013 DAMN YOU ARE HANDSOME
Dorin approached like a nurse with a syringe, though the device in her hand was something stranger. Without asking or warning, she jabbed it into Damen's arm and triggered the injection.
"Ouch! What the hell was that?" Damen yelled, more in shock than pain.
"I implanted a chip into your blood stream," Dorin said matter-of-factly.
"It contains the instructions your body needs to develop a meta skill. With training and conditioning, you'll learn to use it," she added.
"A chip? What kind of chip? Are there side effects? How do I remove it later?" Damen demanded.
The idea seemed absurd….could a simple chip implant really grant superpowers?
"This chip is the result of years of research," Dorin explained. "It mobilizes the meta particles already inside a meta-human. Once its work is done, it dissolves into your body. There is nothing to remove."
Damen frowned but nodded.
"Meta skill grafting is one of humanity's greatest scientific triumph since Armageddon, when ordinary humans could be engineered to become super humans. It was the result of every great mind in the world who turned their mind from other pursuits to unlocking the mysteries of meta particles," Dorin explained.
Damen had no other questions.
She led him into a chamber where a cylindrical booth stood open. He stepped inside. The door sealed shut, and moments later, a radiant liquid cascaded in, rising until it covered his head.
"Dammit, I can't breathe!" Damen choked, thrashing.
Through an intercom, Dorin's calm voice reached him. "Breathe it in. The liquid is engineered to be breathable. It activates the chip, catalyzing the meta particles within you."
He froze, then instinct—or programming—took over.
The liquid forced its way into his nostrils and lungs. Panic flared, then faded. He wasn't drowning. The substance circulated through him like water coursing through gills, and as it cycled, it carried an electric rush through every nerve.
When it finally drained away, he stood drenched but alive, as if reborn.
"This… this is miraculous," he whispered.
It was like breathing inside a miracle.
An hour later the booth drained fully. Damen stumbled out, exhausted, dripping, but whole. After cleaning himself, he rejoined Dorin.
"So that's it?" he asked. "I've grafted the skill… Summon Shield?"
"Yes," she said, with a knowing smile. "But grafting is only the first step. Now, you must learn how to wield it."
-----
Damen still had a few hours left on his unlimited gym pass, and he wasn't about to waste them. He booked one of the specialized training rooms for Summon Shield practice.
There were no manuals, no instructions. The meta grafting had already etched the ability into his body. Now it was up to him to unlock it.
Without warning, a beam of light flared across the room and struck his chest.
"Ouch!" Damen cried, startled more than hurt.
The laser wasn't designed to injure—it was just a sting to force a reaction, to push the latent ability into action.
"Dammit, how do I even activate this bloody skill?" he muttered, bracing himself.
The barrage intensified.
Thin beams lanced out from every angle, peppering him relentlessly. Damen twisted, raised his arms, even imagined shields forming in his hands, but nothing appeared.
The same frustrating training persisted for hours. His frustration grew as he vented his frustration at every strike.
Then, mid-screaming and shouting hopelessly, something changed.
A translucent pane shimmered into existence before him—a glass-like barrier that absorbed the next beam with a dull flash.
He froze, staring. "Did I just…? Is that Summon Shield?" His lips curled into a grin of relief.
Outside the observation glass, Dorin watched with narrowed eyes.
"Unbelievable," she whispered. "Most recruits take months before meta powers manifesting even a flicker. And this boy does it in hours? Is he a Genius… or a cheat?"
She recorded the session, sending the footage straight to Director Ambrone before slipping away, leaving Damen to the training floor.
Inside, Damen was no longer fumbling.
With each hit, the shield surfaced faster and stronger. What began as a fragile sliver grew larger, thicker, harder. He laughed between impacts. It was exhilarating.
The Summon Shield was his now…and it was only getting stronger.
-----
Damen ended his session the following morning, having trained through the night. He refused to let the day pass go to waste.
Who knew when he'd have enough money to step into Heroes Gym again?
Damen eventually slipped out of the gym without saying goodbye to Dorin—her shift had ended hours ago and wasn't there anymore.
Exhaustion weighed on him, but his thoughts kept circling.
"I need more DemCoins… and Aurs. Money. Strength. A cheat mining program alone won't be enough."
As if answering his hunger, his phone buzzed. A notification lit the screen:
[You have enough coins for a system upgrade. Proceed? Y/N]
His heart kicked. "Finally. This is what I've been waiting for." He hit Yes without hesitation.
The app froze, reloaded, then installed a new version. Damen skimmed the menus, frowning. Nothing looked different.
Just then, a gym patron stepped outside.
On impulse, Damen targeted him with the mining app. The process began smoothly. Curious, Damen lingered at a distance, watching as the man walked off.
He tracked every step of his victim. Damen was testing the effective range of his mining targets.
50 meters…51 meters…52….
"How far will this reach?" he muttered with excitement.
The target crossed the street, passed another block… and only then did the connection collapse.
Damen's eyes lit up. "No way… my range jumped to over a hundred meters."
Excitement soured when he noticed his balance on his app. Almost all his DemCoins were gone.
"Damn it. The upgrade was great, but it ate everything again."
But discouragement never stuck to him long. He locked onto another gym-goer, mining him as he entered the building. With his new range, Damen slipped into a nearby café, ordered an iced coffee, and settled into a corner seat.
The mining connection didn't fade. Damen was mining his targets inside the gym while he was outside… in the café.
"Damn… I can do this mining like forever and there is no risk anyone finding out I was mining them", he told himself pleased.
The moment he sat, fatigue crashed over him. He hadn't slept all night. With his phone still in his hand, the link to his mining target still active, Damen drifted into slumber.
An hour passed.
"Hey, sir… you're sleeping here all night…we're closing soon, get a room in a motel next time… we don't offer beds here," a voice said suddenly, pulling Damen out of his sleep.
He blinked awake to see the waiter standing over him, obviously not too polite and ready to clear the place.
"Right… I'll get going," Damen muttered, rubbing his eyes as he stood.
At the door, he glanced back at the waiter and smirked. "Damn, you're handsome," he said casually, then walked out into the night.
----
014 THE CONCERT FROM HELL
After leaving the café, Damen already knew his next stop. The rude but handsome waiter earlier had sparked an idea—"I don't mind being good looking too."
The rude waiter even earned him a boost in Charm. One point in Charm to be exact.
After he left the café, he pressed "Acquire" on the waiter while he was closing… stealing his Charm.
"Sorry handsome… care to let me steal a little of your good looks", Damen muttered with satisfaction.
It was too bad the waiter would have to take leave for several days to recuperate in the hospital. He wasn't a meta human, so he suffered a heart attack like Thames and Onda… painful but not fatal.
"Serves him right for being rude."
Since he started mining patrons at Heroes Gym, Damen's DemCoins have grown quickly. The stronger a person's Meta score, the richer the yield.
Patrons of the gym were all strong Meta characters.
With his balance healthy, he finally have the opportunity to invest in attributes, including the one he'd always neglected: Charm.
He remembered he saw a card in the wallet of Stephan King, the thug he had robbed earlier. It was the card to Black Owl Club, the city's most popular night joint.
He planned to rob him again.
Damen quickly made his way to the club hoping to find Stephan and make some Aurs. But the bouncer at the door blocked his way.
"You're too young. No entry."
"Dammit," Damen muttered.
No ID meant there was no easy way inside the club.
"No matter," he thought.
Damen left the entrance to the club then circled the building, until he found the back fence. Climbing came naturally to him, and within moments he slipped over and into the compound.
"No age requirement coming through here", he murmured cheekily.
Once inside the club, age no longer mattered.
The club throbbed with music and lights, bodies packed shoulder to shoulder. This was the first time Damen had been here, though Mikey always bragged about sneaking in here with his brothers.
"This place is too loud and the lights too distracting," Damen thought, squinting at the flashing lights and the loud music.
Damen doesn't like places like this. He preferred calm and quiet environments.
"But I won't be here long anyway."
Damen went straight to look for his financial sponsor- Stephan King. He didn't see Stephan anywhere though, so he scanned the crowd in the club, and began selecting targets.
"Well, if I can't get money here, might as well get some points in Charm", he told himself.
He looked around for good-looking people to steal their Charm stats but it was too dark and the lights were too distracting. He couldn't pick between a swan and a duck in here.
Then the stage lights suddenly flared as a boy band bounded onto the platform.
"Sneakers? The boy group Sneakers," Damen blinked.
He'd heard Mikey talk about them endlessly. A boy band.
They were all tall, handsome, and dripping with charm. They were everything that boys would dream of becoming …. including Damen.
And now he had the tools to do it.
Phones lit up across the club, all taking their aim at those idols for a chance to immortalize them in their phones. Damen was included as one of those snapping pictures, but he wasn't taking pictures.
He was stealing a part of their existence.
But as he aimed his app on the group on stage, the performance took a sudden twist.
One of the singers staggered, collapsing mid-song. Another fell, then another. Within moments, the whole group crumpled on stage.
There was chaos. All the members of Sneakers fell for no apparent reason at all.
The stage became a concert from Hell.
"Hah! This is fun," Damen chuckled to himself without remorse. He had just drained the Sneaker's Charm attributes.
Chaos erupted as bouncers rushed forward. Damen grinned wider.
"Perfect. Time for Strength points."
Moments later, even the bouncers collapsed one by one, their strength siphoned away. Damen laughed without restraint, drunk on the stolen power surging through him.
Morality no longer mattered.
Only power did.
Charm. Strength. Command. He wanted them all.
Then the buttons stopped responding.
Strength failed first.
"What the… why won't it work?" he snapped, jabbing at the screen. No matter how many targets surrounded him, the button refused to respond.
He switched to Charm. It worked—for a while—until that button, too, went dead. Meta and Command never activated at all.
"The app is limiting Acquire," he realized. "But why?"
His laughter faded as he retraced his actions, patterns slowly emerging in his mind.
There were Rules to Acquire.
First—he could only steal one stat per person.
Second—Meta and Command couldn't be taken from ordinary humans. That made sense. Most of them barely possessed those traits to begin with.
Third—he couldn't steal from anyone whose stats were lower than his own.
There was a cap—a hard limit on how much he could harvest from normal humans. And he had already reached it.
If he wanted more…
He would have to take them from meta-humans.
Although he still has some DemCoins to spare, there was nothing he could Acquire from the crowd in the club now. It was time to leave.
-----
As Damen left the club, he passed through a dimly lit car park. To his surprise he sensed a group of men lingering near a row of vehicles. It was nothing unusual until Damen spotted a familiar face.
He was Stephan King.
"Finally, my ATM machine," Damen whispered, pleased.
He ducked behind a car to watch what was going on.
Stephan, who was pale and desperate, suddenly dropped to his knees in front of the leader of the group.
"Boss, please…it's not my fault I couldn't bring the money to you! This guy robbed me of everything!" he begged with cracking voice.
The man he called Boss loomed above him: tall, broad, his shoulder inked with a tattoo of the goddess Athena. Around him clustered a dozen thickset thugs, all muscle and menace.
Stephan was trembling, practically groveling before him.
Damen squinted. "Is Stephan blaming me for failing to pay up?"
Stephan wasn't lying. Earlier in the day, Damen claimed compensation from him and took all his money. That money probably included those that was due to the Boss.
Without warning, the Boss lashed out at Stephan. His slap cracked through the night, sending Stephan sprawling.
Damen's breath caught.
"Damn… so fast. Is he a Meta human?" he wondered uneasily about the Boss' slap.
Damen pulled up his mining app, sweeping it over the group. He could determine whether the target was ordinary or meta human by looking at the rate of their coin harvesting.
Most of the thugs registered as ordinary humans…. The Boss, however, wasn't. Damen's coins climbed rapidly when the target switched to him.
"This bastard is no ordinary guy", Damen murmured.
It was Confirmed. The Boss is a Meta human.
"Nobody steals from me, Mad Cat!" the Boss roared at Stephan. "Where's the bastard who took my money?"
Stephan's whole body trembled as he stammered, "I—I don't know, Boss. All I saw was he wore the uniform of Melrose School No. 9."
"A student?" Mad Cat snarled, eyes narrowing. "You dare lie to me?"
"I swear it! Look at me….look at the bruises. My brothers are in the hospital because of him!" Stephan pleaded for reason.
Suddenly, Mad Cat staggered, dropping to his knees. His head jerked around wildly.
Something attacked his mind.
"Who dares attack me? Who's in my bloody mind?" he shouted, his eyes darting for an unseen enemy. He just suffered a mental attack, a kind of Meta ability that targets the mind.
It was Damen's mining Acquire. At the moment, using the Acquire function was Damen's only offensive superpower.
He had just clicked on Mad Cat through his mining app, ripping away his Meta attribute. The side effect of that on Mad Cat was to suffer a mental attack besides losing an attribute point.
Damen made a calculated move.
He planned to take down Mad Cat with the app's ability… once the Boss was down, the rest of the gang he could deal with easily without superpowers.
But Mad Cat wasn't down. He rose again, his teeth bared, and rage fueling him.
"Who dares to attack me", he screamed again as he scanned around him while Damen Acquires another stat from him.
"Damn it, that's not enough to knock him off," Damen muttered under his breath despite acquiring twice on him in a relative short space of time.
Suddenly, every hair on Damen's body stood on end. Instinct screamed. A blur of motion….and Mad Cat's hand was already crushing against his throat.
"What the hell?"
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