After club activities had ended, the members of the Rugby team were praising Gary for his skills on the field. The majority of them had been worried about Mr Root choosing him. After all, Gary had been a member of the club ever since last year but he had never shown any real talent.

Somebody getting better overnight should only be possible in mangas, novels or on TV, but in reality it would take a lot of effort… and yet somehow Gary seemed to have gone through some sort of growth spurt since the start of the week. He hadn’t grown in height, yet he had still vastly improved in terms of speed and strength.

Receiving so much praise was a new experience for Gary. He hadn’t really been unpopular in class, in fact there was nobody in his class who really hated him. If one were to ask his classmates to describe him, most would have probably used ‘class clown’ or ‘a bit of a weirdo’ ever since he came back with his new hair style. However, his relationship with anyone but Tom had never really progressed past the level of an acquaintance.

‘This feels amazing.’ Gary thought with a slightly smug smile on his face. Before the system he had never been particularly good at anything except perhaps for Altered trivia, so getting some recognition from his fellow peers, the high schooler discovered that he quite enjoyed the feeling.

Walking away from his teammates who had patted him, some playfully, others more seriously, Gary checked over his stats, hoping that one of them might have improved. As expected, he had no such luck. The only change was his Energy that was now at 58 points since he had used Charging Heart a couple of times during their practice. Fortunately, his earlier sleep session had been deemed as enough rest for the system to revert his Energy bar back to 100%.

‘Huh, what’s this?’ Gary wondered as he noticed that he had a new notification which hadn’t popped up on its own. ‘When did I get it? Was it at night when I finally fell asleep, or was it during my nap?’

Clicking on it, it opened up before him. The notification time indicated that it had appeared at 4 AM in the morning, which was around the time his desire for sleep had overwhelmed him. Unfortunately, even after reading the message, Gary didn’t understand exactly what it was trying to tell him.

[An Omega has been created]

“What the hell is an Omega?” Mumbling this question, Gary had been hoping for his system to shed some light on that topic. Alas, it wasn’t that type of system. So far it had only provided him with insight whenever it chose to. Realising that he had slept through something important, he quickly checked the Quest tab and indeed it had the red dot to show that something had been added to it.

[Optional quest received]

[Start your own family]

[You were young, stupid and didn’t use protection, so now you gotta deal with the aftermath!]

[Turn the Omega into your Pack and turn it into a Beta!]

[Quest reward: Unlocking of the ‘Pack’ tab]

‘I’m only 16! What kind of pervert designed this system to ask someone to start a family at my age?! I’m not even able to support my own family, so how could I even afford to start another?! No wonder this quest is optional!’ Gary felt a strong urge to punch the creator.

Nevertheless, since those strange messages had appeared through the Werewolf System, he was sure that they were important. Gary was sincerely hoping that his best friend might be more familiar with those terms and would be able to make some more sense out of those.

“I believe I did stumble upon those terms when looking into your… ‘special condition’.” Tom said, as he checked their surroundings, making sure nobody paid close attention to them. However, that wasn’t too much of a problem. The players who had actually been running around, were now in the showers, while those like Tom, who had done nothing but warm the benches, had quickly changed into their normal clothes and already left.

“However, I don’t know if they really apply to you. Like I said, there is a bunch of different lore for everything and who knows which one’s true. In case you’ve forgotten, the silver pendant that most of those sources had agreed should be your bane, had done nothing at all, whereas chocolate nearly became your cause of death.”

“Look, get some good rest today, you still look dead tired. Tomorrow’s Saturday, so if you want we can both head to the library and do some research. … well knowing you, I’ll probably end up as the one to do all the research to figure out what these things mean most likely. Say, where did you even hear those terms from anyway?”

Gary was trying to figure out how to answer Tom, after all he hadn’t informed him about the system part of his transformation into a werewolf.

“Well, given my ‘special condition’, I looked some things up by myself. It’s a bit of the reason why I’m so tired, actually.” Gary answered, touching the back of his head. “But like you said, everything is too confusing so I didn’t really get most of it.”

Tom looked at his friend for a few seconds, he still remembered how Gary had told him off just this morning for talking about werewolves too much and now he was asking him for help. Were it not for his earlier outburst, he might have yanked on his best friend’s chains by playfully demanding a date with Amy in return, but in the end Tom just nodded.

“Alright, then it’s a deal. We’ll meet at the public library at noon. While we’re at it, we could also look up other things about… the moon and stars and such.” Although Tom didn’t say it, he was thinking of ways and learning of what exactly happened on a full moon.

Instead of instigating another fight, Gary had once again stopped by the supermarket, before heading to the gym. Following the instructions the system provided, Gary had worked out until the system had rewarded him with 5 Exp. It was a welcome surprise, since he had been half expecting it to be cut down to 1 Exp or less, seeing that it had been cut in half once he had hit Level 2.

Still, he was a bit down that he had not experienced any other physical improvements. He understood that it would take him far less time than normal people, but he still couldn’t help but be a bit impatient, not knowing when he might need to be more powerful.

For once, Gary was able to head home like a normal high schooler. Kai’s phone was still dead silent, so he decided to spend his evening with his family, something he didn’t get to do often. As it turned out, just because he had time, didn’t mean the rest of the world would accede his desires.

Shortly after he came home, his mother had rushed out because work had asked her to replace one of her co-workers, leaving the two teenagers on their own. In turn, Amy seemed more interested in spending time with her cellphone than spending precious time with her brother.

‘If only we had more money, Mom wouldn’t have to work so hard.’ Gary thought.

While enjoying his meal, Gary also paid attention to the TV that had been left on a news channel. The high schooler was very interested in the local part, since it had allowed him to keep up to date with things that were going on in Slough.

Especially interesting were any updates to the gang situation and Gary was currently even more interested about any new discoveries in the case of the recent killings that Gary himself might have been involved in.

Today, the channel was reporting on a different story though. The breaking news that was playing all day were about two individuals who had been killed in their own home. Gary had been in the middle of cutting up a piece of steak and eating it like a normal human would, until he saw the image of the deceased couple’s missing son appear on screen.

“What the hell?! That’s Billy Buster!” Gary blurted out.

“Huh, how do you know that guy? According to the news he doesn’t go to your school.” Amy asked. Despite her appearance, she had actually also been paying attention to the news, but Gary ignored her.

‘I knew he was a scumbag for using those brass knuckles on me, but I never figured him for a murderer. What’s more, to kill his parents…’ Gary thought, the steak in front of him, losing some of its taste..

———

With Gary having his own plans again, at one point he had parted ways with Tom. Unbeknownst to the both of them, this turned out to be a mistake. Tom had been lost in his own thoughts, walking pretty much on auto pilot, until he hit a meaty wall. Looking up, he saw a familiar face and when he took a few steps back, he bumped into someone else.

“Gil…Barry…err how ‘nice’ to see you. If you don’t mind, I kinda need to get home.” Tom said nervously, already aware that that wasn’t happening. Neither one of them should be living in this direction, and judging by the sneaky manner that they had appeared, they weren’t just there to have a friendly chat with him.

******

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