Chương 54: Recovery (2)

Ben was in a dire state. It looked like he had been stabbed or partially cleaved. He was lying down on the bed with one hand near the bandages and the other by his side, and his pallid face, devoid of any colour, showed traces of contorting in pain.

"What the hell…" Theo wasn't able to finish his sentence. Just looking at Ben's condition made him and Maya wince and ponder over how the hell he managed to injure himself to this extent.

"Did the healing skill not work on him?" Maya inquired. Ben, whose eyes were open, shook his head subtly and said, "I tried… but I ran out of mana."

"You tried and you failed?" Ben nodded at Theo's worrisome words.

"I'm still using the skill on it now. It's a lot better now than when I first got the wound… but I've lost a lot of blood from it." After grabbing chairs from around the room, me, Theo and Maya sat down next to Ben. It was impossible for us to cast our thoughts away from the gruesome condition that Ben had returned in. The number of reasons as to why this had happened was infinite.

"I'll tell you everything from the start," Ben said in a weak voice.

"You guys have to know." Theo nodded. His face depicted nothing but worry.

"I was transported to a planet that nobody's been to before," Ben began.

"No one. I mean, literally no one. No Hopper before me had ever explored the planet I went to." Maya leaned her arms on the frame of Ben's bed and asked, "So what happened there? How did you get hurt?"

"I'm getting there, so be patient," Ben replied, speaking slowly in a slightly hoarse voice.

"I'm telling you the whole story." Maya fell silent.

"I had to build my way up to the surface. That in itself drained a lot of my stamina. And when I reached the surface, it was literally as cold as a freezer. Imagine yourself in the Arctic Circle or Antarctica. That's basically what it felt like." The Arctic Circle or Antarctica. The polar extremities of Planet Earth (or Planet 500 if you're from Planet Zero). Colder than household freezers, it is almost impossible to survive there and getting frostbite is pretty much inevitable. But Ben had done the extreme.

He had gone to Antarctica and he had survived. There was still more he had to say, however.

"I had been placed somewhere similar to the poles. I didn't anticipate this, and I was only wearing a t-shirt and joggers." This sentence coming out of Ben's weak mouth made Maya almost fall back. After her sudden reaction, she adjusted the crown on her head and had a look which suggested that she couldn't believe her eyes.

"You survived Antarctica in a t-shirt?" she asked.

"You did that without getting hypothermia?"

"I might have suffered from hypothermia, but I didn't get frostbite. One of the missions I had to complete was to survive the blizzard, and luckily, to complete that mission, I went back into the portal room for warmth. After all, most of the time, it's warmer underground than it is on the surface."

"Y-You could've gotten frostbite," Theo added; his worries were exacerbated.

"You audacious bastard, you would've gotten injured either way."

"Maybe," Ben replied, "but sometimes, you have to rely on a stroke of luck to get you over the line, and that's what happened to me. I was lucky I didn't lose a limb."

"Then what happened?" Ben considered Theo's words meticulously.

"Once I completed the mission and the blizzard was over, I climbed up to the top again. The snow was so deep to the point where I thought I was going to lose a leg. Fortunately, that never happened." What followed was an awkward silence in the hospital ward. The thought of Ben mentioning that he could have lost vital limbs which were required for people to walk dug deep into our hearts. It was akin to losing a friend in the most brutal ways possible.

"Then I had to face a few mana beasts," Ben continued.

"The first ones were fairly easy. They were at the basic level. Then they progressively got harder, and in the extreme cold, I was starting to lose focus." Yeah, duh. Of course the beasts were going to get progressively harder to defeat.

"Imagine your worst nightmare. Imagine something as tall as a tower block with large red eyes and sharp teeth. Imagine something with white fur that's like snow. Put that all together, and that's exactly what I was dealing with on plan… cough! Cough! Cough!" Throughout his attempt to implant a vivid description of the beasts on his planet, Ben unconsciously used both hands for his hand gestures, and without knowing, he took one hand off his wound, causing him to cough uncontrollably.

"Cough! Cough! Cough!"

"Help him!" Theo bellowed.

"Put a hand on his wound! He's not fully healed yet!" Frantically, Maya and I put our hands on Ben's bandaged abdomen, allowing the coughing to ease. Once Ben stopped coughing, he placed his left hand on the wound to ensure that he could heal the wound himself.

"As I was saying," Ben continued after his breathing stabilised, "imagine your worst nightmare. That's what I had to face. Huge, abominable snow monsters that were about ten to twenty feet tall with sharp shark's teeth and menacing eyes. And I had to defeat a hundred of them." Maya looked to the side once she confirmed that Ben had his wound under control.

"I don't even want to think about it," she said.

"If I'm an animal and I see a large tiger coming my way, I know to run away. That's the feeling it's giving me."

"I had to defeat those beasts in nothing but a t-shirt and joggers. That was literally the icing on the cake. I knew straight away that everything on that planet was out to kill me."

"They say that death is everywhere after all," Theo chimed in.

"You can't escape death. It's inevitable; it will happen soon. Even on Earth, one wrong move could send you to your grave." Ben nodded subtly since Theo's words all made sense; trying to rebuke what Theo said was futile.

"So I defeated the lower-level beasts with ease, but there was one thing I didn't consider, and that was the blunder that almost sent me to my grave: the mystery beast." The mystery beast. I know now that the system message usually hides the boss beast until it reveals itself in front of Hoppers.

"I didn't think the mystery beast was around at the time, so I thought I could take a break and rest for a while. But I was caught off-guard and the mystery beast ambushed me."

"And that's how you got that wound," Theo said, finishing Ben's sentence. Ben nodded.

"It stabbed me. It stabbed me deep into my abdomen. I tried using the healing skill on it, but it didn't do much to help. Basically, to summarise, I had to fight the boss beast with one hand clutching my sword and the other holding my wound." Maya winced. She couldn't believe the lengths Ben went to in order to complete his mission. His dedication was profound.

"What made things even worse was that it was so frigid on the planet and I didn't have a jacket or a coat with me. I was literally thinking about death and the numerous ways I could possibly die. I was literally at death's door." Again, silence ensued. Ben could have died, and according to his words, ending up in this state was the best-case scenario for him.

Rather than being pragmatic, Ben had taken an approach that prioritised the completion of the mission; according to him, he was ready to sacrifice his life for the sake of his mission. He had displayed the true duty of a seasoned Hopper. What Theo said about death is true: it is everywhere, watching your every step, waiting to pounce. People don't think about it much because these thoughts are suppressed by other emotions such as happiness and elation, sadness and fury.

Many people are too busy delving deep into other thoughts that they don't think about it much. To ordinary people, it doesn't really matter how they die. However, to Hoppers, it's a completely different story. Since Hoppers are always placed in perilous situations, they are always actively thinking about death and the multitude of ways they could possibly die on a completely different planet. They tend to be more cautious on other planets because they don't know what might come out and possibly kill them.

As a result, it is harder for Hoppers to suppress their feelings of death, making them more vigilant. They are almost always being placed in perilous situations where their life is on the line, meaning survival is paramount to them, nothing else. And Ben had done his best to survive out there. Unlike the rest of us, he had faced true peril. Whilst we had all overpowered our adversaries to such horrifying degrees, Ben had nearly lost his life because of an ambush.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. Whilst we had all suppressed our fear of death, Ben had actively been trying to avoid death. I thought back to my solo mission, where many obstacles could have led to my demise: the beasts, other Hoppers, Jake, you name it. They all could have killed me. But did I think about death and going to the afterlife? Only once, and that was when I was out of mana.

I didn't think about it even when I was faced with the toughest opponent of my life: other Hoppers. I had successfully suppressed the harrowing, macabre thought of death. But Ben, one of my closest friends, had to actively face it. This was reality, after all. Reality had a whole host of hidden obstacles that people had to overcome to stay alive.

"I made it out, and that's the most important part," Ben said, trying to lift our spirits.

"According to Cayman, I'm expected to make a full recovery thanks to mana."

"That's good," Maya replied, wearing a beaming but disconcerted smile.

"For now, just rest." Ben nodded, but afterwards, he almost immediately contorted his face. He pointed at something behind us, and I soon realised what he had been pointing to.

"What the hell is he doing here?" He raised his voice and pointed at the intruder in the room. Daniel De Souza.

"Hey! Why are you here? I thought you weren't a skill user!" Ben's capricious nature had returned; he had switched from being quiet and in pain to being petulant and boisterous. He displayed hostility towards Daniel, who we had all forgotten about until Ben's attention was diverted towards him. It was like he didn't exist up until Ben pointed at him. Oh well. He still didn't know the full story. And neither did us.

"Speak up! Why the hell are you here when you're not even able to use skills? You need to be at home, chilling… cough! Cough! Cough!"

"Stop, please!" Theo pleaded, putting a hand on Ben's wound.

"You'll injure yourself even more. Just rest. Relax and let him talk."

"About time," Maya said; her indignation was brazen. Daniel stared at us with blank eyes as if all my social awkwardness had just been transferred to him. He didn't seem ready to talk.

"Speak," Ben ordered.

"Why are you here?"

"It's a long story," Daniel said, his voice akin to my quiet, stuttering voice.

"Just speak!" Ben shouted whilst Theo put both of his hands on the wound.

"Don't try to increase the suspense! Just give us a straightforward answer!" Daniel sighed but he didn't speak, prompting Ben to sneer at him. This reminded me of the good old days back at school when Ben used to terrorise and torment other students.

"OK, I'll speak," Daniel said, feeling utterly defeated.

"I was captured. I was walking home from school like normal on Friday when suddenly, someone grabbed me and took me to some facility I didn't know about. Now that I think about it, that facility might have been on a completely different planet."

"You were kidnapped?" Theo replied, as if he couldn't believe what Daniel had just said." You were kidnapped on the streets of our neighbourhood? That's pure bullshit. Our neighbourhood is one of the safest places in town. You were kidnapped out in the open? Someone must've really wanted to go to jail." However, Daniel shook his head and tried to defend his case.

"That's not all. I'm just scared that I'll miss information since my memory of the kidnapping is quite foggy."

"Continue," Theo said simply, not saying any more.

"The people that kidnapped me weren't ordinary people. They called themselves The Leak and they said that they conduct research on skill users and Hoppers-""What the fuck did you just say?" Theo interjected, breaking the silence, infuriated.

"The Leak? You were kidnapped by The Leak? For what reason?" All of Theo's questions were genuine and legitimate. I believed that his outburst was justified, since why would an organisation that deals with skill users, like The Leak, want to kidnap an ordinary teenager like Daniel? Had he even awakened at that point? It was impossible to know.

"I don't fucking know!" Daniel shouted, reciprocating Theo's outburst of curses.

"How the hell would I know? Once I was there, I was told that the boss knew me or something, but he was hiding his identity behind a mask. I don't remember the exact details."

"You were kidnapped because the boss knows you," Maya repeated her brother's words with exaggerated sass.

"That doesn't seem plausible at all. Someone from The Leak knows you? Yeah, fat chance, since you said you weren't even awakened."

"Just listen, please," Daniel pleaded.

"When I got there, I was told that I was kidnapped by a boy called Gavin who worked for The Leak. He was ordered by this 'boss' to do so. And once I woke up and found myself in The Leak's facility, Gavin forced me to become a skill user under the orders of this 'boss'." Instantly, all of our gazes, including Ben's, turned to Daniel.

"The Leak forced you to become a skill user?" Theo asked Daniel, pointing his finger right at Daniel's chest.

"Is that what you're trying to say?" Daniel nodded solemnly.

"Does anybody have a lie detector? We need to fact-check this." However, Theo didn't receive a reply for his question.

"Can you just believe me please? I was genuinely forced to become a skill user. Gavin injected something into my system and told me it was mana. Now I have mana circulating around my body, I can see system windows and I can use skills. Is that enough proof?"

"What's your main skill?" Theo asked.

"Human shield."

"How the hell does that work?"

"Stand up. I'll tell you exactly how it works." Surprisingly, Theo followed Daniel's orders. He stood up and placed himself a few feet away from Daniel.

"Punch me."

"What?" Theo was taken aback. Before, when he used to always punch people, he did it for his own satisfaction rather than because people wanted him to punch them. However, everything he had built up inside his brain was about to be flipped over.

"Punch me," Daniel repeated with unwavering pride and confidence.

"Are you sure?" Theo asked, sounding slightly alarmed.

"My punches are quite strong. I don't want to injure you." However, despite Theo worrying about Daniel, Daniel just laughed. In fact, it looked like he was ready to burst into maniacal laughter.

"Just punch me," Daniel said again.

"Give me your hardest punch." Theo, still feeling apprehensive and reluctant, readied his fist for the punch. After a while, he delivered his menacing punch which was endowed with superhuman strength. Punch! Clang!

"Ouch!" Maya and Ben had expected Daniel to have said that and be wincing in pain on the ground, potentially convulsing and writhing like a little baby. However, they were perplexed when they realised that it was Theo shouting in pain, clutching his reddened fist, which seemed to be in agonising pain.

"What happened?"

"It's my skill," Daniel replied proudly.

"That's why I told you to punch me. That's the human shield. It forms an invisible barrier around me meaning no punches or other kind of attacks can hit me whilst the skill is active."

"Damn," Theo said, still in shock at what had just happened.

"That's a really good skill to start with. I guess being forced to become a skill user blessed you with a skill like that."

"Don't say it like that. I haven't fully adjusted to life as a skill user yet. I'm hoping Cayman can give me some classes."

"Why?" Theo's curious side suddenly took over.

"Because that Gavin guy I told you about was useless at teaching me about the ways of skill users," Daniel said curtly.

"He didn't teach me everything, and the content he taught made my head spin. It's like having an inexperienced substitute teacher teach you maths."

"Sure. You better do a good job convincing him then." Theo gave Daniel a childish smirk. Bang! The door suddenly burst open.

"What's going on in here?" On cue, Cayman, Ellie and Devon arrived. Cayman and Devon looked poised to start arguing again, whilst Ellie's usual steadfast, stoic look was devoid of any emotion. They were staring at us whilst we stood up, crowding round Daniel's hospital bed.

"Why are you all up from your beds?" Cayman asked, glaring at us, suggesting that we should still be in bed despite it being a school day.

"Also, why the hell are you crowding round Daniel?" We were silent, creating an awkward but tense atmosphere.

"You, sir," Cayman continued in a brusque manner, pointing a menacing finger straight at Daniel's heart.

"You still owe me an explanation. Tell me what's going on right this instant." Cayman's mood had turned sour. At this rate, it was almost impossible for Daniel to be admitted to his 'informal school of skill users on Planet 500'. Daniel's face portrayed an awkward expression.

"I just told them what's going on since they also asked the same question," Daniel replied bluntly. He was about to say, 'You should've been there to hear it,' but he soon realised that saying those words would plunge Cayman into a level of fury never seen before.

"Repeat what you just said," Cayman ordered, his orders being absolute.

"I need to hear this with my own ears from the person who shouldn't be here. I want to know why the hell you appeared from a portal that uses mana."

"I'll tell you the full story," Daniel muttered sadly.

"Tell me right now," Cayman instructed in a threatening tone of voice. Daniel sighed, then opened his mouth.

"I was kidnapped by an organisation called The Leak. They forced me to become a skill user. Luckily, one of the workers there let me escape, so here I am, right in front of you. I am a new skill user."

"You WHAT?" Cayman was about to fall head-first onto the floor. He couldn't feign ignorance. To him, this was an extremely serious matter.

"Somebody forced you to become a skill user?" Daniel nodded, not saying anything else.

"So you became a skill user. That's all good. You should be at the basic level then. You should be on stage 1. So how the hell did you come out from a portal? You shouldn't be a Hopper!" Steam was ready to burst out of Cayman's ears and nose.

"What level are you at?" Cayman asked Daniel in a caustic tone.

"Advanced," Daniel replied weakly.

"Stage 5." Cayman looked ready to faint and froth at the mouth upon hearing Daniel's unexpected words. Stage 5? Advanced level? He had just become a skill user. How the hell could he be at such a high level? Nobody had asked him this question before. I certainly didn't. I knew that he was at a high level as soon as I saw him in cave 33, but I didn't ask him about it since I thought he had lied from the outset and had awakened at the same time as us. So how could this be? To summarise, things were not adding up.

It was akin to saying that two plus two is five.

"I took this red orb that Gavin had in his pocket, and instantly, I levelled up from stage 1 to stage 5." Cayman wanted to faint.

"You took one of those orbs, didn't you?" he asked. Daniel nodded again.

"Fine. If someone forced you to take an orb like that, it's all on them. But I'll tell you now, do not take any more of those orbs. They can do damage to your body. Sigh. Looks like I have to teach another person the ways of skill users." Daniel smiled discreetly; he had achieved his goal. Once everything about Daniel had been sorted out, I expected Cayman to say 'good day' and leave us be. However, that was far from what truly happened. Cayman wasn't finished with his rant yet.

"And you!" His next target was me. I didn't understand why, since he was someone I revered deeply, and I had no harsh feelings or attitudes towards him. I couldn't think of a logical reason why he would point the same menacing finger at me and place me in the same group as someone who had artificially awakened inside a research lab.

"I need to speak to you right now."