036 TO THE MINE
"Damn it, Dorin!" Damen muttered, his tone wavering between guilt and amusement.
"I swear I didn't mean to peep on your shower." A smirk tugged at his lips. "Didn't think Live View came with that kind of perk."
With a chuckle, he set the phone aside.
Live View was far too expensive to waste on guilty pleasures.
"One day," he grinned to himself, "I'll see all of Dorin without paying a single coin."
After some hesitation, he reactivated Dorin's feed, wondering what the woman investigating him was up to now.
Dorin walked into a hidden room.
"What now?" Damen whispered. "Hopefully she's given up snooping into me…"
But she went straight to her investigative board. His photo dominated the center, and above it, in bold letters: Suspect.
"Damn it. Still? How long is she going to cling to that psychic injury case?" He groaned, his frustration bubbling.
Then Dorin picked up a marker. Damen leaned closer to the screen as she scrubbed out Suspect.
"What the hell?" His pulse quickened.
She replaced it with a single word: Related.
"Related? What's that supposed to mean? Is that… better?" Damen asked the empty room.
But she wasn't finished.
She drew a line from his photo to an empty box marked with a question mark. Above it she wrote: Suspect / Guardian Angel.
Damen stared, stunned.
"So, I'm not the prime suspect anymore… but now I'm connected to some mystery figure? A suspect or a guardian angel?"
It hit him then. Dorin must have linked the psychic attacks to an unknown psychic—one secretly aiding him.
She stepped back from the board, satisfied, then left the room.
Damen killed the Live View and sank into thought.
He had two choices: stop using his phone's Acquire ability so carelessly… or find someone else to play the part of the unknown guardian angel- a scapegoat.
Either way, the case was out of his control. With a heavy sigh, Damen lay back and finally drifted into uneasy sleep.
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Damen woke the next morning feeling sharper than ever. The aptitude points he had drained from the Aukuoma Auction robbers still surged through his veins, leaving him invigorated.
He stood before the bathroom mirror and flexed, studying his reflection.
"I still look the same," he muttered.
Despite stealing piles of Strength and Charm, his body hadn't changed a bit. The mirror showed the same lean frame, the same height and the same familiar face.
There was a ceiling, he realized. Past a certain threshold, Strength and Charm no longer translated into visible changes.
Pulling out his phone, he scrolled through his stats.
"Damn, I've gained so much… but what am I supposed to do with all this Strength?"
Strength: 56
Strength outpaced everything else by far—thanks to his ability to siphon three points at a time instead of just one.
His Acquire function acquires three points in Strength every time while the other stats give only one point each time.
But raw Strength wasn't the attribute Meta School cared about. Their goal was to shape Meta Heroes, and for them, superpowers mattered more than muscles.
Meta and Command is more important.
The Military School, though—that was a different story. Their entire system emphasized Strength.
"Does that mean the Military School knows how to use Strength better than I do now?" he wondered aloud.
It had to be. City soldiers weren't weaker than the heroes when it came to dealing with threats. Supersoldiers were in no way weaker than Superheroes in terms of prestige in this world.
This meant Strength based soldiers were hiding some kind of secret training method that could extract strength based powers from their meta Strength.
"I need to learn that," Damen decided, his eyes narrowing. "I'll go to the Military School too. They must have secrets I can't ignore."
But that plan would have to wait—until after the expedition to the space rift.
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[Melrose City Aur Mine]
"The local school is conducting an excursion into our mine for research purposes," Yaris announced, as staff began serving dinner hours earlier than usual.
Normally, the miners only ate after a full day's work, late into the evening. Today, however, it was barely noon.
"I don't care, so long as they don't dock my pay," someone grumbled.
"At least now I can hit the pub early," Ralph said with a grin.
"Ralph, you should watch yourself. Drink less—your body can't take it," Yaris warned.
Ralph's smile faltered, anger creeping into his voice. "Ever since that bastard Damen ran off, I've been drowning in stress. If I don't drink, even if my body won't break—but my mind will."
When Ralph recovered from his psychic attack months ago, Damen was gone. To him, it looked like a runaway.
The sound of engines broke the moment.
Several buses rolled to a stop, unloading teachers, students, and a small squad of soldiers. The uniformed escorts flanked the school group as they gathered in front of the mine.
"Soldiers? Why are they here?" Ralph muttered.
"It's always been that way," Yaris replied. "Every school excursion into our mine is guarded. Keeps the children from getting lost down there."
Another miner snorted. "I still don't get why schools keep coming here. What's there to research? Just rocks and dust down there."
Suddenly Ralph shot to his feet, his eyes wide. "That—!"
"What is it?" Yaris asked sharply.
Ralph pointed, trembling. "Isn't that… Damen?"
Yaris squinted at one of the taller students stepping off the bus.
"He does look a little like him, the face is a little different… but no. Damen was shorter by a head, and besides, how would he end up as a student in a school like that?" he reasoned.
Although Damen's perfect score in his finals was published in school, Ralph didn't know about it.
Beck didn't tell him at all about Damen's good result, nor did he tell he stole the heroes' medals.
Beck was afraid they would beat him for scoring badly while his badly treated cousin did so well.
And without the medals, Ralph couldn't march into the City Council to ask about Damen- he wouldn't be entertained. In his mind Damen must have ran off to another hellhole living miserably without his generous alms.
Ralph collapsed back onto his seat, muttering, "You're right. Must be stress. I think about him so much, I'm seeing ghosts."
A miner chuckled. "You're just sour no one's around to share your workload."
From a distance, hidden among the students, Damen watched the miners.
His gaze lingered on Ralph for a brief moment, short enough not to be noticed. His eyes were sharp and his expression unreadable.
He felt no fear of being recognized or confronted by his uncle.
Whatever he thought of him, they now lived in completely different worlds. He was now a completely different person. Their paths have long been broken.
"Gather your equipment, we would be going down to the rift soon. Everyone listens strictly to our command otherwise we would not guarantee your safety", Captain Green of the escort guards warned the students.
"Aye sir," the students saluted the soldier in a mocking way. They were not fully aware of the danger that awaits them.
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