(Third person’s perspective)

Daniel rushed in to Anna’s room without bothering to knock, surprising the old lady. She got angry and was about to say something before noticing how the usually calm Daniel had a look of anguish as he stopped to catch his breath. Deciding it must be something important she held off on berating Daniel about manners and instead waited for him to speak.

“Sorry to barge in like this, but there has been a terrible development!” Daniel spoke in urgency.

“What is it?” Anna asked still annoyed but wondering what this emergency could be.

“You asked me to keep tabs on that absorption man, and he just went to the one place we didn’t want him to go! All of our carefully made plans regarding him have already gone down the gutter!”

“Just explain the situation to me already and stop beating about the bush!”

……

After learning the reason for Daniel’s distress Anna immediately asked him to gather the Council for an immediate meeting! After Daniel left she got off the bed with a sour mood. Yesterday had gone so well after meeting with the guy on the rooftop and making detailed plans with the Council and today everything had been ruined!

‘Why did that idiot have to go there of all places?!’ she thought as she made her way to the warehouse for the emergency meeting.

________________________________

(Ben’s perspective - A day earlier)

I could see Ariel was about to freak out so I immediately spoke telepathically to calm her down. Freaking out would be counter-productive and could even give away our location to monsters and/or people.

Right now we were in a lecture hall. The hall was big enough to hold lectures for close to 250 students and the whole room looked quite clean. The room which was lit up by sunlight streaming in through the high windows was in the exact same state as it always had been. The rows of seats, the teacher’s desk and the large blackboard were noticeably clean. Apart from a thick layer of dust nothing seemed out of place.

This was actually the first normal location I had seen in months. I had gotten so used to seeing corpses of different species everywhere in various degrees of decomposition that this hall looked extremely odd. Noticing nothing out of the ordinary apart from the cleanliness of the hall I asked Ariel to wait quietly for now and decided to run a few tests. I started activating all of my abilities in turn to see if all of them worked or not.

…..

Five minutes later I was pleased to see that everything worked. I could even teleport anywhere inside the hall, it seemed the only restriction was in going outside the building itself. Next, I summoned Gray and told him to stay with Ariel and to immediately communicate in case anything enters the hall. I also shared my hiding presence ability with Gray so he could hide Ariel on the off-chance that I was occupied elsewhere.

I told Ariel to stay here and ignoring her protests I activated hiding presence and proceeded to move outside.

I used a combination of my vision abilities and wide-area ability identification to confirm that there was nothing immediately outside the door of the room before opening it. I proceed down the familiar hallways until I came across the first living thing… or first non-living thing…?

It was a group of... ghosts? Or phantoms? Or Spirits? Or something… They were incorporeal dark-purple beings of average human height floating a few inches off the ground. They looked more or less like humans, apart from the obvious ghost-vibe… I used ability Identification on them and saw an astonishing result!

Target ability identified. Target has the ability: Possession. This ability allows the target to possess those weaker then themselves and gain complete control over them.

Target ability identified. Target has the ability: Double life. Works only when target has used ‘possession’ on someone, this ability allows target to leave the possessed host if it dies and return to its original form to live once again.

Now that’s…. Just too much!

These things can not only possess something but even when the ‘possessed being’ dies they can return to their incorporeal forms to find something else to possess?! That’s just fucked up! And the worst part is they are incorporeal! I’m sure they don’t have any blood for me to drink to absorb their abilities! Fuck me.

I’ll try to find something which is being possessed and drink its blood to see it that works…

For now, I left them alone and quietly slipped past them. They have no blood for me to drink so no use killing them, plus I’m a bit hesitant in killing anything right now. This building, or perhaps the whole university, is under control of something, and these things are probably its minions or something similar. If that ‘entity’ can trap everyone here, he might also be able to tell if I kill something! It may be a far-fetched possibility but I’m taking no chances until I get more information.

I travelled through the hallways ignoring all creatures I could see. There was no discernible pattern to where something was… a single hallway contained a few of those ghosts, some yellow lizard-type creatures, a small number of black felines that were about twice the size of lions and brightly coloured flying insects that were about the size of an eagle. The insects looked like fireflies as they had different coloured lights shining out of their asses.

Everything moved about as they pleased and I couldn’t find anything that connected them all together apart from the fact that they were all monsters. I identified their abilities but didn’t find anything useful. The lizards had regeneration, the felines had enhanced strength and enhanced speed and the insects had ‘illumination’ which basically gave them the ass-torch and ‘sleeping powder’ which gave them the ability to throw sleep-inducing powder.

On second thought, the sleeping powder could be useful. But I’ll still wait to get more information before hunting anything. I checked with Gray through telepathy if everything was alright on their side and found that it was. A thought flashed through my mind about how I could try and summon Gray outside the building to see if it work, but I put it aside for now to try it later. 

As I got closer to the East Auditorium I could start seeing less and less monsters. Soon they altogether stopped in front of a barricade made out of doors, chairs, tables and papers pushed in between any gaps between the furniture. I had to question the usefulness of the barricade against those ghosts, but proceeded through by teleporting to the other side nevertheless. I had used X-ray vision to see if there was anything on the other side before teleporting though.

The other side was again a barren hallway with another barricade at the end before the doorway to the auditorium. The barricade was so thoroughly made that I had to question how the people on the other side would leave in case of an emergency. It looked to me as if they had simply trapped themselves inside… I could only hope that the door on the other side was not so foolishly closed off as well.

As I teleported to the other side of the door I saw the entire auditorium packed with people of all ages. There must have been at least a hundred and fifty of them here! The most noticeable thing though was the silence permeating throughout. The impact of such a huge group of people making no noise whatsoever was much larger than I thought it would have been. The silence was suffocating.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

All around I could see blank, hopeless expressions on malnourished, sunken faces and a defeated air hung about. Some were sitting against the walls with their heads down, some were just lying on the floor while others stood silently in corners. There were those that had their eyes closed but most of them were staring at something only they could see… The atmosphere was extremely unsettling and I decided that I wasn’t going to stay here any longer then I needed to.

I resisted the temptation of identifying the abilities of everyone and taking advantage of their lifeless selves to drink some blood, putting it off for later. For now I needed to get some information and the best person to get it from would be James.

Even though talking to James would have its drawbacks, and I would probably have to reveal my ability to him which could get awkward, I knew James’s loyalty was unquestionable. Even though all this shit happened and we hadn’t seen each other for months, I was certain James would still get over the disturbing facts about me and help me out.

It took me a few minutes before I spotted James lying down in a corner with his eyes closed seemingly asleep. The risk of me waking him up and him exclaiming loudly enough for everyone to hear in this silent hall was too high. I could use telekinesis to shut his mouth so that he won’t make any noise but in the end there was still some risk involved.

I decided to do something crazy. I made sure that everyone around was looking elsewhere and not on James before I moved to his side and used hiding presence on him. I waited a couple minutes to see if anyone would notice his absence but luckily no one did.

I then touched him lightly, taking care not to wake him up, and teleported both of us back to the hallway in between the two barricades. The classrooms here were completely empty and it was a perfect place for me to get some answers undisturbed. The chances of someone discovering about James’s disappearance were low due to the general defeated ‘I don’t care anymore’ air everyone seemed to have, so teleporting him out while he was still sleeping seemed like a good enough idea.

I controlled James’s sleeping body through telekinesis and took him to a nearby empty classroom before I dumped him straight on the floor. He woke up with a start as I deactivated hiding presence and yelled “Surprise! Miss me?”

He looked at me dumbfounded for a few seconds before doing something I did not expect, he attacked me! He jumped straight at me and threw a punch right at my face as I barely avoided it using my speed and stared daggers at him.

“How did you know about Ben? Don’t think you can fool me monster!” He yelled while trying to attack me again.

Huh…? This seems weird…

I took control of him once again and shut off his mouth so he could make no noise. The most probable guess I could make from his words was that there was some kind of mimic or doppelganger type creature and he was thinking that this creature was here mimicking me.

I decided the best way to get over his suspicion would be to reveal secrets about him that only I knew, so I spent a good few minutes doing just that. In the end I could see him getting calmer and his eyes getting rounder as he realised that I was really here. I gave him back control over his body and he immediately ran over and hugged me with tears in his eyes! “Ben! I missed you so much!”

…..

‘Ben, you really should have expected something like this buddy. Your fault.’ I said to myself as I awkwardly patted the bawling James on his back while he tried to squeeze me to death.

…..

It had long since passed my 3-second rule of hugging so I pushed him away as he reluctantly let go. He wiped the tears off his eyes as he awkwardly laughed. I knew many questions about where I had been what I was doing here how could I do what I just did blah blah were coming my way so before that happened I decided to speak up on my own.

“Listen, we can catch up later as we are all stuck here anyways. I know you must have a lot of questions but please wait. Right now I need you to tell me everything important about this place. Leave nothing out, especially details about monsters and whatever this ‘entity’ is.”

He looked reluctant so I took it up a notch. “Buddy I am excited to see you too, believe me I am, but I have another friend I mistakenly brought here with me and I need to know how much in danger she is in ASAP!”

His eyes went wide at the mention of someone else being with me, that too a girl! He had always been the type to be protective of girls and I knew this revelation would push his buttons. It worked, as he immediately started speaking…

“Oh boy! Okay okay, let’s see. Oh! You won’t believe the shit we are in right now Ben! You remember Perry don’t you?” I nodded, Perry was a friend of ours, though I had no idea why he would start off his explanation of ‘everything dangerous’ with the mention of that guy.

“It’s terrible man! We all got the message of how we were stuck in here and we couldn’t decide on what to do. In the end we came to a decision to send Perry to fight off the ‘entity’ by using his unique ability! He was the most powerful one of us all after all. But it all got messed up! The ‘entity’ had some sort of hypnosis ability and ‘it’ took control of Perry! We all barely escaped both ‘it’ and Perry and we have been in a terrible state ever since!”

…..

Okay… A whole lot of speaking but not a lot of information. Typical James. I’m going to have to break it down myself to extract information from him… The most pressing questions on my mind were descriptions about this ‘entity’ and Perry’s unique ability. I decided to ask about Perry’s ability first…

“What was Perry’s ability that you guys made him fight this ‘entity’ all by himself?” It had to have been a powerful ability after all.

“No, he wasn’t fighting all alone! A lot of us gave our abilities to him while the rest of us, me included, fought alongside him! But ‘it’ still has control over Perry and so many of us lost our abilities in the process too!”

Again… no useful information. Dammit, this whole conversation is going to take a while. And what’s this about them ‘giving’ their abilities to him…?

“His ability James, what is his ability?!”

“Oh, right. It is a unique ability called ‘Steal’....”

____________________________

Author's note: 

Oh, that has to be unexpected (I hope...)

In case anyone is thinking 'this sucks I wanted a super-evil villain with steal not a friend which the MC will now have to save'... I'll just remind you of Ben's personality and ask you to think again....

Please do point out any mistakes you see, thanks!

Also, thank you SO MUCH for all the support so far! It has been incredible to see 750+ followers and 180+ favourites! I simply cannot thank you enough for all your support! :)