《ASCENDANT: The Slinger With A System》 CHAPTER 1 - Teleportation In a resting room of a certain research laboratory of country Svearika, with deep blue floor tiles and matching colored bullnose base tiles. Three greyish white cotton sofas surrounded a sleek, two level glass table, made of almost transparent black glass. On one of the sofa lay a brown skinnned man, wearing a pair of rectangular glasses. He had on, a gingham blue and white shirt neatly folded above his elbows, black denims and black socks. The man faced a TV on one of the room''s walls, with two wooden doors on both of it''s sides. A deep blue crown cap rested on his chest, and, with his head comfortably cushioned he watched the news. It broadcast at a volume low enough for rest yet high enough for him to listen attentively. On the screen, a news reporter was currently talking, relaying the latest information. |¡±President Loenmyr of country Krajina has just returned from country Liberty where he met his homologues and returns with quote, positive news, as there was confirmation of a renewed additional financial support from country Liberty to assist in the ongoing war against country Ruthenia, end of citation¡­¡±| |¡±President Loenmyr also says¡­¡±| *Sigh* The person on the sofa, alone in the room sighed and started talking to himself. ¡°It¡¯s this again¡­ Will it end at all? And as if that was not enough, country Rae just had to start messing around too with Hzat, or was it the other way around? It doesn¡¯t even matter who started it at this point anyway. Just wars going on everywhere¡­¡± |¡±In other news, there has¡­¡±| As the news was still broadcasting, another man entered the room holding a brown office handbag in one hand and a vest coat folded on his other hand. ¡°Still complaining about the news Al?¡± The man started. Not waiting for a reply, he continued. ¡°I don¡¯t understand why you keep watching it when it just makes you sigh all the time.¡± ¡°Hey Rob. You going back already? You checked everything in the lab, right?¡± Al asked lazily without turning from the TV. ¡°Yeah¡­¡± Rob replied putting his handbag on one of the sofas. ¡°It¡¯s about time I left. Any more work and I can¡¯t say if I would be able to drive safely.¡± He added while putting on his coat. ¡°Also, you don¡¯t have to worry about the lab. Everything is fine in there.¡± He said as he arranged his coat. Rob was a white man around 25 years old, about 1.72 cm tall. He had on a white, long sleeved shirt and a tie beneath his formal grey coat. He also had dress pants held by a rectangular framed designer belt. He was currently standing while looking in the direction of the TV as he talked to Al, looking in his direction from time to time. ¡°It¡¯s not like I watch the news to complain.¡± Al started his reply. ¡°It just so happens that most of the time when I watch the news these days they talk about depressing stuff¡­¡± Al suddenly saw that there was a breaking news report on the screen with people carrying others running away from an absurdly high fire. Stretching his hand, he picked the remote from the table beside him and increased the volume of the TV while making a ¡°wait¡± gesture to Rob who by now had finished wearing his coat |¡±¡­flagration in the city of Kyrnac in country Kyrnaco. The fire seems to have originated from a petrol station explosion. There are currently no reported deaths but several wounded rescued amid the firefighters still trying to subdue the fire and search efforts not started yet.¡±| ¡°Deflagration? A gas station explosion? Man, how are you not already taking depression treatment while watching this kind of thing all the time?¡± Seeing what was happening on the TV and listening to the report, Rob asked while looking in Al¡¯s direction.Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. After all, he noticed how the news just went from one depressing thing to the next. He then seemed to think about something and looked at Al with an inquisitive gaze. ¡°Are you sure you don¡¯t watch the news just to be depressed?¡± Hearing Rob¡¯s question, Al looked at him strangely. ¡°Hah¡­ Never mind that was a strange thing to ask.¡± Rob said quickly with an apologetic smile on his face with his hand behind his head in a sheepish gesture. ¡°Anyway, do they have nothing else to report about? The world can¡¯t be all grime these days can it?¡± Rob seemingly asking himself said, trying to change the subject. To this, Al retorted with. ¡°There¡¯s sports¡­¡± Rob, recalling Al¡¯s lack of interest in sports countered. ¡°You have never been interested in sports.¡± Al, defended his past enthusiasm, reminiscing. ¡°That¡¯s not really true. I used to watch wrestling.¡± Rob immediately countered. ¡°Yeah ¡®used to¡¯, how long has it been?¡± Al lazily replied. ¡°Four years more or less. Stopped watching when Asuka ¡®lost¡¯-with quoting hand gestures- her winning streak, Styles lost his style and Reigns stopped reigning. I was also too busy at the time anyway.¡± Rob then inquired. ¡°Have you considered going out?¡± ¡°You know I don¡¯t ¡®go out¡¯. I¡¯d rather avoid crowded places as much as possible.¡± Al replied, steadfast in his preference for solitude. After a moment of contemplation, Rob gently suggested. ¡°You should go for consultation¡± Offended by the insinuation, Al quickly responded. ¡°I¡¯m not crazy.¡± Rob, with a worried look on his face implored. ¡°No one said you were. However, you have to make sure you are okay. Last time you said you are too bored to watch even animes anymore and now I hear this. I have to be worried.¡± Al said reassuringly. ¡°I read a lot of novels so I¡¯m good.¡± Rob asked further. ¡°You sure?¡± Al retorted. ¡°Why would I lie about reading novels?¡± Rob, with a serious tone in his voice and a slight frown said. ¡°Be serious. I¡¯m really worried about you.¡± Al, after a short pause, said in a resigned tone. ¡°¡­Don¡¯t worry. I¡¯ll be fine¡± Rob only sighed dejectedly after hearing that. ¡°You want a ride home?¡± He asked with some hope. Maybe he could bring him somewhere and just invite more people while there for a get together. Except- ¡°Nah. I¡¯m good. Besides, we don¡¯t even live in the same direction.¡± Al declined. Rob sighed again. ¡°See you on Monday then?¡± He said closing the topic as he hung the strap of his bag on his shoulder and started to walk towards the sliding glass door opposite the TV. ¡°I won¡¯t be here. I am on a break and it starts on Monday. I won¡¯t be here for the next 3 months if nothing pressing comes up.¡± Rob was surprised. ¡°You actually took a break?¡± ¡°The boss didn¡¯t give me a choice. Something about being the only one to not have rested since the pandemic or whatnot. I don¡¯t know where she got that. It¡¯s not like I don¡¯t sleep when I go home right?¡± Al replied. Somewhat distraught. Rob seemed to relax suddenly after hearing that and started chuckling before stifling a laugh about to erupt. ¡°Hahaha¡­ You are actually worried about going on a break.¡± ¡°You have been going full throttle for so long that you don¡¯t know how to relax anymore. I bet you have no idea what to do with those 3 months *cough* *cough* *cough*¡­¡± ¡°You find it that funny?¡± Al asked a little upset. ¡°*cough* *cough* Hahaha¡­ Of course. It is funny after all. Don¡¯t worry you¡¯ll be just fine.¡± Rob said while making his way through the glass door, still laughing. As Al raised his head to look at the departing Rob, he silently thought. ¡®He¡¯s the one that needs to consult, what¡¯s so funny about being forced to go on a break.¡¯ Suddenly Rob yelled from the garden¡¯s walkway. ¡°At the very least, you should not watch the news during your break.¡± ¡°What¡¯s he talking about? I have to stay informed¡­¡± Al muttered to himself. ¡°¡­And go home already.¡± Rob yelled just before leaving the walkway. A few seconds later, he finally changed channels. ¡®Maybe he¡¯s right about not watching the news. I¡¯m trying to take a break, not to be admitted into a mental facility.¡¯ After zapping through the channels continuously and mostly absentmindedly, Al finally stopped at a random channel. ¡®What should I watch? I¡¯ve gone through all the channels already.¡¯ On a random channel, he proceeded to lower the volume down to 10 exactly. He was obsessed with putting the volume at either an even number or a multiple of five exactly. He was now just staring at the moderately lit white ceiling of the room. He would of course love to go home but when he thought of the trip which he would have to take, and especially how difficult it is to get a taxi that goes to his neighborhood from his work place he just did not want to bother. Suddenly, he felt a little dizzy. He realized something was wrong. Since when did people go dizzy from just wanting to go home? At the very least, he could say with confidence that this was a first for him. What is worse is that the dizziness came to him while he was lying down. It would still pass if he were standing or at worst sitting but feeling dizzy while lying. That is a new one. ¡®I can¡¯t be that tired right?¡¯ He asked himself. At this time, he really wanted to be in his room, that way he could have an undisturbed rest. For a moment, he really contemplated it. Then, it happened. In an instant, he vanished from the sofa. The next moment, he appeared elsewhere, and the change in his surrounding made him snap out of his fatigue. His brow furrowed in cautious alarm. He stood up reflexively, his head jerking from side to side like an alert bird, and his eyes scanned the new location. The new place looked like his bedroom, making him relax his vigilance. However, before he could think any further, he collapsed on his bed, passing out from an assault of dizziness. [¡­] CHAPTER 2 - The System A few hours later, Al woke up in his bedroom feeling a little bit dazed or dizzy. He rubbed his face a little and cleared his eyes. Then, he felt the need to cool his head or even just his face so he slowly stood up from his lying position, wanting to go to his washroom. Before he knew it, he was already standing in front of his bathroom¡¯s mirror, his reflection staring back at him. ¡°Wha¡­¡° He exclaimed, almost moving back. He was immediately startled, and his dizzy state was gone like a lie. He was now more awake than ever. The situation was absurd. He had a confused expression on his face and it took him a moment to realize what was happening. He remembered how he got home earlier. ¡®Is this a dream?¡¯ This wasn¡¯t normal. ¡®But even in my vivid dreams, where I can even feel and taste, I¡¯ve never asked whether I was dreaming.¡¯ He kept thinking with a frown present on his face, and this clearly showed in his reflection in the mirror. ¡®I don¡¯t remember ever sleeping in a dream either.¡¯ For the next few minutes that followed, he tried several things to verify whether he was in a dream or not. He pinched himself, splashed water on his face, held his breadth¡­ He even went online to search for other ways to verify if he was dreaming. There was really some absurd stuff on the web, but he tried whatever he could. However, each new attempt only solidified the possibility that this was all real. . . . Sometime later. He was now sitting in a chair in the living room of his house, dazedly staring at the ceiling of the place. ¡®I guess this is not a dream then?¡¯ With this fact sinking in, a new budding feeling started growing in him. It was a spark of joy. It was still restrained and suppressed but it was there and it started growing. Nevertheless, as the scientist he is, he started making a few theories of how this new power could be working. After the theory came the testing. He removed his digital watch from his wrist and held it in his hand. Then, he switched to the timer feature of the watch and got ready for his tests. The test was to start the timer, teleport, and immediately stop it. He considered where to start and thought of returning to the bedroom first. With great anticipation, while holding the timer in his hand he pictured returning to his bed. It was instant. Before he knew it, he felt like he was dropped onto his bed. ¡°Wow!¡± That was the only thing he could say after a few seconds of being dazed. He was so surprised that he forgot to stop the timer. He had to redo the test. He thought of returning to the bathroom. *beep-beep* Al looked at the timer. [00:00:00:56] ¡°0.5 seconds¡­¡± Al muttered. Then he exclaimed. ¡°Point five seconds?! For that distance?¡± With a happy expression on his face Al said with a tinge of disbelief, ¡°Teleportation is insane.¡± He kept on trying different places in the house, with increasing ecstasy. He teleported to the living room, the bedroom, the washroom, the kitchen¡­ ¡°hahahahaha~¡± At some point he was even laughing like a madman. He started teleporting and taking poses. Teleporting to the ceiling and then teleporting to the ground with a superhero landing. Teleporting in the air with his leg up as if doing a bicycle kick. He had long forgotten that this was supposed to be an experiment and he just kept trying different things with his teleportation. At some point he felt the house was not enough and wanted to teleport outside to play more. Yes, play. He completely forgot this started as an experiment. Oddly enough, when he tried to teleport outside, the teleportation did not work. Two tries, three tries, nothing¡­ That quickly cooled him down. It was as if his expression glitched.This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there. ¡°Uh¡­ is it broken?¡± He tried teleporting in the house again and it worked. An expression of confusion occupied his face. ¡°Wait¡­ can I only teleport into and around the house? What would be the point of that?¡± He went to the door and left the house. Since it was night time, it was very dark outside with only the lights of the lamp poles and a few houses street lights to assist the moon in illuminating the surroundings. After walking a little he tried teleporting again, and¡­ it worked. He tried again, and it worked again. ¡®That¡¯s odd.¡¯ He thought. He continued trying and soon enough realized that the places he teleported to were all within the range of his vision. He thought of teleporting to the first place he teleported to that was outside his house. It took some time but it worked. He kept trying different things and soon enough, realized that he needed a clear picture of his destination in his mind for it to work. It wasn¡¯t just about thinking of the place, he had to visualize it, he had to ''see'' the place to go there. Having mostly calmed down from the earlier excitement, he made his way back home. He started walking back home, he decided to walk since he was not that far, and he wanted some time to think, and the fresh air of the night was really helpful. ¡®Having an ability is great and all but, what should I do with this? I mean sure, it will save me a lot on transport cost and the time I try to get a taxi but nothing more¡­ ¡® Thinking of this, he remembered the things he kept seeing on the news recently. ¡®Nothing more? Is that really the case?¡¯ He asked himself. ¡®Maybe with this, I can finally help some people. With this ability, even if just a little I can reduce the number of people who have to suffer for no reason other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I can be the one who is there for them.¡¯ He could not stop disasters from happening but he would try to save all those that he could reach. At the very least, he would be a damage controller. He started entertaining the thought more and more and was in no time lost in thoughts. Suddenly- ¡°Ah... I think I left my belongings at work.¡± He made a teleportation trip to his workplace. He picked his backpack that was on the mat leaning against the table, as well as his shoes that were on the floor by the sofa he was lying on earlier. Then he returned home, he teleported directly in his room. When he reappeared, the room was dark. He had turned the lights off in the house when he was leaving to test the teleportation outside. It was at this time that he finally noticed the purple-light square present at the top right corner of his sight. When he tried moving in the direction of the light, it moved along with him. Whether he turned his head or simply walked in its direction, it moved with him. This made him ask himself. ¡®When did I become a cat to be chasing after dots of light?¡¯ He then came up with the idea of trying to focus and teleport directly to the light. How is that any different from what a cat would do one might ask. The answer is very simple. Cats cannot teleport. That is just common sense. As he tried to focus on the light, before he could even teleport, it popped up and expanded into a holographic window. This sudden development startled him. ¡®The light was an icon?¡¯ He felt very stupid at this time. To such an extent that he felt like hiding. Lucky for him that he was currently alone. Not that anyone would have understood why he felt stupid anyway. . The window was a see through/transparent, deep-purple window with flowery patterns at its edges. It had a Close (?) button and a Minimize (-_) button, both at the top right of the window. In no time, the loading window shifted to another window. The next window as if waiting came right after. [¡­] [Binding Request] [Do You Authorize Binding?] He saw the System¡¯s pop-ups. All the windows that came up were silent or rather voiceless since there was a pitch less *click* sound with every appearance and change of the windows. [Binding Request Pending] Strangely enough, he could clearly see and read the text on the windows as if his brain had forgotten about his myopia problem. Not that he was complaining about that. ¡°What should I do? Why would I suddenly get a System of all things?¡± Al then took a strange posture with his left hand crossed under his right hand, which was in turn holding his chin. A thoughtful posture that was somewhat of a comical posture. However, he easily adopted comical gestures when he was happy, and it just so happened that becoming a teleporter made him happy, and getting a System put him over the moon. Who in this day and age didn¡¯t know about a System or want one of those. With a System, he would, in no time become a real superhero. It was no surprise that he quickly accepted the binding. ¡®(Authorize binding)¡¯ He replied excitedly. [Binding Starting¡­] With that, a rapidly charging loading bar popped up. After which- {Successful] [You have become a ¡®Player¡¯] The windows just kept popping and then closing. Then- [Loading Status¡­] ¡®Finally!¡¯ He exclaimed inwardly. STATUS [NAME: AKROAT¨ªS SOF¨®S ALTAIR ROHAN] [LEVEL : 1 ] [RACE : HUMAN ] [TITLE(S) : PLAYER?? ] [CLASS : NONE ] [HEALTH : 25 ] [ENERGY : -/- ] [STRENGTH : 8 ] [AGILITY : 8 ] [VITALITY : 5 ] [INTELLIGENCE : 16 ] [SENSE : 1 ] [POINTS : 0 ] ¡®Strange numbers.¡¯ Altair thought. ¡®I wonder what each stat represents qualitatively. What exactly is the difference between 1 in strength and 2 in strength?¡¯ ¡®Why does my ENERGY show as blank?¡¯ As he was in his muses, the next prompt came up. [? Requesting Body Reconstruction Permission ?] ¡®A body reconstruction huh. Hmmm, why not?¡¯ Just as he was about to accept, a red prompt came up. [?? Caution Advised ??] ¡®Why the sudden warning?¡¯ He wondered. [Accept--/--Decline] The System¡¯s window just stood before him. Silent and without reaction or change, giving him no response. In the silence of the room, he examined his body. He suddenly got a lightbulb moment. ¡°Ah! The calories! It¡¯s probably because of that.¡± Altair was not exactly thin or scrawny. Instead, he appeared rather lean, courtesy of the light exercise he did on a regular basis. He goes for a run at least three times every week and does a few stretches before returning home. He also developed a habit of eating simple foods not rich in fats and oils. However, even with this habit, he was addicted to a certain brand of filled biscuits from country Numidia on the Alkebulan continent, branded MAXON. All these things combined, ended in him having a body that was neither fat nor thin. However, he turned out fit but his body lacked the clear muscle definition that would usually imply fitness. ¡®I should probably take some food first. Those kilocalories must be important if I get a warning for not having them. I¡¯d rather not finish just finding myself looking like a skeleton or dying because I ignored a warning.¡¯ With this thought, he teleported to his kitchen. ¡®Teleportation is really convenient.¡¯ He thought with a smile. In the kitchen, he slowly started to eat any light foods high in calories and easy to eat that he set his sight on. Milk, cereals, biscuits, cakes, fruit juice, fruits, more milk¡­ Of course, despite his best attempt and efforts, he quickly got full after a few minutes of eating. His stomach felt bloated and he felt like he could not even walk. ¡®Pregnancy must really suck. I never want to experience that.¡¯ Seeing that he could no longer take in anything, he returned to his room with another teleportation. He laid flat on the ceramic floor and decided it was time. For a moment, he contemplated increasing his diet. ¡°Maybe I should fatten up for the week before doing this.¡± However, he was too excited and even impatient to see what the system could do. ¡®I don¡¯t think I could stand this anticipation for a whole week.¡¯ He wanted to explore the System but could not do so because nothing he did would close or minimize the window of the body reconstruction message. This prevented him from any further exploration of the System. ¡®Ah, whatever. (Accept)¡¯ CHAPTER 3 - Body Reconstruction ¡®Ah, whatever. (Accept)¡¯ [Body reconstruction in 3 seconds] [3] [2] [1] Looking at the countdown, his anticipation of what was to come grew stronger with each count. After the countdown finished, the message announcing the start of the body reconstruction surfaced. [Initiating Body Reconstruction¡­] When the body reconstruction started, he first felt funny, it was a little ticklish, making him almost chuckle. However, it did not take long before he started feeling itchy. Then followed a very intense pain. The skin on his body started undulating; a black jelly fluid slowly appeared on different parts of his body as it left from within. It seemed as though the black jelly substance emanated from inside, judging from some protrusions caused by the undulations. He felt as if his body was repeatedly squeezing and twisting from the inside, as if his body was undergoing a melding process reminiscent of the working process of moist soft clay. The black jelly substance on his body slowly kept increasing. The scene of it leaving his body was like seeing pus squeezed out. Except for the fact that the substance was jelly and pitch black. He felt the pain on his body was too much. However, he still did his best to endure. Wanting to witness the whole body-reconstruction. As if the pain throughout his skin was not enough, a piercing and tearing headache assaulted him. He felt like his brain was torn, and the torn parts turned around inside his head and welded back together The pain was excruciating. He started clutching his head, squeezing it even, as if trying to massage his brain through his skull. In his pain, he squirmed uncontrollably, frantically kicking things around as he writhed in pain on the ground. It did not help him however and he started screaming in agony. *aaaahhh~* It was a high-pitched scream telling of how much pain he was going through. Even a highly apathetic person hearing him would probably empathize with him when hearing the shriek of pain that he let out. A bystander might as well feel some of his pain just from hearing him cry in pain. The pain in his head was so intense that for a moment he felt like the pain around his body was gone. This did not last for long however, all over his body his bones started breaking down. His hands that were pressing on his skull went limp. Just in time, since the bones of his hands melted down around the same time as his skull, it prevented him from squeezing and crushing his brain. His entire body went limp with the melting of the rest of his bones, leaving only his muscles to twitch, as he could not writhe anymore. Lying there in a flake of the black substance and twitching the way he did, he looked miserable. The reconstruction of his respiratory system started, he started vomiting blood mixed with the slimy/jelly black substance. There was a sound that sounded like a mixture of gagging and gurgling. Even his vocal cords started reforming and he even lost his voice. The earlier scream sounding now more like a squealing pant or a wheeze of pain at this point. He looked even more miserable with tears falling from his eyes while not able to scream his pain out despite everything he did.The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. During all this, due to the pain assaulting him, he did not have a thought to spare for anything. Not even being able to question whether he had done the right choice by hastening things or even regret his decision of accepting the body reconstruction at all. This level of pain was far above what he had ever felt. He had never even thought he would go through this kind of pain in his entire life. Therefore, he quickly got to the limit of what he could endure. His body stopped moving, the body reconstruction gradually slowed down. His breathing stopped. Altair had passed out. Even in his passed-out state, the System did not stop the body reconstruction. After working on his tissues and the few non-vital organs, it was time for the lungs. When the reconstruction of the lungs started, his breathing stopped. For a few seconds he was not breathing at all. After the lungs was the heart. By this time, his breathing resumed but it was much lower and almost unnoticeable. The reconstruction of the heart started from the base, and continued upwards. All the muscles of the heart underwent destruction and reworking. All the tubes remained unaffected at first. After the muscles, it was the turn of the tubes. All arteries and veins also underwent reconstruction. While these arteries and veins were reconstructing, the pumping of blood slowed down, to the point that it went from the normal 11 kilometers per hour, which peaked around 30 kilometers per hour during body reconstruction, to now slowing down to 5 kilometers per hour of circulation speed. Without the heart muscles contracting to pump blood, the speed was merely due to inertia of the already moving blood. Eventually, even the heart reconstruction was complete and the speed of blood circulation went back up. The body reconstruction continued for a couple of minutes more before it stopped. . . . A few hours later, Altair woke up. He felt completely refreshed physically. Although he still thought he felt some pain. He was scared of moving. Afraid to discover that he had not survived the reconstruction. ¡®That was a stupid thing to do.¡¯ Altair thought, reflecting on his hastiness in accepting the body reconstruction. He still had some lingering fear. What if he tried standing up and discovered that his body was still laying on the ground while his spirit stood up? He also thought of how painful it was to go through body reconstruction. ¡®Was the pain part of the reason for the warning?¡¯ He stayed laying on the ground for a moment, completely dazed and lost in thoughts. After some time just lying there, he came back to his senses. ¡°*Ugh*. How long has it been?¡± He uttered with a tired tone after an uncomfortable grunt. However, immediately after inhaling back in from talking, he let out a disgusted grunt before asking himself. ¡°*Ugh!*. What is that smell?¡± He finally noticed the smell around him. ¡®A bath. I need a bath.¡¯ He told himself. He ran to the bathroom, slipping and almost falling while going. Once in the bathroom, he opened the shower to the highest pressure. He then switched the tap to warm water and rapidly removed his clothes, tearing his shirt¡¯s buttons in his haste, and throwing the clothes to the side, on the floor. After a few seconds under the water as well as abusing his scented liquid soap, the smell became bearable with the spread of the soap¡¯s smell in the bathroom. As he left the shower, he started checking his body for any changes while walking towards the mirror in the bathroom. *ppffp* He spluttered the water from his lips and passed his hand over his face to sweep some of the falling water. ¡°I don¡¯t see much change.¡± Altair muttered. ¡®My muscles seem more outlined. I think I¡¯ve become thinner as well¡­ but, there¡¯s nothing else¡­¡¯ He was still a brown-skin-tone male human, with short (~8 cm) deep-black hair. ¡®Good, I¡¯m still black. It would be really problematic to explain how I suddenly changed my skin color if that was no longer the case.¡¯ His face was still average looking. Having a small face with small squinty/eastern eyes, small boneless nose, and almost sharp cheeks on a slightly curved but mostly square face. The face sharpened at the sides of his small flat chin, which was still beardless but was now as smooth as his forehead. Overall, he toned up slightly and his body attained better balance but he had become much thinner. He appeared to be just muscles on bones with a very thin layer of skin that now outlined his muscles very clearly. The biggest change he soon realized was in his vision, which had now improved greatly. He now had excellent eyesight and this realization brought a complicated expression on his face. ¡®So, this is how people with good eyesight see the world.¡¯ He thought not knowing really how to feel. More so, when he thought of the difficult times he went through due to his severe myopia. It was so bad that he qualified as legally blind even though he could see. He could still remember a doctor telling him that it was too late to try fixing his eyesight when he went for his latest consultation. Apparently, he missed the best bracket for treatment that was before the age of five. Now, his brain had mostly adapted to the low level of vision and a drastic change to his vision would negatively affect his brain. Having resigned himself to this fact for a long time, he had stopped consulting ophthalmologists altogether. He took some time to test his new vision. He was shocked as this was like a bug to him. Tears unconsciously fell from his eyes. ¡®If only my eyesight had always been this good¡­¡¯ He inwardly thought as he closed his eyes seeing so many other ways his life would have gone. He could not be bothered with the system at this moment because emotions overwhelmed him. . After some time, he eventually calmed down. After all, even though he was very emotional about his eyesight improving, he still had to check what other changes the body reconstruction had brought him. Seeing that there were no other physical changes after some more observation, his attention was back to the system and he proceeded to check his status. ¡®(Status)¡¯ STATUS [NAME: AKROAT¨ªS SOF¨®S ALTAIR ROHAN] [LEVEL : 1 ] [RACE : HUMAN ] [TITLE(S) : PLAYER?? ] [CLASS : NONE ] [HEALTH : 100 ] [MANA : 256 ] [STRENGTH : 10 ] [AGILITY : 10 ] [VITALITY : 10 ] [INTELLIGENCE : 16 ] [SENSE : 10 ] [POINTS : 0 ] CHAPTER 4 - Vonlunteer Looking at his stats, he saw that he was right about the sense of balance that he felt earlier. All his physical stats were now at 10. It felt very comfortable. ¡®I¡¯ll find a gym later to check what the physical stats represent quantitatively.¡¯ ¡®It would even be better if it is one without cameras so that I can test my limits at night with no one watching.¡¯ ¡®For now, I should clean the bedroom of that substance.¡¯ Thinking this, he took a bunch of toilets roll that he wrapped around his face to cover his nose from the smell, and with the towel around his waist, he walked into the bedroom for a change of clothes. With how foul the smell was, he only persisted enough to quickly and randomly pick something to wear before leaving the room as if running away. Then, with a simple T-shirt, denim trousers, and a pair of sandals, he left the house to purchase a vacuum cleaner. That thing deserved more respect than his usual mop and bucket of water. The jelly substance was so foul that, if not for it being black and not solid, he might have thought it was thioacetone. ¡®It smells like a mixture of putrescine and cadaverine¡­ maybe there is some butyric acid in there as well. I think it actually smell worse than thioacetone.¡¯ Because of the foul smell, he decided that he would use a vacuum cleaner to do the first part of the cleaning. . It was quite late now, around 3 a.m. in the morning and thus he had to teleport to different places while searching for a store that was open 24 hours. ¡®I didn¡¯t think this through, I should have checked online for shops that stay open 24 hours before leaving the house.¡¯ Once at the store, he saw the price tags attached to the vacuum cleaners and immediately, he felt like confronting the smell of the jelly substance instead. ¡®I knew there was a reason why I didn¡¯t have one of those. What kind of price is that?¡¯ He roamed through the store¡¯s shelves some more and settled for just protective and cleaning equipment. He thought of borrowing some from the lab at his workplace but ultimately decided against it. In the end, he just bought a protective respiratory mask and hazmat suit with gloves and boots, opting to do the cleaning by hand. ¡®I can¡¯t believe I just spent 2000 Crowns just like that. Still better than the alternative.¡¯ Carrying his items, he cashed them out and once out of sight, he teleported home. At home, he put on his outfit and with that, he went to his bedroom and started gathering the substance using his mop. He squeezed it in an empty bucket and flushed each full bucket down the water closet. After clearing the substance off the floor, he thoroughly mopped the floor several times with a new mop and some soapy detergent, further reducing the smell. Later, he opened the windows of the bedroom in order to allow air circulation and sprayed some perfume into the room before leaving, closing the door behind him. . Altair was now sitting in the living room of the house and habitually he turned on the TV to watch the news channel. On the screen, Altair watched as the report was about what was going on in Kyrnac city following the recent deflagration that happened there. The time on the TV showed 4 a.m. |¡°As the fire fighters continue in their attempts to subdue the fire and stop its spread, the people have gathered rescue teams and increased their efforts in trying to recover people that could be in the wreckage of the explosion¡­¡±| ¡®What am I doing here when people need help there? I¡¯ve never been to Kyrnac before¡­ if so, I could just teleport there.¡¯ ¡®I wish I were there-¡¯ --- ¡®-now.¡¯ Altair was in his thoughts when he discovered that he had changed locations.This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. The calm air of his house was now replaced by a much hotter one, and even the air he breathed now felt ashy. In his line of sight, he could see smoke and dust everywhere. ¡®Again?¡¯ He frowned, realizing that he had teleported. However, he found the place looked familiar. Looking at his ruined surroundings, he realized. ¡®This is¡­ Kyrnac? I can do something like this?¡¯ The first thing that came to his mind was the fact that he could teleport even to places he had never been to. Following which, he started running in the direction of the wreckage where he saw other people. Since he was already here, he should help first and think of other things later. But before he could get far, he heard a shout near him which got his attention. ¡°Hey!¡± Altair heard someone call out and reflexively turned in the person¡¯s direction after halting his run. ¡°You can¡¯t go in there like that right now, it¡¯s not safe.¡± Altair looked at himself and he was wearing a T-shirt, denims, and¡­ sandals. The man gestured to a reflective jacket and a helmet. When the man saw Altair listened to him and was coming in his direction, he seemed to calm down somewhat and kept talking. ¡°Wear these, you will see others and the can see you too.¡± The jacket was yellow with grey reflecting strips and the helmet had a light at the front. Noticing his sandals, the man said. ¡°You also need shoes.¡± Altair nodded and took the jacket from him to put on, as well as a pair of boots. As the man looked at him, he said. ¡°You¡¯re calm, that¡¯s good. Even if you are looking for someone in there, it won¡¯t help to just rush in.¡± ¡°Get in a team or form one. When you¡¯re in there you will need help to move things around when you find people.¡± Altair quietly listened to the man¡¯s instructions as he put on the jacket and wore the plastic boots, and then he started looking around, seeing the few people that were there quickly forming teams to go in together towards the wreckage. ¡°Thank you.¡± He said simply and took off in a jog, to find a group he could join. . It did not take long for Altair to join a rescue team and they moved towards the wreckage together. From time to time, someone in the team with a loud voice would call out for anyone around needing rescue, and the team would listen for a few seconds as everyone steadily moved forward. ¡°Hey~! Can someone hear me~?!¡± ¡°Hey~! Anyone~?!¡± They kept this up for a while, surveying a large area without rest and only finding two people. They continued searching the area, sweeping the area several times more in hopes of finding anyone, whether alive or even dead, so that the family or the relatives would at least know the status of their loved ones. The atmosphere in the team was gloomy, and although people¡¯s spirits were somewhat lifted when they found someone, there was not much joy showing. Even without any prior understanding among the team members, someone took on the task of reassuring the rescued people before questioning them. Asking what would help in rescuing others. ¡°Can you hear me?¡± ¡­ ¡°Do you feel pain anywhere?¡± ¡­ ¡°What do you remember?¡± ¡­ ¡°Were there other people with you?¡± ¡­ ¡°Where were you when the accident happened?¡± ¡°Do you remember if there were people around you at the time?¡± The questioning went on while Altair examined the state of the person rescued. Following the short question and answer, Altair would finish the first aid, and depending on the state of the person, two or more people would carry them in a makeshift stretcher to the temporary camp for further treatment. The stretcher was just a torn blanket or drape that was tied and fastened around sticks. In the case of the two people that were rescued by Altair¡¯s team, he had to accompany them to the camp along with the people who were carrying, in order to monitor their state and report what he had done and what the rescued people reported. ¡°I bandaged this place like this because¡­¡± ¡°He said he felt pain in¡­¡± Altair reported to the people under the tents what first aid he performed in addition to what he did some things, trying to ensure there was no miscommunication for the best assistance of the rescued. Altair just did his best along with the team to be of help. It was the first time he found himself in this kind of situation and no one in the team really had any experience with this kind of situation either, so they all tried to coordinate to be of use as much as possible. They were all volunteers, no one being there with ulterior motives in that situation. The only advantage he had, being the fact that he had some basic medical experience. As time kept moving, everyone put in a lot of effort. They looked sharply around them, slowly moving their flashlights around while they listened attentively, pushing through the night until the break of dawn. Other volunteers moved around distributing sachets of water for the rescuer teams to drink, along with some words of encouragement. Altair accepted the sachet of water and the words of encouragement, quenching the thirst he had not even noticed before continuing to move around with his team. More and more professionals kept arriving at the site, gradually replacing and relieving the present volunteer teams, starting with the medics and the other individuals at the camp. The people arriving also brought with them better and safer equipment to facilitate the search and rescue efforts. With the arrival of the CSC, Coalition de Soins Compatissants, a non-governmental organization originating from country Gaul, a country on the Evros continent, the first aid teams in the temporary tents were relieved. Along with the arrival of the medical teams and professional rescue teams, more journalists also arrived. Some, set up their equipment for broadcast while others just noted on their notepads. From the fact that most of them just stood away from the chaos to their clean and neat appearances. They stood out quite a lot in contrast to the devastation around them, and as if wanting to stand out even more, some of them actually took the time to do their make up before starting their broadcasts. The radio station journalists did not seem as concerned about their appearances and started preparing their reports as soon as their equipment was set, they moved towards the temporary camps and tried asking questions to anyone that had time to answer them. From the TV station vehicles, some went down to collect information, and when the journalist was ready, they gave them the information collected before the report could start. Altair watched them for a short time while moving around with his team and felt irritated at what he saw. It seemed to him that, for some of them, this was just another story to tell. ¡®This isn¡¯t just another story to tell, it¡¯s a crisis to end.¡¯ He thought in annoyance. CHAPTER 5 - How Does This Work? After being relieved along with his team, Altair heard while passing by one of the radio reporters that volunteers had rescued 84 people, all having varying levels of injuries, and that an additional eight people were already dead when found and still waiting to be identified. Altair did not know if that was a lot or too little, he did not know how many people were present in the vicinity at the time the accident occurred since it happened around midnight of coordinated time (CT). What he knew however, was that the team he was in, had only found two people in their search. ¡®Even after working through the night, in the end that is all we could do.¡¯ Altair thought this with clenched fists and a sad expression on his face as he kept walking. While he was in his thoughts, just like with other teams before his team, someone directed them towards the new camp. They were all dirty with soot and dust all over their faces and clothes. The gloves on their hands, showed signs of wear, with the gloves grazed in many places and looking worn-out from all the lifting they did in the ruins. Under one of the tents arranged like an office, the team met with some people that were there for a debriefing of sorts. The professionals under this tent/office asked them to recount to the best of their ability what they did, the places they went to and other stuff like how stable the places were. The team made some kind of verbal report and people were noting what they said and recording them. Apparently, every little detail was important and they needed to give as much information as possible. ¡°We understand that you¡¯re tired after working through the night but please just bear with us for a while.¡± ¡°Everything you tell us will help us in providing better assistance to those waiting for help in there.¡± Altair¡¯s team began reporting their activities, highlighting unstable areas and various other details. From time to time, the professionals would ask them some questions for clarifications. Altair saw that there were two people around an enlarged map and that as the volunteers talked or reported, those two would occasionally circle some spots and add some abbreviations or numbers to them. After finishing the report, they all left the tents area in order to find a place to rest. Given the circumstances, no one was really in the mood to suggest a get together so they went their separate ways, their fatigue only now catching up with them. . After separating from the team, Altair kept walking away from the ruined site, and once in a place that he judged safe, he teleported away. In the distance, the sun was just beginning to peak over the horizon. Looking in the distance, he thought, ¡®Is it that late already. Looks like it¡¯s already 7 a.m.¡¯ . He reappeared in his home and slumped on a couch in front of the TV, and quickly fell asleep after doing so. . A few hours later, he woke up from his sleep, still feeling a little tired and lethargic. Since he did not feel like moving, he rearranged himself on the couch to face upwards, with his head facing the ceiling of the room. ¡®The way I suddenly appeared in Kyrnac even though I¡¯ve never been there in my life makes me wonder. How exactly does this teleportation ability work? What is the limit?¡¯ He stayed lying on the couch thinking of various possibilities. After some time, he stood up from the couch and walked to the bathroom with the intention of splashing some water on his face. When he got there, a certain familiar foul smell assaulted his nostrils and dispelled his grogginess. ¡®This again? Right, I forgot to throw away the clothes and just left them on the floor.¡¯ He picked the clothes he had left on the floor to put in a plastic bag and sealed it shut. He used some warm water to brush off the remaining smell on the floor. After doing all this, he remembered his purpose for coming to the bathroom. ¡®Well, I¡¯m well awake now.¡¯ He thought with a self-deprecating smile. Since he was already in the bathroom, he took a bath before returning to the living room. Later, while sitting on the couch in changed clothes, he started wondering. ¡®Is it possible that I don¡¯t need to have gone to a place, and I just have to see the destination to appear there?¡¯ With this line of thought, he picked his phone and typed a location in the browser¡¯s search bar. |Lutetia¡­| Doing so showed several results about the city of Lutetia or as the Gaulish called it Lut¨¨ce. He switched to image search and started looking through the locations. One place in particular stood out, the Gustave tower. As the most famous destination in the city of love, there were many results with it in the view. He willed it, and the next instant he appeared there. Although it was morning, with many people rushing to their various destinations, no one really noticed his sudden appearance in the place. Nonetheless, he quickly willed it and reappeared in his house¡¯s living room. He was excited seeing that he could teleport to a place just by having an image of the location. ¡®So, it¡¯s really possible.¡¯ He inwardly thought, ecstatic at the possibilities this offered. He took his phone again and typed in another location in his navigator¡¯s search bar. |Dibei¡­| Again, he browsed through images and quickly choose another location, this time less prominent, and as before, he willed it and he appeared there instantly. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.This time, he remained in the area, taking a moment to explore his surroundings. He decided to move around to confirm a few details and gain a better understanding of the environment. However, after staying in the place a little, he found that he could not really do much. The major thing hindering being the language barrier. The people of Dibei mostly spoke Safaitic and he knew nothing of the language. He teleported and left the place to return home again. Checking several locations around the world, he confirmed his ability to teleport to any location, not only through visualization but also by using a picture of the desired place. Time slowly passed, and he forgot about other stuff but after some time, he eventually calmed down. ¡®I thought I would have to travel to different places before I could become a super-hero but this makes things much easier.¡¯ Altair thought elated. Thinking of his super-hero idea, his thoughts returned to the System he had almost forgotten about. He focused on the System¡¯s icon in a corner of his vision and it expanded, opening the System¡¯s interface. He had not been able to go through the System earlier because of the body reconstruction notification that prevented him. After that, with everything that was going on, he had almost forgotten about it. He started browsing through the System but there was not much to see. When the System¡¯s icon enlarged, it first loaded. [¡­] Immediately after, it showed a greeting. [Greetings to the ¡®Player¡¯] Following the greeting, the Status tab appeared again before him. STATUS [NAME: AKROAT¨ªS SOF¨®S ALTAIR ROHAN] [LEVEL : 1 ] [RACE : HUMAN ] [TITLE(S) : PLAYER?? ] [CLASS : NONE ] [HEALTH : 100 ] [MANA : 256 ] [STRENGTH : 10 ] [AGILITY : 10 ] [VITALITY : 10 ] [INTELLIGENCE : 16 ] [SENSE : 10 ] [POINTS : 0 ] ¡®Nothing seems to have changed¡¯ He thought before looking to the side. Beside the status panel, there were three other icons with different drawings on them. Focusing on it, he enlarged the first icon. When it expanded, it showed to be an inventory tab. The inventory tab was large, and like the Status tab, it was a deep blue transparent tab with flowery patterns at its edges. At the top right, it had a Close (?) and a Minimize (_) button. It also had several small square grid boxes with each having a smaller triangle at their bottom right corner. Inside the triangles was the number 0 for all of them. Wanting to test how the inventory worked and what its limits were, he started going around the house trying to put things of different sizes into the inventory. From a simple pen, to the bed in his room. Then he went around the house putting everything in the house to check the number limit of the items the inventory could carry. However, even after emptying the house of all its items, the inventory did not stop accepting items even when he put the clothes he was wearing in the inventory. For a brief moment, he just stood in his house that was completely empty of everything it had ever had. ¡®Hmmm¡¯ He willed it and the clothes reappeared on his body as if they were game items, which equipped without having to wear them slowly. ¡®I was just trying but it actually worked?¡¯ Looking at the empty house, he thought. ¡®I wanted to rearrange the place anyway, this works just fine for me.¡¯ He went around the house removing the items from the Inventory, putting them where he wanted them. With just a thought, the items just appeared where he wanted them to be. They always appeared within a 1-meter distance from him or in contact with him and he could not bring out anything to appear further than 1 meter from him. Although the names of the items in the Inventory did not appear anywhere, somehow, he was able to know which item was in each Inventory grid just by wanting to know. More than the name appearing in his mind, he just knew which item it was exactly. He could also bring out items as long as he knew they were there even without having to look at the Inventory. With both the Status and Inventory icons expanded into tabs, he could still see two icons. He willed it, and the next icon opened. As it expanded, he saw a Shop tab. The items appeared in a ''content'' view, but everything looked so pixelated that he could not even make out the shape of the items'' icons, not to mention their names and prices. A single line of text overlaid the contents of the Shop tab. [Conditions not met.] That was the only thing readable on the Shop tab now. Seeing that he could do nothing about the situation, he focused on the last icon he saw. For some reason it was flashing in an orange light. He opened the flashing tab and it was a Quest tab. The design was similar to the other tabs. All the System showed was an Inventory tab, a Shop tab, a Status tab and a Quest tab. With all the tabs open as they currently were, they appeared side by side, all four deployed in a semi cylindrical style, with Altair standing in the center of this cylinder. ¡®A Quest tab? Why is it blinking, and why is it orange when everything else is blue?¡¯ He thought. When he opened the Quest tab, he saw the dreadful words that he would soon come to hate. CHAPTER 6 - The Daily Quest When Altair opened the Quest tab, the information on it appeared in a ¡®content¡¯ view, instead of the ¡®grid¡¯ view appearance of the Inventory tab. There was currently only one item on the Quest tab, [Daily Quest], and it flashed in an orange color in front of him. He willed it, and it expanded into another tab, shifting the other four tabs to the left and right, and taking center place. While it immediately stopped flashing, the tab did not return to being blue, and instead stayed orange. The Daily Quest, showed a digital timer at the top, and it was currently counting down. [13:50:30] [13:50:29] [13:50:28] After looking at the time on his watch, Altair wondered. ¡®From the way it¡¯s going down, I have 13 hours left to begin this Daily Quest¡­ Does that mean it started at 1 a.m.?¡¯ ¡®Is that around the time I first accessed the System¡­? Well, 13 hours should be enough for whatever this quest is.¡¯ Below the time was the information about the Daily Quest. [Daily Quest : Routine of the strong ] [Push-up, 100 times : Incomplete (0/100) ] [Sit-up, 100 times : Incomplete (0/100) ] [Squats, 100 times : Incomplete (0/100) ] [Running, 10 km : Incomplete (0/10) ] [Quest Reward: Full status recovery (¢ª1), Points (¢ª3), Random loot box. ] [Quest Failure: Moving to Penalty Zone ] ¡®Routine of the strong? Can Systems be pretentious too? Well, seems easy enough, I¡¯ll just do it later.¡¯ Feeling hungry, he teleported to the kitchen to have some food. Altair remembered that he had not eaten anything since the body reconstruction, so he wondered why his body did not protest despite how thin he had become. While waiting for the food to get ready, he took his phone and went online to start reading novels. . Later, when he finished eating, he turned on the TV again, to watch the news. ¡°I am bored.¡± He said slumped on the couch while looking at the TV. ¡°What do I often do on my weekends anyway?¡± Being so dedicated to his work, Altair seldom spends time at home. On weekends, when he is not working, he focuses on keeping the house clean. However, today, this task was quicker thanks to the System¡¯s Inventory. Instead of shifting things around to clean some areas, he just moved all the furniture to his inventory and cleaned more thoroughly, resulting in the whole cleaning of the house taking less time than usual. In addition, as someone who likes being alone so much, he also has no relationship, no friend, and even though he had no problem with his family, he lives away from them and does not contact them often. Consequently, the fact that he finished his tasks so early today meant that he had a lot of free time on his hands. With the TV currently reporting about miscellaneous things like sports, he zapped through the channels to land on a music-streaming channel. As he listened to the music playing, he soon fell asleep in front of the TV. He slept for less than an hour, but when he woke back up, he felt very energetic. ¡®Might as well do the Daily Quest now.¡¯ He thought in his refreshed state. He went to his bedroom, where he switched his clothes to put on a jogging outfit. He then walked out of the house, thinking of starting his exercise with jogging to complete the 10 km run. Seeing how sunny it was, he thought looking at his watch.If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. ¡®Won¡¯t people think something is wrong with me if they see me jogging at 11 a.m. with the sun out?¡¯ He teleported back home and looked for a place where it was still around 5 a.m. |Countries 6 hours behind Svearika with moderate weather in December¡­| From the list of regions that appeared, he chose Karukera, an island country of the Lesser Antilles, most famous for its beautiful waters. He chose a place in the capital, Bast¨¨. The sky was still dark, and the air was fresh, so he started jogging while looking for a park. ¡®Although I don¡¯t know the place, I¡¯ll probably eventually get to a park if I just run right?¡¯ He thought after picking a direction towards which to jog. After some time, he opened the System to look at his progress. [Running, 10 km : Incomplete (0/10) ] ¡®What?¡¯ He stopped running, then, he looked around him. He was definitely not in the same place he started a few minutes ago. ¡®What have I been doing for the last 30 minutes then?¡¯ He asked himself as he huffed lightly, looking at the timer on his wristwatch. Thinking about it, even if he was slow, he would at least have covered a third of the distance. Since he was already near a park, he decided to put the problem aside and try the other tasks of the Quest. He started doing some stretches while wondering what could be the problem. ¡®I¡¯ll try the other exercises first and see.¡¯ With that line of thought, he went down and started his push-ups while silently counting in his mind. After the first set of 40, he stopped to take a rest before continuing. Meanwhile, he opened the System again to check the Quest progress. [Push-up, 100 times : Incomplete (17/100) ] ¡®You¡¯re kidding!!!¡¯ Altair almost snapped. ¡®I did 40.¡¯ He thought, trying to calm his rising irritation at the System. After resting a little, he returned to the ground, and this time without closing the Daily Quest tab, he started the exercise again. He noticed that in the beginning, the System counted each push-up he did. However, after some push-ups, it alternated greatly between which push-up it counted and which it did not. He stopped and stood back up. ¡®What could be the problem?¡¯ He stared at the place he did the push-ups. However, he saw nothing wrong with the place. ¡®Then the problem must be with me. Am I doing it wrong?¡¯ ¡®Doing it wrong¡­ is it the form? Does this thing consider the form when doing the exercises? Wait, then¡­ does that mean for the 10 km run I have to literally run 10 km? Who can even do that?¡¯ This way, he returned to the ground and started doing the push-ups again, this time paying attention to his form while doing so. The excitement of having the System started to leave him at this time. ¡®First that painful body reconstruction and now this torture¡­¡¯ He thought while begrudgingly doing the push-ups. He had a very unwilling expression on his face while doing the exercises now. After a long time, nearly 30 minutes, he was done with the push-ups; the sky was already clearing up at this time. He sat on the ground and leaned on something, not even knowing what it was or bothering to check. He felt terribly tired. [Push-up, 100 times : Complete (100/100) ¡Ì ] ¡®Who knew doing push-ups correctly could be so exhausting?¡¯ He wondered, not really asking anyone. After some time of resting, with the sky clearing up indicating the breaking of dawn, he finally stood up from his resting position. His breathing now very calm. ¡®I guess I should change locations again.¡¯ With this in mind, he jogged out of the park and once in a safe place, he looked for a place that was 1 hour behind using his browser and teleported there. He decided to visit Orua, and unlike his experience in Karukera, he actively sought out a clear path for running without obstacles. During his search, he discovered a 25 km route used for marathon events in the country. He got there and in less than 2 minutes of running at near maximum speed, he felt like he could not continue anymore. He slowed down and decided to rest a little. After about 3 minutes, he stood back up and again ran at full speed for about another one and a half minutes before resting again. He kept this up, repeatedly running at full speed and resting before running again at full speed. After some time, he stopped monitoring the rest time and after running and resting for about half an hour, he checked the task progress on the Daily Quest tab, and he confirmed that he was doing it correctly since this time it was counting. [Running, 10 km : Incomplete (3/10) ] ¡°Not even half way done¡­¡± He muttered between heaving breaths. However, seeing that it had increased meant he was doing it right. He just had to persist and complete it, and persist he did. ¡°Who is the person who came up with such a wicked System?¡± After about five hours of running and resting, he was now sitting on the ground with the sun having chased the morning dew, it now shone over his body as he leaned on a surface to rest. He was too afraid to lay on the ground, in case he passed out there, and he did not want to take the risk of returning home, in case he slept past the time limit of the Daily Quest. When he looked at the Daily Quest tab to check the tasks progress, he noticed that the orange color of the tab was darker, and it now appeared almost red instead of orange. [Running, 10 km : Complete (10/10) ¡Ì ] The deepening in the color of the Daily Quest tab was a great ¡®motivation¡¯ to why he had persisted through the 10 km run. Given how things went the last time the System warned him about something with a red window, the body reconstruction, he did not want to check what that Penalty Zone had in store for him. Therefore, he pushed through the run and opted for staying outside to calm his body before returning to completing the last two tasks. ¡®The most difficult will probably be the sit-ups. How difficult can completing 100 squats really be?¡¯ [04:30:16] [04:30:15] Looking at a post clock in the distance, Altair saw the time was 9 a.m. ¡®It¡¯s still 9 a.m. here but seeing as I have 4 hours left, it should be 9 p.m. in Svearika. Time zones are really fascinating, it¡¯s barely 10 a.m. here but people in Stockar city are probably thinking of going to bed already.¡¯ With a smile on his face, he trailed off in his thoughts for some time more before returning to his senses. With how tired his body already was, it took him nearly 2 hours to complete the last two tasks of the Daily Quest, following which he teleported back home. ¡°What a day¡­¡± He said bringing up the Quest tab. [Daily Quest : Routine of the strong ] [Push-up, 100 times : Complete (100/100) ¡Ì ] [Sit-up, 100 times : Complete (100/100) ¡Ì ] [Squats, 100 times : Complete (100/100) ¡Ì ] [Running, 10 km : Complete (10/10) ¡Ì ] [Quest Reward: Full status recovery (¢ª1), Points (¢ª3), Random loot box. ] [Quest Failure: Moving to Penalty Zone ] STATUS [NAME: AKROAT¨ªS SOF¨®S ALTAIR ROHAN] [LEVEL : 1 ] [RACE : HUMAN ] [TITLE(S) : PLAYER?? ] [CLASS : NONE ] [HEALTH : 121 ] [MANA : 256 ] [STRENGTH : 10 ] [AGILITY : 10 ] [VITALITY : 11 ] [INTELLIGENCE : 16 ] [SENSE : 10 ] [POINTS : 3 ] CHAPTER 7 - Beginning _STOCKAR CITY, SVEARIKA, AROUND 11 P.M._ Altair just reappeared in the bedroom in his house. ¡°What a day¡­ I was so close to failing it. *Sigh*¡­ To think I have to do this every day now¡­¡± ¡®How will I do this when I return to work from the holidays? How will I even get the time for super-hero activities with a routine like that?¡¯ *Sigh*¡­ With another sigh, he left the bedroom to take a bath. ¡®I didn¡¯t even have the time to visit a gym to test what the different stats represent.¡¯ ¡®I¡¯m pretty sure my running speed has increased but I don¡¯t know by how much exactly.¡¯ ¡°Well, there¡¯s always tomorrow.¡± Saying this, he went to his bedroom and slept for the rest of the night. The next morning, Altair woke up still feeling tired. In addition to the weariness, he felt some pain in different parts of his body. Every little movement felt like a chore. ¡®This Daily Quest is going to kill me. Do I have to do it today too?¡¯ He opened the System using the icon, and brought up the Quest tab. [Daily Quest : Routine of the strong ] [Push-up, 100 times : Incomplete (0/100) ] [Sit-up, 100 times : Incomplete (0/100) ] [Squats, 100 times : Incomplete (0/100) ] [Running, 10 km : Incomplete (0/10) ] [Quest Reward: Full status recovery (¢ª1), Points (¢ª3), Random loot box. ] [Quest Failure: Moving to Penalty Zone ] ¡®Of course, it¡¯s still there, and it has reset.¡¯ He inwardly thought with an exasperated expression on his face. Next, Altair saw a new icon had appeared with a circled italics (i), ?, in its center. Opening it, he discovered that it was a notifications tab. ¡®I don¡¯t recall this being here yesterday. Will new icons only show up when there is something new from the System?¡¯ ¡®Well, it doesn¡¯t really matter right now.¡¯ The notifications tab showed a single line of content. [Daily Quest Reward(s) ?] Altair focused on the toggle he saw, and the information expanded into a smaller window. [Claim: Full status recovery (¢ª1) (y/n)] [ lootbox (y/n)] ¡®Can¡¯t help but be amazed at the convenience of this whole controlling with the mind thing.¡¯ He thought. Then, he looked at the time, and it was only 3 a.m. ¡®It¡¯s Monday, but the imposed holiday means I¡¯m not going to work today.¡¯ *Sigh*¡­ ¡®I¡¯ll just wash the jogging outfit that I used yesterday first.¡¯ Not even 15 minutes later, he was sitting in front of the TV with his body still aching all over. He decided to use the Full status recovery, offered by the System, and all his fatigue instantly vanished like a lie. Altair had an amazed expression on his face. ¡°Wow! Talk about convenience. With something like this, the Daily Quest will be a cinch.¡±Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. He felt like he was already ready to do today¡¯s Daily Quest. ¡®It¡¯s probably too early to be running out right? I might be mistaken as a robber escaping or something.¡¯ Altair put on another jogging outfit and went out of the house. Then, he started doing the other tasks of the Daily Quest. With some difficulty, he finished the 100 push-ups, then 100 squats and finished with the 100 sit-ups after 1 hour of persisting. The time now showed 4 a.m. so he looked online for a marathon track in the country. He teleported near the track and jogged to the place. Once there, he did a few stretches first and after about 5 minutes of doing stretches, he took off running at near-maximum speed. Nearly 5 hours later, at about 9 a.m., he was done with the 10 km run. He rested for a while in the place under a shaded area. For about 15 minutes, he sat there, doing nothing other than resting, with even his mind blank. Then he left the place, walking slowly away before teleporting home. He cleaned himself after soaking his clothes in some water with detergent, after which he just went to sleep. Waking up at 11 a.m., he left the house and went out to look for a gym. Surprisingly, it was not that difficult to find one without cameras. He walked into a random fitness club, the first one he spotted, and took a seat. He went in as if he owned the place or like someone who knew what he was doing, going straight for the seats without glancing around too much. With the way he acted, he assumed no one would think he was lost or that he was new in there, so no one would come towards him offering to help him or anything of the sort. While on his seat, he took out his phone, ¡®busying¡¯ himself with it. Meanwhile, from time to time, he would lift his head from his phone and look undisguisedly in places he thought could have cameras, acting spaced out as if he was lost in thought. Once he confirmed that there were no cameras, he did not immediately leave. Instead, he went to the reception. He thought he was acting normal enough, but he noticed that he had attracted the receptionist¡¯s attention. In the end, to avoid looking suspicious, or rather to reduce the receptionist¡¯s suspicion towards his behavior, he had to act as if he was there to register. ¡°Hello.¡± Altair started. The receptionist who was looking at a register turned her attention to him and returned his greeting. ¡°Hello sir, how can I help you?¡± ¡°I¡¯d like to know what I need to register. Can you give me a brochure?¡± ¡­ Walking out of the fitness club, Altair was somewhat confused. He went to the receptionist just to get some information and dispel her suspicion of him before leaving, but somehow, he ended up registering. With the closing of the sliding glass door behind him, he returned to his senses and wondered. ¡®What just happened?¡¯ He steadily walked away from the place, making his way to his house. ¡­ At home, he turned on the TV and put on the news, as was his habit. On a global news channel¡­ |¡± The strip of Hzat is now the most dangerous place in the world to be a child, and to live in today, as entire extended families are wiped out in continuous explosions as casualties¡­¡± | Those were the first words he heard when he switched to the channel. His expression directly hardened, and although he was tired when he came in, he stood back up and immediately teleported to his bedroom. He started looking for something to wear, something that would cover his whole body like a costume to hide his identity. He wanted something that would cover all his skin, not even revealing his race or skin color as he intended to be in contact with the rescuees. ¡®I won¡¯t be standing by this time.¡¯ Altair told himself. He took a greyish green suit he had in his closet and wore it on using the System¡¯s inventory, and then he did the same with a pair of thick black gloves, and a pair of black boots. While inspecting himself, he muttered. ¡°Something is missing¡­¡± He quickly realized what that was. He rummaged through his belongings for a mask, but it was without success. The only thing he had was the one he used to clean his room but it would leave some parts of his head and hair exposed. Since he did not want that, he took a linen wool pullover and started making it into a cowl. He cut it open with scissors and when he had a rectangular piece of the material, he measured it around his head. After doing so, Altair removed the cloth and he took a stapler that he used in the place of a sewing thread to complete the shape of a cowl. After making holes for his eyes, he broke a pair of shades and glued the lenses to the eyeholes he had just made. After doing this, he opened his browser and started searching for locations. His target being places with low population density that are safe to live in. Finding his targets, he memorized the locations and then, teleported back to the living room, wanting to choose a place in Hzat where he would teleport. The news was still going on, but instead of the headlines, it was now a report. On the screen, he saw what appeared to be the ruins of a building. Books, food, and many others items could be seen scattered around and about when the camera moved. The voice of a reporter accompanied the broadcast. |¡± ¡­little remains of this building in the center of Hzat. It collapsed late Friday night following an air strike from country Rae. Children¡¯s toys and some food are all that can be recognized¡­¡± | In barely anytime, the ¡®cowl¡¯ he left to dry was ready, and he wore it on his head, making sure his hair was completely covered. < > He teleported to the place shown in the report after checking that it was not a live report. _DIR-AL-BAH, HZAT, PHILISTIA_ Appearing in the streets of Dir-al-Bah, at the ruined building showing in the report, Altair started looking around him for some time. It was still daytime, and with Hzat being a hot country on the Alkebulan continent, he felt very hot in his stuffy outfit, but it did not really matter to him at this time. He looked for a place to stay by himself and waited for night to come before moving people away. While searching, he saw so many people amid the destruction and ruins of the place. He decided not to hold back. He slowly took in a deep breath and then gently let go. He took in another breath and let go once more, then he felt ready. With his voice slightly muffled by the ¡®cowl¡¯, he said. ¡°This is when it started.¡± For a moment, he recalled the locations he had decided to be the rescuees¡¯ destinations and then he acted. In an instant, he disappeared from his position and reappeared near the people. He started with the stray ones. He appeared near someone, placed his hand on the person, and then disappeared with that person. The first destination, he had decided would be the Land of Ozz country. As a continent country, he assumed it would have the most space to accommodate the rescuees and as a tropical place, it should have enough resources to accommodate them for a long time. CHAPTER 8 - The Limit For the next several minutes, people continued disappearing from Hzat without anyone noticing what was happening. Altair¡¯s way of operating was deliberately silent, and he made sure to go where he was out of sight. He avoided talking to anyone or making any sound. He was particularly wary of journalists and more so of those who had a camera with them. . Frankly, most of his bias came from watching too many movies that depicted journalists in a negative light. However, his observation of what happened in Kyrnac also contributed to his already negative opinion of them. Unlike in the comics, where it mostly went well for the most popular super-heroes, he did not think he would end in a good situation if the wrong people knew of his existence. . After only a few teleportation trips, there were much less stragglers and most of those present were in some kind of group. Seeing this, he decided to wait for the night to fall, counting the darkness as his ally in this situation. When night came, and when he assumed they would all be sleeping, Altair cautiously approached where everyone was, ready to teleport them away. In his opinion, wherever they were, was much better than the war thorn location they were currently in. With Ozz being seven hours ahead of Philistia, places were already turning dark there when he started leaving the rescuees. If they woke up, no one would be able to immediately contact or phone anyone to report what happened, and by the time someone reported, he would be nowhere near the place and there would be no chance of finding him. He made sure to teleport away the outermost sleepers first, those he considered to be the most likely to wake up with the slightest disturbance. Those that were further from the exits were deeper in their sleeps and disturbances were less likely to affect them. They were mostly children. The people in the room started reducing and every time Altair appeared in the room, he touched one or two people and instantly disappeared. An onlooker might perceive this whole situation to be a glitch and might even doubt the number of people present in the place. Meanwhile, in Ozz, the people had been waking up for a while now. It would have been odd for none of them to react to the drastic change in not only the ambient temperature, but also the surface onto which they were lying, even in their sleep. For most of them, if not all of them, the constant exposure to a warring environment had made them very sensitive and agitated. Therefore, when Altair left them and went to bring more people, they started waking up from their sleep shortly after his departure. Naturally, they felt very confused at the situation they suddenly found themselves to be, and with a few shouts, they grouped back up. Since they mostly knew each other, they started coming together in this unfamiliar environment. Gathering towards a single location. After which, they started talking among themselves, trying to figure out their situation. ¡°What is happening?¡± One person asked with apparent confusion. ¡°I don¡¯t know¡­¡±. Replied another. Someone else asked. ¡°Does anyone know how we got here; The last thing I remember is going to sleep.¡± Other people appeared and someone noticed the sudden appearance of two people, along with the disappearance of something that was close to them when they appeared.This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon. ¡°Did you see that too?¡± Someone asked pointing at the place where the two new people had just appeared. ¡°Do you think¡­ Are we¡­ Are we dead?¡± One person asked in a fearful tone. Seeing another two people appearing, another asked. ¡°Was that the grim reaper? Is it taking us on the road to the after-life?¡± When people heard this, the mood became complicated. Many of them did not want to die, and even though some people, at some point thought that death would be better than the situation their homes was thrown into, they still hoped for things to get better and for the situation around them to improve. They were scared of what would happen now that they were dead, but at least their deaths had been a painless one. Since at this time, most of the children were not there, the parents and guardians of the kids were still hopeful that the children had survived the explosion somehow, but they couldn¡¯t help but be worried about their lives in that environment. Obviously, they wished for the kids to have survived but some thought of how painless and peaceful their own deaths had been and somewhat wished for the kids to have had a similar experience. At the very least, wasn¡¯t this better than that suffering? Therefore, the gradual appearance of some kids among the people arriving at the place dismayed and distressed them. The little composure that most of them had managed to gather broke at this time. Many of the mothers strongly started hoping, praying even, for their child not to be among those the grim reaper would bring along to this place. Elder brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts, guardians, who spotted the ones they were responsible for, were moving towards them to reassure them, so that they would not be too disoriented or afraid. Meanwhile, with the continuous rapid teleportation, Altair began to feel the strain. Last time he checked, his teleportation did not consume any resource from him; his mana remained the same, there was no meter or gauge that suddenly popped up, and he was not even out of breath, but he needed clear focus to switch locations. Now, however, with each teleportation, the image of his destinations became blurrier in his mind. It was not as if he was forgetting the places, rather, it was like a driver, who after driving for too long became dry-eyed and unable to keep their eyes on the road. His experience however was not as simple a case as dry eyes. He was able to push through initially, but after some time, he realized that it was becoming more and more difficult to visualize his location and therefore it took him bigger intervals to teleport. Because of the stretching intervals between the teleports, an increasing number of people could see him before he left Ozz after dropping the rescuees. He felt disoriented and very tired, his focus waning and the location blurrier than ever. He decided to teleport to the place he used as a lookout and hiding spot during the day, rather than teleport directly to get the kids. ¡®What is happening? I can¡¯t concentrate.¡¯ He was a little frustrated, but he was also a little scared, thinking this might be a late side effect of either the System or the teleportation ability. For a few seconds, even his vision became dark. So much so that, he could not even see in front of him. That it when it dawned on him that he might just be tired. The solution was simple. At the very least, for him, the solution was simple at this moment. ¡®(Use, Full status recovery)¡¯ He mentally instructed. With prior experience of using this reward from the Daily Quest, he knew it could do away with fatigue. Therefore, it came as no surprise to him that his weariness went away like a lie, leaving him instantly refreshed and ready to resume his activities. . Meanwhile, in Ozz, for the short time that Altair stopped to rest, no more kids had appeared in the location he left people earlier. Some people, especially the ones who had started praying that the kids do not die and meet them in this place, were visibly relieved. Just a few seconds later, Altair resumed his task of teleporting the rest of the children, much to the parent¡¯s despair. . Altair did not notice any of this and just kept on teleporting the rest of the kids from their resting location in Hzat, and after a short while, this time taking some more time in between teleportation trips, he finally teleported everyone. In less than five minutes, he had teleported away over 100 people from Hzat in Philistia, a country on the Alkebulan continent to Ozz, a country continent that is more than 12000 km to the east. When he was done, he felt somewhat tired, but also relieved that he had completed the Daily Quest before going to teleport all those people. ¡®What would have happened if I had collapsed from exhaustion after teleporting so many times consecutively?¡¯ He wondered, pondering also how to deal with it in the future. It would be really troublesome if while he was passed out, someone discovered him and the person mistook him for a robber or they just had bad intentions. ¡®I need to figure out a way to solve the focus problem. Although the Full status recovery helps alleviate fatigue, it is somewhat wasteful to use it for that. Especially since it clears away both physical and mental fatigue and I need it to quickly complete the Daily Quest.¡¯ STATUS [NAME: AKROAT¨ªS SOF¨®S ALTAIR ROHAN] [LEVEL : 1 ] [RACE : HUMAN ] [TITLE(S) : PLAYER?? ] [CLASS : NONE ] [HEALTH : 121 ] [MANA : 272 ] [STRENGTH : 10 ] [AGILITY : 10 ] [VITALITY : 11 ] [INTELLIGENCE : 17 ] [SENSE : 10 ] [POINTS : 6 ] CHAPTER 9 - Observations Altair stood in Dir-Al-Bah, and looked again at his lookout spot, he realized just how much things had changed from a few days ago. From needing a mode of transport for traversing a few kilo-meters to now being able to cross over 12000 kilometers sev-eral times in the span of a few seconds. This was beyond what he could have thought of as ¡°possible¡±. He was a little curious about why he had suddenly received these ¡°gifts¡±, but more than that, he was glad and grateful of what he could accomplish with them. A few moments later, he vanished and returned to his house in Stockar city. Since Stockar city¡¯s time zone was one-hour behind that of Hzat, it was still just around 7:40 p.m. when he returned home; and although he did not feel tired physically, he felt a little weary mentally, so he went to sleep soon after ar-riving. He woke up later feeling hungry and decided to make his way to the kitchen. Using a text-to-speech feature, he let his novel read aloud while he was preparing something to eat. Once the food was ready, he paused the reading and started pondering about different things as he ate. He thought of the different events of the day. Thinking of the people he moved from Hzat, he wondered how they were do-ing currently, wondering about what he had done and what else he could do. ¡®Will they be able to live through the night? The place where I dropped them should be safe¡­ and¡­ I made sure to leave them in the south, where snowfall is rare?¡¯ His thoughts drifted as he wondered about the different things that he could do to improve their living conditions in the place where he left them. ¡®I was so tired that I was in a hurry to return home¡­ I feel like I am forgetting something.¡¯ Altair wondered. ¡®Is there something else I could have done?¡¯ Something both-ered him a lot, but he couldn¡¯t really identify what that was. For some time, it felt like he was blocked before he moved on and thought of something else. When he thought of his tired state, it brought his attention to the limit he discovered today. ¡®It didn¡¯t seem to be a limit in the teleportation itself but rather a limit of myself¡­ I need to improve my attrib-utes if I want to make better use of this ability. That way I could be of help to more people.¡¯ It was really fortunate that he had a System that would al-low him to improve his attributes. He thought of the ruined state of the place in Hzat where he extracted the rescuees from, the physical conditions of the people when he appeared there, as well as how they spent their day during his observation. Several buildings appeared destroyed, with damaged and fall-en concrete blocks visible all around, pieces of iron pro-truding from these blocks; and stone and rubble were spread everywhere in the surrounding area. The entire environment had a haze of grey, with dust parti-cles and more filling the air, making even breathing uncom-fortable for the people; visibility was also greatly reduced because even the sky was a little grey. This all contributed in making the environment very somber. His mood went down as his thoughts drifted in this direc-tion, with even the food in his mouth losing its taste, and he could not really imagine what their mental state could be like, as an outsider. All of this however just reaffirmed his desire to be of more help, making him wonder which attributes or stats he should increase to be more helpful. ¡®Since it¡¯s not a physical limitation that I have on the teleportation, should I focus on improving the Intelligence stat?¡¯ He opened the System to look at his Status window, and he quickly noticed the increase in both his Vitality and Intel-ligence stats. STATUS [NAME: AKROAT¨ªS SOF¨®S ALTAIR ROHAN] [LEVEL : 1 ] [RACE : HUMAN ] [TITLE(S) : PLAYER?? ] [CLASS : NONE ] [HEALTH : 121 ] [MANA : 272 ] [STRENGTH : 10 ? ] [AGILITY : 10 ? ] [VITALITY : 11 ? ] [INTELLIGENCE : 17 ? ] [SENSE : 10 ? ] [POINTS : 6 ] To raise a particular stat, he just had to focus on the only toggle that was beside the individual attributes of his Sta-tus window and steadily increase the value of this stat. ¡®The fact that my Vitality increased probably means that there is something I did that strained it. If I had to guess, I think it would be the Daily Quest, which means a higher Vitality makes the Daily Quest easier in some way.¡¯ Although he wanted to increase the Intelligence stat to ad-dress the mental fatigue that came with rapidly repetitive teleportation, he thought that addressing the issue of the Daily Quest was just as much of a priority. Stolen novel; please report.No, he thought it was more pressing to address this issue than the teleportation issue. For teleportation, he just had to time his teleportation intervals better, and it would be a decent short-term solution, but in the case of the Daily Quest, increasing intervals meant it would take longer than the already several hours he spent on just completing it. STATUS [NAME: AKROAT¨ªS SOF¨®S ALTAIR ROHAN] [LEVEL : 1 ] [RACE : HUMAN ] [TITLE(S) : PLAYER?? ] [CLASS : NONE ] [HEALTH : 289 ] [MANA : 272 ] [STRENGTH : 10 ] [AGILITY : 10 ] [VITALITY : 17 ] [INTELLIGENCE : 17 ] [SENSE : 10 ] [POINTS : 0 ] ¡®Besides, if I am not already tired from the Daily Quest, then I am probably less likely to get tired from teleport-ing; although I can¡¯t be sure for now since teleportation causes mental exhaustion while the Daily Quest causes mostly physical exhaustion.¡¯ With his thoughts diverting, he subconsciously continued eating his food that had by now, regained some of its taste, even though it was almost cold. After finishing his meal, Altair started tidying the place up, his mind still wandering about different things. A few moments later, he sat in the couch facing the TV, not turning it on. His thoughts drifted and went towards his disguise. He took the whole costume out from the System¡¯s Inventory, laid it on the couch in the living room and silently ob-served it. He started thinking about some things he could do to improve on the costume. Picking up the cowl, he thought, ¡®The mask for example won¡¯t do¡­, I remember seeing in the news something appropriate that the soldiers form Krajina wear. I should get something like that.¡¯ With this in mind, he took his computer and started search-ing online. Typing in the search bar a long text that he gradually changed, narrowing his search and making it more specific. After a few minutes of online searches, he found that its name was balaclava. To purchase one, he searched but he found mostly those that would look large on his head and assumed they would be un-comfortable. He also found some that were not in a suitable material. Browsing further, he found one that fit all his requirements and bookmarked the page. Then, he stayed on the couch thinking of other things, with his head slightly raised, having the ceiling of the room in his line of sight, he looked at nothing in particular and was simply absorbed in thoughts. ¡®As for the suit, maybe Kevlar is a good choice for the at-tire, since its used for making bullet resistant gear, it should be good enough.¡¯ He went online, and started looking to purchase a Kevlar suit. When he found the appropriate one, he bookmarked the page and moved on. He started looking for a Kevlar overcoat, but ended up not finding one. When everything was over, he found a complete-set Kevlar suit and he bought a matching windbreaker. As a person who liked the green color, he went for a dark greyish-green suit with a matching overcoat that had a hood; he also had green gloves, a light green balaclava, and a pair of black army-formal-shoes. He felt his heart bleeding, figuratively, with a slightly unwilling expression on his face when he saw that everything he wanted would tally up to around 5000 crowns. ¡®Should I just wear a regular suit instead?¡¯ He started con-templating when he saw that just the Kevlar suit alone would cost around 4000 crowns for the set. ¡®Probably not, I¡¯ll be going to dangerous locations like Hzat a lot, I was lucky this time and there were not any bullets flying around but things could go wrong at any time.¡¯ He went on with the purchase, giving addresses that were close to the locations of the sellers of the items. To do so, he simply tried different delivery location options, and settled for the one that had the shortest delivery time. ¡®There¡¯s no point in waiting for a long-time delivery when I can just teleport to near the place and complete the trans-action.¡¯ He thought. After gathering everything, he tried them on and felt very satisfied with his own costume. < > < > < > With his own personal costume, everything was now set and he could really call himself a super-hero, even though his choice of costume was a little unconventional. With the costume matter dealt with, he remembered that he wanted to visit a gym to measure his fitness level and get an idea of what each of his stats represent. . . . . . . 9 CHAPTER 10 - Assessment Altair looked at the time and it was around 11 p.m., just about 3 hours had passed since he returned home from Hzat. ¡®According to the receptionist, the club should close around 9 p.m., so even in case they were held up by something, 1 hour after closing time should be enough time for everyone to have left right?¡¯ He had been wanting to know, what each of his physical attributes represented. Unfortunately, things always came up and he ended up forgetting or postponing the matter. Since he was free right now, and he already had a location in mind with all the necessary equipment, he decided it was time to get it done. He changed his clothes, putting on a simple sports outfit. Following which, he checked the club¡¯s website, and it showed that they already closed. Still, to be safe, he teleported about a street away from the gym, in an alley he had spotted in the morning. Looking around him and seeing that there was no one around, he started jogging in the direction of the club. The roads looked empty, with barely anyone moving around and just one or two cars occasionally passing by. The air was cold at this time, and he felt a little chilly. However, he ignored the chill, being just a little bothered before continuing his jogging towards the club. He soon got to his destination, in front of the gym and looked towards its doors. He saw the doors closed and even spotted the orange-light [Closed] sign above the locked glass doors, behind which he could see nothing, due to the unknown dark material behind the glass doors. Without stopping, he went past the club, continuing in his jogging until he was far enough from the club. He entered an empty alley and continued jogging while looking around and when he made his next turn, his body vanished. He reappeared inside the club, and he stayed still as he glanced around with just his eyes, not moving his body. Seeing that the place was completely dark and no lights turned on when he appeared, Altair let out a low sigh of relief. His vision took no time to accommodate to the darkness, doing so instantly as he appeared inside the place. He opted to test his strength first. ¡®Let¡¯s see what having my Strength stat at 10 really means¡­¡¯ With this in mind, Altair walked towards the bench press equipment, ready to evaluate his strength. He took his time to adjust the bench according to his height as he had seen online before coming here. After doing so, he added weights to the bar. Feeling confident about his strength, he started with the 10 kg disks, putting one on each side of the bar. He then laid on the bench, ready to test for 20 kg of benching. The result was that, he was able to carry the 20 kg effortlessly. It was not so light that he felt like he was not carrying anything, but it was not heavy enough that he would be bothered even after doing several sets of bench press. It did not feel challenging at all. He sat the bar back in its rack and added the 20 kg plates to the bar, putting a 20 kg plate on each side of the bar. He laid back down on the bench and tried lifting the now 60 kg bar. This time, he felt some resistance but he still felt it was not enough and thus opted to add more plates.Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. He added another 20 kg plate on each side of the bar, making the bar now 100 kg. He laid on the bench, tried lifting again, and only now felt that it was at the adequate weight. He started doing a few reps and after about 30 reps, he racked the bar in its place. Then he started removing the weight plates intending to move towards the next equipment. He went towards various strength training equipment in the gym to assess his strength. ¡®It seems I can carry about 100 kg with medium effort, my limit however seems to be around 200 kg.¡¯ He tried to carry 200 kg and realized that he could not carry it more than once, it was extremely difficult, and he had to store the bar with its plates in the inventory to avoid it falling over his neck. ¡®That could have ended really bad. I guess there¡¯s a reason why there are people watching when lifting this thing.¡¯ ¡®Time to check my speed.¡¯ He thought, as he started moving towards the treadmill section of the gym. He turned on the treadmill and steadily started adding the speed to see his limit. He started in increments of 5 km/h and around 30 km/h, he felt himself getting to his limit, he felt like he was giving everything he had but still believed he could increase his speed. In this spirit, he started adding in increments of 1 km/h and reached a speed of 35 km/h. When he reached this speed, Altair found himself sprinting just to avoid the rolling treadmill dragging him backwards. With a digital stopwatch in his hand, he pressed the start button at this speed. He ran with everything he had and after some time, which was a long time for him, he felt himself getting more and more tired. Since it became increasingly difficult to keep up with the treadmill¡¯s speed, he started reducing its speed and finally stepped down from it. He was panting heavily, breathing in big heaves with his vision darkening and even his hearing fading for a short moment of a few seconds. These few seconds of darkness in addition to the slight ring sound he heard while ¡®deaf¡¯ scared him greatly. He was very relieved when everything returned to normal. He sat on the floor with his legs sprawled as he rested backwards on his palms; allowing himself to breathe to his body¡¯s satisfaction. After some time, when his breathing calmed down a little, he had some leisure to let his thoughts wander. ¡®According to the various classifications I checked online, I fall into the advanced category for both my speed and strength¡­ the only thing I¡¯m not sure about is in what category my endurance falls into¡­¡¯ ¡®Well, at least I know what my Strength and Agility stats represent.¡¯ ¡®As far as senses go, the only change I noticed is in my sight. Not like I have a way of assessing my hearing or my touch anyway¡­¡¯ ¡®However, I wonder what the intelligence stat is supposed to represent.¡¯ He could only assume that it represented magic, going by all the novels he¡¯d read so far. *Sigh* Altair let out a low sigh and remained on the floor for some time more. After he felt that he had rested enough, Altair stood up from his sitting position, and looked around the gym, checking to see if there was anything out of place. ¡®Plates, check; bars, check; treadmill, off; what else is there¡­? ¡­nothing, time to go.¡¯ He teleported out of the place and reappeared in his house. ¡®Why did I want to quantify my stats so much anyway? I can¡¯t remember¡­¡¯ While he went to shower, he tried to remember the reason why he wanted to evaluate his stats. Since in the end he could not remember why, he just decided to go to sleep. . When he woke up after some time, feeling completely rested, he looked at the time and it was just around 2 a.m. in the morning. He immediately tried to access the System and seeing that it was still there, he showed subtle signs of relief, with his shoulders relaxing ever so slightly and his breathing calming down He then looked at the Daily Quest tab, and sure enough, it was still there and had reset. Although he was relieved to see the System was still there, the presence of the Daily Quest somewhat dampened his mood. Even though it was in his interest that it was there, he was certain that even with the rewards it granted, he would already have stopped doing it, if not for the penalty he feared. Altair left the bed and started doing his Daily Quest, although it had not been long, he was slowly getting used to doing the exercises in the correct form. Because of this, it took him less time to complete the basic tasks of push-ups, sit-ups and squats. As soon as he finished doing the exercises, he switched his clothes to put on his jogging outfit and teleported to the location of his running. He also finished the run earlier than usual, thanks to doing runs of close to five minutes each time and taking less time, about six minutes, to recover his stamina than usual. Altair then teleported back into his house and cleaned himself before moving towards the living room to watch the TV. Before turning the TV however, he suddenly thought about the first place he went to after obtaining his teleportation ability, Kyrnac. . . . . . . 10 CHAPTER 11 - Back in Kyrnac After checking that everything was in order in the gym, Altair vanished from there and reappeared in his house. He went to clean himself and proceeded to the living room to watch TV. Before turning the TV however, he suddenly thought about the first place he went to after obtaining his teleportation ability, Kyrnac. ¡°It¡¯s been two days since the fire. I wonder how they are doing there, how have things progressed.¡± He had a feeling that he should check on their situation now, and as a teleporter, he could just arrive there instead of relying on the news. With this thought, he browsed for places nearby, and after sometime he teleported away. When he appeared, he glanced a little around himself and for some reason no one was looking in his direction or paying attention to him. He started walking towards the place that had suffered the explosion, while paying attention to his surroundings. After some time of walking around aimlessly, he came across a man whom he recognized as the one who was distributing safety gear the day of the explosion. It was a dark-skinned man, old enough for his short beard to have strands of white and yet appearing not old enough to have his mobility hindered in anyway. < > He wore a dark grey, long-sleeved top and a wide-brimmed sun hat with ropes that rested on his shoulders and were looped around his neck, securing the hat on his back. He had dressed a mat on the floor in a makeshift stall, and was trying to sell some products. When Altair looked at him, even with the smile on the old man¡¯s face, he thought he appeared downcast, so he decided to approach him for a conversation. When he got close to the old man, he did not know what to say. He was not good at conversations so when he reached in front of the man, he did not really know how to start the conversation. The man however, seeing Altair just standing there, somewhat hesitant, and since he recognized Altair, decided to initiate the conversation. Instead of the standard polite smile, the old man showed a warm, calm and friendly smile on his face as he asked. ¡°Did you end up finding the one you were looking for?¡± The question attracted Altair¡¯s attention, but he looked at the old man with a confused expression. Seeing the look on Altair¡¯s face, the old man turned his head towards the destroyed site in the distance and with his right hand resting on his knee; he pointed his left hand¡¯s index towards the wreckage and said. ¡°The other day, you seemed in a hurry to go into the ruins, I assumed you were looking for someone in there. Was I wrong?¡± Altair¡¯s body language expressed sudden realization as he replied. ¡°Oh¡­¡± *ahem* then he cleared his throat before continuing. ¡°No. Actually I don¡¯t know anyone in the area, I just wanted to help.¡± The old man, still with his smile on his face, replied. ¡°I see¡­ that¡¯s a nice thing to do.¡± After a short silence, during which Altair did not know what to say, the old man continued. ¡°Is there something I can help you with?¡± ¡°¡­ Actually, I am not from around here, and after that day, I left the country. I haven¡¯t really been able to keep up with the news because of various reasons, so if you don¡¯t mind, can you tell me about how things have been going since then.¡±Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. The old man still had a smile on his face but there was a hint of another expression that added to his face as he listened to Altair. Then he started replying. ¡°What¡¯s there to say, just yesterday I heard there was now about 13 people dead.¡± Then he gestured with his hand in a certain direction. When Altair turned to look, he saw a group of tents. It was not there the last time he was here. Seeing that Altair had turned to look, the man continued. ¡°They use that place as a hospital. At least most people come out there walking. After you left, many more people were found in the ruins after the white men came to rescue with their fancy equipment.¡± The man then pointed towards another group of tents as he continued talking. ¡°You see that other place? That is where most people have been living. The white men say we cannot go back ¡®within the range of the destruction¡¯.¡± He said trying to emulate an accent, as he continued. ¡°We should wait for them to ¡®confirm the safety of the area¡¯ before we can go back in¡­¡± As Altair listened to the man continue his explanation of the situation, he came to understand a little bit of how bad the situation was. Altair learned from the man''s narration that authorities had cordoned off a certain portion of the area where the explosion originated. He could even see the sealed part from where he was. Further inside the restricted area, even closer to the explosion¡¯s origin location, there was an even more secure area with armed personnel guarding the place. . Two days after the explosion, strange people came and started driving civilians out of the area. In the beginning, it was just like when Altair came to the place on the first day. They simply relieved the teams of volunteers that were already on site without issue. However, after they had removed all civilians around, they started driving people further away from the location, not even letting those who wanted to volunteer. Altair thought it was normal, so when he asked. ¡°Was that not for your good? That way no one will get hurt accidentally right?¡± The old man replied. ¡°We also thought it was normal at first, because when people started waking up, they were rushing in, to look for their friends and families.¡± He looked at Altair as he said. ¡°That was not safe you know¡­ But why did they not even want people near the place, they even built a barrier to hide something inside there.¡± This all happened around the second day. Apparently, they discovered something and after someone made a call, several cars came in after a few hours and they began to close off a particular area in the range of the explosion. They built a tightly closed high fence a big distance around the area that was at the center of the explosion. The fence was not only high but it was opaque as well, preventing anyone from seeing what was going on inside. The man continued telling Altair what happened in Boubou since the explosion. Altair found these things odd and started musing about them. Sometime during the old man¡¯s narration, without knowing, Altair had sat cross-legged in front of him to the side while listening. He sat there patiently as the man not only talked about what he saw but also shared his thoughts on his observations. After talking about the strange behavior of the professionals who came to seal the area, he started talking about the rescued people. He had a complicated expression on his face as he was on the topic. It was a mix of a happy relieved expression and a sad painful one together. The expressions changed slightly from time to time as he talked, being more on the happier side when he talked about the increase in the number of rescued people and appearing sadder when he talked about casualties of any kind, even the wounded that survived long enough to be rescued. Oddly enough, Altair was able to see these changes in expressions but he attributed this to his increase in eyesight and didn¡¯t think much of it. He had a happy smile difficult to describe as he talked about the increase in the number of rescued people as well as how much more people the professionals found with their ¡°fancy equipment¡± as he called it, compared to when the civilian volunteers were there. Even now, as he talked, he showed Altair towards the location of the explosion, within the cordoned area that was not sealed, there were people moving around with different equipment trying to locate survivors. . Altair saw that at different places within the cordoned area, there was about two people at a table and they focused on the folding tables in front of them, while they would occasionally look towards the wreckage. Looking further, there were other people moving around in different areas with breaks in their movements, sometimes changing their direction of movement. It was as if they waited for instructions before moving forward or to the side. These people had in their hands some tools that to Altair, looked like metal detectors, with the scanning part that was like a sponge or plate and the pole part too. . Just in the 2 to 3 days the stayed here, they rescued over 178 survivors of the explosion and they took much less time to find people than the civilians. That was impressive considering that it was a lot more difficult to find people with each new person they found. And yet, even with all this in mind, he could not help but find the behavior of these professionals odd. . ... STATUS [NAME: AKROAT¨ªS SOF¨®S ALTAIR ROHAN] [LEVEL : 1 ] [RACE : HUMAN ] [TITLE(S) : PLAYER?? ] [CLASS : NONE ] [HEALTH : 289 ] [MANA : 256 ] [STRENGTH : 10 ] [AGILITY : 10 ] [VITALITY : 17 ] [INTELLIGENCE : 17 ] [SENSE : 10 ] [POINTS : 3 ] CHAPTER 12 - Getting Supplies After some time of conversing with the old man and learning of what happened in the place from his own perspective, Altair finally separated from him. The discussion left him with a few things to think about. Among these and king among them, was the odd behavior of the agents that came after the explosion. As a person who lived a relatively sheltered life, he could not really make out what was normal and what was not in this situation. Although Altair had never been to a disaster site before and therefore would not know what was typical or normal in such situations, he still thought the behavior of the agents was strange. After all there was a thing known as common sense. ¡®I can understand that they cordoned off a certain area that can be dangerous to civilians who carelessly rush in, but what about the closed-up area further inside?¡¯ ¡®What exactly is the need for all this secrecy?¡¯ He wondered. The sealed area near to the origin of the explosion, particularly did not make much sense. There was certainly something they were very intent on hiding, whoever they were. ¡®Maybe they are just expecting another explosion and so decided to take precautionary measures by starting to send people away¡­¡¯ Altair wondered. ¡®But if I go with that reasoning, would it not be easier and safer to just tell the people that they found signs that gave them reason to expect another explosion?¡¯ ¡®Right, who would believe that. I¡¯m no expert myself but, I think expecting an explosion from a fuel depot that has already exploded is like expecting a grenade to go off twice. No one would believe that even if it were true¡­¡¯ After thinking of the matter for a while, Altair briefly considered going to the place to check on what was happening there. It should be easy enough, he only had to teleport in close proximity to the place and have a look before leaving. However, he only thought about it briefly before discarding the thought. ¡®Although I am now able to teleport, I can¡¯t just assume I am so special that no one else has a strange power or like me suddenly obtained a system out of nowhere¡­¡¯ Although Altair was very happy and even proud of his newfound ability to teleport, and even more so the ability to teleport anywhere he can see or has the image of, he was way too cautious to take the risk of going into the place just to discover that there was something there that would hinder his teleportation and therefore trap him in the place. For this reason, he only contemplated this for a moment before discarding the thought. As he was walking around, Altair heard more about the evolution of the situation in the place. Most of the things were what he already knew of from listening to Monsieur Jean, the old man whom he had a chat with. From time to time, he still heard a few things the old man did not tell him. Among these things was the fact that most of the things people distributed on that day were just that, distributed. No one was going to pay them for those things and just like Altair, many people did not return the items after use. So not only the vests but even the security shoes are gone just like that. The sachets of water that were passed around, the bread and other things that the people who went in to start the searches consumed were all just shared out of kindness.Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. The volunteers were not only those who went into the hot rubbles for the searches, but also those good people who did those acts of selflessness. Altair¡¯s face slowly scrunched into a slightly pensive and sad expression the more he heard, and the more he thought about it. However, he was also somewhat happy to know that people, despite their squabbles and daily attitudes still had the ability to put all that aside and come together when the circumstances needed them to do so. ¡®There should be something I can do to help in such a situation, but what?¡¯ A plan slowly started forming in his mind as he pondered on this. Altair kept moving and left the area, paying more attention to the situation around him. Later, when he found it appropriate, he vanished, teleporting away. Just before leaving, he suddenly remembered something. ¡°What an idiot¡­ I know what I forgot. What will the people I left in Ozz eat while they are stranded by themselves in a location they know nothing about?¡± From observing the situation of the people in Kyrnac, he saw the tents set up by the professional organizations were not only for treatment and housing but there were also a few that were for giving out food. ¡®I guess it was fortunate that I went there around meal time¡­¡¯ *phone ringing* Brought out of his thought by the noise of a ringtone, Altair looked towards his table, where the phone was placed and saw an incoming call, the caller ID displaying as Robert. *tut* ¡°Hey Rob.¡± He said. The first words he heard were. \¡±You finally bothered to pick up your phone!¡±\ ¡°What happened?¡± He asked with a little alert in his voice. \¡±Nothing but, for someone who didn¡¯t want a vacation, you¡¯re certainly enjoying yourself. I tried calling you a few times in the past few days but the call did not go through.¡±\ ¡°¡­don¡¯t worry me like that.¡± \¡±What are you talking about?¡±\ ¡°The way you started¡­¡± Altair began in retort before saying. ¡°forget it.¡± In a tired tone, and then, ¡°What¡¯s up?¡± \¡±Okay.¡±\ Rob replied nonchalantly and then started talking. \¡±I just wanted to check up on you. But when I called you, the call did not go through.¡±\ \¡±Come on, tell me. Are you up to some shady stuff on your vacation?¡±\ He asked in a devious tone, clearly insinuating something. Altair did not entertain him however, and just asked in reply ¡°You tried calling me several times?¡± \¡±Are you dodging the subject? Heh, I¡¯m very curious of how the rigid you spend your vacation.¡±\ Rob replied, seemingly having some fun in the conversation. \¡±Anyways, when I tried calling, it didn¡¯t go through and after some time, I¡¯d get a notification saying you are available but by the time I freed myself to call back, the call wouldn¡¯t connect again with me getting another notification sometime later informing me of your availability¡­¡±\ At this point in the conversation, Altair started pondering. ¡®Did he call when I was testing the teleportation and the inventory or when I went to teleport the people from Hzat?¡¯ ¡®Does the inventory even block network signals? I should check that later.¡¯ As Altair started pondering about these things, he was brought out of his thoughts. \¡±Hello, Al are you still there?¡±\ Rob asked from the other side, sensing Al¡¯s disconnection from the conversation. ¡°Yes, I¡¯m listening. Sorry, what were you saying?¡± Altair asked in response. \¡± *Sigh*. You always do this. What¡¯s on your mind this time?¡±\ ¡°Nothing. Did anything happen at work?¡± \¡±Nothing much. Well¡­¡±\ The two of them, mostly Robert, proceeded to talk about various topics before having to hang up the call. . Soon after hanging up the call, Altair remembered the place where he picked up the people from Hzat. In that place, there were some dangerous locations like shops and supermarkets which had things like bags of rice and other products that buried under rubble caused by explosions. He knew this because he was hiding in one of those places when he decided to wait for the right time to start teleporting people away. Without waiting further, he teleported into the place and started collecting these things, storing them in his inventory. He cautiously crept into the place, sometimes using both his hands and legs to climb and move around, meanwhile he teleported whenever possible. He slowly gathered as much as he could while he kept searching, and from time to time, when he came across anything too heavy like a concrete block or a collapsed part of a wall, rather than force himself to push them away, he stored them in his inventory to clear a path. He continued doing this for a long time before finally taking everything he thought could still be useful in this particular supermarket. ¡®This should be more than enough to sustain them for a long time.¡¯ Altair thought as he looked around himself. Luckily, no matter how many things he added into his inventory, it did not seem to have a limit to how much it could take, making the whole task much easier. Seeing that the place looked very empty, he decided to release back all the rubble he stored in his inventory. With the limitation of only releasing things within a one-meter radius of himself as the center, it took him some time to let everything out, since he had to move around a few times in the process of doing so. CHAPTER 13 - Hzat Again When Altair left the crumbled supermarket, he did not immediately go to Ozz but instead returned home. It was only then that he realized he had not even worn his costume when going to collect the supplies in Hzat. ¡°Yeah, that was too risky. Let¡¯s avoid that in the future.¡± He muttered. He looked at the time and it was still the middle of the day in Stockar city. ¡®With the time difference with Ozz being close to 9 hours, it should be around 7 p.m. there right now. I¡¯ll just wait a little longer before going to drop supplies, just in case.¡¯ ¡®For now, I should go and evacuate more people from Hzat.¡¯ With these thoughts in mind, Altair used the inventory and changed the clothes he was wearing. He wore his full costume, the Kevlar suit and pants, with the formal-army-shoes, as well as the balaclava, finishing with the overcoat, without forgetting to cover his head with its hoodie, and wear gloves on his hands. < > He teleported back to Hzat and started moving around with teleportation, looking for people that were in large groups. He soon found a good number of people and immediately looked for a hiding spot where he could keep them in his sight. ¡®Wouldn¡¯t it be appropriate to call what I do now, abduction?¡¯ He mused inwardly. Before he spotted a destroyed building that seemed to have been a multi-storied building before. He crouched at a high spot on the building where he could easily see people while being mostly out of sight. Whenever he found the chance to, he teleported near some stragglers and took them away, slowly but surely reducing the number of people he would have to teleport when night came. He kept doing this for the rest of the day until the sun was about to set. It was at this time that he noticed something odd. When there were signs of the sun setting, just as he expected, the people started gathering together in anticipation of the night. However, before long, they spread out again. Too many people were absent and because of this, the remaining ones started looking around to find them. Unlike in normal circumstances when different people lived in different houses, the situation in Hzat, well, the place Altair was currently at, was very different. With houses destroyed all around, and many people having lost their homes, they grouped together in shelters when night came. This made it easier for them to realize that many others were missing. They called out names and kept moving around searching without success. Obviously, they could not find anyone but that just made them more agitated. There was no way Altair would just walk to them and start telling them that he had teleported the people away, so instead, he resumed with his activities. At first, they all spread out so that they could search more places. From time to time, Altair appeared near one or 2 people and just teleported them away without talking to them or asking for their opinion. He still maintained his opinion that wherever they were in the world was better than the warring environment of Hzat. After all, the news reported the same thing, that Hzat was now the most dangerous place in the world to live in. Each time Altair left his vantage point on the building, he appeared on the ground close to the people and placed a hand on individuals to take them away. The number of people there kept reducing, and they also noticed it every time they grouped back together to report their findings. From an onlooker¡¯s perspective, looking from a very high location, even higher than the building which Altair stood on, it would appear that some dots gathered together, spread out, reduced and came back together. Just to spread out and reduce again, before gathering back together.Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. On the ground, the remaining people became a little restless and more agitated, judging from their mannerisms. They seemed to be panicking from where Altair watched them. Altair was becoming burdened by their behavior and started wondering. ¡®Maybe I should stop this.¡¯ This thought came very shortly however before he discarded it. A quick look around would make it clear why. ¡®If they stay here, they¡¯ll die, in a war that has nothing to do with them.¡¯ ¡®Besides, won¡¯t they just live in worry if they never know of what happened to the others. I can¡¯t also just let them talk about what happened here when they leave¡­¡¯ When he thought about it, wouldn¡¯t people be more likely to believe that they all somehow escaped from Hzat rather than believing that they were teleported out of there? Even if they all said it, people will just believe that they are lying together, rather than believe in some random person or entity having teleported all of them out of Hzat right? With this reasoning, Altair continued in his activity, teleporting more and more people slowly, until the sun set completely and places became much darker, with even the moon being obstructed by the dusty atmosphere and the smoke-like clouds in the sky. Each time, Altair had enough time to teleport them all away, and from his lookout, he could clearly see all of them without much obstruction since most of the things that could have covered his vision like houses, had crumbled from frequent explosions. ¡°Why don¡¯t we just stick together.¡± One person suggested, holding a flashlight in one of his hands, the agitation barely discernible in his voice. ¡°Yeah¡­ maybe you¡¯re right.¡± Another replied, the trembling in his voice less hidden. ¡°I agree, whatever it is, we can just face it together.¡± Voices of agreement quickly spread in the crowd of people, as more and more of them were in favor of the idea of not dispersing anymore. The place was originally very quiet, since it was night time, and the people had to almost shout to build up courage, not only for oneself but for the others as well. It was thanks to these that Altair heard them and figured out what was going on. He could have stopped here, and maybe he should have done so, but the little sadistic side of himself found this whole thing somewhat funny. Since no one was harmed in this, he thought of enjoying the situation. Suppressing a slightly evil chuckle, Altair resumed with the evacuation, his mood now less downcast. ¡®Am I actually a villain for finding fun in this?¡¯ He only wondered briefly before pushing the thought aside. He watched them very attentively and when he saw a side towards which the lights were not pointing, he teleported there and vanished with one or two people, depending on how many he could touch at once and as fast as possible. The teleportation was very silent, and Altair only appeared for about half a second before disappearing right after. Both of these contributed in making that those he took away, did not have the time to alert others of what happened or was happening to them. In fact, before they even had the time to shout or scream in fright, they were already in Oz. . As the group was searching around, moving all together, and talking among themselves, one person suddenly noticed that the people he was talking to did not respond. ¡°Ali? Walid?¡± He turned back in the direction where Ali and Walid should be and searched around with his flashlight. ¡°Come on this is no time for this kind of thing¡± He first started talking in a normal conversational tone, with a semblance of joking in his voice. His voice however, slowly started trembling when he called out a second time, but he still expected it to be a joke from them. ¡°Guys, come on say something¡­¡± Still not getting a reply he signaled to the others. ¡°Guys, Ali and Walid have gone missing.¡± His situation was not an isolated case and the behavior of the others around was somewhat similar to his, so when he said this, unsurprisingly, other people started raising similar complaints to his. ¡°I don¡¯t see Razan and Joud either.¡± ¡°Jamal and Ziad also aren¡¯t replying.¡± ¡°Samir! Tariq!¡± ¡°Hey, Hassan! Khaled!¡± More and more people noticed that those around them went missing, and with this, their restlessness became more apparent. Everyone was now very agitated, the earlier cohesion of choosing to stand together not so apparent anymore. Altair also noticed this and it made him lose interest in playing his somewhat sadistic game. He found it much less funny. He regained his serious attitude and decided to hurry up with taking the remaining people away, even if they had a glimpse at him. Something he soon realized was not such a smart idea. Back on the ground, as the people got back together, they stated quiet for some time, all of them very nervous. Soon enough, one person finally suggested. ¡°Should we just return to the camp?¡± No one responded, all of them still with nervous expressions. ¡°Maybe this is all just a bad prank and when we¡¯ll return to the camp, we¡¯ll see them there.¡± After saying this, he paused and looked at the others to assess their reactions. Just like before, no one responded, but this time he saw some change in their expressions. They were all scared and did not want to stay in this place any longer. His words were like what everyone wanted to hear in their scared and tired state. Most of them wanted to believe this was just a nightmare and that once they slept and woke up for real, this will just be a bad episode behind them. Not wanting to think about or consider another possibility, they started agreeing. ¡°I- I agree. Even if they are not at the camp, right now we can¡¯t really see much without having the moon. Let¡¯s return for now.¡± ¡°Yes, it¡¯s better to search in the morning with daylight. There isn¡¯t really much we can do in our current conditions.¡± With more convincing going on and more people agreeing, it took almost no time for even the most reticent ones to follow.¡± This time their conversation wasn¡¯t as loud and Altair could not hear what they were saying. He observed them as they arranged in a way that they were all looking around. They formed small groups of 4, with each group looking around in all directions. Altair looked at them and wondered. ¡®What are they trying now?¡¯ CHAPTER 14 - Because I can do it... Altair stood on the building he was using as a lookout and observed what the people on the ground were doing. All of them slowly separated in groups of 4 and spread apart. Just enough to move mostly undisturbed but still close enough that they could still see the next group. In the groups, each person held a flashlight in one hand while their other hand rested on the shoulder of the person next to them. With everyone doing the same in the small group of 4, the groups moved towards the camp slowly. Stressed as they were, they were in a hurry to get to the camp. It was as if they had a weird confidence that once they got to the camp, everything would be alright. In their minds, all they had to do was get to the camp. ¡°Make sure to all pay attention to the direction you¡¯re looking!¡± ¡°Spread out a little!¡± ¡°Pay attention to the groups beside you!¡± ¡°Move a little faster!¡± From time to time, as they moved, someone kept shouting what seemed like instructions or directions. The silence was unsettling, so he decided to shout to remind everyone that they were not alone. Altair kept observing this, having already lost his mood to have fun with them due to their rising fear. He teleported near the first group of four and placed his hand on two shoulders and left immediately. As soon as he left with these two, the other two in the group of four noticed this disappearance when they no longer felt their touch. At the same time, the next group noticed this disappearance too. When Altair appeared, there was a brief moment when his body shadowed the light of the flashlights and when he dis-appeared with them, the light from their flashlights left with him. This made it obvious that people did not just disappear, they were taken. However, the fact that whatever took them away did so in what to them seemed like an instant, made it clear that there was nothing they could do about it. They barely had the time to process this information that Altair appeared where he was before and took away the last two in the earlier group of four. The remaining groups of people were so shocked that they did not even think. At this moment, they did not know what was important and what was not. They all became apprehensive towards everything from all sides around them. In each group, the individuals moved back a little, to the point that, their backs were now touching, and they remained that way. After some time of just staying like that, someone left his group and took off running away while shouting some unintel-ligible nonsense. The others still stayed there, dazed. Altair appeared close to the next group of people and van-ished with another pair of two. This was like a trigger or a signal to everyone else, all those who were momentarily dazed immediately started running of in different directions. Some shouted about wanting to be left alone and others shouted about wanting to live, but all of them screaming to-gether made it mostly difficult to tell what they were say-ing. The fact that they were all shouting in Safaitic did not help either. Safaitic was already a difficult language to begin with. Meanwhile, some people still thought about those who were left at the camp and ran towards the camp, hoping to alert them and run away with them. Altair reappeared, ready to take away the next pair of peo-ple when he noticed the situation unfolding in the place. ¡®Now what?¡¯ He asked himself, a little confused about what he saw. Listening a little, he heard what they said and he under-stood that once again he was the cause of this. ¡®Couldn¡¯t they just have quietly gone to bed like the others did the other day?¡¯ *ugh~!* He let out a low grunt of annoyance and teleported to the closest person in his line of sight. Since he had not gone for long, no one really had the chance to escape far. Thanks to this, there were still many people close by and he just had to make a choice of whom he wanted to start with. . A few minutes later, Altair was finally done teleporting all those around. There were not really that many people left so, even when pacing himself, he still managed to take eve-ryone away before any of them reached the camp. ¡®Me and my hastiness¡­ I wouldn¡¯t have had to deal with this if I had just waited for them to all go to sleep.¡¯ Altair thought, tired. . For the next few days, Altair kept up a similar routine eve-ry day. As soon as he woke up, he started by completing the Daily Quest. After which, he went to different places around the world with ongoing wars like in Hzat or disasters of some sort like the fire that occurred in Boubou, in Kyrnac. There were quite a few of these situations in the world and he was always so tired after returning home at the end of the day. The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.A month quickly passed with him busying himself that way. During this time, he was able to go to Boubou to know more about the charitable people that acted in the aftermath of the fire and see where each one stayed. Once he had that information he sneaked into the places where some of them slept, and left them gifts. It was money which he had exchanged in different places into the currency of Kyrnac. Each person received 1,000,000 Kyrnac Gallis (KNGs), which was the equivalent of around 1,000 Svearian Crowns (SECs). Making him spend a total of 8,000 Crowns for the 8 people that he could identify and find still in Boubou and in need. Spending this money, he did not feel pressured, since he was only reticent to use money on himself but never when it came to helping those who needed. Altair is the kind of person that cannot see a person in need, be able to help, and do nothing to help. . About a week after he started with his super-hero activi-ties, he already wanted to give up. After all, it was a thankless task where he had to do everything in secret. None of the people he teleported ever showed any apprecia-tion towards him for what he did since most of the time they were flustered and confused about what was happening to them. He could not explain what was happening to them nor could he hang around long enough that that they got anything they could use to describe him. His paranoia would not allow him to even let them know his height so he mostly hunched a lit-tle whenever he teleported them. That and a few other reasons made him understand why vil-lains were so popular and why there were so many more vil-lains than heroes in all forms of media. Villains are just much more realistic. It is more realistic that someone with the ability to tele-port anywhere he wants at any time, needing nothing more than an image of the destination, would use such an ability to do anything in his or her own interest, than it is to be-lieve this person would start helping people, and stick to doing so for no reward at all. ¡®But I am not anyone, I am Altair Rohan.¡¯ He told himself, in an almost boastful tone. ¡°Wow, talk about arrogance¡­ Didn¡¯t know I had it in me¡­¡± He muttered. Regardless, he felt motivated enough to continue his activi-ties for a few more days. But after some time, he felt like giving up again. ¡®Maybe I am not made for this.¡¯ He started thinking. ¡®Surely, someone else will take care of this even if I don¡¯t¡­¡¯ ¡®The world will not stop going around once I stop doing this. People already lived even before I was able to tele-port, before I had a system, and things were working for them¡­¡¯ He kept on having such thoughts that would dissuade him from going on, thoughts that would convince him to put a stop to those activities. But, on that same day, during the day, as he was watching the news, he saw the situation in the world once more and threw the thoughts away. It was a catastrophic earthquake in country Phrygia. The level of damage as portrayed by helicopters and drones on TV was so great that he felt he couldn¡¯t just sit and do noth-ing. It was to the point that he almost acted impulsively by im-mediately teleporting to the scene. He didn¡¯t know how him-self, but he managed some restraint. However, that was enough to reaffirm his resolve. ¡®This is why I have to do it. It doesn¡¯t matter what things were like yesterday or one week or even one month earlier. I must believe that I was given this power, these advantages for a reason. Whatever that reason might be, it can wait. For now, I must keep trying to patch things together to the best of my ability. Not for some grand purpose, simply, be-cause I can do it.¡¯ Just like that, the little task he had started just because of a childish fantasy became his responsibility, a weight he put on himself just because he was able to carry it. Even after he convinced himself of this, he still could not reveal himself to the world. He did not know if the world could accept him or if they were ready to do so, he was not even sure he would be able to bear the responsibility of ex-posing them to such a thing. What he knew, was that he did not need to publicly reveal himself or what he could do to keep on helping the way he was already doing. Therefore, he kept on helping people around the world. he took people from one unlivable place, and brought them to a more decent place. In case people needed food, he took it from a place which had no need for it, like an inaccessible ruined site, the way he did in Hzat, before giving it to the unsuspecting people in need, one way or another. Always doing so in a way that he left no traces and avoided contact with anyone. CHAPTER 15 - Unknowns *peep-peep peep peep* *peep-peep peep peep* *peep-peep peep peep* Altair woke up to the sharp sound of his alarm, and in a reflexive motion, he cut it off before making his way to the bathroom. . A few minutes later, he was sitting at his dining silently sipping on a warm cup of tea. Everything was very peaceful in the darkness and silence of the place, with the only sound being from the occasional clink as he rested the tea cup. Once done he let out a took in a deep breath and let out a long exhale. ¡°It¡¯s a new day.¡± He said calmly, and as if prompted, the lights in the house started turning on. ¡®(Status)¡¯ He called on the system. STATUS [NAME: AKROAT¨ªS SOF¨®S ALTAIR ROHAN] [LEVEL : 1 ] [RACE : HUMAN ] [TITLE(S) : PLAYER?? ] [CLASS : NONE ] [HEALTH : 2500 ] [MANA : 4000 ] [STRENGTH : 18 ] [AGILITY : 18 ] [VITALITY : 50 ] [INTELLIGENCE : 50 ] [SENSE : 20 ] [POINTS : 0 ] It had now been over a month since Altair obtained the teleportation ability and the System. During this time, while many things mostly remained the same, a few things had changed. For Altair, appearance-wise he had not seen much change in this time, with his body mostly regaining some weight from the earlier very thin appearance caused by body reconstruction. His muscles had become much more outlined compared to a few weeks ago, but it was always well covered under the long-sleeved clothes he put on, the only indication of his fitness being the definition of his arm below the elbow as he always folded that part. To an outsider, he would look exactly the same. Despite his unchanged physical appearance, the increase in his stats had not left him completely unaffected. His thoughts drifted to a memory of two days ago. . Altair had just added a few points to his Strength and Agility stats, and when he was in the kitchen, as he noticed a utensil falling, he reflexively went to catch it. The problem is that he was too fast in his movement, and having put more strength than necessary, he clumsily poured the pot of boiling water on the stove over his body. His first reaction was to run to the bathroom and apply some ointment. But before he even left, he realized that he did not feel any pain. The water that should be making sizzling sounds as it destroyed his skin felt like warm water right now. He quickly calmed down, and when he thought about it, he wondered. ¡°Was it a benefit of increasing the Strength or is it related to Vitality?¡± ¡®Probably the Strength stat.¡¯ He thought. The following night, he returned to the gym to get a new idea of how much improvement the stats increase brought him, and he was baffled. His physical capabilities had mostly doubled. He was now able to run close to 70 km/h, and his carrying capacity was far past 200 kg, being around 300 kg base, and a maximum output of 650 kg. ¡°This is crazy.¡± He said to himself.Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. ¡°Wouldn¡¯t I have been some kind of super human if I had invested in these two instead of Intelligence and Vitality?¡± Altair had noticed that with the increase in Vitality, his stamina had greatly improved. And while he was not faster in completing tasks, it took him much less time thanks to needing to rest less often. This made him invest a lot of points into Vitality. On another note, he had been pouring points in his Intelligence stat as well. Not only to alleviate the mental fatigue from quick successive teleportation, but also because each increase also raised his Mana quantity/value. He was very enthusiastic at the possibility that he would be able to use magic or magical abilities of some sort, and did not hold back in putting points here, even ending up neglecting Vitality. But when his Intelligence stat went past 40, he started feeling unwell. It was like all the time, he was hallucinating and disoriented. He could not even concentrate properly and coordinating his body movements was increasingly difficult as days went by. He first noticed this when the Intelligence stat went past 30 but he did not pay much attention to it. The fact that it started happening about a week after obtaining the System and his teleportation ability, made him think that it might be a late side effect of the body reconstruction or teleportation. He persisted for a couple of days, still adding points to Intelligence. Then he noticed that whenever he added points into his Intelligence stat, it got a little worse each time, until it got to 40. It became so bad that he had to stop the ¡®super-hero¡¯ activities. He could not stop the Daily Quest however, because he dreaded the Penalty zone even without knowing what was there. Fortunately for him, he already had his exercise location picked and it was a free place at the time he got there each day. Thanks to this, neither running nor the other exercises of the Daily Quest was affected much by his reduced vision or his disturbed senses. It got to the point that even his daily life was hindered by it, and eventually, he had to find his glasses to put them back on. The glasses improved the situation and he got the opportunity to think clearly again. He remembered how his sight improved considerably right after the body reconstruction. ¡®At that time, all my stats had achieved some kind of balance.¡¯ However, the more he thought, the less likely it seemed related to all stats being the same figure. ¡®Wouldn¡¯t it have gone wrong from the moment I started increasing points if that were the case.¡¯ Since it was his senses that were affected, mostly sight, he decided to put point for the following days into Sense. His mind became less cloudy, less fuzzy, and he could focus again, his hearing and sight adjusted as well and became almost as good as before. He concluded that there was a strong relation between the Intelligence and Sense stats, and that too much difference was detrimental to him. . After cleaning his utensils, Altair teleported to the Scaniae coast ready for the Daily Quest. In Svearika, it is the best place for an unobstructed 10 km run. . . . _A CERTAIN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION_ In a certain room, in an unknown place, two men sat in the dark on comfortable-looking swivel chairs. Around them were several screens displaying different locations. Each screen showed a split view of what seemed to be the same location. On one side of the screen there were images, from three different perspectives, of Altair sometimes with his costume and sometimes in simple clothing, and they showed him appearing and disappearing, teleporting several times doing various things. On the other side of these screens, the footage showed what was, also from three different perspectives, a live video of these locations, judging from the text that showed the words ¡®LIVE¡¯ on that side of the screen. What all these screens had in common was that they showed different places to which Altair had gone in the past month, and they all showed images from far above, as if they were captured with drones at different angles. As the two men sat there, just watching the screens a beeper went off. *beep-beep beep-beep* *beep-beep beep-beep* *beep-beep beep-beep* One of the men kick-pushed his foot on the ground, moving the swivel chair in doing so, as it rolled towards the source of the sound. He picked a device from a table he got to and glanced at it before swiping his finger. Then he stood up and started stretching right there. The other person in the room then asked. ¡°Is it time?¡± The first one replied. ¡°Yes. We should get ready.¡± ¡°Alright, you¡¯re up.¡± Said the second person, before adding. ¡°Will you need help to set things up?¡± The first frowned a little, not replying immediately. ¡°It should be faster that way.¡± The tone of his voice clearly showed his reluctance at something. ¡°He doesn¡¯t like you just as much as you don¡¯t like him.¡± The second one said. ¡°Is that supposed to be comforting?¡± The first one asked as he walked towards the door. The second one did not reply and just sighed softly. He took out a phone and prepared to make a call before- ¡°Is it me that you want to call?¡± He heard these words from a corner of the room. As soon as he heard a voice, his hand moved very quickly towards his belt, where a baton-like object was strapped. However, he recognized the voice and relaxed a little as he turned in the direction of the voice. Confirming who it was, he retracted his hand completely from his weapon. ¡°You should really stop doing this, one of these days, I might react badly to it, James.¡± The new person, James, with a teasing and somewhat smug small smile on his face, said playfully. ¡°I¡¯m sure you don¡¯t mind; your reflexes have improved so much thanks to me.¡± ¡°I¡¯m getting too old for this. One of these days you might just push my poor old heart too far. Besides, if anything, you¡¯re numbing my reflexes at this point. What if one of these days I don¡¯t react, thinking it¡¯s another of your pranks?¡± As they were talking the person who left the room earlier came back asking. ¡°Who are you talking to, Ronald? Is that guy here already?¡± Both Ronald and James turned at the person coming into the room. James¡¯s good mood vanished as soon as he heard this person¡¯s voice and he said one short sentence with an annoyed but mostly serious expression. ¡°I take this seriously.¡± ¡°Whatever, let¡¯s get to work. We need to set up the area. You know where the equipment is.¡± The other person replied in a flippant tone before leaving the room. This person left the room, taking with him the case he came in with and disappearing from sight. ¡°David.¡± Ronald called out, a little late. ¡°I¡¯ll be going as well.¡± James said as he too disappeared. Ronald was left alone in the room and he let out a tired sigh. ¡®I don¡¯t understand how they hate each other¡¯s guts and work so well together.¡¯ CHAPTER 16 - Ultimatum Meanwhile¡­ _SOMEWHERE ALONG THE SCANIAE COAST, SVEARIKA_ Once Altair vanished from his kitchen he appeared here. He started with a few stretches, then he completed the tasks of the Daily Quest in such a record time that he kind of felt empty after completing it. With his speed having increased from 30 km/h to nearly 70 km/h, Altair only needed eight minutes to be done with the 10 km run compared to the 20 minutes of the last 2 weeks. The other exercises were even more of a cinch, since he was already very used to the form for each of them. After everything was done, his body barely started to warm up, and he was not even sweating. He left the coast with a teleportation. _STOCKAR CITY, ALTAIR¡¯S HOUSE_ After vanishing from the coast, Altair reappeared in his house and proceeded to go and have a bath. . One advantage of the Full Status Recovery was the fact that it could do away with even sweat while he only needed to change clothes to be all clean again. However, since he was saving those and since he was not tired, he still had to do things the conventional way. ¡®Besides¡­¡¯ Altair brought up the status bar. Under the status tab were the words. [Full Status Recovery (5/5)] For some reason, there was a limit to the number of these that he could keep. This started appearing about three weeks ago, after he kept the second Full Status Recovery without using. . After the very refreshing bath, he teleported to the kitchen and got some breakfast ready. Following which, he teleported again, to the living room to watch TV while having his breakfast. There, something unexpected happened. ¡°You travel a lot, Mr. Rohan.¡± Altair heard an unfamiliar voice a certain distance behind him even before he powered on the TV. His heart rate quickened and his breathing stalled. He was understandably startled, and his mind started thinking very quickly. Nevertheless, he took a silent deep breath, calming himself as he stood up from his sofa. He turned to look in the direction of the voice and then, he saw a man standing by his wall. The man had his right side towards Altair as he looked with his head turned sideways at the images of different locations which Altair had pinned to his wall. ¡°Who are you?¡± Altair asked the man, after calming himself. With all that had been going on in his life, Altair naturally felt confident in his survivability these days. At the very least, he was confident that whoever this person was, if push came to shove, he could escape safely from him. Therefore, he did not feel pressured, and calmed down easily, despite not knowing anything about this person. The man in question, Ronald, looked at Altair for a moment before returning his attention to the wall of pictures. His expression was flat and serious as he replied calmly. ¡°Who I am is not important. What matters right now is you, Mr. Rohan.¡± ¡°How did you get in here? The doors should have been closed.¡± Altair asked with a frown slowly forming on his face. ¡°You are not listening, Mr. Rohan¡­¡± Ronald replied.The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Here, Altair interrupted Ronald, now talking in a somewhat aggressive tone of voice. ¡°No, you, are not listening to me. Who are you? How did you get in here?¡± Ronald was unfazed by Altair snappy reaction, and just talked after him. In his response, his voice seemed measured. ¡°We know who you are, what you can do. We know everything about you and about what you¡¯ve been doing.¡± At first, Altair was confused, but soon enough, worry started sipping in, and he questioned himself. ¡®How? When did that happen? No, I¡¯ve been very careful.¡¯ Having only questions, and no answers, Altair asked the man in front of him while feigning ignorance. ¡°What are you talking about?¡± In response, Ronald said in his deep and steady voice. ¡°Your, activities, over the last few weeks were not exactly¡­ subtle. And yet, there¡¯s no news. No leaks. Have you wondered why??¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know what you¡¯re talking about¡­¡± Altair started. Just as Altair was about to bring him into a spiral of denial, Ronald interrupted him. ¡°The refugees in Hzat, your ¡®donations¡¯ in Kyrnac, the evacuations in Marash, the evacuations in Balansiya¡­ need I continue?¡± Hearing Ronald¡¯s words, Altair was certain Ronald knew, but he did not immediately leave. With a deeper frown on his face he asked in a slightly more apprehensive tone. ¡°Who are you?¡± ¡°I told you, this is not about me, it¡¯s about you.¡± Ronald said. ¡°What do you want?¡± Altair asked. ¡°Order, Mr. Rohan. You must stop your activities. Completely.¡± The atmosphere suddenly started tensing up. Even more so than it already was. With his thoughts racing, Altair started talking after a short moment. ¡°You can¡¯t just tell me to stop.¡± Ronald interrupted him, still speaking in a measured tone. ¡°Your actions are irresponsible and reckless. The¡­ damage, you leave behind does not vanish. Someone, always, has to clean it up. The world does not have the time to babysit you, or clean after you specifically, Mr. Rohan. Hearing the man speak, Altair wanted to agree to stop his activities. However, he considered the situations he had witnessed. He started a careful reply. ¡°You don¡¯t understand. What I¡¯ve seen¡­. What I¡¯ve done¡­¡± . Over the past month, he saw many things that, almost every other time, reinforced his determination that he could not just do nothing. He couldn¡¯t just comply to what Ronald commanded, knowing that there was so much that he could do that would help. He saw people who had their lives turned over because of the increasing number of conflicts erupting all around. As if that was not enough, there were also natural disasters or different accidents of different kinds turning over people¡¯s lives. In a sense, the world was being torn apart, and although he could not do anything about that, he could at least reduce the casualties, the innocent people that were just in the middle of it as things happened. . ¡°I can¡¯t stop,¡± Altair finally spoke, he had made his decision. ¡°If you know what I¡¯ve done, then you know why I do it. People need help. And I¡¯m one of the few who can give it.¡± For the first time in the conversation, Ronald frowned. A slight frown, but a frown nonetheless. He had a no-nonsense expression on his face as he said his next words with his hands in the pockets of his trench coat. ¡°I am not asking you to stop, I am telling you to do so. This is not a negotiation but an ultimatum.¡± ¡°And you can¡¯t enforce it.¡± Altair countered in defiance. With growing confidence, he said. ¡°You can¡¯t stop me.¡± Ronald sighed, almost imperceptibly. ¡°You¡¯re mistaken.¡± He said to Altair. Before Altair could say or do anything, a bolt of electricity suddenly struck him straight on the shoulder. He had prepared for several things including Ronald teleporting to his position, but this was out of nowhere. He did not even know where the hit came from. ¡®He almost dodged. Reflex?¡¯ Ronald thought, a different frown, a thoughtful one, present on his face. Ronald did not stop his actions in his thoughts. Right as the bolt stunned Altair, Ronald, with his right hand, took something from under the left breast side of his coat, which he immediately flung towards Altair. It caught onto one of Altair¡¯s hands, and in an instant, circled his wrist like a bracelet. Following this, Ronald pressed on a one-button-remote he had in his left hand, before discarding it to the side. From the bracelet on Altair¡¯s arm, came out a wire that connected to the ground with such speed that it dragged his body downward. This sequence of actions, throw bracelet, press remote, and rope binding, happened so fast that, it was only at this time that Altair brought his other hand to try and pry the thick bracelet, now a cuff, from his wrist. The bracelet suddenly sent a strong electric discharge through his body. He instinctively retrieved his hand as his body jolted from the transfer. The whole situation was shocking, figuratively and literally. Altair could not keep up. Just a moment ago, they were still discussing. Altair tried to pry the cuff from his wrist. *nyeurgh* Then he tried to yank it out. *nyeurgh~* He failed in doing so, and received another electric shock, coming from the bracelet. *aargh* He quickly tried to teleport, but even this failed. Since obtaining the ability to teleport, this was the first time that it failed him. At the same time, he kept receiving electric shocks at random intervals and whenever he tried to teleport. Then, he saw Ronald approach him holding a baton-like object in one hand. On Ronald¡¯s weapon, there were visible flickers of electric current. ¡°You seem to be under the false misconception that being a Slinger puts you above others. Let me educate you.¡± The fear and confusion on Altair¡¯s face were so clear, so vivid, that anyone could tell what he felt right now. His struggles to pry or yank the cuff intensified, and since he could not form images in his mind he tried to teleport to one of the locations in the images on the wall. His body flickered several times in place but he did not go anywhere. Ronald saw the flickers and was unsettled but he did not show much reaction, however, his grip on his baton strengthened as he said. ¡°Let¡¯s get this over with.¡± He had a more serious expression on his face, and his voice was a little deeper. CHAPTER 17 - Run Ronald was slowly walking towards Altair, who at this time, had one hand cuffed and connected to a rope that pulled him downward. While putting much effort into standing up, Altair continuously tried to teleport away. However, the seemingly random electric shocks he kept receiving from the cuff kept disrupting his focus, preventing him from clearly visualizing a destination. Seeing Altair¡¯s body flicker, Ronald started talking. ¡°The information about you seems accurate, you are different even among the Slingers.¡± His tone was measured and even sounded conversational, as if the whole situation did not matter. Altair on the other hand was too distracted to be concerned with whatever Ronald was saying right now, most of his attention was directed toward finding a way out of this situation¡­ out of this place¡­ his own house. His own house. ¡°Let¡¯s get this over with.¡± Ronald said as he was now almost 3 meters away. The little composure which Altair had managed to muster in order to think of a way out went away like a lie. He became frantic again and struggled without thinking *nyeurgh~* In his struggle he used all his strength and pulled from the ground enough of the rope that he was able to regain a somewhat standing position. *huff~* Since he could not form images in his mind, his attention turned to the wall of pictures. With a picture in front of his eyes, he would not need to visualize his destination. He finally vanished from his spot. He had successfully teleported. But the next instant- *crash~* Altair¡¯s body crashed into the wall of pictures, destroying it. The pictures that were previously on the wall were now scattered around and below him, on the floor. Behind him, the air seemed to have twisted into itself, both at his previous spot and right behind his current position. It was some kind of transparent distortion that appeared to refract light like heat waves. Ronald was surprised at the successful teleportation. He observed the distortion for a moment and said. ¡°You really are a special case. No matter.¡± Nevertheless, he was prepared. Even after the successful teleportation, the cuff still held onto Altair¡¯s wrist, and the metallic braided rope dragged his hand backwards towards the distortion. The rope¡¯s parts seemed to disappear in air as they extended into the distorted space. Altair turned around quickly and pulled on the binding with both hands trying to yank it out. With his continuous failures, maybe he subconsciously tried to buy time as he asked Ronald in a tone full of indignation. ¡°Why are you doing this?¡± He was so scared, his voice sounded like he was about to cry. Ronald replied calmly but his voice sounded deep. ¡°Why? I warned you Mr. Rohan, that your actions, were not without consequence. I ordered you to stop doing what you do. But people like you take yourselves to be gods in a world you know nothing about. You are all the same. Having gained a little bit of power, you always decide to give in to your instincts. You want to behave like an animal, all impulse, no thought, then I will treat you as the wild animal you act like.¡± As he said all this, Ronald¡¯s voice had a hint of disdain in it. Next, Ronald did something and the electricity around his baton increased, now even making a high voltage sound.Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. *bzzt* *bzzt~* Along with the high static sound, there was a burnt smell. Ronald¡¯s baton had now extended into a whip and it scorched the floor and burnt the carpet as Ronald advanced towards Altair. He looked terrifying to the current Altair. Altair scrambled around, moving debris aside as he picked one picture after another and tried to teleport to the locations they showed. He kept struggling to keep his body from being dragged by the rope linking the cuff to the ground while forcing himself to ignore most of the random electric shocks. Each time he tried to teleport, he got a weird feeling but when he looked back away from the picture, he was still right there, in his living room, with Ronald still there staring at him, as if waiting for him to tire of his pointless struggles. The agitation of wanting to escape from Ronald, coupled with the cuff¡¯s electric shocks really made it difficult. He barely looked at each picture for a second before discarding it. Next, Altair saw that much like on Ronald¡¯s whip, his previous spot suddenly had electricity ¡°erupting¡± from the ground in a terrifying display. It sizzled and with the sound of static, the electricity tore through and destroyed the carpet like paper facing water. Altair realized that, that could have been him burning like that. Not knowing how, his mind cleared for just a moment when he saw this, and he vanished again. *crash~* But just like before he did not go far and simply crashed into the TV that was a about a meter away from the burning carpet. Altair was already in a running position so his body did not stop at crashing but he ran a few steps before falling due to imbalance from his body being leaned forward. Altair barely had the time to register that his body was not held back by the rope that he let out a cry of pain. ¡°*Aaargh*¡± His arm¡­ his arm that had its wrist cuffed was now missing. He saw it burning to the same electricity that burned the carpet earlier. He held onto the empty stump as he started scooting backwards, away from the electrified spot while shuffling his feet on the ground. Seeing his arm being burnt like that, coupled with the smell, Altair almost hurled. Ronald was very surprised at the turn of events, not only at the fact that Altair could teleport a second time but also at the fact that he just lost his arm. ¡°Stay where you are Mr. Rohan.¡± Ronald said with a stop hand gesture. He also said. /¡°No, don¡¯t intervene yet.¡±/ Ronald was no longer as calm as before. He was even a little flustered. Despite Altair holding onto the stump, he was still losing blood very fast. There was a sudden pop-up in his sight. [HEALTH : 2067/2500 ] [Status Effect : Bleeding] [-50 HEALTH per second ] This made Altair regain a little bit of his senses, and while enduring the pain, he stood up and ran out of the room. Ronald just stood where he was and two men suddenly appeared besides him. ¡°This is a mess, it¡¯ll be hard explaining this.¡± David said and asked. Then James, with a serious expression on his face said. ¡°We will think of that later. For now, we should go after him.¡± Ronald then spoke up. ¡°You two go, I will start cleaning up. We might have to destroy the house entirely.¡± David looked around and said. ¡°Wait till we get him before deciding on that.¡± James who was already moving in the direction Altair left then said. ¡°We should hurry or we¡¯ll lose his tracks.¡± ¡°In the meantime, I¡¯ll return to the hideout, in case he goes to one of the monitored locations. Keep in contact.¡± ¡°No time, I¡¯ll take you there.¡± Following these words, David placed his hand on Ronald¡¯s shoulder and vanished with him. . The two of them reappeared in the dark undisclosed location with multiple screens. As soon as they appeared David disappeared again, leaving behind Ronald alone in the room with the screens. . _SOMEWHERE ALONG THE SCANIAE COAST, SVEARIKA_ Altair appeared out of the air as if hurled out. He was breathing heavily, as if it was his first time in a while. This was a place that over the past month he had visited the most often so it was the first place he thought to escape to as soon as he left the room. It was still dark out and people had not started coming out yet so the place was empty. Altair was very disoriented when he appeared due to the agony over his lost arm, as well as the confusion from the earlier situation. It took a few seconds for his mind to clear and he remembered he had the System. He placed all his hopes in his next command. ¡®(Use Full Status Recovery)¡¯ Like a lie, all his injuries disappeared. The only proof of the whole situation being the missing part of his shirt and the blood over his clothes. He was very relieved. Relieved of the fact that the Full Status Recovery did not only work for fatigue but injuries as well. Luckily for him, he had been keeping those whenever he could; rather than squandering them because of a little discomfort from the Daily Quest. Using the System¡¯s Inventory, he quickly changed his clothes, storing the bloodied and torn ones in the System¡¯s Inventory. There was a lot of blood on the ground but he could not really be bothered by that right now. ¡®Who was that person? Who is the ¡°we¡± he talked about? How much do they know about me?¡¯ Altair was currently full of questions, but he could not keep staying where he was. He teleported into a crumbling building. The one that he had once retrieved supplies from. ¡®How long have they known about me? Why could he disrupt my teleportation?¡¯ CHAPTER 18 - Chase As soon as Altair appeared in the ruined building, he started looking around, checking if he could spot any cameras. But it was already dawn and with the sunlight filtering through the holes and cracks, he could not make out if there were any camera¡¯s light. He had a worried look on his face seeing that he could not spot anything. He thought he was feeling pain in his healed arm and it kept spasming because of this. The truth was that he was just feeling phantom pain and even the spasms were subconsciously made by himself. *step* Altair suddenly heard a noise of someone stepping on the rubble and quickly turned around in its direction. There was a man in a dark red suit like Ronald¡¯s and he was standing right at the spot Altair appeared when he did a Sling to this place. It was James, he looked at Altair and started talking. ¡°We need to-.¡± But then he stopped when he saw Altair¡¯s restored arm and then had a slightly surprised expression on his face as he asked. ¡°How did you heal your arm?¡± If Altair still had any doubts, then that question was enough to let him know that this person most likely worked with Ronald. Altair quickly stood up from his leaning position and took on an apprehensive stance and at this moment James said with his hand in a pausing gesture. ¡°No before that, stay where you are. I¡¯m not here to hurt you.¡± James also said. /¡±Yes, I found him.¡±/ So Altair knew he was talking to someone else. He had no intention of waiting here to be ganged up on so he vanished from his spot before James could act. ¡°Damn it~.¡± James said in annoyance as he took out a small spray bottle from below his overcoat. He ran towards Altair¡¯s previous spot and started spraying in the air. The twisted air became more visible and he stretched his hand towards it. The next moment, he also vanished from the place. . In the middle of a burnt down forest, Altair emerged out of the air and looked around him, mostly up. He saw another man appearing out of the air, up in the sky. He was dressed similarly to James and Ronald, a formal dark red suit with an overcoat. As soon as this man appeared he started falling straight down as if diving in an upright position but he seemed undisturbed by this. He just kept his hands in his pockets even as the wind flapped his overcoat upwards. As soon as Altair saw the man in the same outfit as Ronald and James, he took off running into the forest.If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. James soon appeared from there and as soon as he did David said. ¡°That way.¡± Pointing in the direction Altair left earlier. /¡±Ronald, do you see him?¡±/ David asked. \¡±Check your screens.¡±\ Ronald replied through the earpiece. Both David and Ronald folded the right sleeve of their overcoat and on the back of their hands appeared screens. A little bit of manipulation later, and they were looking at a drone¡¯s footage of Altair¡¯s movements in real-time. ¡°How is he that fast?¡± David asked with his head slightly tilted. ¡°Let¡¯s go.¡± James said, and they both vanished. Further inside the forest, Altair was running with everything he had. Trying to navigate through the burned down trees, which he sometimes had to run over and other times run by. His head was full of questions even as he ran. He wondered how these people kept tracking him, how many more Slingers they had with them. He knew that they had at least two in their group. Whatever the case was, he had to avoid going to a place he had already been in the past month. Considering Ronald¡¯s words in the house, he had been monitored for a long time; so, for now he was just running while trying to figure something out. David emerged from the air and placed his hand on Altair¡¯s shoulder. ¡°Stay still.¡± He said. Feeling the palm on his shoulder, Altair who was very sensitive at the moment reflexively slapped the hand away in panic and teleported away. He was still in the forest and James appeared in front of him saying. ¡°Don¡¯t make things difficult.¡± Again, Altair teleported away, this time a little further but still within their sights. He also had the chance to take a look at them and he saw the screens on the back of their arms. ¡®Is that how they track me?¡¯ He asked himself. Then he looked at the screens, trying to figure out the direction from which they were recording, and with squinted eyes he looked towards where he assumed the filming device was. He looked only briefly since he still had to be wary of the two before him. Seeing Altair¡¯s actions, James said. ¡°Don¡¯t bother, you won¡¯t see them.¡± He seemed to have guessed Altair¡¯s thoughts. David was looking at his arm which Altair had just slapped away and he said. ¡°I already wondered seeing how you pulled yourself in the house but¡­ you¡¯re quite strong.¡± Altair was indeed a little stronger than the average person thanks to the added stats, and with his unchanged stature it was not apparent. Altair thought of James¡¯ question about healing his arm and realized. ¡®They don¡¯t seem to know about the System.¡¯ He also looked at James, but the man just like David appeared very casual as he said. ¡°We are here to talk, not harm you.¡± Altair retorted in anger, almost shouting. ¡°You guys cut my arm!¡± ¡°You actually did that to yourself.¡± Said James. ¡°What?!¡± Altair asked. David chimed in. ¡°No one opens more than two Sling gates at once. But somehow, you did two Slings even in that situation. When you tried the third, the already open gates collapsed with your arm going through.¡± ¡°You¡¯re actually lucky that you weren¡¯t cut in two instead.¡± James completed. Then he said. ¡°Why do you think we took the time to discuss with you if we came to harm you? It¡¯s just that guy going too far.¡± ¡°To be fair, you acted quite arrogant when you challenged him.¡± David added. Altair was not pacified. ¡°He thought he would fry me just for that?!¡± David almost let out a sigh before continuing. ¡°About that, it¡¯s something about sparing the rod and spoiling the child. If you are taken down when you first show negative traits, you would instinctively hesitate to repeat it. Just think of the whole thing as a test.¡± ¡°A test?¡± Altair asked. James replied. ¡°This whole situation is just a test that went wrong once you did not follow the script.¡± ¡°Can the two of you take your hands out of your pockets, I don¡¯t think it¡¯s a good sign with you guys.¡± David and James exchanged a look, then they removed their hands from their pockets. Seeing that they were empty, Altair then asked. ¡°What happens now?¡± ¡°You come with us.¡± James replied. ¡°Where to?¡± Altair asked. ¡°You can¡¯t know that yet.¡± James said. Altair then asked. ¡°What if I don¡¯t want to follow you?¡± ¡°Then we take you with us. You lost the right to choose from the moment you saw us, and you were bound to meet us from the moment you choose to be reckless with that ability.¡± James replied again, his voice still as calm as before. CHAPTER 19 - Slingers After staying silent for a moment, Altair finally spoke. ¡°Alright, I agree to come with you.¡± When he thought about it, he could not really find a way to escape from the current situation. He lacked too much information right now. Such as, who they were, whether they were just a small group or part of a bigger organization, or even how they came to know about him and where he lived. They had shown that they could track him and he only knew about the drones(?) for now, but the ruined building he was hiding in, where James met him, could not be viewed from the outside using a drone. ¡®Did he perhaps go through several locations?¡¯ He wondered, but James found him too quickly for him to have visited all the places Altair went to in the past month, even if he searched with David, it was just a few seconds from the time he left the house, went to the Scaniae coast and then went to that building in Hzat. There was the possibility that there were more of them searching but that would only mean more people to watch out for. Either way, Altair had to find out answers to at least some of his questions, and if he was imprisoned, he could count on the Penalty Zone of the System to make him escape. He would just have to deal with whatever was there after getting there. ¡°How do we leave; do we wait for a vehicle?¡± Altair asked. David replied, ¡°I¡¯ll take you there.¡± ¡°Meet you both there.¡± James said, and he vanished. David Slinged near Altair and vanished with him. . The two of them reappeared in an almost empty, moderately lit room. ¡°You can take a seat.¡± David gestured to one of the sofas as he took a seat himself. He appeared quite relaxed. A contrast to Altair who was wary of everything around him. Despite the room having no visible ventilation system and with all its walls and ceiling appearing all smooth without fault, the air inside was very refreshing. While Altair was still looking around him, one of the completely smooth walls of the room opened into a door and James and Ronald walked in. Ronald glanced at the apprehensive Altair and went to sit behind a table. James took a seat on another sofa and all three men looked at Altair, making him feel pressured. He quietly walked to an empty sofa and sat on it. Ronald seemed to be the leader of this trio considering that he was the only one at a table. With his fingers crossed under his chin he briefly glanced at Altair¡¯s healed arm before starting to talk. ¡°Things have gone somewhat beyond our control and I must apologize for that. As you understand by now, we have been observing you for some time. Our first encounter however, was intended to be an evaluation, or a test as they said.¡±This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work. Altair decided to postpone the test issue since he was more interested in other things right now. ¡°How did you guys discover me?¡± ¡°You don¡¯t think your activities were enough to draw our attention?¡± David asked tilting his head. ¡°Maybe, but how did you discover where I lived if that is the case?¡± ¡°We could have some tracking means that you don¡¯t know of.¡± James said almost smiling. Looking at him as he sat in an almost laying position, with his hands crossed over his stomach and his feet crossed on the sofa, he appeared too relaxed to be taking this situation seriously. This was good for Altair and it eased a bit of his nervousness. ¡°Which tracking means?¡± Altair asked. ¡°We wouldn¡¯t be telling that to a stranger now, would we?¡± James replied. Altair decided to switch topics. ¡°Why did you come after me?¡± ¡°As I said, our first encounter was intended to be a test.¡± ¡°But, why are you testing me?¡± Instead of replying to his question, Ronald asked another question. ¡°Why do you do what you do; why did you decide to be some super-hero?¡± Altair paused for a moment. ¡°I¡­ because I had the power to.¡± ¡°Is that it?¡± Ronald asked. ¡°I have always been the kind of person who tried to help others, it doesn¡¯t matter whether I know them or not, I strongly believe that helping someone in need is always the right thing to do, and when I see the state of things around me, the way things are crumbling apart, I can¡¯t help but want to piece some of it back together.¡± James and David exchanged odd looks, with no one knowing what they were thinking at the moment. Ronald on the other hand kept his eyes on Altair and asked. ¡°Do you think of yourself as a saint?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t.¡± Altair replied with a hint of displeasure. ¡°I don¡¯t think you have to be someone or something special to do what is right. What is right is right and it should just be normal to do the right thing.¡± ¡°So, that¡¯s why you never went public. You think helping is simply¡­ normal. That¡¯s why you never wait for even appreciation?¡± Ronald asked. Altair remained silent, but to Ronald, it sounded like an affirmation. ¡°Why now; if you could not see things go wrong and do nothing why wait till now?¡± Ronald asked. As far as Ronald was concerned, someone with such a belief as Altair in front of him would not have waited so long to become active. The strong belief he had was not something someone would just develop snappily. ¡°I became active as soon as I obtained my ability.¡± Altair replied. The three men seemed confused. ¡°You have only been active for a few weeks.¡± David said. ¡°The first time I teleported was a month ago.¡± Altair told him. ¡°Try to think carefully, there has never been a precedent before a month ago?¡± David asked again. Sensing something odd, Altair asked. ¡°Is something wrong?¡± ¡°You might not be a Slinger.¡± David said. ¡°No. He is.¡± Said James. ¡°You saw it yourself, his ability operates just like ours, and there is the Sling gate, everything we saw so far confirms the information.¡± ¡°Which information?¡± Altair cut in to ask, but they ignored him. ¡°Gentlemen¡­¡± Ronald slightly raised his voice and they shut up. Ronald then said. ¡°Slingers, all live their first Slinging at the age of five, if they don¡¯t explore the ability or if they ignore it for any reason, they are free of it until their teenage years when it manifests again and more strongly.¡± David continued. ¡°If you were a Slinger, then when you reached your teenage years, you would not have been able to live normally without learning to control the Slinging, that¡¯s why it doesn¡¯t make sense.¡± ¡°Are those some kind of rules?¡± Altair asked in confusion. James interjected. ¡°The theory is that most teenagers always want to be somewhere else, and well, Slingers can be anywhere they can see or remember, so at that age they just start Slinging more often and unpredictably. Other theories talk about mental fortitude and a faster developing brain but I¡¯m not much of a scientist to look into that.¡± ¡°For a moment there I thought you knew what you were talking about. David said. Ronald pinched his nose bridge sensing another argument coming from the two, but he couldn¡¯t let them proceed any further. ¡°Not now.¡± He said in an annoyed tone. ¡®Why do they always have to argue?¡¯ He asked himself. ¡°You are more of a special case than I thought.¡± Ronald said with his attention back on Altair. ¡°But let¡¯s return to the main topic.¡± With the place quiet again, Ronald started talking once more. ¡°The reason we needed to evaluate you¡­¡± CHAPTER 20 - SPECTER With the room quiet, Ronald started talking. ¡°To answer your question about why we were evaluating you, it is for a recruitment, to have you join our team.¡± He paused here and observed Altair, expecting a question. ¡°I don¡¯t know who you people are, you are a shady group who on our first encounter decided to attack me in the name of a test. Why would I join you?¡± Altair asked. ¡°I already explained the attack part to you. Try to think of it as a misunderstanding.¡± David said with some exasperation. ¡°As for who we are¡­¡± He turned to Ronald, and Ronald started introducing the team. ¡°Sitting on the sofa to my right is Mr. James Elliot¡­¡± ¡°You can call me James.¡± James said with a wave. Ronald continued. ¡°¡­to my left is Mr. David Beresford¡­¡± ¡°Just call me David.¡± David said calmly. ¡°¡­and I am Ronald Shaft.¡± Throughout the whole introduction, he kept looking towards Altair without changing his position or posture. ¡°We are one team of a bigger organization that operates around the world, a special initiative of this organization, we are the Strategic¡­¡± ¡°You guys are SH¨€¨€LD?¡± Altair asked, almost excited. His excitement somewhat took them off guard, and they showed different levels of surprise. ¡°What¡¯s that?¡± Ronald asked. ¡°I guess you¡¯re not.¡± Altair replied, deflating. ¡°As I was saying, our team is part of a special initiative, the Strategic Protection and Enforcement for Covert Threat Elimination and Response. A secret group known to a few as SPECTER.¡± At this point, David took over. ¡°Our tasks go from counter intelligence to the dismantling or disabling of hidden threats. Although we don¡¯t often do the first one since that¡¯s mainly the GHOST¡¯s focus. Of course, as a secret group, we have to avoid public awareness. So, very few know of what we do and even fewer know about us. Listening to their introduction, Altair thought they were quite the fearsome organization. There was little doubt to their claims too, since not only did this team in front of him have at least two confirmed ability users, they also had enough resources to be able to track him and find his home without him noticing. Not to mention, he still didn¡¯t know what means they used to find him considering how cautious he was. ¡°Can I know how I attracted the attention of a world class organization? I don¡¯t believe it¡¯s simply because of my activities over the past month, since that would not explain how you managed to locate me right to my house.¡± No response came. A little earlier, Ronald said they had been observing him for some time, that was probably just a few weeks, since even they did not know that it had only been a month since he obtained his ability. It was unlikely that they had something to do with him having this ability. If they could grant people abilities, they would not need to recruit a random person like him, who had nothing remarkable about himself. It was precisely this fact of being totally unremarkable in all aspects that confused him most about how he attracted their attention.Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. He also did not know the extent of their spying on him, or he could just run away. ¡°You have mentioned more than once information about me, how did that get to you, is it this ¡°ghost¡± that sent it?¡± Altair asked. After another moment of silence Ronald finally decided to talk. ¡°About a month ago, my team specifically received information about you. The sender is unidentified as of yet, but the communication method points at someone higher up in the organization. The information was very comprehensive giving us all the details about your life to that point. Your tendencies, your lifestyle, your inclinations and a lot more was included.¡± The more Altair listened the less pleased he was about this, and the deepening frown on his face was a clear indication of that. He was also confused about this whole thing. Who could do such a thing? Above all, he was scared about the direction in which this conversation was going. ¡°I thought you guys did not intend to harm me.¡± Altair said standing up. ¡°Sit down, Mr. Rohan.¡± Ronald said in a deep tone. Then he resumed talking in a calmer voice. ¡°We also assumed it was an elimination task seeing how much information was included. That¡¯s very rare, even for a target of the SPECTER. However, the task was simply to observe you and decide on the appropriate measure to follow.¡± Listening to this point, Altair¡¯s worries was somewhat calmed. ¡°As far as your capabilities went, the information mentioned that you were a Slinger, and that you were an odd one, nothing more. Your residence, as well as some of the locations you would choose to intervene in were all part of the information.¡± This particular piece of information was very important to Altair. It opened the possibility that Ronald¡¯s team did not have a way of tracing his teleportation from a certain destination to his house, but it did not explain how James found him in that ruin in Hzat. ¡®They mentioned Sling gates earlier.¡¯ A theory started forming in his mind. The possibility that James followed him through a Sling gate that was still open. Thinking about it, he teleported exactly two times to get to that ruin, which meant that he had not opened a third gate and therefore neither of the two had collapsed yet. Even with all this information he could not be certain that by escaping now and switching homes he would be out of their reach. There is the chance that this ¡°higher up¡± would also know about his new house, besides, in the digital world of today, hiding was much more difficult without the right skills. Not to mention, there was still his family¡­ ¡°I guess that was also true.¡± James suddenly said. Altair was brought out of his thoughts by the comment and he saw how they were staring at him. ¡°Your natural tendency to space out and dive in your thoughts.¡± David said. ¡°You should avoid that going forward.¡± Ronald advised, but he did not have high hopes on this. After all, how could it be so easy to get rid of a strong habit? ¡°To summarize, you got information from an unknown source, which you assume to be one of your leaders, that mentioned to watch me, and you decided after your observation that I should join your unit. Is that right?¡± Altair asked the three. David confirmed. ¡°That¡¯s right, yeah.¡± At this point in the conversation, James sat up from his casual laying position and looked at Altair with a serious look in his eyes. ¡°You said earlier that your reason for your activities is to make things better. We give you a chance to do it the right way and in a controlled way. As a member of the SPECTER, you will be at the center of a stage where your help is the most impactful and far reaching.¡± Seeing Altair was not rejecting, James pushed further. ¡°While the things you¡¯ve been doing are not necessarily bad due to the intention behind them, they are wrong. Every time you bring an ordinary through a Sling gate, you take the risk of exposing them to forces that you don¡¯t understand, and the way these forces affect them is beyond anyone¡¯s control.¡± James did not know if Altair was getting his point but he continued. ¡°Besides, your situation is not an isolated case. Just like you, there are many others who randomly obtain an ability and are exposed to something they don¡¯t understand, and unlike you they don¡¯t always try to help.¡± At this point, David had a sudden vague look, as if remembering something and there was a hint of guilt in his expression. Altair did not notice it. ¡°¡­and in the case of those who try to help, their motivation might sometimes be wrong¡­¡± Now it was Ronald¡¯s and James¡¯s turns to have that strange look of sad reminisce. ¡°¡­or, like in your case, the effect is not ideal.¡± Altair seemed skeptical. He did not seem to understand in what way his actions had negative effects, and since he was not as good as them in masking his expressions and thoughts, James quickly noticed this. So, he asked. ¡°How do you think that even after a month of your activities, there is still no news of the people you left in Ozz or Kha¡¯nia?¡± Altair started considering the matter. He had wondered about it too but had just sidelined the thought, thinking the people had either not found a way of communicating their situation or that their comments were drowned by the countless other things on the web and people did not believe them. Then came James¡¯s reply. ¡°We did that.¡± What did that mean? Altair thought of their focus, threat elimination, and he had a nasty frown on his face as he asked in clear enunciation. ¡°Did you kill them? CHAPTER 21 - Mission The tension in the room was at its highest since the beginning of this meeting. For the first time, they felt that Altair was a threat. Altair was emitting a pressure that came from his higher Intelligence stat. And it felt¡­ dangerous. Right now, Altair had a clear intention of harming them and his 50 points of Intelligence all ¡°screamed¡± that. This was what created this situation. Both David and Ronald seemed ready to go for a fight, with David having moved his hand to shift his overcoat to the back and Ronald having moved one of his hands to below his table. From Altair¡¯s perspective, those people had suffered enough, just when he managed to place them in a secure place where they could regain a semblance of a normal life, these people came and disposed of them because they were a threat. How could he not think so considering that these are the same people that cut off someone¡¯s arm in the name of a test? Before the situation could escalate any further, James, who happened to be the only one unaffected said calmly in a voice just loud enough to get Altair¡¯s attention. ¡°They are alive.¡± A simple sentence, and yet it dispelled the tension in the room. The calming effect was like a charm. It was akin to a certain ever-furious green giant calming down just because he heard to sun would soon set. With the atmosphere somewhat back to normal, James continued. ¡°We are not monsters, we are enforcers and damage controllers. There is a different group of the organization responsible for this but basically, we had to clean their memories.¡± ¡°That is possible?¡± Altair asked with some skepticism. Although not his field, he was still a researcher in the human biology sector and had a certain understanding of the advancements of other fields in the sector, and memory erasure was not something that was developed yet. ¡°It is.¡± James said. ¡°But depending on several factors the effects on individuals are varied¡­¡± At this point Ronald interrupted James. ¡°I think we have done enough introductions. Returning to the main topic, the question was whether or not you would join us.¡± ¡®Will they mess with my memories if I refuse to join them?¡¯ Altair asked himself. Then he asked a question. ¡°With all the information you have about me, you should also know that I have no military or combat training-¡° David interrupted him as he said. ¡°We are not a military group and you don¡¯t necessarily need combat training to join the team, that can quickly be taken care of. Slingers just happen to have a brain that facilitates training the more they push their Slinging ability.¡± Ronald then said. ¡°What qualifies you is your mental orientation and inclination. You can be trained into a useful asset but you can¡¯t easily be thought to have the appropriate mental inclination. That, Mr. Rohan, is what qualifies you.¡± Altair quickly thought. ¡®So, they¡¯re just lazy to teach morals? Anyway, it seems brainwashing is either not possible or costs them too much. I should tread carefully. I don¡¯t know if Full Status Recovery will clear away mental conditions like brainwashing or memory wipe.¡¯ ¡°Thank you for giving me the chance to help. I¡¯ll join your group.¡± Altair finally said. Either way, if they were out to help, then joining them was the correct decision, and by joining he would have a better chance of discovering who gave out the detailed information about him.You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story. ¡°Just one thing.¡± Altair said. ¡°Can I get a look at the information you received about me?¡± James looked at Ronald before turning back to Altair and saying. ¡°Sure, why not?¡± He had regained his carefree demeanor. ¡°So, what happens now? Is there a procedure to follow?¡± Altair asked. ¡°We have a mission right now. Mr. Eliot told you earlier that your situation of suddenly getting abilities is not an isolated case. The current mission is to deal with such a case. Lately, there is a certain entertainer who attracted our attention.¡± Ronald said. David took over. ¡°He claims to be a magician and he is grandly revealing his ability to the world. The mission is to gather information as quickly as possible and then get into contact with him before the end of the week.¡± ¡°Why the end of the week?¡± Altair asked. ¡°It¡¯s going to be his biggest performance yet, with the most exposure he has ever had. We can¡¯t afford to let the world take him seriously so, we must stop him before that.¡± David said. ¡°Why do we need to gather information? Don¡¯t you guys as a world level organization know everything about everyone?¡± Altair asked in confusion. David replied. ¡°This person appeared out of nowhere, we tried tracing back his tracks to before he became a public figure without results. Besides, the organization does not have the leisure to be monitoring the billions of people in this world. Like Ronald said earlier, a situation like yours where we know everything about the target was somewhat of a special case.¡± ¡°Alright, what do you know of this person?¡± Altair asked. ¡°Only what he has revealed to the world so far. That¡¯s why we must try to locate him and get more information.¡± *tick* *fwuourr~* There was a brief sharp sound like a click or a beep and the next moment, the furniture in the room rearranged. Altair¡¯s sofa moved, startling him. The sofa moved to stay beside David. Then the wall previously behind him lit up as if it was a screen. An image of a man with sharp features, neatly combed dark brown hair and piercing blue eyes appeared on the screen. Beside the name there was a little bit of information, including his name, Denton Black and his estimated age which was around 30. ¡°This is the information we have managed to gather so far on the target.¡± Ronald said. Still on the wall-screen, there were several images of Denton Black in different places and he seemed to dress mostly in tailored suits. He had the typical conman smirk on his face. That smile that was either malicious or told people that he¡¯s better than them. ¡°Where do we start? Do we know where to find him?¡± Altair asked looking at the screen. *tick* With that sound the images and information on the screen were replaced by several rectangles of video footage. Altair briefly thought of something then he turned to Ronald who was still sitting behind his desk. Ronald started talking either without taking notice of him or simply ignoring him. ¡°These are all in real time. We are monitoring all locations he¡¯s ever appeared in while running a facial recognition program with all the faces in those locations.¡± James further explained. ¡°There¡¯s that and also a trigonometry program that determines if the body size and height is compatible. Before getting a positive match confirmation, the program confirms both the corpulence and facial features. It¡¯s some very thorough stuff with too many complicated things.¡± He also added. ¡°It can be very annoying or very helpful depending on which side you¡¯re on.¡± Altair could easily see why it could be annoying, it seemed like running away would be pointless after all. Even if they did nothing to his family, as long as he went home, they could immediately drop on him. Ronald continued. ¡°As soon as we get a positive match confirmation, the Slingers will move in to tail him before deciding on the right time to establish contact with the target.¡± ¡°How long does this usually take? The tracking aspect.¡± Altair asked. David replied. ¡°Most people cycle their locations within two days of first going through so normally two days. As for Denton Black, he started his rise to fame less than a week ago. According to normal behavioral patterns, he should start noticing his rise in funds and also begin to spend big about now.¡± ¡°You expect to get signs of him within a few hours.¡± Altair completed. ¡°Exactly, that is also why we had to hurriedly get in contact with you. In the information we were also advised to act within 4 to 6 weeks from the beginning of the watch.¡± David said. Hearing the last part, Altair¡¯s thoughts drifted for a bit, then he did a brief calculation and got a slight frown on his face. ¡®This informant of theirs even knows about the System.¡¯ Everyone noticed the change in expression but they chose to ignore it. Altair returned from his thoughts and said. ¡°Since we are just waiting can I take a look at that information now?¡± ¡°The information we received on you? I¡¯ll go get it.¡± James said as he vanished without even standing.