Chapter 2: Powers

Frank's words came out as a shock to them. They couldn't believe that the world they knew was resembling more and more to those fantasy stories' worlds they read on their phone and that everything happened so fast that they had a real hard time accepting this new reality and world.

"You have super power?" Evan muttered incredulously.

Kennen saw the other people in the room approaching them in curiosity after what happened.

"What are they?!" Rafael loudly asked.

"What happened?"

"You alright kid?"

Some people asked when they got closer.

"I'm fine I think, thank you for asking." Frank replied.

Kennen felt it wouldn too hard and unwise to explain them what happened to Frank. It may be the pragmatism he got from reading too much novel of this type and a bit heartless to leave them in the dark but they themselves only have an idea of what was happening so it would be hard to explain it them even if they wanted to, especially to people who didn't read this type of literature.

"This is turning into a gaming system!" Rafael loudly exclaimed again.

"What are you saying kid?"

"Are you saying we are in the matrix?"

"The world is turning into a RPG?"

Rafael's words triggered various reactions as the older people had no idea was his words meant while the very few seemed to come to a similar conclusion.

The situation wasn't developing well for them and they may end up having to answer questions they didn't have the answers to so Kennen decided to get out of here before the situation escalated.

"Let's get you to the hospital." Kennen said and gave Rafael a look that told him to shut it.

Nobody should stop them with that excuse.

"I'm fine." Frank reiterated but understood the assignment after another look from Kennen, "But it's probably safer if I get checked out."

Kennen put Frank's arm over his shoulder as we walked out of the buffet hall and toward the reception hall where many people were leaving with their baggage in tow.

"We'll talk more when we get to Enzo's room since it's closer." Kennen suggested.

Enzo's room was on the second floor while Rafael and Franks were on the fourth, Evan on the fifth and Kennen's on the sixth.

…

At Enzo's room, Frank explained to his friends what was written on the blue screen when he received it.

"Except the description for the power, there's only the power rank when I call for status and I'm apparently rank F-."

Frank jumped, lifted the bed a bit, punched and moved around a bit.

"I mean, I can feel that I'm slightly stronger and faster than before but I don't feel super at all, still a regular human."

"That's all? What a letdown, I thought we would all have game-like abilities." Enzo said in disappointment.

"Still better than nothing, I think we should go hunt for those crystals! I'm getting a bit excited just at the thought of getting some super powers!" Evan said with some eagerness.

'These guys are taking it far better than I thought.' Kennen thought.

He always believed that he was pragmatic and would be calmer than the usual person in these situations since he had imagined himself what he would do if he was put in this kind of situation countless times, but his friends' reactions surprised him a little.

It was probably because they hadn't encountered any danger and they could contact their families and ensure their wellbeing so they had the peace and space to process what was happening more calmly.

Kennen also felt some anticipation at the idea of getting powers and he wondered what kind of powers he would get. Hopefully, it wouldn't be some trash power that made him a mob character who would die on day 2.

"The whole world knows that those crystals give power now, it's all over social media. There's also people shooting fireballs, moving objects around with their power or other incredible stuff. It'll be hard to find stones after this."

Rafael said as he browsed through the internet on his phone.

"Or we could hunt those monsters for them since they seem to drop those crystals after death."

Rafael showed us a video of a red crystal forming on top of the monster after it was killed and one the person on the video absorbing it.

"Well, that's going to be tough to do. Those small caliber guns barely hurt it and they only easily killed it due to having six guys free firing on it with their AR." Kennen warned them.

The last thing he wanted was for them to get too hyped up for power and get killed.

"We also have no guns, or even swords and spears." Frank cautionned. "I think we should play it safe and first let the military do their jobs."

"We all know how important it is to get a headstart in this type of situation. We should be proactive and snowball." Evan said.

Kennen agreed with what Evan said, the strongest were the most proactive ones but how could they be proactive?

"This isn't a novel and we are not MCs, we can't just charge headfirst and things go our way through luck as if we have plot armor. This is the real world and we are just some plebs, we'll die for real." Rafael said.

"We are the MCs of our own story, we just have to act like MC and not like plebs" Enzo said with a smile and a thumbs up.

"Calm down guys, it's like we got monsters here so let's just pack our bags and see if we can a flight back home at the airport. We can always keep an eye up for the crystals." Frank cautioned once again.

"Alright, let's just do as Frank said. Maybe this is just some dungeon spawning and the hardest time passed. Maybe we'll become hunters in the future but we should play it safe right now and go back home and see how the government is going to handle it."

Kennen echoed Frank's sentiment.

In the end, each of them also thought this was the most suitable plan and returned to their room to pack their stuff before meeting back here.

Kennen couldn't help but feel some unease and nervousness as he made his way to his room on the sixth floor. He already came to term with the fact that the world he knew was now changed forever. The unease came from the uncertain future and he also wondered about the whys and hows it happened.

Not that he had an answer to that.

However, he was nervous even after the military all over the world took actions and seemed to wrest back some controls and would soon get it under control but he couldn't help but have a bad feeling.

Kennen should calm his nerves, maybe updating his situation with his family would do so.

As he was packing his bag, he seemed to have heard some scream coming from somewhere, the sound was very faint but consistent. However, it was a different type of scream each time as if it came from multiple people.

He opened the glass door to the terrace and looked down, he saw monsters. Monsters chasing after people and leaving a blood trail behind them.

===

Evan also went back to his room on the fifth floor to pack his suitcase.

His world was thrown upside-down in a matter of minutes but at the end, he strangely felt excited at the new world now.

They could get superpower now!

He was like a kid that had been shown candy but he knew that he should curb his enthusiasm. His rashness and his motto of always shooting his shot had landed into trouble before, not that he cared about it before since the consequences were nearly nil.

It was different now, it could be life-threatening but this knowledge of that couldn't stop his excitement, only restraint it.

He hurriedly packed his bag in excitement as he wanted to go treasure hunting for the crystals as soon as possible. He would try to search around this floor and see if there was any before Kennen was done with his packing and come down to his floor.

While he was packing, he noticed something bright on his trash can. He didn't recall throwing anything shiny so he went to check it and saw a red crystal, the same that Frank grabbed and got his power from.

"Oooh!!!" Evan yelled loudly in excitement and then laughed, "Lucky me!"

*Hiii*

Evan heard the door move, he didn't close it completely after entering the room and would have chalk it up to it moving due to the wind if it wasn't for what he heard next.

*Growl*

He instantly turned around and saw a big wolf.

The wolf was twice the size of a regular and probably weighed around 70 to 80 kg with black furs and streaks of blue furs.

Evan didn't wait around to see what the wolf wanted and just straight plunged in his toward the trash can for the red crystal.

The absorption process immediately started the moment his skin touched the crystal. He didn't feel any pain but felt something new around his chest, it was as if he had a new muscle in his chest and could move it around.

*Growl*

The wolf took a couple steps forward before lunging at him while the red mist was torpeding into his chest.

Evan could only react instinctively and put his non-dominant hand, his left hand, to shield him from the incoming bite.

The mist completely entered his body and the blue screen came out at the worst moment as the wolf was about to bite on his forearm and the blue screen impeded his vision.

Evan was pushed back slightly when the gaping maw crashed into his left forearm but he stayed steady on his two feet.

He expected a lot of pain but actually could barely feel the sting. The wolf was biting down on his arm but it could barely penetrate the skin and his skin was unusually dark so Evan gave a quick glance to the blue panel.

[You awakened your power, Hardening.]

[Hardening: The ability to harden a part of your body and strengthen it.]

Evan grinned and understood what was going on. He subconsciously hardened his left forearm in time before the wolf bit him.

The wolf wiggled his head around in hope to maul his arm but it couldn't do more damage to the arm however it did succeed in putting Evan out of balance as he was pulled forward and toward the wolf.

Evan reacted quickly and tried to regain some balance, he also tried to hit where the wolf's eye was but the punch lacked precision and power due to lack of balance but it was enough to have the wolf let go of his hold on his left arm.

The wolf quickly tried to bite again and this time it went on his right arm but Evan had the time to transfer the Hardening to his right arm to tank the bite again.

This time however, he was prepared and concentrated so he could precisely land a punch on the wolf's right eye with his left hook.

The wolf yelped at being hit on his sensible spot and let go of the arm and this was the end for it.

Evan built momentum and power on his right hardened hand and used it like a hammer on the wolf. The first blow sent the wolf head first onto the ground.

"Wooo! Hammertime!"

Evan was like an adrenaline junkie as he yelled loudly.

The wolf tried but was pretty disoriented.

"As if I'll let you!"

Evan transferred his Hardening to his right feet and stomped on the head of the wolf.

The wolf's skull was quite hard so he had to give a few more stomps before he could hear cracking noises that confirmed the creature's death.

A red mist came out of the wolf's body and slowly formed into a red crystal on top of the wolf. Evan reached out to touch it and the same thing happened. He absorbed into his body after a couple seconds.

Evan checked his power ranking and saw it was at F-. That didn't change but he could tell got slightly stronger after taking another crystal. As for how strong, Evan guessed it was probably a single digit in percentage.

*Growl*

He heard another growl and saw the type of wolf slowly stepping into his room.

"Another one, huh? Come get some!"

He stood fully prepared with his right hand fully hardened and waited for the wolf to lunge at him. Lunge at him, the wolf did but the only thing that greeted it was a well timed right into its face.

"Ah~, this is easy."

===

Kennen sped up his packing after the screams and quickly took the stairs to the stairs to the fifth floor.

He saw that Evan wasn't waiting in the stairs so guessed that he was probably still packing so Kennen went to his room.

Evan was indeed still packing but what he didn't expect to see was two humongous wolf corpses.

"What the hell happened here?!"

Evan gave him a grin and told him a quick recap of what happened.

"You killed three of those demonic looking wolves and absorbed four stones?"

Kennen was quite stunned by the tales as his power seemed to be quite strong and better than what Frank got and Evan was barely hurt too after all of that, his bleeding on his hands even stopped..

"I don't know if you're lucky to have a crystal in your trash or unlucky to have wolves on your floor."

Kennen sighed and didn't know whether he should feel envious or not because nothing happened on his floor.

"Hehe, why not both? Maybe I got that plot armor! I checked around and I'm positive there are no more wolves but I didn't inspect if there are any more crystals."

Kennan was about tell him that it was probably the MC's halo but then thought of his other friends.

"Let's quickly check out on the others. They may not be as lucky as you."

"Shit, hope nothing happened, cuz I'm quite tired after all of that."

They quickly took the stairs and quickly met up with the others

Turns out that only Evan had some actions as things went also pretty calmly for the others.They met some people on the stairs who were clearly panicked.

"Can we even get to the airport with what's happening outside?" Rafael asked in a fearful voice.

Everyone was silent.

Each of them knew that it wouldn't be as easy to get to the airport now with the spawning of monsters outside. It was probably safer to stay in the hotel, who even knew what became of the airport now.

"Let's go to the entrance to see the situation." Frank suggested, "Maybe the military are already here."

"I think not. I'm still seeing people dying over." Enzo said as he peeked outside of the window before quickly getting away from the window.

"We should explore the hotel and if we get lucky, we may find some crystals." Enzo suggested in turn.

Evan and Rafael nodded in agreement.

"I still want to check the situation at the entrance." Frank insisted.

"We can do both." Kennen said, "We can start exploring from the ground floor and check the entrance at the same time. It's better we stick together while exploring anyway, only Evan has a chance against those monsters."

Kennen didn't know why Frank insisted on going to the hotel's entrance but it was better to start their search from the ground floor.

We left our bags back at Enzo's room and left for the hotel's entrance.

The reception desk was empty.

Then some people ran into the hotel from the entrance and yelled when they saw us.

"Run!!!"

Two big humanoid figures walked into the hotel a few seconds later.

They were orcs.

Not the green and muscular ones.

Their skins were pink and had a big belly with a pig's head and two large hoofs coming out of their mouth.

They had thick and strong arms and held a huge club in their hands.

The right name for them should be pig orcs.

"Shit…"