CHAPTER 9

The student stood opposite Max was still holding his hands suspiciously behind his back. Even without the help of the system, Max could tell the student was obviously hiding his ability.

"Come on, what happened to your big balls?" the student said.

"I think you're playing with them behind your back," Max replied.

That immediately angered the student which was what Max was going for.

"You weak piece of garbage!" the student came charging forward and slashed his hand out at Max.

Luckily Max's reflexes were fast and he managed to lift his arm in time to block the attack and move back a little. However, the student's hand managed to slice right through the skin of Max's arm and caused blood to be drawn.

"Dam it!" Max said.

%(HP 8/10)%

Max looked at the student who now had his hands out in view. The student had a transformation ability that was limited to only his hands. They caused them to slightly resemble a tiger claw and hardened his fingernails.

Although Max was able to block the attack in time, the claw managed to still rip through his skin.

"Is the system saying if I take four more attacks like that, I'm dead?"

Suddenly everything became a little bit more serious for Max. The stinging pain he was feeling on his arm was real and this was a real fight. The game-like system had caused him to take things a little too easy. But he was quickly reminded that this wasn't a game.

The student then immediately started to charge at Max once again with his claw-like hands. As the student swung his right-hand Max managed to duck and throw a punch of his own into the student's stomach.

"What the hell, this guy hits hard!" The student thought.

The student didn't quit there though and decided to strike at Quinn's open back causing another claw mark to appear.

%(HP 6/10)%

"Shut up I know!" Max shouted as he lifted the student using both of his hands by the legs and threw up against the side of the wall"How did Max manage to pick him up like that?" Peter thought, "There roughly about the same size and he threw him with ease, does he really not have an ability?"

Max didn't stop there though. It was important for him to teach people like them a lesson, otherwise, they would just come back for more. Max needed to show him to never mess with him again.

Max ran up to the student who was lying and the floor and kicked him in the stomach with full force. The kick was so hard that it caused the student to cough up a little bit of blood from his mouth.

%(Congratulations Quest has been completed)%

%(50 Exp Received)%

%(70/100 Experience points)%

"Is he dead?" Peter asked.

Then the student suddenly started coughing some more.

"No, but if he attacks us again, he's going to wish he was."

Max was actually quite relieved. He didn't know what the punishment was at the academy for killing another student, even if he explained that he hadn't attacked first. He also didn't want the burden of death on his shoulders at such a young age, so he was happy when the system had rewarded him the experience points, without having the need to kill the student.

Then suddenly another message had appeared.

%(Additional Quest reward)%

%(Skill unlocked: inspect lv1)%

Excitement started to fill Max's mind as he had finally received his first skill. Max was hoping maybe this would help himfigure out what type of ability he had but the name of it didn't sound too promising.

"Inspect? So maybe it can tell me the weaknesses of my opponents?" Max thought.

Max then decided to test his new ability out and looked at Peter who was standing next to him. Now was the next problem. Max had no idea how to use his skill but the moment he started thinking about the skill "Inspect." The skill had activated on its own and a screen had appeared right next to Peter.

%(Name: Peter Chuck)%

%(Race: Human)%

%(Ability: None)%

%(HP 3/5)%

%(Blood type A+)%

???????

Max looked at the information that had been given to him and it seemed like there were some sections blanked out. Max could only assume this was because the level of his skill was still only at level 1 but the information it did give him, was quite handy.

It told Max what type of ability they had which would be very useful in a fight, it also told Max how much health they had. However, there was one bit of information that Max found strange and that was the Blood type. It was weird for the system to give him information about such a specific thing and Max also wondered how on earth would this ever help him in the future.

Max then went up to the Student who was still laying on the ground in pain and used the inspect skill on him.

%(Name: Kyle Main)%

%(Race: Human)%

%(Ability: Transformation)%

%(HP 1/8)%

%(Blood type B-)%

Checking the status of Kyle made Max learn a few new things. The information he was given about the ability, only gave him the type of ability. There were hundreds of different transformation abilities so it wasn't able to pinpoint it.

The other thing was the HP, It looked like for his victory he only needed to bring down the students HP to 1 but Max still didn't know if 0 meant death or not. It could also just mean the person had been knocked out.

Right after inspecting Kyle though, Max had received another notification.

%(Optional Quest has been granted)%.

%(Drink the blood of your victim to absorb a stat point)%

"What the, is this thing crazy!" max thought.

Even if it gave him a stat point there was no way he was going to drink someone else's blood. The very idea of it made max feel sick.

For a brief moment though max looked to the ground where Kyle had spat out some of his blood.

"Maybe a little bit wouldn't hurt... max, you're going crazy stop it."

"Come on let's go," max said to peter.

The two of them continued to walk down the hallway but while doing so Peter noticed that max kept turning his head to look at Kyle who was still on the floor.

"He must be worried about him, max's a nice guy after all." Peter thought as he smiled.

But what he didn't realize was that max wasn't looking at Kyle at all, but was looking at Kyle's blood that was on the ground.