74 The Targeted 1

Chris went back to ignoring the devil after confirming that it was not going away.

He was very annoyed though, irritated that he could not do anything about it.

If not for its claim that only an official host could browse stuff and pages from it, he would have suspected that it was already bound to him.

Thankfully, it was not. There would also be no 'yet' like what it was hoping. It was because if he was already losing sanity just from occasionally hearing it in his head, what more once it began forcing him to do its bidding. As he could see based on the bits and pieces of knowledge he gained about its so-called missions, the system was nothing decent. Look, its qualifying task was already about forcing oneself on someone, what more of its future tasks? To steal? To bomb a government building? To murder?

As Chris strode out of the restroom, he was musing to himself, 'I encounter someone who hypnotizes people for fun. If my conjecture is right, those hosts should all be killers or terrible criminals. And this system must be one of the primary reasons.'

Chris frowned and narrowed his eyes. He was looking down in order to hide the dark expression on his face as he walked straight to his classroom. His thoughts were swirling around the encounter he had with Wendy Gomez.

Several questions were plaguing his mind. For example, why did that host hypnotize Wendy? Why did they make her annoy him? Who is that host?

When he realized that he couldn't find the answer, an unbearable feeling flooded his whole body. It grew worse due to the system taking it as an opportunity to endorse itself to him. Of course, he never took its bait.

A while later, Chris berated himself for thinking too much about the system's issue. He realized he shouldn't be thinking about this. Since he could already see that being involved with those hosts was clearly not a good thing, avoiding anything related to them should be the best course of action to take.

'I should not entangle myself with troubles anymore. I feel sorry for that girl, but she's obviously trouble. Who knows, maybe the reason she is targeted is that she did something bad to that host or someone related to that host. She looks overbearing so this possibility is not improbable. I'll just wish her good luck. But as for me, I have a heart and mind to heal...'

He took a deep breath and told himself.

'I should just transfer to another school or city once and for all...'

'This way, I can leave all the troubles and bad memories behind.'

Of course, this conclusion that he reached garnered so much protest from the unbound system. But why would he care about its opinion? It was afraid of him distancing himself from the target, but he was not, and was only afraid that its intended target would bring him unwanted trouble. The other major reason was naturally his reluctance to involve himself with another girl.

He was just not ready for it.

....

For Wendy Gomez, the whole morning of the new Monday was not really eventful but still nice. The School Fest had just concluded so not many teachers lectured today, most faculty members were concerned on the cleanup or pointers to review for the semestral final exams on Thursday and Friday. If the teacher was more inclined to do the latter, then it means students would be left to revise their reviewers by themselves.

And as if students would obediently do that!

Naturally, since a revision session means no teachers would be around, the students could freely chatter the period away and not write the pages worth of summaries.

It was around 11:25 am when someone from the student council called for Wendy. That time, the girl was busy laughing along with her friends about a socialite girl that pooped naked in one of the rooms at a party. She was totally having fun discussing the comments in FB so when someone wanted to call her away, she was reluctant to part with her gossipmates. Sadly, she was specifically called by the SC member, informing her that it was their Science teacher who asked for her.

"Did she tell you why?" With a frown, Wendy asked the senior girl.

The person opposite her shrugged, "Maybe it's to ask you to pass assignments or activities later? Who knows? Just go there. Maybe it won't take long and you'll be able to go back to your friends and rejoin their debate about the pooper socialite."

Wendy giggled, "Can't blame me for being curious. Who would have thought that the rich, popular, and glamorous daughter of our mayor will do that at a party? It's the scandal of the century. And I'm sure the whole country knows!"

"Yeah, yeah, pretty Wendy, bye."

The girl shook her head while giggling and then waved a hand at the leaving acquaintance. She then went back into the room to tell Sofony about the summon in case she would not be able to go back before lunch.

Speaking of Sofony, Wendy didn't know yet but her best friend had already drifted away from her in terms of status. The newspapers and other media might have mentioned about the real purpose of the party attended by Lara Abenson as a debut event for the Silver's 'heiress', but the girl was called Sofony Silver. Putting aside the Gomez' lack of connections with the upper circle, since the matter was not related to any crime, plus her best friend was not telling her about it, naturally, Wendy was not aware of Sofony's change in social standing.

In fact, Wendy had long not known her friend anymore. It was just she was also not aware, always assuming that Sofony was still the same nerdy she'd been hanging around for years. She'd picked up signs of her changes, but as a good friend of Sofony, she only assumed those were positive changes brought upon her father's abandonment.

She knew nothing about the system. And probably, she'd be forever unable to guess its existence due to her intelligence that was still limited by 'what she sees is all that she believes'.

Back to reality, Wendy headed towards the Science Dept Faculty Room which was only a room away from the cafeteria. Along the corridor, she ran into the Violent Goddess. But aside from her left brow raising and their eyes meeting for a while, nothing more took place between them.

The real weird thing happened near the cafeteria after that brief encounter with Clarissa. For some reason, she felt like she lost control of her mind to actually end up offending a boy she barely knew. But since the matter was currently out of her league, she decided to think about it later and prioritized completing the teacher's errands first. Anyway, it was not like that gloomy bloke that used to be a shy boy could avoid her forever.

What she had not expected though was to meet Clarissa again when she was about to return.

This time, the other part looked to be really after her. The proof was Clarissa's refusal to give way to her when they were at a stand-still on the hallway.

Wendy raised an eyebrow at her good-looking and annoyingly sexy senior and asked with a displeased tone and expression, "If you have something to say, speak now. I don't have much time to spare because I still have to go back to my classroom."

Clarissa's lips curled up and Wendy didn't like how the other always looked so carefree and fearless.

"Hi there Wendy. Looking as imposing and pretty as ever."

The one greeted frowned at the sudden feeling of deja vu, but recovered her senses immediately in order to reply, "Is that all you want to say? Then great, I heard you. So can you now please make way while I'm still being polite, Miss Guzman?"

"Oh?" the girl who was probably the prettiest in the academy shook her head and smirked. "What I want to say, or rather, ask, is whether you still remember our conversation at the mini-hotel."

Wendy stared at her for a long time and checked if the other party was being stupid, dumb or plain annoying, "...Miss Guzman... Can I take it that you're under influence? What the heck are you saying? When did we meet there? When did I talk to you? If you want to make up stories, can you please make it sound believable? I think you're missing some good outline or a good touch of reality, my pretty Violent Goddess."

The one told that seemingly didn't put the sarcasm to heart and only giggled. Wendy couldn't help but frown as she had difficulty understanding what's funny with her statements. Was this woman nuts? The type who takes joy at being scolded?

Wendy watched as the other girl stopped snickering to say, "It seems you no longer remember. I'm sad."

"Are you done? I'm glad. I'm leaving now." After rolling her eyes at the crazy girl, she stepped to the side and began strutting back to her classroom. It was almost lunch break so she must hurry back or else, the printouts in her hands would wait longer before she could distribute them.

Fortunately, the weird and seemingly insane Violent Goddess didn't continue to bother or else, even if she was the leader of a gang, Wendy would still not hesitate to go against her. Her confidence stemmed from the fact that they were at school. Even if something happened, her brother's police station was only five minutes away. Anyway, Clarissa might have that intimidating moniker but Wendy, at least, the girl was someone who could be reasoned with. Unlike Vienna and her other stupid followers.

What Wendy didn't know was that the person she left there was meaningfully staring at her back, mulling about their supposedly silly encounter.

A while later, Clarissa's eyes sparkled with mischief after confirming something.

'The hypnosis can't be broken, no?' she asked the system.

A second later, a ding resounded in her brain.

Clarissa rolled her eyes and cocked her head to the side. That gestures still looked so mysteriously graceful therefore quite a few students inside their room watching through the window repeatedly blinked and tried to burn her beautiful image in their mind.

Without caring for the stares though, she shrugged and replied to her system.

'Fine, I don't care. But I was curious about how high her hypnotic ability is. Well, nevermind. At the least, I have confirmed that I can still control those she's hypnotized. The only thing I can't force on them is to make them go against the initial commands, like making this Wendy remember what that girl sealed in her memories.'

Clarissa didn't speak for a while, as if there was still another matter weighing on her mind.

A few seconds later, the immoral host finally smiled, a playful glint was in her eyes as she gazed again at the direction Wendy turned to. She then told the system.

'You're right. And I'm already happy about the result.'

'Now all I have to do is wait for the surprise. Hopefully, she'll like it, and that she won't break down just because of it...'

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Author's note is not showing so I'll just leave it here.

Thanks for reading! I'll try to upload another chapter later.