Author's note: I really didn't expect a rating so early, but thank you very much to AlicePandora for the rating! :) I hope you won't have to change the rating in the future due to a lack in my writing skills.

If anyone is wondering why I am writing this instead of my other fiction (Real life in a Virtual World) then please go to: http://royalroadl.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=47852

As explained there I have no intentions of dropping that fiction, I am merely taking a break till March so that I am done with my exams. Meanwhile I am writing this fiction so that I may improve my writing skills and be able to write both the stories much better. Therefore if anyone has any criticisms or suggestions, please do feel free to point them out.

Hope you guys like this chapter.

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I looked at the time and it was 5:44am. More than two hours have passed by since I first found out about these new abilities. So much has happened in these mere 2 hours, the entire world has basically changed! And most of the people around me are still deep in sleep without even knowing what’s happening!

Speaking of people around me… my family are in the house! It’s the Christmas and New Year holidays, and we are all gathered in my parent’s house. I had almost forgotten that I wasn’t in my own tiny little apartment.

This provides me with a great opportunity, doesn’t it? My family are all deep in sleep so I can sneak around and take a bit of their blood and see what abilities I can acquire and experiment a bit. If they wake up… I can pretend to be sleepwalking… I guess…? Whatever, I’ll think of something when and if that happens.

I got out of my bed and slowly opened up the door, but then I shut it again. What am I doing? I don’t know how my abilities work at all, what if I take away my own family member’s abilities and they are left in this new world that is guaranteed to fall into chaos without any ability to defend themselves with?

Hmm… Experiment on family members or not…?

Oh what the hell, let’s just do it!

Wait, am I really about to experiment on my own family? Doesn’t that make me some kind of a monster? Let’s think about this for a second...

Logically speaking, this is the right way to go. If I am to survive the inevitable chaos that will follow, I need abilities. As such, I can’t guarantee I will be able to get blood from somewhere outside without actually harming others, forcing them to give up their blood or outright killing them for the blood. I am not a person who will just go outside and harm random strangers for their abilities unless I have to. Plus, I am not going to go hack away at my family members, I’m just going to prick them with a needle and see if I can get something from a drop of blood.

Okay, I guess that makes some sense… But if I’m not a monster I am at least selfish as I am only thinking about myself and not others. This is always the case for me, I think with my mind and not my heart unlike most people, I don’t even believe I feel emotions, or if I do, they are extremely weak almost to the point of not actually existing.

I suddenly thought about my grandfather. My grandfather died in 2014. He was born in 1924, and he was a few months away from being 90 years old when he died. He was blind in one eye, couldn’t see very well with the other, had trouble hearing, had trouble walking… basically had a lot of trouble doing anything. As one would expect from a person so old…

Now, he passed away extremely peacefully. He went as usual at 5pm to his bed for a nap, and simply never woke up. When we went later to wake him up for dinner, he had simply passed away in his sleep. No noise was heard, no pained expression was on his face, nothing but passing away peacefully in his sleep.

Everyone was sad and crying at his death, and I just couldn’t understand why they were sad when instead they should be happy. My grandfather was a person who liked his independence, and he couldn’t bear it that he had to rely on others to move about and do daily tasks that others could do easily. He was also in pain in recent years, and he had to eat a whole bunch of medicines for this and that. He found release from all his hardships by dying without even feeling anything, such a nice way to die.

Everyone will die eventually. No matter who you are, death will come. So why be sad when my grandfather died a death most people would pray for? They should have been happy instead that he died so peacefully. I wanted to smile at his death, but alas I couldn’t. Why? Because if I did then I would be labelled as a psychopath. Therefore I simply pretended to be sad along with everyone else, it was easy. I act daily to seem ‘normal’ in front of everyone anyway.

Snapping myself back from my memories, I forced myself to get back to the point. I have to go and drink the blood of my family…

Okay that totally did sound like I am an actual psychopath… whatever, don’t care.

Opening the door for the second time, I went downstairs and got a needle from my mother’s sewing supplies. Moving back up, I went straight for my brother’s room. He was the deepest sleeper in the family, and I am sure I can prick the guy without him waking up.

Opening his door I found him snoring as usual, with a small lamp on to give some light. I don’t know how he sleeps with a light on, I can’t fall asleep even if the tiniest of lights comes through from below the crack of the door...

I casually walked up to him, his snoring masking any noise my footsteps would have made. I slowly lifted up the covers, thankfully he doesn’t sleep naked, and pricked his hand. A drop of blood appeared in the tiny hole my needle made while my brother kept on snoring. He is a seriously deep sleeper, we have to shout and shake him to actually wake him up so a tiny prick on his hand doesn’t even faze him.

Now for the disgusting part, I touched my finger on the spot with the blood and quickly put it in my mouth. Better to quickly get this over with instead of thinking about what I’m doing…

The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth and I quickly swallowed before I felt like vomiting. I stood there waiting for something to happen…. a minute passed… 2 minutes… still nothing. Dammit!

Seems like a drop doesn’t work, I’ll have to go back to my room and think of what to do next. I covered my snoring idiot brother again and left the room, making my way back to my own bed.

I sat down on my bed deep in thought. If a drop doesn’t work then this complicates things. Forget the part where I will now have to drink more blood to actually get abilities, I will now most probably also have to injure others to get a lot of blood or I will have to get syringes to take out blood from others. But just how much do I need to drink? Why isn’t there a guide of some sort! It would have been so useful if….

Wait a second… Am I being a complete idiot? I expected something to happen that signified that I have absorbed an ability, I actually expected the mind voice to appear again. But that doesn’t necessarily have to be true. It might be the same as with how you have to find out yourself what kind of ability you have before the voice speaks in your mind. Will I have to go through all possible abilities trying to find out what I have absorbed? I could simply wait a bit and let others find out their own abilities and then I would know what I am absorbing. That won’t always work either, sure family and friends might tell me freely what ability they have but strangers probably won’t trust me at first and will probably refuse to tell me their ability.

*Yawn*

I think I’ll sleep on it. I’ll have to think of a solution tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, I could find out what abilities my family have by encouraging them to try doing everything possible.

With those thoughts, I laid on the bed and drifted off to dreamland… Or I would have if not for the sudden interruption..

Blood successfully absorbed. Drinking a larger amount of blood will make absorption process much quicker.

Ability absorbed: flight. You can now fly. Congratulations! Be careful of air traffic.

AWESOME!

All my sleep suddenly vanished and I jumped off the bed. I tried picturing myself floating in the air… and it worked! I AM FLYING!!!

That lucky asshole got the ability to fly! Lucky me too I guess! WOOHOOO!

Resisting the urge to shout at the top of my lungs and immediately go outside, I contented myself with taking a few laps around my room while floating. It was surprisingly easy to do, I just thought what I wanted to do and it happened. Like how I can move my hand without actually thinking much about it…? Can’t really explain it but it just happened naturally…

Putting the thoughts of flying aside for now, I quickly picked up the needle and went out the room again. I managed to prick both my sisters and parents without them waking up, although my parents, being the light sleepers that they are, did stir a bit. But no one woke up, thankfully. I drank the blood of everyone and quickly moved back to my bed, and then waited excitedly! I ended up getting these messages from ‘mind-me’:

Blood successfully absorbed. Ability gained: Observation. You can now observe things with much greater detail, enabling you to see things many others would miss.

Blood successfully absorbed. Ability gained: Disease resistance. You will now be more resistant to diseases and the chances of you falling sick are decreased.

Blood successfully absorbed. Ability gained: Pain resistance. You will now be more resistant to pain and can carry on work while ignoring more pain then before.

Blood successfully absorbed. Ability gained: Stamina increase. You now have an increased stamina, allowing you to do physical tasks for much longer without having to take a break.

Okay…

Not the best of abilities that I could have asked for but it’s not bad. Disease and pain resistance obviously will help. My stamina is shit, so an increase in that is always welcome. Observing things in more detail could also help me a lot by seeing things I won’t normally see. All in all, not bad.

The strange thing is that all these abilities are somehow related to my family members. My eldest sister is always more observant then others, my other sister doesn’t get sick too often, my father has had pain in his back and right leg for a seriously long time, but that has never stopped him from doing any work, and finally my mother keeps on working from day to night 7 days a week, she just can’t sit down.

So if all these abilities are related to how my family members usually live… what about the abilities from me and my brother? Ah… My brother has had a craze with flying since he was little. Makes sense too… So now what about my weird ability? What’s with all this drinking blood shit? I am not a crazy guy who likes blood or fantasizes about these disgusting things… so what then?

Hmmm…

Ahh fuck it. I can’t be bothered right now. It’s almost 7am! I have to sleep now in order to better prepare for the day ahead, which I’m sure will be full of excitement. I will actually be able to fly outside! I can’t wait!

And with such thoughts, I finally drifted off to dreamland…