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Chapter 9 - Value of Danger Sense

The next day, early in the morning. 

Keith stopped in front of a small inn in the Auberg district. The inn had no name, but was still pretty famous due to the low prices and tasty food. He walked inside and saw a room filled with tables and chairs.

Beside the counter, was a door which had the sign "closed" hung up on it. Not caring about the sign, he walked towards the door and opened it. 

The woman who was silently wiping the empty beer bottles glanced at the ring on his finger and continued to do her work without interfering. 

He walked inside and saw that the room was pretty spacious. Exactly opposite to the door and currently in front of him, was a large bookshelf filled with books. With all of them having leather covers. 

There was no space to his right, but a few meters to his left, was a decently sized table and behind it was a large comfy chair on which a middle aged man sat. 

To the right of the table, and beside the bookshelf, was a large couch where two ladies were sitting. To the left of the table, was a rocking chair and sitting on it was another middle aged man, but unlike the first one, his hair was greying at certain areas. 

All four of them glanced at his hand and noticed a familiar ring. The two ladies and the man on the rocking chair turned to look at their leader, who was the head detective. 

"New blood in the team, huh? I did get a letter talking about you, but... you're too... how do I say this? Not really fit for this job. Can you even lift a book without shaking?" he asked as he grabbed a thick book that was on his table and tossed it towards Keith, who hurriedly caught it.

It wasn't really hard to hold it, but seeing that no one said anything, he continued to hold it while staring at the head detective. It soon turned into a staring contest, which Keith lost after a minute as his hands really began to shake under the weight of the book.

"Well, the result is better than what I expected but you really should work on eating well. We have no use for weak people in this department you know?"

Keith nodded before sighing, "I apologise, but there really was nothing I could do about my food when I was struggling financially."

It was far from the truth as the old Keith simply gave too much importance to money compared to his own well being. This in turn led him to eat only one meal a day. This was also the reason why he had quite a bit of savings.

"Understandable. My name is Brandon and I'm this department's head detective. All the cases will go through me and you're not allowed to take up cases without my permission. Also, no matter what happens, you must never move alone during your job. Always have at least one person with you at all times."

"I understand, Sir Brandon."

Brandon nodded, satisfied with Keith's professionalism even though he wasn't too happy with Keith's current physique. 

"Good. Now that we have a total of five people, I can take some rest from personally acting on cases with you guys. Anyways, what was your weekly salary again? It was written in the letter somewhere but I didn't really pay any attention to it."

"Two Zens per week, sir." Keith replied, his eyes betraying his expectations for the money that he was supposed to get. 

The moment the words left his mouth, he heard a yelp from the right and turned to see the younger one of the two ladies staring at him in shock. 

"Wha.. I mean how is your pay higher than mine? I joined one year before you and even after my pay raise, I only get one Zen and fifteen Braks each week! This is discrimination!" she complained before turning to glare at the head detective. 

Brandon simply shrugged, "You're paid based on the value your abilities provide to the department, not by your damn genders. Clara is a clear example of that, don't you think so?"

The guy sitting on the rocking chair quipped in, "Right, I'm the oldest here but both Clara and Brandon make more money than me hahahaha. Experience and loyalty matters, but our abilities are the ones that put a value on our heads."

Hearing the oldest of the team speak, the girl didn't really know what to say or do other than pout while looking away. 

Keith on the other hand, had a question that popped up due to the interaction just now. He turned to look at the guy on his left, who was sitting on the rocking chair and asked. 

"Sir, does that mean that my ability is valuable?"

"Of course, and you're currently joining us as a trainee. Amelia there joined directly as an employee. Your danger sense is focused on survival and that alone gives it a lot of importance, but after reading the details of your power, we realised that it could be used to verify our clients' claims. 

Once you become an official employee, which will happen at around one month from now if your performance is good, you'll be the one with the highest pay among us as your weekly pay will be doubled. 

We're not counting the special bonuses we'll get for completing the requests from our clients, but if we include that, you'll be getting the highest share among all of us here."

Keith nodded as the gears in his brain turned. 

His danger sense ability worked in a simple way. He could sense danger from certain people and if he did sense danger from someone, it would mean two things. 

One was that the person themselves had intention of harming him and the second scenario was that the person would be involved in something dangerous, which would then indirectly harm him if he stayed too close to them or got involved with them. 

Due to this, his danger sense could be used to confirm whether the clients really had someone who wanted to harm them. Then, it could also be used as a alerting mechanism which would boost survivability if he stayed close to the clients. 

As danger got close to them, Keith would feel it and could alert his teammates who would then take action.

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