Chương 112: Chapter 117: Cole

"Here." A steaming coffee mug appeared in front of my face as I was consulting the System Code of Biological Assets. I followed the arm with my eyes, turning to my left only to see a man I didn't recognize staring at me with a weird smile on his face.

"Ehm, sorry if I interrupted you, but you seemed in need of something a little stronger than just water." He punctuated his words by gesturing for me to take the cup. I was more of an espresso guy, but I accepted the americano anyway. The first sip managed to restore some of my faith in humans, just a little.

"Haa, that hit the spot, thanks. I didn't know we had coffee." The man pointed away from me.

"There is a kind of cafeteria adjacent to this building. You're Elias, right? I'm Cole, pleasure to meet you." I took his offered hand and shook it. He had a weak grip, and it was slightly sweaty.

"The pleasure is mine, and thanks for the coffee," I said while raising my cup.

"Chloe could use one too." As I turned around, I saw my new aide fast asleep on the table. I blinked, looking around and seeing the room full of people looking at me, not that different from the last time I checked, but the light was definitely brighter. I checked the counter for the Tutorial Quest and found out that I had spent the whole night and a good part of the morning on this new project of mine. Fuck, I totally lost track of time. But I made some progress. We made some progress.

I have to admit that Chloe's help became more and more instrumental as the hours passed; her skills must have leveled up quite a lot. And for this kind of work, my stats were helping me, but they weren't comparable to dedicated skills. Those were simply another thing entirely.

"I wanted to ask you, if you don't mind, of course," the man started again, "why are you doing this?" I regarded him. He looked like a wimp, despite being tall and quite well built. His behavior and mannerisms screamed pushover to me. I dealt with a lot of people in my career, and I met a fair share of everything. It wasn't a surprise that he was among the people swindled by the chief, but I wasn't going to tell that to his face.

"Why? Because you got dealt a bad hand, and you don't deserve it. I was a lawyer before all of this," I gestured broadly around me.

"I want to help. And I think I found something, but nothing is set in stone yet. I need a bit more time."

"Well, in any case, you have my thanks, and the others' too…" I noticed many faces trying and failing to look busy with anything other than our conversation. I stood up. I could use a moment to stretch my legs; stats or not, staying seated for half a day wasn't comfortable.

"Cole, I have a question for you. Why did you all sign that contract? Didn't you read it?" He looked away at the question, for shame, embarrassment, or something else—I didn't know—but he responded anyway. If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"We arrived here the night of the first day. Trust me, we tried to move forward, but the monsters are too strong. We couldn't manage to kill even one, so we don't really know their level, but they are little humanoids, and all of them shoot magic and stuff. We were not strong enough. We lost many that day. We tried moving around, but with the exception of the rabbits, we can't manage to kill any other beast.

Our leader tried to move toward the valley, but got a hole in the chest from something we couldn't even see from our position. The rest of his team got wiped out in seconds…"

"We tried," he said with a choke, tears in his eyes.

"But we were out of options. We couldn't proceed. We didn't have points—we spent them all trying to empower our fighters… we were out of food, and most of us can't fight. We sold anything we had to those bastards just to be able to eat. Then they proposed that contract… we—we were getting desperate. We read it and tried to change some parts, but they were adamant that the contract was standard and couldn't be changed. It was that or starving." Okay, that made a bit more sense now.

They got fucked over by their starting point, while we got somewhat lucky that the monsters, while being too strong at the beginning, then became manageable. Not that it had been easy, and maybe if this group had been in our position, they would all have died the first day. But in any case, this "tutorial" was just meant to cull us. That's how I saw it. It was made to create a few powerful people, and the others were meant to just die or get under the protection of someone powerful.

The fact that most of us chose non-combat classes only exacerbated the problem. But maybe I could make things work in my favor.

"I understand. They tried to pull one over us too. If it wasn't for Vix, we would have lost a ton of points… Say, Cole, like I said before, I found something that could work. But I have to ask something of you—all of you. Can you gather everyone who signed the contract by tonight?" If the little loophole I found worked at all remained to be seen. Mostly, it depended on the people themselves. On how much they valued their freedom. I talked a bit more with Cole.

He was quite happy to hear there was even a slight possibility, and he went to start informing the others about the gathering tonight. I shook Chloe's shoulder lightly. She was mumbling in her sleep, drool falling on the table.

"Wake up. Go and get some proper rest," I told her while picking up all the books, papers, and the contract. It formed a pretty big stack that I put into my spatial satchel. This thing was so useful. As I finished my coffee, she went stumbling toward the bunk beds in the other room. Again, mixed area, but beggars couldn't be choosers. I stifled a yawn as I walked outside. I'll catch some sleep later, but I wasn't really that tired—more mentally drained—and I wanted to explore the area around here a bit.

I wanted to practice my skills. Perusing the shop gave me a ton of ideas on how to improve them—directions and specific things I could make some of my skills do that hadn't even crossed my mind before. Like using my aura to deliver my hexes, for once. There were several dedicated skills for that, all doing it in slightly different ways, but my Hex skill said that it worked by impressing a fragment of my intent onto mana and branding an enemy to weaken them.

I was already working with intent, and if I could manage to impress it onto my aura instead, I would be a step closer to linking my abilities together. After all, I had already managed to use my curses with lifeforce many times. Why should aura be different? In that same vein, I reviewed some of my skills. Some, like Arcane Infusion and Arcane Manipulation, should work only with mana, but I clearly remembered improving them in level even with the use of lifeforce. Was there a correlation between the two energies?

Something I could exploit, even? Actually, I still had to study the books I bought—maybe there were answers there. The important thing was that my skills were malleable. Whether it was because of their nature, my traits and achievements, or something else, I didn't know. But it wasn't the first time I managed to do something with them that I shouldn't have been capable of doing. So now I'll put some of my theories to the test. A good morning exercise to prepare me for the day.

Now I just needed to find some practice targets…