Chapter 29

The Capital of Harrelson

Present. Sunday 6/5/119

The weather was pleasant. With the sun beating down a comfortable amount of heat and a cool breeze to accompany it, the common folk of the capital were enjoying a rather upbeat summer day, completely ignorant as to the mayhem that would soon unfold.

In a field a mile to the East of the capital, many slaves were harvesting the wheat grown there as a handful of leashers watched over them with keen, scrutinizing eyes. They paced around with authority, ready to punish any foolish and slothful slaves who dared to cease working.

The only thing these leashers thought about was how brutal the heat was treating them in particular. Their dress code required them to wear combat gear even when supervising a task as safe and mundane as they were.

Two leashers approached each other casually, clearing yearning to strike up conversation amongst their boredom. Watching others work could hardly be considered engaging.

“This heat is killing me,” one of them said to start.

“Same here. I’m envious of those who can wear regular clothes.”

“Right. My wife and daughter talked about having a picnic today in this heat. I guess it wouldn’t be so hot if I could just wear a T-shirt and jeans like them. That way I could at least feel the nice breeze. I’m almost envious of the slaves. At least they get to wear light clothing.”

As he casually said this aloud, the slaves working within range to hear such words turned their heads, sending glares of absolute scorn at the leashers.

The two ignored them and continued talking.

“Haha,” laughed the other. “The grass is always greener on the other side, right?”

“I preface the ‘almost’. Come winter, I’ll appreciate these heavy clothes again.”

Suddenly, out of the corner of their eye, over sixty yards away, they saw a colleague of theirs launched into the air, his limbs flailing as his fate was entrusted to gravity. His ascent stopped at a height of thirty feet, and he quickly came crashing back down into the ground with a harsh thump.

The two leashers stood dumbfounded, along with another three spread throughout the rather large field. All of them stared at where their colleague had fallen, silently questioning what happened.

“Wha …”

“Did a slave attack him?!”

Then, barely three seconds later, another one of the leashers a little ways away from these two suddenly let out a loud grunt. The other four turned towards the sound to see him in the air as well. Only this time, instead of having been launched upwards, his arc was far more horizontal.

He crashed back into the ground with his momentum still intact and tumbled for over twenty yard before stopping.

Then, before the other four could react, another one of them let out a high pitched squeal. They looked around, expecting to see him in mid flight as well. This time, however, they did not see such a sight. In fact, they couldn’t tell where he was at all.

“Where did he …?”

With only three of them remaining, the two leashers started sprinting towards their final remaining colleague so they could regroup and deal with this unseen attacking enemy.

Only after a few steps in his direction, the final colleague disappeared into the tall strands of wheat without ever making so much as a sound.

The two leasher, without wasting time, began standing back to back, each frantically looking for the enemy attacking them.

“Do you see him?!”

“No!”

They both had contemplated the enemy being invisible, but both also quickly discarded that notion. Most likely, it was a coordinated attack from either a group of slaves staging a coup or an enemy Territory.

Their eyes darted around the field, looking for even a single hint of an enemy figure. In fact, they could see signs that someone had passed through certain patches of the field, since the wheat was parted in the paths they took.

However, even when following those paths with their eyes, they still couldn’t find an enemy presence.

Well, they might have been able to if they had seriously calmed down and observed their surroundings better, but all of this was happening within the span of a few seconds. Not even 15 ticks of the second hand had passed since they first spotted their colleague in the air.

Then, unceremoniously, a tall figure, which had been crouching near these two while hidden by the wheat, stood up and approached them without any sense of urgency or hostility.

The two leasher stared at him confusedly, wondering if he was the invisible tormentor which had attacked them. He didn’t look the part in the slightest, his appearance being akin to their own kids. Dirtied casual clothes with unkempt brown hair and large, nerdlike glasses. Not to mention, he was stick-skinny and possessed rather kind eyes.

“Damn, I was hoping I could scare the last guy by having his partner mysterious disappear without a word, but you guys grouped up way too fast.”

These words came out of the kids mouth in a tone that implied he was playing some sort of game.

“Stay the fuck back!”

The two leashers, pulled their weapons and pointed them right at his face. Meanwhile their expressions were encompassed by anxiety and uneasiness due to the strangeness of the situation.

“Who are you?! Did you do this?!”

“Chris. And yeah.”

His answer was so matter of fact and lacked any kind of tension that they thought he might be lying, but considering that the kid was completely calm despite a gun shoved in his face spoke volumes about his confidence in his ability to survive the situation.

Thinking that that confidence matched with the mysterious abilities used to easily take out their colleagues within seconds, they confirmed to themselves that he was the enemy. Since he was so calm, the uneasiness they felt increased as the pistols in their hands suddenly felt useless before him. They’re intuitions told them that the kid was a monster.

Without pondering the issue further, one of the leashers fired his weapon at Chris’s face. The gunshot caused the surrounding slaves, who had been intently watching, to scream from startlement.

However, the state of his target remained unchanged. As Chris uncurled the fist that had suddenly appeared in front of his face, he revealed to the leashers that he had caught the bullet in his hand.

He dropped it from his hand, but before the metal slug could fall to the dirt, he slipped behind the two leashers faster than they could comprehend and lightly smacked the back of their heads, instantly knocking them out. A light smack from Chris is a heavy blow from anyone else. They hit the ground not long after the bullet did.

He bent down and began searching the two guards for the keys to the slaves collars. When he found them, he nonchalantly tossed them to a nearby slave, who had dropped his shovel from witnessing Chris catch a bullet.

The slave caught them and looked at the keys with eyes that reflected how unbelievable this situation was.

“T-these are …”

“Yeah bro, they’re keys. Use them. I would help with that but I gotta do the same thing I just did for the other fields. So …”

There were a high number of slaves currently working in the other fields as well. In fact, a large majority of the slaves currently owned by Harrelson were working in the fields to harvest the wheat which had been planted during the winter. While many of the fields to the west were unharvestable due to the F-beetle disaster, the remaining amount of crop was still exceptionally great. Chris still had many fields left to go.

Ths slave nodded that he understood and frantically began unlocking the electric collar from his neck. After a second or two, it unlocked with a slight click and dropped to the ground.

“T-thank …”

“Well, see yeah,” he said, cutting him off.

And he left, or he should have but he hesitated.

“Wait, which way did I just come from? These fields all look the same and it’s messing with my sense of direction. And to think I used to work in corn fields like these. I’m a disgrace to farm boys.”

He shook his head as he muttered to himself.

“U-um …” the slave called out.

“Well, if I just run around a ton while freeing people it should be fine.”

And with that, he sped off, kicking up dirt from his acceleration and disappearing from the surrounding slaves’ line of sight in the blink of an eye.

***

At the Batrock metal mine, Michelle peeked around a rock wall to observe the entrance and found two armed leashers standing guard.

Though called an entrance, it was, in actuality, the opening to a mine shaft elevator capable of raising and lowering large groups of slaves.

She quietly stared at the two guards, contemplating how best to eliminate them without sustaining any injury. Despite being a powerful Awakened, she wasn’t powerful enough to traverse through a hail of bullets unscathed.

Though the 5th tier is considered freakishly strong, a gun can still potentially kill one, especially if the wielder can imbue the bullets with Geinta to enhance their impact.

Not to worry, the leashers she faced hadn’t the ability to do so. Still, should one of them get lucky and nail a headshot with a regular bullet, she could still lose her life, as evidenced by her missing eye which was taken by a well placed shot.

With just two, this should be a piece of cake but it would be even easier if I had my damn gun on me. When I left, I had a weird gut feeling that I should’ve brought a spare.

After her father had asked her to visit this Territory, she had had a case of businesswoman intuition. A nagging feeling of ‘the territory is sketchy and some shit might go down so bring a spare just in case.’

Obviously, she ignored that warning.

“Ok, let’s do this.”

***

The leashers standing guard by the elevator stood slack, bored and exhausted from keeping watch for hours on end without a chance to sit or rest. When they were first assigned the position, they never imagined the boredom would be the most tiring aspect.

The left guard tried to hold back, but eventually he widened his mouth and let out a loud yawn, which then caused his partner to do the same.

“D-don’t yawn. It’s infectious.”

“Sorry. I’m just bored and the heat is lulling me to sleep.”

As the left guard started to let out another yawn, they spotted a figure walking towards them from the front. They hadn’t noticed her approaching until just now, signifying how hazy and lackadaisical the heat was making them.

The figure continued to approach, and the guards began to observe her more carefully. A large woman, taller than either of them, of Southerner race descent and missing an eye. Although good looking, neither of the two guards were enamored.

Southerners, besides being large, are all born as Awakened. Though they’re usually not any stronger than a weak 1st tier, some of them grow to be quite formidable.

The woman approaching them looked very tough. The eyepatch over her missing eye suggested she had seen a fair number of bad days and likely meant she was tough. Aside from this, her overall demeanor was sharp and militaristic. Though these two guards couldn’t feel her strength through sensing her Geinta, as they hadn’t the ability to do that, their instincts were screaming that she was dangerous.

Although they did not immediately raise they’re weapons, they discretely widened their stances and primed their bodies for combat.

“Hey lady, you can’t be here. Turn back around now.”

“No thanks.”

Faster than either of them could raise and shoot, the approaching Michelle back-hand threw a pocket knife at over 300 miles per hour, striking the left guard in the neck with deadly precision.

The knife, with that amount of kinetic energy, sliced completely through the guards neck, reaping his head from his neck. The knife hit the rock face behind him and smashed into bits as his headless body quickly slumped to the ground.

Although Michelle was not adverse to killing, she had only ever done so in self defence before, and only with bullets. Her first premeditated kill turned out to be far more gruesome than she imagined, which caused her to flinch and nearly puke as a result. She bit down on her lip to prevent that from happening.

In her moment of hesitation, the right guard, realising his partner was killed, raised his rifle and fired a bullet through Michelle’s shoulder. However, due to Michelle’s muscle and skin density, the bullet ended up shallowly lodging itself under her collar bone. She stumbled back slightly and let out a scream of pain.

The guard, seeing she hadn’t fallen, fired again into her abdomen, but once again the bullet didn’t pass all the way through her muscle, preventing any internal bleeding or serious injury.

“What the fuck?!”

He furrowed his brows and switched his weapon to automatic fire. Then, with not a second's hesitation, sent a hail of bullets into her person.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

He continued to fire until the clip was empty.

However, even after doing so, Michelle still remained on her feet. Though her balance was wobbly and she likely was about to pass out from pain, she kept upright.

“How in the … what?!”

Already astonished from her miraculous survival, his attention then turned to a second figure approaching him from the side, and to his surprise, this figure looked identical to the women he just attempted to kill.

Not giving the guard a second to contemplate the situation, the second Michelle stabbed her pocket knife up into his chin. The blade sliced through the underside of his mouth and through his tongue, filing his mouth with the warm sensation of blood. He stared wide-eyed at Michelle, questioning how and why he died, as his body fell to the ground. The light quickly left his eyes.

Michelle stared down at her now second victim with a conflicted expression. She felt disgusted with herself for gruesomely murdering them, however, she was also strangely calm. Her rationality hadn’t left her in the slightest nor was she shaking from adrenaline. She only felt disgust with her methods, not with the killing itself.

“I should bring a second pistol from now on.”

Her preference was guns. Though, a part of her told herself that the method of killing someone shouldn’t matter nor should one have a preference at all, but for some reason, the idea of using a knife bothered her.

She bent over and slowly closed the right guard’s eyes.

“I’m sorry. I’m sure that you guys have families but I knew you weren’t gonna let me through.”

She looked back to see her other self writhing on the ground in pain, having finally fallen over. She cancelled her ability and the wounded double dissipated into brown Geinta particles before vanishing into nothingness. The clothes, the spilled blood and the shattered knife which she had thrown did the same.

She quickly collected the rifle off the beheaded guard, since he hadn't fired his weapon at all. His magazine was full as well as the spare clips and the pistol on his hip.

She then turned her attention to the elevator. Walking over to the shaft, she could hear the leashers at the bottom barking orders and freaking out over the gunshots. They were likely waiting to ambush the enemy at the bottom.

She stepped into the elevator.

“Part two, I guess,” she told herself before aggressively exhaling in an attempt to release some of the tension from her body.

She glanced back one more time at the two dead guards with a slight look of guilt before pressing the button to go down. As the elevator descended, she split herself into two, including her clothes and weapons, effectively cloning herself in preparation for the second battle.

***

In the Harrelson mansion, the conference between Harrelson and his committee continued after Chris’s ejection from the room. They discussed various aspects of Harrelson’s idea, such as a draft to expand his military, which, at the moment, consisted only of a thousand city guards, patrollers (law enforcement) and leashers. He could most likely conqueror Arbhar with that amount, given that the Empire had indeed ‘abandoned’ the town.

However, his greed knew no bounds and he began considering a takeover of all northern territories. Afterall, the empire didn’t care about them anymore, right?

During the conference, the conversation was interrupted by a sudden report, which came through Darrell’s SDC. It came in so suddenly and in a volume which greatly startled everyone in the room, even causing a few to jump in their chairs.

“THIS IS LAWYER REPORTING IN!”

“This is Head Leasher Darrell, I read y…”

Darrell quickly began stepping out of the room so as to not further disturb the conference, but before he could make it out of the door, the report was heard loud and clear by everyone in the room.

“Ethan Blade escaped! He’s headed for the boss. We can’t seem to stop … GAHH!”

The report ended with an ear piercing scream and presumably, the leasher’s death. The sudden piece of news caused a panic throughout the room.

“Shit! That animal is loose?!”

“Holy fuck!”

One of them turned to Harrelson with an uncontainable amount of anger in his eyes. He was the same man who had mentioned the trap when Chris had brought Ethan in.

“Samuel, this is your fault! We all advised against it, but you couldn’t let go of your sick obsession!”

The other committee members immediately began backing this statement, directing all of their current panic and frustration at Harrelson.

However, being the narcissist he was, Harrelson grew angry at the accusations rather quickly, slamming his hands down on the table with a nasty snarl.

“Don’t fuck with me! This is my fault?! How could he get out of the black box unless he had help?! If anything, one of you probably betrayed me by giving him the key!”

“The absolute fucking nerve!” one of them yelled back. He was the oldest in the room and had served on Harrelson’s father’s committee. “You sick, pompous ignoramus. You let your disgusting habits lead you on without any comprehension as to the shit storm you were creating!”

“Shut your fucking mouth Gerald!”

“I will not! That boy has always been dangerous since day one! Why in the hell would you bring him back here?! Do you think he sat around waiting to be caught for three years! No! He probably trained his ass off to come back here and kill you! In fact, I’ll bet he was caught by choice.”

“No! His capture was just a lucky break for us! There’s no reason for him to kill me!”

Everyone in the room fell silent. They all looked amongst themselves, trying to decode the meaning of Harrelosn’s words.

‘No reason,’ he said. Any idiot could figure out a motive to kill Harrelson, but it seemed the person in question hadn’t. His committee members stared at him with astonishment.

“You delusional horse’s ass,” Gerald continued. “No reason?! You raped that boy for months.”

“That should be considered an honour by anyone. I mean, he only struggled the first few times. He started liking it after a while.”

“He punched you and escaped!”

“An act of rebellion to get my attention. It was just taken too far. You know how brats his age are.”

Everyone in the room, including the other leashers, stared at him with wide, utterly unbelieving eyes. ‘How could he delude himself to this point?’ they all thought. A perfectly sane reaction to his words. I mean, he said what he said with a straight, completely shameless expression.

Gerald was fuming to the point where one could worry about him keeling over, given his advanced age. He had been trying to reel in Harrelson for years, but he had never succeeded.

“Doesn’t matter,” Harrelson waved off their opinions while turning towards Darrell, the only one who wasn’t surprised by Harrelson’s words.

“Darrell, Ethan isn’t in his right mind right now. Set up guards outside to capture him. I repeat, ‘capture’ and not ‘kill.’

“Yes, boss.”

Darrell immediately got to work, ordering the six leasher’s stationed in the room to assemble in the hallway outside and prepare for battle. Among them, the three Awakened who had escorted Ethan in the past were present, as well as two more Awakened additions who had joined within the last three years.

Including these five, Darell counted as the sixth. All of them were high ranking leashers in charge of different areas. They had all been called in for the committee meeting so they could provide input.

This was the strongest squad Darrell could possibly assemble.

Still, he was nervous, which was highly unusual. He had stationed over a dozen leashers in the hallways between the west wing and the main office because he suspected that Ethan could potentially wake up while being carried to the black box. He normally could not do this, but the personnel had already been assembled for the trap which Harrelson had concocted.

He didn’t do this out of nervousness, just precaution. He understood how powerful and violent Ethan was in the past. The reason he was nervous now was because the leasher who had carried Ethan to the black box returned safely, reporting that he had indeed caged him.

This meant that, despite the unlikelihood, he had escaped the black box.

Darrel believed that escape from the box was impossible without a key, so how did he do so? Did he actually have a key, or was he just that powerful?

Darrell prayed that it was the former. At least that way, they could deal with the traitor who gave the key to him. If it was the latter, then the chance of stopping him was slim. The strongest person in the mansion was Darrell himself, and he was only a 4th tier, which is considered impressive, but even he wasn’t strong enough to break out by force.

Hell, even if he were ten times as strong, he couldn’t do it. So, if Ethan did indeed break out, then Harrelson had invited not a monster, because monsters can be slain, but a calaminity onto the property.

They stood quietly in the hallway outside the main office, rifles raised while waiting for the prey to arrive.

Suddenly, the silence which added to the tense atmosphere of the hallway was shattered by the sound of yelling coming from around the corner. A couple of leashers were stationed there by Darrell earlier, and now acted as the last line of defence before Ethan could reach them.

“Ethan Blade! Stop right there or we will …”

“You won’t,” said a cold voice before a blood curdling scream was let out accompanied by the sound of bones breaking.

“GAHHHH!”

The leashers standing ready for battle alongside Darrell flinched at the sound of this exchange, which was hidden around the corner of the hallway. They couldn’t see what had happened, but each of them could guess that their colleagues had been killed mercilessly.

However, since they had not actually laid eyes upon the sight, their imagination filled in the gap, which served to worsen their anxiousness of the situation.

They all thoroughly gulped as their breathing became heavy and their palms became sweaty. A few chewed on their lips to ease their tenseness. All of them were Awakened, and none of them had felt this threatened in years.

They had been asking the same question as Darrell.

Did he forcefully break out of the black box? If someone came and informed them that the answer was indeed yes, they would likely surrender immediately.

“Stay focused. He’s coming!”

Darrel yelled, fearing that the little sound bite of Ethan’s kill damped their resolve.

A figure calmly emerged from around the corner and immediately put the leashers on edge. His cold eyes and confident demeanor were frightening enough given the situation, but that wasn’t what scared them the most.

It was the blood splattered all over his clothes, dripping from his arms. Red spray covered his face, alluding to the absolute slaughter which had just preceded.

Their assumptions were correct. The hallways were a bloody mess. With Ethan’s strength, a light punch could drive his hand straight through the average leasher’s head, chest or really any part of the body.

“Remember, deadly force is not authorized!” Darell reminded them. “The boss wants him alive!”

“And never mind those of us who get killed to achieve that!” One of the newer leashers snapped back, the angst and frustration plastered on his face as he continued to glare at Ethan, never once daring to take his eye off him.

His statement summed up the general mood of those in the hall. They all nodded their heads in agreement.

“You knew what the job entailed when you signed up,” Darrell said in a collected manner, trying not to show the same nervousness as the others. “We’re meant to be expendable as long as we do our jobs.”

“The only way to make anyone truly expendable is to gain their undying loyalty or to blackmail them,” Ehtna suddenly spoke after hearing their conversation. “Money holds no value for dead men.”

“Shut your damn mouth slave!” Darell fired back.

“Oh, you still think I’m your slave? Tell me … Derrick … where is my collar?” he asked while pointing at his neck. “How about cuffs? Don’t see them? Then there’s nothing on me which identifies me as a slave, so how about you shut your fucking mouth and die quietly for me.”

Darrell grinded his teeth together in anger, his face scrunching with scorn. He had defied him. He had gotten his name wrong again. In instances like these, his narcissistic pride revealed itself.

“Tch. Men, subdue this piece of shit. Non life threatening injuries are fine. And don’t bother with ordering him to the ground. He won’t surrender.”

Reluctantly, the five of them followed the order and began approaching Ethan slowly and with caution, their rifles adamantly pointed at their target.

The five had closed in on him. The one closest, who was within arms reach, circled around and attempted to kick the strangely still Ethan, whose arms were crossed, in the back of the knee to get him on the ground.

He understood that Ethan would likely retaliate in some way if he did this. In other words, he was poking the sleeping bear. However, with the other four surrounding Ethan as well, all pointed rifles and with nervous trigger fingers, he was semi-confident he could at least survive should he be attacked.

However, before his foot could connect with the back of Ethan’s knee, the leasher felt a sudden pain in his chest for a brief second before collapsing.

[Destruction Geinta Blast]

Ethan fired a small, precise blast of Geinta from his fingertip. With his arms crossed, the blast traveled under his armpit and behind him to pierce through the leasher’s heart, killing him almost instantly.

The leasher died and hit the floor without ever understanding what happened.

“Wha …?”

His colleagues hesitated, not understanding why he had collapsed.

They were standing in a semicircle in front of Ethan, and had watched their colleague circle behind him and then collapse unceremoniously.

In their brief second of hesitation, Ethan turned his attention to the leasher on the far left. He stepped forward, faster than his target could see, and drove his open palm into the dumbfounded leasher’s chest.

The impact crushed the man’s heart and sent his body flying backwards through the mansion walls. His momentum carried him through the solid oak walls of many consecutive rooms before his broken carcase settled onto the floor.

Snapping back to reality, the other leashers immediately turned and fired their weapons at Ethan. However, he evaded with a swift kick to the floor, launching him up to the ceiling.

He turned himself upside down in mid air and landed feet first on the ceiling in a crouching position. The speed of which his feet impacted the ceiling caused its integrity to give out. Though, he wasn’t worried as he wouldn't be up there very long.

Looking down, he saw the bullets pass through where he had been. They were covered in a whitish glow, meaning that the remaining shooters had the ability to focus their Geinta into the bullets in order to enhance their impacting power. Much like how Ethan focuses Geinta into his fist to enhance the punch.

Even he wouldn’t get off scot free if he took one of those shots.

Despite his opponents' confirmed dangerousity, his sudden and swift escape to the ceiling baffled them. Though they were Awakened, their human minds were still susceptible to panic when a target suddenly disappears from their view.

Only a split second had passed and he had yet to fall from the ceiling. Using their confusion, he pushed off towards the ground, and landed behind the three remaining leashers.

Quickly, he formed a blade from Geinta, which covered his hand.

[Creation Geinta: Hand Blade]

Creation Geinta wasn't his strong point, and thus his blade wasn’t very sturdy, so he decided to use it against the weakest of the three leashers just in case his blade couldn’t cut through the skin off the tougher ones.

Though, if he gave himself enough time to concentrate, he could create a sturdier blade capable of doing so, but he wasn’t in a situation which allowed him to do that.

On his right stood a 1st tier, the weakest of the three and who he determined was his next target.

As the other two had begun looking around for Ethan’s whereabouts, the 1st tier had not processed information that quickly and was still standing wide eyed at Ethan’s disappearance. His reaction speed was slower than the other two, which confirmed what Ethan already knew. He was the weakest link.

As the other two looked up at the ceiling to find it collapsing, he reached in front of the 1st tier and promptly slit his throat. The 1st tier dropped to the ground, holding his profusely bleeding neck.

Seeing this, the other two turned their rifles to their five o’ clocks to find Ethan. Calmly, he grabbed the closest leasher’s rifle and twisted it away from his grip. The shoulder strap snapped off as the gun was ripped away.

He then poured his own Geinta into the bullets and pulled the trigger, firing a hail of Geinta enhanced bullets riddling through the two leashers.

With the power of Ethan’s Geinta packed into the bullets, their bodies didn’t stand a chance. They were ripped to shreds, turning into ground human meat instantly. Their remains dropped to the ground or splattered against the wall.

Among the five killed, three of them were those who had dragged Ethan to Harrelson’s chambers night after night. A bit of his revenge had already been performed.

***

Darrell stood with his jaw slack, trying to comprehend what just happened.

Within a mere 4 seconds, Ethan killed five well trained Awakened who were all armed with automatic rifles. That amazing fact was clear, but he still attempted to deny it.

What Darrell didn’t know was that Ethan performed this feat with ease and with mostly skill instead of overwhelming power.

Don’t get it wrong, he still displayed power beyond that of his assailants, but let it be known that Ethan could have killed those guys a hundred different, easier ways.

Punch them all in the head before they could react. Produce a wide destruction Geinta blast, wiping out everyone in the hall. This time, though, he used skill because he was hoping to leave Darrell unnscathed.

Ethan turned to Darrell, dropping the rifle onto the ground. “Don’t look too surprised. From your earlier, warry demeanor, you had a suspicion that I was a monster.”

“I don’t know what you mean ... ”

“Oh, drop the fucking act, DeSean,” Ethan growled, still unwilling to call him by the correct name. “You should at least be honest with yourself before I kill you.”

“You? Kill me? Now who’s lying like a rug, boy. I can still deal with someone at your level. I’m glad that my fears were unfounded.”

“I was holding back, you know.”

“I’ve heard every bluff in the book, slave, and that right there wasn’t very convincing. See, I’m not entirely sure how you took down some of my guys over there, but your speed and power wasn’t that much greater than my own.”

“You arrogant son of a bitch. Instead of killing you instantly, I wanted to torture you nice and …”

“Give it a rest, slave. You’ll have all the time in the world to sing your bullshit like a canary once I capture you. And we will figure out who allowed you to escape.”

“His name was Hilbert, and he was …”

“I was talking about today, not some treacherous guard who died three years ago.”

“Died?! You killed …”

“Silence. There will be no more words from your fucking mouth, boy,” Darrell barked before as slid his finger over the trigger of his rifle. “Looks like lethal force is necessary against you, but try not to die on me. It’ll be my ass if your soul departs.”

BANG!

A Geinta laced bullet left the chamber of his rifle..

Ethan was pissed. Pissed that an annoying, narcissistic bug continued to talk at him as if he were still the superior. As if he were the one in control.

Ethan was never egotistical. That was beaten out of him by the world at a young age. However, the strength which he accumulated because of his grueling training earned him the right to a bit of pride and arrogance.

He hated Darrell. Hated him with a burning passion and wanted nothing but to see his frightened, pathetic expression as he begged for his life, but Darrell’s narcissism and overconfidence had robbed him of even that pleasure. The man could not see how outmatched he really was.

He was pissed.

Darrell had aimed the bullet at his thigh. A good decision, given that his aim was to wound and not to kill.

Ethan’s face curled with anger as he swatted the approaching bullet out of the air with the back of his hand, changing its trajectory towards the wall beside him. The Geinta covered bullet easily drilled through the wooden wall like butter and continued into the next room over.

“What?!” Darell shouted reflexively. He couldn’t contain his surprise over the fact that Ethan casually swatted a Geinta enhanced bullet out of the air.

His surprise didn’t last long. Within the next half second, Ethan suddenly [Shan Stepped] and appeared in front of Darrell, covering the entire hallway between them faster than even his superhuman eye could comprehend.

[Geinta Fist]

Ethan’s fist glowed white while his face burned red with anger.

As his fist accelerated, the floor underneath Ethan’s feat cracked due to the force of pushing off his backfoot. A loud boom preceded the impact as his arm exceeded the speed of sound.

Before Darrell could even understand what was happening, Ethan drilled his fist through the Head Lesher’s face.

Upon impact, Darrell’s head exploded, and the resulting shockwave caused by the excess Geinta flowing off his fist continued past Darrell. The shockwave hit the heavy wooden doors to Harrelson’s office and smashed them to bits, the shards of wood exploding into the room.

BOOM!

“Fuck!”

“Oh my god!”

Panicked yells spewed from inside the office as the committee members were greatly startled by the sudden explosion of the doors into the room.

Not only were the doors destroyed, but the hallway walls were blown apart and the furniture within the office was all pushed to the back wall by the shockwave.

As those inside the office recollected themselves, Ethan stared at Darrell’s lifeless body as it dropped to the floor.

I was planning on making him suffer, but I lost my temper. Damn, I thought I was better than that.

He looked at his blood stained hand and then noticed that his clothes were covered in the red liquid as well. He hadn’t noticed how much of a mess he was making until now.

Although he couldn’t do much about the clothes, he could still rid his hands of the blood. He focused Destruction Geinta over the skin of his arm, and much like what happened with his sword, the blood on his hands burned off and withered away without a trace.

With the death of his old torturer, Ethan breathed a sigh of relief. A weight, which had plagued him for the last three years, had been lifted from his shoulders.

He was absolutely the kind of person who could feel sereneness from the act of revenge.

Taking a deep breath, he marched towards the destroyed doorway to Harrelson’s office. Returning to his eyes was the cold, violent look which had only disappeared for a moment upon Darrell’s death.

One more to go, he told himself.

Samuel Harrelson.