"We should have gone left. Who knows maybe we wouldn’t have had to kill several monsters along the way."

"What are you saying? Maybe it was even the left path that would have contained even more monsters."

"I don’t think so."

"Quiet, we don’t want to alert more monsters." The lady in front said to the two ladies talking. It was obvious she was the leader of the team.

"Fine..." They both responded together.

The five D-Rank female awakeners walked toward the Boss Room.

Immediately they all saw the scene and felt their skin crawl.

"What the hell is this place?"

Thud!

The others turned to see that one of them had fainted.

"What happened to her?" The leader asked.

"I think she has trypophobia."

"Hey... What’s down there?"

The three of them suddenly looked toward the bottom and saw the littered bodies of spiders slowly disappearing.

"Wait, isn’t that the awakener they sent?" One of them suddenly asked.

"Yes they are."

"Quick, you two follow me down, and you look after Helen."

The three of them jumped down and landed on the circular platform.

The leader looked around.

The entire circular platform looked like a massacre site. Cracks spread across the floor, green blood stained the walls and dozens of spider corpses were piled everywhere slowly dissolving into black particles.

A disgusting burnt smell lingered heavily in the air.

’There doesn’t seem to be any sign of the Boss Monster or any other creatures,’ she thought quietly.

"Why do I have the feeling that someone was here..."

"Yeah me too..."

The leader said nothing and just quietly took in the scene, then her gaze shifted to the hole Reiji had come from.

They each grabbed one of the awakeners who had fainted before jumping upward.

***

"That was close..." Reiji muttered under his breath as he walked through the cave.

"Status."

Ding!

_____

[Status]

[Host: Kurosawa Reiji] – [LV1]

[Class: None]

[Skills: Active] – [Charm (F), Water Jet (E), Soul Torture Flame (E)]

___

[EXP: 279/100] [BP: 35/100]

[Health: 100] [Mana: 30/100] [Fatigue: 20]

___

[STRENGTH: 19] (Important for the accumulation of bond points through affection. Who doesn’t love a strong, thick man ;) Well at least you are at the Bodybuilder stage.)

[SPEED: 20]

[STAMINA: 18]

[PERCEPTION: 12]

[INTELLIGENCE: 14]

[AESTHETICS: 8] (Also vital for the accumulation of bond points. Slightly above meh.)

[Free Stats: 30]

_____

Reiji was totally floored from what he was seeing, compared to when he entered the gate, the gap in his stats was huge. This was definitely a good raid. He could feel his body already much stronger than before. Even his breathing felt lighter. The soreness in his muscles from before had almost disappeared completely.

Reiji clenched his fist slowly, feeling strength he definitely didn’t have a few hours ago.

"But how do I leave the gate without being seen?" Reiji muttered to himself.

Ding!

[Gate Unstable]

[The Gate will close in thirty minutes. Host is advised to leave before then.]

"..."

Reiji stared at the system notification on the floating screen in front of him. He needed to leave this gate quickly but how could he do it without being seen?

He thought for a while then his eyes landed on the free stat points quietly sitting there. He decided to add all 30 points to his speed.

Ding!

[Speed: +30]

Reiji slowly walked forward to the place he first appeared, by now the Hellhound’s corpse had already disappeared.

He stared at the portal shimmering in front of him, took a deep breath before calmly walking out.

***

Outside the E-Rank Gate.

"Someone’s coming out!" a young soldier on guard suddenly called out.

"That was fast." Another soldier at the back said to the other one next to her.

"They are D-Rank awakeners after all." the other lady calmly replied.

SWOOSH!

A strong gust of wind suddenly blew, making the papers on the analyst’s table fly. Even some unawakened cadets were knocked down by the sudden wind.

"What was that?" Morgan who also felt the sudden wind muttered to herself.

***

Meanwhile at an apartment near the Gate, Reiji had crashed into the apartment. He was now on the floor covered in rubble only his hands were visible.

"Cough.... Cough..." Reiji coughed as he sat up from the rubble.

"Mmmm.." He winced as he slowly got up.

"Man, that was insane..." Reiji muttered to himself as he struggled to stand up straight. He genuinely felt he had left his soul back at the dungeon. "What was I thinking... a body as weak as mine could handle such speed..."

Immediately as he went through the portal and just took a step to start running he accidentally crashed into this apartment.

The speed was just insane, it was surely at the level of a beginner D-Rank awakener or adventurer.

"Thank God no one was home, otherwise this would have been much worse..." Reiji stood up as he walked out of the apartment. There was no way he was running again.

As he dragged himself along the sidewalk he suddenly heard the sound of vehicles approaching. It seemed the awakeners were already out and everybody was returning back to their stations.

"Fuck." Reiji’s instincts immediately kicked in and as soon as he took a step, he regretted it dearly.

BOOM!

Reiji crashed straight into the wall of an alley.

"Argh...."

Reiji clutched his head as he dizzily stood up, the world doing a complete 360 in his head.

Despite his dizziness, he was able to see that the apartments that should have been dark suddenly had lights on. It was clear that the commotion he caused had woken up most people.

Windows started opening one after another.

"What was that sound?"

"Did a monster escape?"

"Call the authorities!"

Reiji’s face twitched hearing the panic spreading around. His instincts kicked in again and this time he just gave up entirely.

BOOM!

This time he crashed straight into a lamppost, knocking it over.

Reiji didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

He felt bullied but the irony was that he was the one who bullied himself by adding 30 whole points to his Speed stat. 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

He slowly got up despite the dizziness and pain. He noticed that it was only a few blocks from his apartment.

He dragged his broken body toward his apartment.

If anybody saw him now they would think he was a monster that had escaped from a dungeon or some kind of failed science experiment.

Reiji reached his apartment and clawed his way up toward the window like a thief, or more like an animal.

He opened the window, closed it and plopped straight onto the ground.

[....]

Reiji could have sworn he just heard a soft barely audible robotic laughter.

"..."

He brushed the thought off, feeling the comfort of home.

Ding!

[Host has not claimed the Mystery Item]

[Does Host wish to claim it now? [Y/N]]

"System not now...." Reiji muttered, turning away from the screen hovering in front of him.

Just as sleep wanted to overtake Reiji and bring him some comfort, he suddenly heard his name.

"Rei-kun...?" Hina said sleepily.

Reiji’s pupils shrank at a visible speed as he turned to see Hina sitting upright on the bed staring at him.

’Shit...’