Harvest Condition

Eve's vision darkened and the world spun.

The force and the location of the impact knocked his breath away, making it much harder to properly breathe. In fact, the force of the punch was enough to lift Eve off the ground and send him tumbling down the stairs.

He, who lost all sense of perception under the influence of pain couldn't regain his bearings and was doomed to hit his head and die when Melina grabbed him by the collar, effectively sparing him.

'What the hell was that?' He tried to ask but he was too busy struggling to breathe.

His ears rang, drowning most of the noise around him. Although he didn't understand the conversation happening around him, he heard one word.

"Deserved"

'What did you say?'

The pain slowly started to fade and his eyesight returned.

He found himself kneeling on the floor, clutching his stomach. He looked to his left where Melina was holding him by the collar, her face looked angry, furious even.

His sight drifted to his right where the twins were. They had stood up, the female twin looked shocked while the male twin had a look of concern.

The concern wasn't directed at Eve. He followed his gaze and looked up, to where the gloomy boy was.

His inky black eyes were now tainted by rage, literally glowing red, and his knuckles were white. Melina scolded him from Eve's side but he had no look of remorse.

Contrary, he had a look of sick satisfaction.

"Weakling," he says triumphantly before walking back and sitting on his couch.

"You-, Apologise to him!"

He stared at her with the eyes of a dead fish.

"Me? Apologise? To that piece of shit? Never."

She looked frustrated "You-, Gragh, why are you making this so difficult."

"Fine, you're suspended from the group for a while. Go home and rest for a week or two."

Melina's comment seemed to have a bit of an effect on him as his eyes shook, albeit momentarily.

However, his eyes regained the usual tired glint right after, as if nothing happened in the last minute or two.

He smiled cheerfully as he shrugged.

"Fine by me."

"Now, Let me go home."

He stood up, dusted his clothes, and passed by Eve to descend the stairs. And if Eve wasn't mistaken, he winked at him mischievously as if it was all a prank, a clear sign that this was not the last time he would do this.

He exited the room without saying another word, and Eve threw up.

'Fucking bastard, I will get you back.' he solemnly swore.

'But how can he punch that hard? He looked 14, or 15 at most, so how?'

The image of Melina sending grown-up men flying with her kick resurfaced and it clicked.

'It's that damn soul power. Dammit, I wanna learn it too!'

Melina escorted him to a chair while the male twin went out to fetch someone to clean the mess.

"Sorry for that." She said. "Sorry, it's my fault. When I asked the groupmates if it would be fine to bring you, he remained silent. In hindsight, it was probably a mistake to ignore that.

Wait here. I'm gonna go get a doctor. Who knows if he damaged anything other than your pride."

Eve wanted to tell Melina that he had no such thing as pride but his burning stomach didn't permit it so he exercised his right to remain silent.

He left, and it was him and the other twin left in the room.

Two strangers, alone in a room. One looked like he had just seen death while the other could pass for a model.

A strange pair for sure.

Unable to withstand the awkwardness, the female twin tried to initiate a conversation first. 

"So, how is life?"

"..."

"Ah, my bad. It was a stupid question to ask."

She squirmed around in his seat.

"Normally, Adrian isn't like this. You know, the guy that just made you puke your guts out."

Eve's face darkened, causing her to flinch a little.

"He's usually calm and composed, likes novels and webtoons a lot. But I can't say I don't understand him lashing out like that. Although it's been only a few months since we met, I never knew he harbored a grudge that deep for you.

Er, you know, for the you in your past life. Or is it the future?"

The girl had a nice voice, Eve could listen to her mumble like this for a while. She could definitely make a living by singing.

"Haha, that's an awkward topic. Anyways, my name is… You can call me Este. My and my brother are aspiring idols, you see.

It has something to do with this group's purpose, which I won't reveal yet, hehe.

Unlike Arco and Adrian, me and my brother are not fit to fight. Our Harvest Condition is something totally unrelated to combat, you see.

Come to think of it, Have you figured out what your Harvest Condition will be?"

Eve shook his head.

"Do you know what it is?"

He shook his head again.

"I see… Well, I'm not the best person for the job but I will try to explain it as much as I can.

You see, Melina does something that makes you feel 'Swoosh' and also very strong at the same time even though you are not strong, can confirm from experience by the way, that does another thing and you need the other thing to make you strong for real. Got it?'

"You have a good voice. *Cough*."

'What did she just say?'

"Hehehehe, thank you so much. Melina tells me to practice singing every day!

One time, me and my brother went to a concert…"

Este talked on and on while Eve struggled for dear life as his consciousness alternated between sleep and pain. After who knows how long, Footsteps could be heard from the staircase.

At that point, Eve was practically asleep while Este continued on how she and her brother met Melina.

Melina pointed at Eve. "There, the boy lying on the couch."

A moment later, a man in a white coat was observing Eve's pulse, pupils, the red bruise on his stomach and did some poking on it to do pain checks.

In the end, Eve was scheduled for a more detailed check-up later tomorrow since there were no spots available.

The doctor described some painkiller tablets to him and advised him to put cold weight on his stomach before departing.

Eve waited until he was out of the building before saying a piece of his mind.

"Some doctor he is."

Melina shrugged nonchalantly. "Well, it's obvious. If he was qualified to become a real doctor, he would have joined a real hospital instead of a freelancer. Judging by how panicked he looked, he didn't face wounds as serious as that before."

"Hey, if a doctor is nervous, doesn't that mean the wound is serious?"

"Don't worry about that. If you can survive for a few days at most then it will be healed soon.

So, Have I mentioned Harvest Condition to you yet?"

"Yeah, I think so."

"So Harvest Condition is like this, I have a vast reserve of Soul Power from killing the Ravager and some others. I use a bit of that soul power to construct a special container in your 'Soul'. Once the construction is done, I pour a substantial amount of my reserve into said container.

Now, the container is filled, right? Then it's sealed off. Now, how do you access that vault of soul power? First, during the construction of the container, I have to put a condition on it.

A condition that you must fulfill to obtain soul power in that container. Be it fighting and defeating opponents, cooking pizzas, or reciting a poem.

That is the Harvest Condition. Now you might ask, why won't you just pour the soul power directly into the soul and be done with it? Well, I did that once and…

The person on the receiving end didn't make it alive."

Her face got gloomy but soon regained vitality.

"Harvest Condition Slowly releases soul power into your soul, causing it to slowly adapt. The Condition must be something repeatable, and preferably an action that aligns with our goal.

"What is our goal? It's world domination but I can elaborate later. For now, focus on what your Harvest Condition will be. If you can figure it out within the next hour or so, I can get to the process. That would take approximately until tomorrow morning.

At that point, your body will be partially covered in soul power. That would rapidly boost your recovery so you don't have to go to that appointment.

Call me if you need anything. I'm usually in my room upstairs."

With that, Melina left the room and Este followed suit, leaving Eve to his thoughts. And pain too.

"Get the painkillers." He weakly yelled. 

'Hmm. Harvest condition huh.'

Eve thought and thought, but his sheltered life experience limited his scope of thinking.

His mind always returned to RPG games, how a person could improve their stats via leveling up and gaining exp.

'Come to think of it, can that work?'

It seems Eve had found his Harvest Condition.