Chapter 18 - Active Skill

Sending Amber to die in the tower tutorials, I grab all five health potions on the top shelf of the tv cupboard and place them in my storage bag inside the T-system inventory. 

Then I turned my attention to unconscious Stan. His breathing had become slow. So I checked his pulse because I didn't want to waste a health potion on a dead person. I was casual about this because I knew I could get away with Stan's murder by making his body disappear. To make that happen, all I had to do was chop up his body, wrap it up in a trash bag, place it in the storage bag, and then dump it in the tower. Just like that, there is no dead body to investigate. Maybe we can treat the world's trash problem similarly by tossing it in the tower. 

Stan's body felt cold. His body temperature was dropping with every passing second. He was about to die. I could not delay feeding him a sip of health potion any longer. Before that, I grabbed a rope and used it to tie his hands and feet. Stan had a skill. It would be foolish not to immobilize him before healing him back. Even if he is in a half-dead state, a skill is a skill. 

I propped up Stan's body and fed him a sip of the health potion. This should keep him alive for a little longer. 

[Item: Health Potion (Common)

Durability: Consumable (100%>>90%)] 

After consuming a sip of the health potion, Stan's body showed signs of improvement, but clearly, the amount of potion fed to him was nowhere near enough to heal Stan entirely. All I did was buy him a few more minutes. 

"Hey, Stan, wake up! I know you can hear me. Do as I say if you want to live. Or prepare to meet your ex-wife in hell." I used the threat of death to motivate the dying person with the allure of hope. Hope that if he did as I said, he might live to see another sunrise. 

"... Amber is dead. You killed her." Stan said in a hoarse whisper as if it took him all of his might to utter these words. 

Laying him back on the cold blood-stained floor, I replied, "Yes. If you don't want to join her, give me the authority to view your status window." 

"..." Finding his hands and feet restrained, Stan tried to search for me with his drooping eyes. But all he could see was the furniture surrounding him and my blood-stained feet. 

"Hurry, you don't have time to waste." I rushed Stan. 

"View Status" Stan had no choice but to give me the authority to view his status windows if he wanted to survive. Nobody chooses death over hope, even if the hope can be false. They would rather gamble than lose for sure.

[Name: Stan Hunt (Bleed)

Level: 0 (Exp: 10%)

Meta: please develop your meta to ascend as a Mortal Regainer

Floor: Bathroom Door

Heath: 10/100

Stamina: 13/100

Strength: 8

Agility: 7

Defense: 7

Intelligence: 4

Stat points: 0

Skills: Wrestling(Common)

Items: None equipped

T-coins: 3

Note: User under abnormal status, Bleed.

Bleed- The user will lose one health point every minute.]

[Skill: Wrestling(Common) (Active)

Effect: When activated, for ten stamina points, users' strength and agility are enhanced to grapple and take down the target.

Cooldown: 30 seconds]

"Trash," I uttered after reading the effects of Stan's Wrestling skills. It would be useless in front of someone stronger than the user. Not to mention it is an active skill.

John Johnson Jr. said that his 'Jiu-Jitsu Mastery' skill was a passive skill. So what gives? 

'Mastery' This word caught my attention. Seeing it, I could not help but speculate whether the vast difference between the two skills rewarded by the tower is because of the difference in Stan's knowledge of Wrestling compared to John's knowledge of Jiu-Jitsu. Stan barely fits a rookie title in wrestling, while John holds a pro title in Jiu-Jitsu. These thoughts are nothing but groundless assumptions that would not bring me anywhere close to the truth, so I decided not to waste time on them. 

[Name: Stan Hunt

Level: 0 (Exp: 10%)]

"Wtf!" The Skeleton Foot Soldier I killed to clear the tower tutorial gave me enough Exp to level up. But according to Stan's Exp bar, defeating his opponent in the tutorial only raised his Exp to the next level by 10%. The disparity in the Exp given by the monster we defeated to clear the tutorials showed I didn't go through a standard tower tutorial like Stan or anyone else. I felt like I cleared the tower tutorials in hard difficulty settings while other others cleared the tutorials in easy difficulty settings.

Other than that, I was a little jealous of Stan's stats, physical stats, not intellectual stats. His level zero stats were almost the same as my level three stats. I felt like I was paying the bill for the food late Ryan ate. Considering I am using his body and identity, I didn't hold it against him. Not to mention he is dead. No point in keeping scores with the dead. 

*Poof!* *Thud!* 

"Already?" I said, witnessing Amber's body mysteriously appear out of thin air and fall to the floor. 

"HUH!" With a deep breath, Amber awakened. And looked around in alarm, finding herself in familiar surroundings, she sighed, but the panic and fear on her face hadn't cleared yet. Various emotions coursed through her heart. After all, she had just experienced death.

Amber did not know whether to appreciate that she was alive or indulge in the negative emotions brought by being beaten to death by a Cyan dog. Thankfully it immediately aimed for her throat, giving her a quick and painless death. She wasn't unfortunate like the people in internet posts who were alive while the beast fed on their immobile bodies. 

"Welcome back. Looks like you are all patched up." I greeted Amber, reminding her that she wasn't out of the frying pan yet. Amber's blood-stained clothes made it hard to tell if her wounds were healed but seeing how she was not bleeding anymore, her wounds must have healed. 

"..." Amber glanced at me blankly and then turned to look at the main door. 

"Don't worry. You are free to go after you clean this bloody mess up. Now go grab a mop and get to work. The sooner you finish cleaning up this mess, the sooner you can leave this place. Or you can try escaping. Good luck with that." Since I didn't plan on killing the adulterous ex-couple, I can only let them go. They better have learned a lesson here. If not, I don't mind dumping their chopped-up bodies in the tower.