"Daigo, I think I got Enhanced," I said causally to Daigo, keeping a straight face.
He just looked at me, completely dumbfounded, like I was going full kurutta.
"Enhanced?" he finally asked, his brow furrowed with a deeply worried and confused look.
"When you say 'Enhanced,' you mean like… you somehow got a fucking superpower, or shit, from a Donor?" he then asked, trying to confirm if he'd heard me right.
"Yes. From an Aggressor I fought a couple of days ago, back in that weird cave," I confirmed his guess, keeping my expression neutral.
"Look, Shitsubo, man… I know you think you have been going loco, ever since you managed to crawl out from that Gate, few days ago.
Then mixed up with the issue with the blood hounds...
I know with every fucking terrible thing that's been happening to you, it's hard, maybe impossible, to see a clear way to fix things.
…. but still…" Daigo said, his voice filled with a surprising amount of genuine empathy.
He then used the back of his hand to roughly clean his nose, sniffed, and then continued, his tone shifting, "First, you gotta get a grib, you need to stop capping like you're seriously losing your marbles.
See shit is one thing but talking about you getting Enhanced is another. And not the good kind"
Look man, you got mouths to feed and asses to cover. Our lifestyle is fucking shit but get a good damn grib" he said, this last part laced with a definite hint of growing annoyance and concern.
We just stared into each other's eyes for a long moment then.
And I clearly saw a potent mix of pity, remembered pain, simmering anger, and utter confusion swirling in his own troubled eyes.
It seemed pretty obvious that he now thinks my previous statement about me possibly losing my mind, combined with my recent, even wilder statement about me being somehow 'Enhanced,' has unfortunately got him convinced that I am now having a genuine, full-blown mental breakdown.
Since I had most of my stamina back by now, I decided a demonstration was in order.
I stood up slowly, which clearly surprised him a bit, judging by the widening of his eyes.
Then, I walked over to a huge chunk of wall debris lying beside us, leftover from some ancient collapse.
I easily lifted a sizeable piece of it, probably weighing a good 100 kilos, up to my waist level, and then, without as much as a grunt, tossed it a good 7 feet away from where I stood, where it landed with a heavy thud that shook the room violently.
I turned back then and got the distinct satisfaction of seeing Daigo's eyes now wide open in utter, absolute disbelief.
He just stared, first at the heavy piece of debris I'd just casually thrown, and then back at me, his mouth slightly agape.
"Wait-wait… How? When did this happen? Which fuckin' Aggressor…" he sprung up from the floor then, his voice a torrent of total confusion and rapidly growing curiosity, firing off questions.
I had to cut him short and firmly told him to sit his ass back down.
Then, I calmly reminded him about how that vine wall I'd supposedly flown through had actually led to an unexpected cave system.
I carefully added that, while lost in there, I had fought a certain, very strange, pitch-black skinned dwarf-like gremlins.
And that when I'd finally managed to stab one of 'em, I had somehow accidentally shattered its arcane-core while it was still inside its body.
Then, I finished by telling him how I have since felt a slow, but very steady and noticeable, increase in my overall physical strength.
Of course, most of it was a carefully constructed lie, mixed with just a few convenient bits of the actual truth.
I couldn't possibly tell him about the 'System' – the real, unbelievable truth – which actually made me stronger with every single one of the Aggressors I personally killed or the exact and the nature of the creators.
I like Daigo, he's my closest 'friend', but the System, its very existence, needed to remain a closely guarded secret.
He, bless his loyal heart, tends to talk a bit too much, gets a bit loose-lipped, especially when he's chattin' casually or drinkin' heavily with people that he's very friendly with.
He might inadvertently let slip some crucial details, or even just openly talk about knowin' someone, a friend, who can somehow get stronger with no apparent, visible limit.
And someone out there, someone who knows him well enough, will also know that Daigo doesn't usually sell cheap, bullshit stories.
They might actually fuckin' believe him, and then they could start actively huntin' for me, tryin' to find out my secret.
Daigo isn't a snitch, not by any stretch of the imagination, but the undeniable fact that he tends to be a bit too fuckin' loose-lipped when he is drunk or socializin' with all sorts of people, that's a very serious, potentially life-threatening deal breaker for me right now.
Still, we hang out a hell of a lot, so he will definitely, inevitably, notice more significant changes in me at some point in the near future.
It's much better for me to give him a plausible, if somewhat vague, fake story now.
Then, when I'm eventually strong enough to properly defend myself, it won't matter as much, even if he does accidentally run his fuckin' mouth about it.
It's a known, if rare, fact that Evolves do sometimes get 'Enhanced' when they manage to break the arcane-core of certain, very exceptional Aggressors.
This process supposedly grants them some, or even all, of the unique powers or abilities of those specific Aggressors.
Aggressors that possess this rare, power-transferring feature are normally potent Arcane-beings, and they are commonly referred to as 'Donors.'
And once an Evolve successfully takes that power, that Evolve also then becomes a Donor themselves.
Meaning, that specific power can then potentially be passed down to others again, if their arcane-core is subsequently crushed in the right way too.
I'd also heard, through various street rumors and Gate-runner tales, that both Aggressors and Evolves can potentially get Enhanced in this manner, though it's far rarer for humans.
"A black gremlin, you say?" Daigo questioned again, his voice still tinged with a bit of lingering disbelief.
"Man, I have never, ever heard of any Aggressor that even remotely looks like what you are describin' right now," he then stated, shaking his head.
"Yeah, well, that's actually one of the main reasons I initially felt like I was fuckin' losing my mind. New, undocumented race of Aggressors don't just typically appear out of nowhere in some random, low-level Gate like that. They mostly, almost exclusively, appear in the much older, more dangerous Forts. So, I originally thought I'd just imagined the whole damn fight between us, and also that entire sequence of events after I got separated and lost in that weird part of the Gate," I said, trying my best to keep my fabricated story as straight and believable as I possibly could.
"Hmm, maybe it might actually be a common type of creature in other countries, or other regions, who knows?" he then suggested, trying to rationalize it.
"You might be right about that, especially since it was only that one single specimen I actually fought and killed," I agreed with him quickly, seizing on his explanation.
"…And you are absolutely sure that this strange gre thingy was definitely a Donor type?" he then asked, his eyes narrowed in thought.
"Well, it was the only truly strange, unknown bein' I fought right before I first started to notice this gradual increase in my raw strength. And all the other Aggressors I fought in that Gate, like those Goblins and Hobgoblins, they are all way too fuckin' common to be special Donors, right?" I responded, trying to sound convincing.
"Okay, okay. So, how the hell does having Enhanced strength suddenly make you so goddamn tired that you can't even fuckin' talk or move?" he then asked, hitting on another perfectly good, logical question again.
"I think the actual amount of Arcane I currently have, or rather, don't have, is the main fuckin' problem there," I replied, deciding to stick with the actual truth this time, at least partially.
"What does that even fuckin' mean, Shitsubo?" he asked, clearly still confused.
I then gave him a lengthy, somewhat convoluted explanation on how I now think the Arcane or Arcane Energy is also fundamentally linked to our body's available energy, or stamina, using the generally accepted differences in prowess and endurance between each known Grade of Arcane-beings as my main example.
He then asked some more insightful, probing questions, and I tried to answer them with the best of my current, limited knowledge.
He clearly disagreed with some of my theories, but since this whole concept of gettin' 'Enhanced' is mostly just somethin' we both only ever hear about from other, often unreliable people, or see dramatized on the fuckin' TV, we just had to eventually agree to disagree on a lot of the finer details, things we both actually knew very little to nothin' concrete about.
After our long talk, we both finally managed to get a bit more sleep, with our precious bags and all our weapons held so close to our chests as we slept, that it would have taken a goddamn miracle, or a ghost, for anyone to try and steal anythin' from us without us immediately noticin'.
Daigo, that lucky bastard, woke up first, as usual, and then started shakin' me continuously, tryin' to wake me up too.
But I just groaned and told Daigo that I would really like to try and rest a bit more, to recover fully.
I then suggested that he should probably go out there on his own and try to get a paying gig for himself today, without me holdin' him back.
He didn't really want to do that at first, because he still seemed to think that I might not have fully recovered from whatever happened yesterday.
But I eventually managed to assure him that I would be perfectly alright on my own for a few hours.
I calmly decided to check my Profile again after he finally, reluctantly, left.