Welcome to Ability Store

Chapter 274 - 273: Descent of the Divine

After dinner, Wang Baihu went back to his room on the second floor. As soon as he turned on the computer, the screen suddenly glitched.

This kind of malfunction was not common.

He frowned, reaching out to press the restart button, when that mess of patterns suddenly changed. Countless color blocks shifted and combined, as if reconstructing a new image.

At the same time, a line of subtitles appeared at the bottom of the screen: "Your name is Wang Baihu, you are employed at the Jiang City branch of the Dimensional Limit Mechanism, a field agent of the Red Lotus Team, and your abilities are ’Outer Domain Vision’ and ’Lucky Star’. But those are just the abilities you’re familiar with. In fact, you also have two additional abilities: ’Agile Body’ and ’Desperate Tower’. That is the entirety of your powers as an Ability User."

In an instant, goosebumps broke out all over Wang Baihu’s body!

His first thought was that he’d seen a ghost!

What abilities one had was the greatest secret of every Ability User. Even the Mechanism wouldn’t force them to submit the specific effects of their abilities; they only required Execution Team agents to communicate on their own. In other words, how much you were willing to reveal was entirely voluntary.

Although the names of these abilities sounded a bit awkward, from the literal meaning they did in fact match Wang Baihu’s understanding of his own abilities quite well.

Which brought up the question: how had the other side gotten such a thorough grasp of something so secret?

After the wave of goosebumps passed, Wang Baihu immediately realized that his home computer had been hacked. He pulled out his phone, intending to call the Intelligence Team, only to discover there was no signal at all.

Electromagnetic shielding?

The hacker was somewhere near his residence?

Wang Baihu panicked at once! His whole family was here right now—if something happened, could he really protect everyone’s safety?

Just then, a new line of text appeared at the bottom of the screen: "If you want to talk to me, just speak. I can hear you."

In such a state of restless anxiety, his mind instead calmed down. "Who are you? What do you want?"

The image shifted again. This time the color blocks were smaller and much more detailed, at first glance like an abstract pixel painting. Wang Baihu could tell it seemed to be a room, with a huge glass tank standing upright in the center.

Subtitles: "Do you still remember her? Don’t draw attention. This is your only chance to save her."

Who?

Why should I save her?

Forcing himself to be patient, Wang Baihu asked, "Could you maybe explain your purpose first? Why put on all this mystic—"

Halfway through the sentence he suddenly froze.

As the resolution of the pixel painting gradually increased, he could already see the figure inside the glass tank... The outline of that person made his heart hammer wildly.

This person... why did she look so familiar?

A name suddenly flashed into his mind.

Elorie!

Right, Elorie! On the day of the incident at the Five Rings Machinery Factory, he’d left the rookies in the reception hall and gone out alone to look for Honglian. Later, a large number of mutated monsters appeared in the hall, resulting in Han Yuhao and Li Xing being seriously injured, Jiang Siqi lightly injured, while Elorie... directly disappeared...

Disappeared? In disbelief, Wang Baihu clutched his forehead. Why had he completely forgotten about this? It had clearly been almost two months since then, Elorie still hadn’t returned, yet he hadn’t found that strange at all!

Not just him—Honglian, Little Pigeon, the others had never mentioned Elorie either!

Moreover, Wang Baihu realized that no matter how he tried, he couldn’t remember how he had forgotten Elorie. He remembered the incident of the expanding Erosion Space, remembered Elorie fighting side by side with them, remembered every second of the Execution Team entering another world to explore, but there was simply no room in those memories to fit Elorie in...

It was as if she had vanished into thin air!

"She’s still alive, and she’s right here in Jiang City." Another line of text appeared. "The reason you forgot her is because history was once altered. A segment of memory concerning her was erased, causing the links before and after to no longer connect, so your brain chose to discard it. Like when you wake from a dream, those disjointed dream fragments can only linger briefly; afterwards, no matter how hard you try, you can’t recall them, unless—"

"Someone is able to wake you up."

History altered? Was that the Wanderer’s doing?

Wang Baihu felt his head spinning. "How am I supposed to save her?"

Subtitles: "To understand that, you must first know how she ended up like this. To prevent events from sliding into an irretrievable abyss, I must warn you: the culprit responsible for Elorie’s current state is none other than the chief captain of the Jiang City branch of the Mechanism, Xiao Canong."

"Huh!?" He couldn’t help letting out a startled cry, then hurriedly clamped a hand over his mouth and lowered his voice. "The chief captain remembers Elorie?"

"That’s right. If this gets out, you’re likely to find yourself in deep danger as well."

By this point in the exchange, much of the anxiety and worry in Wang Baihu’s heart had faded. The other party seemed not to be targeting his family; the signal jamming was merely to stop him from contacting the Mechanism immediately.

"If you really cared about my safety, you wouldn’t have told me this in the first place." He folded his arms, a clear note of dissatisfaction in his tone. "Why choose me? You think I’ll go against Captain Xiao for the sake of an agent I’ve only known for a short time? In the end, I don’t even know who you are!"

"If you insist on an answer, I can give you one." The subtitles flickered rapidly, though the content was rather unbelievable. "I am the collective entity of ability wills. You may call me the World Ability Center, or Shixin for short."

The corner of Wang Baihu’s mouth twitched.

If the other side hadn’t pinpointed his abilities so precisely, he would have absolutely dismissed this as a hacker’s prank. And the situation with Elorie was exactly as the other party described, which left him conflicted, unsure whether he should trust them or scoff at them.

Just then, the screen suddenly dimmed, and a large black lens appeared in the center of the display.

"Humans are in the habit of questioning everything, yet when they receive answers beyond common sense, they toss them aside like trash. I am now going to take your ’Outer Domain Vision’. As long as you agree, you can verify your doubts as quickly as possible."

At the same time, a dialog box popped up on the screen with only two options inside: Agree and Refuse.

The UI was downright crude.

Abilities were something one was born with; they stayed with their owner for life, right up until death. How could they possibly disappear just because a window popped up on a computer?

Wang Baihu clicked "Agree" with the mouse on the spot.

"And then?" He shrugged and silently activated his ability. "There’s no way this thing just—huh? Ah?"

Wait, where was his ability!?

In terror, Wang Baihu realized that the power he’d used for over ten years, a power he couldn’t have been more familiar with, had actually vanished! He tried several more times, with the exact same result. The thing he was most proud of seemed as if it had never existed!

"I believe you... Is that enough? That ability..."

"If I can take it, I can also give it back to you." The subtitles paused for a moment before continuing, "—if you still want it, that is."

"I want it, I want it!" Wang Baihu nodded repeatedly.

No new dialog box popped up on the screen.

He waited a moment, then cautiously tried to use his ability again. This time, the familiar sensation flooded back all at once.

Wang Baihu couldn’t help but let out a long breath.

In less than a minute, he felt a fine layer of sweat had soaked through his back.

He was never going to joke around with his trump card like that again.

At the same time, he developed a deep respect for the "World Ability Center," no longer daring to hold even a shred of contempt. To strip away or grant someone’s ability with the flick of a hand—this was an almost unimaginable power!

Or rather, this was precisely the kind of power the Dimensional Limit Mechanism dreamed of—sealing all abilities and completely ending the chaos caused by illegal Ability Users.

However... the claim of being a collective of ability wills, so mysterious and nebulous, was still hard for him to accept. If the other side truly represented some supernatural force, wouldn’t that mean it was naturally opposed to the Mechanism? After all, no one likes being locked in a cage.

"Come find Elorie." The subtitles flickered again. "She will tell you herself what she went through, and how Xiao Canong betrayed her."

"How do I find her?"

Beep-beep—

Right then, the honk of a car horn came from outside the window.

"Just get in the car."

Wang Baihu hesitated. This sounded extremely serious, with far-reaching implications. And even if he learned the truth, what could he do? Openly rebel against the chief captain?

This was a kind of challenge that had never appeared in his Simple Life Game.

And Wang Baihu was not someone with an exalted opinion of himself. Although he was always bickering with Honglian over the title of strongest agent in the team, he knew that even if he could beat Honglian, he could never replace her.

He just wasn’t cut out to carry a whole team on his shoulders.

So should he refuse the other side? Honestly, Wang Baihu couldn’t bring himself to... He really couldn’t just leave Elorie alone, because she had once been part of the Red Lotus Team.

He hesitated for a long time before finally speaking. "Can I bring someone with me? This person definitely won’t leak anything, and I trust that she can make fair judgments under any circumstances."