Free Web NovelChapter 6: Awakening And Cursed...?
Naomi’s reveal switched something in everyone’s minds.
The moment she revealed that Fredrinn wasn’t Richard, the surrounding males got alerted and instantly tried to overpower Fredrinn to question him.
But he was no amateur.
He quickly slipped from their half-hearted grapple and raised his hands in surrender, "Wait! Please, wait!"
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN WAIT?! WHO THE HELL ARE YOU? WHERE IS RICHARD?!" Naomi screamed in response, pointing at Fredrinn accusatorily before covering her mouth in horror, "Did... did you kill him to find out about this hiding spot...?"
A single accusation and suddenly, no one in the group was willing to listen to Fredrinn’s defense anymore.
The males slowly inched closer to him while the remaining women gave him distrustful and fearful glances.
But suddenly, a calm and collected voice cut through the tension with ease.
A man revealed himself, dressed in a flamboyant neon jacket and a cowboy hat that looked ridiculous but no one dared to say that to the man’s face.
"Screaming and making sounds will attract the zombies, Naomi. Do not make this mistake again, yes?" He smiled kindly and offered, but there was an underlying threat in his tone.
Then he turned to the group of men surrounding Fredrinn.
"Charlie, please go bolt the door shut, would you? We don’t want any zombie invasion here."
Charlie was a muscular but obviously young boy that merely huffed in response and walked towards the door to complete the orders.
"So... fake Richard, my name is Jacob Pomroe. What’s yours?" Jacob fixed his cowboy hat before questioning.
"Fredrinn," he replied.
"Ah, Freddy it is." Jacob smiled, offering his right hand for a handshake.
"You can call me that." Fredrinn nodded, taking the handshake even though he had no clue about what was going on currently.
However, the moment his skin came in contact with Jacob’s, his instincts trembled dangerously.
They had only brushed their hands for a minor moment before Fredrinn pulled back his hands and the left retreated to his back while the right now rested on the pommel of his sword.
He was prepared for a fight through and through.
[ Congratulations on your awakening, human. ]
An unknown and completely unnatural holographic screen popped up in front of Fredrinn’s eyes, reminding him of the text magic but it wasn’t really the same.
As for Jacob, he hadn’t taken any offense from Freddy’s retreat. Hell, he was grinning widely!
"So at least the part about you being an awakener was not a lie." Jacob chuckled warmly as if the two of them were best of the buds.
Charlie had already slammed the doors safely and Naomi was only looking at Fredrinn coldly as if he was already dead in her eyes.
But for the poor Fredrinn, who had come looking for answers, he only got more questions as the hologram in front of his eyes expanded.
[ Name: Fredrinn Winchester
Race: Human (Apollo Hybrid)
Age: 136 ]
[ You have been inflicted by the curse, Skill Drain. ]
[ Skill Drain: An evil skill that allows the caster to plunder the target’s skill if the requirements are met.
Requirements for your skill theft... deemed impossible. ]
[ Curse, Skill Drain has been lifted but the caster has not been notified. Do you wish to notify them? ]
Fredrinn mentally chose not to notify the caster, which was obviously Jacob.
As for the man in question, he was simply grinning ear to ear on the thoughts of acquiring a new skill under his repertoire.
His own skill was cool, but he found it much cooler to steal other’s powers and use them against themselves. It sounded like a power a protagonist from a fiction would own.
He saw that Fredrinn was looking ahead of himself blankly, and he instantly recognized that the man was checking his status screen.
Jacob felt a slight fear from the thought that maybe Fredrinn found out about his evil skill as he had no clue about its workings. It was his first time trying it out, after all.
He had given an offer to all the girls to call everyone they knew and find an awakener for him, and in return he would give them an absolute protection against everyone in the group.
He was the strongest, so none of the girls doubted his claim and hence Naomi’s adamant efforts in bringing Richard, or in his place, Fredrinn here.
"Heh, what are you seeing in there that’s so interesting, Freddy?" Jacob placed his hands around Fredrinn’s shoulder, but the latter simply swerved out of the action without even looking at him.
There was no way he was going to let a dangerous man like Jacob touch him again.
Though, most of his focus was on the weird hologram.
And he called it weird because the hologram in front of his eyes was glitching out crazily.
It kept phasing in and out, shifting colours throughout the whole spectrum as the words transformed into incoherent strings of texts.
Sometimes he understood what it meant, sometimes he didn’t as the shitshow continued for several seconds until Fredrinn could feel that the surrounding humans were getting antsy about his absence of focus.
So he let the glitch go on in the background as he turned to Jacob.
"I am honestly really sorry for approaching this place under the ruse and a fake identity, but I had no other choice as I was dying of hunger outside and I was scared." Fredrinn said whole heartedly, using his expert skills to hide his lies just like how he hid his age perfectly under the guise of this handsome body.
He could see the humans sigh in understanding and nodding reluctantly, having a slight idea of what difficulties Fredrinn was talking about.
But of course, Naomi wasn’t easily impressed.
She still looked at him in anger and felt betrayed, since she dearly wanted to reunite with Richard.
Jacob had promised her that no ill would come to Richard, so she had no reason not to invite him, especially when he– or rather Fredrinn disguised as Richard, had revealed that he was an awakener.
But alas, her plans were doused before they could kindle into a small fire. ƒгeewebnovёl.com
"Even then, you could’ve simply asked for help under your real identity instead of impersonating someone else." A slim and lanky man with typical round specs pointed out and the rest nodded in agreement.
That would’ve been much better, no?
However, Fredrinn had the perfect response ready for the question.
He shamelessly pointed at Naomi and ratted her out that...
"I actually did try to talk to her under my real name, but she only cared about her friend Roxanna and hung up on me! So next time, I simply took the disguise of her friend."
