Samira woke up on a bed she didn’t recognize, she looked around wondering where she was. The things that happened the previous night came to her mind and she felt relieved, she looked out the window and found that it was in the afternoon. She got up from the bed wondering ‘Where did he go?’ she thought as she looked for Jade.

She went down the stairs and out of the building she was in. In the distance she saw a pile of concrete moving up and down ever so slightly. She ran to the moving pile and saw Jade under the pile, doing pushups, sweat dripping from his face.

The pile was as high as a 6 storey building, Jade made it by piling up the walls of various building in the vicinity. He heard Samira’s footsteps as she approached, her footsteps stopped and she stayed silent as she didn’t want to interrupt him.

Jade finished his reps and came out from under the concrete pile. He stretched and said “How was your sleep?” Samira responded “It was great, thank you for your help yesterday”. Jade waved her away and said “It was nothing; I helped you because I wanted to, and it was as much for you as it was for me. You owe me nothing”.

Samira was silent for a moment before she said “How are you so powerful? Please, I would love to learn from you, I would do anything to-”. Jade sighed, interrupting her and said “You know, if I give you a bit of my en-code, you would probably be able to max out your stats and evolve, but I’m not running a charity here. I could also give you advice, but you are not my responsibility.

Yes, I did help you get your revenge without a price but that was different; I really wanted to see your enemies suffer, I wanted to be a part of their suffering too, but that’s over so I have nothing to do with you, I owe you nothing”

Jade’s cold shoulder made Samira feel sad, her image of him being a nice guy was broken, but she couldn’t argue so she walked away. Jade, seeing her sullen expression sighed and said “It’s really hard having more intelligence than humans” in a low voice and said to Samira as she was walking away “It’s at these times you should make a deal” his voice caused her to turn back.

He continued “You got your freedom and now, your little legs are waddling back towards captivity” when she heard what he said she frowned with a blush, again she couldn’t disagree with his logic. Saying she would do anything to learn from him would just make her a slave of his, bringing her back to square one.

“Freedom comes at a price, the price that is you take care of yourself; no one takes care of you. Hence if you want my help you should help me also; a fair trade” Jade said and left her to think on it. The moment Samira heard ‘help me’ the first idea that came to her head was that she should have sex with Jade for his guidance but she immediately rejected the idea.

‘I’m so used to being a sex slave, the only worth I see in myself is my capability to pleasure people’ she thought deep about what she could give Jade apart from sexual favors. She thought until she realized, she didn’t know what he needed.

She asked Jade “What do you need?” Jade shook his head and said “I don’t know, I have most of what I need. I don’t know what someone as weak as you could offer me that I can’t get myself, but good try though”

Samira thought on what he said ‘What a weak person offer, apart from sex, to a strong person’ she thought for some minutes while Jade continued his workout. Then she asked again “What do you want to do? What are your plans?”

Jade answered “My aim is to get more powerful, to that end; I’m going to kill all the monsters in Abuja. I plan to stay here and work out while slowly chipping down the numbers of the monsters, one Rank at a time. I need to work out because my physical stats and my stats in general, are lacking. I’m trying to become one of the most powerful persons on the planet.”

Samira thought ‘So he’s stuck here for a while’ she proposed “If you’re trying to become one of the most powerful people then you need information right? On your competition”, she paused thought for a while and continued “Then I can help you get information, I’m not strong enough to get information on monsters but people won’t kill me and I can tell you what’s going on”

Jade thought ‘It’s a shame someone this ingenuous was just rotting away as a sex slave. Now that I think about it, people as well as monsters are getting stronger, if people get strong enough to force me back into prison or worse, kill me, which would be horrible. If I have someone who can work as a spy and find out the developments people make and report the details to me, I won’t be left behind.

Although I have spatial technology, who’s to say some high human somewhere won’t invent it. Or worse, if people are able to create better weapons than me then all the 3 months I spent experimenting will be worth nothing.

Since the world most likely will become my enemy, I need people on the inside, people who can keep their mouth shut. And now that I’ve gone and killed a bunch of people, word will spread. They might even make a punitive force to capture or kill me’

Jade smiled and said “That’s a lovely idea, let’s work on the details”. He made the deal with her and assured her of one thing, he told her that among all continents, Africa had the lowest military power so the continent was surely going to be the first to be reclaimed from the monsters. He told her all the information he knew about the apocalypse.

He told her that his condition was for her to evolve right away, although improving one’s state allowed for ‘superior’ evolution options, Jade didn’t want her to stand out as that would make her a bad spy.

And he was the one who got most the en-code for Abhad and his officials kill, he got about 99.999% of the en-code, so she couldn’t increase her stats on her own and she was still Rank 0 even after killing so many people higher ranked than her.

He required her to evolve to a high human right away. There was an upside to it; she would be able to fight better and grow faster than if she chose to stay human before improving her stats and she would have more time to practice energy control. She could then take her time to improve herself before her next evolution which was probably going to come by faster than his own as she would be weaker than him.

This was also one of the things that troubled Jade, the people that he could easily kill today may evolve and become far stronger than him tomorrow, so he was going to hurry himself and get stronger to stay ahead of them.

They agreed that they would meet at a certain future date and Samira give him the news of what was happening in the world and also news about the strongest people in the world… well as much as she could find. He agreed to pay her 1,000,000 en-code per year as a subscription to her news channel.

He also told her that he was willing to pay separately for any information about new technologies or martial arts… basically anything that could make him stronger he was willing to pay for if she found them.

When they had finalized the deal Jade sent Samira 21,000 en-codes in two batches of 10,500. He told her what she needed to do to evolve and she did, she fell to the floor as the process started.