking and the door that was left open, it could be seen that whoever had left their car there had done so in a hurry.


    The red Cerrari belonged to Fiona Lecroy, she had been on her way to a meeting with somebody after trying to reach out to Davies to invite him out for some leisure activities, but failing to as he hadn''t yet replied to her messages. That was when she saw it, a beautiful red Lykan Super sports car driving through the streets at high speeds and had a police car chasing after it.


    Her inner curiosity had awakened at full power as she didn''t know who in Yorkshire City could own such a car except for a few people at the very peak of wealth and power in the city.


    Since they were moving in the same direction as the venue for her meeting, she followed after them. It had been nothing more than a high-speed chase until she saw the police car ramming into the Lykan Supersport and almost sending it spiraling out of control, but luckily, whoever was driving seemed to have quite the driving skill and had managed to keep the car under control.


    Fiona had been surprised that a police officer would bump into the car that was merely driving dangerously at high speeds through the city, but that was not the end of her surprise. She was even more shocked when she saw the window of the driver wind down and a pretty hand holding a golden gun poking out and pointing in the direction of the Lykan Super sport.


    *Bang*


    The gun had been fired at one of the back tires of the Lykan Super sport, but a different explosion had happened inside of Fiona''s head, an explosion of surprise. She recognized that golden gun, or to be more urate, she recognized the weaponizer blessing.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    The golden gun was the A-rank blessing "Golden Gunslinger" that belonged to the daughter of the head of the Santos family, Dalena Santos.


    Fiona had always known Dalena to have an annoyingly oppressive attitude and liked to show off her power while passing it off as punishing people that broke thew, but it was obvious that whoever was inside of the Lykan Supercar was someone influential to avoid any sort of punishment/trouble that came from breaking aw as simple as dangerous driving, so why had Dalena even bothered chasing after someone like that.


    ''It seems that bitch has finally bitten off more than she can chew,'' Fiona thought gleefully, looking forward to whoever was in the Lykan Supercar teaching Dalena a lesson. They weren''t friends as firstly, their families were rivals and secondly, Fiona couldn''t cope with Dalena''s annoying attitude, so she didn''t mind seeing her knocked down a peg or two.


    The Lykan Supercar had finallye to a stop after skidding across the road and almost crashing into another car due to suddenly losing one of its tires. The door of the car slid open upwards, and a familiar face stepped out of the car with an icy smile frozen across his face.


    It was Davies Lake who had been driving the Lykan Supersport and it was obvious from the smile on his face that he was less than pleased at the current situation that he found himself in.


    At first, Fiona had thought to jump forward and help to settle the issue between Davies and Dalena before things went too far, but his icy smile had her frozen in ce.


    ''He should be able to deal with someone like Dalena,'' she said in her mind to justify herself, while doing her best to act like she wasn''t scared of Davies''s smile.


    Unfortunately, while she was in a battle with her own mind, things had gone wrong quickly and escted very fast, Dalena had used the speakerphones present in the car to deliver her message to Davies for him to put his hands up and get on his knees.


    **


    As previously said, Dalena had an annoyingly oppressive attitude and liked to oppress people. Seeing people groveling beneath her gave her some kind of sadistic joy that nothing else could give her. This was one of the main reasons why she had be a member of the MPA(Mega Protection Association), just so she could get to punish people and see them groveling beneath her, whether by force of her own abilities or by the influence of the Santos family behind her.


    (A/N: Dalena is not a policewoman, but rather a member of the MPA, but since they also wear uniforms and use sirens, hence Davies''s misunderstanding)


    Lately, she had not been feeling the same amount of pleasure from cracking down on and oppressing low-level mobs and wanted the rush from stepping down on somebody who had a bit more spunk, and just as she was thinking of this, a perfect scapegoat (Davies) had appeared while driving at high speed right in front of her.

 Chapter 109 CHAPTER 109: SCAPEGOAT ACQUIRED

    ?


    Lately, she had not been feeling the same amount of pleasure from cracking down on and oppressing low-level mobs and wanted the rush from stepping down on somebody who had a bit more spunk, and just as she was thinking of this, a perfect scapegoat(Davies) had appeared while driving at high speed right in front of her.


    She had quickly given chase as she felt that the driver of the Lykan Supercar was not giving her enough respect by daring to break the rules in front of her. His further tant action of ignoring her even though she was chasing after him with her sirens ring and all, had infuriated her at first but when she thought of punishing him until he begged her to stop, her excitement increased even further and she had decided to ram into his car until he stopped, not caring about the other citizens that she was supposed to protect, but Davies had actually regained control of his car even after he had been rammed hard from behind.


    She had then called upon her blessing and materialized her golden gun in her hand and shot at one of his tires using one of her skills, "Precision Shot", blowing out the whole tire and sending Davies spiraling out of control and almost crashing into another citizen that she was supposed to protect, but why was she supposed to care about mobs.


    The Lykan Super sport had finallye to a stop and the most handsome man she had seen in forever had gotten out of the driver and was now looking at her with a very displeased smile. Seeing his displeased smile sent shivers down her body and when she thought of how she would make him grovel beneath her while paying for his "crimes", her excitement rose even further, and she was even beginning to feel a little wet down there.


    It was at this moment that she finally knew that she was masochistically sadistic.


    She had begun by using the same words she had said to other people she had arrested in the past, telling him to put his hands up in the air and get down on his knees, but it seemed that this guy had no care for her words, nor did he even seem the slightest bit apprehensive of his current situation, he only seemed to be displeased at the whole charade¡­ or at least that was the whole look on his face was saying, though it looked scarier than that for some reason.


    Dalena wasn''t happy about Davies tant action of ignoring her orders to get down on his knees with his hand in the air and had gotten down and even pointed her gun at him while repeating her words, but he seemed to care even less this time and did not even seem to pay attention to the gun in her hand as if it was but a mere toy that she held onto and this infuriated her to no end.


    ''This mother fucker¡­'' The one thing she wouldn''t ept from anyone was a tant disregard for her presence and that was exactly what Davies was doing at the moment so in her anger she had shot at him.


    Maybe after a hole in his arm, he''d learn to appreciate her presence and might even cry out in pain satisfying her sadistic desires¡­ but that was where it all went wrong.


    Somehow, the prey that he had set her eyes on had avoided the bullet hitting his arm and had ended up with a hole in his shoulder instead, but instead of the scream of pain that she was expecting from his person, what had fallen on her instead was a suppressive aura and the dense smell of blood, as his gaze at her had changed from nonchnce to disbelief at her shooting at him, to anger at what she had done and finally a murderous gaze that promised pain¡­ and death.


    The prey-turned-predator had slowly walked towards her with blood dripping from his bleeding shoulder, yet he showed no sign of pain on his face and his aura grew heavier with every step and she could vividly see a shadow of a mighty and regal being standing behind him as he walked toward her.


    It felt like a second, yet it also felt like forever for him to reach her and when he finally did, her mind had already turned nk, knowing what to expect, yet her mind noting up with any way to avoid it. Even her mind had given up, so she did do as well when she saw his now bloodied hand reaching for her face, but inches before reaching her face, she heard a loud shot,<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "DAVIES WAIT!!!"


    "Even though you''re from the Lake family, harming the daughter of the Santos family head would lead to a troublesome situation for you," A voice shouted from behind them, who Davies and Dalena recognized to be Fiona''s.


    ''Why is this bitch her-¡­ wait, Davies¡­ Lake,'' Dalena''s eyes widened in surprise at who she had thought to be a prey and had been targeting, but at the same time, she was slightly happy that Fiona had exposed her identity to Davies, otherwise, he may have actually killed her, she thought.


    "... the Santos family?" Davies''s clear voice rang out in a surprised tone.


    "That''s even better," he said, and a wicked smile popped unto his face and he grabbed her by the face and held her up in the air, disying power that one wouldn''t expect from his slim frame.


    "You know, you''re actually the person in your family who hase closest to taking my life since you could actually make me bleed, the others weren''t up to par,"


    "But by the time I''m done with your family¡­"


    "There will be no one left with enough blood to bleed¡­ or even anybody at all"


    Davies was actually happy now, he had been looking for a scapegoat to use to show the 4 great families that he wasn''t in any form a soft persimmon that they could easily y around with, and now someone had simplynded in hisp to be used as a perfect scapegoat.


    If he had a gamer system, he''d be receiving the notification [Scapegoat acquired] right about now.

 Chapter 110 CHAPTER 109: WEIRD HEROINE

    ?


    "You know, you''re actually the only person in your family who hase closest to taking my life since you could make me bleed, the others weren''t up to par,"


    "But by the time I''m done with your family¡­"


    "There will be no one left with enough blood to bleed... that''s if there is still anybody in your family at that point," his icy voice rang out into the silence that had taken over the whole location.


    Davies was actually quite happy right now, he had been looking for a scapegoat to use to show the 4 great families that he wasn''t in any form a soft persimmon that they could easily y around with, and now someone had simplynded in hisp to be used as a perfect scapegoat.


    If he had a gamer system, he''d be receiving the notification [Scapegoat acquired] right about now.


    What Davies failed to realize was that Fiona who was nearby had heard everything he had said and was now looking at him with surprise and a hint of fear. She had never expected such cruel words toe from his mouth, neither did she expect to see such a wicked expression on his face, and she found it hard to believe he was the same Davies she had seen yesterday who had such a nk expression that one would think he was bored of everything and everyone.


    But then, what would one expect from someone who had gone through painful deaths and reincarnation, just so he can die again? It would be even more strange if such a person was normal, but how was she to know that?


    ''Now what to do with her,'' Davies thought. He had previously just wanted to kill her and be done with it, but now he had to think things through a bit more to avoid the undesirable consequences that woulde from such action.


    Like already said, he could go ahead with his previous intentions for her and just kill her, stabbing his hand into her chest and ripping out her heart would do the trick but then he''d have to deal with whatever consequences came from killing a heroine, as well as retaliation from her family and a few other annoyances as well.


    Dealing with whatever retaliation woulde from her family after he killed her wasn''t anything he couldn''t handle, but he was a bit apprehensive about whatever would befall him because he killed a heroine whose fate was tightly linked with the protagonists. He didn''t know what would happen if he actually took that step, but he had a feeling it would make things a whole lot moreplicated.


    He could simply maim her and not actually kill her, thereby avoiding the repercussion of killing a heroine and at the same time, using her as a sort of example to the great families that let them know that he didn''t care about their influence and woulde after anyone who dared to overreach their bounds. It was a great idea but Davies didn''t fancy it much.


    There was also the option of keeping her hostage to keep the Santos family in check, but to Davies, this was an even worse idea.


    "So, killing her it is," he said out loud and conjured a thin ice knife in the air, grabbed it, and then stabbed it into her arm.


    "Ahhhhhh!!!" Dalena let out a yelp at the sudden pain in one of her arms. She iled around, trying to use her other hand to break away from Davies''s grasp of her face, but no matter what she did, she couldn''t get rid of his vice-like grip on her face.


    His grip was so firm, that she felt she was lucky that he wasn''t trying to kill her by crushing her head because she had a feeling that he would be able to do it and it would be even more painful than what she was currently going through.


    Davies slowly began turning the ice knife that was lodged in her hand giving rise to a different kind of feeling inside of Dalena. For some reason, the pain that was being inflicted on her slowly was giving her pleasure instead of the torturing feeling it was supposed to give, she was actually slowly beginning to enjoy the pain, and a thought even arose in her mind that she wanted more pain and she wanted it rougher this time.


    Of course, Davies didn''t know that and continued turning the knife slowly inside of her flesh, trying to make her feel more pain from the injury in her arm. When he noticed her not screaming in pain like he was expecting, at first, he was a bit puzzled, but then attributed it to an unyielding character and decided to make her feel more pain.


    He quickly formed another ice knife and plunged it roughly into her shoulder this time, but instead of the scream that he was expecting from her, what came to his ears was a weird moaning sound.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Aiyo, what the fuck?"


    ''Is she actually enjoying this?'' Davies thought with a ''what in the 19 floors of hell is this shit?'' look on his face.


    [Why do you always end up meeting deranged people wherever you go?] Miya asked in disbelief as even she couldn''t believe her eyes at what she was seeing.


    This was a heroine for God''s sake!


    Who was picking these people and giving them high fate values!? she wondered, but her AI brain couldn''te up with a usible answer for such bullshit.


    Davies was still very much appalled at what he was seeing when he felt something wet and stick run across his palm that was tightly grasping onto Dalena''s face. He quickly flung his arm in disgust, throwing her away into the police car that was just behind her and watching as she smashed into the car''s windshield, the impact causing a few bones in her body to break and also injuring her a bit further,


    ''Did this bitch just lick my hand?'' at this point, Davies''s brain couldn''t cope with the weirdness that was Dalena Santos which was why he had flung her away from him. He was more appalled at her strange behavior than he was angry at her right now.


    ''What a waste of beauty,'' he thought as in the short moment that he had held her up, he had been able to fully see her beautiful face and athletic, shapely body that hugged all the curves of her uniform very well, but he truly felt that it was a shame that she had such a fetish.


    Davies didn''t mind a woman with a few kinks, but Dalena''s fetish was a bit too much more than what he could handle.


    Since he didn''t want to have to go and pick her up so he could continue his torturing process of killing her slowly, and also because she was enjoying the pain instead of being tortured by it, there was no point in doing so. He decided to just run her through with enough ice spikes to make her a porcupine, but that was when he realized that cars had begun to stop nearby, attracted by the strange scene.


    Giving ast look at her body that had been smashed into the car, he turned away and determined to take care of her at ater date. He sure as hell wasn''t letting this go, he just did not want to be seen killing an officer of the MPA(yes, he had finally recognized that she wasn''t a normal policewoman who happened to be patrolling the streets when he had driven by at high speed).


    He was awless and vindictive viin who could kill someone for the slightest offense against him, but he didn''t have to let people know that otherwise, he would have quite the problem, after all, only trashy viins had trashy reputations, the real dangerous viins were seen as morous heroes by the society around them until they finally decided to take off their masks and show their real faces to the world.


    It wasn''t yet that time for Davies, so he would rather not be seen skewering an officer of thew to death¡­ it didn''t mean he wouldn''t do it, he would just have to do it where no one would see him do it.


    With that thought he turned away and began to walk towards Fiona who had stood there watching his actions without being able to so much as say a word.


    "Let''s go, you have to drive me to a hospital," Davies said to her as he walked past her and began to make his way toward her car.


    "W-What about her?" Fiona finally managed to stammer out a question, even though she was still in shock at what she had just witnessed.


    "Someone will call an ambnce for her, she shouldn''t die from that much, and even if she did, it would be good riddance," Davies said smoothly, not even bothering to look back at where Dalenay stered into the police vehicle.

 Chapter 111 CHAPTER 110: BACK AT IMPERIUM HOSPITAL

    ?


    "Let''s go, you have to drive me to a hospital," Davies said to Fiona as he walked past her and made his way towards her car.


    "W-What about her?" Fiona finally managed to stammer out a question, as she was still in shock at what she had just been a witness to.


    "Someone will call an ambnce for her, she shouldn''t die from that much, and even if she did, it would be good riddance," Davies said without a pause, not even bothering to look back at where Dalenay stered into the police vehicle.


    As he walked along, he pulled out his phone from his pocket and called Danie. The phone rang twice before she picked it up,


    *"Hello?" Danie answered the call with a question in her voice as she wasn''t expecting a call from him anytime soon.


    "I need you to send someone toe get Sierra, someone rammed into her and also popped one of her tires so she can''t be driven right now," Davies said to Danie over the phone.


    "... Ok, I guess the tracker''s still working, so I''ll send someone toe pick it up soon¡­" Danie replied after a slight pause.


    "... I''ll also send someone to get rid of the body," she added as an afterthought.


    "What bod-¡­ ohhh," Davies was confused at first but then he understood what she had meant.


    "There''s no need for that, she''s not dead yet," he said and hung up, leaving Danie slightly confused as she knew there was no way Davies would willingly leave someone who had damaged his favorite car, alive, but it was not her job to think about why Davies did the things he did, but rather to follow the orders he gave her.


    Meanwhile, Davies had arrived beside Fiona''a red Cerrari and gotten in alongside Fiona who kept looking at his still bleeding shoulder. She couldn''t seem to understand how Davies could ignore the pain that must being from his injury without so much as a slight change in his expression, his face still nk as always.


    Davies ignored her stare and gave her the address to Imperium Hospital and sat back in the chair, not caring about the injury on his shoulder or the fact that he was staining Fiona''s handmade leather seats with his blood.


    To be honest, Davies had no need to go to a hospital to get himself treated for this level of injury as he had shaken off even worse injuries with nothing, but self-medication and he was very used to pain, so he had no need for medication to ease his pain, but why would he avoid going to a hospital filled with beautiful women of all types and tastes.


    That was like not going to an all-you-can-eat buffet.


    Also, he did not really have anything he was doing at the moment, so why not?


    Fiona followed the directions he had given her and drove to Imperium Hospital. Unlike Davies''s past visits to the hospital, the journey had no rough driving involved in it and the drive there was smooth all through. Fiona probably drove slowly as she thought that Davies would be affected by her driving at high speed, after all, how was she to know that Davies wouldn''t be affected by something of that level, so Davies ended up having a slow and boring journey to the hospital.


    Fiona didn''t try to make any conversation as she was still in shock, so Davies had no one to talk to as he sure as hell wouldn''t be talking first, as firstly there was nothing he wanted to say to her and secondly, he was not really in the mood for a heroine right now. One did just shoot him through the shoulder after all.


    The current situation was actually a very good one if he truly intended to score some affection points, but like previously said, he was not in the mood, and also, he felt it was beneath him to act like he was in pain when he had experienced even worse pain without a single change of his expression.


    Finally, they got to the Imperium Hospital and Davies got down. Fiona offered to follow him in, but Davies refused her offer as he didn''t feel the need for her to do so, it wasn''t like he couldn''t walk¡­ and it wasn''t because he didn''t want her to see the inside of the hospital and begin wondering what type of ce he had chosen to treat his injuries.


    Nope, it wasn''t that at all.


    Fiona, seeing that Davies seemed to be fine, decided to leave him be since he didn''t want her help, or herpany at the moment. After leaving the hospital grounds, she headed off to where she was headed previously before she hade across Davies and Dalena and had ended up watching their whole charade of a high-speed chase and utter decimation of the Tom in this Tom(Dalena) and Jerry(Davies) situation after Jerry got pissed and fed up of Tom.


    She was happy that she had been able to help Davies as he had requested, after this, they could at least be counted as acquaintances with one another, right?<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    ***


    After Fiona drove off, Davies headed inside the Imperium hospital, calling Alyssa, his newly employed personal doctor. He got her office''s location from her over the phone and headed off in that direction, garnering weird stares from people who saw him walking through the hospital with a heavily injured shoulder and yet not showing any signs of pain on his face.


    Of course, a few nurses and other medical personnel(all beautiful women, of course), rushed toward him and offered to try and help him, causing him to have to go through a long process of trying to exin how an injury like this wasn''t worth mentioning, but even then, they weren''t willing to let him walk around the hospital without aid.


    He got held up for so long while trying to exin and convince all the medical personnel that gathered around him that Alyssa ended up having to look for him after he hadn''t arrived yet.


    "I see why you couldn''t get to my office on time now," Alyssa said as soon as she saw him surrounded by ''medical personnel''.


    "It is kinda my fault and not really my fault at the same time," Davies replied as even he couldn''t do anything about his current situation. He had underestimated a woman''s desire to want to take care of someone, especially when the "someone or something" was as handsome as he was.


    Who knew that these women''s motherly instincts would be invoked so heavily when they saw an injured pretty boy?


    He definitely didn''t, otherwise, he would havee to this ce covered in blood way earlier. He thought all this with a wry smile while doing nothing to keep their hands off him, after all why would reject such a good thing?


    Which man didn''t like having women''s hands running across his body? ¡­ Except the gay ones, and that was definitely something that Davies was not.


    He didn''t have a single gay bone in his body, though he wouldn''t mind seeing two women kissing or touching each other while pleasuring him, because, despite his legendary level and experience of being a yer, he has never actually had a threesome before.


    Alyssa began to push away the women and send them back to their jobs, much to the dismay of Davies''s body which was enjoying having so many womanly hands fawning on it and running across every part of it.


    After a few minutes, they were alone in a corridor and walking toward wherever Alyssa was taking him to get his injuries treated.


    "So, what happened to you?" Alyssa asked with an eye on his injured shoulder. Normally, as a doctor, she should be able to identify what could cause such an injury with just a nce, more especially as she was a very good doctor, but due to Davies''s blood all over his shoulder and covering the injury, she wasn''t able to determine what had caused him such an injury.


    "Oh, this? "Davies responded with a nce at his own shoulder.


    "I got shot by a bullet filled with mana," he spoke with such a carefree tone that it caused Alyssa to be confused and wondered if she had actually heard what he said, or that he was actually being serious with his words because such an injury was not something that could be taken lightly.


    If it were any normal human that had been hit by a bullet filled with mana at the same spot at which Davies had been hit, then losing an arm as well as half of their chest would be the inevitable situation that would have urred.


    Just the fact that Davies had gotten away with a hole in his shoulder that could be barely seen showed how much stronger he was than the normal human.


    Also, it had to be said that Elementals(Elemental blessing users) had just a slightly stronger body than the normal human.


    They were usually between 2x to 5x stronger than the normal human, so it was obvious that Davies''s body was much stronger than the average elemental, but of course, while Alyssa knew all this, that wasn''t the question on her mind, but instead, what she wondered was,


    "Who was the idiot that had no value for his life and had decided to shoot the enigma known as Davies Lake and why the hell was Davies so chill about having such a thing happen to him?"

 Chapter 112 CHAPTER 112: DALENA SANTOS, THE BITCHY PROWLER

    ?


    Alyssa had been left confused at Davies''s chill answer to her question as among all the answers that her brain was expecting, it wasn''t ready for him telling her, that he had been hit by a mana bullet while the tone of his voice made it seem like he had only been hit by a snowball.


    Putting aside the fact that he had survived what would have sted a normal human apart, or would have severely injured an elemental, just the fact that someone had actually dared to shoot at him in the first ce was mind-blowing enough, that Alyssa''s brain almost short-circuited.


    "Who would even dare shoot a hole through your shoulder?" Alyssa asked in a bbergasted tone, as her mind could not understand who would be stupid enough to do such a thing.


    Davies was a very dangerous person who wouldn''t let someone do such a thing and get away scot-free. In fact, such a person''s death was already a confirmed thing should he ever try such a thing, and said person would be lucky if he got to die quickly, but Alyssa didn''t know all that about Davies... Yet.


    What she did know about Davies Lake was the general knowledge that anybody with knowledge about Davies Lake knew.


    He was a young genius who had established apany at an age when most kids would still be ying with sand, he had received at least one S-rank blessing during his blessing of the Cataclysm ceremony when he was ten.


    Thepany he had established was the world''s leadingpany when it came to magical engineering, and they were partnered with many other giants in the technological business industry to produce different innovative technologies that were huge sesses in the market, and it was to be noted that most of the products of Imperium Technologies were single-handedly developed by himself.


    Davies''s personal wealth could not be measured as he was unusually secretive about it, or about most of his life in general, but the numbers that Imperium Technologies were making and the value of their assets were enough to ce him as one of the richest humans on the entire of Leivandage, yet he was just twenty-two years old.


    His abnormally innovative mind and high-ranking blessing made the rich, powerful, and influential humans pay attention to him and his growth, and even though he had literally disappeared for the past twelve years, their interest in him hadn''t waned one bit as they had high expectations for his future... Or at least some of them did, the others that didn''t, wanted to snip him in the bud before he grew even further.


    With a status like that, there was no way someone would be stupid enough to actually dare to shoot at him unless said person was a suicidal maniac who cared nothing for his life, Alyssa thought.


    What Alyssa failed to think about was that, though this information was widely known, a picture of Davies''s face was even rarer than a diamond, more especially as he had not been seen for thest twelve years, so most people that saw and met with Davies did not actually know that he was actually the legendary figure known as ''Davies Lake''.


    That was exactly what had happened earlier, as there was no way that Dalena as a member of the Santos family did not know the name ''Davies Lake'', but knowing the name of a person was different from recognizing the person and that was the cause for their current situation.


    Due to Davies''s naturally elusive behavior, Dalena was not able to recognize him and fired at him in anger... Though Dalena''s oppressive behavior had yed a part in actually performing such an idiotic action, it was mostly because of Davies''sck of fame.


    Another thing to note about Davies was that, even though he had made so many technological innovations, none of them was a weapon... Or at least none of the ones he released to the world was a weapon.


    It wasn''t because he was scared of bing a Tony Stark in this universe as the world could go to hell, for all he cared... His reason for not doing so was because he had a habit of keeping the best things for himself, and also, he didn''t really spend much of his time on making weapons from technology as he knew and had experienced first-hand that power that came from things as flimsy as technological weapons could never be called true power, which was why he never focuses his attention on weak weapons that could only kill less than a thousand people at a time.


    "It was some bitchy MPA officer that chased me for breaking a ''few'' traffic rules," Davies answered, but then flinched as he realized that his shoulder was beginning to be numb, but he attributed it to him losing so much blood from that area and didn''t think much more about it.


    "Wait, hold up... Somebody shot you for breaking a few traffic rules?" Alyssa asked with a raised eyebrow like it was the dumbest shit she had ever heard in her life, and to be fair, it was actually quite unbelievable.


    Well, of course, since Davies didn''t mention the part where he had disobeyed an officer of thew, or that said officer of thew got off on oppressing people and seeing them groveling beneath her feet, and since he wasn''t going to give her the pleasure, he had stayed defiant and then he got shot by the previously said, officer of thew.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    What he had told her was the one-sentence version of what had happened, hence her confusion.


    Yeah... It was some bitch named Dalena Santos," Davies exined further, ignoring the numbness in his shoulder that seemed to be growing by the second.


    "Wait, Dalena Santos, as in the "Bitchy prowler" Dalena Santos?" Alyssa asked in surprise as she recognized the name of the infamous "Bitchy Prowler", after all, she had received quite a few patients due to her usual antics, but the current situation was a bit different from the usual.


    For one, she had never met a patient that Dalena had shot before for the simple fact that none of them survived for long enough to be patients, and the second thing was that she found it a bit difficult to believe that someone like Dalena who was from the well-known Santos Family had shot Davies Lake.


    These kinds of actions usually had deeper meanings and usually ended in a very bad situation, but from the way that Davies seemed to make light of the whole situation, she didn''t know what to think.


    "Can we not talk about something so unimportant right now," Davies quickly put an end to the conversation as while he was quite interested in the nickname "Bitchy Prowler" that Dalena was called, the rate at which his shoulder was growing numb was not something that could be caused by something as simple as blood loss.


    Something was wrong with that bullet that Dalena had shot into his shoulder, and he didn''t n to wait until it became worse to find out what it was and stop it from doing whatever it was supposed to do to him.


    Alyssa immediately stopped speaking as she noticed the slightly ufortable look on his face that wasn''t there before.


    She quickly hastened her steps and moved even faster to a theater that was nearby while pulling out her phone and calling for some helping hands, as what she would have to do for Davies after finding out that he had been shot, was to perform an operation to remove the bullet from his shoulder and dress the wound.


    Soon, they were in a theater and after preparing everything that would be required for the procedure, she began operating on a still-conscious Davies.


    Alyssa had offered to sedate him for the duration of the procedure which Davies had, of course, refused as he saw no need for him to be sedated when all they would be doing was to take a bullet out of his shoulder.


    He could deal with that much pain without squealing like a dude who was getting his dick chopped off... But the major reason he avoided being sedated was that he was way too distrustful of people to leave himself unguarded and at their mercy by being sedated.


    Alyssa began the process and skillfully disyed that her years in medical school, as well as her years of hands-on experience, weren''t a waste. Her hands moved seamlessly as she worked and before long, the bullet was out of Davies''s shoulder and on an iron dish.


    The bullet was golden, the same color as Dalena''s gun, which was as Davies expected, but what he did not expect was for it to still have mana flowing from it.


    He had an inkling that the mana flowing from the bullet was responsible for the numbness in his shoulder, and soon enough he was proven right.


    After removing the bullet and dressing the wound, Alyssa went to do a test on some samples of blood and flesh that she had removed from around the wound and when she came back to the theater, she gave it to him straight,


    "You are poisoned."

 Chapter 113 CHAPTER 113: MANA POISON

    ?


    Alyssa came back to the room where Davies was waiting with his shirt off and a well-bandaged shoulder.


    "You are poisoned," Alyssa said frankly, without trying to hide anything, or even soften the blow as doctors normally did.


    "Oh?" Davies''s right eyebrow rose in response to Alyssa''s statement, but in all honesty, he wasn''t that surprised as he had expected something like this to be the root cause behind his numb shoulder.


    What he hadn''t been expecting, was a bullet having poison, or that he had been poisoned so easily as he had undergone training and even had a special body physique that was mostly impervious to poison... Or at least the weak ones.


    For him to have actually been poisoned by whatever poison was in Dalena''s golden bullet meant that either the poison was special, or it was abnormally strong.


    Davies''s curiosity had been piqued, but he decided to ignore the matter for now and think of something that was more important at the moment.


    What had the poison done to him?


    "What are the aftereffects...?" He asked Alyssa, no hesitation or fear in his voice as he wasn''t scared of a little poison.


    "You tell me, how do you feel right now?" Alyssa returned the question to him as she obviously couldn''t know what the effects of the poison were until she knew what it did to a living or non-living organism, so whether Davies realized it or not, he was currently ab rat, a handsome and coherentb rat.


    Davies tried to move the affected shoulder, which was his left shoulder, but he had difficulty moving it as the whole left shoulder and arm had gone numb. He could still move it but it was quite difficult to do so,


    "Well, no woman would be screaming from pleasure from this hand''s movements in a while," he said jokingly after realizing that there wasn''t much to the poison other than the numbing effect that would only slightly incapacitate him for a while... Though he wasn''t sure if the effect of the poison would be this minuscule for someone other than him, as he was pretty confident in his high poison resistance.


    Alyssa was left with her jaw dropped at Davies''s smartass answer and had no words for him as she couldn''t be sure if he was being narcissistic, or he was actually telling the truth, but her intuition pointed more at thetter.


    "Do you guys happen to have medicines that cure numbness?" Davies asked, breaking Alyssa out of her stunned reverie. Though he had determined the poison''s effects to be too weak to cause him much harm, he didn''t fancy being incapacitated, thereby reducing hisbat strength and overall efficiency, even if it was only for a little while.


    "We do have some medicines that can deal with such symptoms, but I wouldn''t rmend them for you right now, as we don''t know whether they may have any adverse effects uponing in contact with the poison in your body, or not..."


    "The poison in your body is one that we have nevere in contact with, talk less of researching it,"


    "It doesn''t even seem to have a physical presence and can only be sensed through a mana scanner," Alyssa responded and began to exin why.


    ''So that was the weird mana I was sensing from the bullet!'' he remembered sensing mana flowing off the bullet after it was taken out of his shoulder.


    Shockingly, when he had tried searching for the strange mana that flowed from the bullet inside his body, he wasn''t able to detect it. I


    t was likely that it was no longer there, but it was even more likely that he wasn''t able to detect it due to some strange characteristic of the mana, or it could be an effect of Dalena''s blessing.


    He didn''t know what it was but he wasn''t willing to try putting it to the test by acting like an idiot protagonist that was ready to risk his life over something stupid.


    If he would have to bear through the period of numbness, then so be it, after all, he wasn''t a protagonist with a halo that would make sure he didn''t die no matter how many stupid and risky methods they took or underwent.


    As a viin, he was more likely to suffer a loss from trying something like this, so he immediately decided against it.


    Though being even just slightly weaker did not sit right with Davies as for him weakness, even the slightest moment was a cmity waiting to happen, he had prepared enough in this life to be ready for any disadvantageous situation that coulde his way.


    Also, the current period wasn''t an especially dangerous time for him.


    Lee Jung was still weak to actually threaten his life, and if he even dared to think in that direction, Davies was sure that he would be able to deal with him even in his current half-incapacitated state, and that was if Lee Jung could even make it past Danie, but he doubted his ability to do so.


    Also, the 4 great families would currently be watching their steps around him right now due to the actions he had taken since he got back to the city.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    He stood up, interrupting Alyssa who was still droning on and exining things in medical terms that sounded like abination of Greek and Latin, with a pinch of Mandarin and Hausa all jumbled together and sounding like the most confusing shit he ever heard.


    He always wondered why learned people always had to speak in terms that sounded soplicated and threw off the normal people who were listening to them talk, especially when they knew that the people listening didn''t understand even half of whatever jargon it was they were saying.


    "I think I understand the whole gist of... whatever it was you were saying,''


    ''I get it, I''m not using the drugs that haven''t been tested against the position in my body, now can I leave?" He spoke while looking around for his shirt, as even though it was covered in his blood, he still needed to wear something to leave the hospital.


    "What are you looking for?" Alyssa asked, wondering why his eyes were farting around the room.


    "My shirt..." He answered half-mindedly, wondering where his shirt had seemingly disappeared to.


    "Oh... I- Uh... I-I took it," Alyssa stammered out, but it was clear from her tone that something suspicious was going on and Davies caught on quickly.


    "... Why?" He asked, not understanding the reason for such an urrence.


    "F-For research purposes!!!" She shouted out a bit too loud while looking like a deer in headlights which only increased Davies''s curiosity.


    "Research purposes...? Davies found it hard to believe that there was any hospital that took people''s properties and said it was for "research purposes".


    "Y-Yes I want to run more tests on your blood to find out more about the poison," Alyssa came up with a sound argument, but the "deer in headlights" expression on her face was telling another story, a story that Davies was more interested in than whatever nonsense she was saying and expecting him to believe.


    "Hmmm, mmm," Davies had a thoughtful expression on his face as if he was considering her answer to be true, but that was when he remembered something about his purple-eyed doctor.


    It was something he had forgotten about since theirst meeting, the fact that his doctor had some sort of obsession with blood.


    Now that he remembered that, he suddenly didn''t want to know what would happen to the shirt lest he be weirded out.


    ''I better not meet a third girl with weird fetishes today,'' Davies groaned in his mind to whoever could be listening to his thoughts.


    Since he couldn''t get his shirt, he ended up picking the only piece of clothing avable in the room which happened to be a white-colored doctor''s overcoat, after all, they were in a hospital.


    The resulting effect of Davies adding a white-colored doctor''s overcoat to his dressing made him look like a well-knownrade of culture.


    This well-knownrade was a doctor, fireman, surgeon, pizza delivery guy, and many more. Davies would have looked exactly like the previously saidrade If he was bald, less handsome, and more muscr.


    In the end, Davies walked out of the hospital with only a doctor''s overcoat covering his upper body.


    It was only after he got out of the hospital that he remembered that he didn''t have a car to drive anymore, but luckily he had a super bodyguard who had thought of this issue ahead of time and was waiting outside the hospital with a Smokes Soyce, a top tier luxury car.


    "Tell me you got clothes as well," Davies said as soon as he got into the car, and just as he expected, Danie was holding up a duffel bag to him with clothes inside.


    "Nice," he replied and grabbed the bag from her hands.


    "Where to?" Danie asked as she started up the engine.


    "Thepany," Davies replied after giving it some thought. Since he couldn''t do much right now due to his ''injury'', then it was better he spent his time on finallypleting the project "Words Make Up The World."

 Chapter 114 CHAPTER 114: ONE WEEK LATER

    ?


    It had been a week since Davies had been shot in the shoulder by Dalena and poisoned by her golden bullet, and he had spent most of his time at the 139th floor of the Imperium Technologies building.


    From early morning tote evenings, he was always there, working on project "Words Make Up The World." Even his weekends weren''t spared.


    For everyone who didn''t know his reasons for doing so, they thought he was working hard on a new product since they didn''t know his working habits, and they were half right, but what they didn''t know was that Davies had been rushing to finish this project before his hands healedpletely, so that he could get to dealing with Lee Jung as soon as he was back to a being a hundred percent fit.


    Also, he was finally almost done with the project that was supposed to y a very important role as his trump card should anythingpletely out of his expectations should happen.


    As for why it was called a project and not an invention was because it epassed what one item could be. It was more like a discovery into a whole new path of mana usage but it''s details are a story for another time.


    Davies had not just stayed locked up in theb without doing anything else, he had asked Danie to get some people to watch Lee Jung''s every move, but as expected of a protagonist, it was proving quite difficult to track his exact movements and a lot of things that didn''t make sense urred continuously in the tracking process, making it even harder to keep an eye on him.


    Davies had expected this much, as he knew that fate was sure to protect it''s agent from any issues that could ur, unless said issue was an opportunity in disguise instead, so he hadn''t expected much in the first ce was not bothered by it, but had instead used that to fuel himself into finishing his long worked on project as soon a possible, to be ready for whatever fate nned to throw his way.


    Apart from keeping an eye on Lee Jung, he had spoken with Tisha a few times on the phone as he was too busy to go on something like a date with her.


    Also the two of them with dark fates being together was like a beacon that attracted trouble whether from Lee Jung or something even more unexpected... Like the time they had been stuck in the mission gate.


    He had been thinking about it for a bit ande to the conclusion that them being stuck in the mission gate was not some strange coincidence, but rather it was fate ying it''s tricks because they were both viins with dark fate values, but fate seemed to have either underestimated him, or overestimated it''s protagonist, Lee Jung.


    Getting him stuck in the mission gate was probably some way of buying Lee Jung time to slightly develop himself, otherwise it wouldn''t be so coincidental that the same day Lee Jung got ess to the system was the same day he had gotten stuck in the gate... And he wasn''t just specting on this matter as he had actually gotten Danie to check and confirm his thoughts, and from the testimonies of people who knew Lee Jung before he had gotten a system, they all said that they had noticed something different about him on the same day that Davies had gotten stuck in the gate


    Hisndy said that he moved out of the building that exact same day while saying he had gotten a house, but he had never been able to pay his rent on time in recent months, so to her it was quite strange.


    His neighbor said she had seennd deeds and car keys to a car that she never thought him to be able to own. She had even had the fantasy that he was some rich family''s young master who hade out into the real world for experience.


    Davies didn''t care about Lee Jung''s neighbor''s fantasies, but it was obvious from the information that he had gotten, that everything he had been thinking to be correct was just as he had thought it to be.


    This made things even more dangerous, as Davies was able to confirm that fate would attempt to directly tamper with him as long as he became too much of a threat to Lee Jung.


    Such a thought disgusted him and pissed him off even more, while at the same time giving him some relief in the fact that he had listened to Miya and had not gone after his life or even injure him on the night when he met him at the mall.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    He had not even done anything yet, but fate was already attacking him, so what would happen if he had actually dared to directly target Lee Jung''s life... He may even be struck by lightning, or get a visit from truck-kun, or worse.


    This information only cemented the fact that he was in uncharted waters and needed to y his cards very carefully, and not overestimate his own ability because he was still no match for a phenomenon like fate.


    Thus, Davies had spent most of his time working on his trump card while revising his ns to deal with Lee Jung... And also enjoying a bit of snu snu with Jessica whenever he got a bit tired from working all day long.


    Like this, a week had passed and Davies''s left arm and shoulder were now fully healed and ready for whatever action came it''s way. Davies turned his shoulder and moved his arm in different directions to check if there was still and numbness present or if any form of stifness was present in his hand movements.


    He was currently on the 138th floor of the Imperium Technologies building, shirtless in front of a mirror and looking at his shoulder while rolling it.


    Surprisingly, there wasn''t even a scar to show that he had been shot in the shoulder just a week ago as while being a Mega came with a stronger life force that enabled them to survive worse injuries than a normal human, as well as a higher healing factor, Davies also had a special physique that was almost impervious to poison, had high healing capabilities as well as a few other quirks that couldn''t be used at the moment as they were currently sealed by his Ex ranked blessing "Reversion".


    Though his arm had beenpletely healed and didn''t even have a scar that marred his skin to remind him, Davies hadn''t forgotten about the one who had put a hole in his shoulder a week ago, Dalena Santos.


    He had Danie keep an eye on her as well after she had been taken away by the ambnce. Her father, Phillipe Santos, who was the head of the Santos family, as well as the General inmand of the Mega Protection Association(just a fancy title that means he is the head of the MPA) had arrived at the hospitalpletely livid at the thought that someone had dared to harm his precious daughter.


    Only after finding out that the person who had harmed his ''precious daughter'' was Davies Lake, and that his daughter had chased down Davies, almost scrapped his favorite car, thereby almost killing Davies in the process, and still went on to shoot him in the shoulder with a mana bullet, did his anger begin to dissipate from his face as Danie literally listed out Dalena''s offences against Davies and that she was lucky that Davies hadn''t killed her immediately after she had dared to shoot at him, and had instead gotten away with just a few injuries.


    If it was any other person, Phillipe would be able to use his status and power to silence the person and make sure the person died in the cruelest way possible, but he didn''t dare to do something like that as the person he was up against was Davies and he wouldn''t dare to show any killing intent against him out in the open.


    That was why even though Danie had spoken disrespectfully to him, he couldn''t even shout her down and openly show his anger, but Davies knew that Phillipe Santos was a venomous man who wouldn''t let something like this go, would look for Davies to settle ountster... And that was exactly what Davies wanted.


    He couldn''t go after their family without raising eyebrows if they didn''t do anything against him first.


    It had been a week, a mostly inactive week for Davies, and now he was itching for some action, it was time to go in guns zing and do the best to make Lee Jung lose fate points, while dealing with whatever other problems that came his way.


    Various nned scenarios and ns that he hade up with roiled through his mind as he put on his shirt, but while buttoning up his shirt, the watch on his hand vibrated violently, greatly surprising him, because his vibrating watch signified trouble.

 Chapter 115 CHAPTER 115: INTRUDER

    ?


    Davies was buttoning up his shirt while the many ns he had made to go against Lee Jung ran through his head when suddenly his watch began to vibrate violently, greatly surprising him as the vibration indicated trouble.


    The vibration in his watch was an rm he had implemented in it, to notify him if there ever was a security breach on the 139th floor, so the vibrationing from his watch meant that there was someone, who had broken into the building and was trying to steal his technology even though he, the owner and creator of whatever they were trying to steal, was right inside the building.


    "The nerve," Davies murmured, a wicked grin appearing on his face as he stood up from his seat and began to walk towards the elevator at an unhurried pace, not hurrying in the slightest.


    He went into the elevator and pressed the button for the 139th floor while wondering how the intruder, whoever he or she was, had managed to get into the 139th floor without triggering the main rm, thereby bypassing the main defense team and only triggering the personal rm he had set up into the superputer.


    "Well, it doesn''t matter anyway, I needed to warm up my body," he murmured to himself and cracked his bones as he waited for elevator to reach the 139th floor.


    The doors to the 139th floor opened up with a loud ding, but before the security system could activate and begin the security checks, Davies called out


    "Over ride security protocols: keyword; ck wing,"


    [Keyword epted]


    [Security protocols overide... epted] the security system''s voice rang out and all the security systems shut down immediately, immediately letting Davies see into the white colored room that he had spent most of thest week working in.


    There were only two differences that he noticed from thest time he was in the room and now, namely the presence of an all ck wearing person and a USB drive that was plugged into the USB port of the supeputer that was ced in the middle of the room.


    The intruder was visibly surprised by Davies''s arrival, even though his expression was hidden under the ck mask that was on his face.


    No one should have known he was here, but from the way Davies hade charging in and disabling the security systems as he came in, it was obvious that he knew that something was going on


    ''Where had he slipped up?'' he wondered as he looked through his ns and his arrival, but couldn''t find what he had done wrong.


    He had note in through the entrance, and had made sure that he hadn''t triggered any rms as he went into the room.


    He was also sure that there wasn''t even a security camera on the floor which could disy his movements.


    Though, he had found it weird that there were no security cameras on this floor as the security here was very high, he hadn''t bothered with that fact and had even been thankful to whoever had created this ce without security cameras, as they had made his breaking in, easier.


    Try as he could he couldn''t find what had given him away, but that was when Davies''s voice broke him out of his reverie.


    "How did you get in here?" Davies asked with a questioning tone, while only taking a few steps toward the ck clothed intruder.


    "Why should I tell you?" The ck clothed man said while drawing out a dagger from behind him and holding it in front of him in a defensive posture, but not moving from the spot.


    "Ok then, allow me to guess," Davies continued speaking like he wasn''t bothered with the fact that the ck clothed man had brought out a weapon but not attacking, making it very obvious that he was stalling for time rather than trying to fight.


    "Hmm, no broken windows or even anything broken, for that matter, yet you somehow managed to break into a ce as secure as this without triggering a single rm," Davies began, his eyes ncing around at the whole room and confirming everything that just came out of his mouth.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "There are only two ways I can see that happening," he continued, not oblivious to the growing difort of the intruder, who was wondering why he had chosen to speak instead of doing the more important thing that was stopping him from stealing his technology, but even though he was thinking all of that he still listened with rapt attention to Davies''s words.


    "Either you''re the best thief or assassin in the world and was somehow able to bypass all the security systems and get in here to steal my technology, or you were able to get in here magically without touching anything," he said keeping an eye on the masked intruder to watch for any strange movements and as he expected, the ck clothed intruder had flinched when he mentioned getting into the room without touching anything.


    After noting that, he continued, "seeing how unimpressive you look, I think it''s thetter,"


    "You probably have a blessing that makes you intangible and with it you were able to get in here without rming anybody... But me," he finished with a smile finally appearing on his face, and making it seem like he was in control of the whole situation.


    ''So, this is the rumored genius, Davies Lake... He''s much scarier than I thought,'' the ck masked intruder thought, his back now drenched with sweat after hearing Davies''s appraisal of his abilities which were somehow correct without ever even seeing his abilities, but just making a guess based off of his intuition and the current situation, as well as the situation of the environment.


    ''Step 1, shake up your enemy''s mind before beginning the battle,plete,'' he thought after seeing the unease at which the man stood and awkwardly held his dagger.


    His movements now looked unsure, as if he wasn''t sure whether to finish what he was here for, or to run away before Davies could easilye up with a way to make him unable to escape, even though it would be obvious with a bit of thinking that even Davies Lake couldn''t grab onto intangible things.


    Unfortunately, his mind was now a bit jumbled up from his abilities being discovered this quickly and his instincts were screaming at him to get away from Davies, who though, was standing there with a rxed posture and look, was emitting an aura of danger that the intruder''s fragile mind couldn''t keep up with.


    He was just a small time thief who had always been able to get in and out of wherever he targeted without ever alerting the owners or even their rms, and had just recently taken on a big job to stealpany secrets from Imperium Technologies because the payout of the job was enough to let him retire and leave the rest of his life infort of good food and beauties.


    He wasn''t even good at fighting and had only managed to survive this long because he never got caught, but here he was now, a deer in headlights of the biggest predator he had ever provoked in his life.


    If not for his experience, he would have already pissed himself and ran away, but the knowledge that his employers wouldn''t let him go if he came back with nothing kept his feet still ced on the ground, albeit unsteadily.


    ''Step 2...'' Davies thought, blowing out white mist from his mouth as he took a deep breath, ''unexpected attack!!!''


    Davies immediately threw out an ice dart that he had formed in a few milliseconds with pinpoint uracy at the sh that was connected to the USB port of the superputer.


    Just because he had not acted rmed or troubled by the fact that his technology was being stolen didn''t mean that he didn''t care about the matter.


    Rather he had put up the facade that he was not even slightly troubled by his technology being stolen, to mess with the mind of the ck clothed technology thief.


    There was no way that  Davies would allow his technology to be stolen, especially since it was pertaining his trump card.


    Normally, he would not be worried about his technology being stolen as he had always made sure to put many measures in ce to avoid a situation like the present, but during the time that he had been working at the 139th floor this week, he had only erased everything about his work after sending it to his satellite, and he usually did that when he was about to leave thepany, but he hadn''t done that yet today, so his immediate priority was to stop the stealing of his information.


    That was also the reason why he had targeted the USB drive that was being used to steal his technology rather than the intruder himself, especially after he had discovered that said intruder was able to make himself intangible.


    Unfortunately, it seemed thatdy luck was currently siding with the ck clothed intruder as he was somehow able to grab and remove the USB drive before the ice dart that Davies had thrown could reach it''s target, though not without cost.


    ''Shit,'' Davies thought with a wry smile.

 Chapter 116 CHAPTER 116: INTANGIBLE INTRUDER

    ?


    "Shit," Davies said with a wry smile after witnessing the intruder somehow managing to remove the USB drive from the USB port and preventing it from being destroyed by the ice dart, but because he was trying to get to the USB drive and grab it in time, it seemed he hadn''t used his intangibility ability as he had wanted to guard the USB drive and thus had gotten injured.


    *Drip* *Drip*


    Blood dripped off of the now injured masked intruder''s hand, but even then he still gripped tightly to the drive and did not let it go while he jumped backward away from Davies, trying to open up space between them, but Davies wasn''t nning to let him go.


    At first, Davies had wondered why the intruder hadn''t used his intangibility ability immediately after he grabbed the drive as there should have been enough time for him to activate his ability and dodge the ice dart, but he didn''t... or maybe he couldn''t?


    The first thought that came to Davies''s mind was that he couldn''t make objects intangible along with him, but immediately after, the thought disappeared from his mind as if that was the case, the intruder wouldn''t be wearing clothes, would he?


    Thus, it meant, that there was obviously some sort of limitations on his powers.


    As for what those limitations were. Davies was aiming to find out as he knew that doing so would be pivotal to take care of the current situation as he was not naive enough to think that he had the situation under control just because he had managed to injure him first.


    To that point, Davies used his mana to conjure five ice spears and sent them all at the ck-clothed intruder while making sure that one of the spears was headed for the fist that held on tightly to the USB drive. The ck-clothed intruder quickly put the drive into the pouch that was held on his waist just as the ice spears closed in on his location, but unlike thest attack that had injured him, the ice spears that had been shot at him by Davies this time had harmlessly phased through him and had gone on to hit the white walls behind him.


    Davies''s right eyebrow raised in response after finally seeing the intruder''s phasing ability for the first time. It was actually a very impressive and interesting ability with so many possibilities, unfortunately, Davies wasn''t looking to help an enemy to develop their abilities, rather he was thinking about the quickest way to kill the intruder before he became an even greater threat.


    Davies quickly conjured another row of ice spears, but there were a lot morepared to what he had previously shot at the intruder. They were sent flying at the intruder who just phased harmlessly through it again, but that didn''t stop Davies from conjuring more ice spears and sending it in the same direction.


    Just because his attacks were currently ineffective didn''t mean that Davies would not bother to attack him all, rather he attacked even more ferociously, trying to find a limit to the intangibility ability. He continuously shot ice projectiles, trying to overwhelm the ck-clothed technology thief, but no matter what he sent at him, it just went harmlessly through.


    After attacking fiercely, but ineffectively for almost five minutes, Davies was able to note that there was no need for an interval in the periods when the intruder went intangible. He seemed to be able to stay intangible as long as he had mana to fuel his ability, but as for how long that was, he still didn''t know.


    At this point, it almost seemed like a hopeless endeavor to keep attacking him in hopes that one of his attacks would hit, but Davies wasn''t nning to let him go and he kept attacking by sending even more ice spears at the tech thief, he even began to use ice explosion for added damage even though it was all seemingly ineffective, yet he continued what he was doing, an idea brewing in his mind.


    The intruder had gained a bit of confidence after seeing that Davies''s attacks were unable to touch him and he had even stopped actively trying to escape and was just phasing through Davies''s attacks almost as if he was enjoying ying around.


    After a few more rounds of ice spears and ice explosions, Davies finally stopped attacking and just stood there staring at the intruder.


    "Haha, have you seen the futility of your actions,"


    "Neither you, your security, nor your attacks can touch me¡­."


    "I am invincible," the ck-masked intruderughed out loudly in pride at his own abilities,pletely forgetting what he hade here for in the first ce.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Davies on the other hand was listening to what the masked thief had to say, but rather was thinking up a n in his head. From what he had seen earlier, he was not able to tell if the intangibility that had been shown off by the masked thief earlier was the extent of his powers or if he was holding back to avoid the repercussions that came withplete intangibility¡­ that is, if he had the ability to do so in the first ce.


    Complete intangibility like the name suggests is the ability to pass through anything, be it light, sound, or air. This meant that if a person waspletely intangible, then the person wouldn''t be able to see things because sight came as a result of light rays entering into the eye, and neither would the person be able to hear anything.


    The person wouldn''t even be able to breathe because the air wouldn''t enter his lungs, but it was obvious that the masked thief in front of him wasn''t suffering any of those symptoms, which was to say, the masked intruder wasn''tpletely intangible, but only intangible to physical objects, hence why he was able to see, hear, and breathe.


    ''If that is the case, then this could work,'' Davies thought about a n he hade up with earlier as he thought about this.


    Since the intangible bastard was only intangible to physical objects, then what if he hit him with something that wasn''t physical¡­ like mana.


    "Mana zone," Davies murmured as he began to umte mana at an extreme pace until he had gathered a ser ball-sized amount of mana that was so concentrated, it looked to be in a liquid form.


    "O-Oi, d-did you just say mana zone?" the masked intruder stammered out after hearing Davies''s words, the fear-filled expression under his mask that had disappeared, appearing once again as Davies''s words were worthy of inducing such fear.


    The mana zone stage of power, or the fourth stage of power for a Mega, wasn''t something that could be achieved by just anyone, and even the ones that have achieved such power, did so in theter stages of their lives. So far, the youngest known person to have achieved the fourth stage did so at the age of thirty-four, but here was Davies who had achieved that same stage of power at just twenty-two years of age.


    His doing so at such a young age meant that there was a very high chance of him achieving an even higher stage.


    Just the thought of offending such a future powerhouse sent shivers through his mind and he was beginning to doubt whether his brain had been inside of his head when he had dared to ept this job.


    The general public didn''t know much about the power stage that came after the fourth stage, but he knew, as he had to learn such information so he could stay alive in his line of business.


    The power that the people who had achieved this stage,manded was not something just anyone could hope to achieve.


    Even the heads of the four great families would have to bow if they met such a figure as they were just in the fourth stage and the gap between the fourth and fifth stages wasn''t something to take lightly.


    Before the ck-masked thief could ponder more about how stupid he had been to take on such a job, Davies quickly changed the shape of the liquid-like mana from a spherical shape into a sword-like shape, grabbed the hilt of the liquid mana sword and shot off at high speed toward the ck-masked thief.


    The ck-masked thief saw the attack and tried to move back in time to dodge as for some reason he felt a very great dangering off the liquid mana sword that was shing down at him. Unfortunately for him, his agility wasn''t one of his best traits and he wasn''t able to get away in time, so he tried to phase through the attack, but unlike what he was expecting, the liquid mana sword didn''t phase through his body, but instead cut into his arm, shing the arm off.


    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Please vote powerstones and golden tickets... I wouldn''t mind a few gifts as well...

 Chapter 117 CHAPTER 117: END OF AN ESCAPADE

    ?


    Davies shot himself off at a high speed towards the ck-masked thief while brandishing a sword made of icy liquid mana, while the ck-masked thief was doing his best to avoid Davies''s shing attack of icy liquid mana as he felt a sense of dangering from the attack, but in the end, he couldn''t get out of the way of the attack so he decided to phase through it, but that was when it all went wrong¡­ for the ck-masked thief, that is.


    Instead of phasing through the attack like he was expecting, the icy liquid mana cut into his body instead of phasing through it and ended up cutting off his left arm. A thinyer of ice also began to spread over his body from wherever the icy mana hade in contact with as it cut through him.


    The force of the attack sent the ck-mask thief flying until he crashed with his back into the wall and fell to the floor, retching up blood due to the force. His right hand went towards where his left arm used to be, but only grabbed onto his now cleanly severed shoulder and he gritted his teeth in pain as hey with his back against the wall, the energy to get back up seemingly knocked out of him.


    ''So that works,'' Davies thought while releasing up a pent-up breath that even he didn''t know he was holding onto. He looked at the icy liquid-like mana-shaped sword that he held in his hand. The concentrated mana had not actually taken a physical form but was simply mana that was very pure and concentrated enough that it could now be seen.


    But even though it could now be seen, that didn''t change the fact that it was still not a physical object. It could be exined in the same way that when a whirlwind happens and the wind could be seen moving around in a whirl, or when the heat that was present in the atmosphere was high enough that it caused the air to shimmer, thereby seemingly having a physical presence when it was still, in fact, not tangible.


    "Not so invincible now, are you?" Davies taunted, a great weight having been lifted off his chest as he finally had a way to deal with a problem that had proven itself to be very annoying since he couldn''t touch it¡­ it was intangible, so to speak.


    "*Cough!!!*" The ck mask on the ck-masked thief''s face was now stained with the red blood that he had coughed up. Other parts of his body were also stained red from the blood flowing from his injuries, but despite that, he propped himself up with his back against the wall to keep himself upright.


    "I really under- *Cough! * underestimated you before," he struggled to speak, it seemed his internal organs had been damaged from the force a which he had been thrown into the wall.


    "I''ll make sure not to do that next time," he barely managed to say out loud.


    If it was anybody else in Davies''s shoes right now, they would have wondered, "What is blud talkin about? Dude can''t even move yet he''s talking about next time like he had already escaped,", but Davies immediately acted as soon as he heard those words as they were words someone who still had a card, they hadn''t yed yet would say¡­ and in most cases, that card was usually a trump card.


    He shot off at an even faster speed than before and in a second, he was already in range of the intruder and his liquid mana sword was sweeping through the air towards the intruder''s neck.


    *SWOOOSH*


    The liquid mana sword cut through the air and into the neck and then went all the way through, but Davies immediately felt that something was wrong. Unlike the feeling that he had gotten from the liquid mana sword when he had cut off the arm of the intruder, he didn''t feel anything when the mana sword passed through the neck of the intruder and that could only mean one thing¡­ the attack had somehow been phased through.


    "Huh!?" Davies''s eyes widened in surprise when he realized that the liquid mana sword that was able to touch him even when he was intangible to physical objects had be ineffective as well.


    Before he could even think what to do next, he realized that the ck intruder was already sinking into the floor as if the floor was naught but an illusion. Davies quickly used the icy liquid-like mana to coat his hands and he quickly tried to grab the intruder to prevent him from getting away, but his hands that were coated in icy liquid mana still phased harmlessly through the intruder, not managing to grab anything that was on his person, not even his clothes.


    Since Davies wasn''t able to touch him, the intruder phased through the floor undeterred until he disappeared from a now livid Davies.


    "Fuck!" Davies mmed a fist into the ground, causing a web of cracks due to the damage from his fist to appear on the floor.


    He quickly brought out his phone and called Danie''s number. It was not likely that he would be able to find and capture the intruder anymore, but that wouldn''t stop him from searching for him.


    "Hell-"


    "A rat snuck in and stole some of my tech, find him," Davies began immediately, not even letting her speak.


    "Are you alright?" Danie asked immediately as she knew how strong Davies was and also knew that he wasn''t going to wait around while someone stole his work, so for someone to be able to steal and even get away from him, the person had to be strong enough to be able to do so.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "I''m fine, just get your people to keep a lookout for any suspicious movements or activities on the ground floor," Davies instructed as he knew that with the injuries he had managed to inflict on the intruder, it wasn''t going to be easy for him to get away¡­ unless if he had some other means of getting away without being seen.


    "Ok," Danie acknowledged his orders.


    "... Also, he can turn intangible," Davies said after a slight pause, giving her information on the intruder, lest she be caught off guard by his abilities if they ever found him.


    "Hmmm!" On Danie''s side of the phone, she nodded her head in shock and realization. It was no wonder the intruder was able to get away from Davies.


    Davies hung up the phone and went to the supeputer and started typing inmands rapidly, trying to find out what the intruder had been able to steal away. His anger and unease red up even more when he realized that it was a part of the project that was meant to be his trump card that had been stolen, but after a few checks, he realized that what the little that the intruder had managed to steal wasn''t an important part of the project, but barely some information about some of the things that the project could be used for.


    They weren''t even able to get a single prototype of the things he actually considered important, so with that, his unease was reduced, but he was still livid at the fact that someone had actually dared to try to steal his technology.


    He would have to look into this as well, but he didn''t think anyone below the level of the four great families would dare to do something like this, but he needed more information about this issue before he could get back at whichever bastard thought it was a good idea to steal his things.


    He began to look into other things on the supeputer pertaining the project while waiting for a report from Danie about the intruder.


    ***ck-Masked Intruder POV***


    He had finally been away to get away from the monster known as Davies Lake, by using his trump card skill, "Perfect Intangibility". The skill made him intangible to everything, both physical and non-physical. In this state, he couldn''t see, hear, smell, or even breathe, hence he didn''t like using the skill very often¡­ the fact that it also used a shit ton of mana helped with that decision.


    Luckily the way the skill worked was that it used everything that his mana was in contact with to be intangible as well, otherwise, he wouldn''t be able to escape with his clothes, let alone the USB drive that he had lost so much to acquire whatever that was inside of it.


    After a while of using perfect intangibility, he deactivated it only to realize that he was just about to reach the ground floor, he quickly gathered himself and used hisst bits of energy to stabilize himself andnd well, doing his best to not damage anything else in his body.


    Somehow, he was able to gather enough energy tond well, and now all that remained was for him to get away from the building without being seen, but luckily, he had a way to deal with that, especially after he found out that there were groups of men in all ck clothing moving around the building to secure the area.


    He brought out a strip of paper with weird engravings on it and began to inject his mana to activate it. The weird strip of paper with engravings was a random low-level escape charm that could make one teleport to a random location within a ten-mile radius of where it was used.


    Even though it had the words low level in its name, the escape charm wasn''t a tool that just anyone could get and even he, a master thief only managed to steal one from one of his previous targets.


    The engravings on the charm had begun to glow due to the mana that had been inputted into it and with a bright sh, a white light covered him, and he disappeared from his location.


    *PUCHI*


    The sickening sound of flesh being pierced was the first sound the ck-masked intruder heard after he was teleported, immediately after a sharp pain could be felt in his chest.


    His sight fell down to see a sharp de stuck into his chest which was the cause of the pain he was feeling, his eyes ran along the sword to the arm that held it and then onto the face of whoever held the de.


    The surprised look of a young Asian man who currently had his sword struck into his heart was what came into view before everything began to fade to ck as his life slipped away from him and he dropped to the floor, dead.

 Chapter 118 CHAPTER 118: A PROTAGONISTS LUCK

    ?


    The young Asian man who owned the sword that had been run through the ck-masked thief was Lee Jung. He had been at the current location due to a sudden mission from his system.


    [Intercept the Ghost thief at the highlighted location]


    [Reward: ???]


    That was what his system had said, and his system map had opened up with a location marked on it and a timer that was counting down. Lee Jung didn''t know what or who the ghost thief was, but as a simp for the system, he hurried over to the location that had been marked down on the map, but upon reaching there he didn''t find anything strange.


    He looked at the map to confirm that he was at the right location, and after confirming that he was at the right ce he took out a sword from his system''s inventory and began to look around, but even then he couldn''t find anything noteworthy or anything that indicated the presence of the Ghost thief, whoever he was.


    Suddenly, his eyes began glowing before they changed their colors. Each of his eyes was now a mix of white and ck color and they slightly glowed as Lee Jung looked around.


    Lee Jung''s eyes beginning to glow and then changing color was a result of him activating a blessing that he had gotten from the system as a reward a little while back.


    The name of the blessing was "Eyes of a Sage", an S-ranked blessing.


    Due to the blessing''s high rank, it was very strong, but since Lee Jung had just gotten the blessing a few days ago, all he could do with it was to see things that couldn''t be seen with normal human vision.


    With the blessing activated, Lee Jung had noticed a gathering of mana and he had walked to the ce where the mana was gathering and for some weird reason, decided to thrust his sword through the gathering mana.


    No sooner than he had done that when suddenly a ck masked man with severe injuries appeared where the mana had been gathering and by ''coincidence'' Lee Jung thrust his sword into the gathering mana at that exact same moment.


    The sword ended up going through the chest of the ck-masked man and running through his heart, injuring him fatally. The man dropped dead to the floor a few seconds after, leaving apletely stunned Lee Jung who had just unexpectedly killed a man.


    Before the fact that he had just killed a man could set into his mind, a ding from his system sounded into his ear,


    [Mission Complete!]


    [Check the Ghost thief''s body for the rewards]


    The mental aggrievance that was about to attack Lee Jung immediately dispelled in the face of the greed that awoke in him and he immediately began to rummage through the dead man''s belongings for anything valuable, but all he found was a pack of condoms, a dagger, and a USB drive.


    The system rang again as he held those things in his hands,


    [Rewards: USB drive and a pack of condoms]


    Lee Jung was left stunned as he didn''t expect his rewards to be something so worthless, but his mind told him that the system wouldn''t give him something worthless, so he first put the pack of condoms into his inventory as he would be needing themter and the system had saved him the trouble of going to a pharmacy and having to deal with the awkward situation that came with the asion.


    He also threw the dagger somewhere behind him and focused on the only thing that seemed important among the rewards,


    "System, what is inside the USB drive?" he asked his system.


    [Fragments of Magical Runic Technology] the system answered.


    Lee Jung was confused at the answer that his system gave him, so he asked another question, "What is Magical Runic Technology?"


    [Magical Runic Technology is a method of turning mana into words and inscribing them to enhance or empower anything. It is a new path of mana usage that has not been discovered yet] the system exined in its mechanical emotionless voice.


    Such a piece of information excited Lee Jung and his mind became excited when he thought of the possibilities that were possible with such a technology, his mind subconsciously ignoring the fact that the system had said it had not been discovered yet which was obviously a lie since if it was something that had not been discovered by anyone, it could not be present before him.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "How can I use it?" Lee Jung asked the system excitedly.


    [You can''t]


    [The USB drive only has fragments of the technology and cannot be used] The system poured cold water on Lee Jung''s excitement with its cold mechanical voice.


    "Then I''ll just buy the knowledge from the system," Lee Jung said to himself, not letting his excitement be dampened by the system as he felt he had another way to use the technology.


    "Buy Magical Runic Technology," he ordered the system.


    [Magical Runic Technology Knowledge(Rank:Ex)]


    [Error¡­ skill unattainable] The system rang.


    At this point Lee Jung was about to lose it, "Why will you tell me about something I can''t use!" he shouted at the system in annoyance as he felt that the system was ying with him.


    After raging internally for a while, he finally remembered that he had gotten the USB drive from the Ghost thief who was now lying dead behind him. Lee Jung looked at the body of the Ghost thief with pity as now that the man was dead, there was no way to get any information about where he had gotten the USB drive from.


    ''Such a shame," He thought as he was about to turn and leave the location when he noticed a blinking blue light around where the ears of the man should be.


    He quickly bent and began to unravel the mask around the Ghost thief''s head only to discover that it was a wireless earpiece that had been attached to the man''s ear, but since it had been covered by his mask and hair, he hadn''t discovered when he searched his body for valuables earlier.


    Lee Jung took out the earpiece that was blinking and vibrating as if it was trying to notify it''s user of a call, only its user was dead, so its efforts were doomed to be a waste¡­ at least until Lee Jung found it. Luckily, he knew how to operate it since he also had one, so he put the earpiece to his ear and double-tapped it to answer the iing call,


    *"¡­ Is the missionplete?"* a rough-sounding voice rang into Lee Jung''s ear.


    "What mission?" Lee Jung asked back, not even making the slightest effort to disguise his voice, but whether he was doing so purposefully, or he had simply forgotten to do so, no one knew.


    *"Of course, it''s the mission to steal technology from Imperium Technologies, you don''t have any other task at the mome-¡­ Wait, who is this?"* the other voice was already answering Lee Jung''s question when he noticed something strange about the person he was speaking with.


    Lee Jung''s eyes widened in surprise after hearing the wordsing from the other side of the call. It turned out that the USB drive had been stolen from Imperium Technologies so that obviously meant that the rest of the Magical Runic Technology was back at Imperium Technologies.


    Now that he had found out this important piece of information, all that remained was for him to find a way to get it, but before that,


    "Me?" he asked with a scornful voice.


    "You don''t need to know who I am¡­ all you need to know is, your friend is dead, and you''re next,"


    "Enemies of my young master don''t have a good end," he said mysteriously, trying to put the me on the owner of Imperium Technologies who happened to be his enemy, Davies Lake.


    Quickly after, he took out the earpiece from his ear, threw it to the ground, and smashed it under his foot. After doing that he quickly left the location and headed away, thinking of the best way to be able to st¡­ ahem, take the Magical Runic Technology.


    He also thought of the look that Davies would have on his face after he took the Magical Runic Technology from him and ruined it, he smiled foolishly as he thought of this, not realizing the opposition he''d have to face if he was to make such a thinge true¡­ not to mention that Davies wasn''t going to be looking like an idiot as he tried to do the things he had in mind, but well, a man can dream¡­ even if the dream wasn''t going toe to pass.


    Shortly after Lee Jung left the location, some men in ck suits arrived at the location following arge amount of mana they had sensed and found the Ghost thief dead on the floor. They immediately called it into Danie, who also told Davies and he quickly made his way over to the location as quickly as possible.

 Chapter 119 CHAPTER 119: CAUSE OF DEATH: PROTAGONIST OPPORTUNITY

    ?


    Davies arrived along with Danie shortly after she told him about the discovery of the Ghost thief''s body.


    Waiting on the scene was a squad of men in ck suits waiting patiently for their arrival. The men in ck suits and white shirts were members of the Men in ck organization that Davies hadmissioned for a "pest removal" operation a while ago.


    Danie had seen fit tomission them for a long-term operation to help her in her duties with managing Davies''s security details, and since Davies didn''t mind it as he figured that she''d need a bit of help on more basic tasks so he could have her focus on more important things. To this end he had given her free reign on hiring more people she would need for anything that she didn''t want to have to do herself.


    The Men in ck showed him the body of the ghost thief, which wasying on the floor, now with a hole in his chest as well as having his face uncovered.


    Davies finally saw the face of the man who had dared to try to steal his technology from right under his nose, but he did not try to remember it as he had other important things on his mind.


    "Please tell me you at least found the drive?" he asked with a sigh, but he didn''t have high expectations of a positive answer as it was obvious from the condition of the ghost thief that he had been killed and ransacked of whatever properties he may have had.


    "Negative sir, he seemed to have been ransacked clean," Just as he had been expecting the answer he received from the Men in ck was a negative one.


    "All we found in the area was this dagger and the remains of what seemed to be a wireless earpiece," the man currently speaking said as he held up a dagger with its handle wrapped in a white handkerchief to Davies.


    Davies collected the dagger and inspected it and sure enough, it was the dagger that the ghost thief had held up when he had been discovered by Davies himself when he had just arrived at the 139th floor.


    "So, he probably arrived at this ce and was killed," Davies murmured to himself, looking at the injury on the chest of the ghost thief.


    "But how?" he was finding it hard to believe that someone who was intangible to physical objects and even nonphysical objects, someone who had managed to escape from even him when he was in a very injured state was simply killed with a sword stabbed into his chest.


    "Either he was killed by someone he knows and trusts to never attack him, or it happened so suddenly that he wasn''t expecting it and wasn''t able to activate his ability in time¡­" he murmured with his hand on his chin, disying a thoughtful look.


    "... or was the killer so strong that, his death was inevitable?" he thought with a disbelieving look appearing on his face, but he just as quickly dismissed the idea as he didn''t think that something like that was possible.


    For one, if the killer was that strong, then he would have stolen the technology himself without needing to y tricks, and if the killer was unrted to the issue, then he wouldn''t have disappeared so quickly.


    Also, someone as strong wouldn''t be so jobless as to go around just killing people without reason, right?¡­


    [Can''t tell, you of all people should know that there are too many weird people with weird habits in this world] Miya put forth her thoughts, but even she didn''t think that it was the third option.


    [So that only leaves him being killed by someone he knows or an unexpected idental death] she continued.


    ''Wait¡­e again?'' Davies immediately asked as some of her words had struck a chord in his head and now his brain was turning rapidly.


    [Him being killed by someone he knows?] Miya asked if this was what he meant,


    ''No, after that,'' Davies rified.


    [An unexpected idental death?] Miya asked again, unsure about what he meant <novelsnext></novelsnext>


    ''Exactly,'' it finally clicked in his mind who those words were usually used for.


    If you''re thinking of a protagonist''s opportunities, then you''re thinking in the same direction as Davies was. He immediately called out to Daniel, "What are the whereabouts of the kid I asked you to keep an eye on?"


    "Let me check," Danie quickly answered and took out a phone to call the people she had watching Lee Jung''s movements. Soon after she was telling Davies about how they were able to keep Lee Jung in their sights for most of the day, but suddenly lost his trail just about an hour ago.


    At this point, Davies was able to confirm that it was just as he had thought. An unexpected idental death had befallen, but to the fated protagonist Lee Jung, it was an unexpected idental opportunity that had befallen him.


    He didn''t know whether tough or to be angry at this kind of urrence. It seemed that fate was taking him to be some sort of free EXP giver for Lee Jung.


    The sheer absurdity of the situation only served to infuriate him, someone had broken into hispany and tried to steal something he had been working on for years, right under his nose. He had prevented aplete loss, but somehow, the person was able to escape from him only to die a dog''s death at the hands of the protagonist, handing over information that he had no right toe in contact with, for free.


    The audacity of fate to take him as some sort of newbie pack that would be handed over to the protagonist to be ughtered and to hand over years of his hard work, perseverance, and sleepless nights.


    He began to chuckle, but soon he had to cover his mouth to stop himself from letting out madughter. Previously, he only disliked Lee Jung because he was a fated protagonist and did not actually hate him as he had never actually done anything to him, but now, he hated him.


    He was going to make sure he fucked him over so bad that fate herself would feel the sting because he hated being made to feel like everything he had suffered and gone through, as well as everything he was as a person, was inconsequential, and that was exactly what he was feeling right now.


    And for that, fate could be congratted for triggering an enemy that wouldn''t stop until he hunted down every agent of hers.


    Davies swallowed hisughter, took another look at the ghost thief, and began to leave the scene as he no longer felt the need to be there, but just before he left, he left an order behind for the Men in ck.


    "Run his face through every scan you have and figure out his identity," he ordered, obviously talking about the now-dead ghost thief. Just because the ghost thief had not managed to steal much information from him, or because he was now dead didn''t mean that Davies wasn''t going to look into him.


    The bastard had actually dared to try to steal technology from him in the first ce and he was obviously acting on someone''s orders. Davies nned to find those bastards and show them what it meant to poke at a dragon''s treasure horde. He was going to show the wrath of an angry dragon¡­ their family and loved ones would feel it together with them as well.


    He was a magnanimous person, so he wouldn''t send a man to the afterlife without having his family apany him.


    Lee Jung would also get what wasing to him in due time, he wouldn''t be left out even if he had no ns of stealing from Davies in the first ce, but Davies was sure that with the greed that was to be found in every fate-fed protagonist, he would be having intentions at the rest the technology that was in the drive.


    The Magical Runic Technology was just that valuable, otherwise, it wouldn''t take him this long to develop it even when he had the most genius mind in the whole world of Leivandage when it came to magical technology.


    As for whether Lee Jung would know if it was valuable, Davies had thought of it and found such a situation to be inevitable, otherwise, it wouldn''t have ever fallen into his hands in the first ce.


    It was a well-knownw of fated characters that if even the inkling of an opportunity came close to the character, then it was meant for him, and he would be taking every single bit of it¡­ alone.


    But Davies didn''t care about such a rule orw, as for him such aw could as well go to hell. He was not letting Lee Jung''s greasy palms get anywhere near his technology. He''d break each and every one of his finger''s bones if he even so much as dared to reach for what he shouldn''t.

 Chapter 120 CHAPTER 120: DIAMONDS IN THE ROUGH

    ?


    Davies got into the backseat of the Ventley Contaverse that he had arrived at the scene with and Danie got into the driver''s seat, started the car, and began to drive.


    Now that the excitement was over, Davies finally had time to think about a particrly important issue, which was why they had even tried to steal his technology in the first ce.


    He didn''t know who had given the ghost thief the order to try to steal his technology, but why was the first ever attempt to steal his technology done now?


    Why wasn''t it done before now, when he wasn''t even in Yorkshire?


    He had expected to be watched because his resources were being moved as he had always known that there was no way something like that would go unnoticed, but he hadn''t expected to be robbed.


    The whole situation was weird, and he had a feeling that he was missing something... Something very important, but he couldn''t for the life of him think what it was.


    Since he didn''t know what was giving him a bad feeling, all he could do was to stay cautious and be prepared for whatever situation that coulde his way, but he''d focus on that on another day, for now, he had an asion... of sorts.


    A few days earlier, Fiona had called him to ask how he was doing since the ident... And the shooting, and he had replied to her that he was doing perfectly fine, which of course, was a lie, but she wouldn''t be finding out, and he had no interest in telling her that he had been poisoned and was almost crippled in an arm, especially since he didn''t trust her, but he didn''t trust anyone so we wouldn''t be getting into that issue today.


    Fiona had invited him to a birthday celebration for her father, the current head of the Lecroy family.


    At first, Davies had wanted to refuse as he saw no reason to go to a boring party filled with stuck-up people who were smiling on the outside but looked to devour each other whole on the inside.


    Davies had always hated hypocrisy and this uing ''celebration'' seemed like it was going to be full of it.


    He was about to reject her invitation when it suddenly urred to him that Lee Jung may be at this celebration, and it was the perfect opportunity to make him lose even more fate points, and also steal his opportunities at the party, as Davies could be absolutely sure that there were always opportunities for the protagonist wherever he went and the party seemed like it could be a hotspot filled with opportunities for the protagonist as it would be filled with rich and powerful people who could help the protagonist in whatever he wanted to do.


    That is to say that the party would be filled with futureckeys of the protagonist and maybe even some future harem members.


    It would be a shame if he let Lee Jung have all of that just because he didn''t want to go to a party filled with hypocritical people, so he would have to suck it up, put on the big boy pants, and go wreck a protagonist.


    That was in the past though, as after what Davies had experienced earlier today, he was raring to go after Lee Jung at the slightest opportunity, but before that, he had to go with Fiona to go pick a gift for her father.


    It all started when Davies had finally agreed to go to the party and had asked what he should get for her father as a gift, but it turned out that even Fiona hadn''t thought about what to get her father for his birthday, so she had asked him to go with her to get a gift for her old man.


    Davies had no reason to refuse as he didn''t mind thepany of a beautiful woman, not to mention that he had to make sure that she stayed away from Lee Jung and with him instead.


    He had not had the time to deal with making her have the hots for him, so he wouldn''t reject the opportunity that had appeared on a tter of gold, so he had epted, and they had set a date and time for their meeting, which happened to be today and just an hour from the present time.


    Right now, Danie was taking him to where they had agreed to meet. Davies took a slight look at his clothes and nodded to himself as they had not been roughed up even though he had been in a battle earlier.


    Normally, it was easy for Davies to fight using mana and not even cause the slightest crease to appear on his clothes, but his opponents usually did not agree with his style of keeping himself presentable even during fights which were why his clothes usually ended up in a mess after a fight, but this time he had an opponent that was only avoiding his attacks the whole time so it was easy for him to stay clean and presentable during the battle.


    At least, now he didn''t have to change clothes and could go directly to meet with Fiona, which he was doing right now.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    After almost thirty minutes of driving, they arrived in front of an elegantly morous building that screamed luxury no matter what angle one looked at it from.


    The building which was called ''Diamonds In The Rough'', was the venue for Davies and Fiona''s meeting. It was a ce where rare-grade power stones could be found and bought.


    During the Great Cataclysm decades ago, many of the things that were normally present in the world changed because of the presence of mana.


    One of them was the appearance of power stones.


    Power stones are stones that somehow have mana present within them in a sizeable amount. There are grades of power stones depending on the amount of mana present within them.


    The grades of power stones are low grade, medium grade, high grade, rare grade, top grade, and starlight grade, in ascending order.


    Low-grade power stones were of course the lowest grade and were the mostmonly found while starlight-grade power stones were so rare that hardly anyone had seen them.


    Once upon a time, the only use of power stones for humans, was for them to be absorbed by Megas to try to increase their total mana capacity so they can be promoted to the next stage of power, but ever since the kid genius, Davies Lake discovered the way to use the power stones as a source of energy to power all sorts of things, the demand and worth of power stones had grown tremendously.


    Among the power stones were the rare grade power stones which had an additional use apart from being used as a source of power for both humans and machines.


    Rare-grade power stones, apart from having a high amount of mana present in them, also had a very high aesthetic value as they were quite a sight to behold, while some of them even had a specific type of mana in them, making their value rise even higher.


    Their values rose to the point that the rarest of the rare-grade power stones managed to reach the price of a top-grade power stone, which was a whole grade higher than the rare-grade mana stone because of the higher amount of mana it possessed.


    Coincidentally Fiona''s father had a particr liking for things with high aesthetic value, so Fiona had thought to get him an especially beautiful, rare grade power stone, and ''Diamonds In The Rough'' was well known for selling beautiful, rare grade power stones, hence why they were meeting here.


    Apart from the selling of rare-grade power stones, the diamond in the rough was also well known for its stone gambling.


    Since power stones were found inside of stones, stones with a possibility of having power stones were gathered and sold to people who wanted to try their luck at getting more than their money''s worth in power stones.


    Weirdly enough the mana from inside power stones could not be sensed unless it was exposed to air and even blessing users(Megas) weren''t able to see into or sense power stones without it being exposed, thus making the stone gambling cheat-proof, and preventing the ''Diamonds In The Rough'' organization from losing money to cheaters.


    With such a weird characteristic, stone gambling was just like its name sounded, in gambling on stones, and this was what had ensnared the wealthy.


    Since it all depended on luck, they could brag about having more luck than their wealthy opponents.


    Davies didn''t understand this particr mentality of rich people, and he didn''t care to understand, after all, he wasn''t here to bet on stones, but to buy a beautiful, rare-grade power stone.


    The idiotic act of gambling on stones can be left to people who had too much money to waste away.


    Finally, after waiting in the car for twenty minutes, a red Cerrari could be seen driving into the parking lot of the building.

 Chapter 121 CHAPTER 121: DIAMONDS IN THE ROUGH II

    ?


    Davies had waited in the parking lot of the borately morous building before a red Cerrari drove into the parking lot and parked in the free spot beside Davies''s Ventley Conraverse.


    A beautiful redhead stepped out of the car in a beautiful evening gown that didn''t hamper the movement of its wearer.


    "You''rete," Davies said to Fiona as he stepped out of his car to meet her.


    "No, you early," Fiona answered back as she was pretty sure that there were still at least ten minutes till the appointed time for their meeting.


    "I''m never early orte, the party only starts after I get there... so, you''rete, Davies countered, leaving Fiona stunned at his way of thinking, but then she realized that in a way, he was kinda right.


    Though there had been no previous record of Davies gracing any person''s asion with his presence, with the absurdly high level of clout and fame that came with his name, it was right to say that there were only a few people that dared to start an asion if he had been invited, but not yet present, lest it is taken as disrespectful, and no one wanted to be seen as disrespectful when it came to someone like Davies Lake.


    "Are youing or not?" Davies asked while looking back at Fiona who had stopped in ce after he spoke to her.


    ''Was what I said that shocking?'' he wondered to himself after she simply stopped in ce.


    "Maybe her brain short-circuited?" Danie who was standing beside him in her disguise as Daniel, his bodyguard and personal assistant, asked him with a pondering look on her face.


    Fiona who had been brought out of her thoughts by Davies''s words now had her face turning red because of what Danie had said, but she didn''t react violently as she had no idea who the handsome guy in a suit was to Davies and she''d rather not overstep her bounds.


    "May I have the pleasure of knowing who this handsome gentleman is?" She spoke eloquently, deciding to find out who Davies''spanion was.


    "Ah, sorry, I forgot to introduce you," Davies thought and slightly tapped his forehead.


    "This is Daniel... My literal right hand," he said with a littleugh,


    "I hope you don''t mind his presence, I go everywhere with Daniel," he continued, his words seeming to ask for her permission, but the tone of his voice sounded like he didn''t care what she thought, and in reality, he didn''t care much.


    Fiona nodded to his words with a smile, but inwardly she was thinking, ''What right hand isn''t there when his master gets shot?''


    If Davies knew what she was thinking, he would have told her that he had gone out alone that day because he had given Danie prior tasks, and he also wanted some time alone to think, hence why he was alone, but since he didn''t know her thoughts, he couldn''t correct her wrong impression of Daniel.


    Even if he knew that she had a wrong impression of Danie, he wouldn''t care, and neither would Danie. He was toozy to care and Danie simply wouldn''t care either, especially with her apathetic attitude which was very simr to his.


    She had taken after him in the temperament department.


    In the end, the three of them walked into the building together, Davies and Danie not saying another word as they listened to Fiona rambling on about what she knew about the establishment, ''Diamonds In The Rough'', but everything she said was things Davies and Danie already knew, they had done basic research of the ce beforeing here after all... Or Danie had done the research and told Davies her findings.


    As soon as they walked into the building, making it past the security checks, a beautiful female attendant walked towards them with a smile.


    Employees of big, luxury establishments like ''Diamonds In The Rough'' knew the faces of especially rich and powerful people, and it seemed that the attendant walking towards Davies''s group had recognized Fiona Lecroy, even though she didn''t know who the two handsome men apanying her were, but for them to be apanying her, they had to be worthy of her respect.


    "Hello, Miss Lecroy," the beautiful attendant began with a weing smile.


    "Are you here to look for some beautiful rare-grade power stones, or are you more tilted towards the excitement of the stone gambling zone?" The beautiful woman continued, saying all of that in a breath without a pause, showing her experience at her job.


    "We''re looking to buy your most beautiful, rare-grade power stones, none of that stone gambling shit," Davies quickly replied in the ce of Fiona as he was feeling slightly hurried.


    He wanted to see if there were ways to upgrade his security systems against other unwee visitors who were looking to borrow some of his technology without having any ns to return it, so he wasn''t looking to waste time on something as stupid as stone gambling.


    His reply came off as rude, but he didn''t care, and the attendant didn''t have the nerve to point that out to apanion of the young miss of the Lecroy family, though even if Fiona wasn''t there, she still wouldn''t point it out as Davies handsome face gave him handsome guy privileges with girls so he never had to care about how he spoke to them.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Fiona was also surprised at Davies''s words, but not because she thought he was rude, rather it was because he had said that they were looking to buy the most beautiful, rare-grade power stones.


    There was no way her ount would be able to take on the burden of buying such a thing even if she was the heir apparent to the Lecroy Family''s power and wealth.


    To understand her surprise, one needs to know the price range of power stones per grade.


    Low-grade power stones usually cost between ten thousand powerstone dors, to forty thousand powerstone dors.


    Medium-grade power stones usually cost from above a hundred thousand powerstone dors, to half a million powerstone dors.


    The lowest price for a rare grade power stone was at least a million powerstone dors, and the highest price of a rare grade power stone could reach a hundred million powerstone dors, depending on its size, rarity, and the type of mana present inside of it.


    Top-grade mana stones could be sold for a price between a hundred million powerstone dors, and five hundred million powerstone dors.


    As for starlight-grade power stones... They were hardly ever even found, and whenever they were found, they were either kept by the organization that managed to find it if they were powerful enough, otherwise, they would be auctioned off, and the starting bid of a starlight-grade power stone was at least a billion powerstone dors.


    What Davies had mentioned was the most beautiful, rare grade power stone that the ''Diamonds In The Rough'' would have, so we are looking at a rare grade power stone with a price of at least fifty million powerstone dors.


    There was no way she could afford to spend that kind of money even if she had it, and she didn''t even have it, but for Davies who wouldn''t blink even if he had to participate in a bidding war for a starlight grade power stone, and would probably win the bidding war, he didn''t even bother to think about the price for a mere rare grade power stone.


    ''How much could it cost anyway?'' This was Davies''s thoughts whenever he wanted to buy anything. He had never had to bother with something as mundane as thinking about his budget in this reincarnation.


    "So, that is what the esteemed guests are looking to buy!"


    "Please follow me to the top floor," the woman responded with perfect professionalism and turned to lead the way.


    "Well, what are you waiting for, go on," Davies had to prompt Fiona, who had slipped into deep thoughts once again.


    Davies''s voice finally made Fiona realize that there wouldn''t actually be a problem even if their objective today was to buy every single power stone in the building, after all, the wealth of Davies Lake epassed all of that.


    He could even buy the whole organization and not blink, and luckily he was the one who had followed her to buy the rare-grade power stone today.


    Fiona hastened her steps until she was walking almost shoulder to shoulder with the attendant who was leading them, leaving Davies and Danie behind as they wondered what was wrong with this girl that she kept falling into deep thoughts.


    ''Is something really wrong with her head?'' Danie wondered with a nce in her direction before she looked in Davies''s direction, wanting to ask the question out loud, but thinking it would be thought of as tactless by her master, she decided to keep quiet.


    What she didn''t know was that Davies had the same exact same question as she was floating around inside of his head, but he purposely did not mention it as he didn''t want to make a girl he was trying to woo, feel bad about his words as he knew that saying such a thing would be pushing the line.


    Even though he was especially handsome, a girl like Fiona had seen no shortage of handsome faces, even though not one of the faces she had seen was probably anywhere near as handsome as his.


    In the lead, the attendant looked at Fiona and asked after realizing that she still didn''t know what to address Davies with,


    ''Miss Lecroy, how do I address this young gentleman?'' she asked, referring to Davies


    "Davies Lake," Fiona answered without much thought, her mind still half covered with errant thoughts.


    It was why she had not bothered to think much of how her answer would cause a scene.


    Immediately a gasp could be heard from the attendant.

 Chapter 122 CHAPTER 122: TOP FLOOR

    ?


    As Fiona walked almost alongside the attendant, the attendant who had suddenly realized that she had no way to address thepanions of Miss Lecroy, asked Fiona,


    "Miss Lecroy, how do I address this young gentleman?" she asked, referring to Davies as he was the only one who had spoken.


    "Davies Lake," Fiona answered half-mindedly, her mind still having errant thoughts running through it.


    Because of the errant thoughts upying her head, she had not remembered to give any thought to how her answer would cause an explosive reaction from whoever heard it.


    Immediately after her words flew out of her mouth and fell onto the ears of the attendant, a loud gasp could be heard from her, and that immediately brought rity to Fiona''s mind about what she had just done.


    Fiona had never really bothered to ask, but she had noticed that Davies wasn''t interested in unting his name and identity around, and liked to stay considerably low-key, only revealing his identity when absolutely required of him, but she had in her state of thoughtlessness, inadvertently revealed Davies''s identity without asking for his permission.


    She could feel a re from behind her but didn''t dare to look behind her, afraid to face Davies who would probably be annoyed at her thoughtless actions, but Davies''s re from behind her had nothing to do with annoyance.


    To be more correct, it wasn''t even a re, Davies was enjoying the scenery of her shapely ass as she walked ahead of him and wasn''t even paying attention to what she had said to the attendant.


    Even if he knew what she had done, he wouldn''t even be the slightest bit annoyed as he would have revealed his identity anyway, as doing so usually resulted in quicker and better treatment in ces like these, and that was exactly what he was looking to get right now, he didn''t want to waste too much time in this ce after all.


    As Davies walked behind Fiona while admiring the scenery, he had to admit that, fate may be a bitch, but it knew how to pick the best babes for the protagonist. As he stared at her shapely ass that gyrated along with her movements, he discovered that he may have unlocked a new fetish, finding every single woman that fate had in ns for the protagonist and then sleeping with them.


    He said sleeping with them because he had no ns to go out of his way in bid to keep a huge harem and would not go out of his way to make them his women, but at the same time, he was not one to share women with anyone else, so if he ever got tired of any of the women and she had any ns to move on... well, let''s just say she will be moving on, to the next life, that is.


    Danie who could see many thoughts and expressions appearing and disappearing in Davies''s eyes, wondered what weird thoughts her master was thinking at the moment.


    The attendant who had just been shocked out of her mind at the fact that she was currently attending to the rumored "Once in a century genius of the human race," slightly peeked at Davies who was walking behind her and Fiona only to see him looking walking with an apathetic look on his face.


    Suddenly his pupils shifted and fell directly on her peeping eyes as she peeped at him discreetly. She quickly turned back to the front, not wanting to be seen as rude, but even after she turned, she still felt as if he was staring at her, and he was.


    Davies who had not heard what Fiona had said to the attendant, was wondering why the attendant was peeping at him so discreetly for with such a fiery look of respect and admiration in her eyes.


    He was more used to having looks of hunger, seduction, and suggestion from the opposite sex and even a few from the questionable members of his own sex, not looks of admiration and fervor, but in the end, he attributed it to character perk of the attendant, and simply turned his attention back to admiring the well-shaped beauties of nature that seemed to call to him with every step Fiona took.


    On their way to the top floor where the most beautiful, rare-grade power stones were kept; the initial attendant had disappeared after calling one of her fellow co-workers to take on the duty to escort Davies''s group to the rare-grade power stones.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Davies wondered why she had handed over her job to another co-worker but didn''t think much about it as he simply didn''t care. Fiona had an idea as to why the attendant had disappeared and handed over her job to someone else but didn''t mention it as she still didn''t know if Davies was angry or not, but she still felt his gaze almost burning fervently on her back.


    Soon, they entered an elevator and the attendant inputted the button to take them to the top floor, where the most expensive rare-grade power stones were disyed for buyers to admire and buy.


    They quickly reached the top floor thanks to the elevator and as soon as they stepped onto the floor, even Davies had to take his eyes off of Fiona''s ass.


    The rare-grade power stones were beautifully arranged inside well-ced ss cases that did nothing to hamper their beauty but rather made them shine even brighter even though their most important task was to protect the rare-grade power stones from shifty hands of people who couldn''t keep their fingers to themselves.


    They glimmered and glittered in all types of shapes and colors that enamored everyone in the room.


    ''Fate might be a bitch, but nature is beautiful,'' Davies didn''t have any words he could use to describe the beauty of the beautiful power stones. Looking at the beauty of the power stones made him understand what made women go crazy for jewelry and why men didn''t mind wearing them.


    ''Enough of that,'' he quickly shook himself awake after realizing that he had almost lost his consciousness to the beauty radiating from the power stones. He quickly refocused his mind on what he was here for, he had no time to waste getting lost in thoughts over a few beautiful objects.


    He would have dered that such a thing was for pussies, if he didn''t do it himself whenever he needed to rx his mind and focus on something that has entirely nothing to do with his chaotic life.


    As his eyes swept across the floor, he saw different types of beautiful power stones, all kept safely in their transparent ss casings. The ss casings looked so thin and brittle that it felt like they would break if one breathed too hard on them, but Davies knew that they were of mana-reinforced ss and would not be broken unless someone of at least the third stage of power attacked it seriously, but even then he probably wouldn''t manage to get far as the building had enough security to snuff out such a threat to their belongings.


    Davies quickly shook his head again, removing thoughts that belonged to someone looking to steal from his head, he didn''t need such thoughts when he could simply take over the whole business legally if he wanted to.


    He walked past Fiona and who was still stunned at the umtion of the beauty of the power stones and began to walk in between the rows on the floor, his eyes sweeping across every rare-grade power stone that the ce had to offer, but even after looking around for a few minutes, he still had yet to see one that caught his eye, specifically.


    Though they were all beautiful, and Davies had already decided to just pick one that he would hand over to Fiona for her father''s birthday celebration, he felt like he wanted one as well¡­ but if he was going to get one for himself, he would very much prefer for it to be out of the ordinary, as while Davies appreciated the beauty, he was also weirdly possessive towards things he wanted and wanted no one to have any of the same kind.


    When he had bought Sierra, his Lykan supercar, he had bought all the other Lykan Supercars and locked them up in a secret vault, never to be used by anyone else and their only value was to serve as parts for Sierra, should any part of the car need to be changed.


    That''s how possessive he was. Living through a lot of shit can input a lot of weird habits and mentalities in one, and Davies never tried to change such a habit, as doing so was the same as tampering with his own sanity.


    Finally, after a little while, Davies saw a rare-grade power stone that caught his eye. It looked like a gem but had a milky unclear color and glowed heavenly, more importantly after sensing the mana that wasing off it, Davies felt like his mind had just undergone a soothing massage.


    Immediately a little smile lit up on his face as he had identified something he wanted, but a secondter, the smile that had inadvertently appeared on his face disappeared like it was never there.

 Chapter 123 CHAPTER 123: "I GOT HERE FIRST"

    ?


    Davies had inadvertently had a smile appear on his face when he had discovered a rare-grade power stone that was capable of attracting his interest, but just a few seconds after, the smile disappeared like it had never been present and was reced with an annoyed look on Davies''s face.


    The cause of the disgruntled expression on Davies''s face was a young, fair-looking Asian youngster who was eyeing with a fervent gaze, the rare-grade power stone that had managed to catch Davies''s interest.


    As previously said, Davies was very possessive towards anything that had ever managed to catch his eye, regardless of whether it was in his possession yet or not, but seeing Lee Jung appear to have an interest in the rare-grade power stone that he was also interested in, his possessive mentality soared to heights he never knew possible and he could have sworn that he felt a phantom hand on his heart, squeezing it and almost making him lose his breath at just the thought of losing the power stone to Lee Jung.


    He began to make his way towards where Lee Jung stood talking with another attendant, and as soon as he arrived close enough, he didn''t even bother to listen to what Lee Jung was saying to the attendant and just directly barged into the conversation, ignoring Lee Jung and speaking directly to the attendant,


    "I''ll be taking the stone, wrap it up for me," Davies said to the attendant that Lee Jung was speaking to.


    Lee Jung was firstly stunned that someone had immediately tried to something he had been nning to buy, but immediately he recovered from the shock he became livid at the fact that someone tried to steal what rightfully belonged to him(dumb protagonist mentality).


    Just because he had wasted a little time flirting with the beautiful attendant did not give anybody the right toe and take it, he was going to buy it anyway, these were the thoughts of Lee Jung as he reached for the vaguely familiar back that had tried to steal the rare grade power stone that he wanted to buy from him.


    As Lee Jung''s hand was about to grab the shoulder of the annoying interference, a hand swept towards his hand and pped his hands away before he could touch the shoulders of the interference as he called it.


    "Get your hands away from the young master," Danie said to Lee Jung with a cold look after pping his hand away.


    Fiona and the attendant were looking at Danie with mild shock on their faces because they hadn''t managed to notice when Danie moved away to reach where Davies was and swat Lee Jung''s hand away before it could reach Davies''s shoulder.


    "I''ll have to ask that you not use mana within the premises," the attendant who led the group to the top floor, said to Danie with a professional look, immediately after recovering from the shock at Danie''s sudden movement, she couldn''t just let anybody run wild inside of the establishment''s premises.


    "When you upgrade your security enough to not let dogs in, then I can adhere to that request," Danie replied to the attendant with the same cold look she had given to Lee Jung just seconds before.


    It did not take a trantor to get the meaning of her words to both parties that she meant her words to. For the attendant, it was obvious that he(she) was less than pleased that someone had tried to grab Davies roughly by the shoulder, and for Lee Jung, it was clear that she thought of him as little more than a dog, and his face turned red in anger at the tant disrespect.


    Davies, on the other hand, didn''t bother to react to the things that were happening behind him even though he stayed attentive to everything that was happening.


    He believed that Danie would be able to take care of everything that could happen, even embarrassing Lee Jung as her words were always unusually sharp, thus he focused on his part, which was buying the moon-colored rare-grade power stone.


    "Hurry up, what are you dawdling for?" he said sharply to the attendant that was supposed to be helping him pack up the damn thing but was looking lost at the ongoing situation behind him. Even he wasn''t looking back, and he was the cause of this whole fiasco so why was the dumb attendant looking around like a lost and confused puppy?


    "I- uh- well¡­" Even after her attention was called back to Davies, she still didn''t know what to do as the whole situation had unnerved her, and she didn''t know whether to pack up the stone for Davies who had just arrived and wanted to buy the power stone, or for Lee Jung who also intended to buy the stone.


    Davies did not really look the part, but the aura he gave off was telling her that she could not offend him and expect to go scot-free, while Lee Jung on the other hand¡­ she didn''t know much about him, but she felt like she should choose him over Davies at the moment.


    "You look like you''re new to this whole thing," Davies spoke as he could see the hesitation in her eyes,


    "So let me tell you how this normally goes¡­" he continued and then paused,


    "When the greatest person you''re ever going to meet in your short and miserable life, which is me¡­es into your ce of work and tells you he wants the most expensive thing in the damn building, and that you should pack it up,"


    "You move that ass of yours, and do exactly as I say and pack. that. shit. up,"


    "Are we clear?" Davies said in a cold tone with his eyes glowing due to his mana.


    "Y-Yes," the girl was stuttering due to being exposed to Davies''s cold mana and did not have the luxury to pay attention to his narcissistic way of speaking.


    "I can''t hear you," Davies said in a stern voice.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "YES!" the attendant said in a louder voice, not even conscious of what she was doing, her instincts had taken over at this point, and was no longer paying attention to the urging that tried to make her favor Lee Jung over Davies.


    Fiona, Lee Jung, the attendant that had led Davies''s group here as well as the other customers on the floor were looking at the situationpletely stunned.


    Why did it seem like a superior was teaching his subordinate how to do things, sure the superior seemed like an annoyingly narcissistic person, but apart from the fact that his handsome face gave him permission to be as narcissistic as he liked, no one could deny the aura of authority in his voice as he spoke.


    Even though he didn''t speak loudly, his voice could be clearly heard all across the floor and they all subconsciously felt the desire to follow his orders, yet he wasn''t even speaking to them.


    "Well, chop chop, that beauty isn''t going to pack itself up, you know?" Davies spoke again, turning his eyes back to the moon-colored beauty that had taken his interest away.


    At this point, the attendant almost saluted in response before going to look for a package to pack up the power stone.


    "Wait!!!" a loud voice rang through the ears of everyone on the scene,


    "I got here first and wanted to buy it first, so why is he the one that gets it," Lee Jung cried out with an indignant look, looking like a kid who just had his fire-truck toy stolen.


    "Huh? I didn''t quite catch that," Davies finally turned to look behind him.


    "I said, I got here first an-" Lee Jung made to repeat himself but Davies interrupted before he had even gone halfway,


    "So?" Davies asked.


    "What?" Lee Jung was stunned.


    "What exactly is your point? Like, what exactly are you getting at?" Davies asked to rify.


    "I-I was here first," Lee Jung began to say again, repeating the same sentence like he was a broken record.


    "It doesn''t matter if you were here first, you didn''t buy it when I wasn''t here and now I want to buy it, so what is the problem,"


    "Matter of fact, can you even buy it? Do you even have an idea of how much this thing costs?" Davies countered.


    "Just for rity, how much is this thing anyway?" Davies turned to one of the attendants and asked.


    "Uh¡­ It''s ny-five million power stone dors," the attendant turned private and quickly replied to the drill sergeant(Davies).


    The mouth of all the people listening would have dropped if they hadn''t expected it to cost that much, after all, it was the most expensive piece in the building after, but that didn''t mean they weren''t shocked by the mere mention of the price.


    Most of the people here were not here to spend more than a few million, and something that was worth almost a hundred million was way out of their budget.


    "Oh, it''s cheap, yayy," Davies said with a little mirth.


    This time the mouths of the onlookers dropped in shock.


    Who was this nouveau riche that dared to call something that was almost a hundred million powerstone dors cheap?

 Chapter 124 CHAPTER 124: "HOW MUCH IS IT ANYWAY?"

    ?


    "Just for rity, how much is this thing anyway?" Davies turned to the attendant he had been speaking to previously and asked about the price of the rare-grade power stone that he wanted to buy.


    "Uh¡­ It''s ny-five million powerstone dors," the attendant quickly replied to the drill sergeant-like customer(Davies).


    The mouth of all the people listening would have dropped open if they hadn''t been expecting it to cost that much, after all, it was the most expensive piece in the building after all, but that didn''t mean they weren''t shocked by the mere mention of the price of the damn thing.


    Most of the people here were not here to spend more than a few million, and something that worth almost a hundred million was way out of their budget, and to be perfectly honest, such a price scared the hell out of quite a few of them.


    "Oh, it''s cheap, yayy," Davies said with a little mirth in his tone.


    This time the mouths of the onlookers dropped in shock.


    Who was this nouveau riche that dared to call something that was almost a hundred million powerstone dors cheap?


    Even Lee Jung''s mouth was about to drop open in surprise as he hadn''t been expecting a power stone to cost that much, but he quickly controlled himself, not wanting to look like a gaping idiot.


    Luckily, he had just about that much money in his ount, so he could still afford to pay for the power stone, so he wasn''t nning on giving up on trying to buy it.


    He really needed the mana that was present inside the power stone as he could feel that it could help him to strengthen and advance the "Sage''s eyes" blessing, so he couldn''t afford to let the stone be sold to Davies, as he had the feeling that if that ever happened he would lose an almost unredeemable opportunity.


    "I can buy it," Lee Jung spoke again, doing his best to stop himself from gritting his teeth in anger at Davies who seemed to be always everywhere he went to ruin things for him.


    Unknowingly to him, he had yed into Davies''s hands by insisting that he could buy it, even though he had just a little above that amount of money in his ount.


    After meeting Lee Jung, Davies''s current goals were to get the rare-grade power stone in his possession and to embarrass Lee Jung to make him lose a few fate points, and there was no better method to embarrass Lee Jung in a ce such as this than byparing wealth.


    Though it was in bullying, topare whatever meager wealth the system had handed over to Lee Jung, to Davies''s own wealth, he didn''t care.


    Why shouldn''t he use whatever advantage he had over Lee Jung to set things up in his favor?


    Unlike Lee Jung, he didn''t have some phenomenal force like fate behind him, so he was willing to use whatever he could get his hands on to give himself an advantage in this game of tag with the fated protagonists.


    "Sure you can," Davies replied, but it was obvious from the heavy sarcasm in his tone that he did not believe a single word of what he had just said.


    Davies turned back to the attendant, obviously not paying any more attention to Lee Jung, and motioned with his hands for her to get a move on and get on with packing up the rare-grade power stone for him.


    "I said I can pay for it," Lee Jung shouted again, after seeing that Davies wasn''t paying any attention to him and was merely treating him as some sort of dog barking on the roadside that was not worth taking a note of (his thoughts, not Davies''s, though Davies didn''t think any better of him in any way).


    Lee Jung''s sudden shout had stopped the attendant once again and she was back to looking at Davies for confirmation as she felt that he would have something to say about Lee Jung''s continuous disturbance, and she was right.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Davies made sure to not smile after Lee Jung felt such a simple method of provocation. He turned back to Lee Jung,


    "Let''s give you a benefit of a doubt then¡­"


    "What bank do you have an ount with?" Davies decided to ask.


    Lee Jung who had been asked the question thought it was the perfect moment to show off and put his hand into his pocket to pull out a gold card with ck engravings, "It says, Yorkshire Imperial bank," he read off the gold colored card like he didn''t even bother to know the name of the bank he kept his money with while keeping the card up in front of his face so that the surrounding onlookers could see that he had a gold card with one of the most famous banks in the city.


    Immediately, the looks of quite a few of the onlookers turned ugly as they had been mocking him for trying to buy something that he couldn''t afford as that was their thoughts from his shady attitude, but now he had pped them across the face with the gold card from Yorkshire Imperial bank.


    A gold card from one of the most famous banks in the whole of Yorkshire was not something that most of them could dream of ever having, as it was only avable to people with at least a billion powerstone dors worth of assets, and at least a hundred million powerstone dors avable in liquid funds, so for Lee Jung to have a gold card, meant he had that much worth in assets and that much money avable to him in liquid funds.


    Even Davies''s face turned a little strange, but it wasn''t because he felt shocked at the wealth that Lee Jung had managed to garner in just over two weeks since he awakened as a fated protagonist, after all, he had expected that much, as fate, wouldn''t be worthy of her name if she couldn''t do at least this much.


    What had caused Davies''s look to turn strange was that the name of the bank was quite familiar to him, ''It couldn''t be, right?''


    Even with a new thought appearing on his mind, he didn''t miss a beat and asked another question as if Lee Jung''s showing off had done nothing to his mental state,


    "I''m guessing it''s your name, Lee Jung, that is on there?" he asked, surprising Lee Jung, as well as the onlookers by the mention of Lee Jung''s name.


    Lee Jung was surprised that Davies actually remembered the name that he had only told him on their first meeting, despite the number of times he had insulted him saying he didn''t remember the names of non-important people, while Fiona and the onlookers were surprised, but due to this, were able to determine that since Davies knew Lee Jung by name, then the vice versa was also most probably true and the current situation was not just a mere argument over a rare-grade power stone.


    Their thoughts were correct¡­ the enmity between Davies and Lee Jung had escted beyond a mere battle of words and the only reason why they were not yet at each other''s throats, waiting for the opportune moment to slit it open, was because, different circumstances stood in the way of both Davies and Lee Jung''s goal to kill the other.


    For Davies, it was because he was trying to avoid the repercussion of killing Lee Jung without draining him of fate value first, while for Lee Jung, it was simply because he was too weak and insignificant before Davies to even dare attempt such a thing.


    Fate wasn''t dumb enough to let Lee Jung attempt something that would send him to oblivion in mere seconds, and attempting an attack on Davies''s life was on top of that list. The only reason why Davies hadn''t gone into his "all consequences be damned mode", was because Lee Jung was not enough of a threat yet.


    The moment he became such a threat was the day he would stop living peacefully and wouldn''t even be able to trust that the air he breathed in every day wasn''t poison, because Davies had many ingenious ways of killing people and he would try them all in a bid to kill the threat before it could affect him, all fate or consequences be damned.


    "Yes, that is the name that my ount is in," Lee Jung replied to Davies, putting aside the fact that Davies remembered his name, as to him, it was nothing worth stressing his mind over.


    "Did you get all that?" Davies suddenly turned to Danie who had been standing beside him all this while, and received a nod as she brought out her phone and typed a few things into it and a few secondster a *ding* sound came from her phone.


    Lee Jung and the onlookers wondered what the golden-haired young man was checking on his phone on the bequest of Davies, and a few secondster, they got their answer.

 Chapter 125 CHAPTER 125: FATE TO THE RESCUE

    ?


    "Did you get all that?" Davies suddenly turned to Danie who had been standing beside him all this while, and received a nod as she brought out her phone and typed a few things into it and a few secondster a *ding* sound came from her phone.


    Lee Jung and the onlookers wondered what the golden-haired young man was checking on his phone on the bequest of Davies, and a few secondster, they got their answer.


    "Lee Jung, age: 21, nationality: ***** *****"


    "Personal assets worth: 2.57 billion powerstone dors,"


    "ount bnce: 105 754 976 powerstone dors,"


    Danie recited aloud Lee Jung''s bank details as well as some personal information.


    "Oh wow, he can pay for it, I''m sorry I did not believe you," Daviesughed lightly and mockingly apologized to Lee Jung who was staring in absolute shock with a half-ajar jaw.


    "What? Cat got your tongue, or do you believe that any of the information is wrong?"


    "Should we go on to transaction details and hear about that?" Davies asked with a slightly puzzled look on his face, but his eyes glinting in merriment and his mocking tone showed that he was enjoying the situation.


    Lee Jung dared not believe that the information was wrong as he knew it to be correct, especially as these values were shown on the status screen of his system interface.


    "H-How did you get ess to that information,"


    "What kind of person are you to be able to get this kind of information from the Yorkshire Imperial Bank?" Lee Jung asked, his brain ringing rms and his cautiousness and wariness of Davies shooting off the chart.


    "The kind that owns more than half of the damn bank," Davies replied scornfully, throwing out a shocking revtion like he was talking about the color of the sky.


    "What? You didn''t think that Imperium and Imperial sounded a little too simr? He continued with a mocking tone, not paying attention to the expressions of everybody whose brains had currently short-circuited due to his shocking revtion.


    A few years ago, he had wondered what to do with the excess funds he had on hand, but since he hadn''te up with a good idea of where to put his money to work, he decided to deposit all of it in a bank, but because he didn''t want information of how much money he had in a bank getting out, he decided to just buy the whole bank, and that was exactly what he did.


    He bought out the majority of the shareholders to avoid raising too many eyebrows and put his money into the bank but hid all information about how much he had in the bank and even the fact that he had a bank ount with the bank.


    The only thing the other shareholders and the management officials of the bank knew was that Davies Lake had bought a majority of the shares of the bank, and ever since then they never had to worry about their ounts as they never ran out of money. This was what had enabled them to grow this much.


    "Anyways, even if you have the money,"


    "I fear for your ount bnce, so I''ll do you a favor and buy the stone, you can hold on to the little amount of money you have," Davies said with a pure look, making it seem like he was actually doing Lee Jung a favor.


    The onlookers would have fallen for his act if not for the sarcasm in his tone that he made no effort to hide as that went against his goal of thrashing up Lee Jung''s "face" in front of a crowd.


    Lee Jung''s face turned red in embarrassment and anger upon hearing Davies''s words and only the knowledge that nothing woulde of him trying to hit Davies across the face prevented him fromunching an all-out assault on Davies''s face.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Normally, by no rights should he be ashamed of having only just over a hundred million powerstone dors, but when his wealth waspared with the hegemon that was Davies''s wealth, his ount bnce was meager enough that if the money was added to Davies''s wealth, he wouldn''t notice it as it had too few zeroes.


    Davies''s clever use of his words only served as the icing on the cherry of his embarrassment, and they did exceptionally well in infuriating him, but even after going through all of that, something helped him stay calm and not act irrationally as that would cause him to lose every chance of gaining the rare-grade power stone.


    The benefits he stood to gain from the power stone were too great for him to lose it to Davies because he was trying to defend his pride, so he stayed calm and did not give up his im to the power stone, but the rare-grade power stone was slipping through his fingers, and it was slipping fast.


    He would soon lose the rare grade power stone to Davies and would only be able to bite his fingernails in regret if that happened, but just as he was losing hope on what to do or say that would give him a chance to take possession of the stone filled with the mana that he so sorely needed.


    "What seems to be the problem over here?" an old benign voice rang through the voices of the people at the scene.


    An expensively dressed old man who was apanied by the attendant that had originally met Davies, Fiona, and Danie on the ground floor, was the one who had called for rification on the issue.


    "President!" the attendant who was beside Fiona called to the old man and hurried toward him to exin the situation to him.


    The sixty-something-looking old man was the owner of this establishment, Diamonds In The Rough. He hade to this floor because of the attendant that had rushed to tell him about the presence of Davies Lake on the premises.


    He hade out to meet with Davies to give him a good impression and maybe even try to establish a rtionship with him, but upon reaching the ce where he was supposed to meet up with Davies, he had stumbled upon a gathering crowd due to something going on and he demanded an exnation immediately, he couldn''t let rampant happenings like this take ce inside of his turf.


    The attendant quickly exined the situation as best as she could, and before long the old man had a grasp of the things that had happened.


    In a nutshell, it was two customers fighting over amodity of their establishment, there was only one issue, the identities of the two people fighting over themodity.


    On one side was Davies Lake, a well-known genius with wealth and power that the old man had no hopes of ever glimpsing in his whole life, while on the other side was someone he knew and recognized, someone who had saved the life of his wife just a few days ago, Lee Jung, a promising young man.


    The man was currently in a dilemma, if it were anybody else but Lee Jung, he wouldn''t even bother listening to the story and would have just directly kicked him out, but he didn''t want toe off as ungrateful and disrespectful to Lee Jung, even though he was older than him by quite a margin.


    Normally, if the old man''s brain was functioning properly, he''d realize that there was only one important person here, and that person was the one he was supposed to adhere to and favor in this situation, but due to fate''s hand currently fingering his brain and shutting down the brain cells that were used forprehensive thinking, the man was lost for words and unable to make a decision quickly in this situation.


    Suddenly his face brightened up as he came up with an ingenious solution that would solve this whole situation, but it was unknown whether it was actually an idea of his own, or an interference from fate to try to rescue her agent from the tight situation that he currently found himself in.


    "Why don''t we leave the decision of who gets the stone to a round of stone gambling," the benign-looking old man said, inwardly feeling pleased with himself that he hade up with such an ingenious idea that would let him take a step back while giving an equal chance to both characters to get the stone without it seeming like he favored anyone over the other.


    "Yes! Yes! Let''s do that!" Lee Jung almost squealed in happiness at being given the right to take what rightfully belonged to him in the first ce. He had no fear of going up against anyone in stone gambling as he had a strong belief in his luck and felt that he wouldn''t lose to anyone as he was obviously the chosen one, the main character of this world¡­ but if only he knew that he was not the only fated protagonist prowling the of Leivandage.


    "What?" Davies couldn''t believe his ears at the words that had juste out of the stupid old man''s mouth.


    ''Is he high or something?''


    ''... or has he been fingered in the brain?'' he wanted to ask somebody but felt like no one would be able to give him an answer that would calm down his rising annoyance.

 Chapter 126 CHAPTER 126: STONE GAMBLING... OR NOT

    ?


    What?"


    Davies couldn''t believe his ears at the words had just heard from the old man''s mouth.


    ''Is he high on something?''


    ''... or has he been fingered in the brain?'' he wanted to ask somebody, but felt like no one would be able to give him an answer that would calm his rising annoyance.


    Davies could only think that someone had severely finger-fucked the old man in the brain, otherwise he wouldn''t be saying something so stupid and expecting that Davies wouldn''t take offense. The fact that he had a content smile on his face as if the words he had just spoken were the wisest words to ever grace the human ear, infuriated Davies even more.


    Originally, this was supposed to be something extremely easy, he would have gotten the power stone and humiliated Lee Jung, killing two birds with one stone, but due to the old man''s absolutely stupid idea, he would have to go for a round of stone gambling against a luck-empowered protagonist, thus making his job extremely annoying and nigh-impossible.


    He already knew that winning in a game of luck against a protagonist was an impossible task, and it would be even harder as protagonist''s usually had cheating tools in addition to an extremely high amount of luck.


    The fact that Lee Jung was at this ce and that he had somehow been involved into stone gambling made Davies realize that Lee Jung probably had some sort of cheat that could help him recognize stones that would have power stones in it.


    Unfortunately, Davies had no such skill, so it was impossible for him to win against Lee Jung fairly, and it was even more difficult to find a way to cheat on such a short notice.


    He also wouldn''t protest and begin to shout out his grievances as doing such a thing was below his pride¡­


    Fate had really kicked him into a corner, but like a wounded beast he was going to revolt, he was no longer to going to y her game, there was no need for him to show any modicum of respect to people who didn''t deserve it.


    He was going to crush Lee Jung''s hopes of ever getting the rare-grade power stone, he would show them a whole different game from what they had in mind.


    Upon deciding this, the annoyed expression on his face faded away and was reced with an impassive look and an asional wicked glint in his eyes. Danie looked at him with a questioning expression in her eyes that said,


    ''Just give me the word, and I''ll smash some senses into their heads,'' but Davies was not looking to smash anybody''s head¡­ for now.


    Danie saw that Davies didn''t intend to say or do anything at the moment, so she kept quiet and waited beside him.


    As for Fiona, her brain was still catching up to everything that had just happened, so she had no words to say to Davies.


    The old man and the attendants looked at Davies, but were met with his cold and impassive face as he stared at them with dead-looking eyes.


    Somehow, their befuddled minds decided to take his silence for eptance as he was not exactly voicing his objection, but¡­ if only they knew how wrong they were.


    Since they seemed to havee to an agreement, they all began to move to the floor where stone gambling took ce as they obviously can''t begin stone gambling here.


    The old man led the way with Lee Jung walking alongside him and he was followed closely by the attendants, Davies''s group walked behind them, the onlookers who had been watching the situation between Davies and Lee Jung earlier followed after them as well.


    Looking at the difference in treatment between him and the protagonist, even though he was without a doubt, the one with a higher social status and was supposed to be treated better, made him begin to smile.


    Before long, his trademark wicked smirk appeared on his face, ''Seems I''ll have to burn down another building in the city.''


    If anyone could hear his thoughts, they would wonder what he had smoked to be thinking that he wanted to burn down a building in Yorkshire city, and what was funny was that he had said "another building," which indicated that it wasn''t the first time he would be doing such a thing and wouldugh even louder, thinking he was a braggart¡­ until they heard his name, only then would it dawn on them that he meant every word he had said, and had the capability to follow through with his words.


    Unfortunately, since no one could hear his thoughts, so no one would be able to witness such an interesting scene.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    After a while, they got to a wide area that was filled with all sorts of people in luxurious clothing and quite a few stalls that had stones piled up in front of them or inside of them.


    The air was filled with raucousughter, yet some slow background music and the merriment and good mood of the crowd could be felt, just through vision.


    The arrival of theirrge group as well as the old man in the lead of the crowd that everyone in this ce recognized to be the president of this establishment, attracted quite a great deal of attention, and the interests of the crowd to the just arriving group increased even further when some of the original onlookers of the conflict that was going on between Davies and Lee Jung, stepped into the crowd and began to spread the news of what had happened on the top floor.


    The old man stepped forward to exin the rules for the stone gamblingpetition to both Lee Jung and Davies,


    "Each of you will buy stones from any of the stalls around and then bring them to be opened up, after which whateveres out will be evaluated by the appraisers present,"


    "Whoever has the highest total value after evaluation of any power stones thate out... If theye out, wins the game and thus, the chance to buy the moon stone(the rare-grade power stone being fought over)," the president exined.


    "Any questions? No, if so, you can beg-" the man tried to hurry up and start thepetition, but was immediately interrupted by Davies.


    "I have a question," Davies quickly interjected,


    "...Actually, I have a couple of questions, of which the first is,"


    "You never mentioned how many stones we are supposed to buy for thepetition, isn''t there a limit to the number of stones each of us can buy?" Davies asked, an interesting scenario already appearing in his head should the answer of the old man be what he wanted to hear.


    "You can buy as many stones as you wish, the end goal is for the results from the stones to be higher than the other person, nothing else matters," the old man used the same rules that were usually used in any stone gambling game as there was no need to change it.


    ''If a person''s luck was bad, then there was no amount of stones that could be bought that could save him'', this was the thought of the old man as he spoke, he had seen it happen countless times, people buying more stones in a bid to try and get more power stones, but it usually ended up in a waste of money.


    "Hmmm, ok," Davies nodded and looked to be in thought, but after a few seconds, he asked his next question,


    "My second question, let''s say one of thepetitors has no way to purchase a stone, then what happens to thepetition?" Davies asked, everything already aligning with his thoughts, but he wanted to hear the answer to this question as it was potentially the nail in the coffin for Lee Jung.


    "Of course, it''s an immediate forfeit for such a person,"


    "If one doesn''t even have the money to buy a stone required for the stone gamblingpetition, then he has no businesspeting," the old man scoffed, wondering why Davies was even bothering to ask such a question, but then it didn''t really matter much anyway.


    "Hmmmmm, good," Davies said and his wicked smile became more pronounced as he took a side nce at Lee Jung who was standing a mere few feet away.


    Lee Jung suddenly felt an intensely bad premonition, but he did his best to shake it off as the situation looked to be in the bag for him, and it didn''t even require the slightest effort.


    His instincts told him that he could pick up more valuable stones than Davies could, even with his eyes closed.


    "Before we start, how much is one of those stones anyway?" He asked hisst question even though it wasn''t a question he really needed the answer to, he wanted someone to say it out loud, so that when he began to take action, it would have the shocking effect on Lee Jung that he wanted it to have.


    "The stones are a million powerstone dors per piece," the old man answered again.


    This time Davies simply nodded his head and didn''t say a word.


    "If all the questions have been answered, then you can begin picking stones," the old man spoke with a louder voice than normal, indicating that thepetition had begun.

 Chapter 127 CHAPTER 127: THE POWER OF MONEY I

    ?


    "If I''ve answered all your questions, then you can begin picking stones now," the old president said with a louder voice than normal to initiate thepetition.


    The onlookers who had nothing better to do had their excitement''s bubbling up as the old man initiated the beginning of thepetition but to their utter dismay, the two contestants did not move from their positions even after hearing the old president initiate thepetition.


    Though both Davies and Lee Jung stood rooted in ce, not moving even after they were supposed to, they were doing so for different reasons.


    Davies''s eyes swept across the floor looking at all the shops and a thought appeared in his head,


    ''How many stalls even are there?''


    The establishment didn''t have more than a stall selling stones on this floor as they rented it to other people who sold stones and collected a certain percentage of the sale as well as rent for the stall.


    "Well, it doesn''t matter anyway," he sighed and turned over to look at Lee Jung, who surprisingly hadn''t moved from his ce,


    "Why haven''t you gone ahead to pick any stones?" Davies asked bewildered as to why Lee Jung was waiting behind.


    "Oh me, I''d win thepetition even with my eyes closed, so I decided to be magnanimous and give you a head-start,"


    "It wouldn''t even be apetition I didn''t give you this much of a handicap," Lee Jung spoke condescendingly with a smirk on his face as he looked at Davies like he had the situation in the bag. He obviously looked down on Davies''s ability to even present a challenge to him. This could be seen from the condescending look he wore on his face and the aura of confidence that unconsciously emanated from him.


    "..." Davies was lost for words at what he had just said and covered his face with his right hand. Shortly after he began to shake, his body beginning to spasm.


    The onlookers watched with stunned expressions, wondering what was happening, but before they could give much thought, the sound of burstingughter filled the air.


    "Pffffft, Hahahhahahahahahah," Davies wasughing so hard that tears could be seen at the corner of his eyes.


    Hisughter surprised everyone as they couldn''t understand why he wasughing, after all, there was nothing funny about Lee Jung''s mocking words to him earlier, but the only person that could understand the reason for hisughter was the one that wasughing so hard he had to hold on to hispanion''s shoulder to stay upright.


    Lee Jung also didn''t understand why Davies wasughing so hard as he had been trying to mock him with his words and not leave him in stitches. Daviesughing in response to being mocked rubbed him the wrong way. For now, he could not do anything, but he would make sure to show him who was boss by destroying himpletely once he moved to pick his stones.


    Davies''sughter slowly began to fade after a few more seconds of hardughter and he looked at Lee Jung with a smile that was a remnant of hisughing fit earlier.


    "Admirable effort for being able to undermine me this much¡­"


    "You''ll regret those words of yours in a bit," he continued, his smile morphing into a challenging one as he began to walk toward the middle of the stone stalls.


    Since he didn''t have a microphone to transmit his voice to the whole area for what he wanted to do next, he used the next best thing,


    "Ahem," Davies''s voice echoed across the room despite him speaking at his normal volume. This was the effect of using mana to project his voice and amplify it. Of course, it wasn''t something that just any Mega could do, and it was only possible for him to do it because of his exceptional control of his mana.


    "I hope everyone can hear me," he continued after clearing his throat, shocking the people present on the floor as he was somehow able to get his voice to be so loud without the aid of any sound amplification tools.


    After looking around and seeing that everyone seemed to be able to hear his words, he continued,


    "I hear that the price rate for the stones is a million powerstone dors apiece¡­ but as a representative of Imperium Technologies, I offer to buy every single stone from you all for two million per stone,"<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    No sooner had he finished his words than the whole floor had gone up in an uproar with the stone traders not wasting a second and rushing towards Davies with their card readers to quickly make the transactions.


    Every one of them was focused on this opportunity to make double the profit, especially since the buyer was a representative of Imperium Technologies, an organization whose reputation preceded it.


    Unlike the stone traders who were in a frenzy to sell their wares, everybody else in the room had been stunned into silence with thoughts like these going through their minds,


    ''Can this even be done?''


    ''Isn''t this against the rules?''


    ''What in the absolute fuckery?''


    ''Da fuck?!''


    Lee Jung who was supposed to bepeting with Davies could only watch in absolute shock at Davies''spletely absurd move as it was beyond anybody''s expectation. It was not even a move that could be ssified as sane, yet Lee Jung himself had been acting confident and had given Davies a supposed head-start so that things could be ''challenging'', not knowing that he had shot himself in the foot with such a statement.


    That didn''t mean he wouldn''tin about it and that was exactly what he did.


    Lee Jung turned to the old president of Diamonds in the Rough, who was just as stunned as the other onlookers,


    "Can this even be allowed?" he asked with bitterness in his voice as he understood that if Davies bought all the stones, then there was no way that he could evenpete.


    While he was thinking of what would happen to thepetition if Davies managed to buy all the stones in the building, he had forgotten that ording to the rules that had beenid out earlier, Davies had not broken the rules by deciding to buy all the stones even though it was a very excessive move that not many could even think up, not to mention having the capability to actually buy all the stones that were being sold, after all, there were well over a thousand power stones being sold in this ce.


    Davies would have to spend a few billion powerstone dors on this move of his, yet he didn''t mind as he had tons of money to waste away, but it was mostly because he didn''t really have any other options to go against Lee Jung in thispetition as it would be a waste to even try topete fairly with Lee Jung.


    He couldn''te out on top unless he used this kind of extreme method. Luckily, he had prepared this much wealth and influence in case of situations like this.


    He had seeded in using money to p fate across the face, but he was just starting as there was still a lot he had to do before he coulde out on top.


    The old president finally came out of his thoughts after hearing Lee Jung speak to him about whether the situation could be allowed. Deep down the old man knew that there was no rule against what Davies was doing, and it was because of this that he didn''t take action immediately and try to stop Davies''s actions.


    That and the fact that he was greatly shocked by Davies''s means were what had him rooted to the spot and gaping in absolute surprise like a goldfish, after all, what Davies had done was too shocking.


    That said, he didn''t want the opportunity for Lee Jung to gain the moonstone to disappear just like that, so he first stealthily sent a text that told the stall that belonged to his establishment to not sell any stones to Davies, after which he cleared his throat and wanted to try to talk Davies out of buying all the stones, but he couldn''t even get through the crowd of stone traders that had crowded Davies''s group.


    Realizing that it would be a waste of effort to try to speak with Davies who was smack dab in the middle of the frenzied crowd, he decided to wait outside the circle and make even more preparations for Lee Jung to be able to win.


    He sent another text to the stall and told them to bring out the stones with a high chance to have valuable power stones inside of them, hoping that Lee Jung could still defeat Davies with very valuable power stones.


    After sending the text, he called Lee Jung over and in a low voice, told him about his preparations for him to still have a chance at winning the stone gamblingpetition. Lee Jung was thankful to the old man for his considerations and regained his confidence as he had the hope that he would still be able to defeat Davies as long as he was able to pick up a few stones.

 Chapter 128 CHAPTER 128: THE POWER OF MONEY II

    ?


    Lee Jung waited confidently after hearing about the arrangements of the old man, as he had confidence that as long as he had the chance to pick a few stones, he would definitely be able to win thepetition no matter how many stones Davies had bought.


    After a few more minutes, the crowd of traders began to thin out, indicating to those that were watching the ongoing situation, that Davies had almost finished buying all the stones that were being sold.


    Another couple of minutester, the crowd dispersedpletely to reveal Davies sitting on a chair made with ice which he seemed to have created with his ice at some point when they were surrounded by the crowd and Danie was making the payments to all the stone traders¡­ he obviously wasn''t going to personally go through the hassle of continuously making payments to almost a hundred people when he had someone who could do it for him, standing right beside him¡­ this was a personal assistant''s job anyway.


    He was staring at Lee Jung with a fist under his cheek, while Danie and Fiona stood on both of his sides respectively. He had a slight smile as he looked at Lee Jung victoriously as if he was asking him with his eyes if he would ever dare to give him another head-start ever again.


    "Are you done?" Lee Jung spoke in a scolding voice, but Davies didn''t understand who he was using such a tone for,


    ''It better not be me he''s talking to like that,'' he thought internally.


    "Do you think that just because you have more money than most people, you can do whatever you like?" Lee Jung continued, his tone sounding a little bitter because he was more than a little jealous of Davies''s wealth and wished he was the one who owned such a great amount of wealth.


    "No, I''m not quite done yet," Davies replied, his smile slowly turning into his trademark wicked grin that seemed to be nning another sneaky act,


    "And yes, I can do whatever I want because I have more money than most people," he continued, answering Lee Jung''s second question.


    "Money is a superpower¡­ you just don''t have enough money to realize that," Davies spoke as he stood from the ice chair and it shattered into ice dust behind him as he did so.


    Then without paying any more attention to Lee Jung, he walked in the direction of thest remaining stall that for some "reason" had not sold their stones to him even though he had offered double of the market price.


    "I wish to buy these stones," Davies said to the middle aged man who sat on a chair inside of the stall, not even bothering to look at the stones that he wanted to buy, but if he was being honest with himself, he did not expect a positive answer from the trader.


    He wasn''t stupid enough not to realize that for the trader to not have been willing to sell his wares at double of the market price, thereby increasing his profit greatly, he was obviously not the one in charge of the shop as any normal trader would have jumped at the offer he had made earlier.


    He could discern that the stall not selling their stones to him, had probably been due to an arrangement of the old president for Lee Jung to still have a fighting chance in thispetition as it was pretty obvious that for some reason, the old man seemed to favor Lee Jung to the point that his brain had shut down and he was offending someone he should never dare to.


    "I''m not selling," the man spoke grumpily to Davies, sounding very annoyed that Davies hade to disturb him even when he had not made any moves to sell his wares to him in the first ce.


    Just as Davies had expected, the answer was not a positive one, but one thing bothered Davies, and it seemed to be a weirdly repeating urrence.


    Even though he had not been very open about his identity, the mere fact that he had introduced himself as a representative of Imperium Technologies should have guaranteed him at least some respect from the old man and the stone trader in the stall, but neither of them seemed to be acting under the influence of their brain guiding, as they spoke to him and treated him like he was some sort of child they met by the roadside, who they could talk to anyhow without expecting any form of repercussion.


    Did they really think he was some sort of a generous and selfless person who wouldn''t react even if they shat on his face, or had their thoughts been tampered with so much by fate who was trying so hard to create opportunities for it''s agent, that it had ended up frying their brain cells in the process.


    If the reason was the former, then he could show them that they thought very wrongly as he was in no way rted to those two words. Hell, they didn''t even exist in his dictionary anymore¡­ and if the reason was thetter¡­ then it exined why all the fated protagonists seemed tock any working brain cells¡­ fate probably fried them all while trying to make their destiny brighter than most people''s.


    "Not selling, huh?"


    "Even if I wanted to buy at a price of five million apiece?" he continued, taking his eyes off the trader and looking at the stones in the stall.


    The trader''s heart almost burst out of his heart when he heard about the price Davies was willing to pay, but he garnered his willpower and still rejected Davies''s his voice sounding extremely rude.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    The onlookers and other stone traders had had their hearts leap into their throats when they had heard Davies offering to buy the stones at five times the market price, but it had leaped even further when they realized that the trader still rejected such a lucrative offer and wondered if something was wrong with his brain as there was no way anybody who called himself a trader/merchant/businessman would reject this kind of deal that guaranteed five times the profit.


    ''Are you even a businessman?'' the other traders thought bitterly at such a lucrative business being rejected.


    They could only wish that they had more stones to sell to Davies, but unfortunately they had all jumped on Davies''s initial offer and sold thest of all their stones, so right now they could only grit the teeth and swear internally at the bastard trader who was not taking such a great opportunity that even they did not get.


    "Still not selling, huh?¡­"


    "What if I still want to buy them at ten million apiece?" Davies asked again even though he knew the merchant probably still wouldn''t ept the deal, but he wanted to make the man cough up blood and feel regret at not agreeing to the deal even though he was doing so under the orders of his boss.


    The merchant almost lost his head at this point and stared at Davies with grievance,


    ''How much money do you even have!!!'' the merchant screamed inside his mind. This was also what was echoing in the minds of everyone else at that moment, but Davies didn''t seem to care about their stunned looks and even seemed to be enjoying it, a wicked grin dancing at the corner of his lips.


    "I will still now be selling any of my stones to you," the merchant said with great effort. At this point the other stone merchants didn''t even react as it was obvious that there was another reason for which the thest stone merchant wasn''t selling his wares to Davies.


    "Alright, I respect that," Davies gave in, surprising Danie a little as she knew that Davies wasn''t one to give up on something he wanted, but then she quickly realized, that he had only given up on buying it with money... There were other ways to acquire things after all.


    Davies walked back to where Lee Jung and the old president were and he spoke to Lee Jung,


    "You can take the floor now," he said, gesturing towards the trading area.


    "Don''t cry too much since you couldn''t buy the stones," Lee Jung said mockingly, surprising Davies who thought, ''Protagonists really are dumb creatures'', but outwardly he replied,


    "Cry? Me?" Like it was the dumbest shit he had ever heard.


    "Yes, you... You can learn a valuable lesson from this," Lee Jung affirmed


    "And what''s that?" Davies asked, intrigued at what the protagonist had to say.


    "Money can''t do everything," Lee Jung spoke sagely.


    "I respectfully disagree... and I can prove you wrong," Davies said with a bright smile as it was time to move to stage two of his n of shutting Lee Jung from buying a single stone today.


    "How?" Lee Jung wondering what Davies meant by proving him wrong.


    "Like this,"


    "Daniel, call the Imperial Yorkshire bank and tell them to freeze Lee Jung''s ount because he is under investigation of suspicious transactions." Davies said to Danie.

 Chapter 129 CHAPTER 129: THE POWER OF MONEY III

    ?


    "Money can''t do everything," Lee Jung spoke sagely to Davies.


    "I respectfully disagree¡­ and I can prove you wrong," Davies replied with a bright smile as it was finally time to enact the second stage of his n to stop Lee Jung from being able to buy a single stone to be eligible for thepetition.


    After all, the best way to prevent himself from losing to a protagonist was to make sure that the protagonist wasn''t even in thepetition¡­ and that was exactly what he was going to do.


    "How are you going to do that? Lee Jung asked with intrigue, wondering what Davies meant by proving him wrong.


    "Like this,"


    "Daniel, tell the Imperial Yorkshire bank to freeze Lee Jung''s ount because he is under investigation for suspicious transactions," Davies called out to Danie with a very interesting smile on his face.


    Immediately these words left his mouth, it was like an explosion rang out in the atmosphere, an explosion of silence.


    It was almost like Davies saying, "If you think what I did before was shocking, then check this out," with a shit-eating grin on his face. His previous actions had made people gasp and think "Here is another crazy dude with too much money to spend," but this¡­


    They could only open their mouths with gaping expressions as this was beyond anything they had ever expected or even thought of happening, but amid their silence, the cry of the afflicted one rang out,


    "You can''t do that!"


    "It''s not true!"


    "You can''t do something like that!"


    "The bank wouldn''t even listen to you!" Lee Jung''s well-kept cool head and mocking attitude evaporated instantly, and he began rambling.


    As Danie took up her phone to follow his orders, Davies turned to Lee Jung,


    "First of all, I can do that, after all, I own the bank," Davies spoke with his arms wide.


    "Case proven, I can do anything I want with money," he added mockingly.


    "..." Lee Jung was about to speak in disagreement when he remembered that from what had urred earlier, Davies could be right.


    "B-but,"


    "That''s a false usation so you don''t have a reason to freeze my ount," Lee Jung almost screamed as he realized the implication of what was about to happen.


    "You¡­ don''t seem to understand the way these things work, do you?" Davies spoke with a look that showed surprise at Lee Jung''s ignorance of these kinds of things.


    "It doesn''t matter whether the usation I made is true or false, all that matters is if I can do whatever I can simply because I can¡­"


    "But speaking concerning that, you were merely a valet at Imperium just two weeks ago, but now you have over a hundred million powerstone dors inside of your ount, as well as assets worth almost three billion powerstone dors,"<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "... Don''t you find it a little suspicious, especially since there was a recent attempt to steal Imperium tech, hmmm?" Davies spoke, his gaze turning sharp as he spoke thest sentence.


    All the onlookers were shocked at the interesting pieces of news that just got revealed by Davies.


    It was more than shocking to be nothing but a mere park valet and then just over two weekster, such a person has a wealth of almost three billion. If someone said it was a case of great luck and hard work, any sane person would call "bullshit!" in the person''s face as such a thing arose way too much suspicion, after all, such a thing was impossible by normal means.


    The over a hundred million in liquid cash that he had didn''t cause that much suspicion as it could be exined to be a fortuitous encounter, for example, he could have won the lottery or found a high-value material due to good luck and sold it, thereby earning that much money, but the almost three billion assets had no way to be exined as one did not simply gain assets worth that much like they were fruits on a tree to be harvested by just anyone.


    With these kinds of thoughts going through their minds, everyone''s gaze on Davies turned suspicious, especially since Davies had mentioned that there was a recent attempt to steal Imperium Technologies Tech.


    ''This bastard couldn''t have sold out information about Imperium Technologies, right?'' this was what everyone, but Davies and the old president was thinking. Davies obviously knew that there was no way Lee Jung had enough information about Imperium Technologies that could be worth selling for three billion dors, he had just said it as a ruse and to make people have suspicions about Lee Jung''s sudden wealth so the rich and powerful people that could end up bing his allies became wary of him.


    The old president, on the other hand, didn''t think Lee Jung could be such a bad person just because he had previously saved his wife¡­ but it wasn''t clear whether something or someone was influencing his thoughts, so he didn''t think badly of Lee Jung.


    Though one of Davies''s reasons for saying all he had said earlier was to make people suspicious of Lee Jung once news of this event spread, the major reason was something else.


    He nced at Danie out of the corner of his eyes to see that she had put her phone back in her pocket, indicating that she had given Davies''s orders to whichever upper management of the Imperial Yorkshire bank that she had managed to get a hold of.


    Davies rxed a little, but he didn''t let go of his tense breath as he couldn''t be sure that the orders had been carried out yet. This was why he had spoken and had chosen his words carefully to prevent Lee Jung from being able to move abruptly. It was all to dy the idiot protagonist from focusing on what he should actually be doing, which was buying the stones that he needed for the stone gamblingpetition before his ount actually got frozen.


    It stands to reason that the ount could not have been frozen immediately Davies had told Danie that he wanted it frozen as she would have to call the upper management of the bank and pass on Davies''s orders, and after receiving the orders, the upper management of the bank would in turn pass the orders to whoever was responsible for managing the ounts and the said person would then ensure that Lee Jung ount was frozen.


    All this would take some time, and this was exactly the time that Davies was trying to buy by engaging Lee Jung in an interrogative conversation that he wouldn''t be able to run away from easily, lest people be even more suspicious of him than they already were.


    "I didn''t do such a disgusting thing!" Lee Jung obviously disagreed with Davies''s statement that insinuated his supplying of information to someone who had tried to rob Imperium of some of its technology, even though he had been thinking of how he would steal the technology just an hour earlier.


    And he was right, he wouldn''t do something as disgusting as selling information about such an important technology when he could simply steal it and hoard it all to himself, so technically he wasn''t lying.


    "You of all people should know that there is no way that a valet like me would be able to have any information about Imperium Technologies, after all, you''re Davies Lake, you own the damn ce, and you probably created the security systems yourself, or are your security systems not as good as we all thought them to be," Lee Jung spoke, trying to push away the heavy usation from off of his head, in his haste to do so, he willingly spoke about his past as a valet for Imperium Technologies though it was not something he liked talking about, the response of the crowd that had been watching the show was a deafening silence as he had inadvertently revealed Davies''s identity to everyone who was watching the situation currently.


    Earlier, Davies had only introduced himself as a representative of Imperium Technologies, and no one but the president, and the attendant who had initially attended to Davies''s group, knew his true identity, so now that Lee Jung was revealing it, every eye in the crowd turned to the bespectacled, handsome, white-haired man who stood with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes and a wicked grin at the corner of his lips.


    Unlike previously at the racing arena where Davies''s identity had been revealed, the people that visited the Diamond''s In The Rough, to buy stones, or for stone gambling, were more high-end and wealthier people who knew what the name Davies Lake represented, so imagine their surprise at meeting someone famous in both the world of business and of Megas, yet was elusive enough to not have been seen in thest twelve years.


    Davies merely let out a sigh at what Lee Jung had done, but he didn''t react much and simply moved on to his next line of questioning,


    "While it is true that I own the ce, and created the security systems personally, I can''t say that it was uncrackable, after all, I did just mention an attempt had been sessful and the culprit had actually managed to steal a fair bit of technology before he was apprehended¡­"


    "So, I can''t be perfectly sure of anything at this point," Davies bluffed brilliantly.


    "Also, let''s say I did believe you¡­ would you be so kind as to exin to me how you were able to umte such a great amount of wealth in just two weeks¡­ especially since you''re not even an activated human?" he smiled as he asked the million-dor question.

 Chapter 130 CHAPTER 130: THE POWER OF MONEY IV

    ?


    Davies merely let out a sigh at Lee Jung''s tant revtion of his identity, but since it wasn''t something to dwell on at the moment, he simply brushed over it and moved on to the next line of questioning,


    "While it is true that I own the ce,"


    "And it''s also true that I personally created the security systems, I''m not foolish enough to believe that it was uncrackable, after all, I did just mention that there was an attempt on our technology and the culprit had actually managed to steal a fair bit of technology before he was apprehended¡­"


    "I''m not sure of anything at this point," Davies bluffed brilliantly.


    "But just so I don''t seem discriminating, let''s say I believe that you did not sell information about Imperium Technologies, right?" Davies continued, purposely speaking slowly.


    "Right!"


    "You better believe that I didn''t sell any information about Imperium Technologies, cuz I didn''t," Lee Jung said affirmatively, his voice a bit loud.


    "Ok then¡­ would you be so kind as to exin to me how you were able to umte such a great amount of wealth in just two weeks, especially since you''re not an activated human? (another word for Mega)" Davies smiled as he asked the million-dor question.


    "I-¡­" In his thoughtlessness, Lee Jung''s mouth started moving and almost said something that should never get out, but he managed to catch himself in time before he said something that he would regret if it ever got out.


    Lee Jung was relieved that he had managed to catch himself in time before he made a mistake and said something he never should, but to the crowd, the scene where he had almost spoken but held himself back only cemented the fact that he had something to hide.


    "No answer, huh?"


    "What? Cat got your tongue?" Davies spoke, his tone not having a single drop of respect present anywhere inside of it.


    "..." Lee Jung stayed silent as he had no words to say. He couldn''t tell them that the system was responsible for everything that he had presently, as he couldn''t afford to have any news of the system getting out, thus, he had no story to whitewash himself with, so he fully executed his right to stay silent.


    "... hmmm, I understand that we all have our secrets, and your sudden acquisition of great wealth is probably one of yours, so I won''t ask any further,"


    "But, due to this, investigation of your ount would have to continue, so it would have to stay frozen," Davies said with a sigh like he couldn''t help it. He was using this chance to make his actions seem like it was due to his aggrievance at almost having his beloved technology stolen from him.


    His reason for going out of his way to act like this was especially due to having his identity revealed by Lee Jung, as while he may be a viin, the general public did not need to know that information, and he''d rather just have the image of a handsome and elusive genius, than someone who used his wealth power and fame to get his way.


    He couldn''t afford to have the women, especially the heroines running away from him due to a bad reputation, thereby increasing his workload as he''d have to put in extra effort to get close to them, to sway their minds from whatever protagonists they were attached to, and to get them into his bed.


    His life was already way tooplicated for more difficult shit toe cropping up when he could avoid it by just acting a little.


    "I hope for your case, that there is nothing that points at you being involved in this case, otherwise¡­"


    "¡­" his gaze turned cold as he let out a chuckle,<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "... well, people who piss me off enough never have good endings," he spoke as his mana charged out of his body, sending out an aura of suppression around the surrounding area and making it quite hard to breathe for weaklings in the environment.


    His eyes glowed eerily as he kept them locked on Lee Jung. It almost felt like he''d attack him the next second, and to be perfectly honest, Davies did want to attack him, but he couldn''t¡­ at least not yet.


    Suddenly Davies felt a hand on his shoulder much to his surprise, so he turned to see who had put a hand on his shoulder only to see an unknown face.


    The unknown face was wearing a ck suit and was quite muscr, as he filled out the suit he wore. As for his face, Davies had no intention to pay attention to it as he was currently wondering who gave the "mutt" the right to touch him.


    "I''d have to ask you to refrain from using mana on the premises," the unknown face who will be called the security guard 1, as there were a few other people that were dressed up the same as him appearing from the surrounding crowd.


    Whatever the guy had said had flown over Davies''s head as he first turned over to look at Danie to wonder how he had managed to escape both his and her senses, but with the stunned look that he saw on her face, he was able to confirm that it wasn''t due to her being careless, but that the unknown face had some means.


    Well, that would exin the mana he sensed when the guy touched his shoulder, but putting that aside, Davies turned back to the important part in all this, which was that some mutt had decided to grab his shoulder and even tried to tell him what to do.


    "While your movement methods might be intriguing, I''ll advise you to get your hand off of my shoulder, unless you''re prepared to lose it," Davies''s already chilly gaze turned even icier as he looked at the hand on his shoulder and the mana that wasing off his body increased even more.


    Security guard 1''s hand that was on Davies''s shoulder was suddenly attacked by frost due to Davies''s icy manaing off his body, and ice began to appear on the back of security guard 1''s palm and quickly began spreading to his upper arm, causing him to quickly retreat his arm in horror.


    Security guard 1 jumped back, his gaze alternating between Davies and his now almost frozen arm that he could no longer feel anything from except numbness. He looked horrified as he had no way to understand how Davies had almost managed to make his arm freeze just with his mana.


    He was a Mega himself and was already at the third stage of possession as a Transmopher, but for Davies to manage to almost incapacitate him with just his mana alone¡­ didn''t that mean he was stronger than he was?


    His eyes widened in surprise as he came to that realization and his look of horror became even worse, but at the same time now had a look of respect and reverence in them as he widened up the distance between him and Davies, only stopping when there was over five meters of distance between them.


    "I apologize for roughly handling this matter, but I still have to ask you not to use mana on the premises," he repeated his request with evidently more respect in his tone, as even though he didn''t want to, this was currently his job and he had to do his job if he was going to get paid for it.


    "..." Davies simply stared at security guard 1''s face for a few long seconds but then stopped releasing his mana into the surroundings, causing the suffocating pressure to be alleviated.


    He turned his head away from the direction of the strangely appearing security guard as while his methods were enough to provoke his curiosity, there was a more important matter on the ground: Lee Jung.


    Security guard 1 was quite surprised that Davies simplyplied and let him off. He had expected Davies to make a big deal of the whole issue, especially since his reaction to just being touched was quite "explosive", but surprisingly, Davies hadplied with his request and took his eyes off the matter, and for that, he felt quite relieved.


    He had heard Davies''s identity being revealed by Lee Jung earlier and it had been difficult for him to even find it somewhere inside of himself to try to do his job and prevent Davies from using his mana to inconvenience the other visitors of the establishment, but after being on the receiving end of Davies''s explosive reaction to being touched unawares, he had almost lost his head in regret for making a move that had offended this little ancestor.


    He heaved a sigh of relief thinking he had gotten off the hook, but if only he knew that Davies had ns for him that were only being dyed by Lee Jung, and the crowd watching him.

 Chapter 131 CHAPTER 131: FATE REALLY IS A BITCH

    ?


    "Ah, where was I," Daviesmented taking his focus on Security Guard 1 and the other security team members that were dressed the same as Security Guard 1. He returned his focus to Lee Jung who just stood watching the situation.


    "Ah, right, where were we?" hemented, his icy look disappearing immediately and a slight smile taking its ce.


    "Oh¡­ right, you better hurry, you should be able to buy a few stones before your ount gets frozen," he said, but he knew, or at least he expected that he had bought enough time for the ount to have been frozen, he expected at least this much from somebody working for him directly or indirectly¡­ and if they weren''t capable of this much? Well, no one would notice if a few employees of one of the biggest banks in Yorkshire disappeared overnight, after all, idents happened all the time.


    It was at this point that Lee Jung realized that he had spent way too much time arguing with Davies and doing other time-wasting things like gaping like a fool when he should have been rushing to buy the stones and have purchased them before his ount was frozen.


    Immediately he realized his folly, he rushed towards thest stone stall that still had stones in a bid to quickly pick out some stones and buy them before his ounts were frozen, hopefully, he still had enough time, he thought, not giving up hope on defeating Davies even though it was almost sure that he was in a losing game.


    Davies watched as Lee Jung hurried off to the stall to try and pick out some stones that he could still use topete. To be honest, he wasn''t sure whether the process of freezing Lee Jung''s ount would bepleted before he could pick out some stones and buy them, especially if some circumstances could happen that would not let it happen early enough to stop Lee Jung from buying a single stone.


    It was already obvious that fate was directly tampering with various things and people to give Lee Jung an edge over Davies¡­ in fact, the coincidences were so ringly obvious and out of ce that Davies would have to be blind to not have noticed, but despite that, he still chose to remind Lee Jung before he received a confirmatory message from the bank that Lee Jung''s ount had been frozen.


    The issue here was why had he even done such a thing?


    Well, it was pretty simple, since he had been able to confirm that fate was directly tampering with things to keep Lee Jung on track and was favoring him in everything he did, he wanted to know how far fate could go to keep Lee Jung in favorable conditions.


    After all, there had to be a limit to its interference¡­ and if there wasn''t one, he needed to know that as well, hence why he had prompted Lee Jung to see if he could somehow still win against a situation where he was set up to fail.


    But even though he was going to be doing such a test, he was also not nning to let Lee Jung have his way, should things go sideways, and in preparation for that, he moved closer to Danie and whispered a few orders to her ear, not noticing her ears turn slightly red as he spoke into her ear.


    After giving her his orders, he whipped out his phone and started tapping things into it.


    Meanwhile, at the stone stall, Lee Jung activated the blessing "Sage''s eyes," his eyes beginning to slightly glow, but doing such a thing as he immediately closed his eyes in pain and had to do his best not to scream out in pain at almost being blinded at the light.


    As previously mentioned, Lee Jung couldn''t do much with the blessing of the "Sage''s eyes" other than to see things that were normally not visible to the human eyes, and mana was one of those things.


    When he had activated the blessing inside of the stall where stones were arranged all around, every single stone produced a blinding light which signified that all of those stones had power stones inside of them, and from the intensity and variety of the lights that he was seeing due to the sheer amount of mana that they held and the types of mana they contained, it was obvious that they were all at least high-value rare power stones.


    Even though his eyes were almost popping out due to the stinging pain from being bombarded with such a high-intensity light show, he couldn''t dampen down his excitement, as with this, he was definitely going to win the stone gamblingpetition against Davies, gain the right to buy the "moonstone" and also make a huge profit from the stones.


    He quickly forced his eyes open and tried to look normal as he asked the stone merchant how many stones were in the stall. Whether it was coincidental or it was fate, somehow, there were only a hundred and five stones in the stall.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Lee Jung quickly brought out his card, intending to buy all the stones in the stall as he would be a fool to leave any of those rare-grade power stones behind for anyone else to buy. Such was the mentality of a fated protagonist, they weren''t one to share opportunities unless it was with another opportunity in the form of a smoking hot gyal with a bombastic body that theizens knew as the heroine.


    With this in mind, he called out, a bit loudly, "I''ll take it all,"


    It almost seemed like he was trying to brag, but the onlookers who had already seen Davies earlier buy more than a thousand stones at double the price weren''t even shaken by his actions and some even mocked him under their breaths, calling him a hopeless loser and braggart, especially now that they knew the identity of the person he waspeting with.


    All of this did not escape Davies''s attention; from the moment Lee Jung had entered the store, to the moment that he had closed his eyes in pain, Davies was watching.


    Even now that Lee Jung was trying to buy all the stones in the stall, Davies was still watching and had been able to confirm that Lee Jung did have a way to select the special stones and he knew that it was more than likely that all the stones in the stall had valuable rare-stones in them because if anything could be confirmed about a protagonist, it was that they never spent their money on something that wasn''t worth at least double the price they used to buy it.


    Luckily he had already made ns for something of this sort, as he knew that now that Lee Jung had decided to buy the stones, he could almost guess that there was no way that the ount had been frozen, and it was even less of a coincidence that the stones were exactly a hundred and five, which was exactly the same amount of money that Lee Jung had in the ount that was about to be frozen.


    It was almost like the universe was telling him to buy the stones with all the money in the ount before it was frozen, putting all of Davies''s efforts to waste and not making a loss because he would have used all the money to buy power stones that Davies couldn''t seize from him even if Lee Jung was actually being investigated¡­ which he was, but it was not because he was suspected for selling information about Imperium technologies.


    As an experienced reincarnator, Davies could see all the signs and if he hadn''t been overly pessimistic and had made ns for even this situation, he would be grinding his teeth in annoyance at fate''s methods and tant cheating in this situation.


    As if it wasn''t enough that Lee Jung was a protagonist who would be favored wherever he was, and in whatever he did, fate was also taking her sweet time to personally involve herself in his every disadvantageous situation and helped him cheat his way out of it.


    As someone on the other side of that scale, how was he supposed to ept such a tant favorability towards some bastard that was not even deserving of such a treatment?


    Even as he slightly gritted his teeth in slight anger, his fingers did not stop moving on his phone as he finished his preparations for his next move while he walked towards the direction of the stone stall where Lee Jung was as he did so.


    The stone merchant rummaged through his bag and brought out a card reader with which Lee Jung would use to make the purchase and began to slightly rub off the dust on the ss screen, much to the annoyance of Lee Jung who was working with a clock and had to quickly finish the purchase before his ount got frozen.


    "Hey, can you hurry up, I don''t have the time for all of that," he quickly called out, his tone expectant and a bit rushed.


    "Oh¡­" the merchant handed the stone over to Lee Jung after being spoken to. Lee Jung quickly grabbed it and plunged his card right into it from the back, with a smooth, hard, and fast stroke of his hand.


    "Showtime," Davies who was approaching the stone stall, muttered.

 Chapter 132 CHAPTER 132: THE CASE OF DISAPPEARING STONES

    ?


    DING* the POS machine that was being used to make the transaction sounded out a notification at the same time Davies finished tapping on his phone''s screen and looked up with a slight smile.


    [Author'' note: POS means Point Of Sales]


    Whether such a situation was a coincidence or not, we did not know, what we did know, was that what was written on the screen of the machine were the words, "Transaction failed".


    Upon seeing those words, Lee Jung''s bright mood disappeared like it was naught but an illusion.


    Seeing those words were that much of a dampener and his mood immediately sunk, but before he could think any further, the phone in his pocket vibrated soundlessly, but he noticed the vibration and immediately pulled his phone out of his pocket.


    "What the fuck is this shit!?" angry words barged out of his mouth like they were bullets from a machine gun as he stared angrily at the notification that had just been sent to him by the Yorkshire Imperial Bank.


    "t: 0671057298,


    Amt: (Debit) 105 000 000,


    Desc: Via Yorkshire Imperial Bank to Diamonds In The Rough,


    Avable Bnce: 754 976,


    Date: **/**/****, 5:43 pm."


    This wasn''t the notification of a failed transaction, but of a sessful one, so why was the POS machine telling him some stupid shit like "Transaction Failed", Lee Jung raged internally.


    As he raged internally, he failed to notice the rising smirk that just as quickly deted from Davies''s face as he watched him.


    The stone merchant who had quickly finished packaging all the stones inside of the stall for Lee Jung, since he had said he wanted to buy everything, looked back to Lee Jung in a bid to collect the POS machine and to confirm the transaction, though he internally felt a bit bitter that he wouldn''t be able to sell his wares at a great profit just because he had been ordered to not sell to Davies.


    His mood which was already not very great due to this, worsened even further when he saw the words "Transaction failed", written on the POS, but for courtesy sake since he was acting on the orders of the old president, he asked Lee Jung what was wrong.


    "I-I don''t know..." Lee Jung could only stutter out as he didn''t understand what was going on.


    "T-This piece of junk is saying that the transaction failed, but my ount has been debited by the bank... Or at least that''s what the notification says..." Lee Jung exined the current circumstances.


    "Gimme that..." The merchant said as he snatched the POS machine from his hands and looked at what it was saying, but just like Lee Jung said, it wrote that the transaction had failed, after which he looked at the phone that Lee Jung was holding out for him to look at where he saw the debit alert.


    ''What sort of situation is this?'' the merchant wondered feeling a rising headache.


    "What seems to be the issue?" Davies''s voice rang out as he reached the stall, asking what was the dy.


    "Unlike you people, I don''t have all day,"


    "Complete the goddamn transaction, let''s do this stone gambling thingmajing, and let me be on my way, I got things to do," Davies said in an annoyed tone...


    The stone merchant who had been trying to operate the POS to check the transaction receipts to see if he could see what was wrong, but felt his headache grow, as for some weird reason the stupid thing wasn''t responding to external stimulus... To be clear, the machine seemed to be having a hanging fit and wasn''t responding to his attempts to manipte it.


    Davies shouting out in annoyance at being dyed only infuriated the stone merchant even more and he almost lost his temper to shout at Davies to shut his effing mouth.


    Just as he turned to shout at Davies, he was met with the sight of Davies standing right behind him and he jumped in fright at Davies''s sudden appearance right behind him.


    "Give me that," Davies said as he snatched the POS machine from the stone merchant''s hands before he could even react.


    He looked and tried to manipte the machine like he was wholeheartedly trying to find what was wrong, but he inwardly smiled as he was the cause of this whole situation.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    He had been trying to test how far fate would go in a bid to help Lee Jung out of this situation, but he had also nned for if that had actually happened.


    One of his talents was that he was literally a technological genius, so doing something as easy as hacking a POS machine and making it disy the wrong message while also disabling it''s sensors and making the POS machine inoperable by anyone for a while, was a walk in the park for someone of his expertise... And that was exactly what he had done...


    "Are you sure you were able to finish the transaction and buy the stones...?" Davies asked Lee Jung hesitantly, obviously acting as if he wanted to believe Lee Jung even though the situation was not in Lee Jung''s favor at all.


    Doing this would make people ignore the possibility that he could have had anything to do with this issue as he was not rushing to any conclusions that there was something shady about the issue.


    "... You didn''t do something as sneaky as trying to trick us with a fake transaction receipt, right?..." He asked again, still speaking hesitantly.


    At first Lee Jung had wanted to ignore Davies as they were obviously not on good terms, but the moment Davies tried to insinuate that he was a lying, cheating, bastard that tried to scam the merchant out of his stones, he immediately reacted violently,


    "Of course I didn''t do anything of the sort, you bastard!"


    "You of all people should know that I have enough money in my ount to pay for this many stones!" He shouted at Davies angrily, wondering why so many things were going wrong today.


    "Well... Just barely..." Davies said with a scoff, obviously not happy that Lee Jung was shouting in his face when he had been trying to help.


    "You!" Lee Jung began with an even louder voice.


    "Stop shouting in my ears, idiot!" Davies immediately shouted him down before he had to listen to another earful of shit from Lee Jung''s mouth.


    "Have you tried to check if the establishment has received the credit alert?" He continued before Lee Jung could retort and begin shouting again.


    His words suddenly enlightened all the involved parties as they immediately thought,


    ''Oh...''


    ''... That is a good idea.''


    Even Lee Jung immediately shut up and looked to the stone merchant to ask him to check and confirm if he had received a transaction alert from the bank.


    The merchant was about to shout out that he had been trying to do that on the unresponsive POS machine before Davies snatched it out of his hands, but he weighed his words carefully and decided not to say anything and instead looked at the old president.


    The moment he looked expectantly at the old president to check and confirm the transaction as it was the old man that was in control of the ount, and he was merely someone who watched the stall and sold the stones on behalf of the establishment.


    But his actions immediately gave a brainwave to the crowd who were immediately able to understand why the merchant hadn''t sold the stones to Davies in the first ce.


    It was obvious that it was on orders of the old man as it was obvious to everyone who had been watching that the old man was quite biased towards Lee Jung from the start, so he had probably told the stone merchant not to sell to Davies.


    Even Davies muttered, "Is that how it is," with a slightly shocked look on his face as if he finally understood why the merchant hadn''t sold the stones to him in the first ce, but him acting like this was all for show as he already figured that this was the case.


    How else would fate have involved itself in his n to buy all the stones otherwise.


    It was also while he thought of this that he had realized that if Lee Jung was to buy only these few stones against the amount of stones that he had bought, but would still win the stone gamblingpetition, then the powerstones to be found in those stones would be pretty valuable... And he wanted them.


    In this respect, he and fated protagonists weren''t so different from each other, they both liked good things and wanted it for themselves, there was only one difference...


    Davies''s greed was far greater, he was more open about it, and he was crazy enough to do whatever he had to, to get whatever it was that he desired to own, and that was exactly what he would be doing with these power stones as well, so while Davies and everyone else''s eyes were on the old president to check his ount statement to see if he had received the credit alert, nobody noticed all the piles of stones slightly glowing for a split second before all disappearing from view.

 Chapter 133 CHAPTER 133: THE CASE OF DISAPPEARING STONES II

    ?


    While everyone''s eyes were on the old president, waiting for him to check if he had received the notification from the bank, nobody noticed all the piles of stones beginning to glow slightly and then all disappearing at the same time.


    All the stones that were present on that floor inside the building; the ones Davies had already bought and the one that the stone merchant had packed up for Lee Jung, suddenly disappeared mysteriously, yet no one noticed¡­ except the one who was the cause for the sudden disappearance of the stones.


    ''So, it does work¡­'' a slight smile appeared and disappeared from Davies''s face, within the span of one second, but he returned his focus back to the old president after that thought, slightly anticipating the reaction of everyone else when they realized the sudden disappearance of the stones.


    The old president ignored the different looks on everybody''s faces as it hade to light that he was subtly supporting Lee Jung, he didn''t care about them anyway, they could think whatever they wanted to think after all and it would do nothing to him, it was up to him to do whatever he wanted to do, to whoever he wanted to do it for, whenever he wanted to do it, and there was nothing anyone could do about it¡­ at least, that was what his fate-corrupted, optimistically proud, mind told him¡­ as for if there were actual consequences for all the actions he had made to get in Davies''s way today¡­


    Davies had already decided on that, and it was but a matter of course, but for now, let him enjoy the beauty of life that he did not know had be a luxury for him the moment he had gotten in Davies''s way of doing things.


    The old president brought out his phone and logged into his banking app, and after a few minutes of manipting the phone, typing in different passwords, and dealing with other things, he was able to confirm that the transaction had actually been done, and whatever was being shown on the POS machine was nothing but baloney, though he did wonder what had actually gone wrong with the machine.


    It shouldn''t have any issues as it was a fairly new one, he remembered authorizing the purchase of a new POS machine as the former one was quite faulty, he heard.


    ''That couldn''t be the faulty one still being used even after he had authorized the purchase of a new one, right?'' he wondered as he looked suspiciously at the POS machine still being held in Davies.


    In the end, he decided to find that outter as he didn''t want to get into that right now as if such a thing was actually true, it would make him lose face, so he instead did what he was supposed to be doing at the moment and said,


    "I''ve confirmed the payment, it seems there is something wrong with that POS machine, probably nothing more than a small glitch," he spoke, confirming Lee Jung''s payment.


    While he spoke, he didn''t notice the stone merchant, flinch when had mentioned that the machine was probably faulty. If he had been more attentive to his surroundings, he would have noticed that the merchant seemed to begin sweating even though they were in a fully air-conditioned room and the temperature was not one where people would sweat in¡­ at least in normal cases.


    Lee Jung was obviously happy to have had his payment confirmed and a victorious smile quickly appeared on his face as he side nced at Davies, not even trying to hide his look. The look in his eyes said he wanted to relish defeating Davies and taking something he wanted from right before his eyes, but upon turning back to go and grab his prize, he was left stunned.


    "...!?"


    "W-where are the stones?" he couldn''t even find it in him to shout as this was not something he expected.


    His voice hadn''t been loud, but somehow it had swept through the ears of everyone on the scene, probably due to the weight of the words and the absurdity they contained, after all, stones weren''t something that could just disappear into thin air.


    "What do you mean, they were right¡­ here," the stone merchant quickly turned around to look at where he had put the stones but was stunned at what he was seeing¡­ orck of anything to see at all.


    The stones that he had packed up weren''t there¡­


    The sudden question from Lee Jung and the sudden actions and shock of the stone merchant made everyone look in the direction of where the stones should have been, but they didn''t see anything.


    "I don''t see anything wrong¡­" Davies mumbled, but Lee Jung somehow heard his words and erupted.


    "THAT''S THE POINT, NITWIT!!!"


    "THE STONES I JUST BOUGHT ARE GONE!!!" Lee Jung raged in fury. He had just spent all the money he had on a bunch of stones that were supposed to give him quite a few gains, but they were all wrong.


    Davies''s face immediately tightened up in annoyance at Lee Jung shouting in his face and he insteadmented angrily,


    "I guess that means I won," he spoke not even trying to hide that he had no love lost for Lee Jung''s stupid attitude. It created an image of him not caring about another person''s misfortune, but at this point, he didn''t even care that much, especially when said person was an asshole he didn''t like.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Davies''s words seemed to have awakened Lee Jung to even more consequences of having the stones he had just bought, stolen and his face turned even uglier.


    Suddenly, a voice came from just beside Davies,


    "Uh¡­ Mr. Lake¡­ your stones have also disappeared," Daniel''s voice rang through his ears in a low tone, but just like when Lee Jung had found out about his stones disappearing, Danie''s disguised voice rang through the crowd.


    "You say what now?" Davies asked like he couldn''t believe his ears.


    "... Er¡­ your stones have also d-disappeared," Danie spoke in a trembling voice she didn''t know what the cause was of the stones'' sudden disappearance, but she did know that if Davies was not the best person to be around whenever he actually got angry, and the sudden disappearance of stones that he had spent a few billion to buy was almost guaranteed to make him angry.


    Fiona, standing not far from Danie and having been watching the situation all this while, suddenly had her face turn ugly at the mention of Davies''s stones disappearing.


    Unlike the other people watching the situation and enjoying the conflict, she had seen a glimpse of Davies in a bad mood, which was very scary. She bit her lips hard as she remembered that she was the one who had invited him here.


    There was an unexpected silence after Danie told Davies about the disappearance of his stones and Lee Jung''s. In normal situations, Lee Jung would have been the first tough at Davies, but the current situation concerned his property as well, and everyone else was simply stunned and wondering what exactly seemed to be going on.


    Thousands of stones couldn''t just disappear into thin air, right?


    Amid this silence, Davies''s icy voice spoke with the most unbelieving tone anyone had ever heard,


    "... So you mean to tell me¡­ that I spent more than two billion Powerstone dors buying STONES!!!" he spoke, thest word being emphasized loudly.


    "... and the stupid establishment where I bought the stones don''t have enough security to safeguard MY merchandise," he finished his words with his eyes falling on the security guard who had touched him but had instead had his hand frozen by him instead.


    "Wow, just wow," he began to chuckle and p, but one could only hear a cold amusement in his tone as his eyes ran over everyone that he knew to be linked to the Diamonds In The Rough, causing all of them to have cold shivers by just having his eyes run across them.


    "Hey sharp shoes," Davies called out at Security Guard 1 and began to walk towards him while speaking.


    "You were quick enough to appear behind me to tell me to not use mana on the premises, so what were you doing that you weren''t able to notice someone stealing billions worth of merchandise from right before your FUCKING EYES!" he finished his sentence loudly, after which he took a deep breath¡­


    "... you know what, I shouldn''t even be mad¡­" he turned away from Security Guard 1 and began to walk back to the old president who seemed to have descended from his fate-inducing high, after realizing that a few billion powerstone dors'' worths of merchandise had just been stolen on his property, and he couldn''t even exin to the owner of the property as he wasn''t even the one who had received the payment for the merchandise.


    Cold sweat began to run down his back as he watched Davies walk towards him as he did not know what Davies was going to say or do, but his heart sank after hearing the conversation going on between Davies and the gold-haired youngster who was one of the people that hade with him.


    "Hey Daniel, how much is this ce worth?" he asked a question while looking like he was trying to calm down.


    "... A few billion¡­ I don''t know the exact amount, I''m sorry," Danie replied and apologized, not understanding what the worth of this ce had to do with the current situation.


    "A few billion, huh?"


    "And I lost a few billion, hmm¡­ I guess I can take this ce as an apology¡­" he said with a slight smile as he arrived before the

 Chapter 134 CHAPTER 134: GAME PLAN

    ?


    "Hey Daniel, how much is this ce worth?" Davies asked while looking like he was doing his best to calm his rising annoyance.


    "... A few billion¡­ I don''t know the exact amount, I''m sorry," Danie replied to him and apologized, but did not understand what the worth of this ce had to do with the current situation.


    "A few billion, huh?"


    "And I lost a few billion, hmm¡­ I guess I can take this ce as an apology¡­" he said with a slight smile as he arrived before the old president.


    "...!" the old president was so stunned he went silent at the words that had juste out of Davies''s mouth which requested him to hand over his business as an apology like it was some cheap candy, but before he could recover his ability to speak and protest, another string of words came out of Davies''s mouth,


    "... or you could simply get me a few billion worths of power stones in the next hour¡­" Davies gave the old man an alternative that was equally as difficult as the first one while he walked past the old man and moved towards the elevator.


    Fiona and Danie followed him wordlessly, living behind a crowd that had been shocked and stunned too many times today by all sorts of things.


    It was only after Davies had disappeared into the elevator, that the old man came back to his senses and realized that he should have at least retorted to Davies, and he quickly made to chase after Davies as he realized that if Davies was unsatisfied, or even worse, if he was pissed off at what had happened today, losing the Diamonds In The Rough was going to be the least of his worries.


    In his rmed state, he had forgotten about the protagonist that was the cause of his downfall as he chased after Davies to the elevator.


    Lee Jung was even more pissed off that he had just lost all of his money on something that ended up stolen from him and his eyes darted around the crowd looking to see if he could find the culprit, but in his frenzied state, he hadn''t bothered to notice that Davies who had lost a great deal more than he did, hadn''t made a single effort to try to recover the stones he had just lost.


    Everybody else at the scene also didn''t think too much of Davies''s actions to recover the lost stones¡­ orck of them thereof. They either ignored the notionpletely or they thought he had figured that someone who was able to steal that many stones unnoticed would have found it easy to get away from the ce.


    They also ignored the fact that Davies had not taken much time toy the me onto the old president and other staff members of the ''Diamonds In The Rough'' and had quickly and overbearingly demanded reparation from them instead.


    They hadn''t ignored these things because they had suddenly be stupid overnight or anything of the sort, but rather it was because of the way Davies had led the whole situation and made them think the way he wanted them to think.


    Right from the start, he had given off the vibe that he had been dragged into the whims of the old president to ensure a fair situation due to the "moonstone" he had tried to purchase at the same time as Lee Jung.


    He made people think that though he wasn''t happy with the situation, he had gone along in order not to cause an issue at the shop, and he had also shown his annoyance by trying to hurry things up and simply buy all the stones so he could end the dumb stone gambling game.


    Though the method he had tried to use were tyrannical methods that could only be done by someone as rich as he was, he had also not forced or threatened anyone into selling to him and had simply increased the prices a few times instead.


    Due to all the previously mentioned actions, all the people who were watching the situation with interest had the impression that he was excessively rich and irritable enough to not want to have his time wasted.


    After he wasn''t able to buy all the stones, he had given in and let the otherpetitor, Lee Jung, also purchase his stones, once again showing that he had no wish to waste time on mundane things, and if money didn''t solve the problem, he stopped trying.


    Lee Jung then proceeded to reveal Davies''s true identity, adding the character of a young genius to not be messed with, to him in their views after which what had happened had happened.


    With all of these, the crowd thought Davies Lake to be an excessively rich young man who didn''t like bothersome things and would usually resolve bothersome situations with money, otherwise, he just wouldn''t bother himself.


    Of course, they knew that there was more about Davies Lake than what they could see and thought about him, but the little they knew (or what they thought they knew about him) wouldn''t let them think for a second that he was the one behind all of this.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Anybody looking at this from an outsider''s perspective would instantly see that there was something wrong with the situation, but there was no one like that in the crowd, and when the people who were there told this story outside, the story would be distorted and be told from their views, thus making it almost impossible for anyone toe with the conclusion that Davies purposefully targeted the establishment, and even if they dide to that conclusion, there was ack of a reason for such a situation as a mere ''Diamonds In The Rough'', that sold nothing but power stones didn''t warrant Davies personally taking action to crush or even take over the ce if he wished.


    He could very well do the exact same thing with a few phone calls from inside of his bedroom while getting ap pillow from any of his women, unfortunately, they wouldn''t know that the cause for everything that had just happened was the fair-looking, young man of Asian descent who was his supposedpetitor in the proposed stone gambling game.


    Though this kind of result was because of nothing short of genius-level thinking, Davies wasn''t able to think up such a n with such a result because he was a genius at espionage, or a master spy, or any of that shit¡­ rather it was due to experience of his misfortunes that came in the form of his previous reincarnations.


    For him, this was not a happy topic as the price he paid for this level of skill was unimaginable pain and despair, but that was another topic to be left for another day, right now, he was back in front of the ''moonstone'', the beautiful milky white rare-grade power stone that had been the start of every conflict he had with Lee Jung inside this ce.


    He simply waited with Danie and Fiona standing behind him in silence. Fiona looked like she wanted to say something, but she did not trust herself to be able to speak to Davies right now as she did not know what kind of reaction woulde forth due to her speaking, so she kept quiet.


    They had not waited there for more than a minute when they heard hurried approaching footsteps,


    "Mr. Lake," an old-sounding male voice called out with respect in his tone.


    ''Is that respect I hear in your tone old man, I wonder when you came back to your senses,'' Davies snickered inwardly but outwardly maintained an unperturbed face that barely turned over to look at who had called him.


    "... Have you made your decision?" Davies simply asked and returned to viewing and appreciating the beauty of the moonstone.


    "Er¡­ about this¡­" the old man began to perambte.


    (A/N: perambte can be used as a ng that means talking nonsense in circles and not getting to the point)


    "W-We will need more time to gather billions worth of power stones, so we as-" the old man was trying to ask Davies for more time, but Davies quickly interrupted,


    "Then hand over the building¡­" Davies cut in without looking up from what he was doing before the man could say anything further.


    "Ah¡­ this¡­ We can''t do-" The old president was trying to speak his refusal when Davies interrupted him again,


    "I don''t think you understand something,"


    "... I''m not asking you¡­ I''m telling you,"


    "You don''t get to have a say in this¡­"


    "You either give me the damn building, or you prepare the power stones for me in the next one hour¡­"


    "... though there is a third option¡­" Davies spoke slowly and clearly so that his words could sink in.


    "But it''s pretty much just the repercussion of you not picking one of the first two options¡­" he finished his words with a wicked smile appearing on his face.

 Chapter 135 CHAPTER 135: GLITCH

    ?


    "See, I don''t think you understand something," Davies began in a low but very clear voice.


    "... I''m not asking you to pick one¡­ I''m telling you,"


    "You don''t get to have a say in this¡­"


    "You either give me the damn building, or you prepare the power stones for me in the next one hour¡­"


    "... though there is a third option¡­" he continued in a slow and clear voice so that his words could sink in.


    "But it''s pretty much just the repercussion of you not picking one of the first two options¡­" he finished his words with a wicked smile appearing on his face.


    "So, chop chop, your one hour is ticking,"


    "But in the meanwhile, I''ll be taking the moonstone and another stone of Miss Lecroy''s choice," Davies said and opened up the ss casing that covered up the beautiful milky-white rare-grade power stone before taking out the stone and putting it into his coat pocket with ease and then returned his focus to the old president.


    His face that had a slight smile like he hadn''t just taken the most expensive thing in their shop and pocketed it without paying a single cent while still demanding even more, unnerved the old president and infuriated him, but he didn''t dare to do anything as the situation was not in his favor.


    The old president could only stay quiet while debating with himself if he could find that many stones. It should be possible if he pulled out everything he had, but he should be able to get it done at the cost of a great loss.


    Davies passed by the old president and went to Fiona,


    "You can take any stone that you feel like your father would like, it''s on me," he said with a smile,


    "I''ll be leaving now, as I have other things to take care of, so I''ll see you at the banquet," Davies said his goodbyes and affirmed that he would be present at her father''s banquet.


    After finishing his words, he left her and the old president behind and walked away with Danie tagging along. They got into the elevator and headed downwards to the ground floor.


    Right as Davies stepped out of the elevator, his phone started ringing and he quickly took out the phone and picked up the call as he had an idea of who may be calling him.


    *"H-Hello," a voice that had a fearful tone stammered a greeting from the other side of the phone a few seconds after Davies picked up the phone and put it to his ear. It seemed that the caller''s nervousness and unease didn''t let him immediately notice that Davies had picked up the call¡­ or he knew but was too scared to speak up earlier.


    "Ah, Jeffery," Davies immediately recognized the owner of the voice as, Jeffery Lerma, a C-level officer of the Yorkshire Imperial Bank, and was also the one he had told Daniel to get across to so that he could have Lee Jung''s ount frozen.


    "Do I take it as my orders getting to youte and thus you were incapable of following a very simple order," Davies said in a light tone that gave off the impression that he had no issues with what had happened, but his tone only served to aggravate the unease of the man that was hearing the words and thinking to himself, ''SHIT! SHIT! SHIT!''


    *"U-Uh, n-no, it wasn''t like that, I swear," Jeffery tried to get himself together so he could tell Davies the reason for his failure. Davies could almost hear him falling over himself in a bid to try to exin to him.


    "So what was it like?" Davies asked but he didn''t stop moving his legs and he made his way out of the building and towards the car.


    *"After receiving your orders, I immediately gave the orders for it to be carried out and even personally supervised it, b-but¡­ b-but¡­" Jeffery began to exin but started stammering again as he remembered what had happened when they had tried to freeze Lee Jung''s ount.


    "But what?!" Davies was especially intrigued to know what had happened to prevent the ount from being frozen and was less than pleased by this stammering fit from the idiot that was supposed to be telling him the story.


    *"Our servers began behaving strangely, it seemed like a glitch in the whereputer anytime we selected his ount, we weren''t able to make any changes to his ount,"


    *"Either the server wouldn''t respond when we tried to freeze it or it would glitch and simply return to the homepage,"


    *"I even tried to have it closed but even that didn''t work¡­"


    *"I-I''m not sure if it was a virus, but we weren''t able to do anything to his ount until we received the notification that a hundred and five million was to be transferred from his ount,"


    *"I told them to reject it and not let the transaction go through, but even though the transfer wasn''t approved by us, it was still made, and the strangest part is that after the money was transferred we were able to easily freeze the ount and the glitching problem disappeared like it was never there,"


    *"I think something must be wrong with the servers," Jeffery finished exining and was breathing a little hard because he had said all that at a stretch without remembering to breathe<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    . It could be seen that he had tried his best to me the bank servers that hadn''t allowed Davies''s orders to bepleted, which was actually correct, but Davies immediately recognized that the bank''s servers weren''t the ones at fault.


    Everything that seemed to have happened was all because of a bitch named Fate who was up to her stupid games while she tried to make sure that her agent was the one with the upper hand.


    Luckily, he had made preparations for the situation blowing up in his face, which it did, and he had been the victorious one in the end.


    "So, you mean to tell me¡­ that everything that happened was a mistake and it was because of the faulty bank servers, huh?" Davies asked.


    *"Y-Yeah, that''s exactly what happened," Jeffery quickly tried to affirm so he could quickly smooth over this time''s mess-up as it wasn''t really his fault, but how was he to know that Davies was too sadistic to just let him go even if it wasn''t his fault.


    Luckily for him, Davies had other things on his mind at the moment to really focus on someone who wasn''t even an extra right now.


    "Tch, whatever¡­ I better not have another reason to doubt yourpetence, or a mistake could happen to you as well," Davies said and hung up.


    While on the call with Jeffery, Davies had reached his car and was now entering the back after removing his overcoat and throwing it into the car while the door was held open by Danie.


    As he sat in the car, he called upon the other inhabitant of his mind other than himself,


    ''Hey Miya,''


    [What?] Immediately after he called, she responded wondering what he wanted to know.


    ''It''s pretty obvious that fate is favoring Lee Jung¡­ like actively,'' he was referring to things constantly falling in ce for Lee Jung that was supposed to put him at a disadvantage. Luckily, till now, he had been able to use his wit and other resources to get himself out of such situations, but he didn''t know how long he could keep up with fate actively switching things up¡­ or if it would get even worse.


    [Don''t worry much about this issue, there is a limit to what can be actively affected by fate herself]


    [She can only y little tricks like this, but if you can make Lee Jung lose even more fate points, then her influence on things around Lee Jung would decrease] Miya exined and put out some of his rising worries.


    ''So, you mean that the lesser the fate points he has, the lesser he can escape from whatever I throw his way,'' Davies repeated to himself,


    ''... well, that makes things a lot easier,'' he thought with a sigh.


    ''... Is there anything else I should know?'' he asked after a little pause and some thought?


    [Yes, there is¡­ fate cannot directly attack you, she can only affect circumstances around you, but there is a limit to even that] Miya responded.


    ''I pretty much figured out something like that a while ago,'' Davies replied, unimpressed, but Miya continued as if she hadn''t heard him as she knew that no matter how much he figured out, he didn''t have ess to the knowledge to things concerning this matter as she did,


    [By this I mean that fate cannot directly attack you and cause you to suddenly contract something like an incurable disease, but she can create an atmosphere where you can contract the incurable disease, so she is just as dangerous¡­]


    [Luckily, this is not something she can just do arbitrarily, and can only take these kinds of measures if you directly try to kill the protagonist] Miya exined carefully so that Davies could fully understand and not have any immediate concerns about this issue.


    ''So that was why you were always telling me to not go after his life yet?'' Davies asked.


    [Yes] Miya answered.


    ''Ok, also, why are you so silent these da-'' Davies was asking Miya when suddenly his eyes snapped to the right at breakneck speed, but he didn''t see anything except for his overcoat, but that didn''t dissuade his suspicion as he knew what he had sensed.


    Immediately he called,


    "Daniel, tomorrow I want the headlines to be "The old presidentmits suicide after being unable to pay billion powerstone dors debt," he spoke with a grim face.

 Chapter 136 CHAPTER 136: PREEMPTIVE STRIKE

    ?


    ''So that was why you kept telling me not to go after his life yet?" Davies asked Miya.


    [Yes] Miya quickly responded.


    ''Hmmm, ok... Also, why are you so silent these da-'' Davies was in the process of asking why the second presence in his mind was suddenly very silenttely as it was not like her when suddenly his head snapped to the right at breakneck speed, but there was nothing strange to notice apart from his overcoat that he had thrown so carelessly to the side.


    Seeing nothing strange did nothing to dissuade his suspicion that has risen extremely quickly as he was sure he had sensed his mana at that side of the car which was strange as he hadn''t purposely released his mana, neither was it leaking out of his body, under no condo should his mana be somewhere that his body was not.


    As he looked at his overcoat that he had thrown so carelessly to the side, his brain cogs started turning quickly until the most likely scenario appeared in his mind and immediately, he realized what had happened, he called out to Danie who was driving the car.


    "Tomorrow, I want to see the headlines ''The old president of the ''Diamonds In The Rough'' stonepanymits suicide after being unable to pay billion powerstone dors debt''", Davies spoke grimly.


    Danie, who was driving, was shocked at Davies''s sudden decision to make the old president disappear,


    ''I guess he was more annoyed than I thought,'' she thought to herself, but outwardly replied,


    "I''ll bring the newspapers to you tomorrow then," to which Davies nodded approvingly despite the grim look on his face.


    In reality, Davies wasn''t trying to kill the old president because he was annoyed at what had happened earlier, but rather it had to do with what he had realized to have happened after he had been snapped alert just seconds earlier.


    What had caused Davies to snap to attention earlier was that he had sensed his mana. It was strange as he hadn''t released his mana, and neither was it leaking so he shouldn''t have sensed his mana somewhere that was not his body... But he had.


    Since he was very sure that he hadn''t sent his mana in that direction and thus was not inadvertently the cause of why he had sensed his mana where he had thrown his overcoat, the only reasonable exnation was that his mana had been brought there by someone else, which also shouldn''t be possible, but the moment he remembered something that had happened earlier, he realized what had probably happy.


    Just a few minutes earlier when he was still at the ''Diamonds In The Rough'' building, he had been grabbed on the shoulder by one of the security guards who was somehow able to appear behind him undetected by either Danie or himself.


    To repel him from holding on to him, Davies had burst out his mana and sent it into the security guard''s body through the hand that was grabbing onto his shoulder, managing to freeze his arm before the guard pulled away to avoid being frozen any further.


    The reason why Davies remembered this urrence was because it was thest time he released his mana and it was just a few minutes ago, and it was on someone who was able to escape his senses.


    It perfectly fitted the bill. If that same security guard used the same stealth that he had used to appear behind him undetected, then Davies wouldn''t have been able to sense... Unless he somehow still had a trace of Davies''s mana which Davies was very sensitive to.


    After realizing that the security guard had probably appeared here stealthily, the only thing that remained for him to figure out was why the security guard had appeared here inside of his car, but Davies was able to easily figure it out immediately he saw what was in the ce where he had sensed his mana.


    It was nothing but his overcoat. When Davies had taken the moonstone back at the building, he had put it inside of his overcoat''s pocket, and now he had sensed the security guard where he had ced the overcoat.


    It was obvious that the security guard hade here trying to steal back the moonstone from Davies on the orders of the old president.


    That was the only usible exnation that could be inferred from this situation. The old president would probably have med whoever had stolen the other power stones if Davies hade back toin about the situation.


    "Well, too bad for them," Davies said with a smirk and pulled out the moonstone from his inventory and began to throw it up and y around with it as he thought about what the old president would be feeling like right now after the security guard went back to tell him that he couldn''t find the moonstone.


    That old man had really underestimated him, thinking it would be so easy to steal back the moonstone in order not to incur any more losses, but Davies also realized that fate probably had a hand in this move as well as it was obvious that, for some reason, Lee Jung really needed this stone.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "What''s so special about this thing anyway," Davies muttered with a smile and tried to ess the mana inside it. He was able to sense a strange kind of mana inside the stone, but he was unable to do anything to it.


    He tried to absorb it, but he couldn''t even get the mana toe out from the stone, and after a minute of trying to move the mana but failing, he gave up and put it back into his inventory.


    For now, other than its aesthetic beauty, he couldn''t find another use for the stone, so it was better to put it away. After putting the moonstone back inside his inventory, his eyes fell upon two other slots inside of his inventory that were full of stones and he snickered.


    Of course, he was the one that stole the stones, otherwise, he would have razed the ''Diamonds In The Rough'' building to the ground and turned everything and everyone upside down while tearing the ce up looking for the culprit that had stolen something he had his eyes on.


    His pursuit of the ghost thief earlier was an example of that.


    As for how he had managed to make all the stones appear inside of his inventory without alerting even Danie was a trade secret, a mystery that would unravel itself sometime in the future... For now, all that needed to be known was that he was awesome.


    Today had been a bit rough and he still felt ufortable about letting a piece of information about his trump card fall into the hands of Lee Jung, but he had managed to hit back at Lee Jung and take a few of his advantages.


    Well, he was going to do even more by making sure that the old president was no longer breathing tomorrow morning, after all, he couldn''t allow the protagonist to have a rich thigh to grab onto.


    Originally he hadn''t nned to be this direct and proactive, but the old man had put his own head on the chopping block by annoying him and trying to steal his stuff, so off with his head.


    "Hmph," Davies snorted annoyedly as he remembered the guts of that stupid president.


    ''Maybe I should continue acting this proactive and continue removing the problems before they be problems?'' he wondered to himself.


    ''I could start doing that at the banquet for Fiona''s father tomorrow,'' he thought to himself as he wondered what would happen at the banquet that was scheduled for the day after this one.


    He knew that it was probably going to be another crazy plot and to be honest, he wasn''t sure if he was prepared for another crazy situation where everything went against him, but he didn''t really have a choice in this whole thing anyway, so he''d keep going.


    At least, he''d keep riding until the wheels fell off, but before that,


    "Also, make sure to find that security guard''s details... As for whether to terminate him or recruit him, I''ll leave that up to your discretion," he said again to Danie, and she replied with a nod.


    There was no way he would leave someone who was able to appear behind him undetected alone... Such a person was a threat and neither to either be owned or terminated.


    If he was called evil for doing something like this, he wouldn''t even react because that was just the way life was.


    If you find a weakness in yourself but didn''t eliminate it due to factors like being humane, you will be the only one to suffer when the said weakness bes your downfall, at that point, you would only have yourself to me for not acting earlier and terminating the weakness when it was still possible.


    Thus he was always going to make the preemptive strike no matter how inhumane it may seem the moment he was able to guarantee that it was a weakness.


    With that out of the way, it was time to look at how many fate points he had managed to make Lee Jung lose this time, and right on time, he heard the notification ding from the system, and he immediately pulled up the notification screen looking forward to his results.

 Chapter 137 CHAPTER 137: WHAT IS TO COME

    ?


    *Ding*


    The system rang and threw the screen full of notifications in front of Davies''s face.


    [Sessfully face-pped a fated one and caused him to lose 200 fate points]


    [Sessfully caused a loss in reputation of a fated one and caused him to lose 400 fate points]


    [Sessfully interrupted the opportunity of a fated one and caused him to lose 10000 fate points]


    "Hmmm," Davies murmured to himself as his eyes ran across the screen of notifications that told him how many fate points he had made Lee Jung lose.


    He nodded to himself after seeing that he had made Lee Jung lose more points thanst time but he almost choked on his saliva when he saw thest notification.


    *Cough* *Cough* he immediately had a coughing fit when he saw the number of zeros that Lee Jung had just lost.


    "Are you alright?" Danie immediately took her eyes off the road and turned back to look at Davies who was coughing hoarsely due to his shock.


    "It''s just me *Cough*¡­ coughing, keep your *Cough*¡­ eyes on the road," Davies immediately retorted in-between coughs as he didn''t want his coughing fit to be the reason for him to experience a car crash today.


    Danie quickly reverted her attention back to the road upon Davies''s orders but inwardly she was already wondering where she could get coughing medicine for her master even though he didn''t need it, but she didn''t know that.


    To be honest, this kind of number was not even among the lowest number that Davies usually had to deal with daily, but there was a whole other level of difference between the values of the numbers that Davies usually saw and fate points.


    One had to know that making Fiona have a bad impression of Lee Jung thus increasing the difficulty of Lee Jung establishing a rtionship with her only caused Lee Jung to lose a thousand points.


    Fiona was a genuine heroine in this plot¡­ though she hadn''t shown much of it yet, but that was beside the point. The heroines were supposed to be the weak spot for any fated protagonist and were usually the best way to leech points off of them but stealing a mere rare-grade power stone had somehow ripped a huge amount of fate points from Lee Jung.


    "What really is this thing?" he muttered to himself as he once again took out the moonstone from his inventory and examined it again, with his eyes and mana, but he still couldn''t figure out what this thing was.


    He also wasn''t able to do anything to the mana that was inside of the stone, so he quickly gave up.


    ''It was probably because this thing was invaluable to Lee Jung that, different ''coincidences'' kept getting in the way when I simply tried to buy it from the ''Diamonds In The Rough'','' he thought to himself.


    [Well duh, you haven''t exactly had to go up against half of such ''coincidences'' before this, have you?] Miya immediately replied as if such a situation was obvious, and to be fair, it was very obvious.


    ''It''s also probably because it was very important to Lee Jung that I was even attracted to it in the first ce,'' Davies continued thinking to himself as if he hadn''t heard Miya''s words.


    [Uh¡­ I don''t know about that part] Miya spoke hesitantly at hearing this because she didn''t know anything about this.


    ''No, think about it¡­ since ancient times, it has been proven that whenever something catches the eyes of a viin and he wishes to take possession of it, the desired thing either already belongs to the protagonist or it is something the protagonist also desires,'' Davies continued his inner monologue.


    [... Er¡­ I don''t know, but OK] At this point Miya was just being swept along by Davies''s inner monologuing.


    ''... but unlike ancient times, I was the one that ended up with the treasure, stepping on the protagonist''s dry bones in victory and holding my prize in my hand,'' he gripped the moonstone even harder,pletely carried away by his monologuing.


    [Pffffft¡­ kid wake the fuck up, hahaha]


    [What dry bones, you''ve barely even managed to make him lose a few points but you''re already dreaming of stepping on dry bones]


    [Hahahahah] Miya''sughter and sneering words woke Davies up from his inner monologuing with an embarrassed blush appearing on his ears, his ears turning red.


    ''Hey! I have the right to dream as much as I want,'' Davies retorted.


    [Hahaha, whatever, dreamer boy, just make sure to have your dreamse true than to make your nightmarese alive] Miya said with a slightugh at the beginning but with a more solemn tone at the end of her sentence.


    ''I told you, I''m fine,'' Davies sighed in response. He knew she was talking about his recurring nightmares, mostly about his past, buttely, he had been having nightmares about some more sinister things, and she knew about it.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Even though she couldn''t see the nightmares, she could always tell that something was wrong with him just by watching his emotional state, which was an extremely easy job for her, especially as he almost always disyed no emotions.


    ''I''m more worried about the repercussion of me taking something this important from Lee Jung,'' Davies quickly diverted the conversation from himself as it wasn''t in his taste to talk about his problems with another person, even if said person was someone who had been inside of his mind for over sixteen years and knew almost everything to know about him.


    If Miya ever asked him about something like that his response would always be "You already know everything about me that there is to know, so what is the point in talking about something that we both already know about."


    It was a very wed excuse and an even more wed thinking method, but Davies already had way too many ws for him to care about one more being added to the pile.


    Miya immediately realized that Davies was diverting the situation from himself¡­ like he always did, and since she already knew that there was no way she would get him to talk about it, she also didn''t bother to try and dwell on the matter.


    [Well¡­ what do you think?] She threw the question back to him.


    ''I''m guessing that another opportunity will probably be prepared for him¡­''


    ''A really big one, so that it can cover his losses¡­ I''m drooling just thinking about how I''m going to snatch it from him,'' Daviesid bare his thoughts and a greedy, wicked smile made its appearance on his face, making him look the part of a crazy, devious viin rather than a rich young master with a handsome face and no brains or brawn.


    [Whoa, whoa, hold your horses]


    [I won''t tell you to not try to steal his opportunities, after all, that is the goal, but I will warn you to be extra careful] Miya quickly poured cold water on his rising excitement.


    ''I''m always careful, but why the sudden warning?'' Davies asked, intrigued at the sudden warning.


    [I''m sure you''ve already noticed that ''coincidences'' were actively happening to get in your way thest time¡­] Miya began.


    ''Yeah, and?'' Davies asked, not getting her point.


    [Don''t you get it¡­ if there were active ''coincidences'' doing their best to stop you from having your way thest time, then there would be even more such ''coincidences'' in your way this time] She continued.


    ''Yeah, and?'' Davies asked, still not understanding her reasons for him to be extra careful.


    [...] Miya was stupefied at his nonchnce.


    ''I expect that much and even more as I am currently going against fate, so I think I''m already being careful enough,'' Davies began his exnation.


    ''To be frank, I already expect my next meeting with Lee Jung to be a storm of crazy shit, and that happens to be tomorrow as I am sure that he will find his way into that banquet that I will be attending tomorrow,''


    ''It''s even more likely that his opportunity is somewhere at the banquet and the only thing at the banquet apart from food and drinks are the rich and powerful people of this city¡­ unless Lee Jung is going to be robbing at the banquet, but I doubt it,'' he told her the scenario he had thought to be the most usible one among the many ones that hade to mind.


    ''His opportunity is probably going toe in the form of one of the rich and powerful people of the city, though I personally think it would be someone that is abination of both and is also a female,''


    [You mean his next opportunity is in the form of another heroine?] Miya interjected, but her mind was also beginning to wrap itself around the situation and the more she thought about it, the more she thought him to be correct.


    ''Yeah, one that is probably rich and powerful enough that even I can''t just harmlessly try to take go after of, though that doesn''t really matter much to me¡­ also, she''s likely going toe bearing gifts,''


    [Of course she''s going to be there bearing gifts, it''s a birthday banquet for someone, so she obviously has toe bearing gifts] Miya stated the obvious¡­ or what she thought to be obvious.


    ''... I meant, gifts for Lee Jung,'' Davies sighed.


    [Oh¡­]


    ''You don''t think him just getting ess to a rich and powerful heroine is all that fate would prepare for him after losing an opportunity that cost him ten thousand fate points,''


    ''Do you?'' Davies asked with his eyes now firmly on the milky white rare-grade power stone in his hand and if Miya had eyes, it would have widened in realization of what was toe.

 Chapter 138 CHAPTER 138: PREPARATION FOR THE BATTLEFIELD BANQUET

    ?


    Davies stepped out of the bathroom with water dripping from all over his body to the floor, his hair slick with water and stered to his face due to him just having a bath just a few moments prior. He stepped away from the door that led to the bathroom and moved towards the room where his clothes were ced.


    Yes, you heard that right. He had a whole room for just his clothes, not counting his shoes and other dressing essories.


    It was to be expected as he had that much money to waste and he quite liked dressing up, after all, as a rich and devilishly handsome viin, he had to look the part, didn''t he?


    Also, he had bought 3 vans full of clothing thest time he had gone shopping for clothes, so they obviously couldn''t fit into a drawer or a wardrobe unless he had quite a bit of them, and they would end up taking enough space to fill the room, so it was the same thing.


    He first put on underwear, the only part of his clothing that he wasn''t very picky about. Secondster, he was using his towel to dry his hair after putting on in ck underwear, as even though he wasn''t picky about his underwear, he still wouldn''t be caught dead wearing embarrassing underwear like mickey mouse underwear or something of the sort.


    Since he was going to a formal celebration, then it was probably best if he wore a suit, right? To be honest, it didn''t really matter what he wore as he would still be treated like a guest of honor even if he wore cute teddy overall pajamas to the event. People wouldn''t even dare give him strange looks lest he takes offense, but Davies obviously wouldn''t be doing that.


    Also, he felt like wearing a suit and looking especially badass as tonight''s birthday banquet was more of a battlefield than a celebration in his opinion. He moved towards the section for suits and was about to pick an borately designed ck suit when his eyes fell on a slightly bulky ck overcoat and immediately every thought about wearing a suit flew out of his head.


    "I choose you,"


    The ck coat was literally calling out to him, and he immediately picked it up to examine it. It was made of expensive fabric and every part of it was ck from the main material to the thread used for tailoring, and even the buttons were ck. All in all, it was a beautiful piece of clothing¡­ at least to Davies.


    As previously said it was slightly bulky and was probably made to be worn in cold environments, but that didn''t matter to Davies as he couldn''t mostly feel hot unless the heat was unnatural; perks of being an ice mana user.


    "It''spletely ck huh? ¡­ might as well go all the way," he murmured with a slight smile as his eyes fell on anotherpletely ck piece of clothing. This time it was a ck turtleneck and coincidentally it fitted the bill for the next piece of clothing Davies needed as he obviously couldn''t just wear the ck coat while fully disying his admirable upper body, and what else fitted the bill for the innerwear of a ck overcoat than a ck turtleneck shirt.


    He immediately picked the turtleneck shirt as well and moved toward the trouser section. This time, he didn''t waste any time thinking too much and immediately grabbed the first ck pair of trousers he spotted. It was a pair of cargo pants that had quite a lot of pockets, just like Davies liked.


    Davies had always preferred baggy clothes and ones with lots of pockets as they gave him more room for movement and also lots of ces to put hidden weapons. It was a habit that had grown on him due to certain urrences in his past lives, though now he had the inventory and did not really to keep too many hidden weapons on his person, it was more of a habit and personal preference, and he had no desire to change it now.


    Now that he had picked out his outfit, he spent a couple of minutes putting them on and soon, he was done. Now all that was left were shoes and other essories.


    Since he was going for the all-ck look, he picked out a couple of ck suede boots and put them on after putting on ck socks first.


    Next up, essories¡­ without much thought, he decided to use only silver-colored essories as they melded with the look and aura he wanted to give off tonight. Wearing gold would have made him give off a regal aura and it may even look a bit tacky, and right now he wanted to give off the feeling of hidden danger so, it was better to go with silver.


    Silver earrings, silver rings, and a silver watch¡­ and done. He moved to a mirror to take a look at himself and only after reaching the front of the mirror and taking a look at himself did he remember that his hair was still messy and still wet, even though he had dried off the excess water with his towel.


    A hair drying and styling sessionter, Davies sprayed a million powerstone dor perfume all over his body, put the perfume back into its specially customized pack, and returned it to the drawer he took it from before heading out of the room.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Davies stepped out of his bedroom toe face to face with a Danie that was fully dressed and disguised and waiting patiently for him toe out.


    "Let''s go," Davies spoke and walked past her not looking back to see if she was following as he was sure that she would be right behind him, watching his back whenever he needed her to be, after all, that was what he had trained, trusted and entrusted her to do.


    They both went to the elevator and used it to go to the underground garage where they both alighted. Davies went to the keyholder that was hung on the wall and took out two keys. The first key he threw to Danie was the key to one of the cars he had in the garage, an SUV Vercedes D-Wagon.


    "You''re driving that one and following behind me," he said to which Danie nodded affirmatively, indicating that she understood that they wouldn''t be going to the banquet in the same car.


    Davies took the second key and walked a few meters until he was beside his beloved Sierra, the Lykan Supersport which he had personally repaired after that unfortunate encounter with Dalena Santos. After a lot of work, she was back as good as new and Davies rubbed the tip of his fingers across her paint lovingly for a few seconds before opening the doors and getting in.


    It was time to go after a protagonist and steal more of his wom-¡­ ahem, his opportunities, Davies thought as he ignited Sierra''s engine and she started up with a low hum. He drove Sierra to a huge tform in the middle of the garage and Danie''s Vercedes was soon beside him on the tform in the middle of the garage.


    The roof above them slid open and the tform that their cars were standing on began to rise slowly taking them up onto the surface, somewhere on the driveway. Soon, they were above the ground and they both stepped on the elerators of their respective vehicles, zooming out of the driveway and leaving the house behind them while the tform returned underground.


    Davies''s car was in the lead as he followed the directions shown on the map that led to where the banquet would be held, which was somewhere in the family estate of the Lecroys.


    As Davies drove at a not-so-high speed, his eyes went to the passenger seat of the car and he wondered if he should have not bothered being too cautious and should have invited Tisha toe along with him as a +1.


    He had previously thought to bring Tisha along, but after giving it a little thought, he had decided against it as, for starters, if the two of them with dark fate values went to a ce where the protagonist was guaranteed to show up, then the conflict that was supposed to ur inevitably between them would be quite the sight to see and may end up being more annoying than amusing.


    Secondly, he was going there to the banquet of the father of the heroine he was nning to bed, and he was nning to steal another heroine while he was at it, so bringing a ''date'' along would be counter-effective, but then it didn''t really matter as polygamy was widely epted after mankind had lost quite a bit of its poption during the great cataclysm and they were still losing even more due to the various dangers that existed out in the world after the cataclysm, but even then, Davies didn''t want to take any chances.


    Heroines were always known to have sky-high pride and were kind of idiotic until you could get them in line with your "dragon" so until then, he had to avoid trying any stunts.


    It was a shame though, he kind of missed the cute and over-bubbly sses girl.


    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    So... today is my birthday!!!


    Happy Birthday to me!!!???????????


    You guys could like, gimme a couple of gifts, or golden tickets, or power stones.... it would make today a lot happier for me????

 Chapter 139 CHAPTER 139: AT THE GATES

    ?


    A sleek Lykan Super dashed through the road, lights reflecting off its sleek body in the evening light. Just meters behind the Lykan was a ck V-Wagon car that kept up with the Lykan''s high speed and curvy movements.


    Soon they left the crowded city roads and began to gradually leave the heavy evening traffic behind them, the speed at which they cruised gradually increasing, eating up the miles as they continued.


    After a few more minutes of driving, they arrived at an intersection that led to huge and borately designed gates that were being manned by a scary-looking group of men and women holding both hot and cold weapons.


    Their presence did nothing to dissuade Davies from turning the Lykan in the direction of the gates.


    If anything, their presence assured him that he was on the right track to the estate of the Lecroy family as not many other people could have ess to these many scary-looking guards.


    Though there were also many other organizations that could have this level of security, Davies didn''t think he was that bad at map reading to not be able to find his way around town, and even if he was, this was why he had Danie as an assistant, and since he had not received a caution call from her as she had dutifully driven behind him, then it was right to say that he was where he should be currently... At least that was what he thought.


    Davies stopped a little distance from the gates and slid down his window to speak with the tough-looking woman with a sharp-looking scar on her face which was probably caused by a knife during a battle.


    ''I mean, that is where that kind of scar could be picked up, otherwise, maybe she fancies BDSM or something like that... '' Davies thought yfully.


    [I''m pretty sure it was not that kind of battle... Focus] Miya had to speak so he could focus his attention and not waste time ying around... Again.


    ''Alright, alright, stop bugging me,'' Davies smiled wistfully.


    "Here''s my invitation," Davies handed over a gold-colored envelope to the tough-looking woman, not bothering to make small talk as there was no need for him to gather information, and also, he didn''t want Miya shouting in his ears, admonishing him for wasting time flirting with every woman he met.


    He had heard enough of such remarks and didn''t need another earful from someone that he couldn''t p into oblivion to silence them.


    The tough-looking woman took the envelope from his hand without dy, not trying to act overbearing or anything of the sort as almost everybody that would being to the birthday banquet was way above her paygrade and would have enough power, or money to make her life difficult if she did so to them.


    She slowly opened the envelope that wasn''t sealed to look at the name on the card and to crosscheck it with the list of invitees that they had been giving to use to determine who could be let in for the banquet.


    Immediately after opening the gold envelope that had several beautiful motifs borately designed on its body, she pulled out the invitation that was carefully ced inside.


    An explosion immediately went off in her head as soon as she saw the name that was written on the envelope in an obviously more borate font than the rest of the words on the invitation card.


    "P-Pleasee in," she quickly turned to the other guys that were on security duty today along with her and gestured for them to open the gates.


    Her movements seemed a little frantic as if she couldn''t bare to keep the guest who had just arrived waiting a second further.


    Her frantic movements came off as quite strange to her fellowrades but since she was their leader, the gates were quickly opened automatically by whoever was operating the gates.


    [Another person shocked by your identity]


    [Maybe you should change professions and simply use your identity to shock people back to life, there''d be no need for a defibritor] Miya''s chuckling voice echoed inside of Davies''s mind.


    ''Did they really have to be so old school as to use a paper invitation?'' Davies wondered to himself as if he hadn''t heard Miya.


    After all, he had long since been used to people being shocked by his identity, especially after living as a viin in his previous lives, he had more often than not been someone with a high social standing, so fame wasn''t a foreign term to him.


    Davies collected the invitation that had been slotted back into the gold envelope from the firm hands of the female head of security... That was of course the name that he had used to register her identity in his mind and not her real name or even or title.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Oh yeah, the V-Wagon is with me," Davies remembered to say before he wound up his window and drove through the gates, not wanting Danie to be dyed by some stupid protocols.


    Normally there had to be an extra invitation from the Lecroy family for Danie to be permitted entry, but no member of the security team would tell Davies that in order to avoid offending him. Davies knew this and that was why he was able to simply state that he had brought someone along without expecting any repercussions to his normally uneptable actions.


    Davies and Danie drove their respective vehicles through the gateway and after they passed through, the gates quickly shut behind them before the next car that had arrived after Davies, could enter the gates.


    The female head of security had her eyes fixed on the taillights of the two vehicles that were gradually disappearing into the darkness of the evening when she heard someone ask,


    "Who was the albino head?"


    "..." The tough-looking woman turned her head slowly to look at her cheeky-looking subordinate that had just spoken thoughtlessly.


    "That albino head... Is Davies Lake,"


    "I think you should have heard that name at least once," she spoke slowly and gasps from the other security personnel as soon as they heard the name.


    "Just in case you haven''t, let me refresh your memory,"


    "Extremely rich, genius, S-ranked blessing, and a few other things... None of which you have,"


    "Sometimes you need to shut the fuck up and stop saying things that can get you erased from existence," she spoke sternly to her thoughtless subordinate who had said something so stupid and was lucky that Davies had already left so he didn''t hear what the idiot had said.


    She sighed as she noticed the cheeky guy look shocked and remorseful for what he had just said.


    As Megas, they were usually above normal humans, but even then, they had to take orders from the rich, even if the rich person wasn''t a mega, so they usually didn''t have many good feelings about rich people.


    Unfortunately, the rich people were the only ones who could afford their services as no matter how powerful you were, killing monsters wouldn''t guarantee you a meal unless you sold the useful parts of the monster you had killed to a rich organization or buyer as only those with great amounts of money could afford monster parts... Or you could simply eat the monster you killed and live like a caveman.


    Thus, it was understandable that the cheeky-looking subordinate did not feel good about seeing an excessively handsome and fragile-looking guy behind the wheels of a car that was impossible to be acquired by the general public and even by most of the people that had the money to buy it.


    He felt like he should be the one that should be enjoying those kinds of things and that kind of treatment, after all, he had real power, which he somehow thought Davies didn''t have, but after hearing the identity of who was behind the wheel, his thoughts changed.


    Apart from the immediate fear that had gripped him and the relief he had felt that he had waited for Davies to leave before speaking his mind, he also felt respect for Davies as everyone who knew the story behind Davies Lake, knew that everything he had, he had acquired by himself.


    From an orphan, he had begun to read until he was buried in books and began to ask questions that for some reason the dumb adults around him hadn''t asked.


    "If mana is a source of power for humans, why can''t it be used as a source of power for other things?"


    Davies''s innovations had begun from here, and from then he had simply gone crazy while at the same time driving the world crazy with the feats he had achieved.


    From finding a method with which to use mana to power technology, to inventing the first mana engine at just the age of 9 had thrown humanity as well as a few other races into shock.


    He had then gone on to establish apany that would sell this technology, but when the world had been waiting for even more shocking feats, he had simply disappeared after shocking them with his inborn talent for the evolution of the human race.

 Chapter 140 CHAPTER 140: DAVIESS FETISH

    ?


    "If mana is a source of power for humans to disy various powerful abilities, then why can''t it be used as a source of power for other things?" Davies asked a simple question that for some reason the dumb adults around hadn''t bothered to ask themselves, therefore not managing to see a ring door that led to creative innovations.


    This question was what paved the way for the floodgates of innovations that continuously flowed out from his brain. He had simply gone crazy while at the same time driving the world crazy with the feats he had achieved.


    From finding a method with which to use mana to power technology, to inventing the first mana engine at just the age of 9 had thrown humanity as well as the other races that were in the know about various urrences in other races though there was no need for them to be in the know to find out, the things he had done at his age were just that attention seeking.


    He hadn''t just shown an innovative and creative mind, but also gone on to shock the world once more with his inborn talent for human evolution by acquiring at least one S-rank blessing at his blessing of the cataclysm ceremony when he was ten.


    People weren''t clear on how much power he had or the exact type of blessing he had achieved as he had disappeared shortly after the ceremony, never to be seen for the next twelve years after that. All they knew was that he was quite powerful as he had managed to survive through a mission gate without many injuries just after he once again appeared to the world.


    "Someone like Davies Lake is not just above our pay grade, he''s above our level of understanding,"


    "It''d be better to know your ce and to act as such¡­ that is if you still have any ns of surviving in Yorkshire city," the female head of security left her final words of advice to her subordinate before returning to her usually stoic face and sending someone to check the invitation of the next visitor who was now waiting to be let into the estate.


    Davies simply followed the road, not knowing what had transpired behind him, and even if he knew, he would not do anything about it, he was beyond being hurt by the words of extras who were not even on the level of side characters in the turbulent series of event that was his life.


    If he also heard their estimations and thoughts about his identity, he would simply chuckle and look away as while most of their estimations about his abilities were true, they were wrong about a lot of things.


    For one, the reason why he was able to continuously spit out inventions was that as a reincarnator, he had seen quite a lot of things that no one could conceive with their minds in this world and all he had simply done was to recreate those things with his technological ability.


    Normally there was no way one man coulde up with so many inventions and ideas for ideas as no matter how smart one was, he could not continuouslye up with so many innovative and useful ideas¡­ emphasis on the useful.


    The movies andics lied¡­ the human mind was not capable of continuously bringing out such groundbreaking inventions at the pace that Davies did without input from other creative minds, after all, inspiration was something that could dry up.


    Davies hadn''t run out of ideas because he had simply seen too much and he had time to think up other innovative ideas of his own without stressing his creativity and burning himself out¡­ it was all due to him continuously giar-¡­ ahem, borrowing technological ideas from other worlds to develop on Leivandage to make like better for everyone in the world.


    It was all due to him being a selfless person¡­ yup, that''s all it was, no other ulterior motives were included.


    Putting that away from his mind, he focused on the matters at hand as he drove up to a huge building that ringly announced its presence even in the darkness of the night that had taken over from the dim evening light of before.


    Davies drove towards the building that advertised itself as the venue for the banquet as it was the only building that has been decorated extravagantly and also was the only one where he could see human activity. He followed the tracks until he reached the front of the hall and stopped the car to get out as he already noticed the group of valets waiting at the side to do their job.


    He and Danie who had stopped behind him got out of their respective vehicles and handed over the keys of their vehicles to their cars to the valets, though Davies took the time to warn the valet who hade to drive Sierra to the car park, to be very careful with her, otherwise his life would be ruined by Davies if anything happened to her.


    Unlike Lee Jung who was protected by fate, this particr valet had no one to rely on so it was guaranteed that Davies would be able to make good on his words to ruin his life if he messed up while trying to park Sierra.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    After giving the valet a warning, he walked up the stairs towards the hall and entered the hall after the doors had been pulled open by the strong-looking men who were manning the door.


    Davies had held the golden envelope that had his invitation in his hand just in case it was requested once more before he was let into the hall, but it wasn''t required so he put it into one of the pockets present on the inner surface of his overcoat, thinking to himself that he shouldn''t have bothered with bringing it along, but since he hadn''t known, he had had to bring it along just in case.


    He and Danie entered the hall without anyone shouting out his name, after all, they weren''t in some fantasy world where important people''s names were shouted upon their entrance into a party¡­ well, it was a fantasy world, but it wasn''t that kind of fantasy.


    Upon their entry into the hall, Davies realized that the main character of the banquet as well as the side character that had invited him weren''t present in the hall yet, which was probably why he hadn''t been personally received by her.


    "Seemed we were a bit early," Davies muttered in a voice only he and Danie could hear as they walked further into the hall, passing by people who were already present in the hall and were already conversing freely amongst themselves while helping themselves to some drinks which were being carted around by people in waiter uniforms.


    Normally, Davies wouldn''t have been at this kind of asion and even if he hade, he would never havee early as he wasn''t very interested in fraternizing in a gathering where asses and boobies were ever present in the environment¡­


    ''Wait¡­'' he suddenly realized that these kinds of parties weren''t bad as there were asses and boobies ever present here as well, and they were even of the high-strung women who liked putting on airs.


    Davies especially liked conquering high-strung women. It always gave him some kind of derisive joy to make a woman who always put on airs and acted like some sort of ice queen moan beneath him and have all their attitude disappear due to the kind of pleasure he made them experience while being ministered to by his hands and junior Davies¡­ though with the size it had, he should be calling it senior Davies, but since that would mess up the seniority, he would stick to calling it junior for now.


    ''Damn¡­ is that the kind of fetish I have?'' he suddenly realized that he also had an interesting fetish.


    [Oh my God, if I started acting like a cold CEO, would you have the hots for me?] Miya asked in the spirit of making fun of him.


    ''While you aren''t a figment of my imagination, you still exist inside my head¡­''


    ''I can do a lot of things to you in there¡­'' he replied snarkily, stunning Miya into silence as this wasn''t the kind of reply she was expecting. She more or less expected him tough it off, but she didn''t know that he would answer her like this.


    [You would even sleep with a system''s interface inside of your mind¡­] she spoke incredulously, but her tone also sounded suspicious.


    ''I''ve slept with the queen of the greatest country in the world before¡­ this of all things shouldn''t shock you if I actually intended to sleep with you as well,'' Daviesughed at her shock.


    Now that he thought about it, sleeping with powerful women was one of the things that never failed to gain him enemies, especially since most of them had husbands, and even if they weren''t married, they had tons of powerful admirers who wouldn''t take kindly to having the woman of their dreams moaning like a hoe under the pleasure of another man''s cock.


    [No wonder protagonists were always the least of your problems] Miya had finally stumbled upon the discovery of why the world was almost always after Davies''s life in every one of his transmigrations.


    Compared to those distant memories that she had seen inside Davies''s mind, she realized that he had been holding himself from acting on all of his desires in this transmigration.

 Chapter 141 CHAPTER 141: THE FLAMING WINGED ENCHANTRESS

    ?


    Davies picked up a ss of wine and swirled it around as he moved to a more inconspicuous area of the hall.


    He maintained a low key appearance and spoke to no one as he moved until he arrived at a corner of the hall where there was no one to disturb him.


    He was very thankful that this hadn''t been the kind of banquet where one''s name was shouted out upon their entry, otherwise he would be swamped with annoying idiots trying toe in contact for various reasons, some weirder than the other.


    Of course, with a face like his, he still turned heads and he wasn''tpletely inconspicuous in the corner he had chosen to stay, especially since he wasn''t recognizable among the people in Yorkshire who were influential enough to be invited to the birthday banquet of someone like the head of the Lecroy family, more especially as he was very young.


    But most of the eyes that had fallen on him quickly moved away as even though he was handsome, mysterious and influential enough to attend the banquet, they preferred to focus on rting with the people they actually recognized, giving Davies the sce he had in mind when he had avoided interacting with anyone.


    As for the few eyes that remained on him, Davies ignored them and began to scan through the visitors present in the hall with a scrutinizing look in his eyes as he tried to figure out which one of them could end up bing a problem, after all, he wasn''t really here because he had wanted to celebrate the birthday of someone he didn''t even know.


    Thanks to his request to Danie to help him gather information about the top brass in the city and him actually going through some of the gathered information, he was able to recognize quite a few of the people gallivanting around.


    He had already noticed a few reputable business owners and with their worth in at least the hundreds of millions, there were even some league leaders and important members of the most powerful and reputable leagues in Yorkshire city andst but not least, there were members of the four great families present, and of course, they weren''t alone as they all had some apaniment.


    ''Seems Lee Jung isn''t here yet,'' Davies thought to himself as he brought his wine ss to his mouth after not noticing the presence of the annoying fated protagonist. This meant that for the time being, there was no need for Davies to do anything or talk to anyone unless it was absolutely unavoidable.


    He leaned back on the wall, grabbed another ss of wine and slowly sipped it, looking disinterested in everything that was going on around him, but his eyes that were stealthily darting around told a different story. Even though he lookedpletely disinterested, he was still keeping an eye on the proceedings going on inside the hall as he did not want to miss anything important.


    Danie who was also just right beside him also took a ss of wine and slowly sipped on it. She didn''t really know what had brought Davies around to making the decision to attend this kind of gathering as it wasn''t something he''d normally do, but it wasn''t her duty to question his decision, all she had to do was follow all his orders anyway.


    Davies maintained a low key image while drinking ss after ss of wine, not bothering about if he could get drunk as there was no way the light wine he had been chugging down for thest few minutes could even get him slightly tipsy, especially as he had a naturally high alcohol tolerance.


    Suddenly, there was a light ruckus at the entrance of the hall. It wasn''t on the level that it could disturb the whole hall as it was simply a change in the moods of everyone who was close enough to the entrance, but Davies who had been constantly scanning through the hall immediately noticed the change in mood of everyone looking at the direction of the entrance and he also quickly looked at the entrance of the hall to know what had caused such a reaction in the crowd.


    His eyes darted towards the entrance of the hall and immediately he realized what had caused the change of mood in the people who were within reach of the entrance.


    Standing at the entrance in a ck evening gown was an extremely beautiful raven haired woman who had ample curves in all the right ces.


    Her curves weren''t just ample but were big enough and so well shaped tha Davies felt like her beauty and sexiness had just sucker punched him right in the middle and he immediately lost his breath, but luckily he managed to not let the wine he was drinking to go into the wrong ce and not cause him to have a coughing fit.


    The beautiful raven haired woman who looked to be in her early thirties stood there with a frigid look on her face as she also scanned the hall with her eyes.


    Davies could understand why just her mere appearance had been able to cause such a change in the mood of everyone with a view of the entrance of the hall, he had also been sucker punched by her beauty, especially as she had the kind of beauty, maturity, and temperance that fully triggered his desires.


    Melinda Ashborne, League Leader of The Furious Phoenix League which was probably the most powerful league in the whole city of Yorkshire, was the identity of the beautiful raven haired woman, Davies recalled from the information he had read about her.


    ording to the information that Danie had submitted, she was a stage 4 elementalist with the S-ranked blessing, Wings of the phoenix.


    "Hmmm, interesting¡­" Davies murmured slightly nodding to himself as various thoughts ran through his head.


    [...]


    [Somehow, your intuition was correct, I''m detecting great amounts of fate valueing off of her] Miya said in Davies''s head, expecting him to use this chance to gloat in her face that he was smarter than she was and she should just listen to him like the idiot she was, but surprisingly, Davies wasn''t saying a single word.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    The reason for this was because Davies had noticed an annoying pest sticking around the woman who had just triggered all of his desires to possess her, the stupid bastard protagonist, Lee Jung.


    From where he stood, he saw Lee Jung walk into the hall from behind her and go up to talk to Melinda, who actually responded to him before they split up and went different ways into the hall.


    ''Hey, Miya, what do you think would be the best way to damage Lee Jung right now?'' Davies asked internally with a tone that was a little too calm. Miya immediately realized that her host had been triggered and had already entered hunt mode, his eyes glinting dangerously.


    [...]


    Miya could note up with an answer as everything she could even think up at the moment were things that wereand were almost impossible to be.


    [Without a doubt... It would be snatching the new heroine from Lee Jung before he can establish a romantic rtionship with her, but...]


    [...I doubt even you can crack open that ice queen easily] Miya spoke her mind.


    ''So... All I have to do is pipe her?'' Davies thought quizzically to himself.


    [Huh.... Hold up, what do you mean ''pipe her''?]


    [What does that even mean] Miya was confused at Davies''s choice of words.


    ''Don''t sweat the details... It means what it sounds like it means, piping her hard,'' Davies didn''t care about Miya''s confusion as he had other challenging things to think about at the moment.


    ''Piping'' the most powerful woman in the city was not as easy as he had made it sound with the words easily rolling smoothly off of his tongue.


    But as a viin, Davies had no ns to y fair, after all, why would he have to crack open the ice queen if she could crack herself open with almost no effort from his side.


    Of course, getting that to happen was also easier than it sounded, it would require devastating intelligence on his part and an equally just as despicable n that would get him thrown in jail if Leivandage was a world where thews of society were actually able to hold him.


    Unfortunately, for Lee Jung and fortunately for Davies, there were almost no one that could make Davies answer to them, and that was even if they ever found out about what he was nning to do.


    [I get that you''re nning to... In your own words ''pipe her'', but how are you going to do that?]


    [And even if you manage to, by some crazy n of yours, achieve such a feat... Which would be very shocking]


    [It could just end up being a one night thing and not actually stop the Lee Jung from getting the opportunity he was supposed to get]


    [I''m pretty sure I don''t have to tell you that just sleeping with a heroine doesn''t gather anything] Miya warned.


    ''It''s true that it doesn''t, but I have my ways...''


    ''Also, you have to admit that while I have been betrayed by some women, my bedmatic skills have no equal...'' Davies stated with pride.

 Chapter 142 CHAPTER 142: THE FLAMING WINGED ENCHANTRESS II

    ?


    With a goal in mind and a n at hand, he shifted his gaze from Melinda and turned his focus back to the wine as it wasn''t time to make his move yet.


    Strangely enough, he was the only male in the vicinity who could take his eyes off her and focus entirely on something else. This didn''t escape Melinda''s cold eyes that literally scanned through the room.


    She had always been used to being the center of the asion and was always on the receiving end of different kinds of gazes from both the men and the questionable females, so seeing someone who simply nced at her for a few seconds and was obviously amazed by her beauty as she had seen his eyes widening slightly when they fell upon her, but still took his eyes off of her with seemingly no effort piqued her curiosity.


    ''That''s him right?''


    ''That kid everyone has been talking about for a while, Davies Lake,'' she wondered to herself.


    As the head of one of the city''srgest and most powerful leagues, there was no way she didn''t have any inside information about Davies. She had been notified by the information gathering unit of her league that Davies had once again surfaced and had arrived back at Yorkshire City.


    She had been quite impressed by some of the things he had achieved, but she was not so interested as to actually be very interested in meeting him, so she had simply taken the information about him as a side note.


    But he still belonged to... Or rather, he owned a ginormous organization that she couldn''t afford to get into any stupid conflicts with, so she had made sure to stay updated about any major news that concerned him.


    To be honest, she didn''t really pay attention to him even though she had told her people to keep her updated as she didn''t really care about what happened, but that all changed when she the headline of the news for the day after Davies had arrived in the city was that he had somehow gotten stuck inside of a mission gate.


    Talk about bad luck, something she hadn''t been very interested in had forced her to stay interested as she knew the kind of chaos that would ensure should anything actually happen to the widely acimed genius of the century.


    The mad dog fight for the things he possessed would almost tear the city apart. Unfortunately, her guild was a leading figure in the city so even if she wasn''t in the least interested in whatever befell Davies, she also had to take preventive measures to ensure that her league wasn''t pulled into whatever chaos that was brewing.


    At the end of it all, Davies''s arrival had brought her extra work and ack of a peaceful mind so her impression of him had degraded by quite a bit.


    A weekter, when everyone was walking on eggshells and doing their best to avoid inciting a fight in the city that could potentially take a turn for the worse, news about Davies making it out of the gate almost unharmed and he had even managed to drag out the trainees that had gotten stuck into the gate with him.


    It was also at this period that her information-gathering team had managed to get a clear picture of Davies''s face and she had to admit that she was quite impressed by his beauty which was even higher than hers even though she as a woman should be the one with higher beauty, but she felt no attraction for him as she was not like other women who would swoon so easily upon getting a nce of Davies''s face.


    She was also quite impressed that Davies had not only saved himself but also taken care of his subordinates even though they were probably holding him back from the information she had gathered about the issue.


    Melinda may look like the frigid ice queen born in the deepest parts of the North Pole without the slightest bit of emotions, but that was only what was shown on her face due to her past circumstances.


    She was actually a very caring person who took care of everyone around her which was also what ensured that she had grown to where she had been able to reach.


    The people she surrounded herself with were people that respected her and werepletely loyal to her so she almost never had any internal issues and could focus on growth, all of this stemmed from her good leadership and caring attitude despite what her face portrayed.


    Though impressed she had been prepared to put away her worried and focus back on her own things when she suddenly wondered what Davies would do after he found out about what had almost urred due to his disappearance.


    Unknowingly, she has started to be a little interested in Davies and was now paying some attention to him which was a great contrast to when she did not want to have anything to do with him as she simply didn''t care enough.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    She had heard that one of Davies''s employees, a C-level executive for that matter, had tried to attack him while under the influence of some ''suspicious substances''.


    ''Attacked him my ass,'' she remembers thinking with a roll of her eyes when she had heard about it. Anyone with a brain would instantly realize that there was something wrong with the situation, but then they would think that since he was under the influence of some strange stuff, the situation was usible, but the more adept thinkers would immediately realize that the mention of the C-level executive being under the influence was nothing but a smoke screen.


    She immediately recognized that Davies had killed the executive because of something else but had managed to push the me to something like narcotics so he wouldn''t have to deal with the annoying aftermath of having to kill his own employee.


    Melinda was even more impressed at this point because she knew that as a leader of an organization one had to cut away any rotting parts no matter the cost, before they could infect the whole tree and cause it to implode.


    If she had to do the same thing as he did, she would... After all, she wasn''t new to killing people.


    ''It seemed the genius of the century isn''t a house cat but a tiger prowling in the jungle,'' she had thought and then changed her focus back to her own job, no longer caring much about the situation or anything else about Davies Lake in general.


    Unfortunately, the things that had to do with Davies didn''t wait for her toe looking for them but rather they jumped at her, waiting to be found... Or rather, they had appeared on her television in the form of the morning show that she had always watched every morning.


    As she heard case after case of strange deaths that had befallen the employees of Davies''spany, she actually became a bit wary of Davies and actually sweated a bit in apprehension,


    ''Did I say he was a tiger... He''s more like a furious dragon raging around after someone infuriated him,'' she thought with cold sweat appearing on her back as she swallowed hard.


    This time, she resolved to not pay any attention to things about Davies and whole heatedly focuses on her own work, and luckily, she didn''t hear anything about him for a few days until she heard that he had been dragged into an ident and had been shot by the stupid pretentious bitchy girl from the Santos family.


    She actually had a slight smile on her face after she heard that Davies had actually beat her up a fair bit before leaving her sprawling on the road.


    Melinda had not yet met Davies at this point but had already begun to think that he might be quite an interesting person to speak with.


    Due to news about Davies constantly flying around since he had arrived back at the city, she had actually been able to get quite a bit of information about him, and the one thing that anyone who had heard everything that had urred around Davies would be able to confirm one thing.


    That one thing was that Davies had quite the temper and the moment that he ended up in a bad mood, someone would have to pay for it... In blood.


    The old president who had suddenlymitted suicide this morning after pissing Davies off after Davies had just almost been robbed of his technology was another fresh warning to people who were in the know about the urrences in the city.


    Melinda had been quite interested in meeting Davies prior to today, but knowing that he had just been almost robbed of his technology and was most probably in a bad mood, she didn''t want to meet him right at the moment when he was probably looking for someone to let out his anger on... She had an inkling that the suicide of the old president wasn''t just a suicide and had probably been encouraged by ''another party''.


    Even the fact that he hade to the banquet was actually quite surprising as she hadn''t thought he would be here, especially after what had almost happened to his technology.


    Luckily he had merely given her a nce and looked away, so it was easy for her to escape from having to converse with him, but she knew that it was only a matter of time before she would have to meet him as she couldn''tpletely act like she didn''t see him as that would be disrespectful, even though she was older than him by quite a fair bit... All she was doing was simply dying their inevitable encounter.


    Unknown to her, the encounter between the two of them was already a foregone conclusion and it was not going to be something she had ever thought of happening.

 Chapter 143 CHAPTER 143: THE FLAMING WINGED ENCHANTRESS III

    ?


    In the darkness of night, the well-decorated hall on the property of the Lecroy estate indicated that the banquet was in full swing. The guests had arrived and the host as well as the celebrant had arrived as well and was being greeted and congratted by the guests¡­ or at least, he was being congratted by most of them.


    Davies wasn''t doing any of that and simply remained where he was as he was not going to join the crowd and rub bodies with the sweaty bodies of others just so he could congratte someone he did not know, neither did he even put him in his eyes.


    So, he stayed back and simply continued sipping wine peacefully, different devious thoughts running through his mind as he stood waiting for something to trigger him into action.


    Soon enough, the opportunity for him to take action arose when he decided to move towards a table that had foodid out on it.


    He didn''t want to only continuously fill his food with wine that couldn''t even make him tipsy if he drank from then till the next day, so he wanted to at least fill up his stomach with something that was delicious.


    Shockingly, he met Melinda there as well, but she simply held a wine ss and wasn''t eating anything. It seemed she was there out of convenience as she didn''t want to be stuck in the crowd as well.


    "I never expected someone with a name like the ming Winged Enchantress, to be someone with such a cold temperament," Davies spoke without even looking in her direction as he stopped at the table to pick up a delicious-looking pastry that was oozing cream.


    Melinda was surprised that Davies had been the one to take the initiative to begin a conversation and was even more shocked that she somehow hadn''t noticed him approaching until he stepped right into her field of vision. It was almost like he was in some sort of stealth mode that made people literally ignore his existence even when he stood right beside them.


    ''Seems like he did his homework,'' she thought with slight wariness as she realized that he had recognized her without them having ever met her before and had even called her by a name that was only used by the other Megas.


    "I also never expected the well-acimed genius of the century to be this handsome," she replied to Davies, deciding topliment him a little so that they could have a frictionless conversation.


    "Oh, you know me?" Davies spoke in a slightly surprised tone as he bit into the pastry smoothly and elegantly not staining his lips with any of the cream that was oozing out of the pastry into his mouth.


    "I half expected to be unrecognized by almost everybody, seems you have been keeping tabs on me," he spoke again as he bit into the pastry once again, but this time he bit quite sharply and his teeth could be heard mping together sharply with a click, his eyes also narrowed coldly as well as he stared coldly at Melinda.


    Melinda immediately felt a chill run down her spine as she heard the direction of Davies''s words that insinuated that she had been spying on him and she had no words to use to deny it as it was kind of true because while she hadn''t paid extreme action to Davies, she had always made sure to stay informed about things that urred around him through different means.


    "I''m joking," Davies suddenly said with a littleugh.


    "Anyway, I''m Davies Lake, a well-acimed and handsome genius like you said," he went on to introduce himself, albeit a bit cheekily and narcissistically.


    "Also, I wouldn''t really mind if someone as beautiful as you were spying on me," he added in a low tone as he stretched a hand for a handshake.


    "Melinda Ashborne," Melinda answered curtly, ignoring everything Davies had said but his name as she stretched out her hand to meet his handshake. As a heroine, she naturally had high defenses so she wouldn''t be so easily moved by Davies''s half-hearted attempts at flirting with her especially as she could hear it in his tone that he didn''t mean anything by the words he had said.


    It was weird how Davies was able to disy ackadaisical emotion while his words were saying somethingpletely different from the emotion he was disying.


    As Davies held Melinda''s hand in a soft grip, he spoke again, "Is this the part where I kiss the back of your hand while looking into your eyes and saying some corny romantic shit that is supposed to make you swoon over me?" he spokeughingly withughing eyes.


    This actually managed to bring a soft smile that lit up Melinda''s face in a different way than the cold beauty vibe that was radiating from her before.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Oh, look, she can smile," Davies spoke in a surprised tone as he looked at the slightly smiling beauty, but the smile immediately disappeared as soon as Davies mentioned it.


    "You have quite the sense of humor, Mr. Lake," Melinda spoke with a lighter tone than before as she removed her hand from Davies''s already released grip.


    "Please call me Davies, it feels weird having a big sister call me so formally," Davies immediately spoke to dissuade her from calling him so formally.


    His reason for his half-hearted attempts at flirting with her which finally made her smile and loosen up with him was due to him making the moves to establish a rtionship that was not romantically inclined like what almost every other man that she had met tried to establish with her.


    By doing this, he had already separated himself from the other hordes of men she had met in her life, and whenever she remembered him, she''d think of him as a yful person who had made her mood lighter and made herugh.


    Davies was going for the "bestie" route rather than wholeheartedly trying to woo her and his reasons for doing so was that a rtionship that blooms from a friendship was usually longersting and left a very deep impression on both sides, or in this case on Melinda''s side, Davies did not have enough emotions to care about friendship and love.


    Anyway, talking about the "bestie" route, Davies had already nned a series of events to happen in the future and he would only be able to e to her aid" if he had a friendship type of rtionship with her rather than a rival of the protagonist in trying to woo her.


    It was very likely that if he decided topete with Lee Jung to get into a romantic rtionship with Melinda, she may end up falling for Lee Jung, and very quickly at that because the viin in conventional stories was usually there not only to serve as a source of free exp for the protagonist but also there to constantly boost the development of the rtionship between the protagonist and the heroine¡­ or heroines as the case may be.


    But, If he was acting as a close friend of the heroine, he could sabotage their rtionship behind the scenes while also constantly defending the protagonist and making the heroine fall even harder for him until the point where he would destroy their love in one fell swoop, after which he as the close friend would be her shoulder to cry on and as the old adage says,


    "A shoulder to cry on, is a dick to ride on¡­" so he''d keep his shoulders dry and his dick hard until the opportune moment.


    Once he was able to take advantage of the opportune moment, then the situation was pretty much already in the bag for him.


    He snickered internally wondering as he thought of what was toe, but outwardly, he had taken the opportunity to continue chatting with Melinda without once diverting the situation towards a romantic direction.


    They spoke about different things, though it was mostly Davies doing the talking and Melinda majorly listening andughing at a lot of dumb corny jokes that were so bad that they couldn''t get a clown tough if they were said by a random person, but Davies had a way of delivering his words that they would make even a dead dogugh and though Melinda had a high resistance to things like that, she had a brighter look on her face than the frigid one she had when she had arrived at the banquet.


    Melinda''s impression of Davies was currently at an all-time high as it was the first time in forever that she had been this rxed with anybody of the opposite sex or even the same sex for that matter.


    The ease at which he spoke so calmly with her and his corny, wack-ass jokes reminded her of her long-deceased brother, who had also been her best friend and she felt a warm feeling in her heart for the first time in a long time.


    ''As expected, going down this route was the best option for the frigid ice queen-like beauty,'' Davies thought to himself upon seeing the brighter look on her face.


    After dawdling for a long while, Davies thought it was time for them to go and meet the host of the banquet, as after all, they had been invited to the banquet and it wouldn''t be good if they didn''t at least congratte the celebrant¡­ though Davies was more interested in meeting Lee Jung while being in thepany of Melinda.


    He smiled darkly as he thought of the kind of expression that Lee Jung would have on his face when he saw them together.

 Chapter 144 CHAPTER 144: THE BESTIE ROUTE

    ?


    Davies spoke of his intention to meet with the host of the banquet to Melinda who nodded in affirmation as she also knew that they had to do at least that much since they had been invited.


    After getting her reply, Davies began to move towards where the celebrant, host, and the head of the Lecroy family stood, receivingpliments and congrattions from his guests, but as he led the way, his walking speed was abysmally slow, and shockingly Melinda moved at the same pace.


    It was obvious that they were dragging their feet and neither of them actually wanted to go and meet the host of the banquet even though they had just affirmed that they were going to do it earlier.


    "You know, it''s kinda obvious that we both don''t want to be here, so why did you even bother to go first," Davies spoke first, breaking the awkward silence that was about to set in as they dragged their feet in the direction of the crowd.


    "Why don''t you go tell me why you came?" Melinda quickly threw back the question towards Davies wanting to avoid talking about the issue.


    "I asked you first so you go first," Davies immediately detected her attempt to deflect the question as it seemed she tried to avoid talking about it.


    "I was-" she began.


    "Don''t even think about lying," Davies immediately narrowed his eyes with a suspicious smile the moment she began to speak.


    "I was not going to!" Melinda immediately shot back, with an aggrieved face that looked like a deer in headlights, it was obvious that she had been trying to cook up some facy that she would tell Davies.


    "OK then, let me hear the spicy details," Davies said with an evil smile and his eyebrows shot up in repeated motions, signifying her to speak as his interest had been piqued.


    "I was #!$@#%@$#^," she began to speak in a low voice, but at the end of the sentence, her voice was so low that all Davies heard was a bunch of gibberish.


    "What?" Davies''s shady smile became wider, and his eyes curved suspiciously.


    "I was tricked okay!" Melinda huffed and turned away with a pout, but her ears turned embarrassingly.


    ''Huh?'' Davies was confused as he didn''t yet know the story so he didn''t know why she was embarrassed, but he had noticed that Melinda had a brighter look on her face and had unconsciously begun to respond very well to the conversation while disying more emotions that normally wouldn''t be seen on her face.


    It seemed that his approach was the right one, and she had unconsciously gotten carried away with the thought of just making a good friend who wasn''t overly interested in her lustfully.


    Normally she was so used to only receiving lustful looks from the opposite sex and or opportunistic gazes from everyone else, but Davies was not someone who needed anything from her and they were quite alike, they both had a cold look masking their face and preventing their emotions from being disyed, they both hated annoying gatherings like the one they were currently in and Davies hadn''t shown the slightest look in his eyes when he had looked at her even though he was obviously impressed by her beauty.


    He perfectly fitted into the role of one of the few people who could be a friend to her without ulterior motives, not to mention that they were both people who had lost important people in their lives, so they could rte very well with each other. In Davies''s case, he had lost his parents when he was just six years old(though Davies didn''t give the slightest fuck about that, but she didn''t know that), while she had lost her parents and her younger brother who Davies reminded her of due to how much younger he was than her.


    It also helped that she could detect a lot of simrities in Davies, and he constantly reminded him of her, which was why she was able to let down her guard so easily and Davies was able to leave her in stitchesughing at his corny ass jokes.


    What she didn''t know was that Davies had been expecting her to be the heroine who was to be Lee Jung''s opportunity, so he had made preparations and ns. One of the preparations he had made was investigating her past and it was from there that he found out that she had once had a younger brother which was the leading reason why he had chosen to use the ''bestie'' route instead of outrightly trying to get inside her pants.


    From the start, everything from the first moment when they locked eyes at the moment she arrived at the banquet, to the simrities that she was noticing between Davies and her long-deceased younger brother was all nned by Davies, and everything was onlying together due to Davies''s determined acting and preparations for the whole situation.


    ''It really was worth it finding out about the personality of her younger brother,'' Davies thought to himself while externally he had a confused look at the words that had left Melinda''s mouth in a huff.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    In reality, he had not really had to do much than talking a bit more than he usually did and constantly making wack-ass jokes that he was easily able to do. He hadn''t gone out of his way to act exactly like her younger as that would be too suspicious and someone like Melinda would be able to immediately detect that he was way too simr to her younger brother in temperament, and even though she may not be able to figure out why that was so, she would have been particrly wary of him as he wasn''t someone with an identity that she could easily brush off.


    He had simply shown a bit more emotion than he usually did and let her womanly mind that was good at making stupid conclusions take care of the rest, after all, it was a well-known truth that a woman only needed to see a piece of hair on a man''s cloth for her toe up with a whole theory of how he cheated, why he cheated, who he cheated with, where they cheated, and even the exact time they cheated.


    With such a godly assist, he hadn''t needed to do much than be himself and the mission was already in the bag.


    "What do you mean you were tricked?"


    "Did someone force you toe or something?" Davies''s voice turned serious as if he was worried about what happened.


    Melinda was immediately touched that Davies who had only met for a few minutes had actually be serious and became worried immediately he heard something that sounded derivative towards her.


    Her heart softened even further, and she fell even more into the trap of Davies''s caring attitude about her.


    There was obviously a reason why women mostly had male best friends, after all, they liked being cared for while trying to avoid the constraints of a serious rtionship. It was one of the reasons why women became hoes, they were addicted to excessive care from the opposite sex and they couldn''t get enough of it, it was their own opium.


    Davies''s caring attitude that he was showing to Melinda without any lust was like a drug to her, it reminded her of the care she used to receive from her brother and her parents, and her heart became warm just thinking about it and her reservations with Davies dropped even further.


    "It''s not like that," She immediately rified.


    "I was trying to avoiding by running into a gate, but my secretary, Jane made the driver bring me here without me knowing and I can''t go away withouting in because apparently my invitation has been seen and my arrival has been reported so leaving without evening in would give off the wrong impression," Melinda exined. This was possibly the longest sentence she had spoken all week.


    Davies was lucky that he hadn''t been drinking wine when she told him what happened, or he would have immediately sprayed it out in shock,


    ''Do secretaries do such things now?'' he thought with a bitter smile while sneaking a look at where he had left Danie to wait.


    Suddenly another thought appeared in his mind, "Wait¡­ if you weren''t nning to then where did you get the dress?"


    "I find it hard to believe that you would wear an evening dress into a gate?" Davies spoke while ring at her suspiciously with narrowed eyes.


    "No! Why would I do that?!"


    "That Jane already nned everything so she had gotten me a dress as well,"


    "I had to change in the car," Melinda answered, satisfying Davies''s curiosity, but at the same time, leaving him shocked at the story of how the lone secretary had one-upped the ming Winged Enchantress.


    "Jane 1: 0 Meliie," Davies suddenly said with augh after recovering from his shock.

 Chapter 145 CHAPTER 145: KICKED IN THE HEAD BY A DONKEY

    ?


    No matter how much they dragged their feet and conversed with each other, in the end, they still had to arrive at their destination which was therge crowd that had formed around the head of the Lecroy family.


    Now they were faced with the problem of how to reach the front of the crowd and congratte the celebrant as the crowd stood in the way of their objective, but instead of making a move to get through the crowd, they both simply took a nce at the crowd and said,


    "Let''s just wait for the crowd to clear," they both spoke at exactly the same time then looked at each other in surprise and both startedughing lightly, while using their hands to shield their mouths from bursting openly withughter.


    It was obvious that they really weren''t interested in meeting the celebrant and were constantly looking for ways to escape from doing it, or at the very least, to dy it.


    Theirughing faces visibly brightened the scenery around them, but unfortunately, no one but Danie and a few of the attendants were able to witness such a photographic scene.


    After a few seconds of trying to control theirughter, they managed toport themselves and wiped away any traces of smiles from their face and quickly reverted to their image of beautiful ice sculptures that disyed no emotion, but for anyone who had been watching them, it was ratherical.


    "So, where were we?" Melinda asked Davies after removing every trace of a smile from her face.


    "You set my soul on fire," Davies replied in a deeply seductive with apletely straight face.


    "W-What!?" Melinda waspletely thrown off bnce by Davies''s words and could only gape at him in shock as a red tinge slowly appeared on her face.


    "Pffftt, hahahaha,"


    "You actually fell for that, hahaha," Daviesughed at Melinda who had actually been rizzed up by Davies''s somewhat romantic voice and extremely seductive voice.


    "Y-You brat," Melinda was shaking in embarrassment as her face turned even redder.


    "Hahaha, fucking hell, you''re actually blushing," Davies said in betweenughs at how she had been so easily rizzed up by his cringy but romantic line. He couldn''t understand how a woman that was as mature looking as Melinda could be so easily rizzed up by such a weak line.


    He had actually only said this line because he wanted to test how resistive she was to being rizzed up, but her reaction actually disappointed him. She was too easily rizzed up by him and was even blushing.


    ''Isn''t this too easy?'' he wondered to himself because he knew that with defenses as weak as hers, he could easily work his way into her bedroom tonight.


    ''Is it supposed to be this easy or is it a trap?'' he constantly wondered.


    [It has to be this easy, how else do you think that romantic idiots like protagonists can get such girls to fall in love with them otherwise] Miya suddenly broke into his wondering and evaporated all his questions with this one singr sentence.


    ''That¡­ actually makes sense,'' he suddenly realized. It was true that most heroic fated protagonists were absolute durds when it came to the romance department and did not know how to speak to a woman much less how to get into a rtionship.


    Most of them were even beta idiots that were easily pushed around by women and acted like well-trained dogs whenever they smelt a pretty girl nearby, yet somehow, through various stupid coincidences they somehow managed to establish romantic rtionships with women that were way above their paygrade and they even somehow manage to establish harems full of women who were extremely docile around him but were like furious dragons to everyone else of the opposite sex.


    ''I see¡­ now it all makes sense¡­''


    [What makes sense?] Miya asked confusedly.


    ''The requirement to be a heroine in this world must be to have been kicked in the head by a donkey,'' Davies thought so seriously that Miya burst intoughter immediately.


    [Pffffft¡­Hahahaha¡­]


    [What do you mean kicked in the head by a donkey?]


    ''They have to have been kicked in the head by a donkey,''


    ''It''s the only thing that can exin their various weird characters and how easy they are,'' Davies spoke as if he had just discovered a hidden truth of the world.


    [What?] Miya askedughingly.


    ''It''s true, for starters, Jessica is a heroine, yet I slept with her in less than a day, then there is Tisha who obviously has something wrong in her head,''


    ''Then there is that bitch from the Santos family who obviously has a whole lot of things wrong upstairs and then-'' Davies began to list out but was interrupted by Miya.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    [First of all, Tisha is a viin] Miya immediately corrected.


    ''She still shows the symptoms of being kicked in the head by a donkey¡­ wait don''t tell me that everyone in this world rted to the protagonist in some way or the other has been kicked in the head by a donkey¡­''


    [...]


    [The people in this world are pretty weird¡­] Miya also came to a sudden realization.


    ''See¡­'' Davies felt a headacheing at the thought that he would constantly have to deal with idiots in the nearest future as he would have to constantly deal with important characters that were inevitably rted to the protagonist.


    The thought that they would all act as if they had all been kicked in the head by donkeys was quite disconcerting, but he could not do anything about that, so he decided to focus on the matter at hand.


    Outwardly he was stillughing at Melinda''s embarrassed look at being so easily rizzed up by him and Melinda was looking away from him in mock anger and embarrassment.


    Because they were so into their own conversation with each other while not paying attention to anything else, they didn''t realize that the people around them were now looking at them with weird looks on their faces.


    ''Is that she actually smiling?''


    ''Since when did ming Winged Enchantress be so jovial?''


    ''Who is the young manughing with her?''


    Various thoughts were running through the minds of the people that were seeing the greatest surprise of their lives, but they were all centered around those three questions.


    The name "ming Winged Enchantress" was derived from three things, Melinda''s S-ranked blessing, her battle style, and her temperament. Her blessing, Phoenix wings were able to control mes and do many things, but Melinda always shaped her mes like wings whenever she fought, yet unlike the fiery temperature of her face, her attitude to everything and her temperament were always frigid, cold and elegant, hence she was called the ming Winged Enchantress, but suddenly the woman that was so known for her cold attitude and temperament that she even got a name for it, was currentlyughing and chatting jovially with someone.


    This was more than the shock of their lives and countless men that were watching and had hidden thoughts about Melinda could feel their hearts shattering into pieces.


    The Ice queen of their fantasies was being cracked open by a white-haired bastard.


    Davies suddenly felt hostilitying at him from various directions and he immediately perked up from his conversation with Melinda and turned around with his mana already flowing, causing his eyes to glow eerily.


    He didn''t expect anything to happen to him in a ce like this, but one can never be too careful, hence why he was already preparing his mana to fight if he noticed any threat the moment, he felt hostility.


    It was only when he had turned around that he noticed that the eyes of everyone were on him and Melinda.


    "What?"


    "Y''all never seen a handsome dude talking to a beautiful woman before?" Davies didn''t back down when he saw the hidden hostility and desire in the eyes of the men and women staring at him respectively.


    He spoke brazenly without the slightest modicum of respect to the top brass of the city who were looking at him with anger in their eyes at the way Davies had spoken to them without caring about seniority or anything for that matter.


    Of course, they were only angry because they couldn''t recognize his face and didn''t know his identity, so they thought he was some second generation who had overstepped his bounds ande here to y.


    "Oh, Happy Birthday dude," Davies spoke like he was talking to the dude next door when he spotted the head of the Lecroy family who was finally visible after the crow had turned their attention to Davies.


    The head of the Lecroy family, Rafael Lecroy, was visibly surprised at being congratted so casually but when he recognized Davies as the guest of honor that his daughter had managed to invite, he quickly began pushing through the crowd toe meet Davies.


    Luckily, the crowd majorly moved out of the way so he was able to easily reach Davies,


    "Thank you for the well wishes,"


    "I''m quite touched that you took some time out of your schedule toe to my banquet," Rafael spoke with visible respect in his tone, surprising the visitors who hadn''t been able to catch on because they didn''t recognize Davies.


    "Don''t worry about that, rather do something about your guests, they all look like they want to beat me up," Davies brushed off whatever Rafael was going to say next and focused on the annoying looks he was receiving from the male guests.

 Chapter 146 CHAPTER 146: SUDDEN STING

    ?


    "Oh, Happy Birthday dude," Davies spoke like he was talking to the dude next door when he spotted the head of the Lecroy family who was finally visible after the crow had turned their attention to Davies.


    The head of the Lecroy family, Rafael Lecroy, was visibly surprised at being congratted so casually but when he recognized Davies as the guest of honor that his daughter had managed to invite, he quickly began pushing through the crowd toe meet Davies.


    Luckily, the crowd majorly moved out of the way so he was able to easily reach Davies,


    "Thank you for the well wishes,"


    "I''m quite touched that you took some time out of your schedule toe to my banquet," Rafael spoke with visible respect in his tone, surprising the visitors who hadn''t been able to catch on because they didn''t recognize Davies.


    "Don''t worry about that, rather do something about your guests, they all look like they want to beat me up," Davies brushed off whatever Rafael was going to say next and focused on the annoying looks he was receiving from the male guests.


    "Hahaha," Rafaelughed boisterously.


    "Good one," he had taken Davies''s words as a joke to lighten the mood.


    "Nah, seriously,"


    "Tell your bros to stop looking at me like they want to jam a knife up my ass," Davies said, his tone indicating that he wasn''t joking.


    "Pfffft," Melinda almost lost herposure, as she was enjoying the situation.


    "Huh, you''re not joking?" Rafael finally looked behind him only for a chill to run down his back due to the unsavory res that he could see in the eyes of the men looking at Davies.


    "Whoa whoa,"


    "You guys shouldn''t scare Yorkshire''s number-one genius like that," Rafaelughed bitterly.


    "What Yorkshire''s number one Genius¡­ please I''m just your extremely handsome dude who can take your daughters and wives away, Davies Lake," Davies introduced himself weirdly¡­ again.


    *SLAP* Davies immediately winced in shock as he just got hit in the back of his head by Melinda who had a hand over her mouth to stop herself from bursting out intoughter.


    "What the hell was that!" Davies eximed with a pained and questioning look on his face as he red at the culprit behind the p on his head.


    "I should ask you the same thing, what the hell was that introduction!?" Melinda was more amused than shocked as she replied to him with a question of her own.


    "I''m just telling it like it is," Davies replied self-righteously, but the guests of the party had various different thoughts running through their heads.


    ''So, he is the Davies Lake? That Davies Lake?'' one of the younger male guests thought amazedly.


    ''No wonder he dares speak so brazenly to Rafael Lecroy,'' an older male guest thought.


    ''Getting Melinda Ashborne as apanion isn''t enough, but now he''s targeting our wives and daughters,'' a middle-aged guest grit his teeth secretly in annoyance.


    ''Maybe it''s finally time to send my daughter to the nunnery,'' a sixty-something year old man, thought with trepidation as he felt that only his daughters could be targeted by Davies as his wife was just as old as he was.


    ''... I want to be taken away,'' a mature-looking woman thought secretly as she eyed Davies''s lithe figure.


    ''Me and my daughters¡­ sounds kinky,'' a woman who was holding the hands of her husband thought derisively, already imagining being rammed from behind while being eaten out and having her ¡­ Ahem, too much.


    ''What is this bastard doing here?'' Lee Jung, who was also among the crowd, finally realized that Davies was also at the party.


    Various errant thoughts were running through the minds of everyone on the scene but the one thing they had all recognized was that he was Davies Lake, someone who they couldn''t dare to touch even if he was actually going to make good on his words so all they could do was force out a smile and remove every trace of a hostile look on their face¡­ or at least, most of them did, Lee Jung still had a less than pleased look on his face upon seeing that Davies was at the banquet.


    "I must say, you have a very interesting way of introducing yourself, you even add jokes into your introductions," Rafael took everything Davies had said apart from his name as a joke.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "I usually introduce myself differently to different people depending on the situation¡­ also I don''t joke during introductions," Davies replied while wondering what was wrong with the family head that he thought everything Davies was saying was a joke.


    What he didn''t know was that Rafael was sweating bullets internally as he continuously diverted and tried to not terminate anything that could cause a conflict and Davies wasn''t helping the matter with the way he continuously said provocating and conflict-inducing things.


    ''Maybe I shouldn''t have invited him,'' he thought wryly.


    "Don''t let me hold you up, we can have another meetingter," Davies quickly used the opportunity to pull away from the conversation.


    Rafael could not be happier that Davies had decided to stop talking before he could finally turn the banquet upside down with his words and quickly replied, "Of course, of course, please enjoy the banquet,"


    He was actually quite happy that Davies had mentioned that they could have another meetingter. This could be counted as having established a rtionship with Davies Lake, right?


    Rafael Lecroy was not an idiot. Like all the heads of the other four great families he was also very ambitious, he also wanted more power and wanted to rise, but unlike the other family heads, his method was different, and he was more cautious and cool-headed.


    Sure, he wanted power, but he wanted his peace as well, he didn''t want to have to continuously ward off enemies every second of the day just because he was overly greedy for benefits when he could simply share some of the benefits and let everyone involved feel like they were winning.


    That was the correct way to grow in his opinion, especially when he wasn''t some sort of extremely strong person who could split the ocean with one wave of their hands. Such people were brutes, and brutes were brainless¡­ he was not a brute.


    This was a mantra he continuously repeated to himself every day to keep himself in the right frame of mind and to keep his greed and ambition in check before he kicked the nest of a sleeping lion, this was why he was able to get so many important people toe to his banquet to honor him, as he was the kind of person that ced a high value on rtionships.


    So, the very thought that he had likely managed to secure a good rtionship with Davies who could potentially help his ambition, gave him goosebumps and he felt like he had just received the best birthday gift from Davies¡­ which was actually a good thing as Davies had no ns to give him a gift.


    "Yeah, I''ll set up a dinner, or lunch meeting, or something," he nodded his head repeatedly.


    "Yeah, talk to my assistant Daniel, he''ll sort it out," Davies replied and went back towards Melinda.


    Rafael nodded to himself and made a note to tell his secretary to begin working on that the moment the banquet was over. With such jubnt thoughts in his mind, he was swept back into the festive mood of the party as everything went back to normal and the banquet continued.


    Davies and Melinda who were standing together in a rtively inconspicuous location received side nces constantly from different guests constantly.


    Davies had previously expected this banquet to be nothing short of a battleground between him and Lee Jung, but who knew that Lee Jung wasn''t going to do anything even after everything that had happened?


    Frankly, Davies was expecting a more explosive reaction from Lee Jung especially since it seemed like he knew Melinda even before they had met at the banquet, but since it didn''t seem like he was going to do anything other than re at Davies with a "not so pleased" expression on his face, then there was no reason for Davies to wait at the banquet for anything to happen.


    ''Might as well just force it,'' he thought to himself and sneakily sent a message to Danie to wait around for about thirty minutes before leaving after him, and then,


    "Hey, we can leave, right?" he sneakily whispered to Melinda.


    "..."


    "Well¡­ I don''t see a problem with it¡­" Melinda whispered back hesitantly while ncing around sneakily.


    "Let''s go then," Davies grabbed her hand without asking for consent, surprising her a bit, then they began to sneakily move through the crowd and towards the doors.


    As Davies and Melinda silently made for the exits, Lee Jung immediately noticed their movements and began to follow them, not liking the direction that the situation was heading in. Davies noticed him following as he had obviously known that it would happen which was why he was on the lookout for it, but he didn''t care much about it.


    After silently maneuvering their way out of the building, Davies and Melinda reached the entrance of the banquet hall and walked out into the darkness of night without calling any attention to themselves from inside the hall.


    On the outside of the hall, some valets were waiting and when they saw Davies and Melinda, they went to get their cars. Davies had already left Melinda''s hand and was going to say something to her when he suddenly felt a sharp stinging pain on the back of his neck.


    It felt like someone had just jabbed a needle into his neck out of nowhere and he quickly wanted to find out what had happened when he suddenly noticed something in the air moving towards Melinda''s neck as well.


    The sudden pricking in his neck had awakened his alertness so he was able to detect something that would be otherwise undetectable, by reflex he quickly moved his hand in a bid to swipe it away while also trying to use his mana to shield his palm, but surprisingly his mana didn''t respond and he felt the sudden sting of being impaled by something sharp again, but from his palm this time.

 Chapter 147 CHAPTER 147: POISONED... AGAIN

    ?


    Davies and Melinda had gotten out of the banquet hall and were now waiting for the valets who had gone to bring their cars, or in Melinda''s case, to get her driver to bring her car over. Davies had already released Melinda''s hand and was about to speak when he suddenly felt a sharp stinging pain on the back of his neck.


    "Ouch," he reacted sharply to the sharp pricking feeling on his neck.


    It felt like someone had jabbed a needle into the back of his neck out of nowhere and his hand quickly reached out for the back of his neck to find out what was causing the sudden sharp pain but he suddenly noticed something moving at an rming speed in the direction of Melinda''s neck.


    Due to the sudden pricking pain at the back of his neck, he was at full alert so he easily detected something that he wouldn''t otherwise have noticed unless he was inbat mode, and by sheer reflex, his hand moved to swipe away whatever it was that was moving towards her neck.


    He was trying to use his mana to form ice on his palm so he could p the attack away should it be something dangerous that shouldn''te in contact with his hand, but surprisingly his mana didn''t respond to his attempt to control it on time and he felt the sudden sting of being impaled by something sharp once again, but from his palm this time.


    "Argh," the annoying sharp pricking feeling was back at full force in his hand, but that didn''t stop him from quickly maneuvering his mana with more force this time to form an ice wall around them and then made sure to cover the top with ice as well for full protection.


    Melinda was surprised by the sudden attack from unseen assants and quickly looked at Davies to check if he was injured by the attack now that they were covered.


    Now that they were covered Davies quickly took this opportunity to check what had caused the pain only to find a dart stuck into the palm of the hand that he had tried to use to block what wasing at Melinda, he quickly checked the back of his neck only to find a simr dart stuck into the back of his neck which he roughly pulled out without showing the slightest sign of pain on his face, after all the only reason he had reacted sharply at the pain just moments before was that it was sudden and unexpected.


    Davies and Melinda looked at the darts that he had just pulled out roughly from different parts of his body and an apprehensive look appeared on their faces as they realized that the weapon that had been used was darts.


    If the darts used were normal darts there would have been no need for such apprehensiveness on their faces, but these darts had empty cartridges that symbolized that they had previously carried some sort of suspicious liquid which was now deposited inside Davies''s body.


    "Fucking hell," Davies cursed as he examined the darts and came to an annoying realization.


    ''I somehow got a double dose of whatever poison these things carried,'' he thought internally with raging annoyance.


    As for how he knew that the liquid that the darts carried was poison? Well, you don''t shoot darts into people to give them medicine.


    That was only done for animals, and he was pretty sure that apart from his sometimes depraved and animalistic thoughts that only he and Miya knew about, there wasn''t any other part of him that screamed "animal", so there was no way the ranger wannabes that shot these things at him mistook him for a rhino in the wild.


    Another thing to note was that the second dart had been shot at Melinda, but he had ended up being the one shot because he had reflexively tried to block the attack. This only signified bad news, for someone to attempt to shoot him and as well as one of the strongest people in the whole city, then the person was confident that just one dosage of the poison was enough to do the job, but he had unluckily ended up with two doses.


    ''FUCK!''


    How did the assants even know of their locations and their movements?


    They had only been outside the banquet hall for a few seconds and for them to be attacked in such a short time only meant that they were being watched and someone was simply waiting for the perfect moment.


    Someone had gotten this close enough to harm him without him realizing it. Davies raged on the very thought.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Are you feeling o-" Melinda wanted to ask how he was feeling when suddenly,


    "Mana zone," he muttered, and his mana responded and began billowing off of his body in surprising amounts pushing Melinda back a bit and shattering the ice walls he had formed to protect them.


    "Ice field," with his feet as a focal point, ice began to spread out and rushed around him in all directions at high speed.


    "Snowfield sensing," he immediately activated the sensing ability that used ice to help him to detect things in his surroundings that he couldn''t detect easily with his eyes or his other senses.


    He was not nning on letting someone who had tried to attack him get away from his grasp without paying for the consequences of his action in blood.


    Though this was a major reason for his sudden explosive actions, it was not actually the main reason for him to take such an explosive action as he could easily use other means to try to find out the culprit, the main reason he was actually sting out his mana without care was that he had felt a slight effect of whatever poison that was deposited inside his body via the darts.


    The poison was making him lose control over his mana which was a very bad thing because, if he allowed his mana to run errant inside of his body without being able to control it, it would greatly damage his body and have terrible longsting effects¡­ if it didn''t kill him first, especially since he had gotten a double dosage of whatever the poison was.


    The poison probably wasn''t supposed to be this quick acting but since he had taken a double dosage even though that was not his intention, here we are.


    What was scary was that Davies was normally very resistant to poison but since this poison affected his ability to control his mana rather than attacking his body directly, his poison resistance wasn''t able to do anything against it.


    This was why he was pumping out his mana at high speed and trying to use it explosively while trying to get rid of the danger around him before he became incapable of using his mana and copsed or imploded because, due to one of his blessings, namely, Ice Dragon Heart which was SSS-rank, he was capable of harnessing and holding more mana than almost every Mega.


    The amount of mana that was present in his body was at least ten times the amount someone at the same power level as him would be able to hold in their body, and normally, he was usually proud of such an ability, but there was always that one day when blessings could turn to curses.


    For Davies Lake, that day was today, because his extraordinary blessing which would always give him an edge in every one of his fights, was now working against his chances of survival.


    There was no foreseeable future where he would ever run out of mana because of this blessing which not only allowed him to harness and hold suchrge and potent amounts of mana, but also recharged his mana at an inhuman rate, but he was definitely going to try.


    He had never actively tried to run out of mana and he would have been excited to try something like this if it were another day, but with the current circumstances that he was in all he cared about was wasting some of his mana, hopefully, find and smash the culprit to death and then quickly find a method to deal with the poison that had turned his body into a ticking time bomb.


    He already had an idea to deal with the poison, but he wasn''t looking forward to it as it was not a method he would want to use willy nilly as using that method had terrible consequences, but since he didn''t have much of a choice that was probably the method he would end up using anyway as there was no time to try to create an antidote to the poison in his body¡­ but for now, someone was going to pay.


    As Davies''s ice spread around more while he was also using his ''snowfield sensing'' skill, he suddenly detected something and without waiting or bothering to confirm, he called out,


    "Nilfheim''s rain x100"

 Chapter 148 CHAPTER 148: ‘JUST TO BE SURE’

    Davies already had a surefire method to deal with the strange poison which was probably a kind of mana poison, but the method he had in mind was not the kind of method he would willingly use as it was a method that had terrible consequences for him mentally.


    Unfortunately, it didn''t seem like he had that much of a choice and it was probably this method that he would end up using as there didn''t seem like there would be enough time for him to figure out the exact effects of the poison, not to mention, devising an antidote that could solve the poison in his body¡­ but that was a thought forter, for now, someone was going to pay.


    His ice spread continuously spread around at high speed while he simultaneously used his ''snowfield sensing'' skill to look for any signs of the culprit and soon he detected something that was probably the culprit.


    Without waiting or bothering to check and confirm, he immediately called out,


    "Nilfheim''s rain¡­ x 100"


    His great amounts of mana immediately swarmed out from his body and shot out to the sky and sharp projectiles of all kinds were being formed at unbelievable speed until they covered the area above them.


    All the Megas who were mana sensitive immediately felt the huge outpouring of mana from a source and their attention was immediately turned towards that direction.


    The people inside the banquet hall that were mana sensitive, including the head of the Lecroy family, Rafael Lecroy immediately had their necks snapping quickly in the direction of the door that led into the banquet hall.


    Even the Megas who were the security detail for the banquet were attracted by therge amount of mana that they were sensing from where Davies was.


    Due to the darkness of the night, the ice projectiles that had filled up the sky and covered the sky above the banquet hall could not be seen, but Melinda who was an extremely strong Mega and had mana-augmented eyesight was able to easily see the sheer volume of the ice projectiles that Davies had just conjured.


    It did not help that she was directly beneath the swarm of sharp ice weapons and being on the business end of that many sharp weapons was guaranteed to make one feel ufortable.


    ''...Oh, my God,'' Melinda had been surprised by all of the sudden actions that Davies had taken after getting hit twice by the poison darts, but this particr action caused her to lose all forms of cohesion and she could only gape in wonder and slight fear.


    Sure, she was powerful, and she could probably deal with this kind of attack if she was to fight, but the sheer amount of mana used to create the attack as well as the fact that the attack was being conjured by someone who was countless times her junior was enough to give her that much of a shock.


    Melinda had always been known as a genius like Davies, but even though he was called the genius of the century she hadn''t thought there was that much of a difference in their talent levels. She had advanced to the mana zone stage at the age of thirty-five, which was two years ago and she had only been behind the currently known record by one year, but here was Davies who was currently breaking her imagination about what was humanly possible.


    (A/N: obviously not the main point of the conversation, but yes, she is thirty-seven years old)


    There was no way the attack Davies had just conjured out of thin air and almost instantly could be done before one entered at least the mana zone stage.


    She nced at him subtly, trying hard to estimate in her mind whether she could defeat him in a fight should such a situation ur, but to be honest, while she thought the fight would be tough as their abilities countered each other, she still wasn''t sure who would win as she knew that she hadn''t seen all of his abilities, and at the same time, she wasn''t some soft persimmon that would simply be blown away by just anybody¡­ unless of course, if that somebody had crossed the taken a step into the mysterious fifth stage known as "Awakening".


    All these things that she was seeing and had discovered about Davies only made her more interested in him, she also did not forget that she owed him a favor for getting hit in her ce as it was obvious that the second dart was meant for her.


    Unfortunately, she wasn''t sure what kind of effect the poison from the dart had as an effect on Davies and she was finding it hard to stay her hand while waiting for Davies to finish what he was trying to do so she could check up on him.


    She didn''t want anything to happen to him because he took a ''bullet'' so to speak, for her.


    Shockingly, even though Davies had inadvertently yed the role of a knight in shining armor who was a hopeless romantic that he could take a bullet for his beloved, it didn''t spark any romantic thoughts in her mind, which was the kind of effect that Davies wanted and why he had made sure to establish a non-romantic rtionship with her.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    If his actions were seen as something romantic, the only effect it would have was to give her a strong impression of his devotion to her, which unfortunately, wasn''t what Davies was looking for, after all, he wasn''t a simp, but since he had done so under the guise of friendship, she would feel extremely indebted and would be able to trust himpletely as well as letting even making her catch feelings for him, which while may not be romantic, but would still give him a ce in her heart which was exactly Davies''s goal, as all he required was that spot in her heart that wouldn''t be shaking even if she had another romantic interest.


    It was a different route, but in the end, he still arrived at the correct destination, everything that happened after was left to him, which was a testament to how great of a method this was.


    One of the reasons why Davies used this method was because it was a tested and trusted method.


    How else did besties get to enjoy the benefits of a rtionship without all the hassles that it came with?


    Davies who didn''t know that the goal he hade to the banquet to aplish was alreadypleted due to an unintentional reflexive movement of his arm to swipe away what he thought to be a threat, continued conjuring even more sharp ice projectiles with his hands raised at his sides.


    Suddenly, he put one of his hands down and used the other hand to make a gesture of using a finger to press a button down hard,


    "Fall," he muttered, and with his voice came the swooshing sounds of thousands of sharp ice objects cutting through the air at an rming speed and moving towards the direction of where he had sensed what was most likely to be the culprit¡­ he wasn''t sure as he hadn''t bothered to crosscheck and confirm, but he didn''t care anyway, one of his goals for attacking was to try and waste away mana so he wouldn''t mind the need to attack more than once.


    *SWOOSH* *SWOOSH* *SWOOSH* *SWOOSH* *SWOOSH*


    *BOOM* *BOOM* *BOOM* *BOOM* *BOOM* *BOOM*


    The booming sounds in the distance of where the ice projectiles crashed into the ground, leaves, trees, stones, and hopefully, flesh and blood, filled the ears of Melinda, Davies, and everyone in the vicinity, including those that were in the banquet hall, some of whom were already freaking out and wondering if they were being attacked.


    The ice projectiles rained down on the designated area for almost a full minute and when it finally stopped, there was a sudden silence as no one was moving and wondering if it was all over.


    That was not to say that people weren''t moving, the Megas who were the security detail were already running towards the rtionship of the noise, but it was going to take more than a minute for them to arrive, so they were not here yet, and for the people inside the banquet hall, they decided to stay their ground and wait for a progressive report of what was happening outside.


    No one wanted to poke their heads out first and be the scapegoat who will probably be killed if there was an attack.


    Rafael Lecroy also stayed in ce while waiting for the progress report, he was too cautious to go out before being absolutely certain of the situation.


    Just outside the banquet hall were Davies and Melinda who stood in ce, waiting for a reaction to see if the culprit that had shot the poison darts at them somehow managed to survive the attack though it was most likely not usible as if the person was that strong, then he would have had no reason to attack so cautiously.


    Davies wasn''t sensing anything after the attack but,


    ''Just to be sure¡­''


    "Devastati-" he was about to use another extremely destructive moment when,


    [STOP, YOU IDIOT!!!] Miya shouted inside his head, her voice ringing around inside his head and giving him a headache.

 Chapter 149 CHAPTER 149: DESTINY AND FATE I

    ?


    The booming sounds of the ice projectiles impacting the ground of the designated area finally stopped and the area was suddenly by a great silence as everyone literally held their breaths to wait for what was to happen next.


    As one of the people waiting for a reaction after the noise and as well as the cause of the noise, Davies was also waiting to see if whoever the target of his attack somehow managed to survive.


    Even after a few seconds, he still hadn''t sensed anything, but,


    ''Just to be sure¡­''


    "Devastati-" he was about to use another extremely destructive moment when,


    [STOP, YOU IDIOT!!!] Miya shouted inside his head, her voice ringing around inside his head and giving him a headache.


    [Are you trying to wipe the Lecroy family estate from the map!?]


    ''... I''m sure he wouldn''t mind, I''ll just get him a new estate alright, life isn''t that hard,'' Davies shrugged his shoulder, not seeing what the issue was with what he was doing.


    ''It''s just a couple of houses and some extrand, what''s the big deal?'' he thought.


    [That''s beside the point]


    ''Tch, whatever,'' he grumbled internally, and started reigning in his mana. It was better for him to stop now anyway. The skill that he called "Devastation; Ice Fury" was a skill that was a part of his blessing skill series and would require dangerously high amounts of mana which was probably more than what he could control right now anyway, so it was better not to take the risk and avoid unseen circumstances.


    The moment he began to reign in his mana he realized that his control of his mana was slipping away fast, and it was a good thing he had not drawn out more mana to use to perform the skill he intended to as he would most definitely have lost control of the skill and that would have extremely terrible consequences.


    *CRASH*


    He let himself fall to the ground so he could focus on keeping his mana in control.


    "Are you okay," Melinda was beside him in a thrice after seeing him crash to the ground.


    "Yeah, I''m just a little winded," he muttered while trying to reign in his mana, but the cold air that was being blown out from his mouth indicated that he wasn''t having it easy doing that and the mana had already started affecting his body because he was losing control.


    Due to him slowly losing control of his mana, his immunity to cold temperatures was rapidly dwindling. Luckily, he had a body that was stronger than normal and an abnormally high resistance to cold temperatures, so he hadn''t turned into an ice popsicle yet, but with the rate at which he was losing control of his mana, it was only a matter of time before he turned to a popsicle, so things currently weren''t looking great at all.


    Melinda could also obviously see that, unlike his words, he wasn''t just winded but more seriously affected by the poison than he was letting on.


    "What does the poison do," She asked, trying to gather as much information about the situation as possible.


    "Nothing much, it''s just making me lose control over my mana," Davies spoke as if he was speaking about something that wasn''t a big deal, but Melinda already knew that this matter wasn''t as simple as the tone of his voice made it seem.


    "How is that nothing much!?" she almost screamed out, but still managed to say in her normal tone, but the worried look on her face gave away her feelings.


    Losing control over one''s mana was almost guaranteed to kill whoever it happened to as while humans could control the mana in one''s body and use it to perform things that would be otherwise impossible, mana was still a very dangerous and vtile resource that couldn''t be released to freely roam around in the body without any semnce of control especially when it had been converted to a more dangerous form due to one''s blessing.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    For example, Melinda''s blessing was rted to fire so she had a high concentration of fire mana inside of her, and if she ever lost control of it, she would be cooked¡­ cooked to death was an understatement, rather she would be burnt to death due to the mana trying to escape from her body and she not being able to control it.


    The same thing was happening to Davies right now, except he was probably going to freeze to death if this poison wasn''t easily solved. At this point, she remembered that due to him trying to protect her(her thoughts), he had ended up with a double portion of whatever this poison was and thus was probably having to deal with double the effect of the poison and her face scrunched up in displeasure.


    "Well¡­ the poison was only two darts much, so it really isn''t that much," Davies tried to make a joke whilepletely ignoring the situation of certain death approaching him like a freight train and would almost inevitably wipe him out if he couldn''t find a way to deal with the poison in about two hours max.


    Certain death was certainly enough to make him lose hisposure, but since he still had onest card to y which could guarantee his life, even though it woulde with annoying consequences, he didn''t lose hisposure.


    "Are you trying to make a joke right now? You''re dying for crying out loud!" this time Melinda lost herposure and shouted at him in a scolding tone. She couldn''t understand why Davies acted with such brevity in the face of almost certain death.


    "Well, what else can I do right now, cry? *COUGH*" Davies immediately retorted with a bitter smile but then ended up coughing up some blood due to his mana treating his internal organs as a punching bag.


    He truly couldn''t do anything about it as hisst option wasn''t something he could use in a ce where there were living people nearby, so he had to wait until he reached a safe location first.


    The bitter smile he had on his face as he replied to Melinda made her remember things she had heard about Davies in the past. She had heard that he had often been targeted by different sorts of people when his genius was just surfacing, from kidnappings to direct attempts on his life, all he did was survive and move on to the next book he was reading.


    He was probably used to being on the receiving end of danger all his life, so death''s door was something that was extremely familiar to him hence why he wasn''t freaking out when faced with yet another attempt on his life. It was no secret to the extreme powers of Yorkshire City that Davies and the Lake family weren''t in a good rtionship as it had been pretty obvious since young that they hadn''t cared about him until thepany that he had established became a hegemony in the magic technology industry.


    She felt sorry that he had to live a life like that and Davies''s position in her heart grew even further.


    If Davies knew what she was thinking, he would realize that while everything she had thought about was correct, her womanly imagination was filling in a lot of things, but since her womanly mind was helping him build an image in her mind, he wouldn''t mind correcting her errant thoughts.


    But since he didn''t know her thoughts, he was more focused on leaving this ce before he became incapacitated by his own mana.


    "Hey, can you get my car so we can leave this ce¡­ silently," he immediately made his request known to Melinda.


    He didn''t want to be seen injured by the wolves at the banquet lest anybody had any stupid thoughts of trying to finish him off while he was down, this was why he hadn''t activated the emergency rm that would let Danie know that he was in danger because the moment he did, she woulde running out and some people will inevitably follow her out of curiosity which would end up in the discovery of his situation.


    Melinda immediately understood his thoughts and nodded in affirmation.


    "What model and color?" she remembered to ask before she stood up to go get the car.


    "It''s a Lykan, you can''t miss it¡­ it''s one of a kind," Davies immediately replied, not bothering with the fact that someone other than him would be driving Sierra for the first time. He loved his car, but he loved his life more, so he would willingly put up with it this one time.


    "Ok," Melinda immediately stood up and began to move towards the car parking area while using her mana to enhance her speed, not willing to dilly dally.


    Davies watched her disappear into the night before resting his back on some sort of contraption that was probably part of the decor of the banquet hall''s environs.


    Suddenly an annoyingly familiar voice rang in his ears when he was trying to close his eyes and concentrate on reigning in his mana,


    "Oh, how the great Davies Lake has fallen."

 Chapter 150 CHAPTER 150: DESTINY AND FATE II

    ?


    One day ago¡­


    After taking the USB drive from the ghost thief, Lee Jung got in his car and quickly drove away from the location as he had an inkling that someone with this sort of information and the state that he was in was probably being chased so it was best for him to not be seen at this location otherwise he may end up in trouble.


    Even though he had a lot of pride and had been quite brazen ever since he got the system and began his new outlook in life, he still knew to follow his instincts at that moment, and they were telling him to bolt, which he did and he somehow managed to escape the web of bodyguards who were charging on to that location.


    After managing to get far away, he turned and began moving in the direction of the "Diamonds in the Rough," as he had received an invitation to the store after saving an old woman yesterday who somehow was the wife of the owner of this famous establishment.


    As he drove to the store, he suddenly remembered that there was a reward for the ''Find the ghost thief'' mission and since it was an unknown reward, it was probably something good¡­ or something very useless, but he chose to believe in his luck, so he quickly opened his system interface while keeping his fingers crossed in high hopes for a very good reward.


    [Reward forpleting the mission: High-grade Mana poison antidote]


    ''Mana poison antidote?''


    ''What was that?'' he wondered as he tapped on the interface to see the effects of the mana poison antidote.


    [High-grade Mana poison antidote: can cure any type of mana poison effects]


    The exnation was pretty basic, and it described just enough information for one to know the usage of the antidote, but Lee Jung who didn''t even know what mana poison was didn''t know whether to be happy or distraught that he got this kind of reward.


    At least, since it was something that was high grade, it was probably useful and he would probably need it in the future, and even if he didn''t end up needing it, he could probably sell this thing at a very good price, he had heard somewhere that these kinds of things were things that any Mega would willingly pull open their purse strings in a bid to acquire it.


    With this, Lee Jung consoled himself for not being able to get a reward that would be instantly useful for him, or at least something he knew how to use.


    **Back to present¡­**


    "Well, well, well, what do we have here?"


    "Oh how the great Davies Lake has fallen," an annoyingly familiar voice rang in Davies''s ears just when he had rested his back and tried to concentrate on reigning in his mana while waiting for Melinda to arrive with his car.


    He opened an eye to see Lee Jung walking towards him from the direction of the door of banquet hall with an excessively smug look on his face as he strode confidently.


    Davies hadpletely forgotten that Lee Jung had been following him when he had left the banquet hall due to the more pressing matters¡­ the matters that could actually threaten his life and for now Lee Jung still fell short of that.


    It was only now that Lee Jung had appeared again that Davies remembered that Lee Jung was actually present and since he had been following him, had probably seen everything that had happened just bare moments ago, including when Davies had been poisoned.


    Seeing Lee Jung speaking so smugly didn''t manage to rile Davies as he knew that there was nothing Lee Jung could do to him and he was also probably not the one that arranged this attempt on his life so there was nothing to fear, so he simply closed his eye,pletely unperturbed by Lee Jung''s presence and returning his focus to the more important thing at the moment, which was reigning in his mana even though he was rapidly losing his ability to control mana.


    Davies actingpletely unperturbed by Lee Jung''s presence did not make Lee Jung keep quiet, but rather he became incensed by Davies simply ignoring him like he was not worth even paying any attention to him, so he wanted to make him pay and luckily he had something that could probably be used for that in this situation, but first, he sneakily pulled out a spy camera that was made like a small fly and could maneuver itself like an automated drone.


    It was a reward he had gotten from a mission a while back.


    He put it on secretly and threw it into the air where it stabilized itself and began to video the scene.


    He had gotten a mana poison antidote yesterday which could probably help Davies recover, and he wanted Davies to beg for it, while he recorded such a scene.


    "Oh dear, are you poisoned?" Lee Jung immediately began acting out his part while smirking inwardly.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    ''Why the fuck is this idiot asking me such a question when he saw me shot by poison darts just minutes ago?'' Davies wondered internally with annoyance at this protagonist''s actions that only proved time and time again, that he had been kicked in the head by a donkey.


    Of course, since he had his eyes closed the whole time and was not paying any attention to Lee Jung, he did not know what Lee Jung had done a few moments prior, especially since he was concentrating wholeheartedly on reigning in his mana and couldn''t use it to sense his environments, thus he did not reply and simply kept mute, but that did not deter Lee Jung who continued his act,


    "Is it some sort of special poison¡­ like maybe a mana poison?" Lee Jung drawled like a serpent trying to entice a fair maiden.


    This time Davies''s eyes shot open and stared coldly at Lee Jung in slight annoyance, his surprise almost making him lose control over his mana in an instant, but luckily, he was not short of self-control.


    ''How did he know?'' Davies thought while ring suspiciously at Lee Jung.


    Lee Jung was indeed right, the poison that he had unluckily been shot with was actually a mana poison, otherwise, it wouldn''t have this much of an effect on him.


    The issue here was how did Lee Jung know that?


    While it was true that Lee Jung had watched him get shot by the poison darts¡­ twice, it was impossible for him to determine what sort of poison Davies had been shot with, after all, the poison hadn''t been researched or identified, nor did it have any obvious symptoms that could make anyone guess, and Lee Jung wasn''t the one who had been shot by the dart so he didn''t know how Davies was feeling right now¡­ also


    ''Does he even know what mana poison is?''


    "How did you know?" Davies finally decided to ask as he didn''t want to stress himself overthinking things.


    ''I was right!'' Lee Jung thought as heughed evilly to himself.


    He had always known that the system had always given him things that were useful or essential for him and it was always so urate to the point that he had begun to believe that the system could see the future.


    It seemed the system was right again. It had given him an antidote that could cure mana poison just the day before Davies got poisoned by mana poison.


    What he didn''t understand was why the system would give him an antidote that could cure his enemy.


    Was the system trying to make him save Davies?


    He didn''t understand what was happening, but if that truly was the system''s goal, then he would have to say,


    "No, thanks."


    He wanted Davies to suffer, to grovel beneath his feet like a dog¡­ so he wasn''t going to do something like saving him, and even if he ended up doing so, it wouldn''t be without cost, for Davies.


    Thinking this, he continued his act. He put his hand into his suit and in that moment, sneakily brought out the high-grade mana poison antidote from his inventory, before bringing out his hand from his jacket and holding out the antidote in front of Davies, not realizing, nor caring about how suspicious he looked at the moment.


    "Luckily for you, I have a high-grade mana poison antidote that can probably solve your problems," he spoke as he shook the tube that had the antidote invitingly like he was trying to seduce Davies.


    *''BOOM''* an explosion went off inside Davies''s head as he saw Lee Jung pull out a tube filled with suspicious-looking liquid that he called a high-grade poison antidote.


    Once again, he almost lost control of his mana as he felt the puzzle that had been bothering him this whole time click into ce even without him trying to solve it.

 Chapter 151 CHAPTER 151: DESTINY AND FATE III

    ?


    "Luckily for you, I have a high-grade mana poison antidote that can probably solve your problems," Lee Jung spoke as he shook the tube that had the antidote invitingly like he was trying to seduce Davies.


    *''BOOM''* an explosion went off inside Davies''s head as he saw Lee Jung pull out a tube filled with suspicious-looking liquid that he called a high-grade poison antidote.


    Once again, he almost lost control of his mana as he felt the puzzle that had been bothering him this whole time click into ce even without him trying to solve it.


    ''Fucking hell¡­''


    Beforeing to the birthday banquet of Rafael Lecroy, Davies had been constantly wondering about what opportunity would there be for Lee Jung at the banquet and he had arrived at the conclusion that the opportunity had something to do with Melinda Ashborne, hence his attempt to befriend her and be a block that would constantly interfere in their rtionship should it ever ur, and if it did not, he would still get the girl anyway.


    He had been almost a hundred percent sure that a rtionship was supposed to be built between those two tonight, but somehow that did not end up happening and this was what had prompted him to want to leave in the first ce.


    He also hoped that by him making a move first, he could provoke a move from Lee Jung, or fate, or whatever was supposed to be the spark that ignited the rtionship between them, as he knew that for someone to form any kind of rtionship with this girl, the spark that would give rise to the rtionship had to be equally explosive to crack the frigid block of ice that was known as Melinda Ashborne¡­ mild methods would definitely not work, unless of course the person was as handsome as Davies himself and as much of a Rizz king as he was, but Lee Jung didn''t evene close to those standards.


    In the end, the result of his trying to hurry up the process, he had been double tapped by poison darts and was now suffering the effects of a poison he had nevere across before and had almost no idea how to deal with it and preserve his life, but seeing a poison antidote that was able to cure that same poison in the hand of the fated protagonist, Lee Jung, he immediately knew that while the process of what had happened may be wrong¡­ what was happening was definitely no coincidence.


    It was probably supposed to happen in a different format from what was currently happening due to Davies''s interference, but this was definitely the opportunity that was nned for Lee Jung.


    Davies was sure of this. There was no such thing as such a perfect coincidence when it came to something that was tightly intertwined with fate like a fated protagonist.


    What was probably supposed to happen was for Davies and Lee Jung toe to the birthday banquet, probably have a little conflict¡­ or not, Davies probably tries to get into Melinda''s pants but fails as she is very resistant to such motives or any type of romantic attempts at her for that matter.


    After failing, Davies probably fumes away in anger while nning something disgusting and derisive for her in the future, but stays unperturbed for now after which, Melinda probably decides to leave the banquet and then she gets shot by the poison dart.


    The rest of the story would be as cliche as always¡­ Lee Jung would arrive like a knight in shining armor and give her the antidote for the poison after Melinda had thoroughly fallen into despair and is overwhelmed by the fact that she would die due to the poison''s effects.


    Lee Jung''s actions probably would cause a romantic reaction and then, vo¡­ opportunity acquired, as well as that piece of devastatingly sexy MILF ass.


    But¡­


    Davies had interrupted the whole process,


    Since he had figured out where the opportunity would probablye from due to his knowledge about this type of thing and had alsoe up with the best method to get close to the opportunity, Melinda, the whole scenario had gone out the window.


    Instead of trying(directly) to get into her pants, he had decided to y the long game and had instead gotten into an interesting but non-romantic conversation with her, and he had seeded since he didn''t go against the flow and had instead decided to y with her feelings and incite sentimental emotions in her instead of making her horny.


    This led to them establishing a rtionship that wasn''t aversive to her. Of course, it was too early for him to actually say he had be her best friend or anything of that sort, but he had sessfully established a position in her heart that wouldn''t be easily shaken, thus when he had simply grabbed her hand to leave the banquet hall, she hadn''t resisted and had simply gone along with it,


    But then everything changed when the fire nation attacked-¡­ *cough* *cough* Ahem,


    ¡­ Everything changed when he felt a sudden sting on his neck which happened to be a poison dart that had then deposited its poisonous content into his bloodstream.


    It was also then that he noticed the second dart moving towards the neck of Melinda and he tried to block it, but due to the unexpected sudden deterioration of the control of his mana, he wasn''t able to protect his hand in time before it came into contact with the poison dart, thereby causing it to lodge itself into his palm and deposit it''s poisonous content into his body, instead of bouncing off of his mana protected skin.


    Davies began to chuckle slowly as he rxed his tense body onto the tform, he was resting his back on even more.


    Everything had gone wrong.


    He had not actually failed in what he had wanted to achieve, rather he had actually aplished his goal and even more... there was just the slight issue that he had ended up putting his life on the line and thus he was now at death''s door, and though he had a way to drag himself away from death''s door, it wasn''t without cost¡­ a heavy one that he currently wasn''t willing to bear.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Melinda was the one who was supposed to be poisoned, but he had ended up being her shield because of his intrusive actions to try to grab hold of the ''opportunity''.


    Lee Jung was supposed to give the antidote to Melinda after she was poisoned so he could establish a rtionship and even make her have a good impression of him, which would then develop into a romantic feeling after they had spent more time together, but he had been the one who had ended up poisoned instead.


    He was not sure whether he was supposed to be poisoned in the original scheme of things should he not have interrupted at all, especially since he had a way to survive, but he did know that there was no way that Lee Jung would ever give him the antidote after all that had happened between them.


    Even if by some miracle, he decided to smoke some weed and then decide to give Davies the antidote, he would use the opportunity to literally take a pound of flesh from Davies, either by humiliating Davies or tantly ripping him off of something that was worth more than a million times of what he was giving.


    Unfortunately, Davies was in no condition to snatch the antidote directly from Lee Jung''s hands, and even if he was able to, he still wouldn''t do it.


    He had his own pride.


    He wouldn''t ept something from the bastards that had been hand fed by fate. He didn''t want to owe his life to a protagonist, no matter the loss he would have to suffer¡­ though this was only because he had another opportunity.


    If he didn''t have any other choice, he would definitely not let the antidote escape his grasp¡­ he needed to be alive for him to actually be able to have his revenge after all, didn''t he?


    Well, now that he understood what had happened, even though he still needed to give the matter a lot of thought, he simply shifted those excessive questions to the back of his head and returned his focus to keeping his mana in check while waiting for Melinda toe back with the car.


    Questions like, whether he was also supposed to be poisoned, or not?


    Or, who was after his life and Melinda''s? were not questions to be thought about at the moment.


    It would be better for him to have a more in-depth thinking and examination of this matter, but that would be preferably done when his life was no longer hanging by a thread.


    Suddenly, he became slightly curious about why Lee Jung had decided to show himself, and why he was waving the antidote around in his face.


    Why was he acting so sleazy all of a sudden?


    Did he actually want to give the antidote to Davies?


    If he did, what did he want in return?


    All these questions popped up curiously in Davies''s head as he looked curiously at Lee Jung who looked like a ck-hearted merchant at the moment.


    "What do you want in exchange for the antidote?" he decided to ask directly without beating around the bush as he wanted to know what Lee Jung could ever want from him.


    "Oh¡­!" Lee Jung was a bit startled that Davies immediately got to the point, but he wasn''t that surprised that Davies immediately understood what was going on.


    This was extortion and his requests were definitely as such,


    "I want you¡­ to beg¡­"


    "To beg for your life as I step on your face, and you grovel beneath my feet,"


    "... Also, I want your Magical Runic Technology," Lee Jung made his exorbitant requests known with a big, evil, shark-like smile on his face.

 Chapter 152 CHAPTER 152: DESTINY AND FATE IV

    ?


    "What do you want in exchange for the antidote?" he decided to ask directly without beating around the bush as he wanted to know what Lee Jung could ever want from him.


    "Oh¡­!" Lee Jung was a bit startled that Davies immediately got to the point, but he wasn''t that surprised that Davies immediately understood what was going on as he was pretty sure that even a blind person could see what he was getting at from the start.


    This was an extortion, and his requests were definitely as such,


    "I want you¡­ to beg¡­"


    "To beg for your life as I step on your face, and you grovel beneath my feet,"


    "... Also, I want your Magical Runic Technology," Lee Jung made his exorbitant requests known with a big, evil, shark-like smile.


    "..."


    There were no words that could describe the level of dizziness that struck Davies''s head when he heard the requests that Lee Jungid out and he was left gaping like a goldfish who had just been told that it was actually and animal.


    "Pfttttttt¡­ hahaha hahaha" he couldn''t help himself and suddenly burst intoughter as the conditions that Lee Jung was way overboard, even by his standards as a profiteer.


    Someone could argue that nothing could be worth one''s life, but Davies begged to differ, especially after dying more than once.


    Dying was just that¡­ dying. That was all there was to it, but there were always things that were worth even more than life itself.


    Lee Jung had asked for two of those things, his pride, and his life''s work. Davies had expected that as a protagonist, Lee Jung was obviously a professional profiteer, but Davies hadn''t expected him to be a shark¡­ a stupid one, but a shark, nheless.


    Lee Jung had actually taken the initiative to tell him that he knew about a secret project that no one else but him should know about and had basically confirmed that he was the one that had gotten the USB drive from the ghost thief, thereby confirming Davies''s suspicions.


    ''Is he stupid?"


    "Or is it because I seem to be dying that gave him the confidence to talk about it?"


    "Or does he simply not put me in his eyes at all?" Davies thought with mirth in his eyes as heughed at Lee Jung''s request.


    Davies''sughter upon stating his conditions surprised Lee Jung greatly as he expected apletely different reaction from Davies.


    "haha, pls, haa¡­ gimme a minute¡­ Hahaha," Davies wheezed out in between hisughter, tears already at the corner of his eyes as he looked at the confused look on Lee Jung''s face that only served to provoke his amusement and caused him tough even harder.


    This was nothing short of a joke, or maybe he was joking because there was no way he was being serious when he said those things. The fact that he even thought for a second that Davies would actuallyply with such stupid requests meant he was a clown, a very stupid clown.


    ''Who knew that getting aedian to make things livelier when you''re on your deathbed was this effective,'' he thought as heughed. He didn''t remember whenst heughed this hard.


    "haaa¡­ haaaa," Davies finally stopped wheezing inughter from Lee Jung.


    "Show''s over, I''m good thanks, you can roll back to whatever rabbit hole you rolled out of,"


    "Also, I think you need to get your brain checked¡­ it seems to be infected with stupidity," Davies said with mirth as he didn''t bother to even give an extra thought to Lee Jung''s request, he had only asked out of curiosity anyway and after hearing Lee Jung, there was no way he would even give it a thought.


    "Huh?" Lee Jung was confused.


    "You can leave now, isn''t your performance not over?" Davies spoke again.


    "Performance?" Lee Jung was even more confused.


    "Of course, performance, your attempt atedy was a sess and you actually made meugh, but now I have other things to deal with, you can leave now," Davies borated.


    "..." Lee Jung waspletely lost.


    ''Performance? Comedy?''


    ''What''s blud talking about?'' his mind was turning extra quickly to understand what exactly was happening and only after a few seconds did the realization hit him.


    Davies had rejected his offer and was now mocking him instead.


    "You¡­!" he raged.


    "Oh, you finally understand," <novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "Thank goodness, I thought I would have to exin even further,"


    "Shoo, shoo," Davies said mockingly to Lee Jung and closed his eyes while no longer paying any attention to him like he was not even there.


    Lee Jung was incensed. He and Davies had ever seen eye to eye, and he even had a few grudges to settle with Davies, but he had put all that behind him and actually given this bastard a chance at life, but this bastard, like always, treated him like nothing more than a bug.


    A bug that wasn''t worth existing.


    Lee Jung hated this feeling as it made him remember how people used to treat him in the past before he got the system and took a step into the world of the rich and influential.


    He didn''t like this feeling at all.


    ''Bastard, I actually gave you a chance to save your miserable life, but you chose not to cherish it,''


    ''I''ll wait for you toe crawling back and begging me for the antidote,'' Lee Jung thought grimly and scoffed at Davies''s child-of-the-world attitude, not aware of the contradictory reasoning that was guing his head and made him look like a fool to anyone else that could see what was going on.


    *Roooooommmm*


    The loud and powerful roar of a vehicle''s engine suddenly began approaching their direction and the bright headlights that approached along with the roaring engine indicated that Melinda had found Davies''s car and was on her way.


    Lee Jung didn''t want to be seen along with Davies for some reason and decided to retreat into the darkness, giving Davies onest scornful look before he disappeared while thinking to himself,


    ''He doesn''t have any other option than to beg me anyway, I''ll wait,''


    He actually thought this was a good opportunity to get a hold of the Magical Runic Technology, after everyone valued their lives the most¡­ if only he knew that Davies had another option.


    He quickly collected the spy-cam from mid-air and stopped it from recording and then quickly left the scene.


    Davies opened one of his eyes when he felt Lee Jung''s gaze on him vanishing,


    ''So, he left,'' he thought and sneakily brought out his phone and tapped it to stop it from voice recording.


    Yes, he had ended up sneakily voice-recording everything that had happened here as he had thought that he could find material that he could use against Lee Jung.


    Unfortunately, he probably wouldn''t be able to use this as Lee Jung had ended up mentioning Magical Runic Technology, and that was not information that he could afford to get out.


    His eyes quickly roamed around the area until he saw a security camera overlooking the area where he was. It had probably recorded the earlier scene, and while Davies couldn''t be sure whether it recorded the audio along with the video, he wasn''t going to take any chances.


    He quickly opened his inventory and took out a mini electromaic pulse bomb and activated it while setting a timer of five minutes.


    ''Five minutes to detonation,'' he quickly used his phone to run a hacking program that hacked into the security systems of the Lecroy estate property and quickly downloaded all the security footage for thest two days.


    He needed somewhere to begin investigating who had tried to kill him after all as he doubted that the person, he had attacked still had any answers for him, so this was the next best thing.


    Just as he finished, Melinda pulled up beside him and quickly got out to help him into the car, but Davies had already stood up on his own despite his growing pains and spreading numbness, he could already feel his blood freezing.


    Luckily, Melinda had parked close enough that he could use the car''s body as a support immediately he felt like falling. Melinda was already beside him, but he sent her back as he couldn''t drive right now.


    "I''m fine, let''s go," he managed to say without his voice or face betraying anything that he was feeling or going through.


    He got into the passenger''s seat and shut the door at the same moment as Melinda who got into the driver''s seat. Immediately he sat in the car and shut the door, the temperature inside the car dropped by a few degrees without anyone putting on the air conditioning.


    That was bad news.


    Melinda immediately noticed it as she was especially sensitive to temperature as her powers were closely rted to this particr phenomenon of nature.


    She immediately stepped on the elerator as she knew that they were pressed for time while asking Davies,


    "Do you have any way to deal with the poison?"


    "Not really, no," Davies replied calmly without any urgency as he looked at his watch.


    ''Tick, tock, boom'' he thought as the electromaic pulse bomb blew out every electronic device in a one km radius.

 Chapter 153 CHAPTER 153: DESTINY AND FATE V

    ?


    Immediately Davies got into the car and shut the door, the temperature inside the car dropped by a few degrees even though no one had put on the air conditioning.


    That was bad news.


    It meant that the mana had caused enough havoc inside of Davies''s body for it to be felt outside his body. He was literally already turning into an ice block from the inside.


    Melinda immediately recognized the levity of the situation as she was able to immediately detect the temperature difference as her powers were closely rted to this particr phenomenon of nature.


    She immediately stepped on the elerator and began driving down the road that led out of the Lecroy family estate as she knew that they were pressed for time.


    ''Tick tock, boom,''


    As they drove off, a shrill bursting sound went off and attacked every electronic device in a one km radius with the electromaic pulse bomb that Davies left behind being the center of the implosion.


    Maybe every electronic device was a bit of a stretch as the pulse only attacked things that could be used for surveince as that was what it was specifically created for. It was an EMP bomb that only blew up things that could be used for surveince like security cameras, and audio recording microphones, and for an added bonus it also blocked transmissions from going out of the zones and didn''t allow the footage to be uploaded via an inte connection, or any wireless connection for that matter.


    Due to all these nifty functions and its small size, its range of effect was a little too narrow for anything that Davies would invent. Of course, Davies also had a bigger and even more powerful one, but he wouldn''t dare to use that right now as it would blow out all the circuits inside of his car as well and he wouldn''t be able to leave this ce.


    Melinda who was driving didn''t notice anything as they sped off in the car, totally ignorant of the chaos that would be taking ce in the hall as phones were among the things that could be ssified as a surveince tool.


    The phones of everybody in the banquet hall blowing up would have caused quite an uproar and would have been quite the sight to see, but unfortunately, Davies had more important things to attend to so he had forgotten that the EMP bomb would do that much, and even if he remembered it he still would have detonated the EMP bomb.


    "Do you have any way to deal with the poison?" she asked, not taking her eyes off of the road as she was doing her best to be mindful of the gradually increasing speed of the car so as to avoid any more idental urrences that would make the evening more tragic than it already was.


    "Not really, no," Davies replied without any urgency as if he wasn''t the one who was dying from poison. He also had not mentioned that he had one foolproof method to deal with the poison because even though the method he had in mind would undoubtedly remove the poison, it woulde with some annoying consequences, so he wasn''t really very hung up on using that particr method and would easily jump on any other method that could solve the poison.


    ''There had to be other methods, right?''


    ''If that idiot Lee Jung could get an antidote, then there have to be other antidotes somewhere, or another method entirely,'' he thought, which was why he didn''t out-rightly say that he could solve the poison by himself.


    "You don''t have a method to deal with the poison?"


    "So, what are we going to do about the poison?" Melinda asked with a troubled voice.


    "I said I didn''t have a method, I never said I was out of ideas," Davies immediately replied with an unperturbed tone thatpletely confused the atmosphere as to who was poisoned and who was not.


    "Oh¡­ so what do you have in mind," she asked after a slight pause.


    "Well, first of all, do you happen to have a high-grade mana poison antidote?"


    "Something like that should work," Davies asked as that was almost guaranteed to work seeing as how it was what Lee Jung would have given to Melinda if he hadn''t ended up interfering in the story though he was not sure if the antidote would work with a double dosage of the poison that he had gotten.


    Melinda actually took her eyes off the road and stared at Davies after he spoke,


    "Yeah, it should work¡­ if you can actually get a hold of one of those," she said sarcastically. <novelsnext></novelsnext>


    High-grade potions of any kind were not things that could just be found on the market because of their absurd rarity. It was to the extent that she had only ever seen it at an auction that she had once been invited to and the price tag on it as the opening bid was so high that she did not even try to bid for it in her dreams.


    "Well, do you have one?" Davies asked again, not understanding the reason for her sarcasm as he didn''t know her thoughts, and even if he did, he still wouldn''t understand why she was being sarcastic, after all the word ''expensive'' didn''t exist in his dictionary.


    For Davies Lake, as long as what he wanted wasn''t non-existent, then he could afford it, after all, it was just money.


    "Ah, right... you wouldn''t understand, after all, you''re¡­ you," only after hearing Davies repeat the question did Melinda finally remember who she was speaking with. He obviously couldn''t understand the thoughts of people who were poorer than he was, and unfortunately, that was almost everybody.


    "You''ve probably never had to deal with money issues your whole life, unfortunately not everyone is like you and has enough money to buy a whole city should they wish to," Melinda actually became even more sarcastic as she was pped with the reality of the kind of difference between them and she actually became a little aggrieved.


    It wasn''t her fault though, anyone who was pped in the face with the reality that someone who is so close to you can afford to be as whimsical as he/she wanted to be when spending money while you were always worrying about opportunity costs even when you were spending within your means.


    "Anyway, I don''t have a high-grade mana antidote¡­ or any high-grade potion or material for that matter," she scoffed with a little pout as she returned her eyes to the road.


    Davies had finally understood her bone of contentment with his attitude, but right now he couldn''t be bothered to care about something as deep-rooted in him as his attitude towards money. Their ways of thinking were fundamentally different, and it would take him a lot of time to get into that right now¡­ time he did not have.


    "Well, can we buy one quickly?" he askedpletely ignorant about this kind of thing. He usually left this kind of job to his underlings, so he had never actually bought anything like this, nor did he know where to buy it, or how to even go about buying it.


    "Like tonight? Of course not!"


    "High-grade potions like the high-grade mana poison antidote that you''re looking for only appear at auction houses,"


    "I don''t think we have the levity for something like that right now," Davies muttered in realization.


    "Exactly¡­ and even if we did, we can never be sure if we''re going to find the high-grade mana poison antidote as the things thate out during the auction are random," Melinda rified even further.


    "Oh¡­"


    "Also, you don''t know anyone who has one?" Davies asked again, still not giving up.


    "..."


    "Not that I know of," Melinda hesitated slightly but then answered, dashing Davies''s hopes of using the easiest method to deal with the poison.


    To be perfectly honest, Davies had expected to not be able to get a hold of the high-grade mana poison antidote despite his ignorance pertaining to this issue.


    After all, if it was so easy to get a high-grade mana poison antidote, then how would only Lee Jung be able to use it to save Melinda and establish a rtionship?


    At least, for tonight, it would be impossible to get a high-grade mana poison antidote to use.


    Davies had also thought about using a medium-grade mana poison antidote, but it would probably be just as hard to get a hold of it, and he also wasn''t sure if it would be able to dispel the poison as he had ended up with a double dosage of the poison that would require a high-grade antidote to take care of a single dosage.


    Seeing that this method hade to a dead end, he began to try to think of another method that could work. He still had some time before he no longer had a choice but to use ''Reversion''.

 Chapter 154 CHAPTER 154: REVERSION I

    ?


    Reversion was Davies''s third blessing and was of the highest rank that was unknown to humanity¡­ or at least to most of humanity. So far, he had never heard of another person having an Ex-ranked blessing.


    This wasn''t to say that he was absolutely sure that there weren''t any other Ex-ranked blessing holders. In reality, he didn''t know if there were any other Ex-ranked blessing holders like him among the humans, and if there were, they were hiding very deeply because there was no way to hide something as high profile as an Ex-ranked blessing.


    Such a blessing was too high profile to hide, he knew, after all, he had one.


    The Reversion blessing was Davies''s absolute fallback should he ever fall into the worst situation possible as long as it had to do withbat. One could say it was his trump card, and he treated it as such, especially as it was an ability that he wanted to use unless he was in the worst situation possible.


    It wasn''t because the usage of the blessing was damaging to his body or something of the sort¡­ far from it actually. It wasn''t the sort of ability that came with a cost, rather it made him capable of unleashing a great amount of power without a limit¡­ but that itself was the problem.


    As for why it was a problem¡­ that was a question for another day. The only thing to be confirmed was that Reversion was his trump card and he would treat it as such, which meant only using it after he no longer had any other option left, so for now, his brain was running constantly on any other method that could be used to deal with the poison that was currently wreaking havoc in his body and making him feel like he had been put in a speed freezer.


    No matter how much tolerance he had to low temperatures, it was only a matter of time before his teeth started chattering from the cold, after which he would suffer hypothermia, and then it would only be a matter of time before he turned to a popsicle.


    One thing he had noticed though was that the poison wasn''t actually lethal and could only inhibit his control of his mana, and even then, it could not inhibit his control of mana infinitely.


    It would sooner orter be ineffective, and if he managed to wait it out, he would once again be able to regain control of his mana and be able to escape from the deadly situation he was in.


    There was only one itty bitty problem with that idea¡­ there was no way he would survive long enough until the poison lost effect and he regained control of his mana.


    While he was thinking this, they were already approaching the exit of the Lecroy estate, so Davies pulled himself out of his thoughts and opened the map on his phone which was still working even though the EMP bomb had blown out every other phone¡­ including Melinda''s, but she didn''t know it yet.


    Of course, as the inventor of the EMP bomb that he had just detonated, he had obviously taken measures to not blind himself along with his opponents should he ever need to use the EMP bomb in a tight situation, thus his phones and other electronics, as well as his car were made with materials that could deflect the electromaic pulse and stay functioning even after he used the EMP bomb.


    "Hey, drive off the road and head in that direction," he instructed and pointed in a shady direction that obviously wasn''t the road, eliciting a raised eyebrow and a strange look from Melinda, but this time she chose not to speak and simply followed his directions, even though it was written all over her face, that she didn''t understand what craziness he was performing.


    Since she had not bothered to ask him why he wanted her to head off the road in a shady direction even though there was obviously a road they could follow, he didn''t have to tell her that he wanted to avoiding across the Megas who were stationed at the gate as doing so would obviously cause some dys.


    They may not dy him too much because of his identity, but he would still be dyed for a few minutes at least, due to the suspicious happenings on the property just a few minutes ago.


    Those few minutes of dy were what Davies was looking to avoid as he wanted to save as much time as possible, hence why he instructed Melinda to go off-road, after all¡­


    Why go through a gate if you can go over a fence?


    Going over the fence was undoubtedly cooler, and it would also help him save time so over the fence it was.


    Melinda had barely driven for almost a minute when she could see a looming wall that was getting bigger every second in the direction that Davies had instructed her to drive. At this point, there was no way she could keep quiet, so she quickly opened her mouth before he made her drive them into a wall.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    "I''m not sure it''s a good idea for us to drive into a wall right now," she spoke hesitantly while giving him a sidelong nce.


    "I agree, so speed up," Davies replied in the most confusing way possible, throwing Melinda into confusion once again, but strangely the confidence and calmness in his voice made her follow the order and the numbers showing on the speedometer rose even more with the ever-loudening roar of the car''s engine.


    The car quickly approached the walls at an ever-increasing speed and once the car was just tens of meters away from the wall, an ice tform made like a ramp suddenly appeared out of thin air just before the wall and a couple of secondster, the car hit the ramp, sped up it and immediately took air looking like a certain scene from a certain movie about cars, racing, and family.


    As the car flew through the air over the wall bordering the estate, the ice ramp that it had used to take flight exploded into ice dust and shards with a crashing sound while the car remained airborne.


    Unfortunately, after being in the air for a few seconds, gravity remembered its job and began to pull the car back to the ground after it had reached the apex height it could reach at the speed it had flown off the ramp and soon with a resounding crash, the car hit the ground and managed not to tumble over.


    It quickly righted itself and sped off into the distance without any visible damage to the car, but Davies who was sitting inside of the car knew that the car would need a bit of servicing after such a tumultuous¡­ flight.


    "... I half expected the car to take flight for a moment there¡­" Melinda managed to say, obviously shaken by the sudden flight that she had just experienced.


    "Also, are you supposed to be doing that?" she asked as well, referring to the fact that Davies still used his mana to make the ice ramp that they had used to take flight.


    "Firstly, no, the car can''t take flight yet as I haven''t yet put in those functions yet," Davies began answering, still speaking in apletely unperturbed tone despite being at death''s door while literally freezing to death from the inside and also just experiencing the ride of his life.


    ''Yet?'' the rming thought immediately popped up in Melinda''s head, but Davies was still speaking.


    "Also, I''m already freezing to death from the inside anyway, so it doesn''t matter if I use a little mana," he said in a calm voice despite the morbidity of his statement.


    Melinda looked at him strangely with amazement as to how he was able to say something so morbid concerning himself without a trace of sadness, pain, or even self-pity in his tone as he spoke. There was also a trace of pity for him in her eyes as she stared, seemingly wanting to speak, but not saying anything in the end and only looking away with a slight shake of her head and a determination to do anything to ensure his survival.


    ''Someone who has suffered so much in life to the point where he can talk about himself dying in such an untroubled tone deserves to live and be happy, and I''m going to make it happen,'' she unknowingly made this deration in her mind as she returned her focus to driving and was now following the GPS directions to the location that Davies had chosen.


    ''Now where was I?'' Davies slipped back into his thoughts after choosing his house as the location they were heading to in the GPS as Melinda was currently the one driving and not him and did not know the directions to his house.


    His mind went back to thinking up ideas that he could use to deal with the poison that was currently coursing through his body.


    He had been thinking about how the poison would lose its effects if he could hold out long enough for it to be ineffective, but there was a limitation to this idea as his mana would kill him before he could survive that long, yet Davies did not n on giving up this idea yet as there was still seemingly hope for him to be able to survive through the period of the poison''s effects¡­


    As long as he was able to find something that could weaken his mana enough for him to hold on long enough, then he could survive the dangerous situation he was in right now without having to use Reversion¡­


    But how could it be so easy?

 Chapter 155 CHAPTER 155: DESTINY AND FATE VI

    ?


    After leaving the estate of the Lecroy family¡­ in style, I might add as they had literally taken to the skies. Davies had found his mind reverting to the mission of finding another method to deal with the poison coursing through his system before he ran out of time and had to use his fail-safe n.


    He had previously been thinking about how the poison would lose its effects if he could hold out long enough for it to be ineffective, but there was a limitation to this idea as his mana would kill him before he could survive that long, yet Davies did not n on giving up this idea yet as there was still seemingly hope for him to be able to survive through the period of the poison''s effects¡­


    As long as he was able to find something that could weaken his mana enough for him to hold on long enough, then he could survive the dangerous situation he was in right now without having to use Reversion¡­


    ''But how could it be so easy?'' he thought with a wry smile.


    "So, have youe up with another idea to deal with the poison?" Melinda asked not shifting her eyes from the front of the car because they were still off-road and she had to pay full attention to driving as it was easier to have an ident in this kind of environment, especially as it was nighttime.


    "Yeah, I figured something out and thought something up¡­ but the idea has a few ws," Davies didn''t hesitate to share his thoughts in the hope that he could figure something out from her due to some knowledge she had, or her way of thinking.


    While he was a well-established and certified loner, he understood very well that no one was an ind of knowledge and everyone constantly needed new sources of ideas and inspirations, so he had never been a loner to the point that he thought he coulde up with every genius idea by himself.


    In fact, most of the things he had invented to date weren''t based on just his thinking, so he fully understood the importance of receiving inputs from minds other than his own when he needed to solve a problem that was beyond his ability to solve.


    "The poison isn''t the kind that can inhibit my control of mana infinitely¡­ there probably isn''t any poison like that, or if there was, it wasn''t this one,"


    "I should be able to survive if I can hold on long enough for the poison to lose its effects," he began exining.


    "I would say let''s do that, but I feel like there''s a but in that statement," Melinda chimed in.


    "I was getting there¡­" Davies sighed, a little ticked by her interference in his exnation.


    "Like I was saying¡­ I should be able to survive if I can hold on long enough for the poison to lose its effects, but,"


    "Surviving long enough till the poison loses its effect is nigh impossible for me right now, especially since I was shot by the poison twice, thus getting double the dosage, which stands to reason that the duration till the poison loses effect is doubled,"


    "So, even if I had the stamina of a camel and the willpower of a tiger, I still wouldn''t be able to survive the effects of my mana rampaging in my body and causing havoc to my internal organs," he continued.


    "Can''t we find a way to weaken your mana so you can survive till the poison loses its effects?" Melinda cut in again.


    "I''m still exining, Mellie, hold your damn horses," Davies snapped, her constant interruptions were getting annoying and he didn''t have the luxury of time to banter with the queen-like MILF that was driving him¡­ unfortunately.


    "Oh, sorry," she apologized in a quiet tone after a slight pause as it was not something she was used to doing¡­ apologizing, that is.


    Many men, and even some women would kill to be in his shoes right now. Just the fact that the famously stunning ''ming Winged Enchantress'' was talking to him was something that many wished for, and for her to even be driving him while trying to help him save his life, most people would give their all to switch ces with him even if it meant they would die due to the excruciating pain of being frozen from the inside in a few hours.


    If they were to even get a glimpse of her apologizing to him, they would immediately cough blood to death, giving the grim reaper a lot of extra souls to ferry to the afterlife, but Davies wasn''t like those simps who would lose their heads over a woman like Melinda.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Sleeping with queens and princesses of Empires that were great enough to be called world powers was right up his alley, and Melinda just about barely matched that level of beauty and temperament so he couldn''t simp for her, especially when his life was on the line.


    Beauty that can topple kingdoms could go to hell if it meant he could save life¡­ this was a rule that he created for himself and fully followed. Unfortunately, all his deaths could still be rted to a woman, but that was yet another story for another day.


    "As I was about to say¡­"


    "If only I could find something that could weaken my mana, but unfortunately, due to my special circumstances, the conventional methods that could weaken one''s mana cannot work for me," he continued after another interruption from the ming Winged Enchantress.


    Davies had actually given this point a fair bit of thought, while there were things that could help weaken one''s mana, but due to his special physique and sheer amount of mana, those things werepletely ineffective on him.


    He knew because he had checked due to his cautious nature and fear that such a thing could be used against him in battle. Back then, when he had discovered that those things were ineffective on his mana, he was thrilled and relieved, but now, his unease and annoyance at such defensive measures of his body reached new heights.


    He never knew there woulde a day when he would be annoyed at the advantages he had over other people, but there was a first time for anything.


    "Since conventional methods wouldn''t work, then I can only try to think of some non-conventional methods to weaken my mana long enough for me to survive through the poison''s effective duration," he finally mentioned the basis for the new idea, as well as the part where he needed her input so he could find a way to survive.


    "I can''t purposely weaken my own mana as I don''t have enough control for that and forcing it would only make the current situation worse¡­"


    "I also can''t try to disperse my mana to the point where it isn''t enough to damage my body as I no longer have that much control," he said outwardly, but inwardly he knew that he couldn''t disperse that much of his mana since the amount of mana his body generated and contained was more than he could handle.


    It was why he had set a limit for the amount of mana he was allowed to use, because even though his body contained that much mana, using that much mana with such a weak body was not possible, but that was mostly because most of his own powers were sealed.


    "Since your mana is of the ice element, can''t you try using the fire elemental mana to try to suppress it?" Melinda was hit by a brainwave and quickly spoke out her idea, showing Davies that his idea to find answers by knocking their heads together wasn''t a bad idea, but despite that, Davies''s answer still knocked her down a step or two.


    "It''s not a bad idea, but it''s currently impossible as due to myck of control over my mana. I won''t be able to resist the burning effect of the fire elemental mana and would probably die to the ming mana instead," he answered immediately. The ice mana coursing through his body was very potent and also had quite the quantity, so it would easily require a great amount of fire elemental mana to weaken it.


    "Not unless you''re trying to cook me with such intense mana," he muttered.


    Letting such manae in contact with his body would turn him to ashes immediately¡­ he''d rather avoid that situation.


    "Is there really no way around that?" Melinda asked with worry, not happy that yet another method to save Davies had vanished before it was even formed.


    "Not unless there was a way for the fire elemental mana to directlye into contact with the ice elemental mana that is inside me," Davies said in passing as his mind was currently working at top power while searching for other methods to deal with the poison.


    What he did not know was that the words he had said so harmlessly in passing would be the key to solving this poisoning incident without the use of Reversion.

 Chapter 156 CHAPTER 156: DESTINY AND FATE VII

    ?


    "Since your mana is of the ice element, can''t you try using the fire elemental mana to try to suppress it?" Melinda had asked after suddenly receiving a sh of inspiration.


    "It''s not a bad idea, but it''s currently impossible as due to myck of control over my mana. I won''t be able to resist the burning effect of the fire elemental mana and would probably die to the ming mana instead," he answered immediately.


    The icy mana coursing through his body was too potent and also quite plentiful so the amount of fire elemental mana that would be needed to weaken his mana to a considerable level where he could withstand it was way above the level his body could currently tolerate.


    "Not unless you''re trying to cook me with such intense mana," he muttered.


    Letting such manae in contact with his body would turn him to ashes immediately, especially since he currently couldn''t use his mana to protect himself¡­ so he''d rather avoid that situation.


    "Is there really no way around that?" Melinda asked with worry, not happy that yet another method to save Davies had vanished before it was even formed.


    "Not unless there was a way for the fire elemental mana to directlye into contact with the ice elemental mana that is inside me," Davies said without much thought.


    He didn''t know any such method and he couldn''t think of one at the moment, hence his careless answer. His mind was currently working at top power, trying to find other methods to deal with the poison before it was game over, so he didn''t have time to divert his thoughts into searching for such a method, he felt that it would only waste time if he did.


    What he did not know was that the words he had said so harmlessly in passing would be the key to solving this poisoning incident without the use of Reversion.


    He may not have known a method that could let external manae into direct contact with the mana coursing through his body, but that didn''t mean that no one else did¡­ Melinda happened to be one of those that knew such a method.


    She had heard about such a thing once in the past and Davies''s words had triggered that particr memory, and it hade rushing to be her foremost thought, reying itself in her head and her face turned blushing red at the embarrassing idea that had formted from the knowledge that she happened to know.


    She suddenly mmed on the brakes, putting a halt to their cruise in the forest as the car tires seized immediately while the car slowly skidded to a stop, aided by inertia until it finally stopped.


    Her sudden actions had stunned and rmed Davies by quite a bit and now he was looking at her with annoyance all over his face, as his forehead was still aching from bumping into the interior of the car due to her sudden stop, but before he could put his annoyance into words, Melinda spoke first,


    "... So, as long as the mana in your body can be weakened long enough to a level you can tolerate, you should be able to theoretically hold on until the poison''s effects wear off, right?" she asked, her eyes fully on him, and her face red, though he couldn''t understand why this was so.


    "I believe that''s what I said, yes¡­"


    "Also, it''s not theoretically, I would be able to hold on till the poison''s effects disappear," Davies stated, deciding not to speak¡­ yet, on why she had suddenly stopped in the middle of almost nowhere when she should be driving him to his house.


    "How long till the poison loses effect?" she asks another question.


    "Just over five hours, but since it''s a double dosage of the poison I was shot with, then I''m guessing that each dart inhibits my control of mana for three hours each¡­ I think?" he began to analyze while keeping his eyes on her face that he thought couldn''t get any redder, but he was wrong. Melinda''s face flushed even redder when he mentioned "just over five hours".


    He couldn''t help but think that something was wrong.


    Why had Melinda suddenly turned into a tomato head? But even though he was intrigued by this, he didn''t bother to ask what was wrong, as right now, he could not afford to care about how cute she looked while blushing so hard, even though he didn''t know why she was blushing in the first ce.


    "So¡­ as long as we can get enough fire elemental mana to directlye into contact with the mana in your own body, then it should be able to directly weaken the mana without causing you any harm, right?" Melinda asked yet another question, dissecting the previous discussion into parts and earning a raised eyebrow from Davies who still couldn''t understand what she was doing by suddenly stopping the car and asking him all these questions, yet he still answered,


    "Yes¡­ as long as fire elemental mana can directlye into contact with my ice elemental mana, then it should reduce the pain and fatality of the situation to something I can handle for the next five hours¡­ though it will still hurt like hell during that time peri-¡­" he was answering when he suddenly had a thought.


    "Wait¡­ Why are you asking me all this anyway?"


    "... you wouldn''t happen to have a way to do that¡­ right?" he asked hesitantly, not wanting to get his hopes up, but there was still a glint of anticipation in his eyes that Melinda could see.


    "... Yes¡­ yes, I have a-¡­ uh-¡­ method to get fire elemental mana into your body without burning you to death," she said in a quiet tone, trying to take in the new information that even with the idea she came up with, he would still be in unimaginable pain until his mana returned back under his control.


    "What is it?" Davies couldn''t exin his relief at hearing her words, though he did think there was something a little off with her right now, he didn''t care much for that as long as there was a method that could solve his problem so that he wouldn''t have to use Reversion and snap thest thread of sanity that was holding his mind together right now.


    "H-H-Have you h-heard about dual cultivation?" Melinda stammered out embarrassed at the wordsing out of her mouth right now.


    "...!"


    "What?!" words could not exin Davies''s loss of words at the moment as he stared at her with the nkest stare in his ''looks dictionary''.


    "Dual cultivation!"


    "Don''t make me say it again, have you heard of it?" Melinda shouted as well. It was obvious that she was embarrassed by the words that were leaving her mouth, but she also knew this wasn''t the time to be ashamed.


    Davies''s life was at stake¡­ or so she thought, and in a way, she was right.


    "I didn''t know you read web novels," in the end, Davies couldn''t resist asking.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    ''Could it be that the famous ''ming Winged Enchantress'' read smut in her free time?'' He couldn''t help thinking with an eyebrow raised suspiciously as he looked at her questioningly.


    "That''s beside the point!"


    "Do you know about it or not?" she didn''t deny it and instead cleverly deflected the question with her own, confirming Davies''s thoughts that she definitely read some of "my little brother" and "Duke Asmodeus''s" books.


    "Yes, I know what dual cultivation is," Davies finally gave the reply she wanted to hear.


    As a man of culture, how wouldn''t Davies know what dual cultivation was?


    He had studied the chronicles of smut and knew what the go-to for every harem-type cultivation novel was.


    What he didn''t know was what it had to do with his current situation.


    "Dual cultivation is the exchange of yin and yang between a man and a woman in order to cultivate and temper themselves¡­ to be perfectly clear, it''s sex, but with an added bonus,"


    "What''s more¡­ it doesn''t exist in this world¡­ I think¡­ so I don''t see why you bring it up," he finally exined and spoke his mind.


    "The thing is¡­ it does exist, but it''s not exactly the same, neither is it as exaggerated as it is in those web novels," Melinda began to exin, not aware that she had given herself away with her words.


    "Hold up, hold up¡­ Dual cultivation actually exists?" Davies was stunned.


    ''Why didn''t somebody tell me?'' he thought tearfully.


    "Wait¡­ even if it exists, what does it have to do with this whole situation?" he still asked, not seeing where this conversation was leading to.


    *ISSSSHHHH*


    *PHEWWW*


    Melinda first took a deep breath to regte her breathing andpose herself,


    "I know a dual cultivation method¡­" she began.


    "... Nooooo," immediately Davies heard her words, everything clicked and his answer to that was immediate refusal.


    "With it, I can send my fire elemental mana directly into your body without hurting you," she ignored his refusal and continued speaking.


    "Nope¡­ I''m not letting you do that," he still rejected, even though he had no reason to, but he had a n and she was the one jumping the gun instead of him taking advantage of her.


    The situation was too strange.


    A heroine like her wanting to give herself to him in an effort to save his life even though he had inadvertently saved hers was too much of a strange urrence.


    As long as rivers didn''t flow backward and mountains didn''t grow from the sky, this was never a situation that he would ever expect, so he immediately refused it, feeling that it was too sketchy, but in Melinda''s eyes, he was rejecting such a deal because he cared for her and would not want her to do something like that just to save his life. This made her touched and even more determined to save his life.


    The situation wasn''t easy for her either as she had never been this close to a man in all her 37 years of living, but she was determined to save Davies irrespective of the cost or she would regret it forever¡­ after all, he had saved her life first.


    ''What was wrong with using the life he had saved, to help him save his?'' these were her determined thoughts.


    If Davies knew what she was thinking, he would think that a woman''s thoughts were indeed scary and confusing, but right now, he was trying to reject Melinda''s attempt to ''save'' him.


    "Just let me-¡­"


    "Nope, I can''t take advantage of the situation to do something like that," he spoke righteously, but his thoughts were going haywire.


    He constantly refused her every method to persuade him, adamant about not falling into this honey trap, even though he would have willingly jumped into this situation if it were under any other circumstances.


    In the end, after constant refusals where it felt like she was trying to convince an innocent kid, Melinda could no longer stay patient as she knew that every second counted if she wanted to save him, so she did like every heroine in a story would do¡­


    She surprised him with her lips smashing onto his and making him lose himself in her taste.


    ''Those web novels were right,'' she thought after seeing the effectiveness of her kiss.

 Chapter 157 CHAPTER 157: DESTINY AND FATE VIII

    ?


    Somewhere in the middle of nowhere¡­


    A sleek red-colored Lykan SuperSport supercar with elegant gold and ck designs was parked in the middle of shrubbery and other such objects that very much indicated that this ce wasn''t a road where such a car should be tearing up and burning up rubbers as it ran wild.


    All in all, this was a very weird ce for such a car to be and an even weirder ce for someone to think of parking a car, but the person who had parked the car there currently didn''t have such thoughts as the decision was a spur of the moment kind of decision, and after what had happened, after the car had stopped, neither of the people who were in the car at that moment had the luxury to think about how terrible of a parking spot this ce was, but even if they did remember to think about it, they wouldn''t feel that it was a bad parking spot and would instead feel quite relieved instead.


    Inside the car, there was only one participant of the ''strafe'' that had urred just hours earlier, left inside of the car. The early morning sun glinted and shone brightly on his face through the windscreen and though most of it was blocked out by the shaded color of the windscreen, it had still done its job of disturbing the rest of the only inhabitant inside the car.


    As expected, as the sun rose, so did the eyelids of the white-haired inhabitant of the car, and after a few seconds of fighting with the enemy known as drowsiness, his eyelids finally rose up to the point where he could be ssified as barely awake.


    "Urrrggghhhh," he groaned as he brought his right hand to his head which was aching strongly for some strange reason.


    As his eyes opened enough for him to see his surroundings and his immediate view was of the dashboard of the car which was devoid of any fancy lights or motions since the engine of the car was off, but its beauty was still clear to see.


    Unfortunately, its beauty was enough to stun Davies into suddenly activating his mana and forming an ice shard in caution as he had just woken up and did not yet recognize that he was inside his own car, but what he did know was that this wasn''t his room and this was what had elicited such a sharp reaction.


    Unlike he had been half expecting, he wasn''t attacked by any suspicious person and slowly his brain woke up as well and he suddenly looked at the ice shard in his hand that he had managed to create without feeling any difort orck of control over his mana.


    "My mana control¡­" he muttered, and with that, he began to remember everything that had happened to him yesterday prior to him falling into the embrace of the goddess known as sleep.


    He had gone to the banquet of the family head of the Lecroy family to try to interrupt and set up ns to steal the fated protagonist, Lee Jung''s opportunity. His mission to do so had been going well until he had grown a bit bored of the party and decided to leave as it didn''t seem like anything explosive was going to happen¡­ oh how wrong he was.


    Something explosive did happen and it came in the form of two poison darts that impaled themselves well into his body and released their poisonous contents into his body and they had in turn exploded his control of his mana putting him in a dangerous state where any wrong step could mean his demise to his own mana.


    In an explosive rage and also with regards to terminating the threat that had shot him before he had any extra time to shoot more things into him, he had wildly used his mana, sessfully demolished the threat, had a bit of a conversation with the fated protagonist who was the inadvertent cause of the whole fiasco, found out a bit more about the stupidity of the so-called protagonist and also gotten a piece of valuable information and then had finally escaped the location before anyone else could see him in such a weakened state.


    After that, they had left the Lecroy estate in fast and furious¡­ flying style, after which he had discussed with Melinda about finding a way to deal with the poison and then¡­


    "Fuck¡­" he sighed as he finally remembered everything that had happened the night before¡­ including the steamy night he had shared with Melinda before everything went ck and he had woken up alone.


    "Fuuucckkk¡­" he sighed even deeper as he let himself fall back into the chair that had been drawn back and pressed into a resting position.


    As he fell back, his eyes picked up a white piece of paper that had been folded and put onto the dashboard. It was most probably carrying some sort of message from Melinda to him, seeing as she was no longer here and neither were her effects(clothes), but he ignored it for now as his mind was still too scattered to deal with that already.


    He had survived yesterday''s poison without having to use Reversion due to Melinda''s idea of them using her method of dual cultivation to transfer her fire elemental mana into his body to suppress his ice elemental mana as she was strong enough¡­ but just barely.


    Due to the sheer amount of Davies''s mana, she had to continue supplying him with her mana to constantly suppress his mana from going bonkers and attacking his body any more than it had already done, which mainly meant that they had to continue¡­ fu**ing for more than five hours.


    Not that Davies hated the sex or that he detested the idea of sleeping with Melinda¡­ rather he had quite enjoyed her taste, how she had moved, her sweaty breaths, her expressions, the way she had touched him all over, her¡­ okay, we''re getting a little off topic here.


    The point was, he had enjoyed it, but the whole situation was way too strange ording to the normal urrences in any such situation that involved a viin and a heroine.


    Things weren''t supposed to happen this way. <novelsnext></novelsnext>


    It was way too coincidental for Melinda to have a way to save him and even worse was her willingness to sacrifice her purity to someone (that wasn''t the protagonist) who she had just met that same day.


    It was too strange, it reminded him of a protagonist''s plot armor where things are forced to fall in ce so that it can be advantageous to the protagonist, or when the protagonist was facing a threat that could potentially reap away his life, and then some stupid coincidence just happened and somehow resulted in the protagonist surviving.


    ''A viin wasn''t supposed to have plot armor, right?'' he wanted to ask because such a situation was far from the norm, but since it was happening to him right now, he needed to find out about the whole situation ASAP to see if the situation was advantageous, or disadvantageous for him.


    He needed answers, and answers he got,


    [I think I''ve always told you that my job is to answer anything pertaining to the system or about your current life''s mission in general, right?]


    [After all, it''s my damn job] Miya''s voice came at him from inside the depths of his mind.


    ''Oh¡­ well, I didn''t think you''d know anything about this as it hasn''t exactly happened before,'' Davies answered honestly as he really hadn''t even had the slightest thought to ask Miya since he hadn''t expected her to know anything about the current situation.


    [Well, you thought wrong!] Miya replied immediately, surprising Davies.


    ''...Oh¡­''


    ''In that case, can you exin what exactly is going on?'' he decided to ask, his mind gued with unease at the sudden and unexpected situation.


    [Well, apparently, it''s a new system function] Miya began to answer but,


    ''What do you mean it''s a new system function?''


    ''What does this even have to do with the system?''


    ''Could it be that the system can control the threads of fate as well? Davies immediately barraged her with questions as he still didn''t understand what was going on.


    [Hold your horses!]


    [How do you expect me to answer all your questions when you barraged me with them so suddenly] Miya had to interrupt before Davies asked any more questions.


    ''Oh, sorry,''


    ''Tell me what you know, then I''d decide if I want to ask questions,'' he held back for now as he wanted to hear what she had to say, but he wasn''t done with his questions.


    [...] he could almost imagine Miya staring at him with a nk but annoyed look on her face as she stared at him with exasperation, but she still decided to speak anyway.


    [Well, yesterday I suddenly received an influx of memories that had to do with the new function of the system] she began her exnation.

 Chapter 158 CHAPTER 158: DESTINY AND FATE IX

    ?


    [Well, yesterday I received a sudden influx of information concerning this new function of the system] Miya began her exnation.


    [Even though you can''t use the fate points that you''ve harvested from Lee Jung, there''s ast line of defense that would activate should you ever face something that is beyond your capabilities to deal with and is potentially lethal]


    ''Let me guess, there is a catch...'' Davies spoke, already beginning to piece together the situation in his mind.


    [Of course there''s a catch, you don''t expect the system to save your life free of charge, right?] Miya asked stupendously as if she couldn''t believe what he was hearing.


    ''Figures...'' Davies scoffed.


    What did he expect from a system that didn''t even give him the tools he''d need to aplish the missions that he has been tasked with?


    The same stupid system that required him to kill a protagonist and survive the aftermath should he finish the mission in a wrong manner before he could even get the basic tools to kill the viins in the first ce, obviously couldn''t be kind enough to save his life free of charge.


    ''Tch... This stupid system,'' he thought in annoyance.


    [Anyway... The catch is you have to have enough fate points that can bnce out the method that the system would employ to save your life] Miya continued like she hadn''t heard all the bad things he had thought about the system as even she thought the system was a bit too much sometimes, even though she was the assistant interface that was built into the system.


    She was like that employee that hated her job and sympathized with the customer(Davies) because even she knew how much of an asshole her boss(The System) was.


    ''What the fuck?!'' Davies couldn''t believe his ears.


    What kind of ck-hearted policy was this?


    The system was literally saying that it could take as much of the fate points that he had struggled to harvest from the leeks... Ahem, protagonists, to try to save him.


    He didn''t mind the part where it would try to save him... What he did mind was that the system could literally take all his fate points no matter how much he had harvested under the pretext that it was trying to save him.


    ''What the hell!''


    This bastard system wasn''t helping him the slightest bit and now it was telling him that it could simply throw him back to the starting line, should it so wish.


    He was more than dumbfounded at the creator of this bastard system... If there was any.


    ''How did anyone manage to create something so ck-hearted and unhelpful?'' he groaned in annoyance.


    [Hey, do you wanna hear what I have to say or not?] Miya interrupted his internal outrage to ask if he was still interested or if should she just shut up.


    ''Sorry, please do go on,'' he reigned in his annoyance and chose to listenpletely before bursting forth with more cuss words.


    [Good...]


    [Like I was saying, the system would take an amount of the fate points that you had previously umted and then use it to influence the world around it to create circumstances around you that would help you to save your life]


    [The it could be a direct help or a coincidence like what happened yesterday] Miya further exined.


    ''Coincidence my ass,''


    ''If what happened since yesterday could be counted as a mere coincidence, I''ll eat my hat,'' he thought apprehensively.


    [You don''t wear hats] Miya scoffed at his attitude.


    ''Exactly...''


    ''I don''t believe that something like Melinda having a dual cultivation method that she apparently came across years ago can be ssified as something as simple as a mere coincidence,'' he immediately put out his point of view.


    [When you put it like that, it does sound kinda convincing] Miya mused.<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    ''What''s the name of the so-called additional function?'' Davies was suddenly ovee with curiosity and asked.


    [Err... It''s called "Destiny''s Helping Hand"] Miya answered after going through the new information floating around inside her memory files.


    ''That''s an ominous-sounding name if I''ve ever heard one...'' Davies immediately felt a cold shiver run down his spine and for a split second he felt exposed like someone was watching him intently.


    He had the urge to get up and look around due to the sudden difort, but he suppressed the sudden urge and stayed out, certain that it was just a fragment of his information.


    But in reality, he knew that was just him sounding optimistic because he was pretty certain that he was probably being watched, but the one or ones watching him were beyond the scope of his imagination and he wouldn''t be able to see or sense anything no matter how much he looked.


    As for how he felt, or knew that he was being watched... Well, he wouldn''t have been sent into world after world and then finally deposited in a death fight where everything was on the line, and then the person responsible for such a situation would then just ignore his situation.


    That fucker probably had a bowl of popcorn in hisp as he watched Davies fight for his life and his sanity at every given moment... Or Davies may have been wrong about the whole thing and his presence in this world could simply be a coincidence.


    This would mean that nobody had targeted him from the start and he was simply a victim of some bad circumstances, but Davies didn''t want to believe that... Or rather he couldn''t, otherwise, he would no longer have a goal and a person he hated so much he wanted to crush their soul in the slowest but cruelest way possible.


    It may simply be him being a little stupid and short-sighted, but Davies wouldn''t be able to deal with the thought that everything he had suffered through, the deaths, the betrayals, were all just due to some terrible coincidence.


    He may simply turn insane if he dared to think of that and risk losing someone to hate.


    Also, he felt that the constant coincidental urrences that repeated themselves in every single one of his lifetimes had to have been directed by someone whose ability was out of the scope of his thought level...maybe one of those so-called gods, otherwise it wouldn''t make any sense.


    For now, he put that thought aside and decided to focus on the new system function that was termed ''Destiny''s Helping Hand''.


    Seriously speaking, just from the effects and how Melinda saved him yesterday, which he now figured was because of the system, the name ''Destiny''s Helping Hand'' felt apt.


    ''Wait...'' his eyes suddenly brightened in realization.


    It was true that the name of the new system function was very apt with the situation that had urred, but that in itself was too strange.


    How did the system know that he would be shot by a poison dart that deteriorated his control over his mana, thereby slowly killing him and that a method of solving the poison was to get someone with opposing elemental abilities as he did to have a dual cultivation method that could be used to save him.


    There were only two ways this situation was usible...


    First, the whole thing about the system saving him was a sham and the system had simply decided to rip him off after he was saved by some absurd coincidences, or...


    The system could actually see that far into the future that it was able to n a way to save his life even years before the situation urred.


    Needless to say, if it was the first situation, he''d be so annoyed at the ruthless profiteering attitude of the system, but he had a feeling that it was the second situation and that was actually a very scary thought to think about to be honest.


    Davies actually started to see the system in a new light... But if the system was so capable to be able to do something like this, then why in the hell was it unwilling to even give him basic abilities and tools with which he could easily go around the job of destroying the protagonist, but instead insisted on him killing one protagonist first before he would be able to ess such basic abilities.


    All in all, while his respect for the system''s abilities and its means grew, so did his annoyance with the stupid thing, because now that he had seen an inkling of the abilities that the system had to offer, he had more reason to be annoyed that he didn''t have such facilities at his fingertips yet.


    Taking care of protagonists would be much easier if the system was willing to help them.


    He wasn''t asking for much, right?


    Just what other transmigrators had on a tter of gold.


    ''Those other transmigrators are lucky bastards. They don''t know what they get to enjoy for free while the great me has to first suffer so much just to get the basic abilities of my system,'' he thought with annoyance.


    Suddenly, he had a thought, if the system took as many fate points as it needed to n his rescue, then it had probably taken a lot of fate points to save him this time, especially as it seemed that something no short of tampering with the timeline itself had been employed.


    ''Err... How many fate points did the system use to save me?'' he asked sheepishly, a bit scared of the number he was probably going to hear.

 Chapter 159 CHAPTER 159: DESTINY AND FATE X

    ?


    Suddenly, Davies had a thought. If the system took as many fate points as it needed to in order to save him, then it had probably used a lot of fate points to save him this time especially as the way he was saved was nothing short of tampering with the timeline to n a way to save him.


    "Err¡­ How many fate points did the system use to save me?" he asked, his tone sounding a little sheepish as he was a bit apprehensive of the numbers he was expecting to hear.


    [...]


    ''Ah, shit,''


    ''It''s a lot, isn''t it?''


    [Yeah¡­ fifty thousand fate points] Miya finally spoke, and just like he was expecting, she was bearing bad news.


    "Fifty what now!?"


    "I don''t even have that many points!" Davies said exasperatedly.


    [Well, since it''s the first time, the system decided to lend you some points, but know that it will not be happening again] Miya said.


    "Am I supposed to feel grateful, because I''m not feeling that right now," Davies replied, annoyed¡­ but to be honest, he had expected a pretty high number from the start and to be told that he was in debt didn''t really throw him off that much.


    He couldn''t exactly use the fate points anyway so he wouldn''t mind being in debt all that much right now, but it was an annoying thing for him to feel like he owed someone something. He didn''t like feeling like he owed someone else his life, but he couldn''t exactly do much about that right now, so he''d have to live with it.


    ''So, now I''ve got ast resort card that can be yed in case of any unexpectedly fatal situations," he was happy that he had another trump card, though this one probably couldn''t be used for a while until he at least repaid all his debts¡­ but since the death of Lee Jung was not very far off ording to the ns he had made, he was confident that he could soon clear the debt.


    Hopefully, he wouldn''t encounter any more fatal situations for a while, but that would be him lying to himself¡­ His life wasn''t going to be that easy on the path he had to tread upon.


    "So now I have Destiny''s Helping Hand to go against fate''s protagonists, huh?" he muttered and suddenly shivered.


    His whole life was not something about some sort of war between gods and phenomena like destiny, fate, and whatever else there is, right?


    Unfortunately, there was no one who could answer that question and if he wanted to find out whether his sudden thought had some truth behind it, then he''d have to do it himself.


    ''In the end, I have to do everything myself,'' he thought as he reached for the piece of paper that was on the dashboard and unfolded it to see what was written on it.


    "My phone wasn''t working for some reason, so I wrote this note to tell you that I''m leaving," he read aloud and then looked for the next line, but there was none.


    "That''s it?" he was confused as to why there wasn''t anything else written on the paper and even thought that she had probably written the rest of the message with an invisible inked pen or something of the sort, as this wasn''t the kind of message, he was expecting from someone who had slept with him to save his life.


    "Where''s the rest of it," he thought out loud, and even used his mana to sweep across the paper just in case he had missed something, but even after subjecting the sheet of paper to all forms of checks, he still hadn''t found any sort of hidden message and finally had toe to terms with the fact that that one line was all that Melinda had written when she had chosen to skedaddle and leave him in the middle of nowhere after sleeping with him.


    "I know she was terrible atmunication, but damn," he had to admit that he hadn''t expected such a short and nd message that made him feel like he was a mere one-night stand for her.


    If he hadn''t known that this was a result of her terriblemunication skills, then he wouldn''t have known what to think and would have thought that she meant something else due to the weird note she had left.


    Anyway, he''d simply have to call her when he returned to civilization, speaking of which, is exactly what he should be doing, so he sat back up and began to put on his clothes that had been flung all over the car''s interior.


    He put on all his clothes and then got out the passenger door to go around and go to the driver''s seat. He wasn''t interested in performing any in-car gymnastics unless it was a dire situation.


    He got into the driver''s seat, started up the car, and looked at the GPS to still see the location of his house still input in and began to follow the directions as even though he knew the way to his house, he did not know where he was right now so he had to follow the directions given by the GPS until he got to an area he already knew and from there he could find his own way.


    He quickly began to drive and was soon back on the road and there he could unleash the full capacity of his car and immediately his car roared in response to the pressure he had put on the elerator and the car zoomed off into the distance while he had begun to call Danie to prepare a bath for him before he reached home.


    **Somewhere else¡­**<novelsnext></novelsnext>


    Lee Jung was packing up some clothes and traveling utensils into a duffel bag in preparation for a trip out of town, but the trip wasn''t a leisurely one, but rather one that got all his hairs standing on his body in excitement.


    He had received a mission from his system, and it wasn''t just any mission, but a chain mission.


    Normally, a chain mission wasn''t enough to make Lee Jung feel giddy with excitement, but this particr mission did because of its final objectives and its rewards, should he manage toplete it.


    [New chain mission activated]


    [Mission title: Get rid of a pest]


    [Mission level: Extreme Danger]


    [Mission details: Davies Lake has constantly been a thorn in your side. His presence at uncanny ces is beginning to put a hamper on your rise to the stars¡­ it''s your job as a hero to get rid of him]


    [Mission 1: Get outta town]


    [Mission details: You may have chosen to get rid of the pest known as Davies Lake, but if he is an insect, you''re nothing but a microbe that can cause no threat to him whatsoever. Go to the location marked X on the system map and begin your conquest of strength till you''re able to threaten Davies Lake''s life]


    [Mission 1 reward: ???]


    [Mission 2: Complete mission 1 to unlock]


    [Mission 3: Complete mission 2 to unlock]


    [Mission 4: Complete mission 3 to unlock]


    [Mission 5: Complete mission 4 to unlock]


    [Final Mission clear conditions: Kill or defeat Davies Lake]


    [Final Mission possible rewards: 1Ex-ranked blessing, Magical Runic Technology, Shares of Imperium Technologies, ???]


    [To note¡­Mission rewards depend on thepletion ratio]


    [Current missionpletion ratio: 0%]


    ''Just like it said, it was a mission to kill his archenemy who somehow survived the mana poison if the mission was telling him to have to kill him'', these were Lee Jung''s thoughts.


    There was no way he would ever reject this kind of mission especially as it was on the kind of objective that both he and the system agreed on.


    Davies Lake had to die.


    Lee Jung had more than a few grudges against him, and it was very clear that there was no love lost between them as it was obvious that Davies didn''t like him either, so Lee Jung was actually happy that the system had given him a mission that would allow him to strike first.


    He had previously worried that he had no way to touch Davies because after he had found out the kind of power he wielded both physically and financially, he had realized that trying to attack Davies was nothing but a pipe dream at the level that he currently was, but now that the system had given him a mission, he knew that the system had created a way for him to aplish this goal, so he now had a way out.


    Also, the mission rewards were enough to make him salivate. Just the Magical Runic Technology was enough to make him jump into the mission even with this level of mission difficulty, but with all the other rewards that had been added, there was no way he would refuse to jump onto such a mission with such a reward, especially as it was something that he would have done either way.


    It seemed even the heavens wanted Davies Lake dead.


    "As one chosen by the heavens, it is up to me to carry out their orders," he spoke narcissistically to himself as he kept packing.

 Chapter 160 CHAPTER 160: WHAT HAPPENED AFTER THEY LEFT

    ?


    **Vroooooommmmm**


    **Screeeechhhhhh**


    The sounds of the engine tearing up the ce and the smell of burning rubber filled the air as a sleek red supercar with elegant gold and ck engravings drifted onto the driveway that led to a huge modern-styled mansion. The car drove on the driveway at a gradually slowing speed until it stopped at an unremarkable area of the driveway, but the engine of the car didn''t turn off, and neither did the driver of the car get out.


    Instead, the area where the car was standing began to sink into the ground without a sound that indicated that whatever machinery was responsible for this phenomenon was kept in tip-top shape.


    After the tform sankpletely underground to reveal the underground garage of the mansion, the car once again moved to the designated parking spot, and only after parking there did the engines turn off and the driver pushes open the door of the car.


    As expected, Davies was the driver of the vehicle, and he slowly came out of the car while rubbing the back of his neck. He felt sore all over from having his insides almostpletely frozen and the soreness waspounded even further due to the various gymnastics that he had engaged in to stay alive.


    To be fair¡­ the gymnastics he had performed with Melinda weren''t actually responsible for keeping him alive as it was actually her mana that was being passed through into his body and making cycles around every inch of his body, thus weakening his own mana and making it easier to bear the pain of his insides being barraged by not only his mana but Melinda''s as well.


    The gymnastics helped him keep warm though and they provided a good distraction, so he wasn''tining anyway, but his body was now a tense bunch of knotted muscles all over. He had also had to bear with pain almost throughout the night, so he really needed some rest and rxation right about now.


    Like the good personal assistant /butler that she was, Danie immediately showed up in the elevator that Davies was walking toward, and he got in while she pressed the button that would take them back to the upper floor.


    She obviously had some questions for him like where he was the night before, but she had seen on his face that he didn''t want to be gued with anything annoying at the moment and one of his ssifications for annoyances was questions so she kept mute, deciding to ask her questionster¡­ that is, if she remembered to ask at all, it wasn''t her ce to press her master for answers if he didn''t want to tell her anything.


    Davies appreciated the silence from Danie as he was too stressed, both physically and mentally to deal with questions that required more than one-word answers, so he simply trudged to the bathroom that had already been prepared, flung off his clothes, and sank his body into the more than warm, but not steaming water that had been prepared for him by Danie.


    He felt his muscles loosening ever so slightly as the water ran along his skin as he sat in the more-than-average-sized pool that he used as a bathtub.


    The warm bath was rxing and refreshing, but not nearly enough to release his stress, so he had Danie give him a deep tissue massage after that his body was finally rxed enough to the point where he could answer people without feeling the urge to smash their heads against a wall in annoyance.


    Now he was seated on a throne-like sofa filled with soft cushions of different shapes in the living room area of the mansion while waiting for some food to be prepared by his improvised chef¡­ whatever her name was.


    He wasn''t waiting idly though but was asking Danie about what had happened at the banquet after he had left with Melinda.


    Apparently, after he and Melinda had sped off into the darkness to perform some fast and flying car tricks, the security detail, that is, the Megas who were members of the Lecroy family League and were tasked with the security of the event, arrived at the scene where Davies had unleashed his mana in fury.


    Due to the environment, and by that I meant, the fact that it was nighttime, they weren''t able to examine it very carefully, thus they weren''t able to notice anything strange, or anything for that matter.


    ''So either I somehow managed to shred the person who shot those darts to pieces, in which case, they should have found some traces of blood¡­ or, that lucky bastard somehow managed to escape¡­'' Davies thought with a little mirth.


    [Or you didn''t actually attack somebody at all in the first ce]


    [Don''t forget that you attacked immediately you sensed strange movements and didn''t bother to crosscheck before you sent ice swords, arrows, and spears raining down on the location you had sensed the strange movement] Miya interrupted and reminded him before he let his vivid imagination take over and create scenarios that may not exist.


    ''You''re forgetting something,'' <novelsnext></novelsnext>


    ''If there''s movement, then there''s life, and if there''s life, then there''s blood,'' Davies replied with an almost unarguable response, but there was a reason why the response was "almost" unarguable, and Miya immediately dug into the "almost" unarguable statement.


    [...What if whatever caused the movement wasn''t actually alive¡­ it could be a machine or something¡­] Miya countered the almost unarguable statement almost immediately after Davies had said it.


    ''...''


    ''Good point, but I think you get what I mean¡­ if there''s movement, then there has to be something that caused the movement, and there should have been traces of whatever caused the movement¡­''


    ''The fact that there aren''t means that whatever I had detected, somehow managed to escape my barrage of attacks,'' Davies replied and exined his point of view and his suspicions as well.


    [... Or your barrage of attacks was able topletely wipe away the traces of whatever it was¡­ you pretty much wiped away the vegetation of that environment, so I wouldn''t be surprised by your attack wiping away something or something¡­] Miya responded, still unwilling to let up on her point of view.


    ''There should still have been some sort of traces¡­''


    ''It doesn''t matter anyway, we don''t have any leads on it yet and if the Lecroy family''s megas end up finding something then I can use it to look for who dared to make an attempt at my life¡­ and even if they don''t end up finding any leads, it wouldn''t really matter much right now,''


    ''The only thing that I need to do right now is to find a way to deal with another disadvantageous situation like the one that happenedst night,'' he replied and began to make more ns to deal with whoever this new threat was.


    [At the rate that new enemies and threats to your life keep popping up, one would think you''vemitted the worst types of crimes in your past life to deserve such a fate¡­ ah wait, that is your past] Miya was speaking in the aftermath and then realized the irony of her statement and they bothughed slightly in response.


    Anyway, after the megas weren''t able to find anything, they decided to do a sweep of the area to be sure there were no threats still hiding, but they still didn''t find anything strange apart from the disappearance of Davies and Melinda as well as Davies''s car which somehow was no longer there and they also hadn''t seen it leave the property, but they didn''t focus much on that as such issues were above their pay grades as well as none of their concern, so apart from reporting the issue to Joshua Lecroy, they didn''t do anything else concerning that.


    Even Joshua wasn''t concerned about Davies all that much apart from the question as to why he had decided to rain down swords of ice upon his property, but since it didn''t seem like it had ended in a loss for Davies, since they didn''t find anything that indicated that either Davies or Melinda was in a dire situation, so he decided to leave the situation for now and deal with itter.


    Of course, there was also the fact that he couldn''t exactly call Davies or Melinda at the moment because all the phones nearby had by some sort of weird miracle all blown up.


    All in all, after deciding that there was no threat to them, Joshua actually decided to continue the banquet, and none of the guests refused such an offer as it was safer to be inside the well-protected hall, rather than being outside and being exposed to any threatsing for their life.


    The rest of the banquet had gone in a very cliche direction. The person who was supposed to y the piano somehow did not make it to the banquet hall, but luckily, there was a genius pianist among the guests who managed to y the piano like he was ying a beginner-level game on FIFA.


    Of course, that person was Lee Jung.


    Davies scoffed at the fact that a poverty-stricken rat was able to y the piano that he had never even encountered in his life at an almost godly level of skill, just because his system has decided to give him freebies of that level.


    If there was one thing that Davies hated, it was people getting things that they didn''t deserve¡­ Lee Jung was a prime example of that.


    ''Speaking of things, he doesn''t deserve¡­ I think that high-level mana poison antidote would be more useful in the right hands¡­ my hands,'' he smirked evilly.

 Chapter 161 CHAPTER 161: DISAPPEARED?

    ?


    Davies scoffed annoyedly after hearing that Lee Jung was somehow able to y the piano in an almost god-like manner just because his system had decided to freebies of things that other people had to sweat and go through mind-boggling training to attain.


    What was even worse was that Lee Jung had probably never even seen a piano previously, not to mention touching it.


    If there was one thing that Davies hated, it was people getting things that they didn''t deserve¡­ Lee Jung was a prime example of that. This was another of the reasons why they could never see eye to eye.


    ''Speaking of things he doesn''t deserve¡­ I think that high-level mana poison antidote would be more useful in the right hands¡­ my hands,'' he smirked evilly.


    He had previously not attempted to take the antidote from Lee Jung due to various reasons, one of them being that he did not want to have to owe his life to a fated protagonist, but his life was no longer in danger¡­ for now anyway, so he no longer had any reservations about ''acquiring'' a useful resource that could also be a lifesaver.


    As they always say, ''Every day for the thief, nothing for the owner¡­'' should be how the saying goes¡­ I think.


    Since Danie no longer had anything left to tell him about the previous night''s banquet, he decided to have her check up on Lee Jung''s location so he could think up a way to acquire the high-grade mana poison antidote.


    He immediately told Danie and she quickly brought out her phone to ask for the status report from the people who had been assigned the task of monitoring Lee Jung''s movements.


    It didn''t take long for her to receive a response. Unfortunately for Davies''s ns, she came bearing bad news. Lee Jung had disappeared.


    "Disappeared how?" Davies asked immediately after he heard.


    "What do you mean he disappeared? He lives right down the street," he spoke stupendously as if he couldn''t believe his ears.


    Lee Jung had somehow managed to acquire thend deeds for a house in a nearby location from where Davies''s house was as this ce was a high-value location in the city.


    Also, by ''somehow acquiring'', Davies meant, the system handed him another freebie.


    Anyhow, back to the situation at hand,


    "That''s what the report says¡­"


    "Apparently, they saw hime out of his house this morning with a duffel bag. He took a taxi and stopped at a mall and then he managed to escape their sights among the crowd at the mall," Danie read out the reports that had been sent to her.


    "Why am I just hearing this now?" Davies asked in annoyance, wondering if they had given themselves away and made him aware that he was being watched and thus decided to ditch them, or was it fate ying her nasty tricks again to interfere in his attempt to keep him under surveince?


    He wasn''t sure which, but the truth remained that Lee Jung had now disappeared with his high-grade mana poison antidote and he did not know when or where he would appear again.


    "The report says he just escaped their sights a few minutes ago and they were looking around to see if they could still spot him," Danie continued, in defense of the people supposed to be monitoring Lee Jung''s movement.


    ''Also, you were still receiving a massage when it happened, and you would probably have sted the report to bits if someone disturbed you then,'' she thought but didn''t say that part out loud.


    "So, it hasn''t been long since he disappeared then?" Davies asked, his ears picking up that important piece of information.


    "Yes¡­ it has been less than thirty minutes since he escaped surveince," Danie responded.


    "Nice¡­" Davies murmured and immediately called in his mind for the system interface to open up, selected his inventory, and pulled out aptop from his inventory, as well as a few other essentials for what he was going to be doing.


    He started up theputer and while it was still booting, he plugged in the USB drive that gave him a remote connection to his satellite.


    Yes, it was the same one he used with the supeputer on the 139th floor of the Imperium Building.


    [Good Morning, Mr. Lake]


    [How may I assist you?] Aida''s voice came through the speakers of theputer, indicating that she was already functioning even before theputer was done booting.


    Since theptop that Davies was currently wasn''t equipped with holographic technology, her holographic figure wasn''t able to be disyed and she could only function by relying on Davies''s voicemands or any instructions that he inputted into theputer.


    Danie didn''t react strangely to hearing Aida''s voiceing through the speakers of the speakers as it wasn''t the first time she had heard it¡­ as Davies''s personal assistant, of course, she would know about his workshop assistant, otherwise what kind of a personal assistant would she be.


    "Hey Aida," Davies responded to the cold-sounding tone of the A. I with a cold-sounding tone of his own, which would have sounded kind of awkward if either of the two of them had emotions.


    Aida as nothing more than an amalgamation of 0s and 1s did not have emotions yet because Davies hadn''t activated them yet and Davies''s emotions had died long ago so neither of them felt any form of awkwardness in such a cold way of greeting each other.


    Danie on the other hand was a bit emotionally daft, so she did not notice, nor would she have cared if she did notice any awkwardness.


    As soon as theputer finished booting and started up, Aida automatically bypassed the security of theputer, making it so that Davies wouldn''t have to input any passwords or anything of the sort, which was a good thing as Davies had too many differentputers to immediately remember the passwords of all of them.


    He was a genius, but even a genius''s brain needs some rest from mundane things.


    ¡¤?¦Èm Immediately the homepage opened up, Davies immediately opened up a browser and began to work his fingers, not bothering to even check if there was an inte connection as he knew that the USB port that connected him directly to a satellite would definitely have a connection to the inte as that was how he made it, and even if by chance that part of the drive was malfunctioning, he knew that Aida would step up to take care of it.


    It was what having an assistant meant and was also why he had taken his sweet time to create something like her instead of making things that go "BOOM".


    *Click* *ck*


    *Clickity ck*


    *ckity Click*


    His fingers danced across the keyboard as he worked his technological magic and by technological magic, I meant, hacking into every surveince security camera city-wide.


    This was a veryplex task that not many apart from him could do, and there was no one who could do it in as short a time as him¡­ no, actually, there was one person who could.


    To be more urate¡­ the person could not be called a person. It was Aida. Davies had incorporated such facilities into her program, and she was able to do something like this almost as easily as he could.


    So, he could have left the job of hacking the security cameras to her, but he enjoyed the process of hacking and liked the finger exercise, he had to keep his fingers in tip-top shape for many other ''activities'' after all.


    It was not his fault that there weren''t many methods to exercise his fingers anyway¡­ he was innocent.


    Soon he had finished the hacking process and clicked on the button "Enter" on the keyboard, bringing forth a loading screen.


    It was at this moment that he remembered that there were too many cameras in the city and it would be a waste of time to try to look through enough of them to be able to find Lee Jung with the small screen of theptop.


    Upon thinking this, he opened up his inventory and took out about five small metal balls with special markings across their little spherical bodies that glinted as he double-tapped each of them and threw them on the floor.


    "Aida, connect to the five wireless holographic disy balls," he gave a voicemand to Aida who quickly responded.


    [5 holographic disy balls detected]


    [Permission to connect granted]


    [Connected]


    With a dinging sound, the balls on the floor suddenly had a part of their spherical bodies slide open to disy a strange-looking contraption that looked like an eye through which light shone and immediately the hologram of Aida''s body materialized and a couple of secondster, different sorts of screens appeared floating in the air and disying different parts of Yorkshire city.


    "Now let''s see where you ran to, little mouse," Davies muttered with a smirk.

 Chapter 162 CHAPTER 162: THE BLACKOUT I

    ?


    "Now let''s see where you ran to, little rat," Davies muttered with an evil smirk as more square-like screens popped up.


    "Where did you say he disappeared,d again?" He asked Danie without taking his eyes off the screens that were popping up.


    "At a mall..." Danie answered almost immediately.


    "..."


    "What mall?" He looked at her with a face that said "Be more specific, nitwit, I knew that much already".


    "Ah, sorry,"


    "It was at the Olisseum mall that he disappeared," Danie immediately corrected herself.


    "Ok... Olisseum ma-... Wait?"


    "Isn''t that the one where he owns 53 percent of the shares of thepany?"


    Due to keeping tabs on Lee Jung, he found out that 53 percent shares of Olisseum Mall were among the assets that Lee Jung had so luckily ''acquired''.


    "Yes, that one," Danie replied.


    "Ok... Which of the branches?" He asked again his eyes reverting to the footage being disyed on the holographic screens.


    "The one you were atst week," she answered.


    "..."


    "Are you messing with me?" Davies''s asked in a slightly annoyed tone at Danie''s annoying way of answering his questions.


    "What?" Danie asked with a wronged look as of she didn''t understand what she did wrong.


    "Address dumbass!!!"


    "What is the address of the damn ce!?"


    "I obviously don''t know the address of the ce, and you know that," he almost shouted, but his tone only came out a little higher than normal.


    "Ohhh, the address," she face palmed as of she didn''t remember to, but he could tell that she was just acting as if she had forgotten.


    As for how he could tell... Well, if he fell for such terrible acting then he hadn''t learned anything in his five lifetimes.


    "Speaking of which... Didn''t I say something about having a premonition about the building crashing down to the floor overnight..."


    "Yet, from your exnation... It seems like the building is still standing?"


    "Why is that?" He suddenly recalled and asked while looking at her suspiciously.


    "...Ah... About that..." Danie began to look to the side while sweating a little despite the air conditioning inside the mansion.


    "What about it?" Davies pressed on with a smirk appearing on his face as he was enjoying getting back at her after her annoying answers.


    "... Errrr, I thought you were joking..." She finally spoke after seeing that he had no intention of letting her off.


    "You thought I was joking?" He repeated with a little chuckle.


    "... I don''t joke about things like that... "


    "I said I had a premonition... Don''t make me a liar," he said, his tone serious.


    After all, he had no intention of letting the manager of that ce get away scot-free, and by doing this, he could also indirectly affect Lee Jung... In a bad way of course, so he was all for it.


    "But before that... The address,"


    "Let''s find that bastard?" He concluded on the issue, not nning to think again about what he had ordered her to do.


    Danie obviously didn''t understand why Davies would want a building like that toe crashing to the ground, and she also didn''t understand why he was so interested in the annoying bug named Lee Jung... Or at least that was how she saw him, but she couldn''t exactly question his orders.


    Asking Davies questions and questioning his orders were two different things and this was perfectly reflected in the results of such actions.


    Asking him questions may result in the question being answered or not, depending on his mood, while questioning his orders would result in being taught a painful lesson or outrightly losing your head... Of course, this also depended on his mood.


    As such, she was not interested in finding out of his mood was good or bad by questioning his orders, and she quickly decided to read the address written down in the report she had received, but that was the start of another problem.


    "The address of the ce is sma-... Ah, wait," she immediately paused after seeing the absurdity that was written down in the report.


    "What is it now?" Davies asked, a bit incensed now as he thought Danie was purposely not saying the address... Again.


    "The address..." She began, but Davies immediately cut in,


    "What''s wrong with the address?" By the sound of his tone, she could hear that his mood was already dangling towards the worse side, so she quickly decided to say the absurdity that was written down even though it was embarrassing to say something like that out loud.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    "Ah, sorry," she gulped audibly.


    "The address is... "Smack Dat Booty Avenue, 69 Street, Coochie Lane..."


    Davies''s eyebrows twitched and he wanted to ask if she was ying around again, but from the red, embarrassed look on her face, it seemed like even she had difficulty saying it out loud.


    He simply stretched out his hand, indicating for her to put her phone into his outstretched palm, which she did and he quickly brought the phone closer to his face so he could see if she was telling the truth and shockingly enough, it was "Smack Dat Booty Avenue, 69 street, Coochie Lane," that was written there.


    ''That can''t be the name of a ce, right?'' he thought exasperatedly as his eyebrows twitched some more while he looked at Danie''s embarrassed face that was slowly recovering.


    *Ahem* he cleared his throat first before he spoke.


    "Aida, bring up the security footage of the area around the Olisseum Mall at... Smack Dat Booty Avenue, 69 Street, Coochie Lane," he spoke as calmly as he could, not wanting to be as red-faced as his assistant.


    [Of course sir] Aida''s holographic figure could be seen nodding affirmatively with the onlypletely straight face in the room. As a mere software without emotion, there was no way she would be affected by something like embarrassment.


    Just a second after she nodded in affirmation, the images being disyed on the many holographic screens that were up in the air all changed and began to show recognizable images of areas around the aforementioned Olisseum Mall.


    ''It really was the name of a ce!" Davies thought with a sigh and a facepalm.


    He had lost all faith in the humanity naming system after this episode. Next time he was going anywhere, he''d simply request for the longitude andtitude of the location he was to be at.


    He didn''t need any more shocks like the one he was getting.


    "Who even selected such a name?"


    "... And why was such a name even allowed?" He finally couldn''t hold it in anymore and burst out with embarrassedughter.


    "..." Danie obviously didn''t have an answer to that.


    He took a deep breath to calm himself and then decided to focus on the more important thing right now which was, finding a rat.


    "How many minutes ago did you say he disappeared from their sight?" He asked, not bothering to look at the report on the phone that was still in his hand, after all, he had Danie to answer the question.


    "Just over thirty minutes ago," she calcted the additional time they had spent bantering before she spoke.


    "Okay,"


    "Aida, rewind the footage by forty minutes and find the individual named Lee Jung,"


    "His picture should be present on your database," heid out the instructions required for Aida to find Lee Jung''s presence at the location.


    [Affirmative sir] Aida''s cold tone rang out in response to Davies''s instructions and her holographic figure could be seen making different motions as she controlled the footage through motions.


    The footage we''re quickly seen being reversed quite a bit until they stopped and then they began to be yed, but at a faster pace than the normal flow of time.


    As aputer software with very high processing power, she didn''t have any difficulty searching for Lee Jung at a speed 32 times the normal flow of time...which was exactly what she was doing.


    As expected, a few secondster, her voice rang out again,


    [Target "Lee Jung" found]


    All the screens paused and one particr screen zoomed in on Lee Jung''s face that was now present on the screen.


    "Oh good,"Davies said with a little smile.


    It was results like this that made him feel that the five-odd years that he had spent on creating her was not a waste of his time, especially as she wasn''t even running at full power.


    ''It''s really a good thing to have assistants,'' he thought with a smile, inwardly giving himself a tip of the hat at how he managed to throw all the difficult work to other people.


    [Lazy ass]


    ''Hey, it''s not my fault I''m rich... Andzy,'' he replied with augh, not even bothering to deny her usation.


    "Track his movements from that moment till now..." He ordered Aida as he wanted to know where Lee Jung was right now.


    [Affirmative sir] Aida replied and immediately a holographic map appeared and the screens continued moving.


    A line appeared on the map that showed Lee Jung''s movements along the map.


    Strangely sometimes the line on the map broke off and then reappeared, but Davies knew that it was only Lee Jung entering a blind spot and then remerging into the views of the cameras.


    He didn''t let it bother him because no matter how many blind spots Lee Jung passed through, he still couldn''tpletely escape the eyes of the cameras.


    Even if he only passed blindspots, all Davies had to do was to determine and follow the blindspots and he would still find him.


    "The only way the little bastard can escape is if all the cameras in the city suddenly stopped working," he said out loud with a littleugh, and as if by wordmand, all the screens suddenly went nk.

 Chapter 163 CHAPTER 163: THE BLACKOUT II

    ?


    "Track his movements from that moment till now..." He ordered Aida as he wanted to know where Lee Jung was right now.


    [Affirmative sir] Aida replied and immediately a holographic map appeared and the screens continued moving.


    A line appeared on the map that showed Lee Jung''s movements along the map.


    Strangely sometimes the line on the map broke off and then reappeared, but Davies knew that it was only Lee Jung entering a blind spot and then remerging into the views of the cameras.


    He bother much about it though, because no matter how many blind spots Lee Jung passed through, he still couldn''tpletely escape the eyes of the cameras.


    Even if he only passed through the blindspots, all Davies would have to do to find him was to determine and follow the blindspots and he would still find him.


    "The only way the little bastard can escape is if all the cameras in the city suddenly stopped working," he muttered with a littleugh, and as if by wordmand, all the screens suddenly went nk.


    Not only the screens but every electrically powered object he could see suddenly turned off.


    Strangely enough, it was not only in his mansion that such a scene was urring, but rather it was happening all over the city.


    It was a city-wide ckout.


    "What the hell?" he muttered as he looked at the nk screens that were still being disyed because theptop and the holographic disy balls functioned on their inbuilt batteries.


    [Seems like you jinxed it] Miya intoned.


    ''Jinxed what?'' he asked,not understanding what she was inferring.


    [Well, you said, the only way he would ever be able to escape from your sights was if all the cameras in the city, and I quote "stopped working"]


    [So, here you go] Miya said like it was his fault.


    ''Noooo...''


    ''Is that even possible?'' He found it hard to believe such absurdity.


    [Well, you''re witnessing it] Miya''s voice resounded in his head to make him realize that what he thought impossible was currently happening,and he was witnessing it.


    As for whether such a thing could be a coincidence...


    Yeah right, that idea was swept immediately under the rug as soon as it popped up.


    One thing he had learned throughout all his five lifetimes was that there was no such thing as a ''coincidence'' in this line of business.


    Everything had a cause and a reason behind it no matter how absurd the cause or reason was.


    It could be sensible, or it could be absurd...But it was present.


    The cause of what had just happened was absurd, the reason was even more so.


    ''Did that lil bitch going by the name of Fate just ck out the whole city just because she wanted to hide Lee Jung''s movements and location from me?''


    ''Like really?'' he had to ask himself again and again to be sure if this was really happening.


    Unfortunately, the reality remained the same and he had been pped in the face by it.


    ''This may be really bad news... Like really bad news..." he thought in sudden realization.


    [What do you mean?] it was Miya''s turn to be confused as she didn''t see what was bad about the current situation other than the fact that Davies wouldn''t be able to track Lee Jung''s movements and thus wouldn''t be able to steal the high-grade mana poison antidote.


    Luckily for her impoverished thinking ability, Davies saw differently and was about to pour some enlightenment upon her stupidity.


    ''If you haven''t already noticed, this isn''t the first time that such a coincidence has urred, and it probably wouldn''t be thest, but haven''t you noticed something different this time?'' he asked.


    [What''s different about it?]


    [It''s still the same old thing where she changes things to somehow favor the protagonist...] she trailed off, not sure where she was wrong.


    ''...''


    ''The scale you dimwit! The scale!!!'' he clutched his head in exasperation internally.


    [What scale?] Miya asked, even more confused.


    [''He doesn''t just expect everything to suddenly click just because he shouted a word that almost made no sense and had no connection with the situate... Oh''] she was thinking to herself when she suddenly understood what Davies meant by mentioning the scale.


    ''What happened this time cannot in any way bepared to the previous ''coincidences'',''


    [It was way too loud of an interference this time] She affirmed, understanding what he meant, but still not sure what he was getting at.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    ''Exactly...''


    ''The whole city being thrown into a ckout just to hide his movements and location from me is way too much...'' he confirmed her thoughts.


    [So what is the problem... She made a big move this time,so what?]


    ''The fact that such a big move was made is the problem,'' Davies replied, not losing his patience.


    ''For this kind of huge coincidence to ur, don''t you think that the reason why he is being hidden had to warrant such a heavy reaction?'' he finally let her know his thoughts about the issue.


    [...!]


    [That can either be very good news... Or very bad news] she spoke in realization, her brain cogs turning at impossible speeds.


    ''... Unfortunately, I think it''s very bad news,''


    ''There is no doubt that for such a huge coincidence to ur, there has to be a very big opportunity for Lee Jung right now,''


    ''All would have been well if I can steal the opportunity...But I think fate has had it with me,'' he exined, feeling a little shiver run down his back as he spoke the conclusion that he hade up with by himself.


    [What makes you think that?]


    ''I think the signs are pretty obvious,'' he replied, referring to the ckout that they had been able to conclude had urred to hide Lee Jung''s movements from him.


    ''After this kind of crazy coincidence, I''m pretty sure that even if I try to find Lee Jung even after this, there''ll be an even more absurd coincidence that would throw me off again,''


    ''... It''ll also probably be a fatal coincidence,'' he said. If he was speaking instead ofmunicating with her with his thoughts, his throat would be dry in slight nervousness... Having to bear the pressure of being able to be attacked from anywhere, by anything, at any point in time, was quite burdensome on the mind.


    [...]


    ''Unfortunately... That''s not even the worst part,''


    ''Whatever the opportunity that has been prepared for Lee Jung, it''s either going to empower him enough, or embolden him enough for him toe at me after gaining whatever the opportunity is,''


    [... Then that means...]


    ''Yeah... When he emerges after fully digesting this opportunity, he would be the oneing at me...''


    ''Our next meeting could even be a fight to the death...'' he said with a chuckle, but that was not very likely.


    But even though it was not, he still needed to make preparations of all kinds because he didn''t know what kind of cheats Lee Jung would gain this time and how he would use it... Or more likely, them, against him.


    Since he didn''t know what wasing at him, he would need to make preparations in all directions, and even then there was still a high chance of him losing to Lee Jung as unlike Lee Jung, he didn''t have full ess to his system tools, he didn''t have any cheat opportunities, and he didn''t have a phenomenon of nature behind him to clean up his shit.


    Yet, he wasn''tpletely helpless either. He had his own advantages and things to fall back.


    He even had a couple of trump cards that he could pull out should things enter the worst-case scenario.


    He wasn''t going to be helpless on the battlefield between him and Lee Jung and he would do his best toe out on top.


    With that decision being made, he reverted his focus to the outside world once again.


    "Aida, terminate the connection to the security cameras and wipe all traces away," he instructed, no longer going to bother himself with finding Lee Jung''s location.


    It wasn''t like he could find it right now anyway, so he shrugged and decided to save himself the energy and time.


    [Affirmative sir] Aida responded and began working on the tasks he had allocated to her.


    "Seems like it''s a citywide ckout," Danie who had gone to pull open the windows while checking on the situation through her newckeys in ck, said to Davies.


    "I noticed," Davies replies half-heartedly, his mind already cooking up preparatory ns for the beginning of the end.


    "Aren''t you going to keep looking for that guy?"


    "Should we keep looking for him?" Danie asked.


    "Don''t worry about it, it''ll probably take a while for the ckout to be taken care of," he replied, still in a half-hearted tone.


    ''After all, Lee Jung has to escape first before the ckout can be fixed,''he thought.


    Soon after, theptop that Davies had used in the hacking process was back to showing its homepage, leaving no traces that it had been used for any illegal activities just a few minutes ago.


    He had Danie pick up all the holographic balls from the floor and put them into his inventory, along with theptop that he had shut down, and the special USB Drive.


    It was time to focus on more important matters.

 Chapter 164 164: THE BEGINNING OF THE END I

    ?


    With everything that had happened and with the conclusion he hade with the fact that he had to start preparing for the beginning of the end of this story between him and Lee Jung, he knew he had to start making his move now before Lee Jung reappeared back in Yorkshire city.


    As for why he thought Lee Jung would not be in Yorkshire City for the time being... Well, there wouldn''t be such a huge coincidence to hide Lee Jung for just a few minutes, right?


    If that was the case, then Davies could easily find him after that and would then be able to steal the opportunity that had been prepared for him, making all the previous moves to hide him nothing more than a waste of effort.


    Even now, if he wasmitted to it, as long as Davies went to an area with technological development(that is; another city), then as long as he was really interested in it, finding him was not an impossible task for Davies, but Davies wasn''t interested in wasting any time to find him as it would probably amount to little more than that... A waste of time.


    Davies had to admit that he wasn''t a fan of wasting his time on anything that wasn''t beneficial to him in the slightest... It wouldn''t even be able to amuse him in the slightest.


    ''Now where to start?'' he wondered to himself after finishing the breakfast in a well-lit room.


    Every electrical appliance inside Davies''s mansion was working again even though there was currently a ckout in the entire city of Yorkshire.


    As a technological genius and as well as someone who always strived to be prepared for any unexpected situation, out of which an absence of electrical power was one of the easiest to expect problems that popped up in his head, he had emergency power generators around that could be used to power a ce as big as his ten times his mansion, so he wasn''t affected by the power ckout for more than a few minutes.


    With the return of power to his mansion, his chef was able to finish preparing his breakfast, which was why he was able to get something to eat to replenish his depleted nutrient bank... Of course,this was nothing more than a fancy way of saying he had satiated his hunger.


    Now that he was done with that he had to begin making his moves.


    In what direction should he make his ns?


    There was probably no need, neither was there a point in him trying to strengthen himself right now because there was almost no way for Lee Jung to suddenly be stronger than him no matter the power steroids fate had decided to feed him.


    Maybe the opportunity that Lee Jung had left the city for was enough to bring him to the same power level as he was or maybe even stronger, but he doubted it.


    Even if it did happen, the power that Davies was disying was nowhere near the limits of the power he could disy, so there was no way that Lee Jung would ever beat him in a fair fight between them.


    As for whether Davies should try to achieve the next stage of power... Yeah, no.


    That wasn''t achievable even by his standards.


    Achieving the next stage of power known as "Awakening" wasn''t something one could just achieve as there was a chasm of difference in the level between their abilities.


    A level 5 mega, also termed "An Awakened one could take on a hundred level 4 megas, and stille out on top.


    The current Davies couldn''t take on more than three of the weaker level 4 megas as a level 4 mega himself,so one should be aware of the level of difference between him and the next stage.


    Unlike in cultivation novels where all he had to do was break through and then he would suddenly be able to match up and do things that were previously impossible for him to do, the power level in Leivandage worked a bit differently from that.


    While it was true that he would also break through a wall on his usage of his abilities and then he could achieve the power of the next stage... There was still a prerequisite for a level ofbat that he had to achieve before he could even attempt to get a glimpse of the next stage and that level ofbat required him to at least be able to take on at least 10 of level 4 megas at a time.


    From the previous estimation of his ability, it could be seen that Davies was already on the road towards the next stage of power which was ''Awakening'', but the distance between him and that stage was still wide and wasn''t something he would be able to bridge in a few weeks, or maybe months without any sudden power boost, so he wasn''t even going to try, after all, there were other things to focus on right now.


    Though, without a doubt, he was nning to break into the next stage of power as soon as he finished Lee Jung off.


    He was quite excited by the prospect of growing stronger and looked forward to it especially as he knew that he needed to advance in strength due to two main reasons, the first and his most prioritized one was that he wanted to reach a level where he would be eligible to answers about how his life had suddenly taken a turn and be "lives" that he had to suffer and die through.


    His second reason was more of a guess... Due to the knowledge, he had found about Leivandage after arriving at this world, he knew that this world had been a normal world where humans lived together in mock harmony... But everything changed when the fire nation attacked-...


    [Ahem]<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    ''Ah, sorry,''


    Anyway, the world of Leiven changed drastically after the event known to everyone as The Great Cataclysm. The world became a lot bigger due to pieces of other worlds being merged with this one and many different species, both intelligent and non-intelligent, appeared with the pieces of the different worlds as well.


    Apart from that, there were also portals to numerous small worlds known as gates where megas who were mana-activated humans entered to kill monsters and make money by selling important monster parts to hegemons that needed them.


    While this scenario was not exactly the mostmon type of troupe, it wasmon enough to give him some ideas and spections.


    As he wasn''t a hundred percent sure that he was the main viin of every protagonist that was to appear in this world as that was quite the headache-inducing thought, he at least expected more viins and with all the signs he had been given, he was more than willing to bet that there was some sort of Demon Lord,or Evil Lord, or something of that sort.


    He was even more certain after what he had seen and heard in the mission gate about the attack on Yorkshire as a present for the so-called "King".


    It was very likely that an OP viin with that tag would be appearing, and by the time range he had been given in the dungeon, he probably didn''t have that much time.


    He obviously couldn''t let this world be destroyed before he got his answers.


    He also could not allow there to be a viin that was an even greater threat to the protagonists than he was.


    Who knew if the uing could kill a protagonist, thereby robbing him of fate points?


    Of course, he doubted the idea, but he already knew that the characters in this world all had weird issues apart from the simr trait of having been kicked in the head by donkeys...


    So who knew what could happen?


    He couldn''t have that.


    He couldn''t have any other big bad viin apart from big ol'' Davies Lake on the scene so he would need to terminate any other annoying viin that popped up and tried to overstep their boundaries by more than a little bit.


    For that he needed power, enough power to trample on his enemies whenever he wanted to, hence his obsession with getting stronger, but...


    Not right now...


    He had to deal with the first problem that was about to appear, so he had no time to currently chase after his desire to be stronger, but he wasn''t too down about that.


    He didn''t mind having to spend a little time teaching an idiot protagonist his ce in the world and beneath the viin''s feet.


    He was looking forward to this as he thought it would be a rather exhrating experience...


    His first win over a protagonist, that is.


    But he couldn''t rush it.


    He had to be careful about this issue as it was obvious that it wasn''t only Lee Jung he would have to deal with...


    There was also that nasty bitch named Fate who seemed to have taken up the role of nning out every step of her agent''s life and was constantly getting in his way while preparing Lee Jung to defeat him.


    He didn''t have the intention of just letting that happen though.

 Chapter 165 165: BREAKFAST IN BLACKOUT

    ?


    Since he had concluded that he could not currently focus on empowering himself, then he should focus on other things instead.


    For one... Which bastard had tried to kill himst night, and he knew where to start looking for answers?


    Since the Lecroy family megas hadn''t been able to find anything, even though that was probably due to their ipetence, he thought... At least he wasn''t nning to personally start looking around for clues, he wasn''t some American investigator from the 80s, he had some self-respect and wouldn''t do the work that was meant for the inferior people.


    What he was going to do instead was to ask Melinda who could have any thoughts of even trying to attack her as it was pretty obvious that she was probably the originally intended target and they had only targeted him as an afterthought due to some reason.


    He didn''t need, nor did he care to know the reason why they did... What he did want, was to smash their heads in for even having the thought of trying to kill him...


    If they then decided to tell him the reason for their actions while they begged for their lives with his foot on their faces, then he wouldn''t mind knowing, for curiosity purposes only, of course.


    "Danie, I need you to find a way to cont-..." he was going to ask Danie to find a way to contact Melinda when he suddenly remembered that she didn''t have a working phone and he wouldn''t want what he was going to ask her to get out... He didn''t need people finding out that he had a very close rtionship with her, or that someone had tried to kill them the night before.


    Also, he wanted to see her personally... Due to ''other'' reasons.


    "Get me the address of Melinda Asheborne?" he said instead, earning a slightly raised eyebrow from Danie as she wondered what her master wanted with this woman, but after remembering that Davies had probably spent the night with her since they had disappeared together, all her curiosity died out and was instead reced with a different feeling that she could not show on her face.


    She didn''t say anything and quickly got to work finding the information that Davies wanted while Davies took this time to go and get dressed as he could obviously not go to meet her wearing a bathrobe, could he?


    It did not take much time to get the home address of Melinda Asheborne, as she was one of the more high-profile citizens in the city and information about general things like that could not be really hidden or even hard to find.


    Danie lived up to her role of personal assistant and got the address in a few minutes just as Davies finished dressing up.


    Davies had just started moving to his garage when he remembered that there was currently a ckout in the city which meant that everything on the roads was probably chaos right now.


    The ckout would have affected traffic signals, the modes of transportation that used electricity, as well as a lot of other things and their absence would cause chaos to ensue on the roads.


    ''Maybe I should use a chopper?'' the thought appeared in his head, but then quickly disappeared as he didn''t want to do so much work.


    He didn''t want to have to walk back to the helipad on the roof.


    "Well, hopefully, I don''t run over somebody,"


    "Nobody can me me even if it does happen anyway..." he muttered and continued to the garage.


    **Two hourster...**


    **Inside a high-rise luxurious condo somewhere in Yorkshire City...**


    On a huge queen-sized bed with bright bed coversy a beautiful woman who was just waking up even though it was almost midday.


    Her big beautiful eyes slowly pulled open and then they blinked beautifully a few times as she slowly escaped from the embrace of the goddess of sleep.


    She turned over in her bed and did a little stretch on her bed, but suddenly felt a stinging, tingly feeling down between her legs that brought the memories of the activities that she hadst night and had tired her enough to the point that she was still asleep until almost midday, rushing into her and beginning to turn her face red.


    In an instant, she transitioned from a sleeping beauty to an awake and blushing beauty as she covered her face in a pillow as she remembered what she had done, but no matter how much she pressed the pillow to her face she couldn''t rid herself of the embarrassment that she was feeling and her face was only blushing even harder every second that passed by.


    Only after a few minutes of the memories reying themselves in her head did she finally begin to calm her nerves that were ring continuously with embarrassment a few seconds prior.


    With deep, calming breaths, she muttered to herself,


    "It was to save him... I had no other choice,"


    "I couldn''t just let him die..."<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    "After all, he tried to save me first..."


    Suddenly her rapidly growingposite was thrown out the window immediately a thought appeared in her head.


    ''He wouldn''t hate me because I forced him to sleep with me, right?''


    This thought was all it took for every form ofposure in her body to fly away from her grasp, leaving her a mumbling, embarrassed, overthinking, mess up of thoughts.


    For a want of better words, she had literally forced herself on him even though she was trying to save him.


    She knew because he had resisted her, but he hadn''t been able to pry her off as she was a fully energized mega in the magazine stage(fourth stage), while he was a poisoned and weakened mega, so there was no way he could pry her off, especially when he had to avoid using his own mana and aggravating his own situation.


    Of course,ter on, his body had begun to respond to her movements and he had even taken the lead, but she knew that was only the natural response of any man to sex.


    Even though he had responded like that, she still couldn''t get his of the thought that he might hate and avoid her after he woke up and remembered everything.


    "At least, he''d still be alive," she muttered as she realized that while it may be hurtful if Davies began to avoid her because of what happened, at least she had managed to save his life and that was the most important thing.


    Of course, it would hurt to lose a friend... Or lover...


    She wasn''t even sure what they were now.


    Amid all her thoughts, she hadpletely forgotten that she had given her purity to Davies, even though she had no thoughts of establishing any form of romantic rtionship beforehand, meaning she had also lost something, but she didn''t have time to put that to heart.


    Such was the mind of a woman who cared... They forgot about the pain to themselves, or the things they lost in the process, and only thought about the well-being of their beloved.


    Melinda as an older woman had even more of that natural instinct.


    She didn''t notice that at this point, she had alreadypletely fallen for Davies, and she probably wouldn''t notice until someone called it out for her to realize it... Unfortunately, there were only two people who knew about what had happened between them and either she realized her situation herself, or Davies let her know, and even he didn''t know her mind.


    Suddenly, she noticed something strange...


    Her luxurious high-rise condo was a top-of-the-line apartment and was fitted with the best technology, which included motion sensors and even an artificial intelligence assistant that helped with the maintenance of the house so on a normal day, the motion sensors should have picked up the fact that she was awake, especially with all the trashing around that she had been doing in the bed as she rolled around with a pillow pressed to her face in embarrassment.


    The motion sensors should have detected her awake status and should have pulled the windows open and also begun to y ssical music, as were the instructions that she had given it, but so far there hadn''t been any reaction from the home assistant system.


    It was only due to the bedside digital clock that also functioned as an rm clock that let her know that it was almost midday.


    ''Don''t tell me the home assistant is busted,'' she wondered as she slowly rose from the bed and pushed away the covers that were wrapped around her body.


    After stepping off the bed, she did a few stretches in the dim room before moving towards where the windows were and pulling away the curtains, letting lighte into the room and


    "Alexa, y some music," she called out to the AI hoping it still functioned by voice recognition as she nced out at the city below, but there was still no response from her home assistant system.


    At this point, she knew that something was wrong with the home A.I.


    She didn''t bother anymore and made her way out of the bedroom hoping to get a cup of tea, but after reaching the kitchen she received a huge shock.


    Sitting on the counter, with a cup of tea in front of him and what looked like French toast, was thest man she wanted to see right now... Davies Lake.


    "See who decided to wake up," he said with a smirk as he pushed a bit of his white hair away from his eyes.

 Chapter 166 166: BREAKFAST IN BLACKOUT II

    ?


    Melinda stepped off her bed, pushing away the covers and getting on her feet, did a few stretches in the dim room, and then moved towards where the windows were and pulled away the curtains, letting light into the room.


    "Alexa, y some music," she called out to the home assistant system, hoping it still functioned by voice recognition as she nced out at the city below, but there was no response from the home assistant system.


    At this point, she was very sure that something was wrong with the home assistance system, but she couldn''t for the life of her determine what it was, and since she couldn''t, she decided to leave the job of figuring out what was wrong with the home assistance system forter.


    She pushed that to the back of her mind along with the otherposure-scattering urrences and made her way out of the bedroom hoping to get a cup of tea and some breakfast so she could get on with her day as she would have a lot to do, but upon reaching the kitchen she received a huge shock.


    Sitting on the counter, with a cup of tea in front of him and what looked like French toast on a te, was thest man she wanted to see right now... Davies Lake.


    "See who decided to wake up," he said with a smirk as he pushed a bit of his white hair away from his eyes, fully exposing the handsome face that was enough to make any woman swoon and admit that he looked better than their other half whoever said other half was.


    "Davies...?" she muttered in shock, feeling all theposure that she had managed to build up slipping away fast, but did her best to control her breathing and asked a very important question.


    "How did you even get in here?"


    "Does that matter?" Davies replied, trying to brush it off as he didn''t see the point in answering that question, but Melinda wasn''t having it.


    "I think it does..."


    "This is one of the most secure ces you can find in this city, and for you to be here matters quite a bit," Melinda shot back, wanting to take the lead in the conversation.


    Whenever she spoke with Davies, it was always him leading the conversation and directing the conversation in whatever direction he wished, which went against her strong woman persona.


    It was also one of the reasons why he was able to get her emotions in turmoil easily, and she couldn''t have that.


    Also, she was trying to avoid the conversation moving towards what had happened the night before even though it was inevitable and they would still have to talk about it, but for now, she was doing her best to avoid it...


    Of course, Davies didn''t know that and instead thought Melinda was simply very curious about how he got in.


    "I mean... I didn''te in through the door if that''s what you''re wondering about," he replied.


    "So... How did you get in?" Melinda pressed on.


    "I refuse to believe that you went through all the guards and detectors and all that, especially if you didn''te in from the door..." she borated.


    "What makes you refuse to believe that?" Davies asked with an intrigued smile.


    "..." Melinda had to pause and stare hard at Davies in amazement before replying,


    "We''re four hundred meters above the ground right now, where else could you havee from?"


    "The window?" she snorted.


    "Well... yeah," Davies replied after a slight pause with a surprised look.


    "..."


    "You can''t be serious..." Melinda couldn''t believe her ears.


    "Uh, yeah... I dide through the window..."


    "That window..." he said and pointed to an open window that led to nowhere but open air.


    "How? Where..." Melinda looked in the direction of the open window with a dumbfounded look on her face and was asking questions when her mouth was suddenly stuffed with something.


    "Mmphhh!" her eyes widened in surprise and her hands reflexively moved to try to push out the foreign object that had just been stuffed into her mouth, but they were held back by Davies.


    "Enough small talk, eat something..." Davies said while taking his hand away from the French toast that he had just stuffed in her mouth.


    Seeing that it was just French toast that had been put in her mouth, she bit down, not having the slightest apprehension or suspicion that he could be trying to poison her.


    If he really wanted her dead, then he wouldn''t have saved her life the day before in the first ce.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    "Hmmm?" her eyes brightened and widened upon tasting the bread.


    "It''s good..." She was surprised by the delicious taste of the piece of bread. It was even better tasting than the food in some famous restaurants she had been to.


    She even took a deep look at the bread to check what type of bread he had used, but it looked like the normal average bread one could see in any normal bakery.


    But she didn''t have bread in her house, so Davies had probably brought it along with him.


    ''Did hee in through the window with bread?'' she was more than amused by the thought.


    "Of course it''s good, I made it," Davies answered her previous statement with a confident smirk.


    It would have been a waste of lifetimes if he didn''t learn to cook, especially since it was a very useful tool for survival, as well as for picking up thedies.


    Davies went back to the seat by the counter and sat down before picking up the cup of tea and gesturing for Melinda to seat at a seat just behind him which also had a cup of tea and some toast on a te set before it.


    "We have to talk," Davies said with a serious tone as he brought the duo of tea to his lips.


    Melinda immediately understood that the situation had turned serious and slowly moved to the seat that Davies had pointed at while chewing on the bread and not making any other sounds.


    Normally, she was a very strong woman who wouldn''t take orders from anybody... An Alpha female, for ack of better term, but the emotional turmoil she was feeling, as well as the naturally suppressive aura roiling off of Davies made her sit down and shut up.


    She sat down and started eating the French toast that was on the te, not bothering to ask who it was for, as the answer to that question was pretty obvious.


    "I have reasons to believe that you were the target of yesterday''s poison incident... Which probably doesn''t make much sense since I was the one who was shot at first, but let''s not focus on that," Davies began to speak.


    "So... Who could be after your life...?"


    Melinda wasn''t surprised that Davies was interested in who had tried to end him, but she was surprised by his conclusion of how she was the target, which as he said, didn''t make sense.


    "What made youe to that conclusion...?" she asked curiously,ignoring his question for now.


    "How I came to this conclusion, huh...?"


    "Well, let''s say it''s an intuition," he said truthfully, because no matter what he thought or derived from his thoughts about the situation,the fact remained that he hadn''t confirmed anything, so it was still all just a guess at this point.


    "... Also, the reason why I''m not starting to look for suspects from my side is because there are too many people who would try to do something like that to me, so I figured I''d start with you since you definitely have lesser enemies than I do," Davies exined his thoughts.


    "Oh..." Melinda''s eyes widened in realization because no matter how morbid what he had just said sounded... It was the obvious truth of the situation.


    If he had decided to begin looking for the culprit among his enemies, he''d probably not be able to determine who the culprit was, but since she was also a target, then looking at her enemies would be a good ce to start.


    "Think about it..."


    "Who would have the means to do such a thing, as well as the guts to actually go through with trying to kill both the ming Winged Enchantress, as well as the Yorkshire city''s genius, while they were on the property of one of the four great families of Yorkshire city," Davies continued speaking, oblivious to her thoughts.


    "..."


    "... Now that you mention it, there really aren''t many people who could manage to aplish that..."


    "... Most people wouldn''t even dare to have such a thought as soon as those terms are mentioned," Melinda muttered, her brain cogs turning at high speed as she thought something up.


    "It''s either one of the four great families because while I don''t have a bad rtionship with them, I can''t rule them out,"


    "Or it could be someone totally crazy and skilled enough to carry out such a task,"


    "Or... It could be someone else with as much influence and power as the four great families in Yorkshire City... "


    Suddenly her eyes widened with a sudden thought,


    "It could be them?"

 Chapter 167 CHAPTER 167: MEGAS UPRISING

    ?


    "Think about it..."


    "Who would have the means to do such a thing, as well as the guts to actually go through with trying to kill both the ming Winged Enchantress, as well as the Yorkshire city''s genius, while they were on the property of one of the four great families of Yorkshire city," Davies continued speaking, oblivious to her thoughts.


    "..."


    "... Now that you mention it, there aren''t many people who could manage to aplish that..."


    "... Most people wouldn''t even dare to have such a thought as soon as those terms are mentioned," Melinda muttered, her brain cogs turning at high speed as she thought something up.


    "It''s either one of the four great families because while I don''t have a bad rtionship with them, I can''t rule them out,"


    "Or it could be someone totally crazy and skilled enough to carry out such a task,"


    "Or... It could be someone else with as much influence and power as the four great families in Yorkshire City... "


    Suddenly her eyes widened with a sudden thought,


    "It could be them?"


    Davies had let her mind run wild trying to create whatever conjunction it coulde up with, without interrupting her, but his eyes gleamed when she seemed to have decided on something.


    "Who is them?" he made to ask as she has not clearly stated who she had in mind.


    "It really could be them..."


    "After all, they are powerful enough and crazy enough to attempt something like this," Melinda continued muttering to herself,pletely ignoring Davies''s question and even almost forgetting about his presence as her mind continuously tried to justify her thoughts, but Davies didn''t appreciate being ignored even if he was the one that sent her mind tumbling into such thoughts.


    He raised his hand towards her forehead yet shepletely ignored his actions as she was still in her thoughts, but then he flicked her forehead hard, sending all her thoughts away with the sudden sharp pain on her head.


    "Ouch," she squealed in pain.


    "Who is them?" he asked again, not paying attention to her pained and aggrieved look as she held onto her forehead with teary eyes.


    He even thought she looked cute this way, but he wasn''t letting those thoughts be known anywhere but inside of his head.


    "Oww," Melinda mumbled as she rubbed her forehead. The sudden flick really did hurt and she looked at Davies with teary eyes, still not answering his question.


    "Should I flick you again?" Davies asked and raised his hand again after still not getting a response from her.


    "N-No, it''s the Megas Uprising," Melinda quickly worded out, even stuttering a bit due to her rush.


    "The mega-what now?" Davies asked as he didn''t quite catch the name due to her rushed tone.


    "The Megas Uprising," Melinda repeated, slower this time, no longer in a rush, it could be seen that she was trying to regain herposure and had taken her hands off her head despite the stinging pain still present. She didn''t like that the atmosphere was like that of her being bullied by Davies and being unable to even speak correctly.


    "Hmm, ok..." Davies mumbled.


    "So, uh... Who are the Megas Uprising?" he asked as he didn''t know who the suckers that called themselves whatever uprising was.


    "..." Melinda took a long and hard look that did not mask her surprise at how Davies didn''t know what she was talking about.


    "You... Don''t know what the Megas Uprising is?" she couldn''t believe there was someone who lived in Yorkshire but did not know what the Megas Uprising was.


    "Hey, if I wanted to see a bunch of clowns, I would go to a circus,"


    "... Though, now that you mention it... The name does sound kind of familiar,"


    "I may have heard of it somewhere, but I don''t make it a point to remember unimportant things, so I probably forgot," he answered with the most straightforward face he could make, making Melinda understand that he was serious about every word he had said.


    At this point the urge Melinda was feeling to facepalm was no lesser than the urge of a man to creampie a coochie while he went at it raw, so she simply stared hard at him with a disbelieving look drawn all over her face.


    "Hey hurry up and tell me about them... Or should I flick you again, that seems to work," Davies said as he looked at his hand that was in a flicking position.


    "Don''t flick me!" Melinda''s hands immediately went into a defensive position as they guarded her forehead against any finger attacks


    "The Megas uprising is a terrorist organization that is made up of Megas who believe that they are the new gods of the human race and that all normal humans should be beneath them,"


    "As their name suggests, they onlyprise of Megas, each more powerful than the other and they''ve made constant attempts at trying to overthrow the city and wipe away the governing power while installing themselves as the new rulers,"<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    "In their attempts, they have caused the loss of countless lives and unimaginably hit economic losses. Every member of the Uprising is a criminal with a human kill count of at least a few thousand..."


    "Matter of fact, one of the requirements of joining the organization is to kill a thousand humans," Melinda exined what she knew about the Megas Uprising whichprised of some general knowledge that almost everyone knew, as well as some information that only people at her level were privy to.


    "So... A bunch of nutcases, huh?"


    "Got it," he nodded without any emotional change after hearing what she had to say about the Megas Uprising.


    As for whether he felt some emotional turmoil about hearing the crimes of the members of the Megas Uprising, that was a solid no.


    He frankly didn''t care about their goals and even thought it was a bit amusing.


    He knew what the disparity in strength could do to the human mind, and he also understood the reasoning behind their goals, after all, why should the powerful be the ones to have to face all the problems and troubles while the weak sat back and enjoyed life while the powerful burst their asses every day to protect them, some of them even dying in the process.


    The worst part was that humans were ultimately an ungrateful set of bastards who instead of feeling grateful would feel entitled to living an even better life.


    Davies knew all of that, but quite frankly he didn''t care.


    Humans and Megas we''re inherently different. One was powerful while the other was little less than an ant.


    The weak had no right to stand up to the strong simply because of the truth and defining factor of their situation...They were WEAK.


    While it was true that the strong should try to cater to the weak, it was also true that no one had an obligation to do anything for any fucking body.


    It was all man to his problems.


    You deal with yours, while I deal with mine... That was the truth of the world and nothing was going to change that no matter how social human beings were.


    But these were all things that didn''t matter to Davies, after all, he had bigger fish to fry.


    Though he was a bit appalled at why the strong Megas wasted so much time killing humans instead of focusing on their so-called true goal of recing humans at the head of humanity.


    It was obvious that they had realized that they weren''t anywhere near strong enough to aplish their goals, they were way too understaffed for that, and so they had probably settled for the constant bullying and show of power to show their presence and not let the other powers dare to undermine them.


    Frankly put, it was a case of bullying the weak while fearing the strong, and these clowns called the Megas Uprising were pretty good at it.


    It had been known since ancient times that Uprisings usually urred because of a catalytic reaction, but unfortunately for the Megas Uprising, they hadn''t encountered that catalytic reaction that could breathe life into their goals, and after threatening Davies''s life, he wasn''t inclined on letting them live until the encountered such a reaction.


    This brought about his next question,


    "Why would they try to kill you... And me?" he asked Melinda because he really couldn''t see the point in them attacking him, after all, he wasn''t an enemy of theirs and not gone after them or opposed them in any way.


    Either it was a show of power, or...


    [You don''t happen to have cuckolded one of them, have you?] Miya suddenly asked the same question he was about to ask himself in his head.


    ''How would I know?''


    ''... But since I wasn''t active in Yorkshire all these years then it shouldn''t be that'' he thought to himself.


    [You speak like you haven''t already slept with almost five women already, and you''re barely even avable for such things] Miya scoffed at him.


    ''That is true...'' he realized that his hand couldn''t bepletely washed off this case as there were too many variables included.


    "Uh... I may have beaten an executive of the Uprising half to death and then thrown him in jail," Melinda who was oblivious to Davies''s thoughts muttered in a low voice, but Davies heard her words clearly enough.


    "So it was you," Davies mumbled in realization and stood up from the counter and began to move toward the open window.


    Melinda had already realized that she was the most likely cause of what had happened and her guilt towards him had skyrocketed. She quickly stood up and followed after him.


    "I''m sorry about dragging you into this," she apologized even though it was not confirmed that she was the cause of what had happened.


    "Don''t worry about it," Davies also understood that he couldn''tpletely me her as there was no evidence thatpletely pointed in her direction.


    "Also, about what happenedst night..." Davies suddenly changed the topic to the one that Melinda dreaded to hear.


    She could already feel her heart leap into her throat.

 Chapter 168 168: KIDNAPPING I

    ?


    "I''m sorry about dragging you into this," Melinda apologized even though it was only spection that she was the cause of what had happened.


    "Don''t worry about it," Davies also understood that he couldn''tpletely me her as there was no evidence thatpletely pointed in her direction.


    "Also, about what happenedst night..." Davies suddenly changed the topic to the one that Melinda dreaded to hear.


    Her heart lurched and was tightening every second that Davies hadn''t yet spoken, yet she didn''t know what to say either.


    She was filled with fear and anticipation at the same time as all the embarrassing memories of the ''tryst'' they had filled up her mind again.


    Davies looked at the fumbling ming Winged Enchantress who looked like a child anticipating a punishment or a pat on the head, and a smirk crawled up his face as he knew that he was currently the only one who could make her like this.


    It was at a time like this that he should rify their rtionship, he knew.


    She wouldn''t reject him even if he tried to get her to be his woman and simply rip her out of Lee Jung''s arms... Forever, but...


    ''Where''s the fun in that?'' he thought evilly.


    Also, he was still suspicious about how the whole situation quickly elevated to this point, and how his system was seemingly behind this particr "situationship", so he was not in a rush to get into something that may be worth more trouble than the coochie involved, so instead of being specific with his words and telling her where they stood, he used the other romantguage that could establish yet confuse situations like this.


    Yup, he kissed her much to her surprise but after a few seconds she began to respond, but immediately she began to respond, he pulled away from the kiss and pit of her embrace much to even greater surprise from her end.


    Now she was even more confused.


    What did he mean by kissing her?


    If he waspletely okay with them bing a thing then he shouldn''t have pulled away like that, right?


    What was going on?


    What were they?


    Where did she stand?


    All these questions filled her mind, but she was not destined to receive any answers to those questions today as Davies was already walking away, leaving her feeling like she had been left in the lurch.


    Melinda didn''t want this kind of unsure situation where she didn''t know where they stood in their rtionship and she was going to speak when Davies suddenly brought out an eerily familiar milky white mana stone from literally nowhere, all she was was his arm seemingly entering a space and disappearing and then reappearing with the rare grade power stone.


    "I hope you don''t mind me borrowing this," he said as he let himself fall out the window.


    Melinda''s mouth could not react in time but her body dashed towards the window and looked out only to see Davies falling to the ground, gradually disappearing from view.


    She couldn''t even find any words to say in this situation and only continued looking at his falling figure as he fell until she could no longer see him, but she wasn''t worried about his safety as if he had chosen to fall out of the window like that, then he had his way of dealing with heights.


    The wind whipped his air and clothes making them continuously p against his body as he fell, but Davies paid it no mind and examined the milky white moonstone one more time before stashing it back into his inventory.


    It was a rare-grade power stone that was eerily simr to the one he took from Lee Jung at the Diamonds In The Rough, but it was even bigger than the one he previously had.


    He had used one of his secret methods to enter Melinda''s condo and hade across the power stone while looking around when Melinda was still asleep.


    As for the secret method he had used... Well, it wouldn''t be a secret if he said what it was, would it?


    He had also found a receipt that showed it was bought at the Diamonds In The Rough, so he knew where she had gotten it.


    Lee Jung would probably have gotten it as a recement for the one that Davies took from his grasp earlier.


    Davies could be very sure now that Lee Jung needed this milky white rare-grade power stone for something, but as for what it was, he didn''t know...


    Maybe it''lle in handy in the future, but for now, he would be satisfied with just not letting Lee Jung have it...


    ***A few minutester...***


    Davies was sitting behind the wheel and pulled out his phone to call Danie and tell her to begin investigating the group of clowns that went by the name of the Megas Uprising when his phone suddenly began to ring before he could even make the call.


    *sses Girl* the phone rang and vibrated while showing the caller ID.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    "Tisha?"


    "Why would she be calling me?" he wondered, but still answered the call and brought the phone to his ear,


    "Hey," he spoke first, but he could hear slightly hurried breaths on her side of the phone and he immediately felt that something must be off.


    "D-Davies..." Tisha''s voice broke as she called his name, she sounded distressed, making rms begin ringing in his head.


    "What happened?" he quickly asked, feeling that the situation was quite serious.


    "I-Its R-Romero..." she stammered, sounding like she was going to break into tears.


    "What happened to your brother?" upon hearing her words, Davies immediately got a bad feeling that worsened every second, especially as he remembered that the boy had a very high fate value. It was so high to the point that even Miya said it was on the level of a second Main character.


    Things urring around the kid couldn''t be good news for him... Especially when so many strange things were happening.


    "H-he disappeared!" she finally said and burst into tears. Davies could hear her crying from the other side of the call and the sounds of someone crying into his ear would be normally very annoying to him, this time he paid it no mind as he was also shocked by what was happening.


    "What do you mean he disappeared?" he asked, his tone a bit urgent, but anyone watching the situation and hearing his voice would think that he was worried, and they were right.


    "I don''t know, I don''t know, I brought him to the hospital because of yesterday, and when they were checking on him, all the electric power went out and when the doctor checking in on him went to check out what was happening, there was an explosion and..." Tisha rattled on, her words shooting out of her mouth at the speed of a machine gun and not giving much cohesion to the one who was listening, so Davies had to cut in.


    "Ok, slow down,"


    "Take a deep breath..."


    "Exin clearly, what happened yesterday. What made you go to the hospital? What caused the explosion?"Davies gave her an order of questions she could follow to rify the situation for him.


    "... Okay," Tisha answered as she knew that losing her mind would not help her find her brother any quicker.


    Davies heard her take a deep breath and waited patiently as he needed her to be in a sane state of mind so he could understand what she was saying and get a grasp a hold of the situation.


    "Start from what happened yesterday,"Davies said, giving her a good starting point to start exining.


    "Okay..."


    "Yesterday, Romero suddenly looked to be in a trance and fainted, when I ran to check on him, I also noticed that the flow of mana around him seemed to be strange and even stranger was that his body seemed to be umting mana," Tisha began her exnation, but Davies already felt like his head was going to explode.


    He was familiar with those symptoms, they only happened when one''s blessing was being activated, and for that to happen, they must first have a blessing, but the little boy wasn''t even ten years old yet so there was no way for him to have had his blessing ceremony yet.


    This kind of situation wasn''t impossible as there were other characters who suddenly had a blessing activated before the blessing ceremony, or even after the ceremony had already urred and they were deemed normal... But that was not to say that it wasmon either.


    Such urrences were so rare, it had not happened ten times after the first generation of Megas, but here was a little boy already achieving such a feat.


    He was already proving that the amount of fate value he had been showered with was not a waste.


    Tisha didn''t know what was running through Davies''s mind and so she continued speaking,


    "I brought him to Imperium Hospital to get him checked on by a healer,"


    "b-but after he was taken in to be checked on, the b-ckout happened and everywhere went dark," her voice started stuttering again as she spoke and neared what happened.


    "Suddenly, there was an explosion. I ran towards the explosion as fast as I could, but after getting there..."


    "... After getting there... I-I d-didn''t find Romero," She managed to say before beginning to cry again.


    "..."


    Davies had no words, as the situation was veryplicated. It was obvious that this was a kidnapping, and not only that but the kidnapping was nned very well.


    He had also not forgotten that she, like him had a dark fate value so this event could very well kickstart her viin arc, so for now he would avoid making any moves until he saw the scene and madeplete sense of the situation.

 Chapter 169 CHAPTER 169: KIDNAPPING II

    ?


    **A day before the kidnapping incident...**


    Romero wasying on the sofa in the living room when he felt a sudden cool feeling like something wrapping around that made his body feel extremely rxed.


    It was a feeling that was hard to describe, as it felt like something was rushing into his body and filling him up gradually, making him fall into a daze and bepletely unaware of his surroundings.


    This carried on for a while and he realized that at a point, it seemed that what was filling him up began to slow down and he slowly came out of a daze, but just before the mystical feeling he had been experiencing disappeared, he suddenly felt a pricking feeling in his eyes.


    He tried to endure the pricking feeling and managed to call out for his sister before everything went ck.


    He had fainted... Or, at least, that was how it looked on the outside, but for Romero, he was experiencing something different from what an unconscious person should be experiencing.


    A few moments before he fainted, a blue screen popped up in front of him which disyed,


    [Blessing Activated]


    [Eyes of the Seer(Ex-rank)]


    Those had been the letters he had seen before he fainted.


    Romero was a young child that had not even clocked ten, but he was very smart for his age, he read a lot and his life''s circumstances had made him mature faster than other children his age.


    He had found out that his parents were killed, yet unlike his sister who wouldn''t kill anything, Romeri hated the monsters that killed his parents and took them from him, but he made sure not to mention any of this to his sister as he knew that she would be conflicted and worried about him.


    He was also an avid reader so he knew what a seer was.


    ''Wasn''t that someone who could see the future?'' he wondered immediately after he saw the words, but before he could think any further he had fainted.


    Surprisingly, even though he should have fainted on the outside, he was stillpletely conscious and self-aware, only he couldn''t see the outside world and could only see things in his subconscious.


    Everywhere was ck, yet he could see clearly, and just before he could begin wondering if his subconscious was supposed to look like a little dark room, he felt like something seized his body from all angles and he began to vibrate.


    The vibration began at a low frequency and continued rising until he was shaking so much that if someone was looking at him from the outside, they wouldn''t be able to see his features because of how much he was shaking.


    Suddenly he disappeared in a sh of light to who knows where.


    When he reappeared he felt a sick feeling well up in his stomach and he had the urge to throw up due to the chaotic treatment he had just experienced, but that was when he found out that he couldn''t move a muscle.


    It was at this point he realized that he wasn''t in a little dark room any longer, but in a room that reminded him of the ward where his sister had beenying just a week or so ago.


    He tried to look around but found out he still couldn''t move his body, but strangely, he could sense what was behind him... It was a strange feeling as he couldn''t call it sight, but he still knew what was happening within a range of three meters around him.


    As he was still confused and trying to figure out what was happening, he realized that, unlike thest time when he had been at the hospital and his sister was the one in bed, this time he was the one being examined by a beautiful woman who looked to be around the age of his sister''s friend, Big Sis Teresa, as he used to call her.


    The woman in a doctor''s overcoat had her hand which was glowing green and was stretching it all across his body like she was searching for something.


    ''This is strange?'' he thought, as he was very sure that something like this had not happened before.


    ''Am I dreaming?'' he wondered, but before he could have any more thoughts, all the lights in the room suddenly went off, startling both him and the woman checking on him.


    "What''s happening?" the words that were the same as his thoughts came out of his mouth, but he knew that he hadn''t tried to say it out, yet the words came out of his mouth.


    It finally urred to him that he wasn''t in control of his body, which was a pretty scary thought, but for some reason, he didn''t lose his calm.


    His head was constantly turning left and right and looking around even though he wasn''t trying to do all of that... It was obvious that he was nothing more than a spectator in his own body and that was pretty disturbing, but since he couldn''t do anything about it, he just sat tight, thinking everything to be nothing more than a weird dream, and he would be lying if he said he didn''t want to know where the story was going to especially as it involved him.


    The woman in the doctor''s overcoat stood up and went to the door to check what was going on while telling him to sit tight in the room and wait for her, to which his body replied affirmatively to.


    After receiving his response, the woman left the room and he was left sitting in the room on the couch.


    Since he currently didn''t have anything to do, his body began to look around the room and his eyes fell on a digital clock that showed the time and date.<novelsnext>I think you should take a look at </novelsnext>


    ''9:33 am''


    ''22nd of July, year ****'' he recited in his head and then suddenly paused.


    ''22nd July?'' he wondered.


    ''... But today is the 21st?'' his childish mind wondered, expecting the time inside his dream to be the same as the time on the outside.


    Of course, that was not how things worked, but this made him realize something.


    His mind suddenly went back to the blue screen he had seen before he passed out that said he had activated the blessing called "Eyes of the Seer".


    ''Could it be that I can se-...!!!'' no matter how young and childish his mind was, it was quickly pitting two and two together when his thoughts were interrupted by a loud, explosive, crashing sound and the wall of the room he was in was blown apart, exposing him to the outside sun.


    The room was filled with dust and all sorts of debris flew all over the ce, but luckily none of them came his way as he would not have been able to avoid being injured due to how stunned he was.


    Before he could get a hold of himself, which was pretty difficult for someone his age, a big burly man in gray clothing stepped into the room and appeared through the dust, his eyes immediatelynding on Romero, and a wicked grin appeared on his face.


    "You''reing with me kid," he said with his wicked grin still stered across his face.


    His words rmed Romero, both the one controlling his body and the one that was spectating the whole event.


    "Who are you?" little Romero''s voice came out, but it sounded full of fear as the intruder was pretty scary.


    "You''ll know... Soon," he replied, his smile deepening and he seemingly disappeared at high speed and reappeared behind Romero and smack the back of his neck with smoothness and precision that showed his professionalism in the act of disarming and kidnapping people.


    Romero felt everything gradually turning ck for the second time in less than an hour on the same day.


    Everything in view slowly faded to ck and Romero was left in the darkness once again, but this time, he was rmed, surprised, and scared of what he had just seen.


    If this truly was the future, then did that mean that he would be kidnapped tomorrow if he did nothing to change the future that he had just seen?


    ''I should tell sister!'' he thought but immediately he had that thought, the surroundings brightened up once again and showed the scene of the grey-robed man that was going to kidnap him, fighting with his sister.


    A few minutester, the scene ended, but instead of feeling relieved, there were tears in his eyes and an even greater fear in his heart.


    The gray-robed man had won, and he had crushed his sister''s heart in the process.


    That was the most scary and heartbreaking scene Romero had ever seen in his life, especially as it feltpletely real.


    Due to seeing such terror, his mind was totally out of it and he didn''t notice the important parts of what had just happened.


    He was able to see a future and if he wanted to change it, all he had to do was make a thought and this ck space would simte and show him the results of the actions he had in mind.


    With this, he could theoretically avoid the worst situation of every future he would ever see, and he should have been able toe up with a good n to avoid this one as long as he kept thinking up ideas, but it was too much for him.


    After seeing something as trauma-inducing as his sister''s heart being crushed, he couldn''t think straight enough to realize the importance of this ck space, more so, no matter how smart he was as a kid, he was still a kid without enoughplex thinking maturity so he simply stayed in a daze until his surroundings faded to white and he woke up back in his own body in the embrace of his sister who was happy he had woken up.


    "I''m taking you to the hospital tomorrow," Tisha told Romero, her voice sounding worried, but her words didn''tfort him.


    Rather his heart sank deeper into his chest as he remembered what he had seen.


    It was obvious that the gray-robed man was after him, so even if he told his sister that they shouldn''t go to the hospital, the man would stille looking for him and would kill his sister.


    He was distraught and his childish mind was not developed enough to know that there were many ways to go about this situation, so the idea he settled for was the most innocent and childlike one that would not harm his sister or anybody for that matter.


    He would simply let it happen and not change anything.


    At least this way, his sister would be safe and no one would be harmed in the process. He was sure that his sister would be able to save him if she wasn''t killed, and even if she wasn''t person powerful enough, she could get some help to find him, so just like fate would have it, he simply smed in response to his sister''s worry and did not say anything else.

 Chapter 170 CHAPTER 170: INVESTIGATOR LAKE

    ?


    A sleek red sports car with beautiful gold and ck engravings pulled into the parking lot of Imperium Hospital and stopped after getting into a parking space that wouldn''t obstruct other cars from making their way out of the parking lot.


    Behind the wheel of the red Lykan Supersport was none other than Davies. He had made his way here as fast as he could after getting the call from Tisha about what had happened.


    Not that he cared they much about Romero, Tisha''s little brother, but the stakes around him disappearing were too high and his disappearance itself was downright strange.


    It was obvious from what he had heard about the case that the boy had been kidnapped and it was not just any random kidnapping, but rather it had been nned well.


    What was even more interesting was that the kidnapping happened when the whole city experienced a sudden ckout.


    Was this part also nned, or was it just a coincidence?


    He couldn''t tell which was correct, and while one of those possibilities could be the right one and one was way scarier than the other, for now, it didn''t change the fact that the kidnapping had happened at a time that made it almost impossible to track since all the security systems, including every security camera in the city, wasn''t working at the time of the kidnapping.


    Even now, the electricity hadn''te back on, so he still couldn''t even begin looking for traces that could help him find the kid.


    A heavy sigh left his lips as he took his keys and stuffed them into his pockets before pushing open the door and getting out.


    He couldn''t afford to be careless and unconcerned about this issue as firstly, he would not rather have Tisha turn into a raving mad, blood-thirsted viin that was only after revenge and ughter instead of being under his control... This situation could ruin all his ns if he wasn''t careful.


    Also, since the kid had a very high fate value, there was always the chance that he could be against him in the future so Davies preferred to have him in his sights and whoever kidnapped him was messing that part up.


    Davies couldn''t have that happening so he would do his best to find him.


    He picked up the pace and made his way into the hospital following the directions of Tisha and he soon found her, but she wasn''t alone, the big busty beauty called Teresa who was also on the Beta Squad of the Imperium Troops was also there with Tisha.


    Davies already knew that Teresa was like a big sister to Tisha so he wasn''t all that surprised or concerned that she was here as well.


    His arrival elicited different reactions from the two women. Teresa simply smiled a little while Tisha rushed and hugged him and he could tell from her trembling body that not finding her brother really did a number on her.


    He was not very good atforting people but he did not push her away and patted her hair a few times to try and calm her down.


    After a few minutes, Tisha seemed to have caught herself a little bit and pulled away from Davies.


    "It was here that it happened, right?" Davies asked pointing to the open door that led to a room that no longer had a wall and led directly outside the building.


    "Yes, it is... It seems he was taken by a Mega," Teresa took on answering Davies''s question since Tisha wasn''t in the state of mind to do any investigative or technical thinking.


    "I see," Davies answered as he stepped into the room and looked around carefully, looking for any distinct traces that could help him to find information about the culprit behind the kidnapping.


    The walk was busted open, but there weren''t any traces of charred bricks, or water or any other elemental traces for that matter.


    Davies frowned, it seemed like the person who had done this was either a weaponizer or transformer who had attacked directly with brute force... Or maybe an Elementalist that used wind since it was not an element that would leave traces, but from seeing the distribution of things in the room and how non-scattered they were, he shelved the idea of the culprit being a wind elemental.


    The room would have been more scattered if it had been a wind elementalist because for the wind attack to be strong enough to st the wall apart then it would have enough power to send everything in the room flying, but seeing how they hadn''t really moved much from their positions, it was safe to shelf that idea.


    "So a weaponizer or a transmorpher, huh?" he muttered.


    ''But even if it was a weaponizer, it had to be someone who used dull weapons,'' he thought as he walked towards the opening in the wall and looked down at the ground.


    The room he was looking out of was three stories tall, he noted that as well.


    "For him to be able to make the jump, get into the room, and kidnap the kid without making a sound, he had to be pretty powerful, at least 3rd level..." he muttered but as he looked around the room, his estimation went up.


    The job seemed to have been too easy for the assant no matter who he was, so Davies also thought that the assant could be someone in the 4th level, but at the same time he doubted whether any 4th level Mega would be so free to kidnap a child that was not even ten years of age.


    That was the whole thing that threw him off about this matter.


    Why exactly was Romero even the target of a kidnapping in the first ce?


    He already knew that the kid wasn''t that simple as he had been able to activate his blessing even before he became ten years of age which was something even Davies hadn''t been able to do, so Davies more than anyone knew that he was worth kidnapping, but...


    Nobody should have known anything about that as it just happened yesterday ording to what Yisha told him, so why was he targeted the very next day?


    Could the kidnapper have some way of finding out something like that?


    Also, why was the timing of the kidnapping so coincidental?


    Davies wasn''t willing to believe that the kidnapping had happened so coincidentally. He didn''t believe in coincidences so something like this wasn''t a coincidence which meant that there were only two ways they had managed to match the time of the kidnapping to the time when a ckout was to ur.


    The first way was for the assant to have somehow fallen upon the information that Romero had activated his blessing and he had decided to kidnap him for some reason that Davies couldn''t even specte about, or...


    The assant knew someone or was someone who could see this kind of thing ahead of time...


    [Are you insting that the assant knew someone or was someone who can see the future?] Miya''s voice interrupted his chain of thoughts.


    ''... Yes, that''s exactly what I''m insinuating,'' Davies replied and felt a cold shiver run down his back.


    He knew before he thought about it that it was a scary idea to have, but he also knew that it was a usible idea.


    [Do you even think that is possible?] Miya asked but was apprehensive of the idea.


    ''Well, it''s not impossible, is it?" he directed the question back at her but didn''t receive a response as they both knew that it was not impossible for someone to have this kind of ability in this world.


    There was no ability that one could not have in the form of a blessing.


    Davies also had a blessing with attributes that would be considered impossible to have, and this was all the more reason why he knew that someone having the ability to foresee the future wasn''t impossible.


    Well, this was quite an rming situation.


    If the assant really did have a way of knowing the future, then such a person would be a troublesome opponent and it would be best to kill someone like that off.


    Such people were too dangerous to even keep aspanions. If Davies ever even found someone willing to work for him and the person has such an ability, Davies wasn''t sure he would not kill such a person immediately, after all, though someone who could peek into the future would be very useful, he would be even more annoying as he could find out things he wasn''t supposed to know as long as he had half a brain.


    Due to him having too much to hide, such a person would probably cease to have a head as long as they met.


    After thinking all this, he turned to the two women who were behind him and asked,


    "Did you guys see or hear anything strange since then," he asked, wanting to know if he had missed anything.

 Chapter 171 CHAPTER 171: INVESTIGATOR LAKE II

    ?


    "Did you guys see or hear anything strange since then," he asked, wanting to know if he had missed anything, but they both shook their heads making it obvious that they hadn''t seen anything or anyone.


    The kidnapping happened within a few seconds and before anyone could see anything, or hear anything apart from the sound of a huge crash and stumbling stones, the kidnapper was gone, along with his mission''s objective, Romero.


    "That makes things a whole lot harder," Davies muttered, having no intention to hide how bad the situation was.


    Just as he expected after speaking, Teresa immediately asked,


    "What do you mean?"


    "Well, as you can see, the city is currently experiencing a ckout which means there aren''t any working security cameras right now, so it''s impossible to try to find any traces that way, so if we don''t find any physical evidence that we can use to pick up a trail, then..." he answered, but stopped before saying what would happen if they didn''t find any physical traces, but both girls immediately finished his worlds in their minds.


    ''Finding Romero would be very difficult, if not impossible,''


    ''Finding Romero would be very difficult, if not impossible,'' both girls thought at the same time and their eyes widened, but before any morbid or depressing thoughts reared their head, Davies''s voice quickly brought their minds back to Leivandage, live and direct,


    "Don''t worry too much, we''ll find him... We''ll find something that can help us find him,"


    "I''ll do my best to help in any way I can," he said, turning away from them once again and turning to look outside the building through the now broken-down wall.


    He meant his words, though his intentions for doing so were not the same as whatever anybody else was thinking.


    He wasn''t inclined to let someone who had that much fate value disappear from his sights, so he would make sure to find, and drag the little kid back to his sister''s side where he could keep an eye on both of them and to do that, he couldn''t work alone.


    He would have called the police, or even the Mega Protection Association(MPA), but he didn''t trust their capabilities...


    While it was not a lie that he did not trust their capabilities, the real reason why he didn''t want to involve those suckers was because they were not people he could trust not to mess up the investigation, both intentionally or non-intentionally... That is if they really were as ipetent as he thought them to be.


    After knowing that the head of the Santos Family was the head of the MPA, he was not willing to believe that the man wouldn''t try to screw him over, especially since he had just beaten his daughter up about a week or so ago.


    Another reason why he wasn''t nning to include external parties in this issue was because he didn''t want them to know of his interest in trying to find the child as who knew what they would try... And also, the person... That is if it was only one person that kidnapped Romero. The person was at least a 3rd stage Mega.


    Someone like that that wasn''t without a backing and only people like the really powerful people in this city would have that kind of manpower at their fingertips.


    In fact, Davies suspected that it was someone on the level of the four great families that kidnapped Romero, and even if it wasn''t them personally or an organization at their level, then they couldn''t be far off from it.


    If it became known that he was overly interested in finding a child that had almost nothing to do with him, then a lot of unforeseen circumstances could pop up.


    For one, the culprit could go to very great lengths to hide Romero even more... Or something even more troublesome could happen.


    For these reasons, he would prefer to have people he could trust with the job to do the job since he didn''t have the time as he would have to be preparing to deal with Lee Jung, and even if he didn''t have to do that, he still would not be interested in trying to look for Romero unless he waspletely bored and jobless.


    Luckily, he knew a guy... Or a girl in this case.


    Someone good enough at these kinds of dirty work.


    She was a money-grubber as well, and his requesting for her help would probably cost him quite a lot... But he had money to waste away anyway so, there was no problem on that end.


    It was better to get her on the job quickly before the trail ran cold, but he couldn''t call her here as she was one of his secret contacts-... ''Huh?'' he was thinking to himself when he noticed something on the ground a little distance from the building.


    ''Are those cracks?'' he wondered, not sure what his eyes were seeing as he was pretty far away from what he saw, but now he was really interested in finding out, so he took a step outside the wall and towards the open air, surprising the two girls behind him.


    Unsurprisingly to him and surprisingly to anyone watching, he didn''t gall, but rather a tform of ice that was shaped like an ice crystal formed under his foot that had just stepped out.


    He took the next step and another tform of an ice crystal formed while the former ice crystal that he had just taken his leg off of, began to dissipate into the air like snow being blown away by the wing.


    Step by step, he walked on the rapidly forming and dissipating ice crystals beneath his feet, not paying any attention to anything other than what he had seen from the building.


    Unknowingly Tisha and Teresa had begun to follow him, both of them floating in the air behind Davies due to the influence of Tisha''s telekic ability.


    Davies had long noticed that they were following him but he paid it no mind as he didn''t care if they did and he wasn''t not trying to hide anything anyway.


    He kept moving, step by step towards the ground where he had seen the cracks and had gradually almost reached the ground.


    When he finally arrived at the location, he realized that he was right.


    There were cracks in the floor, but that was not all. Not only were there cracks, but there was also a depression in a circr area surrounding the cracks with all the cracks seemingly originating from the center of that circr area.


    "Well isn''t this interesting," he mumbled a smile rising up his face.


    It looked like something had put enough pressure and sudden force on that part of the ground that it had actually depressed and had worked cracks due to the ground suddenly bing uneven.


    Davies looked at the depressed area with cracks and then back at the Imperium hospital, or more specifically to the room that had its wall sted out by whoever kidnapped Romero.


    It was quite the linear distance, though the distance was a little more than he has expected, this proved to greatly change his thoughts of the suspect.


    "It''s obvious that the culprit has a very high physical ability... Quite a lot higher than I thought," he mumbled his new calctions.


    ''So the culprit is more likely to be a fourth-stage transmorpher or weaponizer,'' he didn''t say this part out due to wariness at what saying this might cause the two girls to think.


    Tisha and Teresa seemed to be a little relieved that they had already found a trace of the kidnapper(s).


    They seemed more motivated and he could immediately discern their eyes looking for more clues, though they didn''t stray away from the location where Davies stood.


    He understood their thoughts and did not stop them from trying to find any more clues as it could help Tisha release some of the tension on her, even though he knew that what they were doing was mostly wasted effort and it would be pretty difficult to find another clue if they were looking around aimlessly like that.


    If one was looking for a clue to anything then one couldn''t just look around aimlessly hoping to find something...Doing so usually ended as more of a miss than a hit.


    Looking for clues was supposed to be done after making spections and creating a scenario that was most usible in one''s head which was what Davies had done.


    He had already managed to establish the fact that the culprit that had broken down the wall was a very physical one, so he had been looking for traces in that direction, and vo! There was a clue.


    The obvious thing to look for now was to find how the culprit had gotten here in the first ce.


    Did he walk here?


    Did he drive a car?


    Did he fly?


    Did he roll on the ground?


    These were the directions they should be looking, but Davies wouldn''t be telling them that, neither would he be doing it himself.


    He already found a clue for the contractor he was nning to hire to do the investigating, so why in hell would he continue searching.


    Romero wasn''t important enough for him to put down everything else he was doing and wanted to do to begin a game of hide-and-seek with the kidnappers.


    For now, he was going to call Danie and get her to contact the contractor he was nning to employ for the job but before he could even begin dialing, his phone rang with Danie''s disguise name as the caller Id.


    "I was just about to call you," Davies began, but before he could say any more words, Danie''s rushed words hit him from the other side of the phone.


    *"Thepany is under attack!"* Danie eximed, almost losing control of her disguised voice.

 Chapter 172 CHAPTER 172: COMPANY ATTACK

    ?


    "I was just about to call you," Davies began saying immediately after he picked up the call, but before he could continue, Danie''s sudden rush of words hit him from the other end of the phone.


    "Thepany is under attack!!!" Danie eximed almost losing control of her disguised voice.


    "What?"


    "What do you mean thepany is under attack?"


    "I just updated the security syste-¡­"


    "Oh¡­ I see," he had first begun to shoot off surprised words at how he didn''t think such a thing was possible as he had just updated his security systems to levels that could even keep out a fourth-stage Mega for at least an hour, but then his eyes had widened as he came to a realization.


    While it was true that he had indeed upgraded the machinery that constituted his security system to unbelievable levels, it was also true that those things needed power to work¡­ a lot of it, which was why he had not bothered with trying to find an emergency backup power supply.


    It was simply because there was currently no existing backup power supply that could be used with such heavy machinery. If he wanted one, then he''d have to create it himself¡­


    Since he was tooz-¡­ ahem swamped with work to create it, he hadn''t done it yet¡­ which led to the current situation, but in his defense, he hadn''t been expecting the whole city''s power supply to be busted.


    ''Maybe I should set my own power generation system,'' he thought leisurely, unlike what would have been expected of someone who was told that his house was currently on fire and some idiots were trying to break in and steal his prized possessions.


    Just like his reaction, he was actually not that bothered and his reason for being so rxed was because he knew that nothing woulde of the actions of whichever idiot was currently attacking hispany''s building.


    He had remained cautious since thest time his building was attacked¡­ which wasn''t even that long ago, so there was nothing that they could steal or destroy that would even warrant a bit of unease from him.


    Every piece of information concerning the project "words make up the world" was safely stashed on his satellite in space so it was unreachable by such threats... And this was even if they had the slightest idea that he had a satellite in the first ce.


    As for breaking into the 140th floor... Well...


    Let''s just say that would be a huge waste of time as there was currently nothing on that floor.


    If the 139th floor was where Davies worked on software, calctions, and other things in that ssification, then the 140th floor was where his ideas and ssificationse to life.


    In other words, the 139th floor was supposed to be the idea pce where the ideas were generated and designed, while the 140th floor was the idea factory where the generated ideas were given life.


    Davies had not been idle the whole week he had been poisoned by Darlena Santos. He had finished the top-offs and even the physical framework of his second trump card.


    Since then, he had not had any need of those two floors for now and there was nothing important there... Like at all...So there was no reason to feel any unease about the current situation.


    But, putting aside the fact that he wasn''t feeling any unease... There was no way that Davies had any goodwill towards people who were attacking his things and trying to steal them, continuously pushing his buttons.


    This was the second time already, and it hasn''t even been a week. If he didn''t do anything about this soon, then people would start thinking that he was some soft persimmon that wouldn''t revolt no matter how far they pushed him...


    He couldn''t have that.


    Also, the constant attacks were beginning to get annoying, so this time he wanted to find a way to release some of that annoyance on whichever scapegoat made himself avable for an ass whopping.


    "So... What''s the situation?" he asked.


    "I... Don''t know," Danie replied, her voice hesitant.


    "..."


    "What do you mean you don''t know?" Davies asked as if he couldn''t believe his ears.


    ''What does she mean she doesn''t know?''


    ''What has she been doing since finding out that thepany is under attack?'' he wondered internally.


    "I can''t go to thepany right now..." Danie''s voice came across from the other side of the phone, sounding a bit too calm for someone whose boss just questioned hermitment.


    Davies''s eyes immediately widened in realization as soon as he heard her eerily calm voice, but he still asked the question anyway,


    "Why?"


    As the best boss in the world... Or so he thought to himself, he knew his employee as well as she knew him, so he knew quite a few of her habits.


    He knew that Danie had a habit of being eerily calm when she was about to enter battle with anyone... And the calmer she was, the stronger she perceived her opponent to be.


    From how calm she was, he could sense that she was about to fight someone... And said person wasn''t weak, but he still asked because he wasn''t sure whether she would be able to deal with whoever was blocking her keeping her upied right now.


    Despite how heartless Davies was, Danie still took priority inside his stone-cold heart aspared to a building with literally nothing important present in there, so he needed to know if the ''road block'' in her way was life-threatening, or not.


    "There is a bug crossing the street, it may take some time to kill it," Just as he had expected, she gave an answer that affirmed his thoughts.


    "Can you handle it," he asked.


    "It''s a bug... Of course, I can handle it,"


    "Other than it flying around annoyingly, it can''t do anything to me," Danie replied, her tone sounding a bit condescending, but Davies knew that it was her confidence speaking...


    Yet... "Don''t forget that even the tiniest of bugs can harm you if you''re not cautious enough, be careful," Davies said and hung up the phone, not waiting for a response.


    He was happy that she was strong enough to be that confident, yet more than anyone else, he knew that one could never be too dismissive and should always stay cautious because even the most harmless-looking people could be more dangerous than one could think.


    He had gotten to personally experience such a situation so he knew to always be cautious, and he had made sure to try and teach Danie to do the same, but so far, she hadn''t been listening to this part of his lessons.


    Since she had said that she could deal with the ''road blocking bug'', then he should go and deal with what was going on at thepa...


    ''Hold up just a minute...'' his eyes suddenly widened.


    ''Isn''t all this too coincidental?'' He suddenly realized.


    [What is?] Just like usual, whenever he asked a question in his mind, Miya had another question to follow up with.


    ''Don''t tell me you still don''t see it?'' he asked, his mind running in circles as he put things together and calcted their implications.


    [Put what together?] she still asked, not seeing what he was expecting her mind to magically put together.


    ''... *sigh*..."


    "Let me start from the top..."


    "While we were trying to find Davies''s tracks, the whole city experienced a ckout, causing us to lose sight of him,"


    [So...?]


    ''I''m getting there,'' Davies said, indicating for her not to hurry him as his head was still processing quite a lot of things.


    ''While I had gone to meet Melinda, someone kidnapped Romero, Tisha''s little brother during the ckout, making his movements, motives, and tracks almost impossible to find...'' Davies began to exin,


    ''As if that was not enough, while I was here with Tisha and Teresa,''


    ''Someone attacked thepany building and at the same time sent someone to block Danie from reaching thepany and interrupting their actions...


    But no one was sent to try to block me or anything like that...''


    ''...It''s almost like... like... they know all my movements,'' he suddenly realized.


    [...!]


    [Are you being watched?] Miya asked.


    ''I don''t think so... If I was being watched, I should know, unless the person is a godsent talent that is perfect at hiding his presence,'' he knew that with his painfully inherited instincts, sneaking up on him without special methods was no more than a pipe dream for whoever was attempting it.


    [If they weren''t watching you... Then how would they know your movements?] Miya asked in an unbelieving tone.


    ''Well, they wouldn''t need to watch me if they already knew everything that I was going to do today,'' his mind immediately went back to his earlier thoughts and so he couldn''t throw away his hypothesis about the situation away just because it sounded like a lot of BS.


    There were way too many strange things in this world for him to be unbelieving in the fact that someone could see the future and this led to his next thoughts...


    ''If someone who could really see the future was behind this chain of events... Then wouldn''t I be walking into a trap by going to the Imperium building?''

 Chapter 173 CHAPTER 173: SQUAD As WHEREABOUTS

    ?


    ''If someone who could really see the future was behind this chain of events... Then wouldn''t I be walking into a trap by going to the Imperium building?''


    "Hmmm... Maybe..." he muttered with a slight smile.


    He wouldn''t mind walking into a trap as long as he knew that it wasn''t lethal to him and promised some amusement.


    Also about how it was the same person who caused everything to happen, he doubted it.


    There were too many possibilities for him to try to conclude on a single one. As a matter of fact, he still didn''t know how the ckout even urred in the first ce.


    The only thing that he was able to conclude after all this was that Lee Jung was a luck son of a bitch...


    Not only had the time he was escaping coincide with the time that a ckout urred making his movements almost untrackable, but as if that was not enough, a couple of problems had already arisen that would keep Davies upied should he not be willing to give up on finding Lee Jung... Little did they know that he had already given up before all this had happened.


    As for what had been the cause of the ckout, he didn''t know yet as he hadn''t had the time to try to find out, but it could very well be that the people who attacked hispany, blocked Danie from arriving and kidnapped Romero, had a hand in it... In which case it would mean that there wasn''t anyone that could see and tell the future, but rather this had all been a well thought out n... But even that didn''t make much sense.


    If this really was the case, then why was Romero the one who was kidnapped?


    Why him specifically and not Tisha instead?


    It really didn''t make any sense, but even if it was a slight over thought and he had been kidnapped because of some reason other than the fact that he was awakened before he was ten years old and without even going to a tower, the moment they had discovered it, they wouldn''t let him go so easily.


    All in all, the situation was a mess and he couldn''te to a conclusion or determine anything about the situation so there was nothing he could do but to first deal with the situation and after everything had quietened down he could deal with finding the one responsible for all of these things.


    For now, he should go and see what was happening at the Imperium building...


    Since Tisha and Teresa we''re not very far away from him, they saw when he had picked up the phone and seen from the little facial expressions that bad managed to show up on his face, that whatever the caller had said was not something good.


    "What happened?" Teresa was the one to break the silence after seeing Davies not move or say a word since he took the phone away from his ear.


    "... Uhm, there has been another attempt to steal technology at the Imperium tower," Davies said after a slight pause.


    "What?!" Teresa couldn''t believe her ears. Even Tisha who wasn''t in the mood to care about anything than about her brother was surprised at the news.


    Since they indirectly worked for Imperium Technologies, they had heard of the attempt on Davies''s technology just a few days and she remembered being warned by the higher ups that should they meet with Davies in a the next few days, they should try not to get on his bad side or make any suspicious moves as it was guaranteed that he wouldn''t be in the best of moods and may be overly suspicious of people right now.


    Teresa wasn''t a technological genius and neither was Tisha, but even they knew that Davies''s constant breakthroughs in the magical engineering field were extremely sought after and the only reason these attempts hadn''t been present before was because he had hidden from everyone so the sharks that we''re inevitably after his treasured works didn''t have a ce to target, but now that he had surfaced, they obviously thought that this was their time to shine...


    But even then, wasn''t an two attempts in just over three days a bit too much.


    One would think that Davies had created an elixir of life the way people were attempting to steal his technology...Though that was a bit of an exaggeration.


    "They''re still there and Daniel is currently being blocked from going there to stop them,"


    "I may have to go there myself," Davies continued, making it seem like he was having a hard time making the decision to go instead of waiting here with Tisha and helping her to search for Romero.


    Just as he expected, aplicated look immediately appeared on their faces when he mentioned that hewould have to leave.


    They didn''t have any words for this situation. Obviously they couldn''t tell him not to go when his life''s work hung in the bnce, yet the selfishness in their hearts couldn''t out rightly tell him not to go and to stay back and help them woth finding Romero instead.


    As the one behind the emotional conflict they were in with themselves, Davies knew what they were feeling, and this was exactly what he wanted them to feel.


    He didn''t want to just run off as the repercussions it could have on Tisha''s mental state may be too troublesome for him to deal withter.


    He didn''t want her feeling like he had deserted her because she was not as important as his work, to him.


    He was willing to bet that doing that was enough to send her into an emotional spiral that would explode sometime sooner orter, and since he didn''t want to have to deal with that, he decided to take this approach.


    While he had been ying his cards he had stumbled upon a sudden thought which was,


    "What about the A-Squad of the Imperium Troops?"


    "Do you know what they''re doing right now?" Davies directed the question to Teresa as she was the only one that would answer the question right now.


    "They should be able to take care of the situation in my stead," he continued, making clear the reason for his question.


    "..." Teresa went silent instead of answering the question immediately even though she understood the urgency of the situation and that every second, counted.


    "... Unfortunately, they went into a gate this morning and they wouldn''t be back for a while," she finally said hesitantly as she was aware that they weren''t helpful words, but rather were words that would infuriate Davies, and she was right.


    "The fucking idiots!!!" Davies scolded in a low tone, even then his annoyance could be seen.


    "They''re never present during important times. They always magically are always in a gate whenever shit hits the fan," he sounded annoyed as he spoke.


    Now that he mentioned it, it was actually quite the suspicious coincidence that they were never around anytime something problematic happened or was about to happen.


    As a matter of fact, he hadn''t even met any of them officially,yet.


    Teresa had also had a sh of surprise and suspicion sh across her eyes when she had heard Davies''s words, but they disappeared soon after as her head was currently upied with one trouble and adding another was not in her interest.


    Davies said a few more annoyed words because despite his n to y on their emotions before leaving, he had found himself hoping that he could get them to help take care of the situation so he wouldn''t have to leave Tisha''s side for now.


    His interest in going to the Imperium tower to deal with the technology thieves wasn''t that high after realizing that he may be walking into a trap.


    If they had been avable, then he would have had a few powerful scapegoats to help him take on the burden of putting their lives on the line, but those fuckers were "in a gate"... Just like back when he had wanted to take them into a gate to blow some steam, but they weren''t around and he had to go with the B-Squas, and we all know how that turned out...


    Nothing short of a life threatening disaster.


    He had almost been wiped our by a huge ass mana bomb.


    In the end, the job still fell to him. He would take care of those bastards that were always in gates as soon as this was over... But for now, he needed to find someone that would deal with the "Romero''s whereabouts" investigation.


    Someone who was extremely good at finding people, though she was more of a finding and exterminating or destroying the target... But it didn''t really make that much of a difference as she was only going to be doing the first part of her job in this case...


    At least until she saved Romero... After that, well...


    Nobody would notice if a couple of criminals suddenly went missing, would they?

 Chapter 174 CHAPTER 174: SEARCH AND DESTROY

    ?


    In the end, he couldn''t depend on them to do anything at the moment so the jobs of finding Romero as well as stopping the idiots wrecking havoc still fell to him so he had no choice but to do everything himself, but he would make sure to take care of those bastards that were always in gates once all this was over... But for now, he needed to quickly get someone that would deal with the "Romero''s whereabouts" investigation while he went to the Imperium Tower and to stop the tech thieves.


    It had to be someone who was extremely good at finding people, and like he had mentioned earlier, he knew a guy... girl, though she was more of a finding and exterminating or destroying the target... but it didn''t really make that much of a difference as she was only going to be doing the first part of her job in this case...


    At least until she saved Romero... after that, well...


    Nobody would notice if a couple of criminals suddenly went missing, would they?


    Those were the guys who were probably involved in attacking hispany in a bid to steal some of his tech, so he wasn''t nning on leaving them alive... and even if they were a different set of people, he would have them swimming with the fishes either way.


    Annoying people like them shouldn''t be left alive, who knew when they would do something even more stupid and annoying that could have even worse repercussions.


    The code here was, and had always been ''kill all forms of threats before they cause his fall''.


    As someone who had experienced a few falls,he had learned that being proactive was the best way to avoid thefalls.


    Fuck the moralpass and kill the threat before you end up with a knife in the back of the throat would be his advice to anyone in the same situation as he was in.


    He brought out his phone and opened the hidden caller app to call one of his special contacts and before long, his phone was already dialing a number and being held up to his ear.


    It wasn''t long before the call was picked up on the other end and the person on the other end of the call spoke,


    *"Davies," a female voice came from the other end of the phone.


    "Selina," he answered with a slight chuckle, wondering why she was making their greetings sound like one between Exes.


    *"I''m guessing this isn''t a booty call, so... What do you need my help with?"* Selina was quite direct in her words and immediately got to asking why he had called her instead of just having the M.I.B channel deal with whatever needed to be done.


    "I do need your help," Davies didn''t hold back his request.


    *"Well, I''m pretty sure it is something important enough for you to call me directly,"* she said again, her mind already wondering about what could require him calling her directly.


    *"What is it?"* she asked, not waiting for a reply on his end.


    "Nothing much... Just a typical case of search and rescue..." Davies said freely, but


    *"Say what now. Rescue???"* Selina repeated like she hadn''t heard his words the first time. Rescue wasn''t part of her job description so she wondered if he was trying to say something else.


    "I mean, there is a little bit of destroy and extermination, in there somewhere, but the main job is to find and rescue somebody,"* Davies exined, not bothered by her reaction.


    *"... You do know that I don''t take search and rescue operations, right?"*


    *"I''m not running an extraction squad, but an assassination squad. If anything, I''m the one who does the kidnapping,"* Selina went on, trying to exin that she wasn''t the rescuing kind, but Davies wasn''t listening.


    "The target for rescue is a Romero... Nancy, less than ten years old,"


    "I should be able to get someone to brief you on the full details when yound," Davies continued like he hadn''t heard a single word she had been saying.


    *"Can''t you just look for him yourse-..."* she began but then paused. She had wanted to ask why he didn''t just look for the person he wanted to find himself as she knew that he was just as good as she was when it came to finding people that wanted to stay hidden, but that was when her mind recognized someone he had just said,


    *"Wait, hold up... Land?"*


    *"What do you meannd?"* Selina had a confused voice as she asked.


    "Exactly what it sounds like, I want you toe over personally and deal with this mission," Davies borated.


    *"You... Want me... Toe over...?"* Selina repeated and even spelled out to be sure if what she heard was correct.


    "I think you heard me the first time," Davies sighed, almost rolling his eyes.


    *"..."*


    *"I''m on my way right now..."* She spoke hurriedly and Davies could hear hurried movements from her end.


    "Hey, you''re onlying here for a job..." Davies tried to speak but was interrupted by Selina''s hurried voice.


    *"I''ll be there in a thrice... See you soon, *Mwah*,"* she said in a hurried tone, sent a flying kiss and hung up before he changed his mind, leaving Davies holding his phone to his ear while hearing a beeping sound that signified that the call had been cut off.


    "..."


    ''She hung up on me...'' he thought with a raised.


    He couldn''t even tell her to first send a couple of her "squad members"toe to the scene and begin the investigation, but he knew that she would be able to take care of everything herself without any help from any of herpadres.


    "I''ve gotten someone that will help find Romero," He said as he turned towards the girls


    "They''re on their way and will find your little brother," he said specifically to Tisha as he walked up to her and patted her head in a bid to soothe some of her tension and unease.


    "Sorry, I really have to go" He said with an apologetic tone and his face didn''t betray the feeling in his voice as he really looked to be in a tight ce.


    Without waiting for a reply, he turned and ran off towards his car, not wiping the look on his face until he got into his car and shut the door.


    "Argh, my face hurts," he muttered as his face reverted to the impassive and aloof look that was his default face while he started up the car''s engine.


    Continuously showing so much feeling on his face was quite tiring for his facial muscles, but he moved that to the back of his mind as he mmed on the elerator and did a burnout spin to get his car in the direction of the road that led out of the hospital grounds and as soon as he was in the right direction, the car shot off and slowly righted itself as he charged out of the hospital grounds, his speed rapidly increasing as he sped off.


    The car drifted itself onto the streets, decelerating a bit, but once it came out of the bend, it''s speed rose back to its previous heights and emwent even higher.


    The power had still note back on and the city was still in a state of perpetual darkness and chaos, but officers of thew were on the roads and making sure that the whole city didn''t fully delve into chaos.


    Unfortunately, Davies did not care for them or the power they seemingly thought they had behind them and he simply drove through the slightly congested streets at blistering speed as fast as maneuvering around cars without crashing would let him.


    That day, all officers of thew who were on the route between Thr Imperium Hospital and the Imperium Technologies building saw a blood red car with beautiful engravings driving at blistering speeds around and in-between cars, passing among them with spaces so narrow that a cat would be hard pressed to pass through them and no matter what they tried to do to stop the car driver, he simply sped past them, the wind barrage from his speeding vehicle carrying their loose pieces of clothing almost off their bodies.


    The female officers were never more happier than today that they wore trousers like the men, otherwise... Everyone would get to see what kinds oftighty whiteysthey wore underneath their clothes.


    At the speed he was going, he soon arrived at the Imperium Technologies grounds.


    The gates were open so he drove in without reducing his speed and only brought the car to a stop when he reached the Imperium Technologies tower itself.


    He quickly got down and looked up.


    He onviously couldn''t see anything clearly, but he wasn''t looking for anything specific in the first ce, rather he was trying to gauge the distance between the ground and the upper floors of the building as he wasn''t nning on wasting time by going into the building and running up the staircases since the elevators wouldn''t be working due to the ckout.


    He was going to do something else... Something crazy.

 Chapter 175 CHAPTER 175: SKYBOARDING

    ?


    The blood red Lykan Supersport sped into the premises of Imperium Technologies since for some strange reason that he could guess, the gates weren''t closed.


    The car did not delerate until it was beside the tower like building with a hundred and forty floors. There the car skidded to a stop and Davies got out, but instead of running into the building like what would have been expected of any sane person who wanted to reach the upper levels of the building, he started looking up instead.


    As he wasn''t sane, he wasn''t going to get into a building full of chaotic people who''d be screaming like bitches and then he would have to run up a hundred and thirty something flight of stairs, all the while sweating like a Christmas goat only to finally reach the top and would then have to deal with whatever is going on up there.


    Uh uh, nope... He wasn''t doing all that when there was a much easier route to the top floors.


    Is it the elevator?


    Of course not... There''s no power to move the damn thing.


    So how, you ask?


    Well, we''ve got all this free sky for a reason, right?


    Yup, it is what you''re thinking, Davies was going to go in through the window just like he did a few hours earlier.


    "It''s a bit far out, but I should be able to reach it," he muttered after gauging the distance with his eyes.


    [You''re crazy, you know that] Miya said in passing, not really caring since he had done even crazier things before.


    "I''m not crazy, I''m just ahead of the curve," he said with a smirk as he stepped back and took a deep breath while gathering a huge amount of mana for the stunt he was about to pull.


    *Fwoosh* a mist of cold air was released from Davies''s mouth as he breathed due to the icy mana running through his veins.


    An almost t ice tform began to form just beside Davies and in less than a second it was fully formed. It was shaped like a surf board and was standing uprightly, floating just a few centimeters above the ground.


    Since his speed elevatorhad been constructed, all that remained was to get on it and ride it to the top.


    Unfortunately carrying himself with mana all the way to the top would waste a lot of mana and was not an easy chore, so Davies picked another method of elevating to the skies.


    He jumped to the top of the icy surf board and using it as a form of ramp, he jumped up as high as using mana to augument his jump without injuring himself would allow him.


    The distance he managed to jump was almost five floors whichpared to the height of the building was not that much, but then, he didn''t n to jump directly to the top of the building and he couldn''t even achieve that either, because if he could, he would have done it already.


    As he soon as he reached the peak of the jumping distance he could manage, he threw his hand forward in a throwing motion, even though there was nothing in his hand... But then he wasn''t actually throwing something in his hand out, rather, it was the ice surfboard that he had used to jump that he had used his mana to shoot off the ground and towards the sky.


    The ice surfboard shot towards the sky in a sudden motion and with blinding speed, just narrowly avoiding Davies''s airborne figure, but before it moved past him, he stretched his hand and grabbed the sharp end of the board and let it grag him along with it to the sky.


    "Ouch..." he muttered in slight pain.


    He had used mana to protect his hand when grabbing onto the icy surfboard, but the force at which the board flew was strong enough to almost rip his arm from its socket, not to mention that the sharp end of the surfboard was sharp enough to impale his palm if not for the mana he had used to protect it, but even then he still felt a warm liquid on his palm and immediately knew that his palm hadn''tpletely escaped it''s impaling fate.


    "The price I have to pay for being ahead of the curve," he sighed to himself with a wry smile as he rapidly ascended to the skies while the wind blew hard against his body as he tore through the skies.


    Before long, he could feel the ice surfboard slowing down, but he wasn''t even half way up the tower-like building yet.


    Even then, he wasn''t worried as this was all within his calctions. All he had to do was to continuouslyunch icy tforms one after the other and hitch rides on all of them until he reached his destination, and this was exactly what he did.


    He first waited till the movement of the ice surfboard slowed to a level when he was sure that it was at the end of it''s flight, and then with a little hand gesture another surf board like tform was formed below the one he was still hitching a rode on, but this one didn''t have an exceptionally sharp edge.


    He pitied his palm and didn''t want to have a Jesus Christ look-alike palm when he reached his destination, hence the modifications to the design of the ice surfboard.


    With another throwing gesture he threw the second ice surfboard and just like before, he jumped onto the next ice surfboard just before it flew past him.


    "Ouch..." he groaned even louder this time as even if he didn''t mind being almost impaled on the palm and he could mostly ignore the pain of his arm almost being ripped off, his bones were beginning to feel the pressure from constantly being tugged at with such great force.


    He was almost sure that by the time he reached the top, he would have to pop the bone back into ce.


    [This feels like some sort of trashy arcade game] Miya suddenly said, eliciting a long silence from Davies as the sudden intrusive thought popped up in his mind.


    "..."


    "Shut up," he finally fired back after realizing that the method didn''t really matter as long as he could achieve his goals, he would do it again if given the chance...


    Also, there was no one to hear Miya''s words and to think about whether it looked embarrassing or not.


    Soon he noticed the ice surf board slowing down again, alerting him that it was time to repeat the process.


    A few hand gestures and a daring jumpter, Davies was back at top speed, tearing through the skies and defying gravity with every millimeter he gained.


    He nced upwards again at the tower, but this time, he shielded his eyes against the burning sun.


    ''I should be able to make it after the next jump,'' he thought to himself after gauging the remaining distance between him and his destination.


    Soon he had made thest ice surfboard switch and was rapidly approaching the top of the building.


    "135,"


    "136,"


    "137,"


    "138..." he counted as he approached the invaded the floors. He had to count from the ground floor as there weren''t exactly written directions on the outer walls of the building about which floor it was.


    He prepared himself to jump and just as the ice surfboard passed the 138th floor and almost reached the 139th floor, he jumped...


    His target... The 138th floor.


    It wasn''t that he was scared of a fight immediately hended on the floor, but because the 139th and 140th floors were heavily fortified and impossible to breakthrough from the outside unless continuously attacked by a fourth level mega for ten minutes...


    He didn''t have ten minutes to waste attacking a wall, not to mention, before the ten minutes ended, he would have already fallen to his death and his body would have already been taken by an ambnce with its destination none other than the mortuary... Unless he made moves to avoid his fall to death.


    Hence his chosen destination was the 138th floor that while also heavily fortified, couldn''t keep him out.


    This he had jumped and in a spinning motion had conjured a huge ice spear in an instant with mana zone and threw it at the ss walls of the 138th floor, shattering it to pieces as he approached it.


    Closer... Closer... Closer...


    But he was too far away from building to make the jump.


    That wasn''t going to stop him though, he quickly conjured a tform and used it to as a ramp to jump even further, just barely making it into his office and crashing to the ground.


    "Whooooo," he threw his hand up in exhration after making it to his targeted destination alive, but a sudden pain in his shoulder immediately reminded him that all was not well in his paradise of dangerous life on the line exhrating moments.


    "Ouch..." he muttered while using his other hand to grab the arm and with a sharp movement, the shoulder problem was gone, though there was still a slight lingering pain left behind, but Davies didn''t care about this much pain and simply ignored it while getting to his feet as he had only just made it to the building and had not yet dealt with his problems.


    "Now on to the 139th floor," he muttered while looking at the door of his office that led outwards into a corridor where he could find staircases that led to the next floor.

 Chapter 176 CHAPTER 176: ANTICLIMATIC I

    ?


    ."Whooooo," Davies threw his hand up in mock celebration after making it to his targeted destination alive, but a sudden pain shooting through his shoulder immediately reminded him that all was not well in his paradise of dangerous life on the line exhrating moments.


    "Ouch..." he muttered while using his other hand to grab the arm and with a sharp movement and a sickening cracking sound, the shoulder problem was gone.


    Even after that, there was still a slight lingering pain in his shoulder, but this little amount of pain wasn''t even enough to make him wince, so it was simply ignored and he got up to his feet like there was nothing wrong. After all, he had only just made it to the building and had not yet dealt with the problems therein so there was no time to waste lying around or taking a little break because of a little pain in his shoulder.


    "Now on to the 139th floor," he muttered while looking at the door of his office that led outwards into a corridor where he could find staircases that led to the next floor.


    ''Now that I think about it, how did those guys even make it to the 139th floor seeing as the elevator isn''t working and they didn''te from the outside?'' he wondered as he barged open the door if he had used a bit more strength the door would have been sent flying off its hinges.


    [Don''t expect me to know, I was with you the whole time] Miya barged into his thoughts even though the question hadn''t been directed to her.


    "Tch... I wasn''t asking you..." Davies clicked his tongue as he ran along the corridor.


    [...]


    [... So, who were you talking to?]


    [I''m pretty sure I''m the only one in here... Right?]


    [Or did you get me a neighbor when I wasn''t looking?]


    [Are you sure it''s only a few bolts you got loose and not all the bolts?]


    Unlike other times when Davies would reply due to his boredom, this time he didn''t as his mind was preupied with more important and interesting issues.


    He had finally reached the doors that led to the stairs and he barged through that door as well, not pausing in the slightest.


    Immediately he got on the stairs he charged up them and a few flights of stairster, he was in front of a door that led to the 139th floor.


    The door that led into the 139th seemed to have been blown away from its hinges as it wasn''t even present.


    This view immediately satisfied Davies''s curiosity about how the invaders got into the 139th floor.


    ''Did they actually run up all the stairs?'' he wondered as he ran through the door, already forming a small dagger of ice in his left hand and a sword of ice in his right.


    [Well, they didn''t teleport]


    "True," he muttered and immediately swung the ice sword and blocked something that was flying at him.


    It seemed they tried to sneak attack him, but he had been expecting this much, as his arrival on the 138th floor was not exactly stealthy.


    If they weren''t prepared for his arrival even after that ruckus, then he would be disappointed in them as he expected better from people who would try to steal his stuff.


    He hadn''t seen what he had deflected with the ice sword, but he was not letting it touch him anyway as it was obviously not paint.


    After the sudden attack, he jumped back and stood at the doorway, blocking the only entrance onto the floor and he quickly surveyed the surroundings and the enemies.


    The surroundings were mostly untouched since there wasn''t exactly much to touch, but the presence of five people dressed in all-ck clothing.


    Four of them were standing on guard while one was standing over the holographic supeputer in the middle of the room and trying to find the information to steal.


    Unfortunately for him, all his work would amount to absolutely nothing, the memory of theputer was as bare as a baby''s bum, but Davies wasn''t going to tell him that.


    He didn''t know how strong the assants were, but he wasn''t going to risk fighting against all five of them at a time instead of four while thest one was distracted, working on theputer.


    "Who sent you?" he asked after getting a look at the situation.


    "Did you think we would tell you?" one of the invaders retorted immediately while getting into a stance and two red daggers appearing in his hands.


    "Now?"


    "Probably not... But after a few hours of torture, you''ll probably sing even better than Ed Sheeran," Davies also replied with a smirk, after which he immediately threw the ice dagger in his left hand at the guy working on theputer.


    "...!" the invader with the daggers eyes immediately widened and he jumped into the trajectory of the dagger and deflected it upwards easily, before turning his eyes back in the direction of the doorway, but unlike he was expecting, he didn''t see Davies''s lithe figure standing there, rather he heard a scream of pain at the side where two of hispadres stood.


    His eyes immediately diverted in that direction to see what was happening and he was just in time to see Davies swinging his sword and cutting through one of his distractedrades before he could even react.


    Davies''s ice sword did not stop after slowing through the body of the invader, but after cutting through, Davies slightly twisted his arm and made the sword stab into the floor with its head first, and using it as a pivot, he swing himself on it heavily and took off in a flying kick at the second invader that was nearby.


    Luckily it seemed that thisrade was paying attention and he immediately crossed his arms to block the hit, but the power behind the kick was high enough to send him flying.


    Other than that, he was happy that he wouldn''t take any more damage... Or so he thought.


    A sudden pain in his chest and an ice spike through his chestter, he looked down at the sharp ice spike that had shot through his back ande out the front, impaling him lethally.


    Davies hadn''t just kicked him away but had conjured an ice pike in the direction he had kicked him in.


    He had flown there unknowingly and ended up running through the conjured ice pike, this dying.


    The invader gripped his daggers tighter after seeing Davies take out two of his fellows when the battle had just started.


    It wasmon knowledge that Davies was a genius, but no one had ever actually seen him in battle before, but with this, the dagger-wielding invader could immediately confirm that Davies was a battle genius as well...


    No, even a battle genius may not necessarily be able to so smoothly let his attack flow and make use of the terrain to throw continuous attacks that flowed seamlessly and quickly finished off two people in just a few motions.


    This screamed experience!


    Experience that no one knew he had,


    ''What has this bastard gone through to know how to fight like that?'' the dagger-wielding bastard thought to himself as he gripped his daggers even tighter Davies jumped off his back without using his hands and turned in his direction while forming another ice sword in his hand, his previous ice sword all but forgotten.


    "Are you stunned?" he asked the invaders who were now watching him warily and almost jerking at every one of his movements.


    "Murder is an art... You just have to know how to perform it," he smirked confidently, giving his current enemies goosebumps.


    Inwardly though, Davies wasn''t all that pleased, they were weaker than he had expected, so he had ended up killing two of them by mistake, and now he was running out ofsongbirds.


    ''Who knew they were so weak?'' he wondered, they were probably not past the second stage... Except for the dagger-wielding guy who was probably in the third stage.


    Davies had already noticed that the mana flowing off him was stronger than the others, plus he was able to see Davies''s first attack and deflect it, meaning he was not very weak.


    ''I still need one or two of them alive so I can find out who was behind this...'' he thought and began the selection process of choosing who would die and who would sing.


    "Mini, mini, miny, mo,"


    "Father, mother, have a goat..." he sang with a slight smile.


    "What are you doing?" the dagger-wielding invader asked after seeing Davies begin pointing at all of them one by one and singing a children''s song instead of outrightly fighting them.


    "Oh, this... I''m choosing which one of you will be dining withdy death and the rest of you will be my Ed Sheeran and Celine Dion singing everything I want to hear," Davies replied, his fingers still moving on and finally stopping on the only invader who didn''t seem to be doing anything and was simply watching warily.


    "Well, guess you have a date withdy death," he said in a congrattory tone, his trademark wicked smile rising up his face.

 Chapter 177 CHAPTER 177: ANTICLIMATIC II

    ?


    "Well, I guess you are the lucky one who gets to have a date withdy death," he said in a congrattory tone to the third ck-clothed invader, his trademark wicked smile rising up his face.


    The person in question could feel all the hairs on his body stand up and mes immediately started flowing around his fists as he immediately assumed a defensive position, yet he didn''t say anything.


    Though he wasn''t willing to admit it with his own mouth, he was more than a little scared by Davies''s threat to his life.


    The dagger-wielding invader wasn''t even a little bit angry by Davies''s attitude of treating him like he wasn''t even there and directly targeting hisrade because he knew that Davies had the capability to make good on his words if they didn''t do their best to stop him... At least judging from the capability that he had already shown, it was believable.


    So he had simply increased his guard towards the guy that Davies had said he was targeting and waited for Davies to make his move.


    "Hurry up, I don''t know how long we can hold him off," the dagger-wielding invader said to his fellowpadre that was trying to find the technology on theputer.


    "I''m working on it," the dude working on theputer muttered under his breath, increasing his finger speed that was already almost a blurring movement to the untrained eye.


    Davies seemed to not have noticed this exchange of words as he kept his eyes firmly on the chosen target.


    He seemed to not even have put the dagger-wielding invader into his eyes and seemingly ignored him as well.


    All this served to pressure the unfortunate soul that had been chosen as the scapegoat. The pressure of Davies''s cold murderous eyes was greater than any pressure or killing intent he had ever faced anding from him... That was saying a lot.


    He wasn''t very strong as a person, but he had met a lot of monstrously strong people and none of them gave him as much pressure as the one Davies was giving off unconsciously without even trying.


    He clenched his fists tighter and a cold drop of sweat ran down his back as he watched Davies simply stare at him and not make a move even though he was the chosen target.


    Due to the strong pressure, he was feeling, he wasn''t able to think straight and did the worst thing a prey could do when it was being hunted...


    With the thought that he didn''t want to be a sitting duck while waiting for his death, his fists caught fire and he ran towards Davies, stunning everyone in the room.


    ''That idiot!'' his tworades were stunned at this sudden, yet foolish move.


    Even Davies was confused and took a cautious step backward as he didn''t know what the idiot was up to.


    The dagger-wieldingrade of the idiot wasn''t willing to let hisrade die so easily due to his stupid actions and immediately dashed forward as soon as he noticed that Davies had taken a step backward.


    Immediately Davies noticed his movement, he immediately conjured another ice sword in his free hand and ran at him as well, ignoring the suicidal idiot for the time being.


    The dagger-wielding invader was relieved that Davies had ignored his obviously stupid and suicidalrade and had insteade for him, but before he had any time to think any more relieved thoughts, he had to put up his daggers to ward off a sudden attack.


    Davies had thrown the two swords in his hands at him one after the other.


    He immediately realized from the way the swords were zooming at him that he couldn''t carelessly deflect the sword to the right or the left because the speed at which they wereing at him was out of hisfort zone of skillfully deflecting projectiles.


    He couldn''t deflect it downward either as that was where his lower body was and he wasn''t interested in sacrificing his body parts just to deflect a few weapons... Luckily, there was always the upward direction... Or so he thought.


    He smoothly and skilfully deflected the two ice swords one after the other. The force of the two swords actually managed to push him back, but despite that he was unhurt.


    After stumbling back a few steps he righted himself and stood stably, but was surprised to find Davies still running at him, but before he could even get himself on guard Davies leaped off the ground and threw himself into a spin.


    As he continuously spun into the air, he soon reached where the two ice swords were still spinning mid-air.


    The next thing that happened shocked the three invaders, burst one in the heart, and blew out the mind of another of the three... Quite literally.


    Davies managed tond a double kick with both of his feet and sent the swords with crushing force in the directions of the invader working on theputer and the suicidal invader.


    The suicidal invader got an ice sword right through the skull. The sword shed through the unsuspecting invader, ripping into his skull and shredding through his brain beforeing out the other side, spraying bits of blood and pink brain matter all over the floor as he fell to the ground, dead.


    The other invader who had been working on theputer at the time and had not really been paying any more attention to the fight other than watching the fight from the corner of his eye so when Davies had kicked the ice swords while spinning mid-air, he had been too stunned by the sudden actions of Davies that he had forgotten to dodge, thus he had ended up with a sword right through his chest, running through his heart and popping it like a bright red cherry.


    Bright red blood sorted out of his chest and his mouth as he stared at the sword in his chest with disbelief and unwillingness written all over his face as he slumped and fell to the ground. A secondter he was dead.


    "..." The dagger-wielding invader had a look ofplete unbelief as his eyes looked from his suicidal teammate to the one who had been working on stealing the technology from the holographic supeputer.


    Those two were usually full of differences and would usually fight at every chance they got unless they were on a mission like today... But those two who were usually like fire and water had something inmon today...


    They were both on the floor, spurting blood from fatal wounds, dead... And they were killed by the same person, on the same mission.


    "You!!!"


    "You lied!!!" he raged aftering to the terms that his people were dead, and he could not ept it.


    "And you believed it?" Davies asked with an unbelieving expression as if he couldn''t believe the idiotic wordsing out of the fool''s mouth.


    "You actually believe the words of your enemy in battle?"


    "Wow, you must either be the greatest battle genius of the century... Or the idiot of the century?" He couldn''t believe this idiot.


    Did he actually expect Davies not to make a move on the other invaders just because he said he wasn''t going to?


    "Ah... What a fool," he sighed as he runner his face. He was disappointed by these invaders.


    Thest one was so dangerous that he couldn''t even touch him and he had expected a simr level of threat or an even higher one, but he got... This.


    Words could not express his disappointment at this bull shit.


    Well, luckily he only needed one person to spill the beans on whichever bastard had sent them here.


    The dagger-wielding invader could not take Davies''s tant mockery of his intelligence, but he also realized that he was also at fault because he had fallen for the trap that Davies had ced for him, hook line, and sinker.


    What he didn''t know was that Davies hadn''t originally nned to kill two of the invaders and had only nned to kill the target he had originally chosen, but his murderous instinct had been triggered when he had realized how unguarded the two of them were.


    At first, he had wanted to stick to his original n, but his reasoning that had told him that he only needed one person to torture and not a whole host of people helped with making his decision


    Also, there should be a lot more people on the next floor as Danie had said that it wasn''t only the 139th floor that had been attacked.


    This meant that there were a lot more people for him to choose a songbird from.


    "Hopefully, they''d be more of a challenge than you squeaky pants," Davies said out loud to the dagger-wielding invader, confusing him because he couldn''t make a head or tail of what Davies was saying.


    Instead of waiting for the situation to be moreplicated, he gritted his teeth, squeezed his daggers extra tight, and charged at Davies.


    He didn''t have much of a choice in what to do at this particr moment anyway, he thought to himself.

 Chapter 178 CHAPTER 178: ANTICLIMATIC III

    Chapter 178 CHAPTER 178: ANTICLIMATIC III


    The dagger-wielding invader made the same move that his suicidalrade had made a few seconds prior and had inevitably gotten him killed... But he was different from his suicidal teammate.


    He wasn''t as weak and had a higher chance of survivability... Plus he didn''t have much of a choice at the moment.


    He wasn''t going to remain a sitting duck when there was a chance to fight for his life.


    His mission was toe here and steal something, not toe and leave his life behind for the grim reaper that he acknowledged Davies Lake to be.


    Completing his mission was now an impossibility, but he wished to avoid the worst-case scenario where he would die along with his teammates, and for that, he was going to fight...


    So, he charged at Davies in the most guarded position he knew and kept his eyes peeled for anything Davies could throw at him, as from the few exchanges he had with Davids as well as what he has seen, he could determine that Davies was a master at making use of the environment to get the slightest advantage in a battle.


    Davies simply conjured a few ice spears and shot them at the invader, wanting to quickly incapacitate him and move on to deal with theproblemson the next floor.


    The dagger-wielding bastard though, had other ideas. He wasn''t nning on going down so easily, and he easily deflected the ice spears and continued advancing towards Davies, slowly, but surely.


    He had no ns of going down today... But like him Davies had no ns of wasting any extra time with him as well, so once he noticed that using ice spears against him was wasting too much time, he immediately stopped and conjured an ice sword in his hand, intending to switch to a more physical fighting style.


    In reality, he could actually just conjure a lot more ice spears and simply overwhelm him with the sheer number of ice spears, but that was just a waste of mana and time.


    Why would he use so much mana to deal with one enemy when they were a lot more enemies that he didn''t know how strong they were, still waiting for him to fight?


    It''d be better to just quickly finish off this guy and move on to the next set ofproblems,he had way too many things to deal with today than to waste time on an extra, Davies thought as he swung the ice sword hard at the invader who was also swinging his daggers at him.


    *CLANG* their weapons shed against each other and their hands were thrown back by the recoil of their actions, but even then Davies cleverly used the recoil from the sh as a force to twist his body and sent a high sweeping kick at the chest of the invader.


    The invader''s body control was nothing to scoff at, while he wasn''t anywhere as good as Davies, he was good enough to throw himself into a backflip and narrowly avoid the kick after he saw what Davies was trying to do.


    "Oh...?" Davies was a bit surprised that this guy was able to see the sudden attack, unlike his otherrades.


    He obviously wasn''t as weak as them because he was at a higher stage than they were, but his battle instincts also greatly surpassed them as well...


    But if this was all he could do, then it was too bad it wouldn''t make more of a difference, Davies thought as he quickly conjured an ice dagger and threw it immediately his kicking leg reached the ground and he turned to face the invader.


    Before the poor guy even came out of his backflip Davies''s ice dagger already embedded itself into his left arm causing him to scream in pain and drop his knife while also losing his footing a bit and almost falling, but he managed to catch himself in time and did a few rolls backward to distance himself from Davies.


    "Tch... He wasn''t much either," Davies clicked his tongue while he kept his gaze firmly locked onto the invader.


    The invader also kept his eyes firmly locked on Davies. There was more caution in his eyes than before, there was also a lot more fear in them.


    Davies was proving to be quite the impassible wall, and if he wasn''t careful, he was fated to die... Or even worse, be captured and tortured.


    ''Am I going to die here?'' the thought floated across his mind, his gaze unwavering from Davies''s figure that just stood there waiting.


    It felt like he was being looked down upon by him, but that couldn''t bother him when his life was on the line, his mind was upied with more important things like for example,how the fuck he was going to survive?


    But as he started at Davies unblinkingly, something strange happened.


    His previously brown eyes that had stared so hard and unblinkingly at Davies suddenly turned into a glowing purple color and the weak aura that he was giving off suddenly changed.


    He stood up straight, no longer giving off the feeling of prey that was being hunted.


    Even the way he looked at Davies changed and there was a strange surprise in his eyes as he looked at his surroundings as if it was his first time in this ce, which was more than a little strange because he has been here for more than a little while.


    Davies immediately noticed the change even before the invader stood up straight, his eyes giving off an eerie glow.


    ''Eh?''


    ''... That''s a new one,'' he thought as he hadn''t seen this kind of reaction in battle before.


    He hadn''t exactly hit the guy''s head so hard that the guy''s personality has been reset, so what was with this sudden strange change in behavior and aura?


    It was almost like he became apletely different person...


    Immediately that thought arose in his head, Davies didn''t hold back and chose to attack immediately.


    He dashed at the invader and swung his sword at him, but unlike before when the invader had to block all of Davies''s frontal attacks, this time the ck-clothed invader simply dodged the attack with a clever twist of his upper body and his legs cleverly moved a few steps away so that he was out of range of Davies''s sword, should he intend to use it to attack unexpectedly again, but Davies didn''t and instead conjured a few ice spears and sent them flying at him.


    The invader skillfully dodged most of the ice spears and only used the only dagger that was in his hand to deflect the few that he wouldn''t be able to dodge.


    While he was dealing with the ice spears, Davies caused an ice spike to form behind the invader and stealthily shot it at his unsuspecting behind, but just before the invader was impaled, he threw himself upward into a spinning backflip, avoiding the ice spears that we''reing from his front and the ice spike that hade from behind.


    Even with this Davies still didn''t give up and quickly created three ice daggers that he threw along with the ice sword at the airborne invader.


    Four clinging sounds and a thudding soundter, the invader had deflected all four weapons with his dagger and hadnded smoothly in a crouching position before standing back up and staring off against Davies who no longer made any move to attack him.


    "Who are you?"


    "You are not that weak idiot from before, that''s for sure..." Davies asked with a light tone, not seemingly bothered by this, and was simply asking out of curiosity and "Oh, wow... Is that some sort of possession ability of yours or something?" Davies asked with interest, no animosity in his tone as he was genuinely interested in this intrigue.


    "Oh, you already noticed?" the now purple-eyed invader did not deny it, but his voice sounded tooposed, quite womanly, and out of ce whenpared to the body of the invader.


    "Oh, wow... Is that some sort of possession ability of yours or something?" Davies asked with interest, no animosity in his tone as he was genuinely interested in this new ability that he had never seen or even heard of someone having before.


    "Yeah, it is one of my abilities... As for how it works-..." the possessed invader began speaking but was cut off by Davies,


    "Don''t bother... You obviously wouldn''t be telling me the truth about it... No one would be stupid enough to do that, and I''m sure you''re not an exception so spare me the lies,"


    "What I would like for you to tell me though would be who you guys are?" Davies continued after cutting in.


    "..."


    "I can''t tell you that either..." The possessed invader said with a little chuckle.


    "Figures," Davies muttered under his breath.


    "Seems the mission isn''t going well," the possessed invader spoke again after his eerily glowing purple eyes swept around the room and saw that only the person being possessed was still alive on this floor.


    "Well, what did you expect when you sent people as weak as they were after my things?"


    "You guys must really not put me in your eyes at all," Daviesughed bitterly as he said because it was the truth.


    "... I am willing to admit that maybe we underestimated you a bit too much," the invader spoke again, his eyes reverting to Davies''s figure.


    "Well, maybe after I find you guys, your impressions of me would change by quite a bit," Davies repliedughingly, but the look in his eyes made it clear that nothing he had said was anything simr to a joke.

 Chapter 179 CHAPTER 179: ANTICLIMATIC IV

    Chapter 179 CHAPTER 179: ANTICLIMATIC IV


    "You guys must really not put me in your eyes at all," Daviesughed bitterly as he said because it was the truth.


    "... I am willing to admit that maybe we underestimated you a bit too much," the invader spoke again, his eyes reverting to Davies''s figure.


    "Well, maybe after I find you guys, your impressions of me would change by quite a bit," Davies repliedughingly, but the look in his eyes made it clear that nothing he had said was anything simr to a joke.


    "Unfortunately... I can''t allow that," the possessed invader''s tone slightly changed when replying to Davies.


    "I wasn''t asking for permission,"


    "Among your people, at least one of them will be a good songbird after experiencing a convincing session," Davies said, tantly telling him that he would be torturing his underlings.


    "Hmmm..."


    "While I have quite the faith in my underlings, indeed, one can never be too sure with humans, so we already prepared some anti-torture policies," The possessed invader replied without missing a breath, making it clear that they were prepared to not give away any information about themselves.


    "Anti-torture policies, huh?"


    "You wouldn''t have sent only suicide agents here, right?" Davies asked with a raised eyebrow as he didn''t think that was true.


    The dagger-wielding invader before being possessed had been trying everything possible to escape from Davies so he had a hard time believing that dude would willinglymit suicide to hide information.


    "That is a very good anti-torture policy... But not the one we are employing today," The possessed invader replied carefully picking his words and not outrightly telling Davies what method they had employed to avoid being caught and tortured for information, but how could someone like Davies not know what was the most likely oue of this situation?


    It was obvious that the people they had sent here were not that important to the organization that had sent them here, so there was no way the organization would then the most likely "anti-torture policy" was,


    "I''m guessing you have a way to kill all of them in their bodies that even they don''t make any extra moves to ensure their safety and prevent them from being caught and thus tortured.


    They had probably already given up on them, and since this guy had said that they weren''t some sort of suicide squad that would rather die than give away information, then the most likely "anti-torture policy" was,


    "I''m guessing you have a way to kill all of them in their bodies that even they don''t know about," Davies immediately exposed their ns through a simple deduction, slightly stunning the possessed invader at the speed at which he came to this conclusion.


    It was almost as if they were in the same line of business and he easily understood their thoughts... What he did not know was that they were indeed in the same line of business.


    "Hmmm..."


    "That may be a bit problematic," Davies murmured to himself, not making the slightest move to try and find a way to keep the invaders alive so he could torture them for information.


    If it was really true that this organization had a way to kill the invaders to prevent them from being captured alive and tortured, then there was probably nothing much he could do to change that... He was a professional at ending lives, not saving them. Even the few lives he has saved were saved because he had killed what was threatening their lives, not because he had brought them back from the brink of death.


    He had no experience in that field and he wasn''t about to start having the experience today.


    ''Well, maybe we can find something out from their bodies after,''


    ''Hopefully, we can find some answers from there," he thought to himself, but he honestly didn''t have that much hope because it would be quite difficult to find anything substantial that could point him in the right direction after all this wasn''t some murder case where all they were looking for was what the cause of death. Also, the method of "anti-torture policies" could be quite damaging to the body, making it almost impossible to find anything at all.


    "What we are using today is a two-step insurance policy," the possessed invader began saying, not caring for Davies''s thought train at the moment.


    "The first insurance policy is already in effect..." he continued, the eerie purple glow in his eyes beginning to dim.


    "As for the second policy... It''s also a gift to you,"


    "There are two of them of which one of them is in that bag," the possessed invader said, pointing at a bag that was beside the dude who had been working on theputer.


    "You should check it soon... It''s an explosive surprise," he said with augh.


    Immediately after these words left his mouth, his body fell to the ground, his eyes dimming and life leaving the body fast.


    Davies didn''t even waste time checking on him and quickly moved toward the bag beside the supeputer, a bad feeling welling up in his heart.


    As a viin himself, he knew that viins never left good/harmless gifts, especially when there were keywords like "time"and "explosive" included.


    He quickly reached for the bag and ripped it open butimmediately he saw what was in the bag he cursed out loud.


    "Fuck!"


    What greeted his eyes was a digital timer that showed,


    {0:14}


    {0:13}


    He did not need anyone to tell him that this was a countdown timer.


    A timer to a very explosive surprise.


    No words came out of his mouth as he quickly stood up from where he was and threw the bag to the farthest corner of the room before turning on his heels and nothing out of the room as fast as his legs could carry him.


    He quickly reached the doorway and charged out while flicking his hand and causing a wall of ice to block the doorway.


    Now that he was back in the stairway with the doorway frozen behind him, he was about to run up the next flight of stairs to move to the 130th floor, but then suddenly remembered the words of the bastard that possessed the dagger-wielding invader.


    ''There are two of them of which one of them is in that bag,'' the possessed invader had said, which meant that there are two bombs, and seeing as they were split up into two groups of which one tried to break into the system on the 139th floor and the other tried to break into the workshop on the 140th floor, it was highly probable that there was another bomb on the 140th floor.


    "Oh hell," Davies sighed in annoyance as he jumped over the railings and into a freefall from the middle of the stairs, and as if timed, an explosion went off behind him and another one rocked from above him, sending loud waves of crashing sounds, fire, and destruction everywhere behind and above him.


    --------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Hey guys, Sorry for taking a 20-day long break.


    I apologize for not posting chapters since then, but I had to take a break due to health issues, but I''m all better now and will get back to regrly posting chapters, though it may be a bit irregr for a while, but I won''t be stopping or reducing the number of chapters and I may even be increasing them.


    Thanks for your support and for reading my book like always

 Chapter 180 CHAPTER 180: ANTICLIMATIC V

    <h4>Chapter 180 CHAPTER 180: ANTICLIMATIC V</h4>


    *BOOM!!!*


    Loud explosions rocked the top two floors of the Imperium Tower, sending sts of heat, smoke, and destruction all around the ce.


    Davies had barely jumped over the railings of the stairs when the bomb went off behind him. The force of the st sent him off bnce and out of control as he jumped over the railings, sending his body into intimate and painful contact with other parts of the stairs as he fell.


    *Bang* *Bang*


    His body made ugly sounds as they constantly collided with the iron railings of the stairs until he finally fell on the inside of the stairs and came to the ground with a loud crash.


    For a few seconds, he couldn''t even move because his whole body hurt due to his fall, but after catching his breath for a few seconds, he turned over and pulled his pain-wracked body up.


    ''Something''s probably broken,'' he thought as he pushed his body up against the wall and sat upright, making no effort to stand up and go check the damage that the explosion caused as he could already estimate the situation in his head.


    An explosion of that level wouldn''t be enough to heavily damage the building since the building was made with materials that could take a few hits... But he could pretty much guess that there would be no one alive or even a body that was intact enough for him to investigate and find any clues.


    "Bummer..." he sighed.


    He hadn''t expected this turn of events... I mean, who would have expected thieves to blow themselves up when they found out that escape was impossible?


    ''You''re a thief, shouldn''t you value your life a bit more?'' he thought with an aching head.


    "How anticlimactic..." he sighed.


    He had been expecting a huge battle where he would have to fight tooth and nail to prevent the intruders/thieves from escaping, but they had instead decided to try sting into oblivion the evidence that was themselves and they had also had no qualms about dragging him along with them.


    And they had seeded... At least in the first part, he had gotten the hell out of dodge as soon as he noticed the bomb. He had a bad experience with things that went "BOOM" after all.


    "Now that I think of it, they probably didn''t intend to kill me, or they wouldn''t have told me there was a bomb about to blow me up sky high..." he mused.


    To be fair, the words from the one who had possessed the now dead dagger-wielding invader weren''t exactly a direct warning about a bomb and were more like a cheekily given clue, but to a Davies''s constantly working mind, it didn''t make any difference which was why he was able to almost immediately find out about the bomb.


    "Well, that''s that..." Davies muttered and with a groan, he pushed himself up to his feet with his aching hands and almost fell back to the ground after standing upright because of the pain that wracked his body.


    "Urgh... Fucking bastards..." he cursed as he leaned against the wall to stabilize himself.


    He took a few seconds to get used to the pain in his body before beginning to walk back up the stairs intending to check how much damage had been done and to find out if there was anything he could salvage that could point him in the direction of the bastards that had nned this, but he didn''t have much hope that he could find out anything.


    "I hope nothing else happens today... It''s been way too eventful for a single day..." he muttered.


    Things had been happening a bit too fast for even him to keep up with. Just yesterday he had been battling for his life against some poison that was trying to get him to implode, and then today he tried to look for Lee Jung but that resulted in a citywide ckout, and as if that wasn''t enough hispany was broke into... again, only this time they hadn''t bothereding in stealthily and had directly attacked thepany building and had even sent someone to block Danie in a bid to buy more time for themselves.


    In the end, he hade here himself and that hadn''t ended well, he had almost been blown up sky-high when those bastards realized that there was no way out avable for them.


    It was extremely annoying that he hade so close to losing his life twice in less than twenty-four hours, hell, it had barely even been twelve hours and now both the internal part of his body and the external part of his body had faced life-threatening danger and though he had managed to somehow survive twice, it was by no means that he was cruising through. His whole body was aching in pain, both internally and externally.


    Despite this, he grit his teeth and continued walking up the stairs, his posture righting itself with every step he took and his face beginning to be devoid of the pain that wracked his body even though the pain hadn''t gone anywhere and it still hurt as much as it did... Or maybe even more, but he wasn''t the type of person that wore his pain and troubles on his face as it made him look weak and exposed a weakness, something he couldn''t afford to have.


    "Why isn''t anyoneing up to check even though a part of the building just blew up?" he suddenly realized and thought back to his employees whose ipetence seemed to be growing in his mind.


    By any means, there should be at least someone who should havee up to check what was going on, or at least someone should have calledw enforcement authorities, but based on the inactivity that Davies was faced with it was either that nobody was doing anything and they had all run helter-skelter, or someone had calledw enforcement officers but they were taking their sweet time responding to the call.


    Of these two options though, Davies was more inclined to believe the first one because he knew that there was no way thew enforcement officers wouldn''t get on their feet immediately the mention of hispany having an issue sounded in the ears, though there was also the possibility of someone with a high amount of power restricting the cops from responding to an emergency call from his employees about what was happening in thepany... Or maybe they were stretched too thin due to the sudden ckout in the city, but all this was just spection, and to be honest, he didn''t really care what had happened, and even preferred that he didn''t have to deal with annoyances that could hinder him.


    With this thought, he continued walking up the stairs and a few minutes of climbingter, he was back in front of the doorway that led to the 139th floor, only this time there was annoying heat and fuming smoke flowing heavily out of it aspared to the silence he had met when he had been here earlier.


    He didn''t waste any time and walked in but as expected everything was charred and the white interior of this building that was worth boasting about had now been stained and damaged by thest from the explosion and further damaged by the mes and smoke that resulted from the explosion.


    "As expected, there was nothing to find," Davies murmured when he saw the barely remaining remains of the invaders that he had killed in here previously.


    There was almost nothing left of them that indicated that they were once humans, just ck everywhere, and the sickening stench of burnt human flesh in the air indicated that they were what he was looking for.


    Davies gave a nce over the room before turning and beginning to walk back out of the room as there was nothing to be found there. Everything that could be qualified as evidence had been destroyed and burnt beyond recognition so there was no point in remaining here.


    ''The next floor is probably the same thing,'' he thought as he inched closer to the doorway with every step, but then suddenly stopped after feeling a vibration in his pocket.


    He stopped and pulled out his phone which was shockingly undamaged considering what had happened to the body of the owner of the phone.


    The reason why Davies had quickly brought out his phone was because he was expecting a call from Danie who should have dealt with whoever was obstructing her way previously, but instead of the call that he was expecting, what he was seeing on the screen of the phone was a notification of a voice message sent to him from a number that wasn''t saved into his contact list.


    For a few seconds, Davies stood there wondering who it could be that managed to acquire his phone number and then send him a voice message because he hadn''t been expecting an impromptu voice message from an unknown contact.


    Suddenly a sudden thought arose in his mind as he looked at the notification that showed the voice message while muttering,


    "It couldn''t be, right?"


    --------------------------------------++--------------------------------


    I''m back... For real this time

 Chapter 181 CHAPTER 181: VOICE MESSAGE

    <h4>Chapter 181 CHAPTER 181: VOICE MESSAGE</h4>


    The sudden vibration in one of his trouser pockets alerted Davies to the notification arrival on his phone.


    He had then brought the phone out, expecting a call or a message from his assistant cum bodyguard, Danie who should have been able to get rid of the "obstacle" in her way, but upon bringing the phone out, what he saw on the screen wasn''t a call or a message from Danie or anyone he knew, but rather, a voice message from a number unknown to his contact list.


    For a few seconds, he had paused to think about who would send him a voice message and why, but even after pausing to think for a while, he hadn''t been able to figure out who would send him a voice message at this particr moment.


    Suddenly he was hit by a very daring thought and he looked at the notification on the phone screen with a newfound annoyance and amazement,


    "It can''t be, right?" he muttered with the sudden but daring and highly likely thought on his mind, but with no way to confirm his thoughts than to listen to the message, he went ahead to tap on the phone to listen to the message.


    "If you''re listening to this message, then you must have escaped the explosive surprise I had prepared for you, but I''m pretty sure that something that low level couldn''t manage to kill you..."


    "After all, you managed to survive the internal destruction poison," a normal-sounding female voice came into Davies''s ears from the speaker of his phone, and his face immediately turned ashen.


    "I can imagine that the look on your face isn''t very bright right now, haha," the voice continued with a littleugh.


    "Oh, how I wish I could see how you''d look right now, but too bad, I''ll just have to do thatter... Though right now, I am more interested in how you managed to survive the internal destruction poison..." Now the voice contained a hint of curiosity.


    "Too bad I can''t hear that yet since this is merely a voice message..."


    "I''m sure you wondering why I sent you this voice message..."


    "... The truth is, I''m also wondering the same thing... It was a spur-of-the-moment thing, and may have been because I wanted to annoy you, or that I wanted to let you know that I was the one who sent someone to poison you, even though that wasn''t the n,"


    "... Or maybe, I wanted to tell you that we were the ones that took your girlfriend''s brother..."


    "Oops, I shouldn''t have told you that yet, but I''m pretty sure it wouldn''t have mattered anyway as you would have found out sooner orter,"


    "In case you don''t already know who "WE" are, here''s a little introduction..."


    "We are the Megas Uprising,"


    "Whether you know what we want or not..."


    "Don''t get in our way, or we will make you disappear..." the voice said with a dark tone.


    *Click* The phone sounded as the voice message ended, leaving a stunned-looking Davies who stared at the phone in disbelief,pletely shocked by the fact that the attempt on his life, the attack on hispany, as well as the kidnapping of Tisha''s brother, Romero, was all done by the same person... Or organization in this case.


    Also, those fuckers had some balls. Not only had they messed with him three times, but they had also even dared to send him a message to point him in their direction as if they were scared that he wouldn''t find out that they were the ones behind it.


    Though the way they had sent him a voice message to literally "snitch" on themselves, was kind of weird, and it smelled like there was something else behind it, it didn''t matter to Davies.


    He wasn''t by any means a hot-headed person, but there was no way in hell he was going to let this go.


    They had dared to call him and tell him not to get in their way after they had messed with his things and tried to kill him.


    "Heh... Hihihi," a cold chuckle escaped his lips and then a secondter it burst out into coldughter.


    "Hahahahahaa!"


    "Bring it on, fucking bastards," a cold whisper left his lips and his icy cold mana burst out from his body and swept across the room, freezing everything over... Even the mes.


    He slowly walked out of the room, everywhere he stepped turning into an icicle as he moved.


    With a newfound vigor to find the bastards that called themselves the Megas Uprising, he went up to the 140th floor in hopes of finding anything that could be used to find out anything about them that would be useful in finding them, but unluckily, he couldn''t find anything useful among the charred remains of those on the 140th floor either.


    "Tch..." he clicked his tongue in annoyance at not being able to find anything useful, but since he had already expected something like this, he wasn''t overly sad or distraught or anything of the sort.


    He knew that for an organization as big and powerful as the Megas Uprising to be making constant moves, they had something they were after, so sooner orter they would pop their heads out of whichever hole they were hiding in, and when that happened, they would leave traces that would help him to find them and be able to hammer their heads back into the ground once he did, but for now, he would focus on whatever else was an immediate problem while sharpening his ws, waiting for the opportune moment to strike.


    So, he began to make his way back down the stairs, he heard a loud banging noise and a rush of footstepsing his way.


    He didn''t bother pausing his footsteps as he already sensed familiar waves of manaing from Danie who was rushing up the stairs towards him.


    ''She already took care of the obstruction, huh?'' Davies wondered, hoping she managed to gain some information about the Megas Uprising from whoever she just fought.


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