Ning found the leader late in the afternoon. He had to use the system to find him as the man was impossible to find by Ning’s current means.

He found him holed up in a room, with his doors shut, with a jar full of Dust on the side.

The Leader was on the floor, with a silly little smile on his face, high on his own supply.

Ning had come here to find out more about the man and somehow he found the man doing nothing but drugs. He had to wait for hours before the effects of the drug wore off.

Around that time, the door opened and Karina walked in. The woman who had brought him all the way from City 3 was now in the room, seemingly uncaring about the fact that she had caused him to die in that underground room.

“Leader, are you okay?” she asked, helping the man get up.

“I’m fine,” the man said. He stood up and pushed Karina aside. He looked around and saw the jar of Dust. Then he reached for it.

Karine put herself in the middle of the two. “Leader, that’s enough. You’re going to kill yourself.” Her eyes held fear that was hard to fake. She was scared that he was going to overdose on Dust.

The leader started getting angry. “Get out of my **ing way!” he shouted, pushing her aside, moving toward the Dust on the table. S~aʀᴄh the NvlFir.nt website on Ggl to access chapters of nvels early and in the highest quality.

Karina quickly got a hold of herself and rushed to the Dust before him. She took the jar and hit it behind her.

“Stop this, please. You’ll die this way,” she said, her voice containing anguish.

“You goddamn bitch!” the leader shouted. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a vial of Spark. He opened the cap of the vial and downed the entire thing in one go.

Once the Spark settled in his stomach, slowly releasing its power throughout his body, the leader moved forward and put his hands on Karina’s shoulders.

“You have one chance to give me my dust, you bitch,” he said. “Give it to me or I’ll kill you.” Karina’s entire body shook with fear.

Ning could see her legs nearly buckle under the weight of her own fear. But she stood her ground.

She took a deep breath and looked at the man before her. “And what are you going to do?” she asked. “Kill me? After all I’ve done to help you, you’re going to turn me into stone? Am I that disposable to you?”

Tears streamed down her face, dripping onto the earthen floor.

The leader took a step back, confused. The effects of the Dust were still working on him, so it took him a moment to realize what was real and what was not.

He took another step back. “Wait… what am I doing?” he asked himself. He looked up at Karina and then back at his own hands. He could feel the power pulsing through them, the power that he was about to use to kill the woman he loved.

“No…” he said, moving back. He stumbled back on his bed and sat on it. His hands touched the bed and slowly it all turned to stone.

He could not hold onto the power for too long or else he would end up becoming Sparkless. “I’m… I’m sorry,” the leader said. “I just… I wanted to learn how to do it too. I wanted to learn how to make Dust at once, but… it’s really hard. I can’t think of how he did it.”

“You’ll learn it, slowly,” Karina said, putting the Dust by the side. “You don’t have to ruin yourself for it. What’s the hurry? We will get there eventually.”

The leader shook his head. “Those bastards have been trying to blackmail me into asking for more of the cut from our sale. Just because they deliver the juice.”

‘Those bastards? Juice?’ Ning got curious.

“We’ll get there one day,” Karina said. “I’m sure of it. If a random person like that man from yesterday can do it, then you can too. You are Swini freaking Milios. Others can’t compare to you.”

The leader smiled finally. “Thank you, Karina. I needed to hear that.”

Karina put aside the Dust jar and finally sighed in relief. She went up to the leader and gave him a big hug before letting go after a while. “I’ll get you some water.”

“No,” the leader said. “I haven’t eaten anything in a while. I’m feeling incredibly hungry. Let’s go eat something instead. I want some meat today.”

“The stores should have opened by now. Let’s go,” Karina said and took the leader away. Ning remained in the room for a while, musing to himself about the man’s name.

Swini Milios. That was a weird name, but most names were weird to him on every planet. They were just a bunch of letters jumbled together that meant nothing, but then again, most names were like that.

‘Well, I got the name at least,’ Ning thought. ‘But who else is he getting his ingredients from? Juice? What juice?’

He got curious. It seemed he would have to stick around the man a little more to learn about what the rest of the things were.

‘Two more days. They should get back to making Dust in two more days,’ Ning thought. ‘I should follow them then.’

For now, Ning had nothing else to do. He decided to return back to his home, but thinking about it, he decided to go back to City 3.

Poor Katie was all alone there, and he did not want to leave a suicidal girl like her all alone if he could help it.

He had also asked her to go deal with her superior regarding her Sparkless case and wondered where that had gone. Had she been demoted or had she been fired altogether?

Ning was curious.

Ning teleported to his house over in City 3 and changed into regular clothes before making his way to Katie’s house.

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