Chapter 017: First Kill

I find out I’ve woken up quite early. It’s 3 AM.

“… Fuck. Being physically unable to sleep long is actually a pain in the ass.”

I look around, go shave and take a long shower.

My bow is missing, probably in Lin Hao’s hands, so I’ll need to buy another for my regular practice.

I go bake cookies using only almond powder, butter, cream, egg, sugar and chocolate so that they’re especially good.

…

The cookies are baked and they’re delicious.

I go on my computer and send emails to the other apostles.

They will each have a huge power spike after the last trial, especially Lin Hao.

I go on to waste my time reading online novels, listening to music and watching videos.

Time goes by while I watch videos at two times their normal speed. The sound is a little distorted, but I can follow normally while using my brain with some of its new capabilities.

This was how I had lived year after year, with a few changes here and there.

I finally felt like I was back on Earth.

Ding

I receive a text from Cassandra.

Right, “yesterday” we went to the aquarium together.

I reply I somehow broke my bow and will only go tomorrow to the archery club.

Ding

…

When it’s a half past ten in the morning, I dress up, pack the cookies and a bottle of water in a bag.

I walk outside and head towards the park.

My steps make very faint sounds on the ground.

I see the bench where Alice and I had spoken before, last Friday.

There she was.

The lonely figure of a young bald girl always dragging along her drip stand, now looking at trees.

Her mental power was still as strong as before, but she looked paler than the last time I had seen her.

I check my watch to see I’m ten minutes earlier than I had promised.

There’s no one else in sight.

I sneakily make my way over and sit down next to her on her left.

With my weight slightly shifting the bench, Alice has a small jump in surprise and looks at me.

“… Sneaky old man, how are you doing?”

“Pretty good.” I reply with a light smile, happy that she asks about my well being.

“I guess so since you look a bit more decent now. Is my present in that bag? Give it up, it’s mine now.” She says with a deadbeat tone.

“Pfft!” I laugh at her antics, which makes her giggle with me.

I open the bag to reveal my cookies.

“These are homemade, fresh from this morning. Here you go!” I open a plastic box and place it on Alice’s lap.

Alice looks at the cookies and doesn’t seem to react that much.

“Thanks, mister. They look weird.” While she takes a bite out of one I start blabbering about some nonsense and prepare to use my healing prayer.

“They’re special magical cookies that are made with holy almonds and a blessed chicken egg, designed to exorcise diseases.” I place my left hand on my mouth and pretend to cough while I slip in the word “heal” in Palepman language and place my right arm behind Alice’s back.

“I don’t know which drugs you’re on, but you make crazy good cookies, mist--” Alice’s sarcastic remark is cut short as the holy light shines from my hand into her.

She cannot see any light, but she feels the effects of the prayer.

She takes a second look at the half eaten cookie.

“What…?”

My divine power is almost emptied before I stop and retrieve my hand back.

Her face had regained color.

Alice clenches her hands and then tries taking a deep breath.

“I feel… So much better…” She looks at me with suspicion. “Who are you?”

Faced with her suspicion, I know I can easily bullshit my way out of it.

“Alice, I’m your guardian angel, I’ve come to heal you and let your life go back on track.”

“…” Alice lowers her head, covers it with her hands and starts sobbing in relief. “That’s so dumb, but why does it sound almost real?…”

While I was half-joking around, with her genuine emotions reaching me I caress her scalp and reassure her.

“Don’t worry anymore. Go get tested and see your parents. Miracles don’t happen often, so make sure to enjoy your life again.”

“Yes, thank you…” She rubs her eyes and looks at my face with admiration, then embarrassment. “Mister angel… I forgot your name…”

“It’s Edward. Well, you don’t need to thank me.” I activate my hypnosis spell chantlessly to save myself from any weird events later on.

“Ah! My head… It hurt a moment. Are there side effects?” Alice reacted in a way that showed my spell failed as she looked at my cookies with interrogations.

(Damn, she did have a strong mental power, did her mental resistance block my spell? To think I’d need to overcharge the spell against her.)

This time, with the spell twice overcharged, Alice goes into a daze. “You won’t tell anyone why you’re cured or healthy.”

Shortly after, her daze goes away. She looks at me, waiting for my answer to her previous question.

“Don’t worry, it’s just a little headache caused by your meridians’ circulation returning to normal…”

“Oh… What are meridians?” She asks with an innocent face.

“They’re part of the lymphatic system that makes your immune cells flow around the body besides blood vessels.”

Alice starts eating another cookie as she listens to me with great attention.

“Anyway, I’ll come see you again this Friday afternoon at 4. In the meantime, go ask to get tested for your cancer. Even if it’s not cured yet, I’ll bring a better cookie next time.”

I ask her to come here again in case she isn’t cured. If so I will use the Purification spell and then the Heal prayer. I know of a way to make the cookie even better by adding a special ingredient to it, so I will just tell her the cookies are even more magical when the time comes.

I’ll know by Friday whether or not this Heal prayer has certain limits or not.

“Alright, got it, Edward!… I can keep the other cookies, right?”

“Sure. Only the first cookie of the batch is effective, but they’re tasty all the same. Right, let me remove the drip from you.” I take her wrist and remove the needle going into her vein. Her vein looks good as new, but it was surely damaged with the needle being there long term before I healed her. “Here you are, you’re good to go.”

“Un. Alright, see you later, Edward!”

I part ways with Alice and go back home to eat some steak.

…

I check on my computer and see replies to my emails from all four apostles.

Claire sent us a list of abilities she bought. She had three new prayers, namely a holy shield, a smite, and a prayer that makes wings appear which slows down falls to a gentle glide and lets you jump higher. She also got the apostle slate, the body enhancement skill, the dexterity enhancement passive and two stamina passives.

With all that and her equipment, she will be able to take a stronger and more active role in battles.

Lin Hao wrote that he had taken the Chi Sense 1 skill to help detect enemies, some “general skills” and a spatial bag called the Holy Bag that could store items in a separate space which wouldn’t weigh down the user. He didn’t describe further what he had bought.

Hearing about the Holy Bag, I knew I had to get one too someday.

Danielo had gotten the apostle slate, mana skills, the Vine Whip spell that’s identical to the goblin mage’s we fought, endurance and hardiness passives, a war hammer and the Common language to the second proficiency like everyone else.

Raquel was the last to send an email to describe her purchases. She now had a poison rapier, some endurance, more mana, the Water Wall spell, the Steam Jet spell, the thinking speed passive and some leftover points.

I think about our team’s dynamic as I cook my steak.

Danielo is set on being a tank, Lin Hao a versatile long-range combatant, Raquel a swift attacker and Claire a healer and close-range fighter.

This is pretty much what you’d expect from the classes we chose.

My steak cooks about 40 seconds on each side on high heat so that a thin crust forms while the insides stay raw and warm up.

I place the steak on a plate, add a slice of butter on the side and start cutting up my meal with a knife and fork.

With each bite I add a small nut of butter that melts together with the steak in my mouth.

(A delight…)

It was time to go to class again.

It felt like I had two weeks of vacation or something instead of a weekend. Weird, I wonder what could have done that?

I sigh.

At this rate I’d need to get Enhanced Memory 2 otherwise I won’t keep up with my life.

I go to class and arrive early. My legs were quite fast without much effort now.

There were only a few other students sitting.

I play around with my telekinesis discretely. I make a tiny Telekinetic Shield and flick it with my index.

My finger gets repelled by the invisible force.

Without a thought, emptying my mind, my finger continues flicking the force field until Elisa comes by and sits next to me.

“Hi Elisa. How are you?”

Elisa is wearing a dark brown blouse over a pink shirt, letting her dark hair fall behind her shoulders. She replies as usual with her awkward English in her cute Taiwanese accent.

“Hello Edward! I’m good. You changed a lot, you look quite handsome!”

“Do I?” Getting these compliments after buying a passive skill feels quite cheap but still nice.

“Yes, I think it might be your posture, your back is straight, your shoulders are held well?”

“I see. Although you haven’t changed much since last week, you’re beautiful too, Elisa.”

A faint redness colors Elisa’s face as she thanks me with meekness.

Seats fill up with students. In a corner, all alone, is Hope. But surprisingly I also see Juan with a cast on his leg and his hand.

The moment I gazed at him, I saw he was already looking at me.

He quickly looks away. But him staring at me is probably a sign that he’s planning something.

I better use my hypnosis spell on him soon.

Professor Vanessa Oslin arrives and starts the lesson.

As usual her she does a little quiz I lift my hand for.

“What is a nuclear localization sequence like? What are its characteristics?”

This time around Elisa had also lifted her arm and was chosen in my stead to answer.

“The NLS has lots of basic amino acids in any position accessible to nuclear porines. An NLS is usually quite short, around ten or so amino acids.”

“Alright, very good. Today I'll present the importing proteins that recognize the NLS…”

…

After classes ended, I go home to drop my stuff and I go to the same store as last time but instead of a compound bow, I opt in for a bigger traditional bow that need 120 pounds of force to draw at 30 inches.

It’s actually the strongest model they had and the clerk gave me wide eyes after I successfully pulled the string back with little effort.

I make the decision to buy lots of arrows for it. Forty thick wooden shafts with piercing steel arrowheads and ten practice arrows.

Since the last dream had made us find a village, if we had to either defend or attack it, a ranged weapon would be more than ideal since I couldn’t continuously use magic and telekinesis.

The only issue would be the fact that I’d have a bow, a sword and a staff to carry around. I really needed the Holy Bag soon.

With all this I could be quite versatile with how I choose to fight.

I have my staff to help with magic use, I have the sword for close combat and the bow for long range combat.

I realize I’ll need to specialize more in magic but having needed to fight often on the move in the jungle required me to get a strong body.

I even wrecked my motorcycle gear throughout the trial, but getting a replacement was pointless.

Only armor from the point store would really be helpful.

I head back home and text Cassandra I have a new bow that’ll impress her.

This starts off a text conversation that ends deep in the night.

…

The next morning I went to my classes. I happened to be free in the afternoon.

After the morning classes I went to the mall to eat and shop for items to add to the white room.

I had promised cookware and tables to Suzabeth as well as vanilla ice cream.

Since I could make very cold ice I did not need to bother getting a generator and a fridge.

I’d get a cold box from Omozan along with a table.

I buy a small whip for the cream, some cutlery and a few bowls, plates and glasses.

My arm are full of shopping bags.

I start exiting the mall. I pass by the clothes section of the mall.

When I pass by a lingerie store my eyes inadvertently look over.

I see a black woman with permed hair wearing a slutty short black dress showing lots of cleavage and thighs. The dress is so short that part of the woman’s pink thong is visible.

As she examines a set of lingerie that would fit her large breasts, she notices me looking.

She walks to me with a smile that reveal damaged gums. “Hey good lookin’, I’m Fiki. Choo diggin’ wat you seein'.”

“…” I think of a witty reply but I realize I could use someone like her.

A prostitute, a thug or a vagrant would be ideal to test my powers on.

(Since fate brought you to me, I’ll make use of you, Fiki.)

“Hi Fiki. My name’s Edward.”

“Hey~ Edwa’d. Wat’s choo thinkin’? You tryna chill?”

I activate my hypnosis spell chantlessly as if my gaze sends her in a daze. “You belong to me. You must do everything I say.”

Her daze starts going away. But I can use this spell four more times and still keep enough mana to stay clear of side-effects. Using it once more, I give more suggestions to her mind.

“You were born to serve me. You… Love me…”

I cringe at myself suggesting her to love me, but I figure it could be an important suggestion to implant if I need her to do what I want. She wakes up again, with wide eyes staring at my face. I use the spell once more. And again.

“You won’t ever betray me. I am the most powerful man on Earth. You should earn money for me. You have to keep secrets to yourself. I’m not suspicious. You wholeheartedly trust me.”

This much should work. With a bit of time, the hypnosis should take hold on Fiki.

Fiki shakes her head and looks back at me with a frown.

I answer her previous question and pretend nothing happened.

“I’d love to hang out, but I’m busy today. Could you give me your phone number?”

She seems to hesitate but I convince her with the simplest trick in the book.

“Please?”

“Yeah, a’ight, fo’ sho', pass meh yo phone I’ll type my info!”

I place a handful of bags on the ground and hand her my phone. She types in her number then takes a selfie while bending over to get her cleavage in the shot.

She hands me back my phone and a new profile with her selfie and name is entered inside.

“See you around Fiki!”

“Yeah, choo too, good lookin’.” She returns back to checking out the lingerie store.

I evade a few awkward stares and make my way back home.

…

In the evening I take my bow and go to the archery club.

Heading inside the building, I see Cassandra taking a few practice arrows.

“Oh, hi Edward!…”

“Hi Cassandra. How are you?”

“I’m great! Wow, is that your new bow? It’s huge! There’s no way you can pull that! You wouldn’t have the strength!”

“Humph. Then prepare to be amazed. This is a 120 pound bow.”

I walk over and head in front of the targets with a practice arrow in hand.

A few other students and the teacher look over with interest.

I hold the bow in my right hand, place the arrow on the string, draw it with three fingers using the muscles in my arms and back.

I quickly draw the bow at arm’s length back to my ear.

Cassandra exclaims her disbelief at the sight.

“Holy Christ, Edward! There’s no way that’s 120 pound, you drew it like nothing!”

But that’s when I let go of the string. The arrow flies off with great speed.

PLONK

It penetrates through the target with a loud sound.

“… Oh…? Let me try Edward!”

“Haha. Sure, Cass. Don’t hurt yourself though.”

I hand my bow to Cassandra. She tries to draw back the string but looking at the arrow's length in front of the bow, can only draw the string for about 20 inches before her arms shake with exertion. But the great majority of the force is in the last few of the 30 inches, meaning she couldn’t really draw my bow.

The instructor walks over. “Hey, can I give it a try? I haven’t seen a bow like this in a long time!”

“Sure!” I reply. Cassandra hands him the bow.

The instructor starts pulling. As he reaches the 26 inches mark, he starts puffing and trembling.

He releases the bow slowly and hands it back to me.

“… That’s a 120 pounder for sure!… I’m not sure how you can pull that all the way! Anyway, be careful with that thing!”

“Yes, don’t worry!”

Cassandra pinches my waist and speaks close to my ear. “Big bro, since when were you so strong? Even the instructor couldn’t draw it all the way!”

“… Well…? I suppose my strength came through practice?”

“What! I’ve been practicing a lot longer than you!”

“I’m a man…”

“I know! But still! A couple weeks ago you weren’t this strong!”

“Well… Anyway, let’s return to shooting…”

“Hum! I know now why your last bow broke, you just pulled on it with that beast strength of yours!”

“You’re calling me a beast?!”

The evening banter slows down as my arrows fly into the targets.

Because my accuracy was upgraded so much, I shot farther targets to challenge myself.

I tried using the fifty meter target.

After a few arrows, my aim adjusted and I consistently hit the target.

(I’m pretty good… This is the power of passive skills!)

I returned home after practice and went to sleep late at night.

…

Wednesday I had classes all day besides the early morning.

This gave me opportunities to speak with Elisa from time to time.

We went to grab lunch together, although our conversations were short due to Elisa’s awkward English and my lack of Mandarin skill.

…

In the end of the afternoon my classes were over.

But someone comes walking right next to me.

Juan, with his right hand and right leg still in a cast approaches and speaks slowly.

“Hey Edward, I wanted to say…” He looks left and right before continuing. “I’ll give you a chance to apologize. You know I lost six teeth and a testicle because of you? So guess what, you’ll come with me a bit and apologize there. If you do that I’ll forget the whole thing. Otherwise I’ll press charges against you. So?”

I really did not want to deal with the justice system, ever.

Though by using hypnosis on the judge or jury I was sure I could turn things in my favor.

Still, doing all of that had associated risks. So I’d rather follow Juan somewhere and use hypnosis onto him instead.

I could guess he had planned something since he asked me to go somewhere with him.

“Alright. I owe you that much.”

I follow him around and we reach the same woods as the last time we fought.

A strong breeze blew towards me.

I had a bad presage about this.

Soon, Juan stops and looks back at me with a distorted crazy smile. He starts laughing his lungs out.

“HA HA HA HA HAAAH! GRINGOOOO! YOU’RE STUPID! Why did you think I hadn’t pressed charges until now!? Huh?”

“… Because you’re a pussy?”

“It’s because I didn’t want to lose the chance to kill you for what you fucking did to me! I wanted to scare you a bit so you’d stop attracting my Vanessa’s attention! But you fucking psycho went and crippled me!…” He pauses and sways his left hand toward me. “Men!”

Three older adult Mexicans wearing white shirts and black pants each appear from behind a tree with silenced handguns.

(Fuck me… I fucking knew he was a drug lord cartel guy! But I can win!)

“Edward, I won’t let you have last words. I’ll leave your corpse in the desert to be eaten by vultures! Men! Kill him!”

My neurons activate at full speed and work out the simplest solution.

(TELEKINETIC GRAB!)

My hand follows the movement I exert with my mind as I grab one of the cartel members’ gun and twist it away from his grasp.

“What the!”

I point the barrel towards one of the other two thugs and press the trigger.

BANG

“YAAAOOOWWW!” The shot thug yowls in pain and falls on his butt.

The other armed man points his handgun to me with one arm.

My attention switches to him and my mental power teleports on his gun’s trigger, locking it in place with a small telekinetic shield in the shape of a ball.

Then, just like for the previous guy, I start twisting the handgun, prying it from his grip.

“Fuck! The gun is possessed!” The man shouts.

The gun is finally freed from his grasp. I promptly turn it around, aim at his torso and press the trigger a few times.

BANG BANG BANG BANG

That’s when I notice the first man I shot pointing his gun towards me.

I don’t have time to think.

(Telekinetic Shield!)

I start running to cover behind a tree as I keep the shield covering everything but my limbs.

BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG

Six bullets are shot towards me. The first three miss, then one hits my arm, another one misses, the following bullet hits my shield, which feels like a punch in the brain as almost all of my mental power is drained, then the last bullet flies by.

I arrive behind cover.

A deep throbbing sensation around my head alerts me I can’t use much more mental power anymore.

My right arm also throbs in pain. I feel the pain all the way through the arm, meaning the bullet went through my arm.

“Heal!”

I heal it back to normal.

From behind the tree I hear Juan worry out loud.

“No… What happened! Did you betray our Buerno cartel!!? Jose, why did you shoot Raul!”

“Young master! It wasn’t me! The gun moved on its own! It was that gringo’s doing! I saw him move his hand the same way my gun moved! He’s a demon!”

“What the fuck Jose!”

I feel this to be an opportune moment to peek and shoot a cartel hitman with a Magic Bullet or two.

I kneel down, placing a hand on the other side of the tree trunk in case I need to pull myself away quickly.

Then I peek toward them and immediately shoot magic bullets to the last two cartel thugs.

The magic bullets hit them straight on, causing them to spasm on the ground and die.

“Jose! Marcelo!…” Juan looks back to me. “… What was that!…” Juan exclaims in fear as he looks at me blankly.

I get up and keep a close eye to Juan.

I could take the guns for myself, but they were more of a liability to me than anything. They’d be practically useless both in the Dreams and here on Earth since I have untraceable magic.

“That was something I wasn’t supposed to use, Juan. But since it’s come to this, then I better go all the way.”

“No… No! Don’t kill me! I’ll give you lots of money! A million dollars! My family has enough! Just let me go! I’m sorry! EDWARD!”

“Alright…” I reply.

“… Alright? Good, good! I promise I’ll give you the money! It won’t take a week!”

“I’ve decided.” I cast my hypnosis spell. “If you lie to me you are dead. You will die if you go against me.”

Juan’s daze goes away and he finds looking at me with more fear.

(Is it working already? It must be due to him already thinking something similar or him being scared enough to piss himself.)

“Juan. You are in the cartel, aren’t you.”

“Y-Yes! My dad is the boss of the Buerno family… W-We deal mostly drugs. We’re mostly peaceful!”

“Juan, what are you doing studying biochemistry of all things? Why not business school or something?”

“… T-That’s because… Our family is searching a way to make cheaper c-cocaine and other molecules… O-Obviously, biotechnology can do that… That way we’ll get a monopoly on the cheapest, purest cocaine…”

“That explains that… Juan, just exactly how rich is your family?”

“We have tens of millions of dollars! We export lots of various drugs to the US! I promise you I can get you a million dollars!”

“Juan, how does your family export that much to my country?”

“We just call up our contact in the US! They come with a few vans and go cross the border… They don’t get stopped since they’re government people…”

“Huh.”

It was widely known intelligence agencies of the US dealt with nefarious business to generate untraceable money for black operations.

But to think my own classmate was involved with that boggled my mind.

(Am I that unlucky or something?)

“Juan, you won’t say a word about me to your family, got it? You’ll say your guys were killed by a rival family or something. Make something up!”

“Y-Yes!”

I hypnotize Juan one more time.

“You will do as I say. You will believe my every word.”

Juan wakes up again from his daze.

“Alright Juan, if you do as I say, I will let you live happily, head of your family. If you go against me, I’ll destroy you. Got it?”

“I got it!”

“Alright. Give me your address, explain stuff about your home and leave.”

Juan gives me his home addresses, here in Ohio and one back in Mexico.

The Ohio home he has is where his sister and mother live with him, while his father lives in Mexico most of the time, but he’s currently here in Ohio with them.

His home always has a few guards, a maid and a gardener.

We both leave the crime scene.

Juan had called backup to clean the area.

It seemed that the previous thugs would have gotten rid of my corpse if I had died, so he needed to call others to clean the area.

I reach my dorm room and sit down.

I had killed three people today.

I was used to blood and violence from the Dreams, but these were living human beings. Even worse, I could remember their names.

I didn’t regret killing them but it still felt bad. They did deserve it in multiple ways, so I doubt I’d get too much trauma from this.

I was tired from using mental power so I went to sleep.

…

I wake up half an hour later feeling better and decide to go see Cassandra at the archery club.

We practice together side by side. Hearing Cassandra’s voice calms my heart.

Cassandra suddenly fidgets around. I look at her to see a blushing face gazing into my eyes.

“Hey, Cassandra. How about we go on another date this Saturday?”

“I’d love to!” Cassandra’s eyes lighten up and she smiles brightly.

“Then I’ll think of somewhere to go if there isn’t a place you’ve been wanting to visit.”

We continue practice and part ways.

I practice with my telekinesis throughout the night while reading some novels and then watching a documentary about a fat cartoon cat.

…

Thursday morning I went to class.

After the two morning classes, Elisa asks me something surprising.

“Edward… How about we go study together this afternoon in the library?”

“Sure, Elisa. Then let’s go grab a bite first.”

We eat together in the cafeteria and study together for about half an hour before I get rather bored. I start tutoring Elisa on a few subjects instead, which is much more fun when I can get closer to her and speak by her ear, getting a whiff of her perfume.

An hour later we both head back home.