After eating dinner at a fancy restaurant, Miles walked the two to their cars, he walked back to the train station. Both Mae and Carl had their special chauffeurs, and both offered a ride to Miles, but he refused. He watched them enter their cars, which were transportation orbs, then walked towards the train station.

When Miles was walking alone in the street, Coin talked to his ears. “Why did you freeze when you were watching the game?” Coin wanted to ask earlier, but he couldn’t because there were people around. He could still speak to Miles’s ear, but he didn’t want to disturb him while he was with friends.

Before answering his companion, a certain person surfaced in his mind, “Coin, do you remember Val?”

“How could I forget? She… vanished on us.”

“... I know buddy. But I just remembered the things she always blabbered about. You remember right? Those auras she mentioned. She always sees it in adults. I couldn’t see them no matter how I tried. But in today’s event, I finally felt what she was chattering about.”

That Kai guy — I felt some kind of energy in his last attack. It was like how Val described it. It was like a burning sensation pricking the skin. That's why I froze at that moment.”

“Kai — he used energy in his last attack.” Miles said as he remembered the scene. He never saw arrows take curves like that after they were fired with such great force. For a second, he felt the same energy he used to activate Bloody Orb in Kai’s arm. The energy left his body with the arrows, but there was a thin line between his hands and arrows. When the arrows were about to collide with Hassan’s weapon, they both changed their trajectory. It was magical.

“Oh, are you sure about it?” Coin asked.

“Yeah. It was weird to be honest. When I felt the energy, my heart beat like a galloping horse. Then I—saw the energy move, as Kai willed it. It was unlike how I used it.” Miles explained what he felt.

It was a strange sensation because he didn’t see the energy but felt it. Now that he was thinking about the scene and rewinding it in his head, it was as if he saw it. He could see the energy when he thought about it.

“Energy is a strange phenomenon which I can’t help you with. Whatever it is, it is not something I can feel or observe.” Coin couldn’t help with the matter.

Ever since Miles’s talk with his father, Coin searched for articles related to energy, but they were far and few in between. So, he was helpless on the matter.

“It is okay, buddy. Don’t beat yourself about it. Since we have just started, we will learn as we grow stronger.” Miles appeased Coin.

Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

Soon, he reached the train station and boarded a train. Not long after, he arrived home.

Coin then researched about energy and related subjects for so long but without any result. All clues pointed out the F-Circle. Miles was excited to level up even more now, but he was still weak. Unlike people with superpowers, Miles had to depend on Strengthening Serums to level up to Form-Rank. But it was both money and time consuming. Just the second serum was a million UD. He could earn that much by hunting something big, but he still had to prepare his body for the next stage.

There was also Mind Serum. He was lucky to steal the first Strengthening Serum from his mother, but now that he had to buy it, he needed to work harder.

“I wonder how did mother react when she realized I was the one that stole that serum.” Miles giggled as he slept on his bed.

“Probably wanted to smack you! You are lucky it was after so long she realized it was you.” Coin answered. He was still looking for energy-related articles.

“Miles?” Coin called out for his human companion after noticing some silence.

“Yea, buddy?” Miles felt the difference in Coin’s voice. He was gonna do something dangerous.

“I want you to connect me to Dark UniWeb.” Coin answered after a silence.

“Absolutely not!” Miles spring to his feet from where he was sitting and answered. “Are you out of your mind?”

“I can handle it, I promise!” Coin answered, but Miles wasn’t going to back down. In the first place, Coin’s hardware was still rock bottom. Created by basic materials of Portal World, it was one of the lowest tiered wristwatches. Even its electric battery was too low for regular hunters to use. If Miles wasn’t so poor, he would have upgraded it a long time ago, but he couldn’t. Both him and Coin agreed to invest in Miles first, after all, the stronger Miles was, the more money they could earn.

With his low tier hardware, Coin would be a fish in the ocean despite the coding language he owned in Dark UniWeb. Any shark with strong computing prowess would tear him apart in seconds.

The Dark UniWeb was the platform criminals used to share their knowledge. It was created to counter UniNet founded by Mother AI when she first came to Earth. However, not long after, the Mother AI exposed it and took it down.

Criminals got furious. In the first place, many organizations didn’t want Mother AI to watch over them all day every day through smaller AI wristwatches, but now that their last privacy got stripped away from them, they were furious. It was the start of the biggest riot on Earth.

Starve Cleric and many other criminal organizations rallied millions of people by tricking them about how their freedom was taken away from them and started a war against the government. Because of the common enemy they were sharing, the military wasn’t expecting so many people to attack them. And half of the military personnel were still fighting against monsters and defending borders on Earth.

It was Cruel Heart, and Malcolm’s efforts prevented another world war from starting. Malcolm’s power allowed him to create a domain that nullified an area, and Cruel Heart’s power stripped people of their powers, which allowed the military to win the war with the technology on their side. But that war also reminded them how dangerous superpowers could be and how they would be put in a difficult position.

If it wasn’t for Porseila’s grandfather, Emeric Lemaze, Starve Cleric’s leader would have destroyed the Mother AI. The world would be destroyed. Even though they had failed, the rioters managed to create a system where they could hide from Mother AI’s detection. The Dark UniWeb got resurrected. But even Mother AI couldn’t go there, let alone Coin. Miles would never allow it.

“You are never allowed to take such a risk. Did you forget our agreements?” Miles asked with anger in his voice. “We will see the peak together, neither of us take unnecessary risks!”