Chapter 26 - Taste of Failure

When clicking the accept button, the usual effects happened, chains came out of Milo's arms and snaked towards Allana. When they wrapped around her however rather than disappearing into her like his last two attempts at stealing abilities, the chains snapped and fell to the ground before vanishing into thin air again.

[Notice]

Ability: Bone Manipulation failed to be plundered

Plunder can no longer be used on this target

Due to failure of Plunder ability, cooldown will last 1.5x longer

Cooldown 6:18:00:00

[Clear]

This was the first time that Milo had faced failure when using the Plunder ability and while it was annoying he knew it had to happen eventually considering all his luck in his first two attempts. While he was bummed that he now had to wait close to a week for the cooldown to end, he was happy that it hadn't given him a worse penalty. The icon above Allana's head had also now turned red, this was most likely tied to him being unable to use plunder on her again due to the failure.

After clearing the screen from his vision he and his group of friends had finally made it away from the school and into the more fun part of the city. The sun was now setting and it cast a beautiful orange glow on the cities rooftops. While walking along they went through a few shops, looking at the different merchandise that was for sale. Because the city was home to the Awakened Academy, many of the shops had items that would be helpful to the future gatecrashers who were attending the school. Things like enchanted weapons and armors, as well as different elixirs were common in these types of shops. Along with this, there were many everyday shops as well, convenience stores, video stores, clothing stores all lined the street the group were on.

After window shopping, Krista had bought a few clothes she had thought were cute, and the group continued on to an ice cream parlor where they all gathered around a table, each with a cone in hand.

The group were still highschoolers after all and each of them still wanted to enjoy being a kid while they still could. Not all of them knew of the horrors that were held back by the dimensional doors but they would all come into contact with them eventually.

On their way back to the school's campus, all of them were talking trying to get to know each other more. The most quiet of the two were Milo and Mark. Chris was going on and on about his family back at his hometown in Ohio, they were all very close and when he had awakened with the ability of fire, he had apparently attempted to use it to light fireworks at a cookout causing all of them to go off at once. Definitely something that Milo could see Chris doing after getting to know him more.

After telling his story, Chris asked if either Milo or Mark had any siblings, after noticing the distant look on Milo's face, the group came to a stop.

"Um, actually…" he said in a pained voice. He hadn't talked about it this many times in one day since close to the time it had happened, so talking about his family situation dredged up memories he had long buried to avoid the pain.

"You don't have to talk Milo, especially if you don't feel comfortable talking yet," said Krista, as she knew why he was hesitating.

After clearing his throat and giving a bittersweet smile he said, "They're bound to find out eventually, might as well get it over with."

Milo then went on to explain his family's backstory, his parents' disappearance, how he was raised by his young cousin right after they vanished, and even talked about getting trapped in the rift. The look on his friends' faces said it all.

"Damn man, sorry for bringing it up," Chris said dejectedly.

"Seems like we have a lot in common," Mark said in a hollow voice.