“You’re fucking useless, you know that?” I looked Solomon up and down in irritation.

“You’re one to talk, you last-place bastard. Shut the hell up and tell me what’s been going on. You look like something the cat dragged in.” Solomon complained rudely before shoving a spoonful of food into his mouth.

“Should I shut up or tell you? Pick one, Nova.”

At his angry glare, I laughed before getting serious.

“I don’t know why you’re getting pissy when we’re the ones who got sent into a trap. Lionel’s a mimic; I analyzed and saw the details. You missed something, and you almost got us killed.”

“There’s no way I made a mistake.” Solomon immediately rejected my words.

“You did. Either you missed something while wearing the cuffs -”

“Impossible. Even if I were restricted, I would have known.”

“How?”

“I just would have, okay?”

Ignoring his nonsense, I reiterated my words.

“Unless you can give me a concrete reason as to why it’s impossible for you to make a mistake, I’m going to need you to take this overconfidence of yours and shove it. You were the one who showed me how their status could change, and as far as I know, you’re not a mimic expert. So either you missed something while you had the cuffs on, or after meeting you, the real Lionel got attacked and taken over…”

“Just trust me when I say that it’s impossible for me to make a mistake. And Lionel being taken over? Also impossible. Even if the heroes attacked him, Lionel wouldn’t go down without a fight. Everyone on the island would see or hear the damage. Trust me.”

“I don’t trust you. So explain.” I told him blandly.

Solomon glanced at me before sighing in exasperation.

“My eyes are very good. Yours are decent, and you have a similar skill, so let’s have a pop quiz. What’s the difference between ‘Analyze’ and ’Scan’?”

“Is there a difference? I assume they more or less do the same thing.”

“Errrr. Wrong answer. This is why I hate people who don’t understand their own abilities and the reason why I call you trash.”

Ignoring his insults, I arched my brow at him, “Since you’re so smart, explain.”

“Analyze simply reads the details of an object or a person’s status. Basically, what they see is what you see. But Scan operates a little differently. It can do what Analyze does, but one of its added bonuses is letting me observe and store every little detail at the current state of the scan. That way, the next time I scan something, I can see the difference between the last scan and this one. Even if someone is overtaken by a mimic, as long as I have a previous scan of them, there’s bound to be a change, no matter how small, and I’ll notice it.”

“I thought you said the difference couldn’t be spotted? You lied.” I narrowed my eyes at him.

“I didn’t lie. If you don’t have my eyes, my brain, and my abilities, you can’t tell, as the difference is minute. Besides, I don’t have to tell you everything I know.”

“Huh.” I stared at him blankly, “Is that why you scan people constantly?”

“What, you think I go around scanning people just for shits and giggles?” at his mocking smile, I just rolled my eyes at him. Cocky bastard.

“No, I think you do it to be annoying.”

“Well, that’s just an added bonus. Either way, just know I scanned Lionel, and it was him that I spoke to.”

“Fine. Let’s say I believe you. If it was the real Lionel, that means we have the third scenario, which is the worst-case scenario.”

“He’s in on it with them, and they swapped when I left. Fuck.” Solomon grimaced before continuing to shove food into his mouth.

“So you believe me?”

As he stared at me, his crystal eyes flashing as he scanned me once more, he looked completely annoyed.

“I believe myself, so I guess your words are true. I’m assuming this area was more difficult than I described?”

“2 giant C-ranked spiders and a C-ranked mimic in the form of Lionel who was not only unhelpful, he was actively causing problems. I’m surprised my spine isn’t broken, and I’m not dead.”

“You should have just put him down and saved yourself the hassle. An easy bullet to the brain while Julius pins him down would have solved the issue.” at his chilling words, I smiled coldly.

“Not yet. I wanted to see what he was trying to do. He tried to kill me and kept secretly aiming for Julius, so I fucked him up temporarily and seized his sword. It still doesn’t make any sense to me, though. What’s the end goal? Are they trying to just kill as many students as possible or plant spies, or are they looking for something or somebody?”

As I said the last part, Solomon slightly flinched for a moment and if I hadn’t been observing him, I would have missed it.

Interesting. Maybe I could get him to give out some more information.

“Who knows? What else happened?” Solomon quickly changed the subject, and I observed him for a moment before responding.

“We rescued the students as promised, but a couple of the students are mimics. I noted them down, but honestly, it’s probably safe to assume the whole group of them is fucked. I’m not a babysitter, so it truly is not my problem. Someone else can deal with it. Ideally, you.”

“Selfish.”

“Selfish people live longer. Now tell me, what happened to you? You seemed confident when you left. Why did you come back looking like a loser?”

“Watch it. I was scouting around the tower for a bit when I caught sight of the Bluebird woman making a drop-off at the lighthouse and circling back. I was supposed to wait for Killian and Cassandra, but I figured that if worst came to worst, I could escape with minimal damage. So I went for the kill, but then I got fucking blitzed!”

“By who?”

“The guy in the red. Cardinal or Canary or whatever the fuck his name was. I knew he had a bird name, but I thought it was for jokes. Do you know that wanker can fucking fly? With no wings! And do you know what his gifts are? He uses wind and invisible knives. Do you know how annoying that is to fight against at night??? Fuck him! If I didn’t have my eyes and cuffs off, it would have been bad.“ Solomon raged as mana began fluctuating around him again. Seeing him angry and with a slight accent, I burst out laughing.

“Wanker? Are you British or something? Also, can’t you fly? He’s an intermediate hero; why wouldn’t he be able to do the same? ”

“That’s what you’re focused on. Me saying wanker? Really? When I’m telling you they tagged teamed me? Fuck you.”

“To be fair, I also asked about the flying thing, but to summarize, you tried to sneak a hero, got jumped, and then lost the fight. Is that the gist of it?”

“First off, I didn’t lose. I cut off one of her wings, took out an eye, sliced off an arm from the dude, and then beat a strategic retreat when they tried to corner me and even brought back a souvenir. That’s a win in my book. Especially cause they didn’t fight fair. Much better than a particular weakling who almost died to some spiders.”

“Who’s fault was that? You’re the one who gave shitty info. And what the hell is fair when you’re in a fight? If given the opportunity and the numbers, I would jump you as well. Also, it’s not a win. Both of them are still alive; you’ve now alerted them that you’re at full power and are completely aware that something is going on, and you’ve given them time to prepare or push forward their plans.”

“That’s the point, dumbass. I need them to rush what they’re doing and for this to be done with. I’m tired of going back and forth on this stupid island, I’m tired of protecting weaklings, and I’m tired of being injured. It’s easier to just kill them all and figure out what the plan is later. Plus, the students are pretty strong, at least for the nine clan kids that are here. If all of us split up between the tower and lighthouse, we can take them while you lot of weaklings hide.”

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“I don’t think that’s enough people, and you’re making a lot of assumptions about how many people you have to go against and their strength.” I glared at him when he began to protest, counting off on my fingers.

“You don’t know how many there are, what their abilities are, and what they’re aiming for. You tried to sneak one and still had to run away without being able to kill her. Assuming the worst of everything, meaning Lionel is not on our side and over half the students are taken over as mimics, we’re in a fucking bad spot. You, our strongest hitter, have been injured and exposed. Evelynn is out for the foreseeable future due to injury. And I don’t know about the rest of you nine clan kids.”

“What happened to Evelynn?” Solomon interrupted.

“The same thing that will happen to you if you keep interrupting me. Close your mouth with food and open your fucking ears to listen.”

“Watch your tone brat.”

“Back to what I was saying, you’re injured and exposed, Lionel (traitor?), and Evelynn is out for the count. That’s 3/8 compromised people.”

“Even so, I injured both Bluebird and Red Leather Suit, and I haven’t spotted any additional people. In the best-case scenario, their attack power is almost cut in half. The mimics are just easy money, especially if you round them up and let Julius go crazy.”

“I don’t believe in best-case scenarios, only bad ones. Assuming that Swallow,that’s her name, not Bluebird asshole. But assuming she somehow gets healed to full strength, she and Robin know your skill set and will be prepared next time. If Captain Merlin didn’t come to aid them, we could assume she’s either at the lighthouse or being kept busy doing something we don’t know about. Additionally, there have to be insiders, either in the academy staff or among students, who are aiding them apart from Lionel. There’s no way they planned this without insider information. There could also be somebody in the lighthouse who’s releasing the mimics and doing something to the students they drop off there.”

“So? Who cares?”

“Who cares, my ass. We don’t know why the barriers are up, where and why the mimics are here, and what the hell is going on with Lionel or what their doing in the lighthouse. I think it would be very stupid to go in without doing a bit more investigation and without a plan.”

“You sound like Cassandra right now. She keeps complaining that she needs more time to investigate.” Solomon muttered.

“Well, Cassandra sounds like a genius compared to the bullshit coming out of your mouth.”

At my words, Solomon’s eyes flashed, and the mana around him began bubbling.

“Listen, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m not one for planning, and I don’t really need it, so take your nonsense and shove it, Mr. Worst-Case-Scenario. I’m going to take a nap, and when I wake up, I’m going to go kill that mimic bastard imitating Lionel before heading to the lighthouse with Killian and Lina to fuck Bluebird and Red Leather suit and any other Darwinist bastard that I see, get the communicators working, and take down the barrier. Cassandra and the others can tackle the lighthouse. It won’t be too late to investigate when this is over, and the professors are here.”

“Then what’s your plan for the real Lionel? Aren’t you curious why he’s possibly working with the Darwinists or why he’s being imitated by a mimic?”

“I plan on playing the Lionel situation by ear and questioning him later. Besides, they’ve only been targeting regular students anyway since they know that if they touch one of us nine clan kids, it would be an automatic death sentence. So we’ll be safe, but the rest of you are screwed. Sucks to suck.” Solomon shrugged carelessly.

“That is such a stupid assumption. We need to scout and discuss things with everybody before we make a move. We can’t just go in blind.”

“I’m strong enough without doing all that, and if a weakling like you or the others die, then you die., I don’t care. I’ve told you what I’m doing. Deal with it.”

Staring at the arrogant boy in front of me, I really wanted to shoot him in the mouth. Repeatedly. As somebody who believed in measuring ten fucking times before cutting, this freestyling was really not my style, and clearly, it wasn’t working completely.

But seeing his angry eyes daring me to say something, I gave him a gentle smile while pulling out my gun.

“Fine. Before you do that, as penance for your mistake, dispose of that wing and go take care of all the mimic students. Tie them up, kill them, I don’t care. Here’s a list.” I handed him a paper with the information written on it.

“I’m injured.” He held his arm out pointedly.

“You seem energetic enough to me. If you don’t want to, then pay up. If I tally the false info you gave me, the risk to my life, the meal you ate, the treatment you received, the labor costs, and having to listen to your bullshit, it totals, oh, let’s just say even 25000 points.”

“Hell no, that’s half my points. Are you on drugs?”

“I’m not, but I’m in a nasty mood right now and really tempted to shoot that arm of yours. Pay up or go work.”

“Hell no.”

“Okay. Bring that arm here, then. Clearly, you don’t want that splint. And cough up the food you ate.“

“If you touch me, I’ll blow your head off.”

Staring at him, I created a barrier in front of me while pointing my gun at him.

“It seems we’re at an impasse, and you’re suspiciously defensive and seem to want a fight. It makes me want to pin you down and question you.”

“Heh, I’d like to see you try.”

“If you want. I’m pretty confident in surviving you until Julius gets here. Shall we give it a try, Nova?”

“I don’t know if you think just because I’ve been nice to you, I really won’t kill you, you damn brat. I gave you a bit of leeway because your skills are not bad, but the arrogant way you’ve been speaking to me really pisses me off. It seems I need to teach you a lesson.”

Solomon slowly stood up, the mana around him forming spears pointed at me.

Smiling at him as I did the same, forcing my mana to create the same amount of spears as him. Although my spears were much smaller and less packed with mana, I didn’t back down.

“If you touch me, I’m going to blow your brains out,” I warned him while crafting high-rank bullets in the gun.”

“Try it.” Solomon let out a crazed smile before releasing the spears.

I shot my gun twice into the air before leaping backward, barely dodging the barrage of mana spears that flew straight at where I was previously standing and shattered my barrier. Launching my own spears, I quickly tried to distance myself before creating another barrier.

Solomon immediately dashed towards me, easily deflecting the spears with a compact mana shield that only covered his body while another barrage of spears flew toward me. Quickly modifying my barrier to imitate his, I dashed off to the side while shooting explosive bullets at the ground near his feet, throwing up a cloud of dust and debris.

At the loud noise, Onyx woke up with a start and transformed into a large wolf-like creature, dashing at Solomon with a loud howl.

As the mimic tried to jump and bite Solomon, thick mana chains appeared and tied the mimic up before tying it down to the ground. It tried to change forms into something bigger and then tiny, but the chains continued holding it tightly despite the forms it took.

Almost immediately, Solomon appeared in front of me, his mana-covered, uninjured hand smashing through the barrier with ease and gripping my throat and began squeezing.

“Shall I show you how I ripped that wing off the hero? Though I think your neck is a little more fragile than that.” Solomon asked, his mana-covered fingers digging into my throat until I felt blood dripping down while my feet dangling in the air.

Trying to Craft a barrier between his hands and my throat to help release the pressure, I gasped as he flexed his fingers, and it shattered causing a jolt of pain to shoot through my head.

Fine. A one-on-one confrontation wouldn’t work on this overly strong bastard, but I couldn’t just eat a loss without making him a little afraid.

I quickly held my hands up and dropped my gun.

“Fine. I give up. Your win. My bad. Onyx, stand down” I gasped out while observing him carefully. Mentally ordering Onyx to settle down mentally into a small shape, I relaxed my body until it hung limply while keeping my hands loose by my side.

“That’s what I thought. Good effort, though, considering your rank. I knew your skills weren’t too bad.” Solomon praised me with a cocky smile.

The moment he relaxed his hand slightly, I crafted two knives imbued with Incorporeal and flicked one directly at his eyes.

The moment he flinched slightly while creating a small barrier, I activated Incorporeal and dropped to the ground, rolling away before I dashed toward Onyx. Becoming temporarily solid, I touched the little mimic, and activated Incorporeal while creating a barrier and shield behind. Knowing it wouldn’t last, I rolled to the side, ignoring the burst of pain that shot through my head as they were broken, I focused on crafting a gun and another barrier.

As solomon turned to charge at me, a ball of fire immediately flew toward where Solomon was while a flame-covered figure charged in front of me like a cannonball.

Julius appeared, waving his hand and causing a line of flames to separate Solomon and me. As he stood there, Onyx transformed back into a gorilla-like form, beating its chest angrily.

“What the hell, Nova, Kid?” Julius growled as the flames around his body died down, revealing his boxer-clad body.

The smoke swiftly cleared, revealing Solomon looking irritated while holding the knife in his hands. His crystal blue eyes flashed angrily as multiple mana spears kept appearing behind him, all pointed at me.

“Move Crimson. I’m going to teach that little punk a lesson.”

“Don’t start. Now is not the time or place for this. If you want to fight, let’s do so when we get back. Not now, with enemies all around. We need every man we have. And the kid is useful.” Julius replied calmly, the line of fire growing taller and turning a deep dark blue that was almost purple.

Even from where I stood, the heat coming from the flames was so intense that my skin felt as if it were burning.

Seeing that he was serious, Solomon sighed before releasing the spears and grumbling childishly.“I can’t believe you’re protecting him. You know he tried to blind me. My eyes are my best feature.”

“And you tried to break my neck. I think we’re even.” I gave him a dark smile while carefully making sure I was completely behind Julius.

“You and your fucking guard dog.” Solomon spat out. Seeing his irritation, I smiled even wider. Truly, Julius was a treasure to have.

“He’s very useful, isn’t he? Now, shoo shoo, go deal with the mess you caused. And make sure you sleep away from us while keeping mimic Lionel tied down. Don’t kill him. Not until we investigate what’s going on.”

“I’m just going to kill him and throw its head at your body. Also, you keep saying ‘we’ as if you’re involved in what’s happening. After that stunt you pulled, you’re not needed anymore. ”

“First of all, what is with you and delivering chopped-off body parts as a trophy? Are you a fucking cat?” Julius snorted in laughter, ignoring the pissed-off look Solomon shot at him as I continued.

“Secondly, you dragged me into this nonsense, and now you’re kicking me out? Why? Because I want to investigate? Don’t tell me you know what those Darwininst are up to, and you’re trying to cover it up because of Lionel? Are you an accomplice, Solomon? Do you know what’s going on at the lighthouse?”

Hearing my question, he flinched slightly once more before glaring.

“I’m not an accomplice. Why would I aid those fucking Darwinist losers? Since you want to investigate so much, why don’t you grab the real Lionel and torture the info out of him.“

“Why don’t you do it? If you can safely survive Basil Lionheart after torturing his son and causing a war between your two families, I’ll kneel and call you big bro.”

“Pussy.”

“I’ll also visit your grave and place flowers on it. The biggest bouquet I can buy. Or steal. Those things are quite expensive you know.”

We stared at each other before he clicked his tongue and looked away.

“I’m going to go kill that damn mimic.”

“Don’t kill him until I have an opportunity to scout the lighthouse. Afterward, you can do whatever you want.”

“No. He’s dying after I take my nap. And if I catch you trying to sneak into that lighthouse, even Crimson won’t be able to save you. I’ll rip your head off immediately”

“Nova,” Julius called out warningly, a wave of heat spreading out around him.

“Shut up Crimson. I know.”

As if it was a signal, Solomon pointed his fingers far off in the distance before whispering ‘bang’.

I saw a small flash of lightning, and a blurry figure just out of my sight disappeared.

“Who the hell was that?”

Neither of them answered my question and I turned back to look at Solomon questioningly.

As the two of us stared at each other in tense silence, Julius sighed before speaking up.

“I think you should get moving and stop causing trouble, Nova. Knowing you, you probably started messing with the kid first. Let’s meet up later and decide what we’re doing.”

“I can’t believe you’re taking his side. I’m supposed to be your childhood best friend.” Solomon replied sullenly.

“Didn’t you already revoke that? Get going. You’re disturbing my rest.” Julius sent a small burst of flames at Solomon, which was easily blocked by a barrier.

“Yes, get going, Nova. Remember to take care of the mimic students,” I mocked him with a wide smile even though my mind was still on that shadowy figure. Seeing that the two of them were calm about it, it meant it was a student and someone in the know about the situation.

Thinking about the most likely culprits narrowed it down to Killian and Cassandra.

Interesting.

Clicking his tongue once more, Solomon rolled his eyes at me.

“You better watch yourself once this is over. And don’t go near the lighthouse. You couldn’t even detect when someone was spying on us, and you wanted to go investigate? If you want to die early, just say so. Also, give me a plate of food to go. I’m still hungry.”

“Get it yourself and transfer the points to Julius. 1000 points per plate. I know you have them.”

“Tsk.”

As Solomon got a plate and picked up the wing with mana, I waved absentmindedly at him. I wanted him to hurry up and leave so I could take a look at the lighthouse.

As Solomon was about to leave, he turned and smirked at me while waving my knife in his free hand.

“Nifty trick, creating weapons on the fly. I’ll be keeping this. It’s a nice souvenir.”

“Nope.”

I immediately canceled the knife, and it disappeared from his hands. Solomon blinked before continuing to smile knowingly at me.

“Ah, I was wondering if it was permanent. Well, I guess this will just have to do for my souvenir then.” He reached into his splint and pulled out a watch while staring pointedly at my wrist. I glanced down at my now empty wrist before narrowing my eyes at him.

When had he taken it?

Solomon whistled cheerfully as he browsed through my watch before putting it on his wrist. “Wow, you have so many points. Rightio, I’ll be taking that. Thanks for your contribution to putting me solely at number one.”

“You fucker.”

“Heh. Anyways. I had fun. Let’s do this again when you’re a bit stronger. See you later, Crimson. Keep an eye out.” Waving without looking back, Solomon continued walking away, carrying his plate, the wing, and my hard-earned points.

That fucking bastard.

I would definitely stick his cuffs back on him before the exam was done.

And I needed to get my watch back.

As I watched him walking away, Julius turned back to look at me with an arched brow. “What the hell was that? You picked a fight with Nova? Why?”

“It’s a long story. Are you going to tell me who that was just now?” I sighed before going to pick up Onyx. It quickly turned into its neutral blob shape and promptly fell back asleep in my hands.

“Nope. If you didn’t see them, that’s on you.” He grinned at me, “But I have time for a long story. And I’m hungry. Explain while I eat.”