Chapter 93: Great Loot and Bittersweet Ability
This thirteen-year-old girl claimed that she could smell a rotting body. She fought with her mom when she couldn’t stand the smell anymore, and tried to run away from home.
Her neighbor heard the noise and thought that her mother was beating her, and so called the police.
Luke and Selina happened to be right next to the building, and went to the girl’s apartment along with another officer.
After knocking on the door and figuring out what happened, Luke looked around the place, deep in thought, then smiled at the girl. “I bet there isn’t a body in your apartment.”
The girl shook her head hard. “That’s not true. I can smell it. Someone definitely hid a body in here. It smells like a corpse.”
Luke smiled and said, “Do you want to bet with me?”
After a brief hesitation, the girl nodded. “Okay.”
Luke picked up a small metal ball from the desk. It was about one centimeter in diameter and was quite handy.
In the next moment, he threw the metal ball into a corner.
Everyone heard a squeak and saw a big gray mouse.
It was struggling to return to a mousehole in the wall, but was dying after being hit by the metal ball.
Everybody was confused. What was the meaning of this? Was it some sort of acrobatic show?
Luke asked the girl’s mother, “Can we make the mousehole a little bigger? You won’t make us pay for damages, will you?”
The mother hesitated, but nodded in the end. “You can, but… don’t make it too big, alright?”
Luke nodded. “I won’t.”
He then asked the officer who had come with them for his truncheon, and widened the mousehole.
He dug some ten centimeters in, and then the slightly rotting, foul-smelling body of a mouse appeared.
The officer was speechless. Here I was, wondering why you asked for my truncheon!
The girl shouted, “Ah! That’s it! That’s the smell! It’s a dead mouse!”
Problem solved. Luke touched the girl’s head with a smile and said, “Why did you think it was a human body?”
The girl peered at her mother carefully, and seeing how angry her mother was, didn’t dare say anything.
Luke turned to the mother. “Ma’am, please don’t blame your daughter. She might have been oversensitive, but a dead mouse in your apartment can’t be good for your health. She noticed something wrong. If you had trusted her more and examined the room, this wouldn’t have happened. What do you say?”
The mother was rather embarrassed.
She had thought that her daughter was just making a fuss, but the truth had been revealed.
Her daughter wasn’t entirely correct, but she hadn’t been lying, either.
The mother apologized to the girl. “I’m sorry, Alisa, I was wrong. Don’t be angry with me, okay?”
The little girl shook her head quickly and hugged her mother. “I’m sorry, mom. I shouldn’t have watched that horror movie in secret. The bad guys in the movie hid the body in the wall, and were discovered because of the smell. So…”
The mother hugged her back and said, “No, you were watching TV because I work every day and you were bored. It’s all my fault.”
Smiling, Luke left his card on the desk and said, “It seems that the misunderstanding has been cleared up. Here’s my and my partner’s contacts. You can call again if anything happens. But Alisa, what do you say we have another bet? You’ll win if you don’t call us in the next ten days, okay?”
In her mother’s arms, Alisa smiled tearfully and waved at him. “Okay!”
System: You have defeated Alisa and received a list of her abilities.
You have received Alisa’s gratitude. You may now learn all her abilities.
Alisa’s abilities list: Sharp Nose (X-gene; prerequisite: 20 Strength): 1,000 credits.
Luke smiled so hard that Selina felt it was creepy. Why was he so happy after helping a little girl? Had some twisted fetish being triggered?
Luke was truly happy.
He had essentially picked up a super ability by doing nothing.
Also, the prerequisite and the credit points weren’t a problem for him.
He learned the ability without any hesitation.
After picking up Sharp Nose, Luke understood the rules of the system better.
The 20 strength prerequisite was probably the baseline for certain abilities.
Even when he hadn’t learned the ability yet, Luke had smelled a vague odor in the apartment.
That meant that once he met the prerequisite, his body already had extraordinary abilities such as a better sense of smell and self-healing.
Learning the ability was more like grasping the way to smell more effectively.
His nose, which had been keen enough, could only distinguish scents at the beginning.
But after he learned Sharp Nose, he could instinctively tell where the scents in the air came from.
For example, he could smell the familiar scent of Selina’s shampoo in whatever place she passed through.
And he would instinctively know that a woman had just walked by.
It was truly an amazing feeling.
This way of observing the world was similar to how bats used ultrasound to sense their environment.
Alisa hadn’t been able to discern that it was a mouse partly because she was too young, and partly because of the horror movie. Most of it, however, probably had to do with the fact that she was unaware of how hypersensitive she was.
Luke was happy that afternoon, but not so the following day.
It was the day when a certain son of destiny and super playboy was supposed to be attending a meeting in Houston.
Luke and Selina were deployed early that morning to the meeting hall to maintain order and take care of potential trouble.
It wasn’t until then that Luke realized the side effect of Sharp Nose.
The side effect was that… his nose was too sharp.
There were two hundred people in the hall, and more still were coming in.
Regardless of gender, most of them were wearing fragrances. Some also had strong body odor and even smelly feet.
Luke almost threw up.
In the end, he couldn’t help but put on a mask in order to stay strong.
Despite his usual calmness, he cursed Brock vehemently in his heart.
They were detectives of the Major Crimes Division, not special forces. They weren’t good at protecting important people, and had never trained to do so, either.
Brock had essentially sent them where things were most likely to go wrong.
Luke couldn’t leave, either. He couldn’t say that he was about to pass out because of the smell, could he?
Besides, Selina would be on her own if Luke left, and it would be on her head if anything happened.