At the main gate of Smallville High School.
Ariel Kent swung his backpack strap over his shoulder and tipped his chin toward the security booth.
“Mr.
Wilson, open up.”
“Hurry home and take a look,” the one-eyed old man said without even looking up.
Ariel paused mid-step.
“What happened?”
“Your brother went crazy.
Ran out through this gate fifteen minutes ago without even taking his backpack, yelling and jumping around like a monkey the whole way.”
The corner of Ariel’s mouth twitched.
“…Right.”
“Go home early.”
“Bye.”
Ariel waved his hand, stepping past the shadow of the iron fence and into the night.
He really did need to get home early.
Though before that…
Ariel turned off down a narrow path.
“Come on out.”
Sycamore leaves rustled in the wind.
The clack of high heels echoed as a woman strolled out from the path’s shadows, her lab coat unbuttoned, brown waves draping beside her ears.
A silver chain hung from her left wrist, its green Kryptonite glowing with an eerie light.
She stepped forward until only an arm’s length remained between the two of them.
Within this range, every male teacher at Smallville High School would start thinking with his lower half—including the principal who had slammed his hands on the desk during faculty meetings to berate her for inappropriate attire.
“Do you just love cleaning up trouble for pretty girls?” Desiree lowered her hand to giggle softly.
“Ariel Kent.”
“Clearing up trouble for a pretty girl isn’t the problem,” Ariel turned around.
“Clearing up the mess she caused is.”
“Who asked me to be such a warm-hearted young man?
Classic Kansas virtues: helping others, doing good deeds, respecting elders, caring for the young, a full-service package right down to helping old ladies across the street.”
“You really are a smooth talker, my dear Ariel.”
“Yet in reality, you were hiding inside a metal cabinet in the Administration Office,” Desiree said with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
“With that soaking wet cheerleading captain.
What?
Were you falling in love in there just now?”
Ariel’s eyebrow arched slightly.
“Ms.
Atkins’s ears sure are sharp.”
“I’m not blind either,” she took another half-step forward, a sweet, cloying scent wafting into Ariel’s nose.
“And I saw you at the school gate, too.”
The sweetness intensified.
Ariel could feel it, but that didn’t stop him from testing the bounds of a biology teacher’s after-school tutoring.
He was testing her, letting the chemical substance attempting to hijack his nervous system enter his body.
And the result actually sparked his interest.
These aphrodisiac substances, enough to turn ordinary people into puppets, were actually things he could convert and absorb.
“So?” Ariel took half a step forward, his face completely composed.
“Ms.
Atkins followed a student out so late at night just to verify whether your student did something bad to a cheerleading captain inside a cabinet?”
“Enough, Ariel.”
Desiree narrowed her eyes slightly.
She raised her left hand before Ariel’s eyes, letting the green stone’s eerie glow sway between them.
“Tell teacher, who are you working for?
Or…
are you also someone who likes to ‘collect’ things?”
Collect things?
Ariel froze.
The pheromones finally reached critical mass.
Desiree parted her red lips in satisfaction.
“From now on, you’ll—”
“Ms.
Atkins.”
“Let me ask you a question.”
“What?” she blurted out instinctively.
“This ability of yours,” Ariel asked with curiosity, “what’s the effective range?
How long does it last?
Does it require repeated exposure to deepen, or can it be done in one go?
Does the target’s willpower affect the outcome?”
Desiree’s pupils vibrated violently as if she had only just realized.
Why?
Why isn’t it working?!
She raised her head in shock, only to see the boy’s eyes burning as if on fire…
No, they were burning!
Both of his eyes ignited, blazing with pure reddish-gold!
“You’re…
you’re…?!”
HUM!
The wind howled past her ears as a single hand clamped around her throat.
The town’s lights melted into a golden river at the edge of her vision, and church steeples flashed past beneath her feet.
BANG—!
Desiree was tossed to the floor, sprawling across the puddle on the supermarket rooftop, hands propped on the ground as she coughed violently.
Ariel stepped back.
“Who sent you?”
“W-What…” The woman clutched her neck, her face filled with terror.
“What are you talking about…
I don’t…”
HISS—!
A golden beam grazed her ear, striking the concrete floor behind her.
A scorched groove was sliced open in the ground, its edges glowing with dark-red lingering heat.
The heatwave blasted against the side of her face, causing several strands of hair to snap under the high temperature and fall onto her proud, long legs.
“Tell me, who sent you?”
RUMBLE—!
Muffled thunder rolled across the sky.
Dull vibrations thundered from one end of the firmament to the other.
“Were you the one who accessed Joanna Kent’s medical record file?”
Rain began to fall.
Streams of water ran down the young man’s golden hair, and his reddish-gold pupils blazed fiercely behind the curtain of rain.
In that instant, Desiree saw it clearly.
That usually gentle and refined face became indistinct under the inhuman contrast of light and shadow.
Rain splashed against his shoulders, completely ignored by him, while she sat shivering on the cold concrete floor!
The girls at Smallville High loved calling Ariel Kent the Golden Lion.
Desiree suddenly understood that nickname.
Just as written in the Book of Isaiah:
He shall roar like a lion; when he roars, who shall not tremble?
“Ms.
Atkins, do you believe in gravity?”
A figure flashed forward, slamming a hand around her throat to lift her right off the ground, her feet dangling over an endless abyss.
“For the last time…”
“Who sent you to investigate Joanna?”
With her legs dangling in midair, Desiree clawed wildly at Ariel’s wrist, her knees striking his ribs, but every blow felt as if it hit solid steel.
This inhuman torture only stopped when the woman’s eyes rolled back and her tongue protruded.
THUD—!
Thrown back into the puddle, Desiree used her elbows to scramble backward until her back hit the metal wall of the ventilation duct.
“I’m not…
I didn’t…
I really don’t know what you’re talking about…”
“Nobody sent me…” she stammered in a trembling voice.
“I just heard a rich young master was coming to Smallville to open a branch office…
I thought…
I just wanted to position myself early and find a wealthy long-term meal ticket…
then I saw Lana…
her bracelet exerted an attraction over me…”
“Then what about Joanna?
Why were you asking around about Joanna?”
because…”
Desiree bit her lip.
“Because she’s too pretty.”
Coming from a woman who used her beauty as a weapon, these words sounded almost surreal.
“A sixteen-year-old high school girl…
If that young master comes and takes an interest in that type, she’d be my biggest competition.
I just wanted to figure out her background in advance, that’s all…”
“You didn’t look at her file?”
“Why would I look at her file?” Desiree froze.
Ariel narrowed his eyes slightly.
This woman’s eyes, heartbeat, breathing…
HUM—
Sparks lit up Ariel’s eyes once more!
Pure intimidation.
Yet Desiree’s body didn’t think so; amid her spasms, a wave of warmth spread out along the inside of her thighs.
Ariel wrinkled his nose.
If someone could maintain a consistent lie while near asphyxiation, crushed to incontinence by supernatural power, then she was either an agent who had undergone professional anti-interrogation training or she genuinely didn’t know a damn thing.
And this woman slumped in the puddle—her skirt soaked through, makeup ruined, unable to even control her sphincter muscle—was clearly not the former.
Ariel closed his eyes.
Which brought back the question…
Who was the one who pulled the file?
He looked down at Desiree curled on the ground.
A whole lot of effort for nothing.
“Give it to me,” Ariel said expressionlessly.
Desiree lowered her eyelids, looking at her wet skirt clinging to her thighs, then up at Ariel’s towering presence.
“…You want it?”
She unbuttoned her lab coat.
As a biology teacher, Desiree Atkins possessed a systematic understanding of male animal behavior patterns.
After completing territorial claims and violent suppression, certain beasts would harbor a desire toward the conquered female…
“What on earth are you thinking?”
Speechless, Ariel strode forward, grabbed her wrist, and pulled the bracelet off with a rough tug.
The woman froze.
So he meant the bracelet…
Desiree felt a rush of humiliation far more intense than her incontinence surge straight from her feet to the crown of her head.
An eerie green light shone from his palm, emitting radiation that would be lethal to Clark or an ordinary person, though to Ariel, it was more like a nice piece of hard candy.
“This thing,” Ariel held the stone in front of Desiree, “to what extent can it enhance your pheromones?”
“From needing repeated exposure to…
just two or three eye contacts being enough…”
“What about command strength?”
“When I don’t wear it…
I can only create favorable impressions and lower their guard, needing long-term exposure to make them completely obedient…” She swallowed hard.
“Once I wear it…
a few sentences are enough.
Any male, no matter how strong his willpower, will within one minute become…”
She couldn’t finish.
After all, a living counterexample stood right before her.
Ariel nodded thoughtfully, tossing the Kryptonite back.
The small green stone arced through the rain, falling into Desiree’s hurriedly opened palm.
Having regained the Kryptonite, Desiree looked up in disbelief.
Her field of vision was completely empty.
The puddles reflected the gloomy dark clouds.
The boy’s figure was gone as if he had never existed.
Desiree Atkins knelt alone on the rooftop of the Smallville supermarket.
In her life, she had used her pheromones to manipulate countless men of all kinds, but no one had ever touched her body, let alone treated her so brutally…
Everyone obeyed her every word.
Yet Ariel’s existence—as if standing at the top of the food chain, looking down on all ants…
To her, it was a hundred times—even a thousand times—more stimulating than any sensation brought on by her pheromones!
“Mmh…”
Her body shivering slightly, the woman unconsciously pressed her legs tightly together, unable to hold back a soft moan.