“What the…?!”

“Here” a familiar voice talked from behind, and Lawrence miraculously held back the urge to shriek like a damsel in distress. Suspiciously too miraculously, even. He felt a hand tapping his back, and he turned back, as calmed on the outside as thinking ‘what the fuck just happened?!’ inside.

“Quite the trick you have showed me” he said without a trace of the inner turmoil he felt.

Wait, does this something have to do with that Feature… how was it called? Façade? The power to be unreadable. What a convenient skill… Mika’s doesn’t fall behind, though. Was that an Insta-Blink? I’ve heard about that kind of thing, skills that allow you to immediately teleport from one place to another…

…No, that’s not it. According to Mika’s explanation, her power takes her to a parallel B&W dimension… Hmmm…

She also said the way and position she got out from said dimension depended on what she did inside it… So, instead of Insta-Blink, more like, teleporting to a parallel dimension and back. Time passed is ignored, but movement is taken into consideration…

Well, that’s my hypothesis. I have a method to prove whether I’m right or not, anyways.

Sheesh, couldn’t that girl explain it a little better?

…Though, well, mine isn’t exactly an easy-to-understand explanation either, is it?

Wait, a second, let me read it again…

… Wow, I’m amazed I understood it.

Anyways…

“You’re not surprised. That’s cheating! You have to go “waaaah!” like everyone else!”

He almost did, you know?

Lawrence cleared his throat once again, and relaxed on his rocking chair. “Mikaella. What level of education do you have?”

“Highschool, I think? Not pretty good at it. They taught us stuff at the orphanage, but it was hard to care about learning when living was hard enough.”

That’s… fair, actually.

… I’ll have to seriously considerate giving her some home-taught lessons. I can’t really have her go to school, but she can’t stay at that level forever, either… Well, that’s a matter for another day, though.

“You haven’t taken any Meta-Society Studies class, have you?”

“No?” She tilted her head aside. Again, Emma is better at that. “I’m assuming you know nothing of handling oneself’s status, then. Well, we will fix that in another time. For now, let’s make a simple exercise. Extend your hand.”

Like this? Mika did as told… Maybe too enthusiastically.

What’s up with that pose? Are you supposed to be what, a Power Ranger?

“Now summon your status. You know how to do as much, right?”

“Uh, yeah. I’ve seen some stuff, and imagined some other… [Status].”

“As you could have imagined, you are the only one able to see your status… However, there will be some cases in which you want to share your information with others. For cases like these, the Root has implemented the function Toggle, which, in summary, allows other people to see your Status. Just saying the command is fine.”

“Wow, you’re pretty smart, chief…”

Uh, no, that’s actually pretty basic stuff. As in, you can’t even graduate if you don’t know this much?

“[Toggle]”

A hologram-like green window appeared before them, floating in mid-air and showing Mika’s Status.

-----

Villain: Mikaella Brown

[ Status ]

Rank: D

(7) Quests before rank-up

Reputation: None

Feature Points: 1 (Next Feature costs 25 Feature Point)

-You have a Free Feature Voucher

[ Meta-Ability ]

Shadowbender: Enter a dimension of shadows frozen in time for a short time. Distance you traverse in said dimension applies to the real world. (Cooldown, 2min)

[ Features ]

Dark Vision:

- Allows you to see in the dark, and perceive things common eyes can’t

- Pasive skill

Shadow Storage:

- Allows to store an endless amount of items in your Shadow Dimension

- Semi-Passive Skill

[ Quests ]

– First Stain:

Fear! Respect! Appreciation! And more fear! When a villain’s deeds grow famous, so does the villain’s name! And who doesn’t want to see people flicker at the sole mention of his name? And so, it is your turn to make this meek neighborhood to know your name!

Goal: Make your name grow famous around the local area (1%)

Reward: Free Feature Voucher

– Evil Lord’s Right Hand:

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Goal: Gain the respect of your chief (5%)

Reward: 25 Feature Points

– Unparalleled Lackey:

Goal: Help your chief with his evil plans (0/1)

Reward: 50 Feature Points

-----

“Hmmm… I see… You can toggle it off now. The same command will do.”

“[Toggle]”

And the screen disappeared.

Before I comment on anything else, allow me to ask a little question.

Why the hell am I the only one with a weird Status?!

Indeed, as far as Lawrence had seen, Mika’s Status was perfectly normal. In other words, it was his’ that was abnormal. The effects of Joe tampering with his link with the Root were still present… And knowing that God, it would stay like that for a very long time.

Not that he would know any of this.

“As I suspected. A dimension phasing ability that ignores time but still applies to space…”

It wasn’t an Insta-Blink, but it had the same effect… and more. Lawrence’s mind started imagining thousand millions of different ways to use such convenient power. As a fan of fantasy novels, and a game developer (kinda), his already swollen imagination was given quite a big amount of material to work with.

Occultation… And also, a Seven League Boots-like effect. If further trained, it can provide temporal shelter… You could use it to reflect attacks… Also, you can use it to cut through whatever you want via spatial severance… Ohoh, what a convenient power…

I wonder, how should I use this…?

Lawrence was excited. When he had ‘scouted’ Mika (that is, if you could call combining a chain of fortuite coincidences with one heck of a good luck ‘scouting’) he had imagined she would make for a good piece in his (inexistence) plan. Even so, he hadn’t expected something this useful would come right into his hands…

And that is setting her Features aside. Dark Eye per se is already pretty useful in infiltration and retreatment, and this ‘see things others don’t’ sounds… Unspecific in an epic sort of way.

That’s the kind of hidden aces summoned heroes get from Gods, you know?

Somewhere in a realm where nothing is or ceases to be, a mischievous God snickered, stuck out his tongue and winked with a V for victory pose telping “You got me! Tee-hee!”

Why do I get the feeling something incredibly offensive just happened…?

No, nevermind that.

Also, look at this Feature here. Shadow Storage. You can store an infinite amount of items here? Just what kind of sickingly good power is this?

Suddenly, Lawrence remembered something, and almost jumped out of his rocking chair.

“Mikaella.”

“Chief?”

“If you had such convenient powers, how come you got nearly arrested? Because you dropped a stole wallet, no less.”

Mika blushed slightly, ad scratched her check awkwardly.

“I had used the black smoke before, it still wasn’t ready… And I dropped the wallet because I was looking for something else in the black hole backpack thingy…”

Luck really is on my side, huh?

“So, just to make it clear: you have a dimension phase skill, a night vision skill, and a dimensional storage skill. Am I correct?”

“I guess so? I understood half of it.”

Good grief Mika, I’ll have to take your education more seriously than expected.

… Though, it’s also truth that it’s kinda hard to focus on studying when half of the orphanage tries to eat your food…

And half of the others are horny beasts…

…Okay, I’ll give it to her that she’s been doing great so far.

Sigh…

“Nevermind me. Well then…”

Lawrence’s eyes locked on the portable cooler below the coffee table, and an excellent idea came to his mind. The all-too-known figurative lightbulb lit up yet again, wondering if the author would ever let him rest.

I’ve got work to do in other stories, ya know? You’re damn recurrent on using my phrase.

“Mikaellla, follow me. There is something I would like to confirm.”

“Aye…”

What are you, a pirate?

Oh, right, orphanage… Damn you, Lawrence! How many times more are falling on that?

The author was really desperate on filling up the word count, it seemed.

Ducking under the table that was currently working his table-ish duties on… air, Lawrence dragged the cooler out of its ‘corner’ (for those who actually know a bit of geometry, it was actually inscribed), taking a couple of beers out of it.

What a good I thing I always keep this thing supplied. It would be such a catastrophe if one ran out of beers in the Beer Room, right?

…No, it wouldn’t. But I don’t really care.

“Let us pla- Ahem! Test the boundaries of your Shadow Storage for a bit, shall we?”

“Chief, were you just about to say play…? Nah, must’ve been my imagination…

Nice catch, Façade skill!

“Try sneaking this into your Sha… Too long. Storage for short. Try sneaking this into your storage” Lawrence lazily threw the bottle to the air, and Mika, making an excellent demonstration of her survival skill picked up in years of misfortune (shitty parents, man-eaters’ restaurant, dysfunctional orphanage, living in the streets… you know, the usual) picked it up with one single, fluid motion.

…I feel like something was off just now.

…Nah, must’ve been my imagination.

“Excellent.”

And now…

Drinking-beer-and-relaxing time!

Barely managing to suppress a sleazy smile (and he suspected this was thanks to Façade once again) Lawrence opened the bottle with a jagged piece of the cooler that had been purposefully crafted that way, and a sizzling sound greeted him.

There’s no greater joy for a tired man than hearing the ‘tsk’ of a beer bottle opening… except drinking said beer, maybe.

He was doing that now, anyways, so it wasn’t like he cared…

Aaaghh… That’s the stuff…

Now, if only I had cookies… My stash went dry today… I suspect Mika had something to do with this… Hmmm, I’ll talk with Emma about having her resupply it.

More chances to flirt with her.

In the time this all went through his mind, Mika had already dropped the bottle confidently.

A second before she dropped the bottle, something unexpected… or not quite for Lawrence, but still impressing, happened.

With a puff of black smoke, a miniscule dot of darkness appeared below the falling bottle, its texture akin to compressed mist. The next instant, with a pulsation, said dot flattened entirely, and expanded until it was slightly bigger than the area of the bottle. Lawrence later wondered how a 2D figure could appear in a 3D universe, but then remembered crazier things happened within the universe of metas.

Yeah, Pink Cougar literally turns into a pink cougar humanoid… I wonder what her powers do.

As he thought about it, the dimensional crack vanished in a trail of dark mist.

“Well that was a sight to behold” he said, taking another gulp of his bottle.

“Now take it out.”

Mika nodded and stretched out her hand. The storage gate appeared above it, spit out the bottle, and disappeared in a fashionable way once again.

There appears to be no cooldown… Good. Now, let’s test the effective area.

“Have you ever tried to store something that was far from you?”

She sighed and made a gesture with her hand, something like ‘don’t even think about it’. “I did, but it was impossible. Whatever I want to store has to be really close to me. Damn all those lost wallets… ”

“Did you say anything?”

“No?”

“I see… What about the extraction range? Can you take anything out from the storage and away from you?”

Frowning, Mika shook her head and gave Lawrence a questioning look. “Why would I do that?”

Lawrence sighed, using his feet to move the rocking chair. “Listen now, Mikaella. As a meta-human, you have been given possibilities others can’t even dream of having.”

Like me.

Not that he was jealous that she got a cool skill and he didn’t and now wanted to test out her skills as a way to forget his own useful but uncool ones. Not at all.

“I could think of other reasons later, but the main one stands now, and that is: ranged attacks. Smoke grenades to blind your foes, zap mines to paralyze them or even the old marbles trick to make them slip. Being able to place an item from afar without actually touching it is quite the advantage. In fact, comparing it to telekinesis, they are quite close to each other. The con is that you cannot retrieve anything, and the con is that until the moment that object is place, it cannot be disarmed or in any other way tampered with.”

Mika’s eyes widen with each word Lawrence says.

“And as such…”

With his own words, Lawrence’s excitement begins to swell.

This is a skill worth experimenting with… Shadowbender, I’m sure that one has its own unexpected uses as well…

Hahahahah…! I’m looking forward to this experimenting session…

And this time, not even his Façade skill is enough to suppress a grin.

…Well, no, it did. He just grinned mentally.

But who cared? He was just getting started.

And once he was over with this, he would make sure he had one of the most useful minions ever!