Chapter 143 141 - New Possible Ability
The next morning, Zach and Milo met up at the front of the dorms. When they were walking to the blacksmithing section of campus, Milo noticed a group of first years. Bullying hadn't been a big issue in his grade due to the scene in the academy cafeteria the previous year, but it was obvious that the first years hadn't heard about it. There was a shorter scrawnier kid being picked on by 3 other kids.
Milo and Zach looked at each other, at this point, Zach knew what bullying meant to Milo and he felt the same way since he too had been a victim of bullying growing up, and even at the academy the year before. He sighed as he knew Milo would be getting involved even if he told him to ignore it, so he simply followed behind Milo.
Milo checked the abilities of the students and was surprised to see an ability that could be useful. The scrawnier of the students had a low level regenerative ability, it wasn't anything super powerful, but with Milo's system he could increase its level and make it more powerful. The copy conditions were brutal though.
[Notice]
Ability: Regeneration detected
Conditions to copy: Witness the user of the ability Regeneration mend a broken bone
[complete condition to copy ability: Regeneration]
Milo wanted to copy the ability but in order to copy it, he'd have to do something that would be considered equal to or maybe worse than what the bullies of the school had probably done to the poor kid. The bullies were toying with the kid, they took his bag and were ruffling through it, it looked as if they were looking for something in particular. Milo was getting tired of watching everything happening and decided to make his way over to where the students were at.
"You wanna give the kid back his stuff?" Milo said aloud.
Hearing a new voice all the first years turned to see who the voice originated from. Two of the students seemed to recognize Milo while the third student who had the bag turned and shouted at Milo. "Maybe you should screw off and mind your own damn business, I don't care if you're a second year I'll still bet your ass," he said.
Milo didn't back down which seemed to piss the student off, as he dropped the bag and turned to Milo. By this point the two goons he had with him were visually terrified as they knew of Milo's strength and ability, most likely from his interview on the television. They began to back up as their leader stepped forward. The student in question was actually bigger than Milo. Milo was 6 foot 3 inches tall and well put together since the ability had boosted his physical traits. The other students, if Milo had to guess, were close to 6 foot 8 and had a healthy layer of blubber covering his body. He wasn't muscular like Milo but size could be an advantage in itself, Milo knew this well and there was also his ability as well.
Milo checked his ability and it seemed like Milo himself kept running into rare abilities. The student had an ability called Thick Fat. It was a physically altering ability like Steven Smith, the guildmaster of the Big 4. Unlike Steven's however the ability was most suited for tanking, Navi explained it as an ability that allowed the user to receive less damage from physical attacks, it would absorb some of the power from attacks and nullify part of the damage. Milo saw this and then looked at the student's wrist to check the ability level displayed on his holo. A bright red X could be seen.
After all of Milo's observations, Milo concluded that he could defeat the student. Since fighting many different people and beasts, his fighting intuition had improved and he had become more accurate at gauging what he could and couldn't handle and he concluded this student would be no problem. Now the only thing Milo had to decide was how he wanted to defeat the student, he could just use the disaster ability, but it was very flashy and would draw unwanted attention. He could use the reinforce ability but his damage would be weakened but at the same time it would be a good challenge, first though he'd let the other student make the first move.
The student so far hadn't made a move, Milo guessed that this was due to him being cautious, most X ranked students were as they inherently had more experience in combat. He was just giving Milo the stink eye, the student who was being picked on grabbed his bag and moved behind Milo and Zach, seeing this the bully waited for Milo to turn before trying to sucker punch him. Milo expected this and turned his head with the attack to absorb some of the blow. The punch packed more strength than Milo was expecting, but not enough to knock him unconscious.
It caused Milo's brow to split and a small amount of blood began to drip down the side of his head. The bully looked proud of himself and had a smug smile on his face. Milo touched his forehead and touched the blood before checking to make sure he really was bleeding. At that moment Milo decided he was going to destroy the bully's pride. Seeing Milo was going to fight back the student prepared himself and put his fists up. Milo thought he should hold back but with how the student's ability worked decided not to. Milo pulled his fist back, used Reinforce to strengthen his arm to its limit and then used the Disaster ability to shoot flames from his elbow to speed his fist forward even faster.
When Milo's fist made contact with the student's stomach it sounded like a firecracker, the student was sent flying backwards until coming to a stop almost 15 feet away. Milo held his position after the punch for a second and steam could be seen coming from his fist. The student was down for the count and his two goons ran off before anything could happen to them. After snapping out of it, Milo realized what he had done and went to check on the bully. He may have been a bully but Milo didn't want to kill anyone. After confirming the student was still breathing, Milo decided to leave him there and hopefully his goons would get a nurse or take him to the nurse themselves.
After checking with the student who was being bullied, he said he was fine and thanked Milo for helping him. He introduced himself as Duncan Tremaine. He was a B ranked student who even though he was of a decent rank had been bullied due to his appearance and size. He told Milo and Zach that his ability wasn't one that was strong when fighting which only added on to the abuse he received. Milo hearing the kids story felt bad, he had been in a similar position before awakening the system. Milo began thinking about some things and came up with an idea.
"I'm going to train you, I'll take you under my wing, help you learn how to fight, learn how to use your ability effectively, I'll make you someone the bullies are afraid to mess with," Milo said, "what do you say?"
Hearing this, Duncan seemed happy at first but then seemed to look down to the ground, "I don't want to be a bother to you, you already did enough stopping the bullies this time, thanks anyways."
Duncan then began to try to rush off, but Milo stopped him. "At least take my contact down in case you change your mind."
Duncan reluctantly agreed and exchanged information with Milo before thanking him again and going on his way. Meanwhile the bigger student who was bullying him was finally gaining consciousness and upon seeing Milo still standing there he struggled to his feet and attempted to run away, only for him to stumble and fall until he finally stood once again and escaped doing a strange combination of limping and waddling. It was quite comical and caused Milo and Zach to burst out laughing.
"All's well that ends well I guess," Zach said between tears. The pair then made their way to get Milo's brow patched up from where he was cut. Milo held out hope that Duncan would come around, as if he had his ability then he wouldn't have had to go all the way to the nurses office to get patched up and instead would just need to wash away any blood that may have resulted from it. The only issue with this, is that Regeneration would be a visible ability and if someone saw him healing so quickly they'd question how it was possible. At the end of the day it would be an extremely useful ability even with the risk.
After getting a band aid for his cut, Milo and Zach made their way to the blacksmithing area. It was time for Zach to meet Milo's crazy personal smith.