Angry Boy and an Ominous Building

The goddess said the skill he chose was garbage but what was this? Spirit Bond, what is he going to do with that? Stark then realized something. A familiar! He nodded to himself, that must be it. If this skill helped him obtain familiars he would gladly agree with the goddess. If he has a familiar he would not have to fight but would also not have to cower behind strangers and draw their ire.

Stark's smile caught the attention of his neighbor, "What are you smiling about?" The pair of judgemental blue eyes scanned over Stark's body. Then he looked to the untouched box next to him.

Stark instinctively opened his mouth, "Oh, nothing."

The fastidious eyes were attached to a face of a child near his age, with surprisingly neat silver hair. Stark took the box and handed it to the questioning youth. After carefully accepting the box, the boy smiled brightly and quietly consumed the box. Envious eyes landed on the boy, whose grin grew at having something the others did not. He grabbed the last chocolate in the box happily but paused inches from his mouth. Painfully he closed his eyes and placed the sweet into Stark's unprepared hands. An innocent piece of chocolate fell tragically to the floor.

"You dropped it!" the boy screamed, his pale face wrinkled together in fury.

The dazed youth sprang to attention only to be drowned in an aura drenched in fighting intent. He had no idea what was going on. Thinking it was not him the child was looking at, went back to his own daydreaming.

"Don't ignore me!" he fumed, his arms rising with the steam escaping his ears.

Stark's head tilted, brows raised. Wasn't he happy a while ago? What happened? "Sorry," he said and turned back to his thoughts.

This made the boy go ballistic but before he could act an annoyed girl finally lost her patience, "Oliver shut up for once!"

"You shut up!" he screamed reflexively.

The girl was about to speak before she choked. A deathly pressure encompassed the van. Only the smooth beating of the engine was heard as the scenery blurred past. Stark stared forward at the blonde head in the driver's seat.

"Look, you got us in trouble," Oliver whispered.

"I got us in trouble? You were the one picking a fight." the girl softly rebelled, her eyes scowled through her oval lenses.

Stark's eyelids opened, observing their argument. The girl challenging Oliver in their whisper bickering was Misumi. He remembers being ordered around by her and yelled at for watering the plants too much. Not really a good impression but she was one of the few people he had talked to in the 4 years he was at 45-3. Now that he thinks about it, the girl with glasses being overly stringent about rules is an anime cliche. There were people like that in his last life too. Maybe reality is the cliche. Stark felt like he had made a huge discovery.

Before he could delve deeper into his enlightenment, he was forced forward. The doors slid open, releasing the children from the van. Ahead of them was a large building with its own personal massive black cloud looming above it. A thunderous boom lit up the sky, hitting a protruded metal pole a few feet away from them, causing the group of 50 to be covered in a cold sweat. If this did not scream ominous, then he did not know what ominous meant.

"Is that normal?" a young boy asked, clearly traumatized.

"They wouldn't send us to a place that is struck by lightning frequently," Misumi said rationally.

However, it seemed rationality did not apply here.

The blonde man smiled, "Haha. It happens pretty often. Don't worry there is only a 5% chance that you will be struck by lightning." As he was talking a bolt of lightning struck his position. *Pyung* The bolt bounced off 1ft away from Kwan's head.

The group stood mortified. 5%? There were 50 of them, doesn't that mean at least 2 of them would become cooked? We might be orphans but we can still do math. Mister, please send us somewhere else. We can't make lightning bounce off us as you can.

Even the talkative members of the group were silent. They did not want to delay entering the building. The inside of the building appeared much better than the outside. There was a wide-open room, the floor sparkled even the glass was free of fingerprints.

Kwan stopped, his blue pupils were barely visible through the 2 crescents. He dropped a bag filled with 50 wristbands, "Now if you want to stay here, take one and run 5 miles."

The group stared blankly. Did they hear right?

Kwan's eyes opened, all light absent from them. "Get out." His voice was calm but everyone who heard it was shivering.

"5 miles is too much." a brave boy stood forward, "Can we make it less and work our way up?"

The sound of flesh pounding against metal echoed through the room. 49 faces widened in terror. In an indentation in the wall, the valiant boy coughed blood. He dropped to the ground.

"Now he does not have to run at all. If you all want the day off, you can follow his example."

Misumi stood forward, ready to express her disapproval but when the eyes shifted to her, all her courage left her like the blood on that brave youth's body. She gulped and stepped back with her head down.

Stark walked forward, grabbed a wristband silently. He paused briefly in front of the door before deciding he had no other option and left. The remaining able-bodied kids followed his example and exited the building.

Outside was a track, looping around the building. Stark began walking around, his pace getting faster whenever he met with the lightless eyes of the man through the window. He had no intention of going to bed early.

After realizing their friend was not dead, the kids eventually forgot and lapped Stark multiple times after being motivated by their mutual competitive spirits. 3 hours passed slowly and by this time most of the youths had returned. They were led to the showers and put into a single room.

The valiant boy, Tony, was already bandaged up and laid at the edge of the room. A group of 3 kids went over to him and checked his breathing again. The room quickly turned silent. Everyone was too exhausted to have their late-night talks.

Stark was exhausted as well but opened his status screen. Nothing had changed. It seems it will be harder to level up his status than he had hoped. Everything does always seem easier through a novel. Every person had 5 main stats. Strength, vitality, and agility were the physical stats and were 5 for an average adult male. Mind and sense were the mental stats the average for mind was 10, and sense was 3. For him to increase these stats he needed actions related to them. His mind was 21, which could be said was quite abnormal. It could be trained from brain work, which then translated into magical strength and mana capacity. Although there were a lot of ways to increase mind, it was one of the hardest stats to raise through natural means, and the most common method was to absorb the mana crystals of monsters. As to why his stat was so high, he had no idea. If he had awakened already it would not be a big deal since it is much easier to raise stats after awakening, but prior to it, he was still limited to the limitations of a primal human. Mental trauma? He shook his head, his life is quite good, much better than many people out there. How could he have suffered enough to be so beyond the norm? He stopped thinking and gave up quietly to his exhaustion.