Business Time

Jack had forgotten how scary creatures were since he had entered this world. The assistant had told him horror stories about the speed and strength of these monsters since normal humans were their natural prey. But once Jack realized that he could infinitely accumulate Sym energy, he had gained more and more strength, which allowed him to dominate the creatures he saw. There were still other types of creatures that he had not encountered yet, such as the ones deep within the ocean, but only the humanoids were making him feel wary.

But for normal humans, creatures were worse than a natural disaster. They were like a hurricane causing a nuclear meltdown in your city. They were fatal in their impact and evil in their viciousness. Jack observed the turmoil that had broken out within the facility and decided to observe how the soldiers would react to the threat. Since he was now free to enter the city, he turned around a corner and put on a black hoodie from his bag to hide his identity and especially his face. It had already gotten dark, which allowed him to secretly jump to the top of the wall and gain a clear view at the area that was illuminated by large floodlights.

From his vantage point, Jack could see how all the cars waiting to enter the city were dispersing into all directions and trying to escape the creature's stampede. The soldiers were flying into the air and started shooting at the creatures, but these were able to evade easily due to their naturally high speed and fast reflexes. The ones they got hit seemed unfazed and barely reacted to the impact. Jack could also notice the large cannons on the wall being moved into position, and he could sense that they were gradually being charged with Sym energy. He wondered if the natural Sym energy stone the military required was for these types of weapons.

Jack observed the movement of the creatures further. He noticed that they were fighting less wildly than they usually did and are more coordinated. From his previous observations, the creatures should attack each other and fight like wild animals, but they were spreading out and specifically trying to reach the border wall. The controlling ability exercised by the humanoid must be very strong if it can push the creatures to such a degree that they will ignore all their natural instincts, Jack thought.

The creature was levitating in the air and kept hidden from the eyes of the soldiers. It seemed to intentionally use the creatures to test the defense of the facility since it did not make any attempts to join them in the fight. Or maybe it was confident that the five creatures could break the city wall and kill all the soldiers. The creatures were moving rapidly and used a random evasion pattern to avoid the gunshots from the soldiers. Their tentacles were reaching for the soldiers and tried to pluck them out of the air, but the soldiers were staying just beyond their reach. Jack assumed that they could not fly much higher, which made the vanguard a very dangerous occupation. One of the creatures jumped up and managed to snatch one of the soldiers from the air and immediately pushed him into its mouth. Jack could only hear a loud scream, and with his detection ability he could sense how the soldier was crushed immediately and sent into the creature's stomach with its entire armor.

Jack realized that such an attack was not business as usual and that this was a serious threat to the entire city. Then he heard a loud noise and noticed a major discharge of Sym energy on the wall. It was one of the massive guns that had shot at the creature. It had left a huge crater in the ground but had barely missed its target. With such firepower, Jack thought that it could be possible to kill the creatures but not with that slow speed. But it was clear to Jack that there was only one way to help them before the creatures made it past the soldiers and started killing the civilians.

Jack opened a window portal and aimed it right at the humanoid, which was hiding behind a rock formation. He heated up his frying hand ability and jumped through, attempting to get a quick kill like with the other creature. As Jack jumped through the portal, the humanoid rapidly jerked its head in his direction and let out a loud scream. Jack was startled but reached for the creature's head and pushed his heating ability to the maximum. As his hands were about to touch the humanoid's head, he suddenly felt that his hands were getting cold. Jack quickly jumped backward and observed the humanoid from a safe distance.

"We learn. Always," the creature said.

"It must be the one we met earlier with the cooling ability," the assistant said.

Jack agreed and rushed back at the creature, saying, "Violence always works." Jack had been accumulating Sym energy like a madman and had long thought that his physical abilities must far exceed those of the humanoids. That, combined with his mixed martial arts skills, should be more than sufficient to take them out.

Jack attacked the creature with a series of kicks and punches to which it had no response and simply tried to evade backward. But Jack's movements were faster, and he started to land significant hits on its body and its head. Jack felt that each contact created a cooling sensation in his limbs, but he was confident that he could heal any potential damage after the fight as long as he kept the contact time short. After a minute of combat, the creature looked like it had fallen down a cliff inside a steel bin. Its body had bumps all over, and it was bleeding dark purple blood, just like the normal creatures do.

"Not yet," the humanoid said.

Seemingly desperate, the humanoid used its teleportation ability and instantly disappeared. Jack immediately focused on his detection ability and increased its radius to over one kilometer. He could sense the creature about 800 meters away and was about to follow it, but when he started to sense that the creatures were attacking the civilians, he turned around and went back to the wall. The disappearance of the humanoid had let the creatures loose since its control ability had disappeared. The creatures were not storming toward the wall anymore but were indiscriminately attacking everyone that was close to them, including each other. The floodlights exposed Jack's movements, but the hoodie hid his face, which is why he openly ran and jumped toward the first creature he saw and took it out before it could reach a family that was trying to speed away in its car. Two other creatures had decided to return to the rocky mountain range and left the area, while the remaining two creatures started to fight each other. Jack could notice that three of the large cannons were directly aiming at the two creatures, and he waited to see how strong they were. Two cannons fired at the same time with energy balls' trajectory aiming perfectly at the creatures' body, but, right before it hit, the creatures jumped to the side and evaded the attacks. The third cannon had fired after the two with a slight delay and tried to anticipate the creatures' movements. It hit one of the evading creatures on its side and blew away one of its tentacles and some of its skin but not killing it.

Both creatures now also decided to leave since they might not be too comfortable in the low-density Sym energy areas, which are not their natural habitat.

The injured creature was moving slightly slower than normal, but it was still moving at a remarkable speed. Jack quickly took the crystal he obtained from the creature he killed and moved back on top of the wall to observe the scene. From what he could tell, three soldiers had died and about ten people were injured. If that's how much damage they take from just five creatures with all of their military power, then this world is in deep trouble, Jack thought. He went back to the spot where he fought the humanoid and tried to sense its presence but to no avail. He kept jumping through the vicinity to increase his detection reach, but all he could find were the four creatures that had fled. He took them all out and grabbed their energy crystals before hiding their bodies by throwing them through a portal. He was not in need of more crystals, but he was not going to give away his loot for free.

He returned to the city and made his way to the address that Ark had provided him with. When they all saw him at their doorstep, they were relieved and gave him a hug. They offered him to stay for the night, but he declined, saying that he had been provided with a hotel room until he got his documents tomorrow. Jack also told Ark that he should be able to get the non-affiliated trader license directly from the government, but he will have to wait and see until tomorrow. Ark felt almost bad for that since he had not fulfilled his side of the deal yet, but Jack reassured him, stating that he would ask him if he needed help. He wished his tired friends a good night and walked into the night. He did not actually have a hotel room, but he was looking forward to his cave in the high-density energy area. Sym energy made him feel at home more than any bed, feeling, or smell ever could.

He hid a portal inside the city center where he was sure no one would find it and jumped to his cave in order to meditate. As he was enjoying the rush of Sym energy he felt after spending many days inside the low-energy density area, he started to experiment with other spatial abilities he could learn based on accumulating energy in neighboring brain regions.

"I have finished the computation of the humanoid's brain. Since I was also able to gain a reading of the humanoid you have just fought, I can share data on both of them," the assistant said.

"Great, so what were their abilities?" Jack said with his eyes closed, still meditating in a half-lotus position.

"The first humanoid had five brain regions that had increased levels of Sym energy. It is important to note that not all of these regions were equally energy-dense, and fluctuations are to be expected since the energy-density will increase if an ability is active but decrease if it is inactive. From my estimations, these are related to two spatial abilities, likely teleportation and storage, and one ability that must be similar to an ability that can generate large-scale explosions. I do not have much data on the latter since it is not an ability where humans tend to live long since the human body is generally not able to withstand any experimentation with such a power," the assistant explained.

"Then I was lucky to take it out so quickly. That could have been a disaster if it had reached the group. And I guess it's not a skill that is suitable for short-range combat anyway, so it was at a disadvantage, not like the one I just fought. What were the other two abilities?" Jack asked.

"The other two abilities correspond to brain regions that humans do not possess, so I cannot estimate their nature. I will try to create a new model that calculates the specific brain resonance caused by such a brain region and can try to identify if there is a way to mimic it using a human brain. I will notify you if that was successful," the assistant answered.

Jack was still meditating but had grabbed some salty snack from his pocket and ate it while the assistant briefed him further. He was still shifting Sym energy into new areas and tried to feel how his abilities were changing in response to it.

The assistant continued, "I have also been able to scan the second humanoid's brain and have mapped it to the new conversion model to identify its abilities. This humanoid seems to have ten different abilities. It has the same abilities as the previous humanoid except for the explosion-related skill. In addition, it has two unknown abilities that do not correspond to any brain region and four skills that are cooling, projection, foresight, and levitation. Projection is a skill that allows the user to utilize Sym energy to communicate over long distances, while foresight is a way of using the Sym energy in a certain radius to predict what will occur in the immediate future. All of these attributions are based on varying assumptions and cannot be considered definite," the assistant explained.

"Are you telling me that it can see the future?" Jack asked, his eyes slowly opening.

"It is not exactly seeing the future since it is only able to read the immediate environment similar to detection and create probabilities that can go minutes into the future. It is rather a way of intuiting how objects will change as opposed to seeing how the future will end up becoming," the assistant added.

"If it is dependent on the objects in its proximity, then it makes sense that it did not see me coming but reacted fast as soon as I appeared. Maybe it also explains why it cooled its head the moment I tried to melt it. Do you think that it's the same one we saw in the garage?" Jack asked.

"It is highly likely," the assistant answered.

Jack got up and looked around in his cave. His eyesight had become so good that he was able to see in the dark. The small shimmer of light that entered through a gap between the entrance and the boulder that blocked it off was enough for Jack to see everything clearly. His cave was not pretty, but it was functional. It contained his self-made shelves that contained a large number of Sym energy crystals and a lot of creature leather, which he had hoped could fetch a good price. But after he had learned about the value of the crystals, he had planned to just throw it all out. While he did like the cave since it gave him a sense of security, he mostly liked the high-density energy that it provided. It would be nice to have a small house somewhere in the area, he thought, but he would need to hide such a home carefully so that it is not raided by some creatures in his absence. Next time he was talking to Ark, he would ask him if there were some tiny home products that he could buy since such things were available on Earth.

Jack spent the rest of the night meditating and experimenting by shifting his energy to new regions. The assistant had pointed out the regions that have not been documented and suggested that Jack carefully explored them. If he wanted to find out about dimensional jumps, he would have to learn as much as possible, and experimentation is an important part of it. But it also bears a risk since new abilities often kill their users due to their lack of understanding what an ability actually does. Suddenly jumping into space and suffocating or dropping down into an active volcano are real risks that spatial abilities can bring. During his meditation session, Jack did discover new variations of spatial abilities, including abilities that allow him to instantly rotate his body as well as a way of teleporting other objects within his visual field. He had not mastered these techniques yet, but he gathered more data and let the assistant create a more comprehensive database of spatial abilities. This will be invaluable when he will face advanced spatial ability users in this world.

The next morning, Jack woke up in the bed in Jalk City after taking a two-hour nap that was not necessary but felt calming to him. He then took a shower and asked himself after which he raided the local abandoned supermarket for some breakfast. His appetite had increased significantly, and he was eating large quantities of meat that he found in the freezers that still worked fine due to their Sym energy power source. Jack was scanning the area through his detection ability and noticed at least three dozen creatures in the vicinity and two humanoid creatures. None of them seemed to have noticed him, but he had become more careful since he knew that humanoids could potentially detect him easily.

Jack got dressed with fresh clothing that he found in the cabinet of another home and then made his way back to Gosi City in order to cash in his payment and also gain his trading license. "If they try to screw me over, they're dead," Jack mumbled to himself. He had become more confrontational and aggressive compared to his life on Earth, but he himself did not notice just how much he had changed. The one who is affected by change is often the last one to notice.

Jack made his way to the address he got from Officer Faber and talked to the clerk, who immediately led him to a large conference room. He brought a large stack of papers and documents that Jack was required to read and sign. Since it contained at least 150 pages of contracts and legal disclaimers, he was given all day to cover the materials as well as complimentary water and some snacks. Jack did not bother reading the documents himself but let the assistant scan the information through his eyes and provide him with an assessment of its contents. This way, Jack was able to finish everything in under 20 minutes and called the surprised bank clerk back early. Since Jack was to be treated as a VIP, the clerk did not urge him to take more time but immediately moved onto the next stage once he confirmed the correct placements of the signatures. He handed Jack two sets of documents, namely his personal identification, which included a Sym crystal-based screen that showed his picture and personal details, as well as his business license, which indicated that he has the permission to be a non-affiliated trader. He was likewise able to open a company directly through the bank, which was common practice in this country. Lastly, he was handed over all the necessary data for his bank account, which was not under his name but was in the name of his company. Since the sum of 140 million CCC that was deposited was significant and had tax implications, it needed to be handled that way because government organizations are prohibited from engaging in trade with individuals, at least officially. Officer Faber also wanted Jack to be financially bound to his new company so that he would trade more Sym crystals with the government in the future, which was a sneaky move.

The bank clerk looked at Jack, who was wearing a black tracksuit and had messy hair, and tried to guess how such a man had become so rich and was even handed such a rare business license on a silver platter. But he was not one to pry, a key ingredient to being a successful banker, and looked at Jack with a smile, asking, "How would you like to name your company?"

Jack thought for a moment and then answered, "Earth Trade Inc.," while walking back to the counter with the clerk, who was entering the remaining information into the system.

"Congratulations, you are now the Managing Director of Earth Trade Inc., and all of our premium banking services will be available to you in 193 countries," the clerk said with a smile and a light bow.

"Thanks," Jack said as he turned around and toward the exit, thinking about what he would do next. Then he turned around and looked back at the clerk, "Can you send a letter for me?"