The Ghost System - Chapter 12

“I said… You’re awfully loud for someone so weak.”

The guy bulldozed towards Rhys with a murderous look in his eyes. He raised his machete high in the air preparing to slice the blade down through Rhys’s face.

Rhys stayed completely still, he had already calculated in his head what would happen so all he had to do now was enjoy the show. This would be an easy win for him and he was almost salivating at the thought of using his power again.

However, to Rhys’s dismay, Otis suddenly darted out from behind the machete guy and instantly restrained him. Otis’s thick arm coiled around the guy’s throat while Otis’s other hand captured the guy’s weapon hand, rendering the guy completely immobile. It seemed that the system was right about Otis’s being stronger than the machete guy because Otis was able to easily restrain him.

“FUCK!” The angry guy only got angrier. His face contorted in rage as his cheeks turned a violent red.

“I’m gonna kill you! I’m gonna kill all of you!” Otis tightened his arm around the guy’s neck and slightly lifted him off the ground. Otis hoped that the added forced would get the guy to comply and stop struggling.

“Just calm down,” Otis commanded trying to sound firm but calm. “We can still all leave here, as long as you agree to go, we can leave.”

“I’m not agreeing… to anything until… every one of you idiots is face down on the floor.” He croaked out angrily while trying to stay conscious. Now that his airways were being obstructed by Otis’s arm, the angry guy began to fight back with his full force. He flailed his legs and shook his torso as much as possible to try and get out of the hold.

Rhys watched on with a resigned frown knowing that his shining moment had been taken away from him. There would be no great reveal or victory lap for him. Otis had handled the situation before him, and Rhys was wondering whether he should have been more proactive.

“Quickly, someone help me secure his legs!” Otis grunted out as the angry guy’s grey sneakers bashed into his shins painfully.

Rhys watched as another three strengthening auras rushed to help Otis. Two guys each held down his legs while the girl took his machete and restrained his right arm. They came so quickly and efficiently that Rhys wondered if they knew each other before the enrolment. Or was it just the earnest speech-giving Otis that spurred them into action.

“SHIT!” The angry guy roared. The humiliation and fury he was feeling grew.

Rhys sighed and looked drearily forward at what was happening in front of him. Rhys had imagined this cool scenario wherein he used his power against the angry guy and defeated him, then everyone would ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ and look at him with newfound respect, thereafter he would walk into his new college life with a great reputation. That dream had gone down the toilet pretty quickly. However as he thought about the situation unfolding in front of him, he realised that there was one thing he could still do.

A quiet feminine voice broke through the tension in the air. “We can’t go until everyone agrees to leave but if convincing him is our only chance, I think it’s pointless…”

The girl with the water aura looked down at the floor guiltily while shakily twiddling her fingers. The rest of the people in the room had similar crestfallen expressions. The only reason that they were not fighting for the gold card was because their morale had been damaged after seeing the mass electrocution that had happened in room four. Now that there was resistance to their mutual agreement, their fragile wills were already crumbling.

“Don’t lose hope guys!” Otis blurted out sensing the shift in the room.

“We just have to keep him like this for a while. He’ll give up eventually if we keep applying pressure.” Although Otis said it confidently, Rhys saw the worried lines on his forehead and knew Otis was actually a little concerned. It seemed the iron will of one machete-wielding idiot was enough to sway the convictions of the remaining eleven people.

“We’ve all tried our best to reason with you, but you still won’t give in. This is your last chance. Agree to leave or I’ll have to get physical with you.” Otis warned while tightening his arm around the guy’s neck.

“Get physical with me?” The guy mocked Otis with sarcastic laugh. “You’re pathetic.”

Rhys watched as Otis lost his cool. The worry lines on his forehead creased even more and his eyes sharpened menacingly. Rhys watched amazed as Otis suddenly twisted himself around the machete guy and jerked himself to the side so that machete guy fell to the floor, from there Otis put him in a perfect neck crank lock, twisting and extending the guy’s head past the usual range of motion.

The guy retched up a thin stream of vomit from the painful lock and the pressure of hitting the floor. His dry heaves and groans of agony were enough to make everyone in the room wince at the sight before them.

Rhys remembered seeing this kind of lock in old textbooks when he studied pre-invasion fighting techniques in history class at school. Of course for the following months he had been subjected to many similar painful locks because everyone thought it was fun to test out what they saw in the books on Rhys. The immense pressure that was applied onto the head and neck of the victim during this lock had always been too much for Rhys to handle. If he did not pass out from the pain, Rhys would swallow his pride and beg for mercy.

Rhys grimaced but forced himself to keep watching as the guy continued to dry heave and grit his teeth in pain. Even if he was a hot head, Rhys admired the guy’s amazing pain tolerance.

“Do you give up yet?” Otis panted as he kept his muscles tightly around the guy’s head.

Rhys perked up and saw the others in the room do the same, everyone was anticipating the guy’s response.

With ferocious eyes the guy looked up at Otis and mouthed a defiant ‘fuck you’.

The room became gloomy with the realisation that this guy was not going to give in. It did not matter what type of choke hold they put him in, he would not budge.

Rhys looked around the room at the disheartened expressions on everyone’s faces. The girl with the water aura was blankly staring into room four where the bodies were still laying on the floor, she had completely given up on working anything out in this room and was focusing on the other room. The telekinetic guy had his hand over his face trying to cover his frustrated expression. The others looked just as discouraged with pursed lips and downcast eyes. Most of all, Otis looked defeated. Although he still had the guy in a neck crank, the fire and determination was gone from his eyes.

Rhys glanced down at the guy who was responsible for all this. He was wearing a smug smile on his face and was probably satisfied that he had won.

[Attention!]

Rhys perked up as the notification popped up.

[New Quest: Get the machete guy to submit to your will by any means necessary.]

[Reward: 50 Exp]

[Penalty: None]

Excitement tingled its way through Rhys’s body at the thought of regaining some of the EXP he had lost. So excited that before he realised what he was getting himself into, he was walking towards the struggling duo on the floor.

[Spiritual body used + 5 Exp]

Rhys summoned the phase change in his right hand and crouched down beside the two guys.

“What are you doing?” Otis asked with a frown on his forehead as he stared up at Rhys. Otis could not help but be a little miffed at Rhys who was the one who started this whole mess by provoking the machete guy in the beginning. Otis thought that if Rhys had just kept his mouth shut, the situation would not have gotten this bad.

“As long as everyone in the room agrees to leave, we can go,” Rhys repeated the words he had heard from the speaker while pointedly staring at the guy still struggling in Otis’s hold. “So we just need to be a bit more persuasive.”

[‘I like where you are going with this Rhys.’] The teachers voice was dark and delighted as its words echoed through Rhys’s head.

“Hey you, what’s your name?” Rhys continued to stare at the guy in the neck crank.

The guy in the chokehold eyed Rhys suspiciously before barely managing to grind out his name from his sore throat.

“Gunn…”

“Well, Gunn,” Rhys reached out his right hand to Gunn and let his hand pass through Gunn’s kneecap until his fingers were about half-buried in the limb. Rhys looked up to see Gunn and Otis’s confused expressions. They gawked at the unreal sight of Rhys’s hand passing through Gunn’s knee as if Rhys’s hand was not real.

“What, how…?” Otis was utterly stumped as to what he was seeing. He could not figure out what type of core ability Rhys had.

“I’m going to need you to hold him down.” Rhys interrupted Otis before looking back at Gunn.

“Gunn, this will all be over as soon as you agree to let us all leave.” Rhys took in a deep breath and came to terms with the fact that he was literally about to torture someone for a meagre 50 experience points. He was off the rails, he knew that, but he ultimately decided that his change was a problem for his future self to figure out.

Rhys released his skill.

His fingers inside Gunn’s knee shifted back into the solid-state. In doing so, Gunn’s knee tissue: bone, muscle, ligaments and flesh were suddenly disrupted and violently pushed aside to make space for the new solid matter that had taken their original position. In an instant, three messy fleshy bloody holes had been made in Gunn’s knee from which blood oozed out.

The look on Gunn’s face quickly turned from shock to agony as he let out an earsplitting cry. His body lurched in reaction to the excruciating pain as the veins on his neck and face bulged in distress. His lips quivered and his eyes bulged and teared up. He screamed curses at Rhys until he ran out of breath.

[Spiritual body used +5 Exp]

Rhys had already made up his mind not to stop until Gunn conceded, so with a grimace Rhys moved his bloodied hand to Gunn’s other knee. Instead of putting three fingers through the knee, Rhys balled his hand into a fist and phased it through.

“I’m warning you,” Rhys felt it was only fair to give Gunn a warning.

“If I use my fist, your knee will be destroyed.” As Rhys looked at the width of his fist against Gunn’s knee, Rhys knew that the physical disruption this time around would be a lot greater. If Gunn’s leg was not severed in two, it would only be hanging on by a tendon.

Rhys looked into Gunn’s eyes hoping that Gunn would concede, however Rhys found Gunn staring shakily but defiantly back up at him, as if daring Rhys to follow through.

In that moment Rhys wandered what the hell was driving Gunn. Perhaps Gunn was so desperately in need of money that the unbearable torture of having his kneecaps decimated was bearable. Rhys kind of felt himself admiring Gunn and consequently felt himself not wanting to inflict even more pain in the guy.

Rhys stared at Gunn for a moment longer, hoping that the machete wielding idiot would change his mind. However, Gunn remained silent and confined to stare up at Rhys. Rhys exhaled a breath he did not know he had been keeping in, and sighed. And then phased his hand back into a solid.

[‘Nice.’]

Rhys could hear a dark chuckle in the back of his mind.

The scream that left Gunn was on a hole other level than they way he had shouted before. His entire body shook and his spine curled upwards from the pain. Otis almost lost his grip on Gunn because of the way he violently shook.

Of the remaining nine people in the room, half of them looked away while the other half were frozen in place and could not look away. Gunn’s knee was practically gone, it was reduced to a minced hole that was spraying and oozing out blood. The thigh and shin were only attached by some meagre strands of flesh on the side of the knee. It was gruesome. Rhys was only just managing to keep it together. Seeing the knee sever like that had turned Rhys’s stomach against him. He was barely stopping himself from keeling over and vomiting.

Because the human body was made up of a lot of soft tissue as well as bone. When Rhys used physical disruption, the bone split apart at a high speed and was shoved backwards into any available space in the leg creating an even bigger injury than Rhys had intended.

“I-I give in.” Gunn spluttered out as pained tears rolled down his face. “You can all leave.”

Rhys was frankly amazed that Gunn had not concede earlier. The guy was made of tougher stuff than Rhys understood.

Immediately a door in the corner of the room took shape and flung open. Bright artificial light flooded the room and cheers could suddenly be heard from outside.

The black speaker dropped down from the ceiling and the same voice they had all heard earlier spoke just as jovially.

“Congratulations on completing your initiation!” Confetti’s blasted out from the sides of the speaker and littered the grey room in colourful bits of paper.

“You were the second group to finish and your method of exit was an interesting mix of violence and peace. Please head straight to the main office where you will be given your room assignments as well as your schedule. If you’re injured, please hang tight, the emergency crew will be here shortly.”

[Congratulations Quest completed!]

[Rewards 50 Exp granted]

[User: Rhys Anson]

[24/30 HP]

[76/300 Exp]

Rhys was pleased to see that he had almost regained all the EXP he had spent on fixing his Aura Detection’s power ratings, but still, he imagine it would take a while to get to level 5.

People in white doctors’ coats suddenly stormed through the open door and headed straight for Gunn.

Rhys quickly used his Aura detection skill and saw that they all had healing abilities. Although that was good news for Gunn, Rhys could not help but be bitter. He no longer gained experience points for auras he had seen before.

The doctors crowded around Gunn and put their hands over his knees. Rhys kept his Aura vision on and watched as the green auras surrounding the doctors bodies were being channeled into their hands, and was further seeping into Gunn’s knees.

“It’s no use.” A doctor sighed while taking out a mini portal device from her coat pocket. “The bone fragments and tissues in the knees seem to have been pushed back into the thigh and shin. We will need to do surgery and extract them first.”

Everyone watched wordlessly as the doctors opened up the portal gate device and then gently carried Gunn through the blue portal that probably lead to a hospital or infirmary. The portal closed behind them, leaving Rhys and the rest in silence.

Rhys looked down at his hands to see that they were both coated in blood. He froze for a moment as this sight that he had never seen before and wondered if what he had just done was actually worth it.

[‘I must say, you humans bleed such a pretty colour.’]

“Not now.” Rhys whispered as he felt his spirits drop.

“Hey, are you coming?” Otis’s deep voice asked form behind Rhys.

Rhys spun around to see that everyone had already gone. Room 3 was empty besides himself and Otis. Rhys peaked at the the two remaining rooms to see that full blown wars were going on inside them.

“Yeah.” Rhys rose from the floor and walked to the door. Otis was leaning against the wall next to the door and eyeing Rhys steadily as he approached.

Rhys stepped outside to find himself in the middle of what looked like an arena. It was massive and had the capacity of atleast tens of thousands of people. And when Rhys squinted and looked up at the highest seats he saw that quite a few people where seated looking down at him.

“My older brother told me that the term tests are held in this arena. It’s also the welcoming stage for incoming students like you and me.”

Rhys turned back to find that Otis was still there hanging around him. Rhys frowned slightly, wondering why Otis was talking to him.

‘Does he want something from me?’ Rhys wondered.

“Oh. Cool.” Rhys replied awkwardly.

Rhys spotted a bright yellow sign at the top of the arena that wrote ‘WELCOME NEW STUDENTS, THIS WAY!’ a bright red arrow on the sign was directing them to someplace beyond the arena.

“My name is Otis, I am from District 17 and I turned seventeen yesterday.” Otis jogged to catch up to Rhys who was already making his way up the stairs.

Rhys’s eyebrows raised slightly when he heard that Otis was from the 17th district. He was very surprised that someone from the seventeenth district was at the 20th district college program.

“District seventeen?” Rhys turned back to look at Otis. That explained a lot about Otis’s personality. The fact that he had not tried to fight everyone for the money despite being so strong and they way he had campaigned for a peaceful outcome, that was definitely not a district 20 mindset.

“Yes.” Otis replied proudly.

“But then why are you in the 20th district’s collegiate program?” Rhys asked confused.

Otis paused for a second and it was his time to look up at Rhys in confusion.

“Didn’t you know, four years ago it was ruled that the collegiate program would enrol students by sector, not by district…”

Rhys gawked at this new information like a guppy fish. He really should have payed more attention when people talked about the military college.

“Won’t there be too many student then in the college?” The idea of mushing together all the students from each district into one college would surely be a disaster for the military…

“Well, there are still four college campuses per sector, it’s just that the kids from the each district are split up and not assigned a campus by district anymore.” Otis explained.

“District seventeen, huh?” Rhys mused as he turned around and continued walking. “Is it as nice as they say it is?”

Although district 20 and district 17 were in the same sector, the living conditions of the two populations were meant to be vastly different.

Rhys had heard that some parts of district 17 were so safe that people left their houses unlocked during the day. Rhys even heard that some people had swimming pools and backyards and were just wealthier in general.

“Well, I like it.” Otis replied quite happily. Rhys immediately knew that if Otis could so confidently say he liked living there, then it really was a good place to live because if someone were to ask a district 20 resident how they liked living in District 20, that resident would confidently reply that district 20 was a shithole.

With that said, Rhys and Otis continued up the stairs.

“So, uh, what was your name again?” Otis tried to sound nonchalant when he questioned Rhys.

“I’m Rhys. I’m from district 20, and I am turning seventeen in two days.” Rhys tried to emulate Otis’s style of speaking.

Rhys was almost at the top of the stairs when he realised that he could not hear Otis’s footsteps from behind him anymore. He turned back to see a blatantly shocked expression on Otis’s face.

“You’re from district twenty?” Otis’s eyes were as wide as saucers. “But you don’t look like…” Otis suddenly caught himself before he finished his sentence, he realised that he was being rude.

“Yeah I know, I’m not exactly the district 20 model seventeen year old.” Rhys looked down at his thinner arms and legs and knew that he did not fit in with the district 20 look at all. People from his district were usually well built, which was not Rhys.

“Sorry, I didn’t meant to offend you or anything.” Otis blurted out feeling embarrassed. “I mean if I had an ability like yours, I wouldn’t work out either…”

Rhys chuckled slightly as he walked up the remaining steps. Otis’s misinterpretation of his circumstances was pretty amusing to Rhys. Rhys was actually less built than most because he desperately tried to stay way form fighting, and he had only had his ability for two days.

As the two finally reached the top, they stood next to the yellow sign and saw the building that was labelled as the main office a few meters away. What caught Rhys’s attention was the grass that had been planted all around the campus. An unending supply of energy for him to consume and eventually level up his skill Energy absorption.

Rhys was ready to head to his dorm and just have a nap. He was exhausted and desperately wanted to sleep somewhere that wasn’t a hospital bed.

“Hey, check out that guy’s hands.” Rhys’s attention was caught by the whispers coming from the arena seats a few paces away from him. He turned his head slightly to see a group of people whispering and staring at his bloodied hands.

Rhys immediately shifted his vision and scanned the group’s auras. It was practically becoming a habit for him to do this.

He finally got to see the dark brown mud-like aura of the earth manipulators.

[Aura detection used +5 Exp]

[Aura: Earth manipulator (average)]

He then feasted his eyes on an aura that kind of reminded him of the desert. It was hot like the sun and dry, looking at it made him want to drink water.

[Aura detection used +5 Exp]

[Aura: Dehydration (average)]

Rhys almost gasped when he saw the dehydration aura. That core ability was known to be very deadly when used on humans. It inflicted damage that in most cases could not be reversed.

Rhys stared in awe at the next aura because it was nothing like he had ever seen before. The guys aura was very well detailed and it looked like it was made of fluffy feathers.

[Aura detection used +5 Exp]

[Aura: owl physiology (strong)]

‘Owl physiology’ Rhys thought amazed. He had heard of wolf, bear and more rarely arachnid physiology but never an owl.

Rhys was extremely impressed by this group’s abilities, not only was one of them ranked ‘strong’ by the system, all of their abilities were rare.

“HEY RHYS!” Otis shouted.

Rhys winced at the volume. “There’s no need to shout. I’m right here.” He grumbled.

“I’ve been calling your name for a good minute. Your seriously couldn’t hear me?” Otis cocked his head and frowned.

[‘That burly human is right you know. Your concentration level is quite high so you tend to zone out of reality and forget about your surroundings.’]

“Oh really, sorry. I zone out sometimes.” Rhys scratched his head embarrassed.

“Well hurry. Let’s head to the main office.” Before Rhys could object Otis had gotten behind him and was pushing Rhys forward like an official escorting him to a holding cell.

‘Geez,’ Rhys sighed internally. ‘I guess this guy is determined to stick to me.’