Chapter 252: Bathroom Trips

Traveling through the arena, a pair of twins were searching the crowd for a familiar face.

"Do we seriously have to do this meet up?" Vicky scoffed, looking around, "Surely there’s better things to do now that we’re here. I mean, I saw a pretty fun looking blocking game earlier."

Pai crossed his arms and scanned the crowd, "Remember what we are here for, Vicky. We don’t want to upset certain people."

Vicky slouched, but sighed, "Ugh... Yet another boring meeting, as if we hadn’t had to go through a whole bunch of them already."

Pai glanced at his watch, then to his sister, "I do suppose we have some time to kill. Fine, we can make ONE detour."

With those magic words, Vicky’s smile curled impossibly wide.

—

Since they were done talking about what to do for tomorrow, Erin, Peter, Fex, and Vorden were preparing to depart.

Peter didn’t bring much with him, so he could have left sooner, but he hesitated. Maybe it was the fact that there was a lot on the line, or maybe it was that the plans of tomorrow meant he’d have to say goodbye to Quinn. He didn’t know.

This didn’t go unnoticed by Vorden, who decided to casually pat Peter on the back.

"Hey, I know it’s all stressful, but that’s tomorrow’s problem," Vorden said, "How about we explore the base and have fun for a little while?"

Peter perked up, "Oh?"

To be honest, Peter was looking forward to the inter-base tournament. There was a lot of talk about the fun events, gaming areas, and stores that he was eager to check out.

"Sure, I’d like to go," Peter said.

"Great!" Vorden said with a smile, then looked to the others, "Anyone else interested?"

"No, I have plans of my own," Erin replied bluntly.

Vorden turned to Fex, "What about you?"

Fex was in the middle of swinging a blade around his fingers. To Vorden, it looked brand new, so he must’ve gotten it recently. He sighed, then caught the blade.

"Sure, I’ll go."

—

The sun had set. Even though Erin didn’t need to worry about the dark, other things weighed heavily on her mind.

Looking around, Erin was searching for students with specific blood types. Namely, type O blood.

She checked her stats. Charm remained her weakest one, currently sitting at 15, which was just 5 points above her starting number.

’I know I’m risking a blood addiction by doing this, but I can recover from an addiction. I can’t recover from losing Quinn,’ Erin thought.

She also didn’t want to rely on Fex for getting food, so this would also serve as a way to fill up her blood bank.

A few students walked around, mostly staying up since this was a rare opportunity to visit the home base of the military. The problem was the guards. They constantly kept watch, making any possible blind spots far and few in between.

"I thought you didn’t want to get an addiction?" The system said in an almost teasing tone.

’I don’t, but this is military base 1, and the Big Four are also going to be here. They’re going to have tight security,’ Erin thought back, then corrected herself, ’Tighter security than they don’t already have.’

In the distance, Erin spotted someone heading into a unisex bathroom. She followed them and heard it was only them two.

[Inspect]

[Rex Cinderfall]

[Blood type O-]

’Perfect.’

"Hey, can you look at me real quick?"

The person, now identified as Rex, turned around. Erin instantly activated her influence skill. Her eyes glowed red, and they were entranced by them.

"Stay perfectly still."

Rex did as asked, and Erin bit into their arm. Under normal circumstances, she preferred not to bite into someone whenever she wanted food, but she couldn’t afford comfort now.

[+1 free stat points]

[Blood Bank 10/100]

While they were holding still, she stared into their eyes yet again.

"Forget whatever happened in this room, and leave to your room."

Rex wordlessly left the bathroom, and a few minutes later, Erin did the same.

"You know, you could just tell someone to meet you in a private area first, and then take their blood," the system suggested, "It would be far more efficient."

Erin clenched her fists tightly, and muttered out loud, "You know, you really are troublesome..."

—

Vorden, Fex and Peter arrived at a game section of the arena ring where they could see booths and booths of games. The most common one in the booths was a machine with a thick pole that had 6 segmented sections and long protrusions sticking out of them.

"Hey, want to try one of these weird bald metal tree games out?" Fex said, pointing at a student about to play.

They watched as the student stood in front of the machine with a timer appearing on a screen above his head. It counted down from 3 to 0, and a loud buzz sounded off.

[Game started. Level 3]

The machine started up, and a few of the segments started to twist. The topmost and bottommost poles swung towards the student. Quickly, the student hit one with his left hand, and the bottom one with a kick, sending the poles back.

There was a ring around the machine, which the student was well within the limits of.

"Oh, I think I get what it’s about!" Fex said as he watched, "You block the poles for as long as you can, but when it hits you—"

At that moment, one of the segments swung behind the machine, and into the student, catching him completely off guard.

"You lose," Vorden finished.

Peter frowned. This was exactly the kind of thing he wasn’t interested in playing.

He looked around to see if there was anything else that would be more his alley, when he saw a large crowd surround one of the booths.

"Hey, what’s going on there?" Peter said.

Fex and Vorden looked at the same thing Peter was staring at, and were curious as well.

"How much credits do you wanna bet there’s a hardcore gamer over there," Fex smirked to Vorden.

Vorden frowned slightly, "20 at most, I don’t get a lot of credits, you know."

Fex groaned, but let it go. He was more interested in what was going on.

"WHOO!" They all heard a woman shout deep within the crowd, "This is FUN!"

"How is she this fast? This isn’t a normal human speed right?"

"I’m sure she’s just using a speed ability, cheater..."

"She’s a teacher, isn’t she?"

As they started to get closer, however, Vorden suddenly stopped in his tracks.

’There’s no way, he’s here? But— He wouldn’t be here alone without—"

Although he didn’t know who was currently playing the game, he could make a very accurate guess based after the man leaning on the wall next to the crowd.

Fex pointed at the guy, "Hey, doesn’t he look like—"

"Hey, you guys can watch the match, I just realized I really need to take a leak," Vorden lied.

"I knew you shouldn’t have drunk all of that water," Fex scoffed, "But alright, I’ll tell you everything you missed."

"It’s a normal amount for a human," Peter mumbled.

Peter and Fex got closer to the crowd, while Vorden tried to run away.

’I need to make sure he doesn’t see me, because if he did then—’

Before Vorden could leave the gaming section, a tall blonde man stepped behind a pillar, blocking his path.

"... Brother."

"Pai."