Chapter 60 Rendezvous

In a city of suits, I decided to be the sore thumb—the one wielding a kimono, the type of attire you’d see in media and towns outside of Im City.

"Morning, everyone," I said.

"Morning Dant..." sleepily Ku replied, with eyelids barely open while rubbing his eyes.

Soyeon was my focus—she would typically be the one to initiate, but this time she was merely just... there. Did Meowximus get her tongue?

Nemo afterwards went and stated, "so, everyone—until the tournament starts—which will be pretty soon, actually—we’ll be doing some missions inside the walls, just to get the score up!—how does that sound?"

No one really said anything, we just stood there silently.

Then Ku sat down and answered, "sure—if you think that’s for the best."

We were in the Association hotel—just downstairs, not a very fancy meeting place.

"How exactly will the tournament work, if I may ask?" I inquired.

With his bunny mask, he peered his head towards me. "No questions in that regard, remember, Dante—you’ll learn by yourself once the day comes."

How boring—and how reminiscent of Ariel.

Sigh.

"Although, for the missions... they’ll be rather simple."

Boring stuff again?

"I got one job with construction!—simple work, just carrying some stuff and helping them with the heavy-lifting."

I could see that both Ku and Soyeon were disappointed—did they hope Nemo would fetch us something a little more serious?—I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hopeful of that as well, to be fair.

They definitely won’t push him about it, though—should I?—should I, should I?!

"Hey Nemo," I raised my hand as I said that...

"Yes, Dante?"

"Is it really okay to take it so easy when the tournament and academy is coming up?"

For a moment or three, he just stood there and didn’t reply to me—expected—he doesn’t take it well when his leadership gets questioned.

"Honestly, Dante, the reason I’m doing this is the opposite—I’m confident in my team, so I think you should take it easy until the day comes."

Oh?—some backbone you got, don’t you?

I nodded my head. "Good answer—I’ll take it."

"By— by the way, guys, would you like to join a group-chat together?" Soyeon let out—did she feel the atmosphere was tense because of my question?

"Sure..." "I’m down."

Both Ku and I went up to her—Nemo was left out, awkwardly standing.

"Nemo—you as well!!" she added, looking at him.

"Oh— me too?"

"Obviously!! How could we do it without you?"

As we held our phones, I could see faint MANA in the air connecting all our phones—it was minuscule MANA invisible to the naked eye, but by focusing my MANA on my eyes I could see even muffled residue like that coming out.

We all joined a group-chat together; immediately, I wondered how it would work if we were a good distance away from the Im City—would it just not connect?—no wifi?

MANA infrastructure is interesting—everything is built on it rather than pure technology.

We were walking to the site... Ku and Nemo were ahead this time, leading the way.

"Did y’all see the news?" I said, with slight volume in my voice.

"The System Killer?" Soyeon replied.

Ku kept walking forward, meanwhile Nemo popped a glance at me upon my question.

"Yeah—thoughts on that?"

I’m honestly baffled how quickly all of this went down—just the next day news was out—I’d expect them to cleanly put it down under the rug, hide it and never reveal that such a thing could’ve possibly existed.

We didn’t stop walking—even as she pondered on her answer.

"I don’t really know— I guess, it’s surprising something like that could happen in this city?"

"Fair enough," I shrugged afterwards—this was the keyword for Nemo to quit peeping at me.

If she has no opinion on it yet, I guess I should really work harder, shouldn’t I?—can’t let her stay like this.

Then, I added, "you think... he really is dead?" I was faintly suggestive with this addition—it didn’t really matter to me, so I wanted to push her buttons further.

"Dante, why are you so invested in this?" Ku retorted instead of Soyeon.

My eyes went over to him. "Stuff like this doesn’t happen here often, so obviously I’m interested in this."

"Oh, if they announced it, trust me, he is dead and gone—they wouldn’t risk hindering the investigation by dropping news before it’s settled," Nemo injected himself into the conversation.

It’s that concrete?—what exactly did Fisk do?

Finally, we reached the site—nothing notable about it, just a construction area.

"We’ll be here the whole day, so let’s take this as training—Ku and Dante, you’ll be carrying all the weight in this mission."

"Sure. "Got it." "What about me?" Soyeon aired her words at the end.

"I want you to somewhat take a leadership role—can you handle that?"

"I can, but I feel like..." after a quick peep at the sky, she raised her determination.

"Well, aren’t you giving me this role only because I’m a girl?—what if I want to work properly like them as well?"

Nemo immediately raised his hands in an anxious way—usual.

"Ah— uhh... I didn’t mean it like that, really— I’ll handle the leadership then, you’ll work with Dante and Ku, okay?"

Soyeon instantly lit up with a smile. "Thank you, boss!"

Ella was a healer; I wonder, what determines the classes?—is it MANA affinity?—its form?

This prompted me to increase the MANA on my eyes—I wanted to properly analyze their forms.

From the surface, their MANA seems identical—just a difference in their mass, but after surrounding my eyes with MANA, I do see a small divergence:

Soyeon’s MANA is calm and gentle; Ku’s is a little chaotic, speedy; meanwhile Nemo’s is almost identical to Soyeon’s, it’s stable, gentle, and in a way, somewhat innocent.

And mine?

I proceeded to skim over myself...

Highly unstable... chaotic and inconsistent as if a mix between all three of them.

I can’t exactly pinpoint what determines classes, but MANA seems to have a lot of personality—somehow they categorize them upon evaluation, it makes me curious on how they do it to begin with.

Hours passed...

Then even more hours...

Eventually, the sun began setting.

Can’t be the System Killer in just my name...

...can I, now?