Chapter 23

It was a quiet and starry night. Time and again, a large bright moon looked out from behind the clouds as if winking to her dark sibling settled at the other end of the sky.

The couple was strolling along the narrow mountain path, enjoying the silence and a gentle wind that felt so good.

«What a beautiful sky.» - Mob decided to break the awkward silence.

«Yeah.» - Martha nodded blankly. She was deep in her thoughts, not really watching the road and completely relying on her companion for this reason.

«If you could make one wish upon the falling star, what would it be?» - Mob took a new attempt to pull her into the conversation.

«I'd wish for you to be happy with the cook.»

Mob tripped when he heard this:

«Are you kidding me?»

His reaction made Martha smile.

«What would you wish for?»

They had just reached a wide stone bench at the edge of the cliff. Mob dusted it off gallantly and invited the lady of his heart to sit down.

«I would make a wish...» - a dramatic pause, a moment of eye contact: - «to live a life without worries.» - He finished his wish with a laugh and pulled out a bottle of wine with a couple of glasses he had brought for the occasion.

Martha's smile was even more sincere this time. She enjoyed his courtship. When the glasses were filled with red viscous liquid, Mob saluted Martha and drained his glass. She followed his example. The strong drink had a pleasant warming effect.

They stayed there for a while, looking at the stars and the moons, each lost in their thoughts. Martha spoke first:

«Can you help me with something?»

«Sure! What can I do for you?»

«Bring Kyon to my office tomorrow morning.»

«Uhm, Kyon. He's the guy that... that I've made friends with.» - Mob quickly corrected himself. He did not want to remind Marta of his old feud with the kid.

«When did you become friends?» - She squinted suspiciously. - «It doesn't matter, anyway. Just bring him in tomorrow.»

«Hehe, you're hiding something. Is he the reason you were depressed?» - The wine made Mob feel more relaxed.

«Pfft, he is not worth it!» - Martha replied hastily, but her blushed cheeks betrayed her emotions.

«Oh, it really hit home! What did he do? Come on, tell me.»

«Nothing... Alright, I'll tell you. Maybe some other time.»

The next working day, Martha wasn't looking her best. She had a splitting headache because of the drink and the dream she had in the wee hours of the morning. It was about Kyon who did unimaginable things to her with a malicious smile on his face, and she was powerless to resist him. The dream reflected her projected feelings of rages for all those times he had taken advantage of her, and she was helpless to resist him. The memory of her dream made her ears and cheeks burn. She couldn't get this stupid dream out of her mind and blamed herself for this.

Her companion of yesterday, on the contrary, woke up in a great mood. A bright smile lit up his whole face. Mob was happy and content with life until the very moment when he realized that he had overslept.

…

It was early morning.

The bell woke Kyon up, announcing that it was time to get up and go to work. He was sitting in his bed, rubbing his sleepy eyes, thinking about his dream and waiting for the flow of memories from his past life to start after he woke up. Two minutes later, Kyon received full information about his life between the ages of 8.5 and 16.

A wave of nostalgia swept over him. The memories were full of fun and joyful moments: his best friend, girls, secrets, scientific research and so on. Lovr used to be the leader of the legendary troll army in the global quantum network. They had lots of fun hacking different servers and abusing thousands of front pages. The mess they caused! If only it had come out that their ringleader was a 14-year-old troll by nickname Big Brother, aka Lovr, aka the current Kyon all his group would have been in big trouble.

Those were wonderful days. The tests his masters gave him were getting more and more difficult. By the age of 12, he had reached the master's degree (4), and at the age of 16, the doctor of philosophy (5), which made Lovr the most successful and brilliant person of his generation.

{It was fun...} – Kyon grinned at the memories, and his roommates snorted:

{How can he possibly enjoy the beginning of another working week, fucking dumbass!}

Kyon didn't pay any attention to their glum faces. Nothing could spoil his good mood. However, he was concerned that his behavior was somewhat different in this world. Why did his character change?

{Maybe, it's because this body isn't mine...} - He made an assumption.

Soon, all the slaves gathered in the common hall. Kyon put some food in the backpack and followed the crowd. The wardens met their groups and led them to their working places. Kyon greeted Osip and stood in line with the other miners. He gave a cheeky wink to the unfortunate fellow, who had to witness his disappearance and spotted Mike walking ahead of him. He looked much healthier now, greedily finishing his breakfast.

Kyon's group reached the checkpoint. The other groups were standing in line for food. Bob was at the distribution without his usual partner, looking visibly displeased. Mob must have ditched work, jerk. Rogash was cheerful as usual, lying on the floor near his master with a yummy marrowbone.

{The asshole is late, and I have to deal with an extra load of work.} – Bob muttered to himself, noting the new groups in the log and giving out each warden ten bag lunches and bottles of water.

When it was Osip's turn, Bob gave him only nine rations, which only confirmed Kyon's guess that his identity had been erased from the database. He had warned his warden not to make a fuss. He had plenty of food and needed no trouble with authorities.

The ninth group stopped at the checkpoint and soon went down in the mine. The rails creaked under their feet. The supporting wooden beams patterned with different symbols towered at the equal distance from each other. Crystals gleamed in the walls. The landscape had not changed at all since Kyon woke up in this world for the first time.

When they arrived, the miners split up as they always did, each to his place. Osip came up to Kyon and gave him the tools: a sieve and a kind of compass. Then he started a brief induction training:

«I appoint you a selector. Can you see the four miners at the grinder? You will join them, but your job is to search for amber stones among the crushed rock, pick them out of the ore and put them in a safe place. Got it?»

Kyon nodded and went to the four miners, who had already started to turn the machine that looked like a millstone.

Watching this unsophisticated technology, Kyon lamented to himself: {Is it back to the middle ages? Why are they crushing ore by hand? Why can't they set up an elementary selection mechanism that would replace hundreds of workers?}

Anyway, the job was very simple. The miners brought buckets with crushed ore, and Kyon with two other guys had to break them to extract amber stones, then clear them of dead weight and put them into another bucket. And so on, again and again…

At first, Kyon watched the other two selectors work to get the hang of the process. They worked with indecently low speed. Anyone with Kyon's skills could meet the daily production quota in 2-3 hours instead of 15.

Kyon hid his backpack in a secluded place and fished a translucent stone out of the bucket. He tried to scan it with Synergy, but for some reason, the amber stone refused to let any energy inside. Kyon couldn't figure out its composition and structure. The smoky substance inside the amber didn't allow him to explore it properly.

Suddenly the stone began to vibrate. Kyon threw it away at once, and it exploded like a small firecracker. When the dust settled, there was nothing left of the amber stone.

The eternal witness of Kyon's quirks happened to be in the thick of things again. He turned around precisely at the moment when Kyon was about to get rid of the weird stone. The next moment, his eyes popped out of their sockets, and his jaw hit the floor. Kyon put his finger to his lips, giving a sign to him to keep quiet. The scared man gulped. He had no intention whatsoever of saying anything. He was terrified of the creepy guy.

Osip, who happened to be nearby, immediately appeared at the explosion site to see what had happened. He interrogated the workers closest to the scene, but they couldn't give him more or less intelligible answers. Osip had to return to his post, wondering what it might have been.

{Why do these stones react with Synergy? How is it even possible?} - Kyon was shocked. No substance in his world had ever behaved like this.

Kyon assumed that the amber stones were crystallized energy. He read that they were used as currency and in many other useful ways.

A handful of activated stones could magnetize to each other and create a perfect sphere of 1 cm with no impurities, nothing extra. A perfectly round ball.

The spheres of the basic grade were translucent white. The spheres of the advanced grade were translucent amber. The spheres of the superior grade were translucent purple. At least, that's what he found out in the books.

Kyon understood that he had destabilized the frequency of the stone, which caused the blast.

{If this process is not instantaneous, it can probably be controlled.} - He made a mental note to do some research on this topic, took another tiny amber stone, and carefully infused it with Synergy. Kyon tried to resonate with it, and it wasn't difficult anymore. It was as easy as penetrating the air.

{How curious.} - He smiled to himself.

After Kyon did enough research, he went back to work. Some minutes later, his coworkers dropped their sieves, staring at the skinny boy who was separating the amber from the rock quick as a flash. In a quarter of an hour, he had filled about half of the bucket. Osip watched how the newcomer did his job, rubbing his hands with glee. He was hoping to get a considerable profit from this guy.

Those who were crushing the ore couldn't keep up with the boy who had taken the job from the two other selectors.

When Osip saw that they had nothing to do, he appointed them to turn the stone grinder at once. Now Kyon was the only selector in the whole group. The rest of the miners could only frown at him. It was much more difficult to turn the grinder than rummage in the stones.

Two hours later, Kyon had already done a good day's work. He wiped the sweat from his forehead, bothered to glance at the others for the first time.

Osip was exultant. He was already counting his possible return. He grabbed Kyon's hand and shook it excitedly:

«You... you are an animal! How did you do it!?»

«It's nothing. It's just that I've just had enough sleep.» - Kyon waved him off with a smile. He was starting to feel hungry.

Kyon found a more or less clean place, saluted with a sandwich to the bucket with the explosive amber next to him and started eating his meal.

Meanwhile, Mob appeared at the entrance, and angry Bob rushed to him:

«Look what the cat dragged in!»

His partner did not even try to justify himself. He kindly slapped his friend on the shoulder, glowing with happiness:

«Come on! Don't be angry with me, you will explode! Next time, you can sleep in, and I will work for you. By the way, have you seen Kyon anywhere?»

«He has left with Osip... Why? Are you going to work? Hey, where are you going?!» - The last words were thrown at his back. Mob was already leaving.

«It's an emergency. Would you be so kind and work for two until I return? I'll pay you back later.»

…

Nine men resolutely marched towards Osip's group, among them the two brothers who were eager to kick Kyon's ass, Babil, his loyal guards and trusted people, and John, Kyon's former warden.

All of them had different interests, but their common goal was to beat up and rob the cheeky jerk who dared to cross their path.

The plan was simple: they had bribed a warden to distract Byron while they were going to give Kyon a quick, merciless thrashing. Another turn, and they approached Osip's group.

As the miners saw Babil and his gang, they rushed from their workplaces and got the hell out of the upcoming brawl. Everyone understood perfectly well who the thugs were after. Alas, it was beyond their power to help Kyon. Whatever, quite a few of them would gladly punch him themselves.

Osip was looking through some documents when he noticed the outsiders. He yelled angrily:

«Hey, what the fuck do you want here!? Byron and the supervisors will be here any time soon! They'll nail your balls to the wall!»

It didn't stop Babil, the leader of the group. He said in a cheerful voice:

«Osip, old man, I have no issue with you, so get out of here. We need the guy.»

Kyon saw the cutthroats and frowned.

{That's no good...} - A short and disappointing thought flashed through his mind. The chances of his survival were too low. He had suspected that sooner or later they would be coming for him, but nine gangsters at a time? According to his estimations and common sense, nine ugly mugs were way too many for a single boy. Sadly enough, he wasn't ready for their arrival. All he had was a pile of amber stones behind the rock.

Kyon did not waste precious seconds. He ducked behind the rock and grabbed the first weighty stone. Well, at least, he had grown stronger and toughened up.

«I'm warning you, mother fuckers, don't come any closer! He's a member of my group. On what grounds should I hand him to you on a platter? You do realize what's coming, don't you!?» - Osip wasn't going to retreat so quickly. And it wasn't only because he had promised Byron to protect Kyon. The guy was a real gold mine! It was a game changer!

Babil did not argue. He just quietly told his guards:

«Knock him out. He's getting in the way.»

When his henchmen heard his command, they approached Osip from both sides.

«Hey, what's going on?...» - Osip took a defending position, trying not to show fear.

Kyon considered that the best defense is a good offense and threw an explosive at the guard's heads.

*bang*

The bullet found its billet: it hit straight the big bald head. The thug fell on the ground but stayed conscious, rolling up in a ball, clutching at his injured head and howling in pain.

Babil detected Kyon and shouted to his minions:

«Catch that son of a bitch! He has our money!»

The four of them immediately rushed toward Kyon while Babil and the two others blocked the only exit. The guard was still lying on the floor, and the other one did not dare to turn his back to Osip, who was ready to attack. The miners were watching what was going on, but they did not dare to intervene. They wouldn't risk their lives for Osip and Kyon.

John approached Kyon with a malicious smile on his face, waving his massive fists around:

«Come here. Daddy will punish you for your misdeeds!»

Kyon didn't heed the threat and threw two more amber stones. This time, one of them hit the warden in the forehead, sending him unconscious on the ground. The second sharp stone flew straight into John's grinning face. He managed to react and dodged, but the sharp edge got him. A piece of his ear fell on the ground with an icky smack, splattering blood around him.

«YOU SCUM! I will kill you!» - John shouted, clutching at the injured ear with one hand and taking out a pickaxe hammer from behind his belt with the other. He wasn't going to hold back anymore.