My ABO System

Quests And Rewards

Elliot volunteered to pick Jacob up from school before anyone could ask why.

He took the keys to his little white car off the hook, a car he had sold in the other life to pay for a ring, and held them a second longer than necessary. He had missed this car. He hadn't known a person could miss a car.

A small timer hung in the corner of his vision.

> [ CALIBRATION: 07:42:18 ]

At three o'clock the school gate was a river of noise. Elliot parked across the street and watched a hundred uniformed children pour out into the afternoon.

Jacob wasn't among them.

He waited ten minutes. The crowd thinned to stragglers, and the knot under his ribs tightened. Jacob was twelve. In the other life, he had been one of the first to go.

Elliot was out of the car before he'd decided to move.

---

He heard it from behind the gymnasium: a flat, hard sound, then a boy's bitten-off cry.

A tall boy of seventeen had Jacob pinned against the brick by his blazer. Jacob's glasses lay in the dirt. His lip was split.

"Say it again," the older boy said, bored. "Louder. So your brother can hear."

Run, said the voice in Elliot's head, the one he had obeyed his whole life. It wasn't cowardice. It was arithmetic. He had a body that tired on a flight of stairs, and this boy had shoulders like a doorframe. Get a teacher. Don't be a hero.

His feet turned toward the gym doors.

A notice flared across his vision.

> [ FIRST QUEST RECEIVED ]

> Defeat the opponent.

> Win condition: reduce the opponent's HP to 2.

> Difficulty: High (for Host)

> Reward: STR +5 (within natural limit)

Elliot went still. It had seen him hesitate. It hadn't ordered him to do anything. It had only offered, the way a door opens in a wall you thought was solid.

A second notice slid in beneath the first.

> [ FUNCTION UNLOCKED ]

> Inspect (Lv. 1)

> You can now view information about people in your line of sight.

> Lv. 1 shows the Name, Ability and Secondary Gender of any target.

> For targets of equal or lower strength, it also shows full attributes and HP.

> For targets far stronger than you, all other information is hidden.

Behind the boy, Jacob's wet eyes found him. "Elliot?"

"Let him go," Elliot said. His voice shook. He made it stop. Inspect him.

> TARGET STATUS

> Name: Marcus Vell

> Secondary Gender: Beta

> Strength 17 | Agility 24 | Vitality 22

> Intelligence 30 | Perception 28 | Willpower 25 | Stamina 5

> Hp 14 / 14

> Ability Combat Enhancement

> Ability Level C tier

> HOST HP: 9 / 9

Seventeen. One point under him. Elliot's mind refused it for a heartbeat, because Marcus was a head taller and Elliot had spent his life assuming that was a verdict. But the screen only counted. And the other numbers weren't kind: this boy was faster and tougher.

Then I'd better use what I have.

---

The first punch caught him in the mouth.

> HOST HP: 7 / 9

Two points for one hit. I can only take four of those.

He swung back, clumsy, all shoulder. His knuckles bounced off Marcus's ribs like he'd punched a tire.

> MARCUS VELL HP: 13 / 14

"That's it?" Marcus grinned.

Elliot didn't answer. He was watching. He leads with his right. He drops his guard after every swing. He plants his feet wide, so he can't pivot. The old Elliot would have seen a monster. The one who had spent five years learning to read Dante's hands saw a boy who telegraphed everything.

He ducked a swing and drove his shoulder into Marcus's chest.

> MARCUS VELL HP: 11 / 14

A kick to the thigh. A slap that set his ear ringing.

> HOST HP: 4 / 9

His lungs burned. Behind him Jacob was saying his name, thin and far away.

Think.

Marcus came in for the finish, wide right hand, feet planted. Elliot let him. He stepped left, exactly as far as a body that slow could manage, and the fist went past. He turned and put everything he had into one punch under the ribs.

It wasn't pretty. It was the best thing he had ever thrown.

Marcus folded.

> MARCUS VELL HP: 2 / 14

>

> [ QUEST COMPLETE ]

> STR +5

Warmth ran from his shoulders to his fingertips, like a rope drawn tight and suddenly released. Marcus sat in the dirt, staring up at him as though the sky had changed color.

"You're insane," he wheezed, and fled, clutching his side.

Elliot opened his status screen. STR: 23. Five points in one afternoon. The notice had called it a hard-fight reward, and he knew it wasn't a pace to count on. But something fierce and astonished rose in his chest anyway. He hadn't run.

Jacob had picked up his glasses. One lens was cracked. He was looking at his brother with an expression nobody had ever aimed at Elliot before. It was wonder.

"Since when can you fight?"

Elliot wiped the dirt from his cheek and smiled, split lip and all. "Since today."

---

By dinner he had iced his knuckles and blamed the lip on a car door. Jacob, to his credit, said nothing, though he watched his brother like a boy who'd seen a magic trick and refused to ruin it.

"The Valois side sends apologies," his father said, pouring wine. "Dante's been held up in the capital."

Elliot's glass stopped halfway to his mouth. Not here. The relief was so sharp his hand nearly shook. Not yet.

"They did send someone," his mother said. "To deliver the contract."

The front door chimed.

He heard the footsteps first, unhurried and even. He told himself not to turn.

He turned.

A tall man stood in the hall in a plain black coat, collar up against the chill. His face looked carved rather than born. His eyes were a flat, pale gray that gave nothing back. He looked at the room the way a person looks at a clock.

Elliot had pictured this moment a hundred times, in the ash, in the dark. In every version he cried. He ran across the room. He said I'm sorry, or you're alive, or I never told you.

He did none of it. He stood there with a fork in his hand while the blood hammered in his ears, because the man he remembered dying in a burning courtyard was walking across his father's hall, alive and perfectly, terribly ordinary.

Arthur.

Arthur Hale handed the folder to Elliot's father. His gaze swept the table and slid across Elias, across Jacob, across Elliot's split lip.

It stopped for exactly one second. There was nothing in it. Only the cool, level look you give a stranger who has stared too long. Then it moved on, and Arthur walked toward the study as though Elliot were furniture.

A line of text bloomed at the edge of his sight.

> [ EMOTIONAL RESPONSE DETECTED ]

> [ NEW QUEST RECEIVED ]

> Start a conversation with Arthur Hale.

> Reward: PER +2 (within natural limit)

A chill ran down his spine. I didn't ask for that. I didn't say his name.

Before he could stop himself, he thought it: Inspect him.

> TARGET STATUS

> Name: Arthur Hale

> Secondary Gender: True Alpha

> Strength Unavailable

> Agility Unavailable

> Vitality Unavailable

> Perception Unavailable

> Intelligence Unavailable

> Willpower Unavailable

> Stamina Unavailability

> Attributes: Unavailable

> HP: Unavailable

> Ability Electrokinesis

ERROR ‼️

> [ INFORMATION RESTRICTED ]

> Target exceeds Inspect (Lv. 1) range.

Elliot's fingers tightened on the fork.

True Alpha.

He had never seen those words on a screen. True Alphas were rare enough that most people never met one. And Arthur Hale, the quiet stepbrother nobody mentioned at Valois dinners, was one.

Marcus Vell had been read down to his last point of HP. The screen couldn't read a man few centimeters away. Not one number.

Elliot had never once thought of Arthur Hale as strong.

He'd never noticed him enough to pay attention to information about him.

Down the hall, the study door clicked shut. In the corner of his vision, the timer ticked on.

> [ CALIBRATION: 03:11:46 ]