[Host: Abram Nadez]
[Charge: 500 | 5 full charges]
[Warning: Combat capability insufficient. 1000 charge required to unlock defense skills.]
[Suggestion: Escape.]
The mist cleared and revealed Mute. Level three. Teleportation. I had assumed telekinetic force. I had assumed wrong.
"Mute." I forced myself up, coughing dust. "What's going on, man?"
Stupid question. I knew exactly what was going on. Mable was his girlfriend, distant or not, and he had seen enough to draw the right conclusion. The only thing I couldn't work out was how. Mable was a level eight illusion creator. Whatever she'd shown the campus on our walk back, it shouldn't have been us. Unless she'd wanted him to see.
Maybe she came to my room because she wanted Mute to know she had options, I thought. And I walked her home like I didn't know I was being used as a message.
I didn't finish that thought. He was already moving. He hit me with a double fist and teleported to the other side before I could process the impact. The force drove me backward into the wall of my room hard enough to rattle the door.
"We can talk about this," I said, sliding down to sitting.
"Talk about what?"
He was standing directly in front of me, and I registered two things simultaneously. First, he had spoken, which was positive, because people who were going to finish you off didn't bother speaking first.
Second, the specific quality of his anger told me everything I needed to know about the situation with Mable.
This fool has never touched her.
He had been standing at a distance, maybe waiting, maybe too cautious, maybe just slow, and I had walked through the gap in two days without even knowing it was there.
"Of all the girls here," he said. "Why Mable?"
I had no answer that was going to help me.
[Move your head left. Now.]
My eyes processed the notification and my reflexes moved before my brain signed off on it. His punch missed my face by an inch and hit the wall instead.
I rolled and came up standing on my feet. Old reflex. The plain had built it into me years ago, the specific muscle memory of a body that had learned to get upright fast or not get upright at all.
I watched him from a distance. One second he was there. The next he was directly in front of me, fist already moving.
I got both hands up and planted them flat on his chest. The electricity moved through me the way it had with the infected on the plain, the same discharge, same direction, same result. He launched backward, hit the ground, and was upright again in under two seconds.
Now I'm in trouble, I thought.
[Get to your room. Door is open, enter and close. Level 3 teleportation cannot pass solid barriers. Forty seconds. Go.]
Easy to read. Easy to understand. Significantly harder to execute against an angry teleporter who was now motivated, had already demonstrated his speed, and was not interested in a conversation.
I started for the door. He hit me before I made two steps.
I was on the ground. Then in the air. Then against the wall again. All of it happening in seconds, him blinking in and out of position, hitting from angles I couldn't predict, and me doing the only thing available, covering my head and trying to stay conscious.
Mable is probably asleep right now, I thought, somewhere between the wall and the ground. Thinking about butterflies and the nice evening she had. And I am out here being a punching bag.
He stood over me. Fist raised. The expression of someone who had made a decision.
From somewhere behind the door to my right, I heard it. A small click. Sherry, reaching for her door handle, deciding whether to check on whatever was happening outside.
Mute heard it too. He was gone before the handle turned. Teleported away into the dark campus, leaving nothing behind but the impression of where he'd been and me on the ground counting my injuries.
Sherry didn't open the door. Probably thought better of it. Went back to her room.
She saved my nose without knowing it, I thought. I owe her something. I'm not sure what.
I lay there for a moment, letting the campus settle back into quiet around me. Then I got up, went inside, and closed the door.
"Bram," Sherry called through the wall immediately.
"Yeah."
"Everything okay out there?"
"All good," I said. "Good night, lovely."
She didn't press. She had decided last night that May had been in my room, which meant tonight she had decided I was doing personal things and had chosen not to investigate. Boundaries. Good ones. I appreciated them enormously right now.
I lay on my bed and looked at the ceiling.
[LEWD LEVELING SYSTEM]
[Class: Prime Charger, Level 5]
[Vitality: Wounds closing.]
I felt it. The warmth moving through the split skin on my cheek, the bruising on my ribs, the system doing quietly what I couldn't do myself. It didn't eliminate the pain. It just worked through it, steady and unbothered, the way a good system should.
Level five, I thought. From two to five in one night.
"Can I keep leveling up with the same ability user?" I asked the ceiling.
[No guarantee of progression with repeat partners.]
[First intimate connection with a new ability user generates a full charge. Each climax during first encounter counts as a Full Charge. Repeat encounters provide partial charge only. New partners are required for consistent leveling.]
I lay with that information for a moment. New partners, I thought. For consistent leveling. I looked at the ceiling. Then at the wall. Then back at the ceiling.
Mute had beaten me across a campus because I was at level five and he was at three and I still couldn't defend myself properly. A level three teleporter had used me as a wall ornament for sixty seconds. That was unacceptable. That was not the future I was building.
One thousand charge for defense skills. New ability users for consistent progression. A campus with eleven girls in my class alone and a junior school below us.
Partial charge meant I could still gain something from Annabelle or Mable again. But not enough. Never enough.
I got up, bathed, and got back into bed. The wounds were still closing. The plan was already forming.
Tomorrow, I thought. We hunt properly.