Meditate.

Truthfully, it only took John mere seconds to come up with a plan to counter this. After a couple flicks through the screens listing the details of his abilities, he found the specifics for Theft.

Theft level 1, 25 mp
Theft: Takes a randomly selected item from a container or a person and adds it to your inventory.

John didn't waste any time after that. With a deep, drawn out inhale, John used Meditate and began to clear his mind of any and all of the distractions that had troubled him over the past few hours. His eyes slid shut, his body tensed briefly before all of the muscles in his body suddenly went lax, and his breathing found an even, perfect pace before the rate of his mana and health began to slowly tick up, up, up.

With the combined help of his natural mana regen and the effects of Meditate, it took just over ten minutes before John had enough mana to try and steal the adrenaline and add it to his inventory. His fingers skipped over the outside of the cupboard and, for a moment, nothing happened.

Theft successful.

A smile spread across John's lips as he closed the pop-up and sat back down on the bed he had been originally directed to, happy with himself that he had been able to confirm the cupboard as counting as a container.

Nothing particularly great happened after that. John chose to meditate a little more, and the nurse returned with the ice pack, but by that point, his health was full again.

"It doesn't feel as bad anymore," he stated simply when she looked confused at his hand. After that, he didn't stick around for very long, choosing to slip away before she asked any serious questions. Specifically, the ones that he didn't have an answer to.

John didn't head back to class after that. There wasn't much of a point. After waiting around for almost half an hour in the Nurse's office, John didn't see how much use arriving late to the class could be. He was going to have to do make-up work either way. Instead, he chose to work on leveling, and went outside to one of the fields near the academy. It didn't take very long for him to get there, they weren't very hard to find with how big they were and he had been there before. The hard part was finding a spot where no one could see him and he could somehow manage to grind unprovoked. The really hard part was finding what it was exactly that he was supposed to grind.

Working on Observe was not necessary. It was the one ability he had that was so cheap and easy to use that he felt like he could work on it all day and be just fine. He couldn't grind Theft with the way it was now. It was too costly and too focused on one action in particular to be of any serious use. It wouldn't do him any good for the next time Frank chose to try and bully him. Meditate might have been a sound option if it weren't for the fact that he couldn't do anything while he was meditating and therefore also no good in an actual fight.

In the end, John wound up just walking around the field, watching a team of guys play football in full gear. With the use of Observe, John scanned over many of the players on the field itself, taking mental notes of the levels for each and every person there. Sure enough, all of them were each a higher level than he was, and he thought he saw Frank out there once or twice. The more he watched though, the more irritated John found himself.

Even in patterns, in plays for a game, John couldn't keep track of the players at the speed that they were moving. And games were his specialty! They stepped and side-stepped faster than he had ever seen actual people do before. Yet, this group of filthy rich players switched their weight around in a fractions of a second, turning on a dime to throw their own heavy body into other players, like it was the easiest thing in the world. It didn't stop either, even after a good ten minutes of watching the players hitting each other like a bunch of trucks, John found himself only staring harder and harder, straining to keep track of them and their movements, to find the pattern before they followed through with the play. Gradually his eyes began to flick and move with their every step, his gaze honing up sharply on each individual.

New Skill: Fighter's Eyes level 1, Toggled, 1 mp cost per second that the ability is active.
Fighter's Eyes: Focuses the user's gaze on the central point of balance and instinct within an enemy to find the subtle shifts made between movements.

Well...at least he got an ability. One that was perhaps too costly to use, and far too ambiguous with what it was that the ability actually did...but at least he got an ability.

Annoyed, almost to the point of exasperation by this point, John used Fighter's Eyes on the football players. His gaze suddenly flicked upwards onto the eyes of various jocks spread out on the field for the few brief seconds he could use it. As his mana dipped, and fell into the levels low enough to be considered empty, John watched as the practice went just as it did before. The player's stepped into formation, each person looking to their specific spot and enemy target for the play before they moved in. He watched as they all squatted down, poising low enough to cause all of their muscles to tense and bunch up until they were all, each of them, ready to pounce. Each side, each person, turned and glanced quickly in the direction they were supposed to move, according to the play. One preparing to flank to the left of the defense, while they focused on charging straight on, digging and twisting their toes into the dirt until they were all angled perfectly for their own specific rol-

He stopped, a short gasp escaping the gamer as he sat on the nearby bleachers just in time for his mana to run out. Sure enough, seconds later when the whistle was blown, each and every person moved just as he had predicted.

They hadn't done it yet. John realized as he watched the offense slip off to the side, bewildering the defense entirely as they were held off long enough for one person to slip through with the ball and score. It's a psychic abil-No.

John paused, his fingers thrumming on the bleachers as he stared out over the field of players. He wasn't looking into the future... He had been looking at them. He had seen what it was they were planning to do because his ability showed it to him. He read their movements off of their bodies, seconds before they actually tried to do it.

Having that kind of knowledge...at that speed, when his opponents just start to think to actually act...

Perhaps he did have something to grind.