Chapter 45: What’s better than coffee and coke?

Howard was looking over excel spreadsheets while drinking coffee. He opened his email and looked through the one hundred or so messages waiting for him.

He felt burnout catching up to him, so he slammed his laptop shut and sighed. He then laid down on the office floor.

Being sleep-deprived but also magically unable to sleep was a strange thing.

“Too many sacrifices. Everything hurts,” Howard said to himself.

His secretary knocked on the door.

“Come in!” he said.

A pretty, young woman dressed in a skirt and shirt walked in with a fresh cup of coffee and a lot of letters and documents.

“Are you fine, Sir?” she said.

“Yeah. Just put it on the to-do pile and leave,” Howard said.

While she was doing as he said, he grabbed his phone and sent a message to his coke dealer.

reup 3 grams pronto he wrote.

He sighed again. “Maybe I should get a coke resistance skill. I wonder how Jack’s Specialized Mental Sacrifice Ritual Focus Borrow: Rank 1 would interact with my sacrifice skill…” Howard mumbled to himself.

His mind turned again to mana. Those three mana skills those boys had. He had tried to make sacrifices to learn more about it, but it appeared absurdly expensive knowledge. Even offering more than 3 days of sleep was not enough to get any valuable information on mana.

“I need to find some way to give the backlash of the sacrifices to other people instead of me. That would be a life-saver. Some way where if they consent you can pass it to them. Something like that. That is what my next skill point will be.” Howard had also tried before to get information on whether or not this was possible, but it was too expensive to know and he had bigger, more short-term problems, to spend his sacrifices on.

…

“What’s wrong?” Jack said to Miranda as she hugged him while crying.

“I don’t know! I just- and then he just tried to kick the door! And then, I told him no I would pay. And then he just kept yelling. Please help me! I can’t go back,” Miranda said.

Lucas and Brian also went over to Miranda.

“You’re not making sense. Please explain what happened,” Brian said.

Miranda babbled on for five minutes in an incongruent way.

“Okay. So in conclusion: You owe a coke dealer 1000 dollars and instead of paying him back like you promised him you would, you spent your paycheck on a new purse? and then he came to your apartment and threatened you and tried to break in?” Brian said.

Miranda was silent.

“I’m gonna fucking kill this piece of shit,” Jack said.

“I have a simpler solution that does not involve risking jail time. We just head over and pay the bill for her,” Brian said.

“Jack, I’m a little tired of murder. Out here it’s different. We’ve got police. And DNA and shit. This isn’t the game world,” Lucas said.

“Okay,” Jack said.

Brian got the coke dealer’s phone number from Miranda and called him and said they would pay him off and got his address and they went over to his apartment.

Jack and Lucas and Miranda stayed in the car while Brian went over to the apartment alone. Jack stared closely at which door it was he knocked on and the person who stepped out.

It took less than 2 minutes and it was over.

Brian came back to the car. “He apologized for knocking on your door,” Brian said.

“The fuck do you mean? He tried to break into her apartment!” Jack said.

“Yeah. According to him he just knocked loudly and yelled. Miranda is exaggerating,” Brian said.

Miranda was silent and clung to Jack’s arm.

They dropped Miranda off at an expensive hotel and paid for a one week stay for her because she was too scared to go back to her apartment.

They then drove back to their motel and each said goodnight and entered their own rooms.

Brian practised more with his mana. Trying to finish the circle shape string Jack told him about.

Lucas fell asleep right away.

Jack paced around his room. He texted Miranda until she fell asleep. Then he grabbed the bag with all of his grinding gear and left the motel.

He walked over to the coke-dealer’s apartment and changed and put on his gear behind a dumpster. He changed into the kevlar black armor with a kevlar mask on and grabbed his assault rifle and machete.

It was during the dead of the night and everyone was asleep. He took a look at the apartment door. He could also see a curtained window next to it. The lock looked cheap.

He thought about what would be the best way to do this. Smash the door with the machete. Or the window and jump through. Or shoot the lock. He decided what to do, then slashed with his machete.

///////

Jack:

Knife Fighting: Rank 1

Knife Fighting: Rank 2

Python (programming language): Rank 1

Mana Generation: Rank 1

Sand to Glass Conversion Mana Blueprint: Rank 1

Healing Mana Blueprint: Rank 1

Origami: Rank 1

Enhanced Bodily Recovery: Rank 1

Speed Counting: Rank 1

Enemy Weakness Identification: Rank 1

Poetry: Rank 2

Blueprint visualizer: Rank 1

Mana Sense: Rank 1

Blunt Force Resistance: Rank 1

Pool: Rank 1

Mana Manipulation: Rank 1

Specialized Mental Sacrifice Ritual Focus Borrow: Rank 1

Typography: Rank 1

Enhanced Healing: Rank 1

Throwing: Rank 1

Acrobatics: Rank 1

INT: +1

Missions Menu unlocked.

Sewing: Rank 1

Ninja techniques: Rank 1

Lethal Strike: Rank 1

Brian:

Shield Defending: Rank 1

Marksmanship (pistol): Rank 1

Right Arm Increased Strength: Rank 1

Mana manipulation: Rank 1

Mana Sense: Rank 1

Enhanced Propriosense in Toes: Rank 1

Enhanced Bodily Recovery: Rank 1

Flame Shield Dispel: Rank 1

Cryptography: Rank 1

Enemy Pattern Recognition: Rank 1

Airplane Pilot: Rank 1

Mana Generation: Rank 1

Enhanced Vision: Rank 1

Blunt Force Resistance: Rank 1

Finnish: Rank 1

French oil painting technique: Rank 1

Throwing: Rank 1

Acrobatics: Rank 1

Vision Upgrade: ⅕ until Rank 1

Ninja techniques: Rank 1

Verbal conjugations Spanish: Rank 1

Mana Training: Rank 1

Lucas:

Insect Movement Control: Rank 1

Enlarged Penis: Rank 1

Mana sense: Rank 1

Mana Manipulation: Rank 1

Surfing: Rank 1

Arithmetic: Rank 1

Chess: Rank 1

Human Interpersonal Non-verbal Bodily Social  Behaviors Enhanced Perception: Rank 1

Blunt Force Resistance: Rank 1

Changing car tires: Rank 1

Water Mana Affinity: Rank 1

Walking: Rank 1

Mana Generation: Rank 1

Juggling: Rank 1

Throwing: Rank 1

Acrobatics: Rank 1

Enhanced General Nervous System Reaction Time: Rank 1

Diesel Motors Piston System: Rank 1

Ninja techniques: Rank 1

Engineering diagram waterwheel: Rank 1