-Vol 6: Dusk of An Era-

-Nightmares of a Maiden-

“This is Stigma one, I have an important report to make. It's vital and needs class three clearance.” Sakamoto hurriedly said into the communication device.

[You don’t have enough authority to invoke the clearance. You can pass the message here. we will judge if it's worthy of being reported to the higherups.]

“Okay, then please keep note…” then Sakamoto started to ramble on and on about everything he encountered ever since he reached Mito. After he finished the comprehensive report, he reminded the listener on the other side once again on the priority of the matter.

“I hope this is enough…” after finishing his report, Sakamoto pocketed the device and sighed while looking up to the sky. He was bleeding profusely from the wounds he received throughout the short but deadly battle he just experienced.

“Yes, this is enough.” A cold voice rang in his ears suddenly. Before Sakamoto could respond in any way, his head was separated from the rest of his body. Behind him stood the zombie whom Kenshin send to keep track of this man. Kenshin strictly ordered him to let him live until he reports everything that happened to higher-ups. The moment he finishes doing so, he was to kill him. That’s it.

From the moment this person left the premise, this zombie was tailing him. When it saw the man reported everything, it felt the time was right to assassinate the assassin. And thus, with that parting line, he separated the body and head. Giving the headless corpse an apathetic look, it sheathed its sword and vanished into the night, uncaring of whether the body would be discovered by others or not.

…

Back in his room, Kenshin sighed while looking at the night sky. Joy and Chiba went to bring their parents and Mrs. Yui back, leaving Kenshin alone to guard the house. Thinking of his life, he couldn’t help but chuckle. Not even a year ago, he was just a lower-rung waste of space that could only collect the scraps left behind by others. But that changed when he received the system that fateful night. His fate changed from then on, and even the seemingly useless skill that he was born with suddenly turned out to be super powerful.

Recently Kenshin felt he was not using some of his skills to their full extent. Take his Opposites, for example. If he just sits down and thinks about it, he could think of many applications of this seemingly impossible skill. Currently, he was only using it to reverse the physical states of things, velocity, and direction. Kenshin felt this shouldn’t be the limit of this skill.

Even his Replication and Shapeshift was the same. He wasn’t fully exploring those skills. Kenshin felt that he could do many more things with those two skills, other than only copying skills, and physical appearance. Replication and Shapeshift shouldn’t be limited to only these. There should be a more advanced function that he hadn’t discovered yet. Thinking of this, Kenshin felt excited to try.

…

It was midnight. The place where the hunters fought with those gooey monsters in an epic battle to protect their homeland, Mito. This battlefield was currently in a heavy military cordon and quarantined. Everyone was afraid that those gooey things would suddenly spring to life and latch into someone, thereby starting the cycle all over again.

It was eerie quiet at night, and the soldiers patrolling the perimeter also felt light-headed. The security was somewhat lax. Everyone knew no one’s gonna come to this place, and the soldiers were only normal people, meant to keep the civilians out of place. Suddenly a humanoid shadow flashed into the night sky and dropped to the ground, creating a huge booming noise.

The ground shook as if experiencing a mild earthquake.

“What the hell?”

All the patrolling military personnel were startled and quickly ran towards the source, the epicenter where the gooey stuff was gathered. Every patrolling soldiers and reserve soldiers ran towards the place where the shaking came and saw a gigantic, humanoid ‘thing’ was sucking all the gooey stuff gathered on the ground. A few militaries who were recently recruited vomited on the spot when they saw the creature’s appearance. It didn’t have skin, and all its internal muscles and organs were clearly visible through its muscle arrangement.

“Everyone, open fire!! Open fire!! Someone ring the alarm. Call the head office. We need Hunter Backup.” One of the commanding officers shouted as everyone started to rain bullets on the creature. But, all it did was just bounce off its red muscle. Aside from that, it didn’t cause any damage, the creature didn’t even flinch even though it took more than a thousand bullets per second from hundreds of military soldiers around it.

After it devoured every last drop of those gooey black things, the creature suddenly stood up to its full height, towering over everyone. It looked into the night sky and roared heavily, causing ripples in the air due to sound waves. A few military soldiers vomited blood and even started to bleed from its roar, unable to endure it. Its previously skinless body suddenly gained a shiny black leathery substance acting as its skin.

Its leathery skin rippled like a surface of the water, and many small pikes burst from it, impaling all the soldiers that surrounded it. Many died on the spot, with only a few surviving it. The creature roared once again, retracting those impalers before jumping into the sky and vanishing in the cover of the night. When the reserve soldiers arrived together with a hunter, what waited for them on the spot was many dead and critically wounded soldiers and a piece of grim news.

That night, this news was spread across all the big and small DCB offices with Priority Tag 1 attached to it.

…

Yuki sighed, tossing and turning on her bed in one of the luxurious hotels in Tokyo. Tomorrow she will be facing a past that she wanted to forget and yet couldn’t. Even if she runs off to a corner of the world, this nasty past will still be caught up with her sooner or later.

Suddenly her vision blurred as the face of a young adult came to her mind. Her smile that created two dimples on her peach-like cheek. Her large eyes and freckled cheeks all too familiar to Yuki. She opened her mouth, and her mouth curved into a smile as a voice resounded in Yuki’s ear, “we are gonna be strongest hunters of all time!!”

Yuki’s eyes opened wide, as her breathing got labored. She was filled with cold sweat, and her nightgown stuck to her body like a second skin. After making sure that what she saw was indeed her hallucination, Yuki could only smile bitterly and shake her head. Those memories that she wanted to forget came today in full force.

Was it because she was going to meet the creator of her nightmares today? Yuki wondered with a frown. She really did not want to meet them. If possible, she wanted to stay as far as possible from them.

That night Yuki was destined to lose sleep.