Merlin had assigned 3 of the dozen captives to each of the four teams, while keeping Jack for himself. Bringing Jack to his room, Merlin sat down on the floor cross-legged, and instructed Jack to do the same.
"So, Jack. What do you think will happen if you leave my group?"
"Huh? I- I don't understand?"
"If you leave my group, what will happen to you?"
"Uhm…"
"Speak honestly."
"I would run away, as far as I can, and kill as many zombies as I can, before going to some secluded area in the woods and wait this disaster out. The military will come and kill all zombies, and I will wait until then."
"Hmm. No a bad plan. But let me tell you a few things. Just like how you have an ability, even I have an ability."
"Yeah. I assumed as much. The speed and power you possess exceeds the human body's limits."
"That is not my ability."
"What! Then you are naturally that strong? That's not possible!"
"I will explain my strength when the time is right. But for now, you should know that my ability allows me to see the future."
"Huh! Wait what!!!!"
Merlin had been pondering over this for some time now. How would he explain to Alex and the rest that he knew the future? In the end he had decided to borrow and emphasis on the ability of a deceased survivor. His ability was future sight, and it would allow him to see multiple versions of the future, and could follow the traces to see about 3 seconds into the future. Merlin decided to use this ability, exaggerate it a bit, and use it as his cover.
"Yes. The future. I just awakened today in the morning. It allowed me to see the apocalypse happening, and make preparations through the day. That is why I am the leader. I knew everything in advance."
"… What! Then why didn't you tell anyone? You could have saved countless!"
"No. What do you think would happen if I ran around screaming 'The Apocalypse is coming today! Run for your lives' in the streets.? And if I went to some authority, they too might consider me to be insane, and if they don't throw me into a mental hospital at once, they would definitely come to find me later on to know how I knew about it once it happened."
"This.." Jack was speechless at the reality of that statement. Everything that Merlin said was 100% the truth.
Initially, when Merlin got to know there was a fire-mage within the group, he immediately wanted to add him to his group. Especially pre-awakened ones. During the tutorial, most skills are sealed, and the only ones who can use abilities are pre-awakened. And the best ones for area of damage spells with the least mana consumption are fire-mages.
However, when he learned of Jack's name, Merlin had a change of plans. He would help out Jack as much as he could. In the future, Fire-ball Jack was one of the survivors till the Zero incident. His natural strategy was to cover his body in flames and fly into the enemy hordes like a fireball and a flurry of fire spells. He even earned the title of 'Fireball' from his fighting style. Jack was one of the people who helped Merlin become the strongest unspecialised elementalists in the human race.
Merlin had pathetically low mana for an elementalists, because the conversion rate for stat points to mana is pathetically low once you evolve to Tier 1. This was because people would be able to gain mana while meditating. As long as they had enough time, they could quickly gain mana. But one needed a meditation law set for that, and Merlin had never come across one that was suitable for an unspecialised. Just as he was about to give up and specialise into one of the four elements and restart his path from Tier 1 back to his Tier 4 body, he was stopped by Jack. Jack, was the first to give Merlin his own meditation law set.
However, being an unspecialised elementalists, Merlin could not use that meditation law set since it was specialised towards fire-magic. And over the course of a year, he travelled the world along with Jack to find the greatest elementalists in the other elements. When one remains unspecialised like Merlin, they are called elementalists, while specialised people are called mages, who were a lot more arrogant than normal people due to their fantasy titles they received from their fighting style. Jack was the only decent mage Merin had ever seen
When seeking out the help of these mages, Merlin had sacrificed a great deal of recourses from mana crystals to elemental orbs, and even 2 artefacts to finally obtain the other 3 law sets. With this, Merlin spent nearly 3 months to create a new meditation law set suitable for elementalists. And with this, he slowly rose in strength, until he became the strongest elementalists.
And this was all possible because Jack's meditation law set had some missing parts. When Merlin checked with another fire mage, although not as profound or powerful as Jack's it too had missing parts. When Merlin checked the law set of a water mage, it too had missing parts, but those parts were different from the ones the fire law sets were missing. It was then that Merlin had realised that the four elemental law sets were part of a puzzle. Experimenting with this, Merlin had taken 10 days to fuse a weak fire law set with a weak earth law set. This created a lava mage law set! But when he tried to do the same with Jack's law set, it always failed. Then he realised that the strength of the elemental law sets must be equal or close to equal in order to fuse. Therefore Jack and Merlin set out on their 1 year long journey around the world.