Chapter 89 Thiefs, Friends, And Mysteries (2)
"Go search into the bathroom," Zachary said, "I will go search into the kitchen..."
"What search are you talking about? This place is a dump! There is not even space to shit in that bathroom!" Greg replied.
"Just do your damn job, Greg!"
Greg went into Erik's small bathroom. Only a toilet and a tiny sink above which a small glass was hung were present in that room.
In the middle of the room, there was a drain and hung on the right side of the wall, a shower head hung over a slide bar was present. The space was no larger than two meters, and whenever Erik had to wash, he had to basically shower everything else.
Greg took pity on the young boy. He himself was living in a better place, and he was a street thug! The man then searched the whole bathroom as per instructions.
Since, according to the information, this young man was in possession of something important, it was highly likely that he had hidden it somewhere, and since there wasn't furniture inside that small room, maybe the young man had taken off a tile and hidden it under.
For this reason, Greg searched tile by tile, centimeter by centimeter, for hidden items, recently placed tiles, hollow spaces, or anything at all. After having inspected every centimeter of the floor and walls with his fingers for half an hour or so, since he found nothing at all, he gave up. It seemed like nothing was there.
As if reading Greg's thoughts, Zachary returned from the kitchen empty-handed. Greg went out of the bathroom to see if Zachary missed some spot, only to find the whole kitchen devastated. Every cabinet has been taken off the wall or thrown to the ground; some were ripped off and utterly destroyed. The kitchen was wrecked.
Greg shed a silent tear for Erik. He didn't want to imagine the horror the young man would feel once he saw his destroyed house. Though this was their job, and despite being sympathetic to the young man since he did grow up in a difficult environment, his job was more important. In the end, whoever the owner was, he wasn't related to him.
"We only need to search the living room; you start from that side, and I will do the other," Zachary said.
Greg actually searched for the side where the couch and the table were. The first thing he did was search the walls and the floor, but he found nothing.
Then he checked if hidden mechanisms or spaces were under the table and found none. He then searched the couch by ripping it open.
Zachary did the same, but since the other side of the room was empty but for a small desk and Erik's computer, he finished earlier than his colleague.
Again, the duo found nothing. There was nothing strange in that room, no in the whole house; that was weird since, according to their information, the young man owned something extremely valuable.
They didn't know what it was, so the higher-ups asked them to take everything remotely suspicious, like a USB pen or hard drives. However, to their dismay, they found nothing of the sort! Aside from the computer, the house owner had basically nothing!
"What do we do, Zachary? There is nothing aside from the computer that could lead us to whatever we are searching," Greg said.
"Then we take the computer..." Zachary replied.
The duo then took the device and quickly left the apartment.
***
As Erik's match ended, he went to the gym to find his friends, but he had to wait 15 minutes before they came. The first to arrive was Amber, who apparently had a slightly harder match than usual, then Gwen and Floyd followed suit.
They won their matches but had to admit that the difficulty increased greatly from the initial matches. They didn't expect so many good fighters to be part of the school, some of them were strong enough to be part of the top students, but strangely enough, they weren't.
When everyone arrived, Erik decided to shower and then eat something with his friends. Everyone agreed. An hour later, the four friends were at a restaurant owned by Amber's family. Looking at the place, Erik was taken aback by the young girl's wealth, and he kept wondering why this girl decided it was ok to be friends with him, a broke nobody. Was it just because he was an awakener?
Aside from these thoughts, they sat down, and each talked about the remaining participants. Of the 44 remainings, 20 were the top students, Erik was the 21, and 23 people were normal students.
Of the latter, probably all but one were going to be eliminated the following day, assuming that Erik would win his match.
Though, they also realized that tomorrow's match was going to be the most important one of the competition since whoever won would gain a sure spot in the Red Palace. Every subsequent fight was just going to be for personal glory.
"That Allan Grimes," Gwen said with her mouth full of food, "He is very promising, even his power is a good one! I say not to take him lightly should you meet him during the next matches..." she added.
Erik nodded, he saw the young man fight, and he was impressed. He didn't know how strong Allan was compared to him, but he thought he was at least as strong as Zakir.
An actual fight between the two mainly depended on their brain crystal powers and their ability to use them.
As much as he knew, Allan could summon a mana spear with electrical properties. His base power was widespread since most humans had weapon-summoning powers. Still, it had a special electric attribute, meaning that his power was extraordinary.
Despite not being able to control electricity as an elemental wielder, having the electricity element in his weapon was a huge boost in power and a very rare one since this element was extremely uncommon.
"Aside from this, who do you think is going to win this tournament?" Erik asked.
"In my opinion, it will probably be Nathaniel. No offense Amber..." Floyd said.
"None taken..."
Floyd was right. Everyone knew that Nathaniel was the school's strongest. It was true that Amber and Anderson were better than him in terms of martial might, but Nathaniel had a highly destructive and highly precise power.
Anderson could easily blow up a whole building, but his move couldn't be easily controlled. The young man was basically winning every match without using his power. This feat spoke volumes about this young man's abilities, but in a not-lethal confrontation, Anderson was highly handicapped. That was also one of the reasons why the young man trained hard in his neural link-establishing classes.
The physical increase in power was his only way to keep up with the others, who could freely use their powers. Besides, only by increasing the neural links would the ability to use their power improve.
Many also speculated that if Anderson reached the MI1 rank on the Idor scale, he could create controlled and small explosions. If that happened, Anderson was going to be sought after by anyone. If the young man didn't end up trying a military career, many organizations would scout him to join their ranks.
On the other hand, Nathaniel could generate force fields he used as shields and use the same energy to attack. His power allowed him to harness this force, but using them for attack and defense was a very rare feature.
Besides, this energy was very powerful, albeit not as much as the explosions that Anderson could generate, and allowed the young man even to destroy walls with a punch. It was a versatile ability with very high destructive power and was easy to use.
The conversation continued until it was time for the four students to go home and rest for tomorrow's match. Amber asked her driver to bring the four students home, and since Erik's house was the closest, they decided to drop him off first. Though, the young man didn't know that once he was back home, he was going to have a bad night.