After the scorpion had left, Zen had kept his eyes locked on that direction just in case but after a few minutes of running,Max and Zen decided to stop to rest
Zen took his hand off Maximilian’s shoulder and sat on the ground leaning his back on the wall trying to recover.
Maximilian decided to join him and sat next to him although he didn’t seem that out of breath
"That was crazy am i right?, I an what are the chances that we would both run into the only beast in this dungeon? And on the final floor at that"
Zen suddenly turned to face Maximilian
"What did you say?"
"Oh yeah, you’ve probably been fighting that thing all this ti that you didn’t realize, turns out the entire academy put up this test to screw with us, the entire dungeon is as empty as your default expression , it’s a total dud, I’ve been spending the past hour just walking around looking for the exit, in fact that’s what everyone’s been doing,at most. i had to deal with a few traps and so idiots that wanted to take advantage of the situation but its been pretty laid back around here"
"....i see"
Zen at that point stopped listening and turned around and closed his eyes trying to rest
"Are you sure you’re gonna be okay?,i wasn’t kidding about you being banged up "
"...i heal fast "
As soon as Zen said that he heard a system prompt
[ 2HP]
[HP: 7/100]
"Hmmm?" Thought Zen
"So, it’s nice seeing you again Zen"
Zen still had his back turned to him with his eyes closed and didn’t say anything
"Co on,why the cold shoulder?,that’s no way to treat soone who saved you , don’t you think i deserve so sort of reward? It’s only fair you show your gratitude "
Surprisingly this ti Zen replied but still didn’t open his eyes
"First of all I’m not giving you the cold shoulder and second,what do you want?, it doesn’t even matter because I have nothing to give you"
"Well what if I want is you?"
Zen suddenly opened his uncovered eye and without turning his head looked at Maximilian out of the side of his eye
Realizing how what he said must have sounded Maximilian hurriedly said
"Wait, that’s not what I ant"
"Then what did you an?" Said Zen as he once again closed his eye seemingly uninterested in the conversation
"I want your cooperation,a partnership of sorts, perhaps even a friendship –" . Maximilian suddenly stopped stopped talking as he noticed Zen’s slightly feminine eyelashes twitch as he ntioned the word ’friendship’
Zen opened his eyes and looked at Maximilian and although they seed as void of emotion as always Maximilian couldn’t help but feel sothing strange in the way he was looking at him but after a few seconds he once again closed his eyes and rested his head on the wall looking upward and speaking in the sa nonchalant yet formal tone that he always did
"You’re going to have to be more specific than that" Maximilian smiled brightly and continued
"Okay,its like this, you help and I’ll help you,we stick together inside and out of the academy, we’ll be a team so any ti you need help I’ll do my best to assist you and vice versa, we’ll be equals in this agreent always and forever so nobody has more say than the other, what do you think?"
Zen thought for a few seconds and answered strangely
"Sowhat similar to the agreent i made with her"
"What?"
" Maximilian, do you fear death?".
Maximilian scratched his head not knowing how to answer that question , he suddenly realized that this was the first ti Zen called his na.
"Forget it, if you did you wouldn’t have helped , but will you regret it?, you clearly don’t know what you’re getting yourself into "
"I would never do sothing I’d regret later on " Maximilian said confidently
"..... we’ll see about that "
"So does that an we have a deal?"
"..... deal "
Maximilian smiled brightly looking contented
"Great, now we’re partners, though i wouldn’t mind if you talked to a bit more instead of being all dark and cold all the ti ". Maximilian had obviously ant it as a partial joke but was surprised when Zen let out an irritated moan
"Fine "
"Huh?" But this ti Zen said nothing.
Maximilian just smiled
"Okay then let’s make it official then. Hello my na is Maximilian Hunter and I’ll be your partner from now on"
Zen was about to do the sa when he suddenly realized that Maximilian’s last na was Hunter.
He suddenly thought back and rembered all the weird things he had done including how he dodged that beast and suddenly felt it made sense
"You have the Hunter family’s ability?"
"Yep, its pretty aweso, hey rember when you said you weren’t giving the cold shoulder?, what did you an " Although Maximilian knew it was an odd question he saw that Zen wasn’t the kind to joke around with anything and just wanted to test it.
For a mont Zen couldn’t help but think it was strange that a Hunter wasn’t on earth but on the red planet but he decided to answer.
"..... It’s about my eye...you should feel lucky I can’t move properly "
"Why?"
"Because if I could i would have cut you down twelve tis by now...make it thirteen"
"Whoa, you’ve got a lot of nerve talking to a biological mber of the Hunter family like that, who knows?,i could just get pissed off and destroy your entire family " Maximilian said between chuckles as he joked but nothing could prepare him for what Zen said next.
"You’re too late, soone already beat you to it"
Maximilian suddenly stopped his chuckling and his expression beca solemn. He suddenly felt akward as he couldn’t believe he had made such a cruel joke, and the fact that Zen said it like it was nothing made him feel worse
"...s.. sorry about that, i didn’t an to"
"...." Zen honestly didn’t look like it affected him much and he simply shrugged.
"A... anyway, what you’re feeling is most likely your mutation’s side effect*
"Mutation?" Asked Zen confused
"Yeah, there pretty rare, even more so than automatons. Yours is your right eye and i guess you already know how to use it, and that urge to cut sobody down must be the side effect, I’m guessing that’s why you keep your right eye covered. Not all mutations have side effects but the ones that do are usually stronger,and more often than not, mutations have more than one way to be used "
Zen thought for a while,he had never heard of mutations which was pretty strange considering he had one, he couldn’t help but wonder if Freya or Riley knew sothing about this and didn’t tell him.
"Don’t think too much about it, you can just think of it as a bloodline skill"
Bloodline skills were exactly what they sounded like and were skills that were lucky enough to get ingrained in a person’s DNA when they were born, usually skills that got inherited were the ones that there parents, grandparents or even ancestors had used so many tis that it had beco a part of them and the skill sequence or how to use it had been carved into their minds, this was how people inherited skills similar to how animals had their inherent mories and instincts.
"And guess what,I have a mutation and believe it or not it’s in the sa place as yours, only difference is mine is in both my eyes and mine doesn’t release killing intent but it does let see so pretty weird stuff most people wouldn’t usually see, that’s how I noticed your mutation in your eye" said Maximilian revealing his mutation.
A mutation in one of the senses, how fitting for a mber of the Hunter family.
The Hunter family was one of the major powers of earth and as such, the known world . Earth was the ho base to the twelve major families which were part of the thirteen official powers of the world of which the military was one of.
Each family had an ability which was associated with them as they had complete monopoly over its production and ’distribution’ as they possessed the original ability circuit, the one that was ford by the world. Each family controlled their own territory on and off earth and had a considerable amount of influence in the current world.
The families were popularly classified into two groups although not due to power but by the fact that five of the twelve families were given a greater honour than the rest due to sothing unique about them.
The first seven families and their abilities were as so.
The Lupin family possessed the lycanthropy ability which was a Evolutionist class ability which gave the form of the mythical werewolf and as a bonus didn’t give the weaknesses of the species.
The Vladimir family controlled the vampirism ability which was also a Evolutionist class and was quite similar to that of the lupin family as it didn’t possess the species weaknesses although they both also lacked many of the strengths of their respective species which their abilities mimicked
The Kryo family possessed the Frost ability (cryokinesis)which was the all round manipulation of ice, snow and everything cold , they don’t just make frost, they control it one hundred percent. This was apparent in the appearance of direct mbers of the family .
The Ford family, which just so happened to be Celia’s family possessed the original circuit for and as such the teleportation ability. The main difference between the Ford family’s ability and the actual teleportation ability was that as Murphy had demonstrated, there was no need for physical contact to teleport sothing other than oneself. This simple feature made it leagues above the regular teleportation ability .
The storm family possessed the original wind ability circuit and as such, the all round wind control ability .
The next was the blaze family, similar to the Kryo and storm families, although there were multiple variations of fire abilities, what the blaze family possessed was essentially the amalgamation of all of them, the all round fire manipulation ability.
The final one in this class was The Armstrong family and although there ability seed like the weakest of them all it was the one of the most highly sought after. Their ability was a non combat type, it was essentially a buff ability for weapons, there ability increased success rate of forging and also the chance of aether gear obtaining a skill during forging and greatly increases the strength of the gear forged. Due to the way it looked when they used the ability it was given the popular na of celestial fire, sothing which really angered the blaze family. mbers of this family were mostly blacksmiths and similar to the military they had relations with all the major powers . Similar to all the other large families all the people under them that worked for the family had abilities similar to theirs,as a result of this most of the buff type abilities were under the Armstrong family.
The last six families were classified differently and in a way it was for the exact opposite reason that the other seven families were. Where the seven families had found their ability circuits and learned from them, the five had skipped this step completely and made their own.
The Hunter, Draconyx, Draconis,Void, Lionel and Ryder, families were mostly thought of as the highest ranking powers in the world even though there was no actual definitive proof of that.
These families were the only ones to accomplish or even attempt sothing as impossible as creating an ability, and for that they were honoured with a class of their own.
The pioneer class abilities were abilities created by the five pioneer families or just the five pioneers
First, the Hunter family which was Maximilian’s family created the sense ability which enhanced the six human senses to an insane level, rumor had it that the highest level mber of the Hunter family could even see and hear things on the opposite side of the planet.
Parents often used it to scare little kids so they wouldn’t keep secrets by saying that the hunters would co to get them if they were bad, it also caused quite a bit of stigmatization towards the family as people(mostly won)would take unnecessary asures to ensure privacy, and so even used it to insult them by calling it the pervert ability.
Needless to say the enhanced senses explained how Maximilian had breezed through the landmines, he must have seen them all and simply avoided them, the sa went for the incident with the scorpion
The Lionel family or as people called it, the beast king family’s ability , the beast form ability was THE Evolutionist class ability. This ability was to transform into beasts but unlike other Evolutionist class abilities, this one didn’t have only one beast form, infact it was widely thought that there was no creature that one wouldn’t be able to turn into if they possessed this ability.
The void family which was revered as one of the most powerful and influential of the major powers were widely feared due to how terrifying their ability was. The void ability which was nad after the family that created it was the ability to nullifiy the ability of another, forcing them to do battle with only their fists and gear, most of the fear that people had towards this family was due to a rumor and although it wasn’t confird no one wanted to test its authenticity, it was a wide spread rumor that when a person possessing the void ability grew strong enough they would be able to permanently nullify a person’s ability and leave them unable to obtain another one.
The Draconyx and Draconis families were in a strange situation. They had both developed the sa ability at the sa ti and this ability was often seen as the most miraculous of them all because it seed to break the rule that all abilities followed, and that rule was that a person could only have one ability. Sohow the Draconyx and Draconis families’ ability was a two in one and sotis even a three or even four in one, granting them an Evolutionist class dragon transformation ability and an elental class ability. Any other information on this ability was either simply rumors,false, or within the family, This family made sure to keep its secrets to itself, even more so than the others.
These two families were also the most hostile towards each other
And finally there was the Ryder family. Similar to the others not much was known about this family, infact nobody was one hundred percent sure about whether they made the ability or it was found sowhere, it was one of the most mysterious however they were undoubtedly one of the cornerstones of the current world as just like the Armstrong family their influence extended far beyond just their ability. Their ability’s na was actually unknown, so called it Cyberkinesis, others called it Technomancy, The point is that their ability gave them the ability to either communicate with or control all things technology
One thing that was clear about all the top class families was that no matter what they all kept to themselves. None of them ever went out and declared what their ability did,most of what was known was what people saw them do, for instance if you asked a mber of the Kryo family
"Does your ability make cold ice and snow?"
They would reply by saying
"I can neither affirm or deny anything involving the family’s personal secrets"
It was the sa for every single one of the Major families so it was quite obvious they all had their own secrets involving their abilities.
_____________________________________________
Maximilian suddenly rembered sothing and decided to tell his new partner/friend Zen
"Oh yeah I just rembered, when I looked at your ex and her new boyfriend, my condolences by the way, i saw sothing weird, those two definitely weren’t normal especially your ex she was filled with this weird energy, the guy looked like he was still a bit normal but the energy was surrounding him , and there was a lot of it too"
Zen listened and didn’t bother telling him that she wasn’t his ex, at the end he didn’t really care about it as it wasn’t his problem but apparently the system didn’t think so
[New quest received]
[Triggered chain quest]
[The plot thickens]
[Quest objective](1)
(1) Find out what is wrong with Gary storm
500 exp
(2) Find out with is wrong with Celia Ford
1000 exp
Zen looked at the screen a bit surprised, although he wasn’t sure how the system worked he was still surprised it gave a quest on this, it seed like whatever was happening with those two wasn’t so irrelevant after all, luckily the system only said to find out, he wouldn’t have to get into any fights
Thinking about the quest thing Zen suddenly realized he hadn’t gotten his reward however he didn’t think too much about it, maybe he’d get it when he got out of dungeon.
Maximilian suddenly stood up
"Okay we’ve been here long enough, let’s get out of this shithole"
Zen looked at him and said
"I still can’t move properly"
"Oh yeah, I can fix that" said Maximilian as he brought out a small vial filled with a glowing blue liquid out of his pocket and extended it to Zen.
"Take it, its good for you, my father gave this in case sothing happened,think of it as keeping to the terms of our partnership,you need help, I’m helping"
Zen looked at the small vial, he didn’t suspect it was poison and Maximilian was trying to kill him because if he wanted to do that he would have just let the scorpion kill him,plus, what would be the point of making a deal with him if he just wanted to kill him?.
Zen took the Vial from him, the mont he opened it a sweet flowery fragrance entered his nose, he downed it all in one gulp not bothering to taste it.
Maximilian who was standing above him complained slightly
"Co on man, you’re ant to enjoy sothing that slls that good,i was intoxicated from here"
Zen ignored him and was about to ask Maximilian sothing when he suddenly got another system prompt
[Consud healing elixir]
[High tier elixir](failed)(poisoned)(corrupted)
[Recovery 15HP every minute for 10 minutes]
[Side effect will kick in in 5 minutes]
[Negating side effect....partial success]
[Side effect has been mitigated by 80 percent]
[Side effect will activate in 20 minutes]
Zen looked at the prompt a bit surprised, and a little bit too calmly
"Hey what’s up,we gotta go" said Maximilian as he stretched his hand out to Zen to help him up, he seed oddly oblivious.
Zen looked at Maximilian questioningly but didn’t say anything, he looked at Maximilian carefully and he was unable to see any signs of excitent or bloodthirst ,Zen concluded he must not have known about it, it wasn’t that he trusted Maximilian but he was very confident in his senses, where he ca from the ability to sense soone’s aura and intentions was more than important and unlike with Celia when his mind had been dulled he was completely fine now.
He stood up although a bit shakily and even had to take Maximilian’s hand to help him but didn’t say anything.
Maximilian put Zen’s arm over his shoulders again and was about to start moving when Zen said sothing
"We need to run, as fast as possible"
"Huh?why?, you haven’t not recovered yet?"
Asked Maximilian confused
"No ti, just go "
Maximilian although confused didn’t really mind except for the fact that Zen wasn’t fully recovered, He held on to Zen’s arm tightly
"Hold on tight!" He yelled and started sprinting looking for the exit, luckily this was the final floor and there weren’t any twists and turns or traps, only the straight way out
Unlike when Zen was moving on his own they didn’t see any temples with offerings or golden orbs further confirming what Maximilian had said said about the dungeon being empty at least before what Zen had done
After a while Zen had recovered a little and was less of a burden even helping a bit but he was still a little very weak still having to use Maximilian to support himself.
After a while Zen and Maximilian suddenly saw a light at the end of the dungeons corridor and Maximilian increased his speed happy to be out of this place
A voice suddenly rang out in front of them
"Halt" it said in a loud tone
The two of them slowed down and saw at least a dozen people in uniforms similar to Callen’s moving towards them .
The person at the front who seed to be their leader suddenly yelled out after seeing them
"Their kids,most likely participants"
He walked up to both of them and noticed one of them was supporting the other but didn’t bring it up
"Are you too okay?"
Maximilian who seed a little out of breath replied
"Yeah we’re fine, right Zen?"
Maximilian however didn’t get a reply as Zen was still staring at the screen in front of him
"Side effect will activate in 3....2....1...]
[Activated]
Zen suddenly felt a cold sensation spread out from his chest as his vision quickly dimd and he started loosing his footing, he began to fall to the ground but Maximilian who had noticed quickly caught him.
The last thing Zen saw was Maximilian panicking and calling out his na and the man calling for help
Reviews
All reviews (0)