015 FIRST KILL
"How dare you attack me?" Mad Cat roared, his hand clamped tight around Damen's throat.
When Mad Cat was struck by mental attacks he scanned for the closest threat….and that threat was Damen. With a shocking blink, he was at Damen's throat.
"Damnit, how did he catch me?" Damen complained in his mind.
Then he realized it was impossible for Mad Cat to know about his mining app and that he was the one attacking him.
Gasping, Damen managed to croak out feigning innocent, "It's not me! What the hell are you talking about? Are you crazy!!…I came here for the concert!"
For a moment, a flicker of doubt crossed Mad Cat's eyes. Damen was just a teenager who loitered too near to them… not a powerful assassin. He's got the wrong person.
He released Damen and spun around, scanning the shadows for his unseen attacker.
But the street was empty. The only one in sight was Damen. He was the only suspect, so Mad Cat's finger jabbed toward him again. "It's you, isn't it, boy? You were the one who attacked me?"
By then Stephan and a handful of thugs came onto the scene. Stephan's eyes lit up with recognition. "That's him! He's the kid who stole your money!"
"What?" Mad Cat bellowed.
"Damnit, I couldn't act my way out of this now when Stephan recognized me," Damen thought.
"No! You've got the wrong guy!" Damen pleaded, his voice cracking.
Damen knew he had made a terrible mistake. He was too hasty and greedy.
Targeting Mad Cat had been reckless. He hadn't expected the man could dash hundreds of meters in an instant. That was Mad Cat's superpower.
"I can't underestimate Meta-humans ever again," he vowed but that was for a future time.
Survival was all that mattered now.
"Damn it," Damen muttered under his breath. "There's no way out of this."
"It's him, Boss. I'm sure of it!" Stephan insisted.
"I should've killed you the moment I could," Damen thought bitterly.
"Kill him now, Boss!" Stephan urged.
Mad Cat usually ignored the chorus of his underlings, but this time, he obeyed. With a wicked grin, he drew a dagger from his belt and lunged at Damen.
"This is it", Damen thought. "So, this is how I die."
His life flashed in fragments—years of torment under his uncle's family, the endless bullying at school, the injustice from teachers, thugs, from everyone.
The DemCoin app had seemed like salvation, a glimpse of freedom. But that gift had turned short-lived, if he was going to die tonight.
The dagger drove into his chest, narrowly missing his heart. Pain ripped through him.
"AARGH!" he screamed.
And then—something strange happened.
Mad Cat screamed too, his face twisted in shock as he collapsed to the ground.
Damen's mining wasn't done yet. He pressed on "Acquire: Command," stealing Mad Cat's third available stat.
Mad Cat was struck by a mental attack from his acquisition.
Everything blurred.
Damen wasn't in the right mind now. He suffered an almost death, so he wasn't thinking straight.
Acting on instinct, Damen wrenched the dagger from his chest. In one swift motion, rage overtaking reason, he plunged it straight into Mad Cat's skull before he recovers from the mental attack.
Blood sprayed all over him.
Mad Cat fell limp and dead.
"Run!" Stephan shrieked at the sight of his boss's death.
But Damen was beyond reason now. Adrenaline surged, and a killing madness was flooding his veins. He lunged at Stephan, driving the blade into him.
Stephan collapsed, lifeless too.
Then came the others. Damen tore into the thugs, one by one. His strikes were brutal, merciless. Screams filled the night until silence swallowed everything.
When it was over, Damen stood amidst the carnage, his chest heaving, and blood dripping from the blade. Slowly, the haze lifted.
He stared at the dead bodies before him.
"What… what did I just do? Did I kill these people" he whispered. Although they were deserving of it, Damen was still shocked that he had murdered Mad Cat, Stephan, all of them.
It was Damen's First Kill.
There was no time for remorse. He fell to the ground in shock and panic.
It felt like eternity to him but in reality, it didn't take long before Damen returned to his senses. "Now I must deal with this mess."
He remembered the news of the frequent gang murders in the city. Dead gangsters were often found burned and all evidence destroyed. Even the police couldn't solve the cases.
With that as inspiration, Damen dragged the corpses to a nearby car, stripping them of their Aur cards before pouring gasoline all over.
"Boom"
Then with the strike of a lighter, the car went up in flames together with the bodies of Mad Cat, Stephan and the thugs with it.
Damen quickly escaped from the crime scene after that.
-----
Damen's body was a map of pain. The bleeding had stopped, but the wounds still burned, raw and screaming for proper treatment.
Normally, he would have gone straight to a hospital.
But not tonight.
Showing up in shredded clothes with stab wounds would invite questions he couldn't afford to answer.
"What do I do now?" he thought, his jaw throbbing. "I need medical treatment… but I can't be seen in a hospital with wounds like this."
A second passed.
Then his lips curled into a thin smile.
"Hospital it is."
Damen ran all the way to Melrose Hospital No. 3. He bypassed the reception desk, slipped through a service entrance, and ghosted up a stairwell, staying close to the shadows.
In the doctors' locker room, his hands were slick with drying blood as he rummaged through cupboards until he found bandages—and a spare set of scrubs tossed carelessly over a chair.
He taped his ribs as best he could, bit back a hiss of pain, then pulled on the clean clothes. His bloodstained ones disappeared into a bin.
"Next stop… Suite—whatever it was," he murmured, forcing his aching legs to move toward the patient wing.
Then it came back to him.
Suite 10051.
He slipped inside.
It was Ralph's room, shared with several other patients. Ralph was sound asleep, breathing evenly.
The cluster of occupied beds felt like a gift to him.
Damen allowed himself a bitter smile. "Perfect," he whispered. "There would be plenty of witnesses here who'll see me here in the morning."
He sank onto the visitor's couch beside Ralph and kept watch as the night clawed at him.
The horror replayed itself again and again—Mad Cat's face, the others falling, the finality of it all. It was the first time he had taken a life.
He knew, with chilling certainty, that he would never be the same.
Damen forced himself to breathe.
Fear gave way to action. Action to preparation.
He stopped thinking about the killing itself and focused instead on what came after—running through it over and over until it felt solid until he was certain there was no evidence left to be found. There were no mistakes.
When dawn came, he would be here. Seen and remembered. These people—Ralph, the patients, the staff—would become his alibi.
If even a shred of suspicion tied him to Mad Cat's murder, this room would shield him.
Satisfied, Damen leaned back and closed his eyes… and finally, he slept.
-----
016 FLASH DASH
"Hey bastard! I thought you'd never come… do you know how much stress I've been since your uncle got sick," Melody shouted, shaking Damen awake from his sleep.
Damen's eyes fluttered open. "I've been here all night," he replied, swinging his legs over the couch and standing.
Melody blinked. She was surprised by Damen's appearance. Damen had grown noticeably taller.
"When did you get so… tall?" she asked, her curiosity was mixed with awe.
Without proper nutrition at home, it was impossible that Damen would have a chance to grow.
Damen smirked. "I have been growing lately. You just didn't have the chance to notice… you were too busy playing poker."
Previously when he was still living with his uncle's family, Damen often left the house before anyone woke and returned late from the mine. By the time he came back, Melody was usually already asleep.
She hadn't seen him properly in a while.
Shoving aside the question of his growth, Melody crossed her arms. "Where've you been these past few nights? I had to get Beck to cover for you in the hospital. You'd better stay here and watch over your uncle until he recovers."
She expected it was Damen's responsibility to take care of Ralph and not them.
"Didn't Beck tell you?" Damen asked cautiously.
"Becky tell me what?" she replied, confused.
Apparently, Beck had never mentioned snatching Damen from his mock test or losing his medals.
"Ah, never mind. I'll be going," Damen said, already turning toward the door.
"Stay there! You're not supposed to go anywhere!" Melody yelled.
The outburst drew the attention of the other patients and visitors. Heads turned. Murmurs rose.
Damen smiled and gave a casual wave. "Hi, I'm Damen," he said loudly.
"I am this sick man's nephew. His own family doesn't want to take care of him, so they dumped the responsibility on me. I stayed here all night watching over him… and now my aunt wants me to keep doing it while she goes off to play poker."
He tilted his head innocently. "What do you think?"
The crowd erupted in disapproving grumbles. Fingers pointed. Accusations flew toward Melody, branding her careless and heartless.
That was exactly what Damen wanted.
He needed witnesses—people who would remember him, remember that he had been here the entire night. A perfect alibi for the murder committed hours earlier.
Satisfied that every eye had seen him, he added lightly, "Bye."
Then he was gone.
Melody lunged after him, but the hallway was already empty. She stomped the floor in frustration, her breath unsteady.
"How does he run so fast?" she muttered, awe and irritation twisting together.
"…Damen."
----
Damen returned to the café outside Heroes' Gym. The handsome waiter who had served him yesterday wasn't on duty—probably hospitalized after Damen had taken his Charm the night before.
"Serves him right for being rude."
He sank into his usual corner seat and pulled out his phone, ready to start the day's mining again. This would become his routine and soon with the help of the app, he would become strong enough to stop being bullied.
"What the hell is this?" he muttered suddenly.
A notification blinked across the screen, "You have a message."
He tapped the message. "You have acquired a new ability from your mining target. Do you accept? Y/N."
Curiosity piqued him, so he read on. The ability's name was: Flash Dash.
He clicked Yes immediately, and the notification vanished.
Damen acquired a new skill from a mining target. In his mind that could only be Mad Cat because he acquired from him a total of four times. The didn't take more than once from his other mining targets before.
"Did I… just gain an ability from Mad Cat?" he whispered to himself.
He thought it through.
After a moment, a theory formed: this must be a new feature unlocked by the app's recent upgrade. "I have a chance to acquire a victim's skill after acquiring from them repeatedly… or it could be because he killed Mad Cat while he was mining him…those were the two possible explanations," he concluded.
"This is a cruel method to acquire a skill", Damen admitted although he still couldn't confirm the mechanism of skill acquisition from the mining app.
But after surviving life-and-death situations, morality seemed meaningless. Nothing matters more than being alive.
"Now… how do I access this skill—Flash Dash?" he wondered.
Then an idea struck.
Flash Dash was an acquired skill just like his Summon Shield. It's just obtained differently… from the mining app instead of from a meta training chip.
Like Summon Shield, Flash Dash probably required training before it could manifest. He'd need to learn it, master it, before he could truly wield it.
-----
Damen returned to Heroes Gym. The moment Dorin saw him, she walked over.
"You're back again? Another unlimited day pass for you?" she asked with a teasing smile.
One hundred Aurs a day wasn't small change—most people didn't even earn that much in a month.
"Yeah, may I?" Damen replied.
Dorin masked her surprise, snatched his Aur card, and debited the cash. Damen signed up for another day of training. He wasn't worried about the expensive fees.
The Aurs were courtesy of Mad Cat and his thugs.
Knowing his way around now, he didn't wait for Dorin's guidance. He strode straight to the changing room.
Dorin watched him leave, a thought flickering through her mind.
"Why do I find him… a little sexy? I didn't notice it yesterday." She brushed it off. It was not important.
Damen's increased Charm had manifested after a night's rest. His Strength increase probably helped to improve his height and physique.
He's grown taller and he's dropped the use of his cumbersome glasses. His looks also changed with minor changes here and there.
Overall, Damen has grown more charming.
Soon, Damen entered the score-testing room and ran his self-check.
Strength: 13 Meta: 2.1 Command: 2.4
He quickly stepped off the machine, his eyes darting around. "Dorin better not see this," he muttered.
The improvement overnight was too suspicious. He didn't know what trouble he'd get into if anyone found out.
Understanding that, he approached an information terminal detailing the gym's meta skill training. Each skill had a recommended routine.
"There's no need to ask Dorin for guidance now," he thought as he browsed through the machine.
He spotted Summon Shield (a Class H Skill), a defensive skill that is supposed to be trained in the defensive targeting room, just as Dorin had suggested.
"Useful info," he murmured.
Then he found what he was really looking for: Flash Dash.
Flash Dash, (a Class H skill) was a common meta graft skill for novice metas, widely offered at training centers.
No wonder Mad Cat, a local thug, had it. Reading on, Damen found instructions: "To train Flash Dash, proceed to the Spinning Tunnel."
"The Spinning Tunnel? What's that?" he muttered.
He located it immediately and booked the room. The tunnel was exactly as the name implied—a long, rotating cylinder where the only way to stay upright was to run.
Damen stepped in. The tunnel spun around him, forcing him to sprint. The rotation accelerated until he stumbled and rolled, finally coming to a stop.
"Damn, this room makes my head spin," he groaned.
But he pressed on. After hundreds of attempts, nothing much happened except bruised knees and ankles. But Damen tried again when everything clicked.
He suddenly emerged from the tunnel, panting and breathless.
"What just happened? I was inside the tunnel only a blink ago, Did I do it- Flash Dash?" he asked aloud as he stood several meters away from the tunnel. He's just transported more than 30 meters away in a dash.
Then something unexpected.
Dorin's voice answered from behind to his shock and worry: "Damen, you've mastered Flash Dash. Congratulations."
Damen froze. She'd discovered his new meta skill so quickly! Panic flared in his mind.
"How do I explain to her where I got Flash Dash from? I should find a new gym next time," he thought.
But the important thing right now was to find an excuse, a reason to explain to Dorin. He couldn't tell her outright that he got the skill Flash Dash by killing Mad Cat.
His mind was racing for an answer.