Chương 19: Power Leveling

Felix's breath escaped him in a wet gasp—blood drippoing at the corner of his mouth, sliding in a thin line down his chin. His legs buckled first, then gave out completely, and only the chain skewering him kept his body upright. He turned his head, slow, to find his teammate.

"Why…" The word's struggled to leave his mouth. Luca stumbled backward, yanking at the chains sprouting from his arms in an attempt to pull them free. They wouldn't budge. Some force outside his will held them tightly, and it would keep holding them until the objective was finished.

"I didn't mean to!" His voice cracked into a scream.

"I swear, my chains, they moved on their own, I didn't—""Bullshit." Blood sprayed from Felix's lips with the word. His eyes, already dimming, found Luca's and held there.

"I always knew. You were just waiting for your chance." His body sagged, the chain the only thing keeping him from folding to the ground. Then the light went out of his eyes altogether. Luca Morales has slain Felix Plier. A Seeker has killed one of its own. No Contribution Points has been awarded. Luca Morales is stripped of half his Contribution Points. Luca Morales updated Ladder Ranking: 1, 799"No!" Luca stared at the notification.

"I didn't do it! Something's wrong here!"

"Both of you." The command sliced through his panic, carrying down the empty street.

"Run. Get as far from here as possible." The fear drained from his face in an instant. Beside him, whatever confusion had gripped William vanished just as fast, and their expressions went slack. Luca's chains slithered back into his hands, and Felix's body dropped to the pavement with a soft thud.. Neither man spoke. They turned together, in a synchrony too clean to be their own, and marched away; fading into the street. With the chain gone that had held him aloft, Gray fell.

The pavement rushed up fast to his skull. Then he stopped, frozen an inch from impact, hanging in the air as though gravity was on his side. The newcomer had his fingers curled like a claw. He rushed toward Gray and held out his arms, before releasing his telekinetic hold. Gray blinked through the film of blood coating his face and scrubbed at it with the back of his wrist. He'd had a guess about who'd caught him. Seeing the man's face up close only confirmed it.

"Hyun." He let out a wet, raspy laugh.

"Bit late, don't you think?" Hyun didn't answer right away. He pulled a small vial from the ring on his finger, tipped Gray's head back, and pressed it to his lips.

"Don't talk. Drink." Gray swallowed. The potion tasted like cherry cough syrup, which thankfully, happened to be his favorite flavor. Heat spread out from his stomach into every muscle, and he felt his ribs shift and click back into their sockets one by one. The caved plane of his cheek knitted itself whole again beneath Hyun's palm. He had survived. The ache stayed, and the exhaustion sat heavy in his bones, but he survived.

"Holy crap." Gray reached up and pressed a palm to Hyun's cheek.

"It's really you. You look like hell, you know that? Ten years older, easy. Those bags under your eyes are practically bruises now." Hyun's mouth pulled into a wide grin.

"Good to see you too, kid." Then Gray's expression shifted into something suspicious. He pushed himself upright, scrambling out of Hyun's lap, and put a full foot of space between them before narrowing his eyes.

"How do I know it's actually you?" His voice dropped flat and wary.

"I just watched you mind-control Luca into killing Felix. How do I know you're not an imposter?" Hyun let out a long-suffering sigh, the sigh of a man who'd been asked this exact question more times than he cared to count.

"What did Dad make you do after you brought home an A-minus in AP Calc?"

"You're seriously doing this now?"

"Dead serious. Answer." Hyun's jaw tightened.

"He marched me out to the front lawn in my boxers, made me hold the report card over my head, and shout 'I am ashamed for disappointing my parents' for half an hour as the neighbors watched." A grin spread across Gray's face, slow and devious.

"Question two. After your first breakup, how many days did you spend locked in your room, crying?"

"That's enough." Hyun jabbed a finger into Gray's tender ribs.

"Ow! Okay, okay, I believe you!" Gray wheezed out another laugh.

"So how'd you end up with a class like that, anyway? Can I Identify you?"

"Go ahead." Name: Hyun Kim Class: Psion Level: 4 Rank: Awakened Ladder Rank: 37"Holy crap." Gray's mouth fell open.

"Rank 37? How'd you climb that fast?"

"I cleared a lot of goblins in the first level. My class scales hard against low-intelligence targets, so I can freeze an entire horde in place and pick them off one by one." Gray let out a whistle, or at least he tried to.

"Why not just turn them on each other? Like you did with Luca and Felix. Wouldn't that be more efficient?"

"It would be, if not for the kill credit. I only get the reward if I land the final blow myself. That's why the System didn't name me as Felix's killer." Hyun clapped his hands together once, brisk.

"Enough sitting around. Loot the body and let's move." Gray's eyebrow crept up, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

"Loot the body? Last I checked you thought video games were a waste of my time, and you would always nag me to get off the computer. Now you're spouting the gaming lingo like a pro." This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. Hyun huffed something close to a laugh.

"I'd have spent more time playing games with you if I had known they'd be of use someday. I didn't expect to change this much either." His humor drained out of his face as quickly as it had arrived.

"This world, this competition, it doesn't leave much room to stay who you were." He fixed Gray with a level stare.

"Tell me something. Have you crossed that line yet?"

"Line?"

"Have you killed someone." Hyun's voice dropped low.

"No. I haven't." Gray kept his voice steady, not counting the time Shota forced his hand.

"But if it's my life or theirs, I'm not going to hesitate." He watched Hyun's face for whatever judgment might follow. It never came. Hyun only nodded, slow.

"That's a good rule to live by." His eyes slid toward Felix's body.

"I don't intend to kill again unless I have no other choice. Felix was my first." Gray let that sit a moment, then crouched beside the body and got to work. He patted down his pockets until his fingers caught on something cold and metal. A Dimensional Ring. He drew it out and turned it over in the light, the metal catching the sun.

"How's this thing actually work? The description doesn't explain much."

"Intention." Hyun crouched beside him.

"It runs on mental imagery. Picture the item entering the ring, and it goes. Picture it coming back out, and it does. There are limits, though. You can't contain anything living, and size matters. I've never managed to store anything past twice my own mass." Gray slid the ring onto his pinky, and it shrank to fit with a small, satisfying click. His gaze lingered on Felix's body a moment longer, the thought of depositing a corpse into his ring causing his stomach to turn over. He left the body where it lay.

"Let's move." Hyun rolled his shoulders.

"You said you haven't killed anyone. That makes you a Hider, correct?"

"Yup."

"Good. With me by your side, you'll be safe from other participants. Let's push your CP toward the Top 100 cutoff before this level ends. There's a cluster of abominations a few blocks back you can grind through."

"Sounds good." Gray hauled himself upright, favoring one leg, and started off with an exaggerated limp.

"One thing."

"What?"

"Carry me." Hyun's face went flat. He swatted Gray's shoulder away.

"You're fully healed, and you're eighteen. You're too big for me to carry."

"Please?" Gray stared at him with puppy-dog eyes.

"Just for a couple blocks."

"Absolutely not." Hyun sprinted down the main road of Gangnam with Gray mounted on his back. He had clocked the cluster of Abominations he encountered earlier and filed the location away, and now he closed the distance without wasting a step. He skidded to a stop in front of a Korean fried chicken franchise, the QBB Chicken sign hanging crooked above the storefront. Through the shattered windows, the dining room came into full view: a sea of doughy, pale flesh.

Twenty Abominations, at a rough count, packed shoulder to shoulder, gutting the restaurant from the inside out.

"Holy crap." Gray slid off his unwilling mount and planted his feet.

"That's a lot more than I signed up for. Can we actually take that many?"

"I've handled larger herds." Hyun rolled his shoulders, working the stiffness out of them.

"So what's the plan? You freeze them in place, I do the slaughtering?"

"That's the idea." Hyun's tone stayed even.

"One hit to the brain or the heart drops them."

"Got it." Gray drew his daggers.

"What about you?"

"Don't worry about me. I already cleared the Top 100 threshold." The corner of Hyun's mouth twitched upward.

"Consider this your big brother power-leveling you." Gray's face soured—the exact look of someone whose dad had just tried out a slang term two years too late. He let it pass without comment, turned back toward the restaurant, and settled into a cold hard focus.

"Alright. Let's do it." Inside, the Abominations tore through the kitchen, ripping open flour sacks that coated their slick skin in a white powder. A few had found the open bar and were pouring liquor down their throats in thick, wasteful gulps. Hyun stepped into the entrance, extended his arms, and his pupils gleamed with a purple glow. The noise and chaos died out instantly. The chicken legs fell from their meaty claws, and bottles of booze shattered on the floor.

Twenty heads snapped toward the front door simultaneously, staring down the two brothers. The Abominations in the dining room stood still, while the ones in the open kitchen began their march—exiting the room. Gray charged at the first target, driving his blade into its eye socket. Yanking it free, he spun in a dramatic twirl and impaled the neck of the second. You have slain [Abomination] +0. 7% EXP | +50CP You have slain [Abomination] +0.

7% EXP | +50CP After the tenth kill, the tension that came from jumping into a swarm of beasts like this quickly faded away. Gray's stance relaxed, his movements becoming far too casual as he hacked through the mob and forewent any sort of technique or form.

"This doesn't feel fulfilling," Gray muttered as he quickly sidestepped a frozen monster, pretending it would actually swing at him.

"I'm not complaining, though. Imagine how easy this competition would've been if I had an overpowered class like this one." As the pile of corpses grew, a question lingered in the back of Gray's mind. What happens when this doesn't work? What happens if Hyun were to face an enemy immune to his mental intrusion? Would he be able to win if forced into a brawl with nothing but his fists? Gray fought tooth and nail ever since he arrived on this foreign planet.

He had to scrape by with a class like his and an unhelpful mentor. That experience had shaped him, forging a hunger for survival that he doubted Hyun could ever understand with his god-like class. If he had the choice to start over. To reboot this entire nightmare with a class like his brother's, even if it meant losing all the hard-earned experience he'd obtained so far… would he take it? Absolutely. To hell with struggle and the 'character development' that came along with it.

He would happily seize the opportunity to start with a class like his brother's if it meant skipping that hellish phase. There was no point in dwelling on hindsight, as the road ahead wouldn't be treacherous, but rather a path of flowers. Gray obtained the fighting experience and now he had his overpowered class—brother, by his side. It was smooth sailing from here on out. Gray finished off the last Abomination, flicking the blood off his blade.

"Dear brother, are there any more EXP farms like this nearby?" His voice rose into a cheerful chirp.

"Yeah," Hyun replied, looking off into the street.

"There are several more clusters like this one." Gray stored his daggers back in their scabbards and turned to his brother, executing a perfect ninety-degree bow—the kind usually reserved for corporate CEOs or mob bosses.

"I'm in your care, hyung-nim." Hyun snorted.

"Since when have you ever called me that? I'm surprised you even know your honorifics." Clearing out close to fifty of the things had exhausted the brothers. They needed a break. The duo found respite in an unassuming cafe on the street corner. Strangely, the street lamps were still working, and the buildings were cycling through their advertisements, but the espresso machine refused to turn on. Thankfully, the plumbing still operated, and the faucet sputtered out water.

Hyun resorted to the manual approach by pulling out a bag of coffee beans and a hand-crank grinder. He had to use lukewarm water as the hot water wouldn't come on. It wasn't a problem for him, though. Gray watched as he reclined in a plush armchair, his legs stretched out in front of him.

"You know you won't be able to taste that, right? Why bother?"

"The aroma," Hyun replied, leaning over the coffee and wafting it toward his nose.

"I don't need caffeine anymore because the System alleviated my grogginess and withdrawal headaches. But I'm making it to… remind me of what I lost." His voice dropped to a low timbre. Gray let out a faint smile.

"Figures. You were practically addicted to that stuff you drug addict, always lugging around that half-gallon tumbler to work every single morning."

"That's not what I meant—" Ring. Ring. Ring. The mounted bell hanging above the door announced someone's arrival. Name: Ivan Petrov Class: Jade Lotus Level: 4 Rank: Awakened Ladder Rank: 5 Name: Gwan Kim Class: Four Symbols Level: 4 Rank: Awakened Ladder Rank: 6