Chapter 453 - Stella Carnegie

The young woman from earlier walked out of the hospital where she left Cecil behind at and walked towards the parking lot.

She walked over to a jet-black car with a Ferrari logo on it, placed her hand on the window and after some sort of authentication, the door popped open and she hopped right in. Once she sat on the seat, the car's engine came to life and the door automatically closed. She drove out of the hospital's parking lot and headed straight to her university.

On the way, the young lady made a call to someone. On the passenger side of the windshield, a screen suddenly popped up, showing a young man with green eyes and long silver hair reaching to just below his shoulders, on it. The lady, who was driving and was obviously of western descent, characterized by her bright yellow blonde hair and sky blue eyes, immediately spoke up and said, "Hey, Ulrich. How are you?"

"Ah, well if it isn't my girl, Stella. I'm doing great right now, what have you been up to, girl?"

Stella kept her eyes on the road while she was driving. The car didn't have wheels but instead it levitated above the ground and ran on a unique source of energy instead of gasoline. The car was basically flying above the ground as the young lady skillfully weaved through the roads and traffic.

After stopping the car at a red light, the girl, Stella, finally replied, "Not much, but I have a job for you."

"Ohoh, well, you know the terms, honey~" Ulrich, the young man on the screen said while rubbing his thumb against his index and middle finger. It was the universal sign for money.

"I've already sent you the money," Stella immediately said after fiddling with her phone and accessing her private bank account which was separate from her family.

"A private transfer? My, are you perhaps doing something shady that even you don't want your family to know about?"

"I thought it was your policy not to ask any questions?"

"I'm just teasing you, honey. So, what's the job?" Ulrich replied in an amused tone.

"I need you to look up and investigate someone," Stella said.

"Give me a name, and I'll have it done in the next 6 hours."

"That's the problem. I don't have a name."

"Well, honey, you've gotta give me something to go off of. I can't find someone in the vast billions of people out there if you don't give me something~"

"I have a picture. Will that do?"

"More than enough. Send it to me!"

Earlier at the hospital, once Cecil had been able to somewhat recover, Stella had taken a picture of him on her phone when he was unconscious. After sending the picture of him over to the young man, the person on the screen couldn't help but squeal in excitement.

"Oh my gosh, girl, is this your future husband or something?! He's so hot!"

"W-what?! No, you idiot! I only met him today!"

"Oh really? Well, if he's not yours then can I have him~?"

"..."

Stella immediately glared at Ulrich who was on the other side of the screen and admiring Cecil's picture. Feeling the glare directed at him from the screen which transcended the distance that separated them, Ulrich stopped fooling around and replied, "Don't worry, honey. I'll immediately put this through a facial recognition device and have it search the whole world for this man's origins. I'll have it done within...5 hours or so~"

"Three!"

"Oh my, how harsh! Is it because of what I said?"

Stella clicked her tongue and this caused Ulrich to chuckle but he still said okay in the end. Stella hoped that within the next 3 hours, she'd finally have the full background of the young man she had saved today.

When Stella arrived at her university, she quickly parked her car and went towards her major's department building. She majored in a new subject which had recently become popular on Earth and that was the study of inter-dimensional portals.

That's right. The world that Cecil had suddenly dropped into after traveling through the spatial tunnel was Earth. However, the present-day Earth was much different from the Earth that Cecil knew of.

Many things had changed on Earth and one of the most major things would have to be that the Earth, at present, was bereft with many dangerous and unknown phenomena.

Some odd things such as portals would spontaneously spawn without notice and from these portals, monsters, and races from other dimensions would come pouring in, laying waste to the environment and cities that were within the portal's spawn area.

The world changed and it naturally adapted to these changes along with the people. Right now, Stella was one of the few 'gifted' people who were born or awakened with superpowers on Earth. These 'super' people had only appeared after the first collapse which took place nearly 70 years ago when the world was engulfed by large portals which suddenly appeared without warning and wiped out a large majority of the world's population.

The humans of Earth now called this piece of history the Initial Collapse. And then came the dark times that engulfed the world after the Initial Collapse which lasted for nearly two years or so.

During those dark and painful years, the people of Earth had to live in fear of the numerous monstrous creatures and foreign races that suddenly appeared on Earth through the portals that began massacring them for no reason who then started terra-forming and colonizing their lands.

However, humans weren't forsaken by the world. The ones who ended those dark years of Earth were actually the humans themselves. A few people who had manifested some sort of superpower took a stance and slowly began driving back and killing those monsters.

This period of time was known as World War III, except this time, the humans weren't warring against each other but had banded together to repel all of the inter-dimensional invaders that brought tragedy to their home and killed or enslaved many of their brethren.

World War III, in a way, was both a good and a bad thing. During this time, the nations and people of the world had banded together with disregard to their ethnicities, race, and color, to strike back at the foreign invaders.

The war lasted nearly 30 years. It was a long and arduous fight, but in the end, the humans won. They annihilated all of the monsters and drove back the foreign races from their home. Naturally, the humans couldn't kill every last one of them, but they were able to subdue all of the foreign races that weren't killed and re-established themselves as Earth's dominant species.

The monsters weren't given any mercy and all of the past, present, and future monsters were promptly dealt away with. Unlike the foreign races, the monsters couldn't be reasoned with so they were naturally taken care of before they became a large threat.

After the long war, the world was naturally put back on its once derailed course, however, a new power rose up from within the ashes of the old world to take command of the present. The World Government, an organization formed by the many influential and powerful families and groups who took part in World War III and lived to tell the tale.

Stella Carnegie was the full name of the young woman who had rescued Cecil when he had suddenly appeared from out of nowhere. She was part of the Carnegie family, a rich and wealthy family that had a history dated back long before the Initial Collapse. The Carnegies were one of the 12 organizations that ran the World Government of the present day.

Their wealth, power, and influence spanned across many sectors of the present Earth. They were a very powerful and wealthy family but even then, they were only ranked third on the World Rankings.

The university that Stella Carnegie attended was an institute whose purpose was to train the next generation of gifted individuals as well as leading them to a career path that is related to things other than fighting monsters.

Most of the world's gifted people chose to become monster hunters for their future career paths. Monsters were always popping into their world from dimensional portals which the people now called Rifts.

Becoming a Hunter was a good and profitable career path, but Stella preferred not to fight if she didn't have to. She had the rare ability of Psychokinesis which was both a powerful weapon if used for attacking and a strong shield when used for defending.

It naturally had other practical uses but the general public judged the gifted mostly based on how powerful their abilities could be when used in a fight. It was a pretty crude way of judging the worth of a gifted person but it was practical.

The abilities of the gifted were divided into 5 ranks and 4 categories. The 5 ranks starting from the lowest was D, C, B, A, then S. There were ranks above that but those were only for specific individuals that needed a rank outside of the system due to the immeasurable nature of their powers.

The categories were separated into Support, Magic, Attack, and Auxiliary. Some superpowers had more than one category, take for instance Stella's psychokinesis. It fitted straight into 3 categories, Attack, Magic, and Auxiliary, depending on how Stella uses it.

Stella's psychokinesis was a rare S-ranked ability which in certain situations could be even higher than S rank. However, despite having such a rare superpower, Stella wasn't keen on fighting and was more into collecting vast amounts of knowledge and saving it inside of her brain.

Her psychokinesis naturally stemmed from her brain and in a way, it could be said that her superpower had somewhat altered her preferences in the way she did things. It wasn't necessarily a good thing, but it wasn't also a bad thing.

Many superhumans in the present Earth had abilities that could influence their personalities, but whether it influenced their nature towards a good or bad side was dependent on the individual themselves.

Stella quickly arrived at her classroom and sat herself down on the front seat of the class, waiting for her lecture to begin. She couldn't help thinking about the young man she had left behind at the hospital who was lying injured in bed.

She pulled out her phone and stared thoughtfully at his picture while thinking.

'Just who are you?'