[BL]The Hero and his Party Won't Let Me Go

"I..."

Rin looked scared all of a sudden. Shuu could see beads of sweat rolling down his son’s face, and he immediately put a hand on Rin’s shoulder to calm him down.

"It will be fine, Rin. You don’t have to worry about anything. It doesn’t matter to me what your rank is. As long as you are happy and live a good life, I won’t feel disappointed in anything you do."

Shuu pointed out, and his words of encouragement helped Rin feel better.

But Secretary Ann just scoffed at Shuu’s encouragement. Disapproval shone clearly in his eyes, but at least he did not say anything.

He just led them outside and toward the internal testing chamber their guild had built in their lab.

Shuu looked around the high-tech room and could not help but feel a little marveled at the space. There was something about it that made him feel like he had stepped into a different world.

"This place is..."

Shuu asked, and Secretary Ann replied with a pride-filled face.

"This is our secret chamber, the magnum opus of our guild—the ability testing center. People usually need to go to the academy to get it tested, but we got special approval from them. And lucky for you that we did. I heard that the academy’s stone has been shattered by someone recently, so it will take some time to get it repaired. Well, enough about that. Kid, are you ready to measure your rank?"

Rin’s eyes had not left that shiny stone in the middle of the room. He still looked worried but determined at the same time.

"Good luck."

Shuu whispered, and Rin nodded before he stepped toward the stone and looked at it with marveling eyes.

His focus made Shuu a little worried, but Secretary Ann placed a hand on his shoulder to keep him back.

"Don’t worry about Rin. Every esper feels a magnetic pull to that stone... or so I have been told. Naturally, as a guide, I don’t feel that pull at all."

Secretary Ann stressed the importance of being a guide when he spoke, but Shuu only focused on what was happening with Rin.

Rin reached out to grab the small ability stone before he started to use his powers. Shuu could feel the powers starting to affect their surroundings, and they pressed down on everything.

It was becoming hard to breathe, and even Secretary Ann had collapsed onto his knees with a wide-eyed look.

"W-What is this...? Pressure? No, an ability...?"

The calm room suddenly turned red, and warning signs appeared all around the room, giving this place a sinister feeling.

[Warning: Energy reaching a threshold. Please pull back to avoid danger.]

The warning was clear, but Rin did not seem to be able to hear it properly. This was going to get difficult at this point.

"Should we get Rin back? Will it hurt him?" 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

Shuu asked while still standing, and Secretary Ann gave him a wide-eyed look of awe that soon turned into terror as he looked at Rin.

"We need to pull him away from the stone. It might make him feel shocked, but if we don’t, then this whole place goes down. Just... try and do something."

The secretary could not move, but Shuu could move. The secretary chalked it up to Rin and Shuu being family. It was possible that Rin was subconsciously ruling Shuu out of his power’s usage.

Whatever the case was, Shuu was the only one who could move right now, and he slowly made his way toward Rin and grabbed his hand.

Blank eyes looked at Shuu, and Shuu’s heart skipped a beat in fear as he wondered whether what he was doing was the right thing to do or not.

In the end, Shuu decided that it did not matter. What mattered was Rin’s safety, and he wrapped his arms around Rin and pulled him back slowly.

Rin’s body immediately gave in under the barest pressure, and the feeling of suppression immediately cut off.

Secretary Ann felt like he could breathe, and he quickly ran over to Rin to provide guiding.

"Let me check up on him... huh? How does he not need any guiding after that outburst? Is something wrong with him?"

Secretary Ann looked shocked at Rin’s perfect condition. He had never seen anything like this before. Suspicions started to creep into his mind once more.

But before he could act on the clues, the door to the testing chamber opened, and their boss, Yuri, entered the room with a desperate look on his face.

"What happened? There was an alarm and... are you both alright?"

The elder esper asked, and Secretary Ann quickly nodded before taking over to explain what had happened.

"We are all fine. Rin just lost a little bit of control while testing, but it is fine now. I am going to check his level now. Would you like to stay and look as well, boss?"

Secretary Ann asked as he turned toward the machine, which was still showing the error message.

Yuri nodded and took a step inside the room. He watched as Secretary Ann worked and got the machines working once more.

"Hmm, let me see. Since this was the problem... maybe this should help... Ah, it is back online."

The machine was fine once more, and it had even recorded Rin’s ability ratings.

[Scanning results... compiling ratings...]

That message on the screen made Shuu feel a little nervous. He wanted to see where the arrow would land, but so far, it was just moving and moving... until it finally stopped.

[Data outside parameters. Cannot determine the rank.]

[Ranking Result: Invalid. Please try again with a better power source.]

"What the hell is this result? It does not make sense! How can the power rating be invalid when we clearly saw it...? I need to look into this again."

Secretary Ann complained as he started to type on the computer to get it to work. But Yuri did not look as worried or even surprised at what had happened.

In fact, he only looked curiously at Rin, who quickly decided to hide behind Shuu’s legs.