Time passed and things were certainly looking up for me. Aiden and I enrolled in one of the lesser known high schools. It was called Dandelion High School. School was a standard 8 hours long. It gave 700 exp. per day, 5 days per week. If you wanted to grind out your Intelligence, this was the place to be. Each day consisted of a big 10 question quiz in the form of a minigame. Either you had to answer single digit math questions or read a brief passage and answer questions about it. I was pretty good at those kinds of things. Aiden needed some help to get acclimated. I was with him every step of the way. Making friends was not easy. Especially if you were a transfer in the middle of the semester. Going to school and doing missions for Old Kipler made things really easy to level up. You did not get any exp. for beating thugs up. You had to end their lives. Old Kipler had given me the gun for my self protection. I still ran into occasional problem when going on these missions for the make had. Some tried to run without paying. Others either tried to rob me or the person I was meeting with violently.
With the gun, I could kill them easily. The level of jobs I took were not too high in the grand scheme of things. At most, they would have knives on them. That got me the much needed exp. I was lacking. Aiden did not want to go work for Old Kipler. He was determined to make his own way without having to stoop to living a life of crime. It was very admirable of him, so I did not bring the up topic around him. Just by staying in school, he would be a much better person than he was when he was, tied to the recreation center. Ivan had no such compunctions against violence, but he was already part of a crew. They did not mess with the drug trade in the city. Their racket was extortion and they were all very adept at fighting. Morals could not stop him, but being the odd man out would cause way more problems than it would be worth for him. I would not stand a change against them all if we were to fight at the same time. That made me a bit happy. This time, the package was in a very large brown cardboard box. I brought it back to him. The old man smiled. "Come help me with this package." he said.
I nodded my head to show that I helped him for the day. Old Kipler wanted me to bring the package to his office. The old man may have liked to wait on the street corner, but he did have an office. He worked just above a record store. He liked to listen to free form jazz vinyl records. When we got to the office, he pointed at his desk and said "You can put it down there. Be careful." I followed those instructions. I was getting more and more curious as time went on. Usually, he would take the package and then reach for his wallet. Old Kipler would then pull out the money I was owed for that mission as a reward. The old man did not do that this time. "Do you want to know what is in the box, young man?" he asked me. I knew already not to ask such question in this line of work. If Old Kipler was offering, I was going to get that answer. All of that grinding was paying off if this was a special event. To look a bit more cool, I gave him a small nod and a grunt. He chuckled and took out a box cutter. Inside the box were five bottles with colored liquids and four hypodermic needles. I just raised an eyebrow.
