by Pegaz
John instructed her on how to do it. Sarah understood pretty easily and changed her appearance. She now wore the guise of an older woman with blonde hair and a disfigured face full of burn marks and cuts.
“People will remember this appearance,” John remarked snidely. “Kids will have nightmares from looking. Follow me.”
Inside the hotel, John booked two connecting rooms that have locks on both sides of the door that connects the rooms together. John sat at a table inside his room while Sarah was sitting at the opposite side facing him. John poured her a cup of tea to calm her nerves a bit.
“So, tell me what you need help with,” John began. “They designed these rooms for immortals and they’re not only sturdy but also soundproof.”
“Right.” Sarah sipped on her tea. She nodded then spoke, “I died seventeen years ago. This body was fifteen years old when I woke up and am now thirty-two.”
“Wait.” John put his hand up to stop her. “You’re about thirty-two years old and six months then?”
Sarah nodded.
“You might have arrived at the same time as me, then,” he mumbled.
“When I first got here,” Sarah continued speaking. “I arrived on the planet belonging to the Anti-Assassin group. At first, they treated me with kindness, but then it got weird.”
“Weird?” John knitted his brows in concern. “Weird, how?”
“One of the Elder’s son took a fancy to me.” Her voice began to quake again, but she steadied it. “Since that day, nobody but my master would even talk to me. My master said it was because they were scared of the Elder’s son. But then, before I came here to capture you, my master arranged my marriage to this very man with no consideration to how I feel.”
John frowned. Arranged marriages were such an archaic trope. He’d forgotten all about them.
“To get out of the marriage, I made a deal,” Sarah continued in a trembling voice. “If I could capture you and bring you back to the headquarters, then the arranged marriage would end.”
“What did they want to capture me for?” This was John’s biggest concern now.
“They know something has happened inside the Assassin Sect, and you’re able to get around the blood oath somehow,” Sarah answered without pause. “They want to torture you for information about them.”
“How did they know all that?”
Sarah looked at John.
“Divination.”
John sighed. I know the basics of Divination but not how to block it so other people can’t find out about me. I can’t use Divination to get an accurate reading either.
“So,” John said, looking at Sarah once more. “What do you want my help with?”
“I no longer believe in the Anti-Assassins people or their beliefs!” Sarah cried out, desperation in her voice teeming. “I want to leave, but I don’t know how.”
“From what you said,” John surmised, “maybe the Elder’s son wasn’t interested in just you but your talent as well. I’m guessing they don’t know you’re a Sider?”
“Interested, how?” That confused Sarah. She knitted her brows. “And no, they don’t know I’m a Sider. I didn’t know about the term either until two years ago when I read a tale about another Sider on their planet.”
“That was the smartest decision you’ve made.” John thumbed his chin, deep in thought. “I’ve read in a book that they can use Dual Cultivation techniques to steal the talent from someone using the technique. More than likely, that Elder’s son would use you as what’s called a cauldron. They steal your talent and then they will discard you. If they knew you were a Sider and that the technique wouldn’t have worked, then things might have gone differently.”
John took one last moment of internal debate before finally answering Sarah.
“For now, I’ll help where I can. But first, go get some sleep and relax in your room.”
Sarah had gone almost completely pale. Still a bit shaky, she stood up and walked toward the door. Before going in, she paused.
“Thank you.”
With that, she disappeared behind the door.
John sighed. His head was a mess. His first priority had to be figuring out how to block divinations and any other types of information-gathering skills.
Before that, though, he had to level up. John brought the one million sin transfer option from the Sinner’s Shop.
‘Ding!’
Congratulations on purchasing the transfer option, we have given the first transfer purchase the rate of 10:1 to celebrate!
John smiled at the surprise.
Looking at the fourth tab, below the shop and all the information was a new option.
Transfer: 0 Sin - 10:1 - 0 Time
To the right of the time was a button with “Transfer”. John went back to the first tab and checked everything first. He had 61.4 million sins to spare, and he needs 1mo 7d 22h 13m 26s total to finish the Defence’s Drain skill. Going back to the fourth tab, he put in 61, 400, 000 in the first box. It changed.
Transfer: 61,400,000 Sin - 10:1 - 2mo 15d 1h 33m 20s Time
John looked at the Transfer button and thought ‘Confirm.’.
Name: John
Title: A Selfish Punisher.
Age: 32
Idlers: 0/225
Skill Points: 4
Life Pool: 148.6M
Sin: 100M
Time Pool: 2mo 15d 1h 33m 20s
John would have gone to talk to Sarah again, but he didn’t know what would happen when he used the skill points; instead, he’d wait until he was finished.
He turned the Continue option off, then used all the time needed from the Time Pool to complete the skill.
Misc List:
Defence - Idlers 225/225, Repair - 0/3, Drain - 4/5
He used the first skill point on the last Drain skill, then checked the Idle Life Power. He was absorbing 3.7 per minute. He then used the last three skill points on the Defence’s repair, completing the whole skill.
‘Ding!’
Welcome to the Idle System 3.9
Idlers: 225/225
Skill Points: 0
Time Pool: 1mo 7d 3h 19m 54s
Immortality List:
Shrink Neurons - Idlers 0/225, Shrink - 0/9
Misc List:
Maximum Idlers - Idlers 0/225, +1 Max Idlers - 224/2159
Maximum Workers - Idlers 0/225, +1 Idler Workers - 126/2061
Divination - Idlers 0/225, Scrambler - 0/1
Mind Parts - Idlers 0/225, +1 part - 0/2
Memory - Idlers 0/225, Keeper - 0/1
Recovery - Idlers 0/225, Idle - 0/1
Resistance - Idlers 0/225, Light - 0/1
Resistance - Idlers 0/225, Dark - 0/1
Resistance - Idlers 0/225, Time - 0/1
Resistance - Idlers 0/225, Space - 0/1
Siders - Idlers 0/225, Share - 0/1
John stood there, stunned.
So the reason it didn’t give me any more skills was because I hadn’t completed the ones from 2.0 to 2.9? As soon as I completed them all, it gave me them all at once to update to 3.9?
John checked the first few skills.
Divination:
Scrambler: Automatically blocks All Divinations about the user.
Mind Parts:
Each level splits the mind.
Right now, I have five parts of my mind I can split to do different things. This skill will increase it to seven.
Memory:
Keeper: Automatically blocks all tries to control or alter the user’s brain.
John clenched his fists. I could have done this earlier! I could have pretended to become manipulated by Jeremy and learn how to remove it from my master!
‘Ding!’
Emotional state back to normal.
Carrying on, John looked at the next skills.
Those are the same as the five elemental immunity, right? Let’s skip them for now.
Recovery:
Idle: Gain Life Power per minute if you are not at y
our current max amount.
So if I have 100M Life Power and shoot bullets until I’ve used 1M, this skill will help me gain back the 1M but only that? Wonder what the amount gained per minute is... I’ll test it later.
Siders:
Share: Able to share skills with other Siders.
John’s mouth gawked at the description.
I can give Sarah the Divination blocker as well? Her master will think she’s dead… Can I have her skills in return? I don’t even know if she has a system yet. We’ve got a little time before her master or anyone else in the Anti-Assassin sect becomes suspicious and checks to see if she’s completed her mission of capturing me or not, I’ll wait to use the Time Pool for now.
Chapter 2
Helping Sarah
John placed all Idlers into Divination’s Scrambler.
Divination - Idlers 225/225, Scrambler - 0/1, Time - 15d
John calculated it backwards. Fifteen days with that many Idlers, and with the skills he already had... It came out to two hundred years’ worth of time. He finished his tea, had something to eat, and went to sleep.
The next morning, he walked to the connecting door and knocked on it.
“You awake?”
The door opened, and Sarah was standing there. She walked to the table behind her and gestured for John to follow. He walked in, closing the door behind him.
“So…” John sat down at the table opposite Sarah, staring at her. “Before you got reincarnated, what was your life like? I’ve told you a little about myself back at the king’s palace. I only changed the names of the people and locations in the story.”
Sarah looked down at the table. “My real name is Sarah Wells.”
John’s eyebrows lifted in surprise, then looked at her with his Immortal Eye.
Sarah Wells
Rank: 2
Level: 9
Sin: 0
So the Immortal Eye goes by the information I know, but if that information is false, then I’ll see the false information.
“I was a doctor and worked at the Royal London Hospital,” Sarah continued, but John was alarmed and interrupted.
“Wait, you were a trauma doctor, right?”
“Y-yes.” Sarah jumped a little in fright due to John’s sudden question. “How did you know?”
“What a coincidence…” John stood from his chair and ran a hand through his hair. “I’m helping the doctor who called my fiancée Dead-on-Arrival all those years ago...”
“I did?” Sarah panicked, thinking John would hold a grudge. “Then I’m sorry, but we’re not able to save everyone.”
“I know.” John looked down at her. “I resented doctors for years afterwards, but I knew she died before she arrived, and I came to terms with it.”
“What is your full name?” Sarah chose her words carefully. “I only know your first name, John.”
“John Allen.”
Sarah’s jaw dropped in shock.
“I remember!” This time, she stood up from her seat, too. “You were the loan shark in London, right?”
John nodded.
“I remember reading the biography they did about you.”
“Huh?” John blinked. “Someone wrote my biography after I died? How was it? Not every day you can hear what somebody says about you after you’ve died.”
“Well,” Sarah said and smiled. “They called you ‘The Gentleman Shark’ if that tells you anything.”
John laughed after hearing that.
“Your fiancée’s father found out you died and paid for them to transport your body back to London,” Sarah carried on. “They buried you next to Lisa. In the biography, it told plenty of rumours about you, but they could confirm nothing.”
“Lisa’s father did that, huh?” John took a seat again. “That’s surprising. He blamed me for her death. The first time we met, we put each other in the hospital. He broke three of my ribs.” He laughed.
“Ah…” Sarah’s smile disappeared as she recalled more. “It also mentioned how bad you had it after your parents died. They got all the information they could find. You must have led a lonely life.”
“It wasn’t… so bad.” John wore a wry smile. “In my line of business, I didn’t have much choice. You get used to it after a while, but when Lisa died… I couldn’t get used to it again. So I left.”
“Isn’t it a bad thing to get used to it?” Sarah’s eyes gleamed. “You’re bottling up your emotions which isn’t healthy.”
“It’s a bad thing, yes,” John said, keeping his answer short. “When the emotions finally came out, it was an explosion. I indirectly killed… so many people.”
There was a deep silence that fell on both of them. John took a moment to collect himself.
“If something happened to someone I care about here,” he pondered aloud, almost nonchalantly. “With all my power, how many billions of people do you think I’d kill out of anger? I’d wipe out planets and not care about it. That’s the very reason I don’t want to get close to anyone. No friends, family, or even lovers. I don’t want any of them. I’m used to being alone and I think it’s for the best, too.”
John paused to let his words sink in.
“With this reincarnation,” he continued, “I was given some kind of a system. That system helps me control my negative emotions when I can’t, but I’m not sure about positive emotions yet. What about you? Did you reincarnate with something to help you?”
Sarah nodded.
“It called itself the Toxic System,” she explained. “It can absorb any poison in the universe and use it to strengthen myself. I can also lessen the poison’s strength to make medicine instead.”
“So that purple smoke you attacked me with was your poison?”
Sarah nodded.
“And the message that popped up—did you receive one, too? Mine said ‘Sider’s poison attack is ineffective on the user.’ What about you?”
Sarah nodded again.
John took a deep breath. “Suppose it’s only fair I tell you…”
He explained his Idle System as best as he could. He used the Idlers that the system made and put them into skills; each Idler knocked a certain amount of time off the skill. When it reached zero, he gained the skill. One of the skills he was learning was to block Divination, to Sarah’s revelation. Another recent skill allowed him to share skills with other Siders.
“But as I said, it takes time,” John finished. “One of those skills takes fifteen days. I know to share the Divination skill will take at least a month. I hope no one uses divination on you in the meantime.”
Sarah had tears forming in her eyes. “I asked for help, but you’re going above and beyond.” She wiped her eyes. “Why?”
“Don’t know.” John shrugged. “You’re the only person I know from Earth, and you’re from the same country. Why did you go with the Anti-Assassins? You couldn’t have actually bought their spiel about doing no harm… Anyway, how does your Toxic System work? Are you able to control the poison?”
“Yes, I can control it,” she answered quietly. “Though, to use it as an attack, it takes time to gather the poison so it doesn’t dissipate before it reaches the target.”
“Right.” John nodded. “Then use the poisons to burn the impurities in your body. When it’s all gone and if I can share my impurities skill with you, you’ll get silver hair and eyes like me. That will be the best way to stop the Anti-Assassins from recognising you. I have ingredients I stole from the assassin sect which might help you advance, too.”
John took out all the flowers, herbs, and anything else that might have poison inside them. If her Toxic System could use these to advance Sarah to Rank 3, that could help avoid being spotted by the Anti-Assassins, too. Sarah touched everything John took out. If they had poison inside them, then they melted into liquid which flew inside her palm, through the blood system into her brain.
BOOM!
John felt a powerful force come out from Sarah’s body, pushing him and his
seat a few feet away. John was on the floor—the chair had fallen backwards with him still sitting on it. Sitting up, John looked at her with Immortal Eye.
Sarah Wells
Rank: 3
Level: 1
Sin: 0
“Congrats on ranking up.” John picked himself up off the floor with a grin.
“Thank you.” Sarah smiled back. “It’s because of the items you gave me. The poison evolved to burn the impurities in my body instead of being pushed out.”
“That’s a good thing because impurities stink.” John set his chair upright. “You’d be throwing up because of the smell and would want to jump in the shower as fast as possible. Are you able to absorb Life Power like normal people or do you need the poisonous stuff to advance?”
“Yes I can!” Sarah took a deep breath, still happy about advancing. “I can absorb Life Power, but the Toxic System transforms the Life Power into a toxin, and it’s the toxin that’s stored inside the brain, not Life Power.”
John crossed his arms, thinking. “That’s kind of like me with the herbs that have Life Power,” he mused. “I can absorb it by eating them, so between us, I take the ones that can store Life Power and you take the poisonous ones. During this month while we lay low, we might as well go around shopping. Herbs with Life Power are easier to find. To get the deadly stuff, we might need to find a black market or something. Do you know if they have them here?”
“They should do.” Sarah nodded. “I’ve been to a black market before, so I know they exist.”
“Then we need to find one in this city.”
Chapter 3
Venom
While thinking about how to find a black market without acting suspicious, John looked at Sarah and asked if she had ever killed a person.
“No.” Sarah shook her head. “My master wanted me to kill a death row prisoner, but that wasn’t supposed to happen until a few weeks from now. I came to capture you—not to kill you.”
“He’s not your master anymore if you want to run from the Anti-Assassins.”
Sarah only nodded at John.
“Well, when I made a deal to kill those people on Earth, that was when it first struck me that I had killed another human.” John’s eyes grew a bit muddy as he reminisced. “For fourteen years, I contemplated over whether what I did was right or wrong. But when I died and got reincarnated, that was when my mind just forgot about it. It still surprises me how the human mind can adapt.”
