Cryptomining Supervillain Chapter 14: 014 THE CONCERT FROM HELL

014 THE CONCERT FROM HELL

After leaving the café, Dan already knew his next stop. The rude but handso waiter earlier had sparked an idea—"I don't mind being good looking too."

The rude waiter even earned him a boost in Charm. One point in Charm to be exact.

After he left the café, he pressed "Acquire" on the waiter while he was closing… stealing his Charm.

"Sorry handso… care to let steal a little of your good looks", Dan muttered with satisfaction.

It was too bad the waiter would have to take leave for several days to recuperate in the hospital. He wasn't a ta human, so he suffered a heart attack like Thas and Onda… painful but not fatal.

"Serves him right for being rude."

Since he started mining patrons at Heroes Gym, Dan's DemCoins have grown quickly. The stronger a person's ta score, the richer the yield.

Patrons of the gym were all strong ta characters.

With his balance healthy, he finally have the opportunity to invest in attributes, including the one he'd always neglected: Charm.

He rembered he saw a card in the wallet of Stephan King, the thug he had robbed earlier. It was the card to Black Owl Club, the city's most popular night joint.

He planned to rob him again.

Dan quickly made his way to the club hoping to find Stephan and make so Aurs. But the bouncer at the door blocked his way.

"You're too young. No entry."

"Dammit," Dan muttered.

No ID ant there was no easy way inside the club.

"No matter," he thought.

Dan left the entrance to the club then circled the building, until he found the back fence. Climbing ca naturally to him, and within monts he slipped over and into the compound.

"No age requirent coming through here", he murmured cheekily.

Once inside the club, age no longer mattered.

The club throbbed with music and lights, bodies packed shoulder to shoulder. This was the first ti Dan had been here, though Mikey always bragged about sneaking in here with his brothers.

"This place is too loud and the lights too distracting," Dan thought, squinting at the flashing lights and the loud music.

Dan doesn't like places like this. He preferred calm and quiet environnts.

"But I won't be here long anyway."

Dan went straight to look for his financial sponsor- Stephan King. He didn't see Stephan anywhere though, so he scanned the crowd in the club, and began selecting targets.

"Well, if I can't get money here, might as well get so points in Charm", he told himself.

He looked around for good-looking people to steal their Charm stats but it was too dark and the lights were too distracting. He couldn't pick between a swan and a duck in here.

Then the stage lights suddenly flared as a boy band bounded onto the platform.

"Sneakers? The boy group Sneakers," Dan blinked.

He'd heard Mikey talk about them endlessly. A boy band.

They were all tall, handso, and dripping with charm. They were everything that boys would dream of becoming …. including Dan.

And now he had the tools to do it.

Phones lit up across the club, all taking their aim at those idols for a chance to immortalize them in their phones. Dan was included as one of those snapping pictures, but he wasn't taking pictures.

He was stealing a part of their existence.

But as he aid his app on the group on stage, the performance took a sudden twist.

One of the singers staggered, collapsing mid-song. Another fell, then another. Within monts, the whole group crumpled on stage.

There was chaos. All the mbers of Sneakers fell for no apparent reason at all.

The stage beca a concert from Hell.

"Hah! This is fun," Dan chuckled to himself without remorse. He had just drained the Sneaker's Charm attributes.

Chaos erupted as bouncers rushed forward. Dan grinned wider.

"Perfect. Ti for Strength points."

Monts later, even the bouncers collapsed one by one, their strength siphoned away. Dan laughed without restraint, drunk on the stolen power surging through him.

Morality no longer mattered.

Only power did.

Charm. Strength. Command. He wanted them all.

Then the buttons stopped responding.

Strength failed first.

"What the… why won't it work?" he snapped, jabbing at the screen. No matter how many targets surrounded him, the button refused to respond.

He switched to Charm. It worked—for a while—until that button, too, went dead. ta and Command never activated at all.

"The app is limiting Acquire," he realized. "But why?"

His laughter faded as he retraced his actions, patterns slowly erging in his mind.

There were Rules to Acquire.

First—he could only steal one stat per person.

Second—ta and Command couldn't be taken from ordinary humans. That made sense. Most of them barely possessed those traits to begin with.

Third—he couldn't steal from anyone whose stats were lower than his own.

There was a cap—a hard limit on how much he could harvest from normal humans. And he had already reached it.

If he wanted more…

He would have to take them from ta-humans.

Although he still has so DemCoins to spare, there was nothing he could Acquire from the crowd in the club now. It was ti to leave.

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As Dan left the club, he passed through a dimly lit car park. To his surprise he sensed a group of n lingering near a row of vehicles. It was nothing unusual until Dan spotted a familiar face.

He was Stephan King.

"Finally, my ATM machine," Dan whispered, pleased.

He ducked behind a car to watch what was going on.

Stephan, who was pale and desperate, suddenly dropped to his knees in front of the leader of the group.

"Boss, please…it's not my fault I couldn't bring the money to you! This guy robbed of everything!" he begged with cracking voice.

The man he called Boss lood above him: tall, broad, his shoulder inked with a tattoo of the goddess Athena. Around him clustered a dozen thickset thugs, all muscle and nace.

Stephan was trembling, practically groveling before him.

Dan squinted. "Is Stephan blaming for failing to pay up?"

Stephan wasn't lying. Earlier in the day, Dan claid compensation from him and took all his money. That money probably included those that was due to the Boss.

Without warning, the Boss lashed out at Stephan. His slap cracked through the night, sending Stephan sprawling.

Dan's breath caught.

"Damn… so fast. Is he a ta human?" he wondered uneasily about the Boss' slap.

Dan pulled up his mining app, sweeping it over the group. He could determine whether the target was ordinary or ta human by looking at the rate of their coin harvesting.

Most of the thugs registered as ordinary humans…. The Boss, however, wasn't. Dan's coins climbed rapidly when the target switched to him.

"This bastard is no ordinary guy", Dan murmured.

It was Confird. The Boss is a ta human.

"Nobody steals from , Mad Cat!" the Boss roared at Stephan. "Where's the bastard who took my money?"

Stephan's whole body trembled as he stamred, "I—I don't know, Boss. All I saw was he wore the uniform of lrose School No. 9."

"A student?" Mad Cat snarled, eyes narrowing. "You dare lie to ?"

"I swear it! Look at ….look at the bruises. My brothers are in the hospital because of him!" Stephan pleaded for reason.

Suddenly, Mad Cat staggered, dropping to his knees. His head jerked around wildly.

Sothing attacked his mind.

"Who dares attack ? Who's in my bloody mind?" he shouted, his eyes darting for an unseen enemy. He just suffered a ntal attack, a kind of ta ability that targets the mind.

It was Dan's mining Acquire. At the mont, using the Acquire function was Dan's only offensive superpower.

He had just clicked on Mad Cat through his mining app, ripping away his ta attribute. The side effect of that on Mad Cat was to suffer a ntal attack besides losing an attribute point.

Dan made a calculated move.

He planned to take down Mad Cat with the app's ability… once the Boss was down, the rest of the gang he could deal with easily without superpowers.

But Mad Cat wasn't down. He rose again, his teeth bared, and rage fueling him.

"Who dares to attack ", he scread again as he scanned around him while Dan Acquires another stat from him.

"Damn it, that's not enough to knock him off," Dan muttered under his breath despite acquiring twice on him in a relative short space of ti.

Suddenly, every hair on Dan's body stood on end. Instinct scread. A blur of motion….and Mad Cat's hand was already crushing against his throat.

"What the hell?"

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