When morning came Peter was prepared to return to his usual activities. He didn't feel tired at all so it really wasn't an issue to act like nothing happened. He finished what he started the previous day and went on his usual walk.
[Achievement unlocked: Strength training 2/5]
[Achievement unlocked: Agility training 2/5]
[Total rewards: STR +0.15, AGI +0.15]
The day went by uneventfully until Sarah suddenly disappeared while they were walking through the city. Peter was worried sick and ran around the surrounding blocks, trying to find her.
She appeared after about ten minutes, acting like she was there the whole time. She got an earful at home about not running off alone and how she scared everyone with that stunt she pulled.
Meanwhile Anthony was not only tired at work, which was becoming a common occurrence, but he was also fuming with anger after a long and loud argument with his boss. The short of it was that the prime minister would hold a press conference and he wasn't allowed to go.
The reason he wanted to go and the reason his boss didn't want him to go were exactly the same. He would go there only to yell at the man.
It was understandable why he wanted to do so. The prime minister was the only person in the government with any actual weight behind his words, which also made him the only person who could be meaningfully criticized. It was pointless to argue with the other empty suits.
Back home he had to put his anger aside because the kids were being weird again. This time it wasn't their behavior that was the problem but their appearance.
Peter was the less concerning case but that didn't mean he was fine. His hair started to darken, which could have been overlooked if his nails, and to a lesser degree his eyes, weren't doing the same thing.
Sarah was a different story altogether. Although she seemingly recovered from the flu, the dry skin she got because of it didn't go away and was visibly worsening in some spots. Some additional problems were a rapidly dropping body temperature and a really slow heartbeat.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
The two were rushed to the nearest hospital to get a doctor's opinion, but the professionals didn't seem entirely sure what was going on. The two seemed to be just fine even though one's condition would usually result in a coma.
They did tests for various illnesses, even for some that were extinct, but all of them came back with a negative result. They also got someone with a healing ability to try treating them. It was doing nothing for Peter and was visibly hurting Sarah so that idea was also discarded.
The doctor's final conclusion was that the situation either had something to do with the children's special condition or with the overly sterile environment they were living in not too long ago. Most likely a combination of the two.
Since no one at the hospital had seen anything similar all they could do was monitor the two's health through regular check-ups and prepare some emergency measures, in case this turned out to be a serious problem.
The two children were mostly surprised by the change in each other's appearance, since they had a pretty good idea of what was happening to them. They kind of felt bad about not telling anyone but they also had an unspoken agreement to keep quiet about each other.
In the next three days Peter would continue to go out at night to fight. He was staring to get the hang of things and became comfortable with beating up people and talking with police officers afterwards. This occupation was also proving to be beneficial financially since he had more than a hundred UC on his account, even after the week's upkeep payment.
If everything went well he would soon be strong enough to go after some better paying targets without much risk to his health.
[Successfully absorbed class 2 regeneration blessing.]
[Result: END +0.05, STA +0.05, MGC +0.02, EXP +20]
[Successfully absorbed class 1 strength blessing.]
[Result: STR +0.05, MGC +0.01, EXP +10]
[Successfully absorbed class 3 all around blessing.]
[Result: All physical attributes +0.05, MGC +0.01, EXP +30]
Everything seemed to be going perfectly. At this point Peter didn't know how much attention he was drawing on himself. He wasn't doing so intentionally and from a certain perspective it wasn't even him who was drawing the attention, but he was the one who would ultimately have to deal with it.
The rulers in this small corner of the world finally noticed the novice bounty hunter and his allies. All three of them had their opinions about him and were ready to take him seriously. In the grand scheme of things, these people were nothing special. But they would, however, play a big part in how our hero would continue his journey.