Waking up the next morning, Gary was still thinking about what he could do to get stronger. He only had five more days left until the full moon and from what he had discovered his ways to get stronger were very limited.
The high schooler could try and increase his stats naturally in the gym, though there were two problems with that approach. For one, his Strength and Endurance had grown, so he estimated that it would take for them to grow, which was exactly what he lacked. Then there was also the issue of him still not having figured out how exactly he was supposed to increase Dexterity.
Gary knew that it would be possible with the free stat point he would gain for reaching Level 5. He wasn’t that far off, yet at the same time he lacked a good source of Exp income. The high schooler could continue completing his Daily Quests, though those gave him a pittance in terms of Exp and without any other source it wouldn’t even be enough to reach Level 5 until the full moon.
The only other way he knew how to receive Exp was by fighting opponents. If he was lucky he might even trigger some sort of Quest that would give him even more. Being excluded from school meant that the high schooler couldn’t really start challenging the other fighting clubs, leaving him with one remaining choice.
Just as he had made up his mind to go out and look for some trouble, he received a text on his special phone.
[Heads up, the Underdogs have ordered the black colour gang to retaliate against the red’s advances into their territory. At the same time, they’ll also be scouting the area for you. I know you’re excluded, so keep your head low and stay off the streets for a while.]
‘Well that’s just great.’ Gary sighed, looking at the message from Kai that had ruined his plans. Nevertheless, he was very thankful for it. It would be a disaster if he would have ended up in the midst of that.
With nothing better to do, Gary opted to complete his normal routine, which included practicing his skills by gathering up his meat candy before going to the gym. As bleak as the day had started, the high schooler left the gym with a satisfied smile on his face.’
[Congratulations!Move, move, move and keep moving. Catch everything and become the wind.]
[Dexterity +1]
‘I guess all that hunting in the forest for squirrels and birds, as well as the sprinting on the treadmill is really helping me out. Since it’s the stat that is the lowest it should also be the easiest to improve, but it’s also the one that I need to work the most in as well. Billy was way faster than I was.’ Gary thought.
After that, there wasn’t really much for Gary to do, and before he knew it with his time spent almost doing nothing. It was time for him to head to rugby practice. After changing, he saw Tom on the bench outside, yet not too far from him, was someone he had seen quite recently.
‘Am I imagining things?’ Gary wondered, rubbing his eyes.
Strangely, both of them noticed him at the same time, waving Gary over. Tom and Innu then turned to each other, realising that they were both calling the same person. Before the practice officially started Gary quickly ran off meeting with the other two.
“What’s going on, why are you here?” Gary asked Innu.
“Huh, how come you already know the transfer student?” Tom asked in surprised confusion. As his best friend, he was quite sure that Gary had not once mentioned someone like Innu.
“Oh, me and Green Fa-“
Before Innu could spill the beans that they had met at an underground fighting match, Gary quickly placed his hand over his mouth.
“He’s the… brother of… of one of my Amy’s friends!” Gary made up on the fly. “It’s not often but Amy brings her friends over occasionally, and… well you know where we live. And you know, they just bring their brother along for some reason!”
Gary honestly regretted his cover-up story the moment it left his mouth. Everything sounded like a convoluted lie. In hindsight, he should have just said that he had met him at the gym or something.
The whole charade told Innu that no one around Gary seemed to know what he was doing.
‘If he’s planning to create a gang, then the people around him will naturally get involved. At some point, he’ll either have to sever his ties with them… or bring them into the gang to protect them. I just hope… he’s prepared for one of the options.’
“Oookay…” Tom replied, clearly not convinced. “Didn’t you introduce yourself as an only child though?”
“Well, she was my half-sister. You remember what I said about my scumbag dad leaving us? Didn’t really feel the need to go into too much detail about family stuff.” Innu added some details, going along with the lie. “As the new guy I was just happy to see a familiar face. I mean look at him, not like you could forget those green hairs. Anyway, I think you should go out to the field. From what I’ve been hearing you’re like a minor celebrity now. I’ve hurt my ribs in an accident recently, so I can’t be taking part.”
Gary was very thankful that Innu had played along, especially since he seemed to have a far easier time with coming up with stuff. While the team started their practice in earnest, Tom and Innu used that time to talk about Gary. The new student learned a lot about Gary, whereas Tom was completely convinced that the other didn’t know his best friend at all. For some reason, he felt relieved at the fact that he seemed to be the only one who knew about this entire Werewolf situation.
During a small break, Gary decided that it would be a good time to talk with Innu, if only to clear up the confusion. He excused himself loudly, claiming that he would take a quick toilet break, while meeting Innu’s eyes. A few moments after Gary had left, Innu followed after. Of course, the high schooler had waited outside as it felt awkward to talk in that room.
“What are you doing here? How did you even manage to transfer this quickly?” Gary asked.
“As of today, I’m a student of Westbridge, just like you. I have Kai to thank for that one.” Innu grinned. “I told you that I would be talking to him yesterday, remember? He asked me to inform him if anything happened in the whole Billy situation, so I told him everything about yesterday, how he attacked me in school and how you were there to rescue us.”
“The next moment, he offered to help me transfer over. Apparently he was going to propose this when we got closer anyway and this ‘special situation’ was a perfect excuse to speed up the process. Who is Kai anyway, for him to be able to do this sort of stuff? It’s clear that he isn’t exactly your average student… ”
That was actually a question Gary would like to have answered as well. All he knew about Kai was that his upperclassman had money, lots of it, and that he wanted to create a gang to get out of the Underdogs, just like him just didn’t know the reason why he wanted to leave. Gary had never asked about the other, despite all the help he had received, but he didn’t really care about Kai since he had a million other problems to solve himself.
“Yeah…he does have his connections, that’s all I know.” Gary shrugged and started running back to the rugby field.
Over the next few days, Gary continued to do what he did everyday, and each night he would get a countdown of the day to the next full moon drawing closer.
There wasn’t anything Gary could do about it.
There were no signs of Billy, no news of more dead either. Gary started training with innu after school. Since Innu was still recovering at the moment, he could only instruct Gary on how to fight, and in his spare time Gary practiced these moves again and again.
Then finally, something strange happened with only two days left until the next full moon. It was also the day before Gary’s rugby match and he was more excited for this than anything. While walking home, he would do so with Tom and Innu, for a short while. A requirement that Kai had set up.
Then Tom would split off early on to head in a different direction. It was then that Gary found himself in a familiar situation. A group of students had surrounded him, and they all wore the Eton High uniform.
“Haha.” Gary started to laugh, usually he would be annoyed but today he welcomed it, for he could do with the extra exp, at the same time Innu couldn’t wait to pay back those that had hurt him before.
Unbeknownst to Gary similar scenes were playing out elsewhere. He wasn’t the only target of this surprise attack. At that moment, every regular member of the Ruby club that was supposed to play had been targeted.
In a certain alleyway down the streets of Slough, Eton High had sent out more students to attack a certain individual compared to others. Walking out of the alleyway into the sunlight his hands were bloody.
‘They attacked me again.’ Blake thought to himself, spitting blood out from his mouth. ‘These guys are scum!’
In the alleyway itself, six students could be seen laying down on the floor hurt.