As it turned out, the earlier brawl caused quite a commotion and a passer-by ended up calling the police. Two officers arrived on the scene and started to assess the situation.
They had to deal with numerous situations like this, the only unusual thing was that everyone involved was still present and probably alive. One of the officers asked the two children for their newly made ID's, while the other tried to find one on the unconscious man with little luck.
The two teenagers ended up being questioned while the officers tried to figure out who they knocked out. Fortunately, the man's fingerprints were already on the police's database so they could close the case quickly.
"Congratulations kids, you caught a pickpocket. The bounty will be sent to your guardian if that's all right with you."
The pair just nodded because they didn't know what a bounty was and started to head home after declining medical attention. They wanted to hide what happened from Anthony, not realizing they were kind of late with that.
However, before going away, Sarah secretly touched the man's hand when no one was looking.
The walk home took more than half an hour because Peter could only limp a few steps at a time due to his injured leg.
After finding their way home the pair found a grumpy Anthony and a panicking James in the doorway.
"Can you explain what is up with this bounty?!"
Peter took up the responsibility of explaining what happened, he was primarily trying to justify their decision to wander off into the city despite being told not to, but he was failing at it miserably.
Both of them ended up being grounded for a week and they had their key to the building taken away. The two adults were seriously worried about the kids' health even without them going on the streets and getting into trouble.
The capital was a notoriously dangerous place. Originally they only moved there out of necessity and because both of them were strong enough to protect themselves. Now with having to take care of children, they were seriously considering moving to a more peaceful city.
Being grounded didn't matter to Peter that much since he would be bound to his bed once again, this time because of his leg. And Sarah, while hating every minute she had to spend in the house, still had plenty of things to explore due to the connecting bridges between their building and some of the neighboring ones.
During the following week the usual routine set in, minus the walks outside and the exercise for Peter.
[Achievement unlocked: Basic science.]
[Reward: INT +0.05]
Peter ended up asking what the bounty the police officers mentioned was. James explained it to the best of his knowledge, although not too enthusiastically.
It was a little complicated but in short, the bounty system was present internationally and the participating countries' governments had the responsibility of enforcing it, with a few asterisks. Under standard operations anyone could place a bounty on anyone else, even organisations on each other, but the alliance made it so that only legal entities who are at least suspected of a crime could have a bounty placed on them. Because of this, bounties had to be claimed from the police.
The money they got for the pickpocket was basically pocket change but James noted that it was a surprisingly low amount for his crimes. It would usually be double or triple of what they got.
At the end of the week, after much thought and time to calm down, Anthony decided that the kids earned the money they got from the bounty, as much as he didn't like it, and he ended up giving it to Peter because he thought he would be the more financially responsible one of the two.
When he was explained how to use money, Peter was over the moon. He thought that the collection of bounties might be a good thing to pursue. If he couldn't do that he wanted to get a job as soon as possible, just to help out around the house, not realizing how much money Anthony had.
That night both kids received a notification, they were both achievements. They didn't think much of them but these achievements would play a big role in their future.
Peter was pleasantly surprised by his own but he did find the reward disproportionate. There was also a weird message afterwards that he would ask the interface about in the morning.
[Achievement unlocked: Earn money!]
[Reward: STA +0.1, INT +0.1, MGC +0.05, EXP +30]
[Remaining tier 1 path achievements have been locked.]
Sarah was less surprised by the achievement itself but more by the fact that it took this long to get.
[Achievement unlocked: First kill!]
[Reward: STR +0.1, AGI +0.1, END +0.1, MGC +0.05, EXP +100]
[Remaining tier 1 path achievements have been locked.]
AE 312.4.04.
The Williams family was in the middle of moving. After the incident with the kids a few weeks ago the decision was quite easy to make.
They were moving to a small town named Ambolt. It was relatively close to the capital so Anthony and James didn't have to travel a lot and while it wasn't the most secure of places it was far better than most of the surrounding cities.
The place was recommended to Anthony in the past by multiple co-workers who had enough of life in the big city and wanted some peace and quiet.
The kids were helping out with the procedures, packing up and taking things to the moving truck. They found it quite fun, although for Peter it had to be cut short.
[Warning: You have been infected with Influenza Type G]
[Achievement unlocked: Get sick.]
[Reward: END +0.05, STA +0.05]
This was bound to happen eventually, but it should have happened years ago. In the first few days there weren't many problems but after a while it got so bad that Peter ended up activating energy conservation just to make it go away faster.
Eventually Sarah caught it as well but she, predictably, handled it a lot better. The only serious symptom she showed was her skin getting unusually dry.
Peter's only joy in this situation came from the fact that nights were extremely long around this time of year, making him recover by the time they finished moving to the new place.
The new house was nothing too extravagant. It was a two floor building with a decently sized yard around it, located at the edge of the town. Unlike their old home, this one was chosen with four people in mind so everyone got their own room.
Anthony allowed the two kids to go outside during the day. This decision was made because of the relative safety of the surroundings and because the two's condition seemed to be improving in spite of their recent illness. Making him convinced that the institute's treatment worsened the children's problems. He was indeed right about that, although for the wrong reason.
The first thing Peter did while exploring the town was checking around shops and looking at their prices, hoping to figure out how much money they had to spend.
They got 40 Universal Currency for the bounty, or UC for short. This currency was given terrible exchange rates by almost everybody, it's main advantage was that it was, well, universal. All bounties had to be paid in this due to the international nature of the system.
After looking around for a while, Peter came to the realization that they really didn't get much. A standard meal packet cost about 5 UC and a bag of treated apples was 12 or more, depending on the type.
A while later the two came to the conclusion that there were a lot less interesting things to. There were a few new things like a squirrel that was flattened by a car, which Sarah seemed to be drawn towards, so much so that Peter had to drag her away so they could get home before sunset.
But before Peter was successful in removing her from the corpse, she managed to pocket one of its broken claws, which she ended up storing in her new nightstand's drawer.
A few days later James gave the two of them their own phones. They were older models, ones that still had glass in them, but they were fairly durable and more importantly, cheap enough so he could buy them with his allowance.
Sarah, while enthusiastic, wasn't really sure what to do with it. James explained to her that he bought these for them so they could call home if they got into trouble, that's why his and Anthony's number were already saved on them.
Peter was similarly confused about the phone until he discovered that it had internet access and along with that, access to the public list of bounties. He really wanted to make use of it as soon as possible, mostly to get money so he doesn't feel like a leech, but also because he wanted to use Absorb more and bounty hunting gave him the perfect excuse.
Obviously there were multiple problems with doing that, least of which was him being too weak for it. With the way things were, Anthony would immediately find out what he was doing if he planned on getting money for his troubles.
To effectively start his bounty hunting career he would need his own bank account and after that was done, he still needed actual targets to hunt.
So the plan was made, Peter would find a bank as soon as he could get to one alone and then try to hide his activities as much as possible.
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