Grade Six

The process of going up a grade was as always excruciatingly painful and with every waking second, there was a sleeping second. My consciousness was fading in and out, leaving me with a patchy memory of the event.

This helped the process feel like it went by in the blink of an eye, but before I knew it, in what was either a brief moment of lucidity or insanity, I found myself back in my apartment. I blinked a couple of times in confusion.

I stood up and waded through the piles of messy clothing and garbage on my floor to finally open a window.

"Aah!" My eyes burned from the searing sunlight.

I started hyperventilating and my mind grew increasingly tumultuous. That was when I heard a voice from a different corner of my room. My head cocked in that direction despite my anxious state of mind.

There was a shadow of myself, no, my brother. There was a shadow of my brother, was he paying me a visit again?

"Hey... Where did you…" I wanted to ask where he went, but I knew it was a lost cause. There was no way he would answer.

But the shadow got my intention and when they opened they parted their lips to answer my question, my heart skipped a beat and I suddenly woke up.

"Haaah…" I let out a deep breath I didn't know I was holding in.

I was still inside the closet, but although I didn't do any exercise, I felt sticky from all the cold sweat. Another bizarre dream. I listed it off as nothing more than that.

"Huh? Wait…" I then realized something... I broke through into the next grade! Without wasting a moment, I instantly stood up off the ground.

"I still have two crystals left…" Either Kaiser's estimates were off or he was very generous. Considering his words, I figured it was likely the latter.

"Now that my grade is higher…" Absorbing the other two crystals became a piece of cake. I reached out to grab another out of the suitcase and absorbed its energy in under 5 minutes.

I did the same for the final crystal before finally opening the closet to leave.

"Argh…" I exclaimed softly. The hallway was much brighter than I remembered.

Nevertheless, I ignored the irritation and went downstairs to the dorm floor. I needed a shower and a change of clothes after that.

After freshening up, not much happened. The only interesting thing that did occur was when Seamus explained to me what they discussed with Kaiser.

"So you are going to have to do missions with Rook to exchange it for lower grades?" They could just exchange it directly, but they would be taking a small loss. To them, absorbing as much energy as possible was a necessity.

"Just small tasks, nothing crazy" Seamus said in response. As long as they could make it up the next two grades, they would be fine.

"Is that so?" I was skeptical about how small these tasks could really be given the nature of the job, but I decided not to ask any questions.

The next couple of days were peaceful. I spent most of my time either lazing around or honing my body. It would be great to hone my skills, but with no one to instruct me… I'd have to rely on my own intuition and intelligence. Unfortunately, I did not trust my own intuition and intelligence.

Training my physical body was not useless either, though. If a muscular man and a skinny man were both at the same grade, it didn't take a genius to figure out which one was stronger.

Whether the skinny man was faster was another thing to consider in that particular situation, but assuming the skinny man was untrained in agility, odds were he was slower too.

Physical fitness and effort still made a huge difference when battling people of the same grade, and maybe when facing rare monsters, even those in lower grades.

Other than lazing and training though, I also caught news of Seamus', Malcolm's, and Lytton's advancement into grade 5. It wasn't long before they also advanced into grade 6. That they caught up so quickly left me with a bitter taste in my mouth, but I was able to console myself.

"Oh f*ck! Damn it Dan!" Seamus and I got into a habit of sparring now that we were of the same grade.

"How do you keep winning?!" Seamus shouted exasperated.

"It's just the difference in energy and skill" I said sneering. To be a winner! How great was this feeling?

Knock Knock

We then heard a knock on the basement door. That was right, there was a spacious basement underneath the mafia building which we made use of.

I went ahead and opened the door after finishing my pretentious gloating. Getting to the basement was rather troublesome since it was more like a secret hideout. This meant the door was safe to open.

"Dan, Kaiser needs you upstairs" Malcolm's face and words greeted me the moment I opened the door.

"I'll be right up then" I replied to Malcolm who nodded and started to walk away towards a ceiling hatch.

Seamus who was sprawled on the floor from exhaustion couldn't help but lift his head and shoot me a glance.

"You are really something, you know?" Seamus said before putting his head back down and letting out a sigh. Young Seamus had been with Kaiser for what felt like a long time now.

Yet, he wasn't called over by this father figure even half as much as Dan was. All along, he was just delegated to the job of door to door seller. He would personally deliver alcohol and some of their other goods to customers.

I took in his words, but had nothing to reply with. I was something, and I knew that since a young age. My parents never looked at me as one would a human being. I could never figure out the reason. Or maybe I knew and could never come to terms with it.

Whatever the case, being needed felt even better than winning. I hurried to follow after Malcolm and made my way back to Kaiser's office.