Author's note: 

First of all my apologies for not releasing any chapters during the last 2-3 days. The reason is because my elder sister is getting married on the 6th of February. How does this affect me? Well, I am the youngest sibling, plus I no longer have classes due to holidays of a few days, these two facts combined make it so that I am constantly being politely asked (forced) to do A LOT of work! Last few days I barely had any time to relax, let alone write! Thus, I should inform you all not to expect any sort of a release schedule till the 6th. This does not mean I am on a hiatus, it just means that I have no idea if I will be able to write till then, I could get a free day and write 3-4 chapters in a single day, or I could get no free time at all and have no chapters released till the 6th, I just have no idea! That being said, regular chapter release schedule will return from the 7th or 8th of February.

Once again my apologies. Blame it all on my sister!

Let me know of any mistakes in this chapter, as I wrote it in a rush... Hope you like it.

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First thing I did immediately after throwing everyone to the walls was realize how utterly stupid I had been! I had exposed myself in front of everyone on a whim without even checking to see what I was up against!

Cursing myself, I immediately reactivated hiding presence, flew far away from the place I was standing and started floating in mid-air.

Thinking clearly now, first order of business would be to check and see what I was up against. Even if I seriously detest rape and this sex slave stuff, I can’t let it cloud over my judgement again! If these people have powerful abilities I will teleport out of here immediately, and either think of some plan to kill these bastards or if they are too strong then I’ll just have to leave them alone for now.

With that decided, I immediately activated my ability-identification ability and focused it on the boss-woman. She was presumable the one in charge from what I had seen, and there had to be a reason for it. The probability of her having a strong ability is high, so I had to check her first. It took only a couple of seconds for mind-me to start speaking...

Target ability identified. Target has the unique ability: ability-deletion. This ability allows the target to delete the abilities of others permanently by touching them.

……

HOLY SHIT!

Ben you are a fucking idiot! If you ever let stupid things like feelings get in the way of doing the smart thing again, I’ll fucking kill you!

I scolded myself a bit more before finally calming down a bit. I then immediately knocked the boss-woman against the wall once again, this time making sure that she was unconscious! If I had stayed stupid for just a bit longer, the woman could have deleted my ability! Without my ability I would have been as good as dead!

I immediately checked out the abilities of the rest of the men, but they all had the usual abilities like elemental manipulations, healing, enhanced speed etc, but I did spot a guy with telekinesis! I immediately knocked him out too. The only other person with this ability had been Carmen, and I hadn’t absorbed a lot of her blood. This guy though I can suck completely dry!

All the other men posed no threat to me, and they were all under my control through telekinesis, so I turned around and checked the abilities of the women. I may have ‘saved’ them, but if they had good abilities I would obviously have to take them for myself!

I focused in on the girls, who were still standing with blank looks on their faces, and waited for mind-me’s message to come.

Ability identification failed. No ability found.

Huh…?

I tried it on another girl but got the same message, all 8 of the girls all had no abilities. The boss-woman bitch must have taken away their abilities! Hmmm…. But the boss-bitch did mention something about her daughter’s ability…

I focused in on the red-haired girl who was still bound and gagged and activated the identification ability…

Target ability identified. Target has the unique ability: Absolute healing. This ability allows the target to heal, cure or regenerate anything instantly. No matter how serious the injury is, or how deadly the disease is, this ability can heal or cure them.

WOW!!

That is a seriously good ability! It makes my rapid-regeneration and healing abilities look stupid in comparison! I want it!!!

….

….

I calmed down and wiped the drool off my face. Now is not the time to be going on a blood-sucking frenzy on the person you are trying to rescue Ben! Let’s rescue her first and then the absorption can start…

I looked around at all the douchebags still lying around and groaning, and realized something...

Why hadn’t the boss-bitch deleted her ability too? All the other girls had their abilities presumably deleted, so why was this red-haired girl spared? Was the boss-bitch unable to delete unique abilities…? Or did she simply not delete her ability so the men no longer had to hold back…?

I felt my blood boil again at the second possibility, but calmed myself down once more. I approached the red-haired girl and removed her chains and gags and immediately spoke before she had a chance to do anything…

“First of all, calm down. All the men here are under my control, so there is no reason to be afraid. I’m the same guy who appeared a few minutes ago, but I am just invisible right now. I wanted to ask a few questions from you if that’s okay…?”

I was using my new voice-manipulation ability to throw my voice so that I appeared to be speaking from right next to her. Although I was trying to save her, I obviously couldn’t trust her enough to reveal myself to her or to stand too closely to her. Therefore, I was hovering up in the air a few meters away from her and ‘throwing’ my voice in order to speak with her.

She nodded and gestured with her face to ask the questions. Surprisingly, she still had fire in her eyes, and right now all she was doing was glaring angrily at the unconscious body of the boss-bitch.

“I wanted to ask you about your mother’s abili…”

“She’s NOT my mother!” she exclaimed angrily.

...... 

Hmm… so this is the age-old plot of the evil stepmother… Well, it is at least better than the possibility of her own mother doing this to her.

“Stepmother it is th…”

“I’ll say this once only. She isn’t my step-mother, she isn’t my mother, she used to be my mother but she isn’t anymore. I suggest you stop thinking that she is related to me in any way, because as far as I am concerned my mother is no more!”

She once again interrupted me, and she was now glaring at the place where my voice was coming from. Well, the boss-bitch actually is her mother huh…? That is just sick what she did to her own daughter! I think even I won’t do something as horrible if I had a daughter of my own… well, at least I hope I wouldn’t do something like this…

I continued talking to the red-haired girl while I kept control of all the men in the room. I learned her name was Ariel, apparently she had red hair since birth and her dad immediately though of the Little Mermaid when he looked at her, which led to her being named Ariel.

The main points I asked her about was whether boss-bitch could delete unique abilities, whether she could delete in ways other then touching the person and how come a woman was in charge of all the men here. The last point was puzzling, even though boss-bitch had a seriously destructive ability, she could still be overpowered extremely easily by all these men using a combination of their own abilities.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

She answered that she didn’t know whether boss-bitch could delete unique abilities or not as she never bothered to delete her own ability. Boss-bitch could only delete abilities through touch and the reason she was in charge was because she had a group of 12 men who were extremely loyal to her since before the ‘apocalypse’, something about how boss-bitch had saved their lives in some way or another… Boss-bitch used these 12 men and her own ability to stay in charge of everyone here.

Again, this was extremely puzzling to me. Why would ANYONE stay loyal to someone in such circumstances? There was no law and order anymore, and just a feeling of loyalty was in no way strong enough to keep someone safely in charge! I guess the woman must have done other things to ensure she stays in charge, or perhaps she was just the ‘face’ in charge and one of the 12 men were actually in control…? Oh well… who cares…

I also asked Ariel if there was anyone else other then these people in the room, but she answered no. This was something of a gathering done every night and everyone was always present. She then asked me how she knew about boss-bitch’s ability, but I simply told her “I’ll tell you later” and proceeded towards the men…

_______________________

About 5 hours later I was standing in the middle of a pile of seriously mutilated dead bodies, with the only survivors being the 9 girls, the boss-bitch and the telekinesis guy. I had absorbed some blood from others, especially the people who had elemental manipulations, to improve my own abilities but had kept the telekinesis guy and boss-bitch alive as I wanted a lot of their blood!

The last few hours had been… interesting. I started off by slowly burning all the men to death, but Ariel and the other girls stopped me from killing them. They then proceeded to torture every single man in a number of different ways. Skinning them, peeling off their flesh, piercing their eyeballs, cutting off their manhoods, cutting off their ears and nose etc etc…

Ariel was the most surprising and the most brutal of them all! Her ability allowed not only her to heal herself, but also allowed her to heal others. She would cut off all four limbs, ask me to burn them alive to the point of where they were almost dead, or cut open their chest in front of their eyes and stick knives straight into their organs… but she would NEVER allow them to die. She would always heal them up if they showed signs of dying or going unconscious.

She spent almost three hours on boss-bitch alone, though she asked me to control her to make her still so she wouldn’t accidentally touch her and have her ability deleted. I also helped her by controlling knives or blunt objects to cut or hit boss-bitch through telekinesis. Ariel healed her so many times from the brink of death that boss-bitch had gone insane at the end! Apparently she could dish out torture to other girls but couldn’t handle it herself...

Ariel was disappointed that she lasted only for a few hours, and regretted not going more slowly on her.

Frankly, it was all very entertaining for me. I got to enjoy seeing these bastards get what they deserved, and I also learned quite a few valuable lessons on how to hurt someone really badly. All in all, I enjoyed the last few hours of helping out the girls while also drinking some blood from some useful ability holders.

Right now all the girls were lying in a group, exhausted from their ‘work’, but they all also had a sort of satisfied expression on their faces. They had only spared the telekinesis guy and boss-bitch because I asked them to. Although both of them had also suffered their share of the torture, and were alive only thanks to Ariel’s ability.

It was quite a shock to see how powerful Ariel’s ability really was. Even after my regeneration had upgraded to ‘rapid regeneration’, it still took me about 10-15 minutes to regrow a lost hand. I know, I tested it out by cutting my own hand earlier during my travels… But Ariel could regrow other’s limbs in an instant! One second a man would be bleeding to death with all four limbs cut, and the next second he would have all four limbs back! The sight was all the more shocking because the previously cut limbs were still lying around the man’s body… Ariel had actually used this ability to regrow a lot of penises and forced boss-bitch to eat a lot of them in her torture…

Right now though, I was more focused on getting the ability from the telekinesis guy and the boss-bitch. The first thing I did was to drink a lot of blood from the telekinesis guy. The girls were all busy in a corner in their own world, and I was still using hiding presence, so they couldn’t see what I was doing. I kept on drinking his blood from a cut on his neck before I felt him passing out due to blood loss.

I stopped and immediately forced him to drink a bit of blood from the boss-bitch. I wanted to see if drinking her blood would delete his ability. I wasn’t going to take any chances when there was a possibility of me losing my own ability…

I made him swallow a bit of blood from boss-bitch and waited…

…..

…..

…..

A good 20 minutes had passed by and I had been constantly using my ability identification on the telekinesis guy to see if he lost his abilities or not. After all this time he still showed that he had his ability, which was a relief for me.

I then tentatively used a knife to cut boss-bitch once again, taking care not to touch her at all, and drank a drop of her blood. I then waited…

Blood absorption unsuccessful. Unique abilities cannot be absorbed.

WHAT!!!

Fuck this shit!

I drank another few drops of boss bitch’s blood but got the same result again! I tried again and again but got the exact same failure message every single time! DAMMIT! I can’t absorb unique abilities?? What’s with this shit! This seriously seriously affects all my plans! I now can’t even absorb Ariel’s abilities…? FUCK!

In my anger, I started to slowly, very slowly, roast both the telekinesis guy and the boss-bitch using fire-manipulation. Their screams made the girls look up, but all they did was make an approving smile.

I took a deep breath and forced myself to calm down. Just recently I had learned not to let stupid things like emotions get the better of me...

Hmmm… let’s think about this. Sure, the fact that I can’t seem to absorb unique abilities seriously hinders my growth potential, but it isn’t all bad. I still have a lot of other abilities I can use to stay strong, and perhaps I could find some sort of creature or animal or plant who had powerful abilities and absorb their blood..? The dragon and the T-rex came to my mind… Dragons make me paralyzed due to some ability of theirs so it would still be a bit too dangerous for me to face them, but perhaps I could absorb a bit of the T-rex’s blood…? I know I can’t kill that thing right now, but I could make a small cut and try to get a good ability from the dino if it has a good ability…

“Ummm… mister…?”

My thought process was interrupted by the voice of one of the girls. I looked around me once again, ensured that every single guy and the boss-bitch were dead and then finally revealed myself by deactivating my hiding-presence. Apart from Ariel, no one alive in the room had any ability, and Ariel’s ability can’t hurt me so I was no longer in any danger.

I asked, “yes?” while wondering what to do now. Sure, Ariel could be a bit useful with her ability, she could heal me out of some tough spots, but I had just rescued 8 girls who were completely and utterly useless. What do I do with them…?

I could dump them all in some place and leave them be, but that would probably kill them all as they obviously can’t survive on their own. I certainly don’t want to bring them all along with me, neither do I care about them nor do I want all of them slowing me down and potentially putting me in danger. I could dump them all along with some other survivors…? But I don’t know if they would want such useless baggage in their group or even if these girls would want to stay with some strangers…

Once again, my thought process was interrupted by the same girl.

“Umm… If you don’t mind, could you kill us all too..? We don’t want to stay alive any more as we know it will only be a matter of time before we get killed. We aren’t strong enough to kill each other quickly, so we were hoping if you could possibly kill us all in a way that won’t hurt…?”

.......

Well… that certainly simplifies things…