“You want a job?” Lina asked in surprise.

“Yes,” he replied firmly. “I recently lost a job due to… personal issues, so now I don’t have a job and since I’m a super human, I’d like to join a guild and earn an income.”

“I see,” she said with a thoughtful look on her face.

Just then, a waiter came over carrying two trays full of the things they had previously ordered.

“Here we are, sir and madam,” she told them cheerfully.

“Thank you,” said Zayden as she placed them down in front of them gently.

“Enjoy your meal,” she wished them happily and left

At that moment, the two of them were sitting inside a fancy restaurant that looked like it was built to welcome rich customers

The previous night, Zayden had requested to meet up with her personally to discuss something and she designated a restaurant that of her choice. Satisfied with the time of which the meeting was to be held, he ended the call with a determined expression.

The next day, he got ready and while leaving the apartment, he ran into the other inhabitants and noticed the fearful looks they threw his way. From Zayden’s memories, Asura knew they never once glanced his way or even looked at him like he was some sort of cockroach. However, ever since he displayed his superiority against their bullies, they developed a fear towards him.

“Works for me,” he thought as he did not change anything as he departed from the apartment.

Getting to the designated place took him several minutes by walking as he did not have much money to spend. At first, he did not recognise the place and had to look it up using the phone device’s navigation program and turned out it was about an-hour walking distance from the apartment. This would mean, he would arrive fifteen minutes late to the set meeting time.

“I better hurry,” he muttered with a serious face.

As such, he set the directions on the phone and began jogging towards the destination by following the indications shown on the phone. This way, he arrived just over thirty-minutes later with a few minutes to spare before the meeting time.

“This is… so… annoying…” he said while gasping for a breath.

As he bent down while holding his knees to catch his breath, he heard a familiar voice say, “What happened to you, Zayden?”

He looked up while breathing heavily to see Lina standing there wearing a beautiful outfit and looking glamorous. She was looking at him with a surprised expression on her face as she did not quite understand why he was breathing so heavily.

“Did you run all the way here or something?” She asked, guessing it right.

“I…” he began wheezing.

“Oh no. I should’ve come and picked you up,” she said, realising in an instant what had happened. “I feel silly. Sorry, Zayden.”

“It’s okay. There’s no need to… apologise,” he said as he finally caught his breath and straightened up.

“But you clearly ran all the way because you didn’t have funds to spend,” she said with a saddened look.

He shrugged his shoulders with a faint smile and indicated at the door while saying, “Let’s go in.”

Together, they entered the premises and were warmly welcomed by two ladies wearing cute outfits. Asura was amazed that the ladies in this world would be willing to wear this kind of clothing, which were maid outfits with animal ears and tails to make it look like they were beast-men.

“I couldn’t imagine that prideful and brutish clan ever wearing these kinds of clothing and greeting people so warmly,” he thought to himself wryly.

They led them towards a spot to sit and handed out a menu each for them to peruse through. Asura was momentarily amazed to see the kinds of food items they apparent serve in this restaurant, but that emotion instantly switched to horror the moment his eyes laid upon their individual prices.

“So expensive!” He exclaimed to himself. “Do people actually spend so much to eat this stuff?!”

He looked up from his menu to look at Lina, who was silently going through the menu and flipped through the pages. Then she put it down and began to order the food that she wanted from the menu.

With each order she gave, he immediately went through the menu and was astounded by their prices. Once she finished giving out her order, he summed the total cost and he realised he had just enough to pay for the order, which was the amount Zayden had worked for an entire month to save.

“Zayden, place an order,” she said and indicated at him.

As the waiter readied the device in her hand to input his order, he hesitated. The previous night, Asura had gone through his belongings and found the money Zayden had stashed away for safe keeping. The reason he did was because he wanted to treat her, however now having only the amount enough to pay for the bill, he decided to forgo ordering anything from there.

“Ah, I’m okay,” he said and put the menu down pleasantly. “I had a bit too much breakfast and a full.”

This surprised her momentarily before a knowing look appeared on her face and she made an order in his behalf. He was stunned and tried to stop her, but she waved her hand at him to stop and continued giving out the order.

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“We’ll bring them out to you soon, sir and madam,” the waiter said happily and walked away.

“Ah. No. Wait,” Zayden began and stretched out his arm to stop her.

“Calm down, Zayden,” said Lina with a smile.

“Why did you order for me? I told you I had a bit too much breakfast,” he told her indignantly.

For a moment, she looked at him with a smile and asked, “Do you see a flower on my ear?”

“What?”

“Do you think I’m stupid to not realise your intentions?”

He blinked in surprise, not realising she had fully understood his thought process.

“Zayden, do you think I called you to this restaurant to make you pay for the food?” He looked up at her in surprise as she continued to say, “I’m not like those other women that make men pay for my food. In fact, I don’t know what self-respecting woman would want any man to pay for her meal unless it’s her partner or she was invited. So, relax and let me pay for the meal.”

“What? Even mine?” He asked in surprise. “It’s okay. I can pay for it.”

“No, I will pay since I invited you here,” she told him much to his surprise. Then she began scolding him with, “Also, didn’t I tell you to accept my generosity without questions?”

“But… this isn’t right,” he said defensively. “I wanted to speak with you—”

“—and I set the designated location for our meeting,” she finished while cutting him off. “In the end, I invited you here so that we can talk together. As such, it’s my invitation and I will pay. Very simple, right?”

She smiled happily at him while he looked at her with a baffled expression on his face. Asura was not sure how the real Zayden would feel about this because he himself was never usually at the forefront of someone else’s generosity.

In fact, each step of the way in his life, he fought for it as his enemies never went easy on him and even went so far as to try and wipe them out. That was the entire reason why Asura and his clansmen waged a global war against all the clansmen around the world to unite it once and for all. So, he was unfamiliar to this giving nature of somebody else when he was the one usually giving.

“Why are you thinking about it so hard?” Lina asked him with a serene smile. “I have no bad intentions from doing this. I just felt you deserve it, so just accept it. Please.”

He looked at her and his magic detected the sincerity in her voice and finally gave in.

“Alright,” he said and smiled faintly at her, and she beamed joyfully at him.

That was how they arrived at the conversation where Zayden was asking for a job request.

“I can try getting you a job at our guild,” she began thoughtfully.

“Oh no, I didn’t mean your guild specifically,” he said quickly. “I just needed to be pointed in the right direction to which guilds I should apply for a job. I don’t want to get a job through back door deals.”

She reacted by blinking in surprise before smiling and saying, “I understand, but what I’m saying is I’ll try to get you a job at our guild but there are no promises. If that doesn’t work out, we can look elsewhere.”

“Is there any reason you’re pointing me towards your guild?” He asked curiously.

“Well…” she began and smiled sheepishly. “Admittedly, we are understaffed at the moment.”

He was surprised by this and asked, “Understaffed? How could Beserkers be understaffed?”

Beserkers guild was one of the top guilds in their country and for them to be understaffed is a shocking fact.

“It’s true because most of our members are super heroes and that’s why we’re understaffed. Actually, we even put up a recruitment ad for people looking for a desk job.”

As she said, she opened her hand bag and rummaged through it before pulling out a piece of paper. She handed it to him, where he saw a brilliant and colourful advertisement requesting for anyone in the general public possessing the required skills to have a desk job and the salary was highly paid.

“I’m guessing a lot of people have applied for it?” He asked after looking through.

“About that…” she began hesitantly, and he looked up to see her with a disgruntled expression. “Most of the job applications we received were requesting to become a super hero.”

“Huh?” He reacted while blinking in surprise.

“It’s true since it’s one of the highest paid jobs right now,” she said gloomily.

“Oh. I can see why people are applying for it then,” he admitted with a nod.

There was a moment of silence between them before she looked at him and asked, “Do you want to become a super hero as well?”

“A super hero? Me?” He asked in surprise, and she nodded in assent. “I don’t know. To be honest, I don’t believe all that ‘fighting for justice’ thing suits me that well.”

He was not Zayden, he was Asura and his past weighs heavily on his shoulders as a rule that had waged wars across the world that resulted in so many deaths he had lost count. By the end of it all, he had achieved what he had set out to do, but the loss of so many lives by his hands weighs heavily on his conscience.

Lina noticed the gloomy expression on his face and said, “I don’t know what you’re worried about, but I think it suits you well. You did save me from Web Raider yesterday, remember?”

“That was just one instance where the circumstances went my way, but I don’t know about the future,” he said while lowering his head. Then he looked down at his hands and said, “First and fore most, I am weak. Terribly weak. I wouldn’t be able to save anyone, not like this.”

“You saved me,” she said, and he looked at her in surprise. She smiled and said, “You saved me with that strength of yours. Besides, I’ve seen how diligent you are from the amount of hard work you are willing to put to get stronger.”

She was referring to the time at the hospital, where he had delinquently trained his body without rest. At first, she was worried he was overexerting himself, but when she saw the sheer desperation at which he pushed himself so hard, she did not stop him but watched over him just in case he hurts himself.

He smiled feebly and said, “Thanks for having faith in me, but I’m just not sure.”

“Well, we wouldn’t know until you try it out,” she said with a smile, “but before that, I think you should gain experience working for the super heroes, see what kind of work they do, what their day to day lives look like and then decide for yourself whether you want to do it or not.”

Asura was surprised by her suggestion as it sounded good, so he asked, “I guess this would mean I should apply for a desk job at your guild.”

She nodded in assent and asked, “So, what’s your education qualification?”

“I’m currently on my final term studying for my bachelors in business and economics.”

This caught her off guard as she asked, “Wow. Business and economics? Were you wanting to become an accountant or something?”

“I wasn’t sure,” he said, which was the truth.

His memories of Zayden showed Zayden being unsure what to do with his life as he had no one to depend on. The only thing he liked was doing mathematics and seeing that maths was heavily involved in things like business and economics, he felt he would be good at it. That was how he managed to get himself a scholarship to study business and economy.

“Well, you can work part time at our guild and gain experience for your degree. As a bonus, you’d get to put down that you worked for one of the top guilds in our country. That’ll surely help your future prospectives if you don’t want to become a super hero.”

“That’s… true,” he began in amazement, “but you told me just earlier you can’t make promises about giving me a job at your guild.”

She chuckled and said, “I did, but we are understaffed so I’m sure you’ll get hired relatively easy.”

He smiled faintly at her and said, “You’re quite optimistic.”

“In world diving head first into chaos, things like optimism become a virtue,” she said with a small smile. Then she shook her head and said, “Anyway, let’s finish our meal and I’ll take you to our guild.”

“Wait? Now?” He reacted in surprise. “Don’t we need a prior appointment?”

“Usually, that’d be the case but you’re with me, so it’s fine,” she said and grinned brightly.

He blinked in surprise and asked, “Is that okay…?”

“It’ll be fine. Now, let’s quickly finish eating and head on our way,” she said cheerfully, and the two of them began eating the food in earnest.