The Paranormal Lifestyle

"The world doesn't make any distinction between good people and bad people; it only provides powers on a whim, and its up to people on how to make use of these powers.

"That is to say, people are inherently selfish, born with the original sin. Let me be straightforward with you; everyone who grasped this power in the Paranormal Society are after one thing only, and that is their benefits.

"It can be their personal benefit, the organization's benefit, their family's benefit, or even their enemy's benefit if the price is high enough.

"To these people, the lives of people, be it the ordinary or the Paranormal, are just chess pieces—means to an end. Let me tell you, no matter how large or small the board is, there's never enough chess pieces to go around.

"As for you—someone without a background, without connections, and most importantly of all; without power… Just what the hell were you thinking?! Are you tired of living?!

"Just the knowledge that you're a Paranormal is enough to elevate you from an overlooked chess piece to a potential chess piece! You can be in the wrong place at the wrong time and the next thing you know, the authorities are knocking down your door!

"In this society, secrecy is an iron law! If Bella's phone wasn't modified to counter espionage, you might have disappeared in broad daylight the moment you stepped into a random taxi!"

After going on her long tirade, Rosaline kneaded her forehead, feeling a headache.

Hiro had an apologetic, ashamed expression on his face. He knew that he was careless, but he didn't think it was this bad…

"It's enough, Rosa…" Bella stepped behind Rosaline and gave her stiff shoulders a good massage. "As for you, little guy, why don't you join under one of our families? At the very least, we can…"

Hiro immediately raised both his hands up and stopped Bella before she could say anything.

"Hold your horses!" Hiro almost shouted. "I get it, I messed up—however! It hadn't gotten to the point where I need your family's help! As for Paranormal business, I take it back, I will spend this month playing games and not get myself into trouble!"

Damn, how could I forget about my system?! I must have been mentally ill this afternoon!

Hiro almost slapped himself. If anything, he should make use of this month to increase both his cultivation and the level of his character in a new RPG game.

Rosaline was right, he shouldn't be pouncing around if he didn't have the power nor the background to protect himself!

What could a mere C-9 Paranormal do in this messed up society anyway? Lie down and wait for death?

Even if his cultivator profile was a C-7, that was still nothing in the grand scheme of things!

Rosaline blinked her eyes, feeling that her intimidation tactics had backfired. She didn't want Hiro to retreat from the paranormal circles, only to be careful and find reliance in them.

However, it seemed like she took things too far?

"Don't you want to know how to get stronger though? I mean, I can tell you how, but you can't make use of this knowledge since you're all alone and well…" Rosaline shut her mouth at this point.

"All I know so far is that I'm a Sorcerer, and I crave for something called spirituality?" Hiro sighed. He acted both bewildered and lost, as though he didn't have a clue about what's happening to him.

Rosaline nodded.

"That's your body's instinctive desire to evolve driving you forward, just like how awakened vampires are drawn to blood rich with vitality. As a Sorcerer, you can grow stronger by meditating in spiritually dense environments or by consuming sports resources."

"Never mind the lengthy exploration," Bella shook her head. "Seriously, you clan people are always so calculative!"

As she spoke, she fiddled with her phone.

"Bella!" Rosaline furrowed her brows in displeasure, but it was already too late.

Hiro phone buzzed, and when he checked the messages, it was an app link from Bella.

Bella stuck out her tongue. "This is the recognized official app for the paranormal circle, and you can only get the app via a referral from an active member."

Hiro was intrigued, quickly downloading the app called PARA.

"Is it safe?" Hiro asked while the app was installing.

"It is," Bella nodded her head. "It creates a virtual identity for you, and it can't be traced since the algorithm is floating over millions of ghost cloud servers, and hundreds of ghost servers are being generated daily from the subscription revenue, not even the creators of the app know how many ghost servers there are today. Thousands? Hundreds of thousands? Millions? A billion servers? Really, the number is anyone's guess!"

Hiro was impressed. He couldn't believe that the government failed to stop such a cancer from spreading.

Bella chuckled and explained that the ghost server algorithm had already penetrated into every server provider platform that exists on the web, and it is futile to shut it down unless the world decides to shut down the internet globally for at least 72 hours.

Hiro tried to imagine the entire planet without internet for three days, but he couldn't.

The chaos such a thing might generate would be unimaginable. Hiro shuddered at the mere thought.

According to Bella, not even the person who sent the recommendation through the link would know the identity of the invited and vise versa.

Since there was an expiration time for the link, Hiro immediately installed the app and registered an account.

The app asked him to position the front camera near his eye for the retina scan, and Hiro complied.

He could feel his phone heating up crazily, to the point where he almost dropped it.

After the phone was connected to an unknown software, it scanned his retina in seconds, then the software was deleted automatically and the phone cooled down.

The logo of the PARA app was changed to a single eye without neither an iris or a pupil, confirming the installation.

Seeing that Rosaline was about to say something, Bella immediately waved her hand to dismiss Hiro.

"Now go! Don't tell anyone about your username on the app, and only accept mission requests when you're confident enough with both your strength and secrecy lest you draw unwanted attention!"

Hiro felt grateful to this pink-haired chibi, smiling and nodding before apologizing to Rosaline once again.

Then, he left.

Once the door closed and after a moment of silence, Rosaline's dark expression brightened up and she exchanged a high five with Bella.

Bella laughed. "The classic good cop bad cop never fails! Honestly, are you sure you want to push him away from your family like this? Your old man will be pissed!"

"So what?" Rosaline tucked away her hair behind her ear. "They're out for their own interests, and I'm out for mine. There will come a day when I branch out from the main family, it's not bad to start laying the foundations from early on."

Bella sighed with pity. "It's times like these where I'm glad to be the only child to a rich and powerful dad. It's so good to be a rich second generation!"

…

That evening, Hiro returned to his dormitory room after cooling down his head. He didn't immediately register an identity on PARA, mainly because he was scared of getting involved in something impulsively.

Marcus left a message saying that he planned to take a month long vacation in the countryside relaxing with his family, leaving the dormitory room to Hiro.

Hiro wasn't bothered by it, he actually felt pretty good.

Now, he decided to seclude himself into gaming mode, taking small breaks for food and some sports activities to keep in shape, while spending the rest of his time playing Transcendent Taoist and farming a new RPG game.

He already found the game to play, an RPG game called Legend of Babylon.