After replenishing his Energy by plundering the fridge, Gary decided to take some of the food along with him. With no better alternatives, he placed them in the coat pockets of his new jacket. Right now he was in a rush, and there was a reason why he had left early.
‘He won’t mind right? I mean the guy is an Altered superstar. Someone as rich as him can easily just replace all that food, and it’s not like I’ll see him ever again. Damn, if I had been in my right mind I could have asked him for a signature! I bet that would have sold for a decent sum!’
Currently, Gary was sprinting towards the Yellow Stack building, it was around 6 AM in the morning. He was hoping that he could grab his phone and check out what state he had left the room in. Perhaps it might give him an idea of what had happened after he had lost consciousness.
When he finally could see the Yellow Stack though, there were the iconic white and black cars, which made him do a complete U-turn.
‘Damn the police are here! Did something happen? Sh*t, did I trigger some sort of alarm or something yesterday? What do I do now? Both of my phones were in there! And my clothes! I hope I don’t get Tom in any kind of trouble.’ Gary started to panic. ‘Well I was naked so maybe I ripped all of my clothes off?’
In the end, the high schooler couldn’t risk staying there. All he could do was head to school without them. As for his school uniform, that had been left at school in the locker. Since he left the rugby match yesterday in a hurry. He could only hope that after yesterday’s match, Mr Root wouldn’t mind giving him some replacements.
Running, running and running non stop, Gary ended up using the Charging Heart skill three times. Once to get Yellow Stack and two more times to reach his school. This was because of how far he was away. Fortunately, with the extra food he had taken, his Energy was almost full again.
Although the moon seemed to still be full, he had lost his additional stats, though it was a small price to pay for no longer losing his Energy as quickly.
‘My stats are now lower though, and I can really feel it on my body. I need to improve it!’
Entering school, there was next to no one due to how early it was. It had taken Gary an hour running, which was quite impressive considering the distance. If anyone saw his accomplishments they would have tried to recruit him for the track team.
The first thing Gary did was change into his school uniform from his locker. Anyone could see that his current clothes were too nice for someone like him. After that, all he could do was wait. Surprisingly, the first person who looked to have entered the classroom was none other than Tom.
‘Yes, he’s here! The one person I could have hoped for, I don’t know why he’s early but thank my lucky stars he’s here!’ Gary thought.
He could see the Marks again, and knew they were getting closer but he wasn’t going to believe his eyes until he saw them. What was even stranger was the first thing Tom did. He immediately ran up to Gary, giving him a big hug.
“You… you… YOU’RE OKAY!!! I’m so happy!!! I was so worried!!! I thought that you might have been hurt, or stuck in that form forever!!!” Tom was crying, rubbing his head into Gary’s shirt. Covering it with tears and snot.
He had no clue what had happened. If it was before, he would have pushed his best friend off, but after everything his friend had done to help him, it felt wrong of him to do that. Gary waited for Tom to finish letting his emotions out.
Still sobbing, the other placed his backpack on the table, and pulled out two phones as well as some ripped rugby clothing, handing them over to Gary.
“Wait, these are my things, how did you get them?” Gary asked, now looking at Tom he noticed that his face looked incredibly tired.
‘What exactly had happened to him?’ Gary thought.
“I went to Yellow Stack after leaving the police station. I thought that you wouldn’t be there, since you were dealing with other things, I didn’t know how I could help you, but I wanted to make sure that the person I saw was you.
“When I entered the Yellow Stack, I could see that the steel door had been ripped to shreds, the chains were completely broken, and there was something on the floor. Anyway, I cleaned most of it up, and grabbed things before calling the police myself. Saying there was a break in, so there shouldn’t be a problem there.”
“Wait what? I understand some of what you were talking about, but the other things make no sense. How did you know where I was, or what I was doing?” Gary asked.
It was then that Tom went into the frightening details of last night. How he had planned to wait nearby, how they had seen someone killed in front of their eyes, but most importantly, that Gary in his Werewolf form was the one that saved them.
‘All of that happened, yet I wasn’t conscious for any of it… At least it didn’t sound like I attacked the other guys… but why did I save them? Well clearly that other Werewolf had to have been Billy.’ Gary thought.
Thinking about things a bit more, Gary had some theories and they were all related to his system. From what it had told him, he should have been hunting those Marked by him with a Forced Bond, yet Gil didn’t seem to have been there.
Since that didn’t happen, he could only imagine that his Werewolf instincts had been trying to complete another Quest of his. Fighting the other Omega to see who would come out on top.
Lastly, there was also the Bond Mark that he had with Tom. Maybe Gary had protected Tom because of his Mark, or there was a part of him that was still in his Werewolf form somewhere, telling his Werewolf self to protect those close to him?
The last one he thought was unlikely because Gary couldn’t remember a thing, it was as if someone had taken over his body.
‘It might be if I place more Bond Marks on people I really care for, like my mother and Amy. However, first I’ll have to deal with a far bigger problem. Billy could still be alive, and if he comes out again…’
“Anyway, thanks for helping us out Gary, now we have an entire month to solve this problem to prevent anything from going wrong next time. Just leave the whole mess about the container to me, I’ll find a way to explain things to my parents somehow. Looks like it wasn’t much use anyway.” Tom chuckled. “By the way, I was wondering, since when did you have two phones?”