*Ring-ring*

*Ring-ring*

*Ring-ri-click*

"Morning Gramps."

"Good Morning to you too, kid."

"So what's the early morning call for? You want me to come earlier than usual for your training or something?"

"Not exactly. I have something important I need to talk to you about."

"Ohh, and what would that be?"

"It's not particularly something that should be discussed over the phone and rather needs to be talked about in person."

"Alright hang tight, sport, I'll be over in a bit."

"Okay, see you in a minute."

*Click*

My phone call with my grandpa John finished. I put my cell away and turned to Alice, who was keeping me company right next to me, and said. "Alice, gramps will be here in a little while so I can talk with him and get him involved with the meeting we'll have with that vile property owner. In addition to that, because I plan on getting him involved in this meeting of ours, I believe it's time I let him know of the system, the abilities I possess, and my dream of conquering the wasteland."

"Having Grandpa John onboard will be a big help in putting pressure on that bad guy. But besides that, having him a part of our secretive group will make a lot of things you wanted to do for a while a lot easier to accomplish because of the connections and accomplishments he's made in the past when he was an active wasteland explorer."

"Yeah, that's what I was thinking, and knowing him, he will for sure help wherever he can as soon as he learns of my goal. He'll also be a huge asset when we eventually have to tell our parents that we'll be leaving the undercity at the age of 18 for the wasteland. We'll definitely be needing the backup when we confront that particular problem down the line."

"I'm not really looking forward to that conversation, but it will have to happen at some point, so having Grandpa John there to back us up when the time comes will be a great help."

"That he will."

"Going back to you informing him of what we're going to be doing in the future, he'll probably put us through more rigorous training than what we've already experienced to prepare us. I wonder what it'll be like." Alice said lastly, not knowing that my grandpa John was most certainly going to put us through even more intense training once he learned that the two of us intended to venture out into the wasteland.

Our future training upgrade aside, Alice and I spent the remaining time until gramps showed up leisurely on the couch together chit-chatting it up since there was no use starting our reading and learning when my gramps would be arriving soon enough.

Less than 15 minutes later, he came through the door. So, as he came over, Alice and I separated from each other and got ready for the talk I needed to have with my grandfather. After he reached the couches where Alice and I were, he plopped down on one of the couches, turned towards Alice, and asked how she was doing today before looking my way and getting down to business.

"I'm guessing since Alice is here, she'll be involved in whatever you wanted to talk about."

"Uh-huh, that she will since she is the only other person who will know of what I've been hiding besides you in a moment here, gramps."

Intrigued, he held back for the meantime and let me continue. "But before we begin, I would like you to keep everything I'm going to tell you from here on out from the rest of the family. Can you do that for me, gramps?"

"Depends on what you're going to disclose to me."

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"It's nothing that could be perceived as negative to family and has more to do with what I would like to do in life."

"This young and you already know what you want to accomplish in life, you're growing up so fast..." He said jokingly.

"But yeah, if that's what you have me coming over for, I can keep what you're going to tell me a secret. However, you'll need to tell them about it in the future."

"Already planning on it. It's just too early to let both of our families know yet. I was actually thinking of waiting until both Alice and I had had our 17th birthdays, respectively." I responded before I had the three of us head downstairs to the gym in the basement, since it would make things easier to explain.

"Getting to the secrets I wanted to divulge to you, I suppose I'll start with my abilities."

"What abilities?"

"You know how there are certain humans that have supernatural powers, well I possess a number of abilities similar in nature that put me on the same level as a gifted marked one or a transcendent human, but I am neither."

"How do you know you aren't one of them?" He asked, skeptical of my claims.

"For starters, I don't have any markings that a marked one would have and two, there has not once been a transcendent born since the founding of the undercity, so why would I be categorized as one? Adding further to that, my abilities don't match up with the kind of abilities they would possess."

"I guess so."

"Alright, now that that's out of the way, here's a demonstration of one of my abilities." I said whilst taking my black t-shirt off I had been wearing and removing my grandad's old combat knife from its sheath.

As he was observing my actions, I suddenly took the combat knife I was holding and quickly stabbed it at my exposed eight-pack, which resulted in his eyes widening suddenly before bursting over in my direction in an attempt to stop me.

Despite that, due to my ever-increasing stats, he wasn't able to cover the distance and make it to me in time to stop me, thus he could do nothing but watch on as the knife inched closer and closer to my abdominal region before the knife eventually made contact doing zilch in terms of damage.

The moment after it made contact, I looked at my gramps with a bit of a smirk that said gotcha and began explaining. "As you just witnessed, my body has abnormally strong defenses, strong to the point where they are more than adequate to stop a full-powered stab from a combat knife."

Although, that's not entirely true in my case. If I had stabbed my core at full power, it would have easily pierced my skin and right through my muscles before then making its way into one of my organs.

The reason why that would have occurred when the weapon's damage is only a total of 16 is because of my high melee weapons skill increasing my knife's damage by 0.25% per skill point, and my strength attribute increasing all melee weapon and unarmed damage by 5% per point of strength.

Given both of their totals, it would have been more than plenty to breach my body's defenses and that's not even taking into account the actual strength I possess, which would have increased the damage of my stab even further.

"Haa, damn it kid, you nearly gave me a heart attack." My grandad said after walking the rest of the way to me, which received a chuckle from Alice and myself.

"So your body has some impressive defenses. I don't think you needed to keep that a secret from me and the rest of the family."

"Correct, however as I said moments ago, it isn't the only ability I have within my arsenal. So once I show you the rest of them and tell you my goal, I'm sure you'll understand why I've been keeping silent." I said last, moving over to the room in the gym, I had my pitching machines rigged up with turret-targeting modules.

…

"Alice, can you start things up the moment I tell you?"

"Sure."

As soon as I made it to the central position of the room, I looked back towards where Alice and my gramps were and said. "Gramps, make sure to pay attention to my eyes. Alice, you can start them up now."

Closing my eyes, I prepared myself to begin dodging the baseballs that would begin flying at me from several different directions. No more than a second later, into my preparations, a swarm of baseballs came barreling at me. With the many pitching machines targeting me, I directed my focus to my perception field and began dodging and weaving in between the numerous projectiles flying toward me.

After doing so for a couple of minutes, the pitching machines ran dry. No longer needing to dodge incoming baseballs, I came to a complete stop and opened my eyes before looking back towards my grandfather and Alice were and said. "As you can see, I have the ability to perceive things any normal human would be unable to sense typically, even with my eyes closed."

"Impressive, though I doubt that's all the abilities you've been hiding?" My gramps responded with a twinkle in his eyes.

Nodding at the old man's response, I continued to divulge my next ability. "Aside from my body's strong defenses and my perception field that allows me to perceive anything within a certain radius, I also possess multi-thought processing, which in simple terms allows me to think of two different things simultaneously. If I didn't have that ability, even with my perception field, there is no way I would've been able to dodge all of those projectiles."

"That sounds about right."

"So if you aren't a marked one nor a transcendent, how do you possess any of these abilities, not to mention all three of them? From the marked ones and transcendents I've encountered over the years in my travels, not a single one of them possessed such a wide array of abilities."

"Besides all that and going back to what I asked previously, why didn't you tell me about all of this earlier? You don't trust your gramps?" He said, starting to fake pout after barraging me with multiple questions.