Alex continued his wild rage not caring about the consequences. He was so fed up with this world and he had barely been here for 3 days! Although he got some good sex, that didn't mean that he enjoyed being here.
Every time he went by someone in the halls, he would get a scowl or a few curses under their breaths. When he went down to eat, he would be met with glares all around him and even the few seats next to his at the end would be empty.
He could hear the drunks complain about him with very colorful language but the workers didn't care, some even joined in. Alan and Emma always turned a blind eye to it like they couldn't hear anything which only ticked him off more.
Alex thought this world would have a bit of public decency but apparently not. He wasn't even safe on the toilet! Right after his short shower, he took a quick piss in a stall when some random person came banging on his door and cursing at him.
He ended up peeing all over himself after getting the shot scared out of him!
He had no idea who these people were but they all hated him over something they probably didn't even see! They were just following the bandwagon made by Alan most likely.
The man probably hated him the most and thought it would be funny to beat him up and "test" him. Then send him to his death in the forest. This way he wouldn't have any blood on his hands and the fault would only fall on Alex for being weak.
The bastard probably wasn't losing much money at all by giving him a room for free and a few meals with the amount of traffic the Inn gets. He probably kept a mask over the devil face he has.
Alex's thoughts... were completely wrong. But it was because he was blinded by rage and frustration that he came up with false conclusions that seemed plausible to him. He was right that Alan could care less, but that was about the room, not the rumors. He wasn't aware of them as the bar was always so loud with dozens of different conversations going.
He couldn't focus on one conversation because they all just overlapped with each other making it difficult to make out what they were saying. He also thought their gossip wasn't worth listening to so he ignored it. As for the rumors, that wasn't his doing either but he didn't really care about it either.
While Alex continued his barrage of attacks, Alan noticed something surprising. He could see strange green energy flowing around his body that bounced around after hitting his skin. He was surprised because this was Essence!
This was a sign that he was evolving! However, the Essence around him wasn't able to penetrate his body! This confused Alan as he had never seen or heard of a phenomenon like this.
'Can he really not use essence?' He thought as this changed a few things. Essence naturally strengthened the body over time and without that, he would have a weak body. However Alan thought that his body was fine, in fact, he might have an even stronger body than normal people with his kind of stats.
The whole situation was getting weirder.
Although he couldn't get an exact number he assumed he had stats in the 200ish range which was the peak of a rank 2 adventure, borderline 3. With this information, he thought he would be fine for a trip to the Ether forest's border, but after fighting him a bit, he seemed way too amateurish.
Although he seemed to know how to use the sword and shield just fine, the rest of his movements weren't fine. It was like his body couldn't keep up with the movements he wanted to do and it was even more sloppy now that he was just fighting through anger.
Alan never showed any emotion on his face the entire time, only casually blocking Alex's strikes and giving his own every once in a while. He had even sent a few stronger hits only for the kid to get up and keep going.
Alan didn't approve of the way he was fighting right now, mostly because it was a very suicidal way of fighting in the real world, but he let him get his anger out.
Eventually, the green energy around Alex disappeared after not being able to enter his body however something even stranger happened afterward. Alan felt his strength suddenly increase by more than double!
'Who the hell is this kid?' This was the first time Alan showed emotion in front of Alex and of course, the latter wasn't paying attention to that. Alan knitted his brow as it was time to end this.
With Alex's next swipe, Alan parried before stepping fast right in front of Alex's face and giving him a strong punch to the gut. Alex's vision soon went blurry and he crumpled to the ground in his own drool.
Alan looked at the depressing figure of Alex and a lot of thoughts went through his mind in an instant. It was unsure just what he was thinking but he could no longer continue with his original plan of sending Alex to the Ether forest.
He looked around the room and saw there were spots of blood that had dripped out of the wounds the young man had. He mostly had bruises and maybe some broken ribs or something, but the only part of him bleeding was just his nose and mouth.
With a sigh, Alan kicked away the wooden weapons they used and grabbed Alex by the back of his collar and dragged him towards the stairs. He took him upstairs to find his daughter was in her room. Luckily she wasn't naked or anything which would have been very awkward for the father and daughter.
When Emma heard something open she jumped in fright from the sudden noise. She looked over to where her father was and complained.
"What the heck dad! At least warn me when you go into the training room! What if I was naked?"
She glared at her father who just put his head down and put a hand to cover his eyes.
"Problem solved." He said like it was no big deal.
"Problem not solved! And why did you bring him here?" She glared harder and pointed to the unconscious Alex.
Alan looked up at her and sighed.
"Testing, but things didn't go as planned." Alan frowned and that made his daughter shocked.
Emma knew her father was a serious man. He very rarely showed emotion and it was usually just him smiling at her mother or towards herself. For something other than the two women he loved to cause him to frown, it must have been something very serious.
She decided not to pry since she didn't really care. She didn't like Alex very much despite being nice to him so far. It was just hard for her and many others to get rid of that first impression he gave the Inn.
Alan gave his daughter a hug and a kiss on her forehead.
"I'm sorry, I will let you know next time when I use it."
Emma smiled and hugged him back before he left and continued up the many stairs.
'Thank god he didn't come earlier.' Emma held her heart and fell back on her bed.
Just a few minutes ago, she was actually naked but she wasn't just naked, she also put a foreign object in her which gave her some pleasure. If he had come up just a bit sooner, it would have been a very awkward dinner later for the Setters.
Alan had reached the ground floor again and went through the kitchen. Dragging an unconscious and slightly bloody body made everyone in the kitchen stop and watch in fear. They knew Alan was an ex-adventurer and this image only made them more fearful.
His wife came over with a worried look on her face.
"What happened? You didn't kill him did you?!" Sharla's face was pale and tears formed in her eyes as she looked at her husband.
"Of course not!" He quickly defended himself.
He then saw his wife put a hand to her mouth and it looked like she was laughing. Alan sighed knowing he fell for one of her oldest tricks. She liked to tease him when they were younger and she had an amazing talent of being able to cry on command.
It help the three friends get out of many situations in the past but she still liked to use her talents to tease her husband.
She trying to stop chuckling as she patted Alan's arm.
"Don't worry honey I can see he's still alive. Just don't be too rough with him, I still need to give him a piece of my mind." Sharla smiled a smile, that to all the other kitchen hands thought looked like the devil grinning.
Many of them turned pale and shivered. Anyone who spent enough time with Sharla knew she wasn't just an Angel. She could become the Devil too if she wanted. As a healer and a cook, she was someone who dealt with the health of others for a long time.
As such, she became proficient in not just how to treat injuries or illnesses, but also induce them. She was like a Doctor of life and death, being able to cause irreversible damage with just a touch and able to create poison out of ordinary foods and have her victims not even notice.
With that, she kissed her husband's cheek and immediately went back to work.
"What are you lot standing around for? You'll let the food go bad and guess who will have to eat it for dinner tonight? It definitely won't be the customers!" She yelled out as Alan walked towards the front door to the kitchen.
He wiped a bit of cold sweat from his forehead and continued on. He loved his wife, but just like any woman, they could be really scary sometimes.
He pushed open the swivel doors and walked into the dining area. He continued making his way towards the stairs as the room progressively got quieter. When he finally noticed, everyone was looking at him with fear in their eyes.
All the customers and workers on the floor were shocked. Did he just kill the freeloader? That was everyone's first thought as he dragged the unconscious body like a sack of potatoes. Some of the more veteran adventurers or workers who had seen this kind of scene before quickly realized he was still alive, but the others were still terrified.
"Don't mind me." Alan said with his signature nonchalant attitude and began dragging the body back upstairs. It took a while for the place to go back to normal once he disappeared on the second floor but it quickly became a hot topic among the patrons.
"Holy cow! He already killed him!" Said a random guy.
"There was blood all over his face!" Another woman paled.
"His nose was ripped off! Didn't you see it?"
The rumors became more and more ridiculous as time went on. Meanwhile Alan had already entered Alex's temporary room and threw him on his bed. He was still covered in dried blood and sweat but his bedding would get washed later anyways.
Just as Alan was leaving, his eye caught the rolled up rug in the corner of the room. He narrowed his eyes before leaving.
'Bastard.' He thought as he went downstairs to find a specific person.
As a once high-level adventurer, it wasn't difficult for him to tell that there were two people's bodily fluids on that rug. One he recognized and the other was like a blank. The one he recognized was of course Alicia's while the second was definitely Alex's but it was still a bit interesting to see that he really didn't have an Essence signature.
It was more like a strange jumble of words and symbols like the Gods just mashed the keyboard when writing his life code.
'He really seems to not have any essence. Hmmm.' Alan thought as he went back downstairs.
As Alan went about the rest of his day normally, Alex was being tortured by an endless looping nightmare.