If someone's eyes could kill, Noah would definitely have killed the system several times over. For the first time after receiving the system, the main feeling that Noah was feeling towards it was not gratitude or happiness but anger because of frustration.
'Shit, I got my hopes up for nothing...' Noah thought angrily as he walked towards the portal to leave the Fortress.
[Absorbing a small fragment of divine energy...]
Another message appeared floating in front of Noah's eyes that caused him to stop walking and look again at the woman who was being burned on the floor.
'Divine energy... That's the same energy that the system absorbed from the statue of the goddess… Perhaps even if the Blessed one does not have so many sins, could I take their divine energy? Even if it is of no use now other than to unlock more parts of Lucifer's diary, maybe in the future it could serve some other purpose?' Noah thought, now less frustrated.
He was really excited to imagine the possibilities of what he could gain by absorbing a human, so the disappointment became very great at first when he did not get anything satisfactory. But thinking about the skills he received from the system, how powerful he had become in those two days, Noah couldn't keep his anger at the system.
Making sure that he had burned the woman's body completely, Noah crossed the familiar portal once again and saw the Blessed Ones making verbal reports to several government officials so they could leave soon. The same was about to happen to Noah; as soon as he crossed the portal, a government agent came over to talk to him.
"Hello Noah, was it? According to the other Blessed, you were one of the biggest contributors, if not the biggest, in the defeat of this Fortress even though you are a Blessed Rank F. Do you mind explaining to us in your own words what happened?" the agent asked Noah in a relaxed tone. Even though it looked like the man was doubting Noah, Noah knew it was just standard procedure for the officials to ask invasive questions about the Blesseds' testimonies.
"I trained a lot in the Rank F Fortresses and now I felt it was time for me to use my own Blessing, as I have no more trouble hurting anyone on my team." Noah responded with the mask of boredom he used to hide what he really thought.
"Okay, so in your other Fortress raids you weren't using all of your power and now you started using it, I understand. And about your Blessing being Rank F and your exerting a Rank E force, what's the explanation?" the man asked, now with genuine curiosity since that kind of circumstance was rare.
"Okay, now would you mind telling us what happened at the Fortress?" the agent asked.
After hiding the most important things (like finding the statue of the goddess and the actual amount of monsters he killed alone while he was separated from the group), Noah recounted the rest without problems. The agent was pleased with Noah's response and released him to leave after saying something encouraging to Noah. "If you continue with this good performance, your ranking will probably go up from Rank F to Rank E in one or two other Fortresses that you show a significant participation in. If not, maybe in a year of invasions with average participation you might also be able to raise your ranking."
Hearing this, Noah was pleased, since to be able to invade Rank D Fortresses, it was necessary to at least have a governmentally recognized Rank E strength. After finishing talking with the man, he went to his own closet and took out his old cell phone with the rest of the things he kept and went inside the bus where most of the Blessed were already waiting.
Seeing that he had already received the $1,000 for the invasion caused pride to spring up in Noah's heart as he realized that he was getting closer to his goal of having enough money to help his sister. That $1,000 wouldn't make much difference by itself, but it was proof that he was on his way toward reaching the goal.
During the return trip, Jasper and Noah exchanged their contact numbers and Jasper said he would let Noah know when would be the next Fortress that they would invade as a group. He mentioned the group would have to meet Noah first so that he could be truly accepted, but having seen Noah's strength, Jasper did not doubt that he would be easily accepted.
On the way back, Noah noticed something he was always interested in on an electronic billboard.
Whenever Noah passed through this area of the city he saw some kind of ad about this game called Valorwatch. In this era of Blessings, where powerful Blessed and high-ranking people were treated like famous celebrities, the entire style of entertainment for humans was mainly focused on things that involved Blessings, and this did not differ when it came to virtual games.
Valorwatch was a good example of this: a team of Blessed came together to compete against another Blessed team in an arena generated in a virtual reality world with 4 different game modes.
Since humans loved everything to do with Blessings, this was exactly what the Blessed used in the game. Unlike the ancient ages where humans had to use predefined characters, it was different now. People had developed a way of identifying through the thought waves of a player what Blessing they had, as well as what skills they were able to use.
So in the game, as in Fortresses, humans could use their own Blessings to be able to fight and earn fame and glory.
Until yesterday Noah had no real Blessing; he never got to play this game as he knew that playing a game like this without having any truly strong skills would only cause Noah to feel like spending money on items instead of earning money like he would when breaking into Fortresses.
As he always lacked money to be able to pay the debt to his uncle, Noah could not afford to play a game and have fun with it, the only thing he did was study Fortresses and train fighting styles so that he would not die and could pay the bills. The only time Noah used to rest his mind was usually when Carlos asked him to do something.
While Noah was thinking about Carlos, his phone started to ring. Looking at who was calling him, Noah couldn't help but think how big of a coincidence it was that Carlos called him at the exact time Noah has been thinking about him.
Noah answered the phone and heard Carlos yelling at someone on the other end of the line.
[Shut up, I know what I'm doing! ... Yes… Wait, he just answered me! Noah! How are you, my dear brother who I adore so much?]
'Here comes shit.' Noah knew that for Carlos to be talking to him like that it was because he needed Noah to do something for him, and that was never a good thing. [Tell me what you want. If it is something stupid I will hit you the next time I find you.]
[Calm down; calm down my friend. I just missed talking to you, hahahahaha...]
Noah noticed Carlos' embarrassed tone of voice; they both knew that Noah knew what this was about. [Okay, as if we hadn't seen each other yesterday.]
Hearing Noah's response, Carlos knew he had already been exposed, so leaving all pretense aside, he said to Noah something that made Noah raise his eyebrows in surprise once again at the coincidence. [Please bro, I need you to play Valorwatch with me...]
-----------------
Sorry guys, today was not my day... I hope tomorrow we will come back with the normal...
-----------------