Chapter 51 Human Companions

“Hey Larry. What’s this thing used for?” Victor asked one of the people who he was now moving with.

The thing he was referring to was a device that looked like a lawn mower that had a satellite dish mounted on it, with some other technological parts. Victor could roughly guess what it’s use was, but just to start a conversation, he asked any way.

“Huh? That’s an area scanner. How come you don’t know something like this? Whose this guy.” Larry said with a funny bland expression on his face.

“Yeah, which guild are you affiliated with? You never said, and you don’t have an emblem either.” Another said.

‘Emblem? Ah, I think I threw it away.’ Victor said in his mind.

About question like these, Victor couldn’t really answer in anyway, deceptive or not. He knew nothing of the world he was in currently, and so couldn’t even lie. At such a critical moment, the only idea he could think of was one he saw someone use in a movie he watched while still on earth. *obviously*

‘Here goes nothing.’ If it didn’t work, then he would just have to do away with these humans too.

“I don’t know, I can’t say. All I know is that we were taken from a young age and trained in isolation, and only left the facility when there was a mission. Apart from that, I don’t know anything else. What the world looks like or anything outside the facility, they are all foreign to me.” Victor said with a blank expression on his face.

“Is that so?” One of them said.

‘Shit, did they not buy it? And our relationship was going well too. Well..’ Victor ultimately couldn’t tell whether or not the story would work. He had no idea how long dungeons had been in this world, but one thing he was sure of was that no matter the world, there would always be a secrete organisation that experiments on humans and does certain inhumane things. Even back on earth where there was no such thing as superpowers as far as the general public was concerned, such organisations still existed.

“I heard that an organisation like that existed where the government would take people and experiment on them, trying to create stronger hunters, but for it to be this terrible. This is really inhuman.” One said, as Larry nodded in agreement.

At this point, if nothing else, they were all feeling a little sentimental towards Victor. Victor himself was quite satisfied that his little story worked. He began asking questions about what the world was like, and about certain things, and because of the story Victor had come up with for his background, they were not in the least suspicious. If anything, they were being supportive and answered his questions very well.

“So what are your abilities like?” Victor asked.

Going full in with the story of being a captive, Victor also added the fact that they were not allowed to socialize with each other in the facility and were not allowed to get close or form any kind of relationships, so information did not flow around between them. Victor himself told them that his ability was fire based, and that he had two variations.

“And I’m also physically strong.”

“…”

“Pwahahahah. Of course you are physically strong, everybody is.”

“Well, that is unless you are extraordinarily strong. Seeing as its the government’s experiments and facility, it is expected if you are more extraordinary than us normal hunters.” Larry said.

The others also said theirs, and also, from what they said, it seemed like the norm was for people to possess not more than three skills. They called them abilities, but Victor couldn’t tell if what they meant was actually skills or something else like abilities. Since he wasn’t sure, he just took it as skills.

Larry’s ability was just like the Victor’s, similar, it was the ability to control fire. The second person’s was the ability to control water and ice. The third person could create illusions, and the forth could control puppets.

According to them, the level of an individual is very important, as it is what makes one stronger the higher levelled they are, but the skill rank also mattered too. A level 50 with an e rank skill would only be physically as strong as a level 50 in some cases, but his skill would fail him greatly when facing others or monsters. So ultimately, the level isn’t the deciding factor, but both are. The level and the skill.

From them, Victor also realised that he wasn’t the only special one around, as every hunter also possessed the ultimate cheat every transmigrator gets on arrival.

‘I can’t believe everyone has a system. Then, at least, I can take pride in having the evolution aspect, right? At least.’ Victor said in his mind, a little defeated.

Victor’s opinion of his luck was quickly changed however, as he found out that his system was still THE CHEAT system. From what they had said, and from the information he had gotten from them, the system hunters possess isn’t exactly like the one he has. Unlike his system, the one possessed by every hunter only enables then keep track of their development by displaying basic information.

From what they said, their system interface would look something like;

..

Name: XXXX

Age: XXXX

Level: XXXX

Health bar: XXXX

Mana bar: XXXX

Physical: XXXX

Ability: XXXX

..

Unlike Victor, the others have a health bar that doesn’t indicate how much health you have in specific figure, and that was the same with the mana. Depending on the figure one had on the physical, it showed how physically powerful they were, and the ability section showed the ability one possessed and what rank it was. The highest rank of of this ability recorded in history was the S rank, and nothing above that has been recorded. Though, there are rumours that say that a rank above that exists, and just wasn’t recorded by the government.

‘Seems the government in this world is no different, keeping secretes everywhere they turn.’ Victor said in his mind. No wonder they easily accepted his lie without much suspicion.

If Victor got it correctly, their system didn’t give them the luxury of seeing their stats or even adding extra stat points… brutal. It didn’t show an experience bar either, so all they knew to do was to kill monsters until they levelled up, or if they were lucky, they would find an energy orb.

‘So much information these guys have given me. I’m so happy I didn’t kill them.’ Victor said with a blank expression despite feeling joy and satisfaction for some seconds.

Though Victor knew the map and where they were supposed to head next, he just left them to their methods and followed. According to them, the area scanner was for scanning the environment, and could be used to make a make shift map that hunters use to find their way around dungeons and also search for monsters in the surrounding area. The reason why they had yet to get anywhere was because the one they were given was an older version that was in a bad state, and a monster ran into it before, and since then it had been misbehaving.

‘Maybe I should do a little bit of work and direct them bit by bit, if not I’m afraid we would just remain here.’

Victor did his best to vaguely hint on which way they should take, and though sometime they didn’t take the hint, there were times when they did. Other times, they would take the hint only to go turn round and come back to the same place, then go the wrong way. Victor got tired of repeating the same routes over and over again and just started directly pointing out where they should head next. Since they saw that he was so good at directions, they chugged it down to his luck or his natural senses directing the way.

“Truly, experimental subjects are the best, you can even do things like find the way inside a dungeon, huh?” Larry said.

“Come to think of it, he didn’t even know what an area scanner was to begin with, so your entire group just relied on their bodies to find the way forward? Wow, that’s amazing.” Another said.

“Y-yeah.” Victor responded. He could not help but find the analogy these guys were bringing as very strange. They were so easy going, that Victor felt like feeling sorry for their lack of security.

They ran into some monsters on the way, and Victor got to witness them use their powers, and sure enough it was similar to using skills, only that it was a bit different.

Unlike the skills Victor possessed that were just like that he would see in games where each did a specific thing, the ones used by the hunters before were more of a combination of skills, or simply put magic?

‘It’s quite interesting how different it works, huh. And they actually believe that my skill is also fire based like Larry’s. This guys can freaking control fire like an extra limb and do a lot of things with it. All I can do is breath it out and create a mine field…’

“Heh…”