Chapter 23: The Little Mouse

　　Alan wasn't stupid, he could see that Lucy was just teasing herself, just like Elsa outside the hall. To them, the act itself was more of a game. Of course, he didn't mind putting it into action if Lucy played too much. Children of the surface, at that age, knew early on what to do, and what could be done.

　　It was just that Lucy always gave Alan an odd feeling.

　　As far as the skin she had just shown was concerned, such smooth, almost satin-like skin was almost non-existent on the surface. The sand, the heat, and the relatively harsh environment would roughen a woman's skin. Even with the best of care, one could not have skin like Lucy's that seemed to drip water when squeezed, that was practically a dream for all women.

　　Furthermore, whether it was now, or before in the training hall on the top floor. In Lucy, Allen always felt that she lacked a sense of urgency. The death ring was not a game, but a brutal life and death competition. Allen asked himself that his mind had been put at a relative ease, while more people hated to use one day as two. However, in Lucy, he didn't feel any tension from the young girl at all.

　　It's like it's all really just a game to her.

　　In any case, Allen doubted that she was really from the surface, even though on her profile, the words "Area 17" were indeed registered. However, after a lot of experience, little Alan has long known that as long as certain officials are willing, this little trick is nothing.

　　For such a person, Ellen did not want to engage in too much intimate behavior with her.

　　"Hey, what's on your mind." Lucy waved her hand in front of his eyes.

　　Alan stood up and said, "It's getting late, I should get back."

　　"It's still early, don't rush." Lucy grabbed him with a wry smile, "You're just in time, stay and go somewhere with me."

　　"Where to?" Alan had a slight headache, at Lucy, he couldn't guess the young girl's mind at all.

　　"Elsa's been a little strange lately." Lucy said seriously, pointing towards the next door, "Since two days ago, at night, some strange movements come from her room. As you know she is my mentor, I don't want anything to happen to her. So stay, the two of us will sneak off to see what's happening to her."

　　"Spying? That's not good." Alan shook his head.

　　Lucy said, unimpressed, "It's called concern, and it's called good observation. Anyway it's not voyeurism!"

　　She glanced at the clock on the wall, grinned, and said, "Get up and move the couch over here."

　　Alan couldn't do anything with her but push the couch to the center like she told him to. Lucy had him put the couch up again and jumped onto it herself with another bent knee. She stood up and reached up just enough to reach the vent in the ceiling. After removing the air filter from the vent, Lucy easily got into the vent pipe, then poked her little face out and said to Alan, "Come on up."

　　Ellen cried a little and followed Lucy's example and got into the vent pipe. So the young girl crawled ahead, and Ellen followed suit. Seeing Lucy skillfully choosing the direction to proceed at the fork in the ventilation duct, it was clear that it was definitely not the first time she had burrowed up here. This quirky girl gave Allen a big headache, but Allen had to admit that perhaps it was this trait of hers that attracted him.

　　Lucy was just so different from the girl he knew, even though Alan knew more women than he could count on ten fingers.

　　"Here it is." Lucy lowered her voice and said, "Come here, but be careful you don't make too much noise, Elsa has good ears."

　　Alan nodded and eased himself up to crawl over. As he approached the air filter of that vent, Allen heard a sound that sounded like a whisper. That soft sound with a few pain, he was shocked, thought to himself, could it be that Lucy's mentor really had some problems? So he hurriedly climbed over at a faster speed, but when he looked down towards the vent, he almost jumped.

　　Looking through the vent, one could see that Aisha, the female tutor who had just received Allen, was sitting on the floor on her back. The too-thin-to-be-thin nightgown was half-faded, revealing her tantalizing upper body. Aisha was propping up the ground with her hands, her eyes tightly closed and her expression pained. On top of her, a man was trying to please her.

　　Seeing this image, Allen's breathing became much thicker. He wanted to step back, but Lucy squeezed up and said, "What are they doing?"

　　The ventilation ducts weren't wide, and even though they were both teenagers, there wasn't even the slightest gap when they were squeezed together. Lucy pushed forward a little, her chest pressed against the back of Alan's hand, so the teenager's breathing became more rapid. His keen sense of touch communicated words like elasticity and softness to Allen through the skin on the back of his hand.

　　"This, that's the one, right?" Lucy looked back, her little face red. The look was so killer that Ellen couldn't help but give her chest a hard backhanded grip, and Lucy's little mouth opened slightly, letting out a small cloud of hot air through her nostrils, a look that almost made Ellen a little unable to control herself.

　　At that moment a regular crashing sound rang out from under the vent, and Ellen looked over and was immediately on fire. The man had begun pounding on Aisha's body, and the woman's face showed various strange expressions of both pain and joy, two contradictory expressions alternating from time to time, forming a strong contrast.

　　Aisha's eyes half-squinted, glanced purposefully toward the vent, and laughed softly, "Two little mice!"

　　"What?" The man looked up as well, and Alan in the vent gave Lucy a quick tug, not daring to look any further as the two quickly left.

　　In the room, Aisha's voice rang out.

　　"Nothing, come on, give it to me! Eat me!"

　　So the man worked harder to reclaim Aisha's body.

　　Return to the room and jump down into the vent. I don't know if it was due to the stimulation, but Allen's arms and legs were a bit out of control. When he jumped off the sofa, he accidentally touched his feet on the sofa, knocking it over, and as a result, he and Lucy both fell to the ground. Fortunately Alan fell down first, Lucy just landed on his body, but the two bodies were tightly pressed together, reminding Alan of the previous image.

　　The teenager's masculine features were awakened and he thrust upward roughly. Lucy groaned as Ellen gritted her teeth and rolled her over onto her back. Lucy cried out softly, "What are you doing?"

　　"Eat you, of course!" Alan said fiercely.

　　Hearing this, Lucy relaxed instead. She also took the initiative to circle Allen's neck with both hands and said with a smile, "I'm not against it la, but you have to think about it."

　　"Think what?"

　　"As you know, we've got three weeks before we're in the Ring of Death. If something happens now, things could get a little special by then. That's a match that only one person can win, and you're sure you won't let what happened tonight cloud your judgment at that time?"

　　Lucy's words were like a bucket of cold water poured down, and Alan's body temperature gradually lowered. The young girl had a point; they were friends now, but friends would naturally turn into enemies as long as they stayed friends until they defeated the other competitors. At that time, it was hard for Allen to guarantee whether or not his judgment would be affected when the time came because of what happened tonight.

　　At that time, a wrong judgment could potentially cost his life. Before fulfilling his mother's last wish, how could he throw his life away in confusion. As he thought so, he broke out into even more of a cold sweat.

　　He let go of Lucy and tried to get up. The young girl suddenly wrapped him in a strong hug and sloppily kissed him on the forehead and said, "If we're both still alive after the deathmatch is over, let's make something happen then!"

　　"How is that possible?" Alan shook his head.

　　Lucy winked and said, "That's hard to say... perhaps, a miracle will happen then?"

　　Allen left in disbelief and returned to the 13th floor when Hughton returned. The old drunk was leaning back on the couch and when he saw Allen he asked, "What happened to your face?"

　　"What?"

　　Hughton pointed to his forehead, "There."

　　"Knock ... knocked." Allen hurried toward the bedroom, "Nothing's wrong, I'll rest first."

　　Hughton rolled his eyes, "Obviously smells like a woman, and you're talking about knocking around. Idiot, can't even tell a lie, I'm really worried about your future."

　　For the next week, Allen was like a tightly wound machine, running circumspectly and efficiently. During the day, he conducted systematic training for physical fitness in the gravity room, source power hammering and fighting training in the afternoon, and in the evening, Hughton didn't specify the training content, which was freely assigned by Allen himself. During his free time in the middle of the day and in the evening, he would move to the training hall on the top floor.

　　The activities include developing tacit understanding with Lucy, as well as performing other aspects of individual training. The scores of the training were silently tallied by the committee for the weekly rankings. Lucy was interested in integrating him into her small group, but with the exception of the girl named Emily, the other teens were somewhat hostile to Allen.

　　After his first contact with Mordecai, Allen didn't purposely force himself to fit in with that group. He was still in his youthful age, and the pride he inherited from his mother also made Allen unwilling to compromise. After a week of this, Alan's ranking was still at the top, and this time, the reward Alan received was a bottle of Physical Strengthening Potion. Even though it was only a low level potion, it was still able to double Alan's physical fitness.

　　Just like that, two weeks down the line, Allen's ranking score was unstoppable and had left many behind. While reaping power, Allen also reaped more enemies. There was no such thing as two things in the world, and while the ranking rewards might seem unfair, they also pushed the first place candidate to the crest of the wave, making him a target, so to speak, another level of balance.

　　On this day, there is artificial rainfall in Babylon. Hughton was teaching another new fighting technique to the teenager, "Spin", which was one of the ten strikes in the army, together with the String Moon that Alan had originally learned. Spinning is a kind of footwork to avoid attacks, using the toes as the axis, able to freely change the face in the battle, to avoid and at the same time create the conditions for counterattacks a kind of skill.

　　However, the prerequisite for learning the "spin" was to have a good balance and center of gravity. Just as Allen was falling to his death trying to learn the footwork, a stretchy black sedan pulled up in front of the training center building.