Author's Note:

My sincere apologies to everyone for disappearing for so long. I had absolutely no intentions of going away but real life came and dealt a seriously bad hand to me and my family. It has been a rough couple of weeks for us but thankfully everything is more or less okay now. No matter what I did there was no way I could have had the time to write anything as I absolutely had to give time to my family. I do apologize for not informing anyone for the reason for my disappearance, as it was rather personal in nature.

Let's move on to the story. I originally had the intention of releasing a number of chapters in one go on my return, but it has taken me the last two weeks to write two chapters! My intention was to release about 8-10 chapters as a way to apologize but I am still extremely busy with the family so it would have taken too long, so I am releasing two chapters today. I will have one day soon where I release multiple chapters to make up for the lost time, that's a promise!

Finally, I would like to ask for some help from you. I have been out of the loop from this story for a long time, so if you do spot any plotholes in the upcoming chapters, please do point them out to me so I can fix them! Thank you in advance!

Once again my apologies for the disappearing, but please do know that I have no intentions of dropping this story and I will finish this sooner or later!

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There were a few ways I could keep this mimic hidden. I could keep a small insect or a relatively harmless monster close to it but the risk that the mimic could become accidentally closer to me is not one I am willing to take. I could keep it near a plant and keep the plant hidden away but again there is a risk of something other than the plant being closer to it and I could lose the mimic as a result.

There was something I could do but I had no idea if it would work or not, so I teleported back to the hallway, taking the mimic with me. I took care of keeping the mimic, which was now mimicking me, asleep with constant use of the sleeping powder.

The mimic and me arrived back into the monster infested hallways as I made sure that hiding presence was active. I spotted a feline monster nearby which was perfect for my experiment.

I needed to see if a living thing could go inside my pocket dimension and stay alive or not. I don’t remember it being specifically mentioned from ‘mind-me’ that living things couldn’t go inside but if this works it will solve my problem. Time doesn’t pass in my pocket dimension so if I put the mimic to sleep and put it in the pocket dimension then it will still be alive and asleep when I take it out. Theoretically, this should work.

I simply grabbed the feline near me and quickly pushed it into my pocket dimension, before I moved on to a nearby empty classroom located in an area more or less devoid of monsters.

I waited for about twenty or so minutes before taking the feline monster out of my pocket dimension. It was still alive! At least that confirms the fact that living things can survive inside the dimension! Next, I released a small amount of sleeping powder on the feline and after making sure that it was asleep I put it back into the dimension.

I also went back into the hallway and got an insect monster and put it inside the dimension too, just to make sure that the feline didn’t have some innate ability that lets it stay alive in another dimension. With the world gone crazy with these monsters and abilities, I can never be too sure of anything!

I waited about forty minutes this time before taking the insect out first. It was still alive, so I killed it and moved on to the feline. After making sure that the mimic was still asleep, I took out the feline and found that it was also fast asleep! This is great! I can keep the mimic hidden away and use it to get all the abilities from the council!

I gave the mimic another dose of sleeping powder before taking out a syringe and drinking as much blood from ‘myself’ as I could in one go. Telekinesis was an amazingly powerful ability, and I just had an unlimited source of blood for it now! I need to take advantage of this lucky situation as often as I can to make myself more powerful. This will give me a rise in my power and at the same time the Council will be unaware of this. It’s a win-win situation for me!

After drinking as much blood as I could I got the confirmation from ‘mind-me’ that I had absorbed telekinesis. I gave the mimic another dose of the sleeping powder and put it inside my pocket dimension. I was feeling quite pleased so I decided to let the feline live, it had helped me out after all! Maybe I should have kept the insect alive as well…? Oh well, too late now.

I had a couple of other things to experiment with the mimic, particularly I wanted to see if I could get the mimic ability somehow. One thing I could try to do was to take the mimic near one of the people who had their abilities stolen and see what happens if I drink the blood from the mimic this way. Another thing I could do was to try and get the mimic near an insect and drink its blood then. Insects don’t have any abilities so that could work too.

But, that will all have to wait. I have left Ariel alone in that room for a few hours and I need to go back to her. With that decided, I teleported back to the room with Ariel and deactivated hiding presence.

Immediately a snarl of “Where the FUCK have you been?” assaulted my ears as Ariel stood right in front of me with a menacing glare fixed in her eyes.

‘Has it been THAT long? Hmmm…’

I know I was a bit at fault here, but I didn’t have the time or the patience to deal with an angry woman right now. Thinking quickly, I said, “I would rather you see where I was for yourself.” I said it with a bit of a defeated look and a sigh, and I could see that it surprised Ariel a bit as she was expecting something else.

I grabbed her hand, activated hiding presence and teleported us both to the hall where everyone was present. The forlorn and silent atmosphere of the room was pressing at us from all sides as the miserable expressions of everyone became visible.

Ariel let out a gasp from my side and I immediately communicated telepathically to not make a sound. I didn’t want anyone to be aware of our presence here, yet.

This sight would make Ariel forget all her anger towards me and instead she would probably focus more on helping everyone, which is exactly what I wanted. It may also have made her remember past memories of her situation before I came to rescue her, which I didn’t like, but that can’t be helped.

About a minute had passed since I got Ariel here, which is more than enough time for now I think. I teleported myself and Ariel back to our room so that we could discuss things.

“I’m sorry it took so long but as you could…”

My pretend apology was interrupted by Ariel as she held up a hand and said, “I understand.”

I pretended to sigh with relief then started to explain all that I had learned thus far from James. I obviously kept the existence of the mimic a secret.

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After my explanations ended Ariel kept quiet, deep in thought. I had told her all about Perry and the ‘entity’, and of the fact that many of the people in the auditorium no longer had any abilities.

A few minutes passed by in silence before I decided to break it.

“So, what do you suppose we should do now?”

“Help them.” She immediately answered without any hesitation whatsoever.

She had a determined look in her eyes which I have only seen once during the time she was torturing the bastards in that penthouse. At that time I knew that nothing I said would make her change her mind about inflicting as much pain as possible on the men, and right now I knew nothing would change her mind from helping everyone in the university.

I’m not against helping them, I actually would prefer to save James and a few of my friends. But, I still need to keep my best interests in my mind. I don’t want to be some sort of hero figure that everyone looks up to and expects to always be there to save them from everything. That being said, there would be no swaying Ariel so I should at least hear what she has to say. If she can come up with something feasible to save everyone I would absolutely go for it.

“Obviously.” I said. “The question is how?”

“Well, for one we need to give them food. You have a lot of it don’t you? We could give it to them to eat.”

I froze.

My pocket dimension was full of food. Both perishable and non-perishable. I had stuffed it full of anything and everything edible that I could find ever since I got the ability. There was probably enough food in there to last me and Ariel a few years comfortably.

But what if I started feeding two hundred or so people? Three meals a day times two hundred? That food would run out in weeks!

I got the food for myself. I don’t mind sharing it with Ariel. If James were here I wouldn’t mind sharing it with him either. Perhaps at most I could share it with ten people daily. But two hundred? Nope. Not a chance.

I need to communicate this to Ariel without sounding as if I am unwilling to give food to starving people. Hmmm….

“Yeah I thought of that. I have no problems giving them food and water, but my pocket dimension can only hold so much. There’s not enough to go around for long. What we need to do is find a food source which won’t run out quickly. I was thinking of seeing if the monsters here are edible, or if there are any other food sources here. I thought it would be best if I took a few of them along with me to search or hunt, it will give them something to do and also give them a sense of achievement which will help them mentally as well.”

It was a load of crap that I just thought of at the spot, hopefully this will make some sort of sense to Ariel.

“Hmm… Sounds better than just handing out food I think…. Yeah, let’s go with your idea!”

Wow. She bought it. Either I’m too good or she’s not thinking straight.

I resisted the grin that was threatening to form on my face and decided to go further with the discussions.

“Right. Food situation is decided. Water is easy enough to get through water manipulation. Ultimate goal is to get out of here obviously but how are we going to do it?”

This is the main reason I wanted to speak to Ariel. My ideas were basically to use the useless people from the group as ‘information gatherers’ against the entity and kill Perry. Sounds good to me but I know others won’t find it acceptable, and I needed to keep them close to me in order to get their help in the future. Especially Ariel, whose ability will be useful against stronger opponents for now. If the mimic thing works and I get her ability then I might have to rethink a few things…

“We need more information. There’s no proof that Perry is actually being controlled by this ‘entity’. I know for a fact how society has changed now and Perry could be doing all of this just for some twisted sort of fun. We need to glean as much information as possible from everyone here, and then perhaps you could investigate with Gray on the abilities of the ‘entity’ and the true nature of Perry.

After providing them with a way to get food, we should also look to get them some sort of comfort. If people are relaxed and well fed they will get more motivated to do something and we can go attack the ‘entity’ and Perry with a large group instead of you going there alone to fight them both. It will be safer and we could have the numbers advantage.

You took a lot of mattresses, clothes, sheets etc. from various places too didn’t you? We could give those to the people, especially the old, the young and the sick. That should help their mental health by a lot and get them motivated.

I think that should be enough for a start. We can decide what to do further when we know more.”

......

I had completely forgotten about all the things in my pocket dimension! I basically became a hoarder and took a LOT of things, including mattresses and clothes. After Ariel joined me I even went and got a lot of clothes for women.

I have a lot of things I took just because of convenience. I used to sleep on a mattress when I was travelling around the world even though I knew I could simply teleport back to my apartment in a split second. I liked sleeping outdoors during that time, but that did mean that any mattress I used would get dirty or covered with bugs after a single night so I usually only used a mattress once or twice, which is why I have about fifty or so mattresses in my pocket dimension.

Same type of situation with clothes. I can’t be bothered washing clothes, so I simply discard the clothes covered in blood and gore and wear something new. There were eight billion people here on Earth and many times that number of clothes, and this abundant supply of clothes is what I took advantage of.

I only have clothes more or less in my or Ariel’s size but that should be good enough. This pocket dimension sure is useful! I have so much in there and I still haven’t found out the total capacity of the dimension!

“Sounds like a plan.” I said to Ariel with a smile.

I can always get more clothes or other things, so disposing of them won’t be a problem. Hopefully we can find some source of food because I DO NOT want to give all this food away!