Ch 53:- Telling the Truth

As they followed Fex, the three boys couldn't help but wonder what kind of plan he had. The only thing he had said was that he had prepared beforehand, while Rayne was in his own world, staring at nothing in particular. But from time to time, if one looked carefully enough, they could see his eyes squinting, as if reading about something.

Vorden, feeling the heavy atmosphere, tried to lighten the mood. "Hey, you didn't tell us you and Erin had a thing, Rayne," he said, teasingly.

Rayne raised an eyebrow in surprise before quickly denying it. "What? No! That's not true. What gave you that idea, by the way?"

"Oh! Is that really true?" Vorden said, not convinced.

"Ugh, whatever. We're just friends. She's just grateful after I saved you all from that Dalki," Rayne said, clearly annoyed.

"Uh-huh, sure, you two are just friends and nothing else. I totally believe that," Vorden said, chuckling.

Rayne just stared at him and said nothing else, but it was all it took for Vorden to understand to shut up.

Finally, they arrived at their destination - Fex's dorm room. It was located at the end of the hall, and it was also the last room. "I hope you're hungry," Fex said as he opened the door.

As soon as they entered the room, their jaws nearly dropped to the floor. Although Rayne had expected something like this, it was still too much. At that moment, Quinn immediately looked out into the hall to see if anyone had seen them before closing the door shut.

"What is the meaning of this?!" Quinn asked, alarmed.

On the floor were seven different students who had been tied up. They each had a blindfold around their eyes and a piece of cloth gagging their mouths. Their arms and legs were tied up using the same type of string that had been used on Peter and Erin.

"This is what someone should have done before they turned him into a ghoul. I noticed he was a crazed ghoul, so he shouldn't need much human flesh to evolve. He would need a different type, right? So here you are, I brought you a different person he can eat for each day of the week," Fex explained.

"So, you plan to just kill these students?" Vorden asked. "The school would find out if seven students just went missing. This isn't really a plan."

"Hey, hey, now look who's being the stupid one. No one said anything about killing," Fex replied. "The size of meat that a ghoul needs to eat only needs to be about the size of a shoe. So there's no need to kill, no need for the school to find out."

"But won't they say something happened? If I were them, as soon as I left, I would get out of here," Peter said, worried as he saw the students wriggling about, scared for their lives.

"Although you guys seem to be friends, it's like you don't know much about vampires, do you?" Fex shook his head. "If I use my influence powers, then I can make them forget anything ever happened. As for their missing limbs, I can replace them with a memory saying they lost them in an accident fighting with each other."

"But still, isn't it a bit cruel?" Rayne muttered to himself, but Quin heard it. On hearing what Rayne said, he felt somewhat guilty. He could understand where Rayne was coming from. Both of them were orphans, but these kids had a family outside of school waiting for them.

"Quinn, what do you want to do?" Peter asked, looking at him. "I can't," Quinn replied, "I don't even know these people that well." Quinn's answer surprised Peter; he had thought Quinn felt the same way, as if he just wanted to find the quickest solution. "If it makes it easier for you, some of these people aren't good people," Fex added, then going over to two male students on the right and lifting their heads, revealing a few bruise marks on their faces. "You see these two here? They were my roommates. As soon as I entered the room, they started ordering me around. I refused, and you know what they tried to do? Beat me. So I gave them a beating back. I hadn't even said a word to them yet." "What about the rest?" Quinn asked. "Well, the rest were randomly selected. They just had bad luck, that's all. Look, someone had to draw the short straw, right?"

Quinn was deep in thought, considering whether he should ask Logan for help. At that moment, Vorden said, "Quinn, I think there is something we can do."

Vorden explained that while coming up with Plan B, he managed to get a list of first-year students' abilities and the classes they belonged to. On this list, it stated that out of all the first years, three students had regenerative abilities.

Upon this revelation, Quinn was once again stuck in a dilemma. At that moment, Rayne said, "I think we should go with the Dark Market one, but until we somehow find a technopath, I guess our only option is those three students."

"Hmm, I agree with you," Vorden said.

"I guess I actually know a technopath, but I don't know how to approach and explain to him," Quinn said.

"Just tell him the truth," Rayne said, to which Quinn nodded.

They explained their plan to Fex. After all, they needed him to be in on it to make sure he erased their memories. Although he complained a little, he did accept in the end.

He then lifted the female student off the ground who had the regenerative ability. "I'm telling you guys, we could get this all over and done with. Are you sure you want to do it this way?" Fex asked. Quinn nodded in response.

"Alright then." Fex then pushed the female student towards Quinn, and he managed to grab her just before she tripped and fell over. "This is your problem, not mine. I'm not going to do everything, so one of you is going to have to cut off her body part. I'm not a sicko who gets pleasure seeing people in pain, so I'm afraid I'm not going to volunteer myself."

As they decided which one of them should cut off the leg, Rayne interrupted them. "Aren't you going to use any type of sedatives?" Rayne said.

They both looked at each other before shaking their heads. "We actually don't have those," Quinn said.

Rayne sighed before replying, "Okay, I guess I will be doing it." Peter grabbed the meat cleaver from the kitchen counter and walked over to the female, handing it over to Rayne, all the while Vorden and Quinn held her down on the floor.

This time, they had also put several towels where the cut was supposed to be made to not make as big a mess as the last time.

The two had to hold her down, even though her mouth was already gagged. Furthermore, she was blindfolded, but she had heard the whole conversation going on between all of the people in the room. At first, she thought it was a twisted sick joke being played by her friends. But as soon as she heard them deliberate and talk more about the matter, she slowly realized that it was becoming a reality. Not being able to see anything was making her go mad as she imagined they might do all sorts of things to her.

Not wanting to make her suffer, Rayne knelt down and whispered something in her ear before moving his mouth to her neck and biting it. But as soon as he bit, he removed his mouth, licking his lips which had traces of blood on them. All of it happened so quickly that everyone present there was shocked, but Vorden soon noticed that the girl was not moving as much as she previously was, but instead, she was in a semi-sleep state with tears rolling down from underneath her blindfold.

"What did you do?" Vorden asked.

Rayne didn't say anything. Instead, he positioned the meat cleaver, which he still didn't know why it was even there in the room, before raising it up and slashing it in one smooth motion, completely detaching it from her body. Quickly, he put it in a plastic bag. However, with it came excruciating pain which woke her up, and she started to thrash around with muffled screams that could be heard. Rayne put his hand on her head and gently circulated his Qi through her to soothe her pain and to further accelerate her regeneration, while Vorden wrapped a towel around the wound. She lost consciousness from fear of everything and blood loss. Using one of the towels, they tied it just above the wound and raised her leg to cause the blood flow to slow down.

"Fuck it, I will go and meet Logan tomorrow only and explain to him everything. I can't bear this," Quinn said.

"Yeah, but thanks to Rayne, she didn't have much problem. Otherwise, could you think of how much of a mess it would have been? But, by the way, what did you use Rayne?" Vorden asked.

"That was a clever way to utilize the vampire enzyme. Truly remarkable," Fex said, and it also answered Vorden's question.

While the female's leg was being prepared for Peter to eat, Rayne was busy tending to the girl and checking her vitals. Vorden was clearing up the bloody towels.

Peter wasn't feeling hungry at the moment, so the leg this time didn't look as appetizing as before. He thought that it was due to the fact that he had seen the girl screaming and crying right before it was cut off, and because of that, he didn't feel like eating it just yet.

Quinn, at that moment, moved around the room collecting and drinking blood samples from the other students present there.

Finally, when the leg was fully healed on the female student, Peter no longer felt as weird about eating the leg in front of him. Before, he felt like he was eating a part of her, but now that he could see she was fine, he couldn't let it go to waste.

The first bite was the hardest, but once he got the juicy taste of flesh into his mouth, he couldn't stop. He continued on until almost nothing was left but the bone.

"Ghouls, a little bit of a messy eater, aren't they?" Fex said, trying to crack a joke. But Quinn was in no laughing mood.

After that, they took off the blindfold from the girl, and then Fex started to use his influence skill. His red eyes glowed, and so did the female's he was looking at. She appeared in a dazed state, as if she was unaware of anything around her, as if she was asleep, but with her eyes open.

Fex gave simple instructions of what happened that night, making sure not to overcomplicate things and at the same time, not giving too many details, otherwise, it could cause problems with her mind. The last thing he mentioned was telling her to sleep for another hour.

While one of them watched the hallways for any oncoming students, the other would carry them and put them in a place where it would be a while before a student spotted them, such as certain sections of the library or just outside the staircase on the top floors, and so on.

"What if someone sees them?" Peter asked.

"There are students who are knocked out all the time. Although to the watch system, it will just appear like they are sleeping, everyone else will think something happened to them," Vorden explained.

After they finished doing everything they needed to do, they left Fex in his room on his own. "If you need me, you know where to find me," Fex said.

~Next day~

Quinn, after waking up and freshening up, made his way towards Logan's dorm room. He wanted to see him as soon as possible. Peter and Quinn had decided to pay a little visit upstairs to the VIP area. Their aim for today was to visit Logan. Not once had Quinn seen Logan in the canteen area, and he realized he never saw Logan around the school much even before that. While training in the pod that Logan had, he realized he never really left the room, and there was no need for him too. The VIP room had facilities such as a shower and a toilet, and whenever he wanted, he could call and ask for food from the shop to be delivered to his door.

"Long time no see," Logan greeted as he answered the door still with bags under his eyes. When he finished rubbing his eyes, though, he noticed someone else behind him. "It looks like you brought a friend with you as well this time."

They entered the room, and Peter couldn't stop looking at all the strange gadgets inside. He also noticed the level 8 on Logan's watch that seemed to frighten him a little. 'When did Quinn get to know someone so powerful?' he thought.

"I am a Vampire," Quinn said.

Logan started to laugh. "Didn't you get a better time to crack such a joke?"

"I am serious," Quinn said.

"Oh really? Then prove it," Logan said.

Quinn was struggling to think about how to explain this to Logan, not only that but if he would believe him and how would he react to the truth. While deep in his thoughts, an unexpected voice in his head was heard.

"Let him touch you again." The system said. "His ability - I think I've figured out what it is. If you touch me, then it will allow me to speak to him. Pass over everything I know and explain everything that happened."

Although Quinn thought it would be better if he explained it in his own words, at the same time, he felt like Logan might not believe him if he did. But if it came directly from the system, then there was a chance.

"Logan, if you touch me, then the system will be able to explain everything. It will all make sense."

"Really? Let's see. I hope you are not wasting my time," Logan said.

When the two of their hands connected, instead of the normal system message, Logan was able to speak clearly to the system. The system was then also able to show images of everything that had happened to Quinn so far, including all of the conversations they had.

Usually, a normal human brain wouldn't be able to process all of this information at once, but it was being downloaded into Logan's mind like a hard drive. The system knew this would only work with someone like Logan. Quinn, on the other hand, had no clue what was happening and could just see that Logan was remaining still. Then after a few minutes, Logan let go of Quinn's hand. He then raised it and touched the collar around his neck, removing it, before sitting back down in his chair.

"What happened?" Quinn asked.

"I understand," Logan said in a tone. After receiving the information, Logan then tried to put himself in Quinn's shoes. Although some of the things he did were bad, could they be avoided was the big question. This would ultimately make up Logan's mind whether or not Quinn was a bad person. After running multiple different scenarios in his head, he had found a couple of ways where he would have been able to come out or done better, but Quinn had never made a truly misguided decision. And even now, he was thinking of a way to turn Peter back to normal without hurting anyone.

It made Logan happy to find out that Quinn's character and persona were as he thought they were. However, what made him even happier was that he could now learn more about the system. He wondered how someone in this era could create such a complex AI. The AI itself reminded Logan of his own abilities. The two of them sat in silence for a while, Logan pondering all that he had learned that day. While the fact that vampires were real didn't interest him as much as the system did, now that the two of them were linked, he wanted to know more about them too. Quinn had remained quiet, unsure how Logan had taken in everything he had just learned. "I will help you. So, you need my assistance to access the Dark Marketplace to buy human parts," Logan said. Quinn hesitantly nodded his head, still not comfortable with the situation.

Meanwhile, Rayne was on the other side of the planet, in Planet Pioletic. He had recently noticed that he was having problems with resources, so he was creating a garden for Yin-attributed herbs. His herbs were in incubation and ready to grow into a new plant as he prepared them through tissue culture. After that, he returned to his room, took a cold bath, and then activated his fabricator. He threw a bunch of things in its inventory, so it proceeded to create a portal device. Although he could teleport, it was only to places he had visited, so it was necessary to make the portal device. After that, he set up the rifle as the next thing to be crafted. He now only hoped that it fared well against vampires and Dalki alike. With that, he exited his room to attend his classes.