Akira gasped, his heart pounding a mile a minute. Was he already dead? Where was this place? Lucifer's palace? One second, he collapsed on the street, mourning in distress. The next, he felt something sharp hit his neck and blacked out. Then, this. “Young miss, stop hesitating. Do it already.” A female voice whispered, her tone filled with persuasive urgency. ‘Ah? There's someone else here? What's she telling her mistress to do? It can't be to kill me, right?’ Akira's ears perked up, and his struggles lessened, trying to understand the situation. A soft sigh followed the young woman's words. “He looks so young. Will it really be alright?”“Young mistress, he's just a broke ass peasant with nothing to his name. How could his life be as important as yours? Serving you is an honor to him and his ancestors. Stop hesitating already, if you're unable to detoxify the poison by morning, you will be the one dead instead. Think about your grandfather, how would he cope?”Akira became even m

“Yes.” Akira nodded, then gave him a side eye. “Or should I have let you hit and kill the kids?”The man shook his head vigorously. “No, sir. How could that be?”He bowed, at angle ninety, startling Akira. “Thanks for helping me. The brakes suddenly wouldn't work. I don't know what happened.”Akira sighed in relief. So he was there to show appreciation. Helping people didn't seem that bad after all. Just that he still couldn't figure out what his new abilities could be. Or did the poison evolve him into a monster? The kids continued to school, and Akira continued his stroll home. He wanted to see how long he could walk without getting exhausted. Akira noticed something else. He could see dust molecules, and tiny droplets of water. Everything seemed too strange. Perhaps, after returning to his students lodge, he would clean up and hit the library. Good or bad, he needed to understand what happened to his body. He had barely gone far when he heard a commotion a little distance ahe

Hostel 5, Sun City University. The moment Akira entered his hostel room, he met his two roommates in a heated discussion. On hearing the door open, they turned around. “Akira!” Brad exclaimed, rushing to him. The other one stood up from the desk he was initially perched on. “What happened to you man? You've been missing since you ran off yesterday morning. It's been twenty-four hours, we were debating whether to inform the police or wait.”Akira sighed and dumped the bag on his bed, sitting beside it. “It's a long story, Michael.”“I heard you were fired from the hospital yesterday, what are you going to do?” Brad's brows were furrowed, his hands on his waist. Like Akira, he was a medical student. He knew how important an internship was. Without it, they couldn't graduate. Now, videos accusing Akira of medical malpractice were flying around the internet and school forums. Getting another internship was basically impossible. Clinching the first one was hard enough, how would he gr

Once Akira was sure his roommates were knocked out in a deep sleep, he woke up to check the ring again. He once heard ‘god-tier storage system binding complete’, but couldn't figure out how to check the interior. ‘Damn, I need to check inside.’ The thought sucked him back into the storage space. But this time, there was only one prominent item, a huge black book with red glows, similar to tiny fireflies surrounding it. He took a closer look at the book. On it was an ancient character which spelled ‘Blood Phoenix Guide’. Akira willed it to come out and it landed on his thigh. On coming out to the real world, the size of the book shrunk into that of a big textbook, no longer the gigantic box it once was. Shockingly, Akira could instinctively understand the characters in the book, as if they've been programmed into his DNA. He flipped open the first page. It was a very lifelike depiction of a man dressed in black trousers, shirtless, with only a wrap-around silk cloth over his arm

“Akira, what do you think about the quiz this time? It was too difficult.” Brad whined, his shoulders slumped as he made his way through the courtyard. “Difficult?” Akira echoed, his brows slightly narrowed in confusion. “It was very simple. I wrote everything.”“Hey!” An excited voice shouting interrupted them. Akira turned to see Michael waving at them. He had run all the way to the medical college from his business faculty to go home with them. Another boy was behind him, Gavin, Michael’s good friend and course mate. They finally caught up with them, with Michael panting. “I thought I wouldn't catch up.”He finally noticed the stunned expression on Brad’s face, and his brows slightly furrowed. “What's wrong, Brad?”“Akira was saying the research methodology quiz was too simple. I didn't write half of it!”Michael shrugged. “Well, Akira has always been intelligent—almost genius level.”Brad sighed helplessly. “He didn't sleep last night. Wasn't Akira the person who couldn't funct