Chapter 4: Chapter 1: Forming A Party
In the full halls of a pretty typical high school, there were many young men and women, all moving around to get to whatever area, their next class would be at, and many sticking to their groups, to keep themselves relevant in some way.
Many options presented themselves before my eyes, but only those in the senior year like myself interested me at the moment, not only, are they the most apt at using their abilities in greater numbers; they are also closer to graduation and thus eligible by law to register as Slayers, though this only mattered when it came to Heroes and anti-heroes, it's unlikely I would find someone with better abilities amongst the younger ones, but I can't fully rule them out yet.
Anyway, my main focus is the hero, as that is the most important facet to have, because of how much people glorified them, having one at the top obeying my commands just sounds like a requirement.
{So, Master! How do you plan on doing this? Are you going to kill someone and cause commotion and then test the people? It would yield pretty good results as long as you locked all the students with you when you did so.} Leah suggested as she flew around me without a care.
Having her around me was not weird or suspicious at all, many people had summons or familiars and even spirits with them, so having some magical creature following me was considered very normal. It was actually popular to get a familiar, for various reasons, ranging from wanting a glorified pet to wanting a companion to wanting a servant. Though some people already started creating a set of rules and rights for summons or familiars, despite some of them being literally created by one's abilities.
There is a whole thing about that, and honestly, I don't care, if people want to treat creatures that are literally compelled by their nature to serve their masters as equals, who am I to stop them? Better for me, while their focus is on that, I take over.
(Not a good idea on the long term, even if I disguised myself, there are still some chances that someone with tracking abilities will be able to trace it back to me. Especially if it's someone with the ranger class. For now, I don't want to take chances of exposing myself, so, I'll instead use the promise of success to push a few students into coming to a low level dungeon with me.) I replied to her as unfortunately, I would like to avoid attention for a bit, even though I actually liked the idea of putting them in an extreme situation, as it would be easier to weed out a proper hero from something like that.
Before that though, using my <Intangibility>. I snooped around and found out about the ones I'll be targeting.
There are a set of students considered the best amongst the school, as one would expect, 20 of them to be more exact. Of those 12 are male and 8 are female, from those numbers, only 6 males and 3 females are seniors, as apparently most of the last people with those positions already graduated. All that related to everything they did academically, not just their abilities and combat prowess.
But that was something I could have easily known anyway, what I was more interested in knowing was their families and home address, all that in case I needed to take people hostage to get things rolling, though that was just a precaution. That aside, I was also able to learn the specifics of their abilities, which made my decision much easier. Now it's at a point, where I have to convince the involved individuals and test them.
It seems the universe conspires for my success as two of the involved girls already have beef, as one stole the other's boyfriend at some point or whatever. What's important is that the first girl, the one who got green-hatted, now had a new boyfriend who just so happens to play chess in tournaments for the school, which the second girl also does. Finally, they seem to be getting a little too close. Can this get any more perfect? This is an easy fire to ignite.
Moving to get started, I went to talk to Derick, the chess guy in question. He had brown hair and green eyes while wearing a green jacket and brown pants.
"Hey dude, did you need something?" He asked me as I approached him, even though he didn't know me, personally, he acted friendly.
"I need a team to help me complete a rank I dungeon, and of course, you can have the treasure, I only want a specific thing." I made the offer.
"I mean... That sounds cool and all, but I don't know man, I heard that people who haven't received universitary level training like us tend to die in even in the lowest-ranking dungeons, plus if you really want that, why not ask the talented people? I'm not that good." Derick refused as I had expected.
"Don't worry, I could complete it alone if I wanted, but since I need a team to get in as I am right now, I wanted to choose some people. Honestly, I've asked others already, but most are also scared... So as the guy who knows both Aimine and Umirica, I thought getting you to agree would make things easier" I lied to him.
"Hm... I mean, I get that, those two are on another level compared to people like me, but I'm still not up for this." Derick still refused.
"What about we make a bet?" I suggested.
"What do you got in mind?" He asked.
"I'll give you 5 minutes to hit me directly, and I won't dodge, just defend and I can't run away. As long as you get a directly hit me, I'll give you 10,000 dollars. But if you can't hit me directly, within 5 minutes, you'll have to help me out with this. What do you say?" I made a seemingly great offer, except for the fact that I didn't mention anything about fighting back, and how he doesn't know I have <Intangibility>.
"... Bro, there's no way you're for real... " Derick narrowed his eyes looking at me with suspicion.
"Here, look at this." I gave showed him my phone with one of my bank account information on display, this one had 30k dollars in it.
"Holy shit!... But how do I know you won't fork on me!!" Derick got mesmerized by the ideas flowing through his head as he looked at the largest amount of money, he ever got offered in his life.
"I can give you a tenth money right now, and the rest if you win. Consider it a consolation prize." It was a small amount overall.
"I'm down! Count me up!" He immediately agreed.
Pulling out some money I had put in my inventory, I give Derick 1000 bucks and then start a 5-minute timer using my phone.
Following this, Derick comes at me, and as soon as he's close enough, I kick him in the stomach causing him to hold onto his stomach before falling on the floor, squirming in pain. Whenever he looked like he was going to recover I kicked him again until the 5 minutes were over and he was on the ground crying in pain.
{Master, you've just earned 5 evil points, for humiliating Derick.} Leah came up to report to me.
"... Derick? Are you ok? I hope I didn't go too hard on you, I was doing my best to hold back, and I imagine something like that was not enough to actually hurt you, right?" I play clueless as I approach the clearly defeated Derick.
".... Yeah... I'm cool... This is just a small scratch." The idiot didn't even complain out of pride.
"Great. You can keep the 1000 dollars since it seems you might need them more. As for the rest of the bet, you're going to do as I say." I talk to him with a small smile.
The plan was pretty simple after that, I made Derick be the one to register as team leader, and the one requesting people to join him in a dungeon since that way it's easier to avoid people bothering me if I end up getting rid of one of them in the dungeon. If anything happens, it was Derick who suggested and started this, so fewer problems for me. After that, Derick was put in charge of recruiting Aimine, and I would talk to the other one.
From then on, I found the green-hatted girl, and she was in cheerleader practice was her friends. This led to me having to wait a bit, but I was eventually able to approach her. According to the files, I read, her name is Umirica. It would be simpler if they were as easy to deal with as Derick, but they are financially well off and not as simple to trick. So, I decided to use their situation instead.
She was a young woman with long light hair and crimson-red eyes, accompanied by her relatively fit body with curvy proportions, which made for a nice look with her cheerleader uniform being tight on because of those same proportions.
"So, what did you want?! I don't have too much time so this better be important, and make it quick!" Umirica had her arms crossed as she looked at me with a slight pout, and a bit of blush while she was somewhat covered in sweat from her training.
"Nothing much, Derick just asked me to call you to join his dungeon party, since he was busy recruiting Aimine for it." I spoke as if unaware of their situation at all, as I showed her a form to join the party.
"He what?!... Where is he right now?!" Umirica frowned and was visibly pissed at this.
"I don't know, probably talking to her. If you have any questions about the dungeon, I should be able to answer them." I said.
"I don't care about some stupid dungeon! Why did he go talk to her and not me?!" She asked.
"Why does that even matter?" I question.
"Because! He's MY boyfriend! He should be talking to ME! Not that slut! He's not doing this to me, not this again!.." Umirica Began having a breakdown as she began thinking about the possibility.
"You seem to be going through something, I'll just ask someone else to join us." I turned around and was about to leave.
"Wait! No! I'm joining the party. Let me sign that form!" She shouted at me.
"Are you sure, you don't really seem to b-." I responded.
"JUST!... Just let me sign it!" She seemed like she was reaching a breaking point of some sort.
After that, Umirica joined the party, and when I met up with Derick, he had managed to get Aimine to join as well, which made the party complete. Most of the other options were people who didn't fit what I wanted for one reason or another. Now that I had everything ready, I just had to keep Derick in line and prepare the dungeon for the party. I hope they aren't all disappointments, it would be sad to have to let them all live after going through all this trouble, but then again they will all live if they are talented, though that way I can at least profit from them.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone