Chapter 55: Hunted

"Someone's approaching," Aiden muttered as he turned towards the source of the distant sound, his gaze eager but with a hint of reservation.

"Tap!"

The sounds of footsteps slowly but surely became apparent to any good listener, and soon, one could see a faint white light in the distance, lighting up the surroundings.

"Hide your tail in your pants," Landon's voice sounded out in Aiden's head, prompting Aiden to hide his tail.

Just as he did this, "Who's there?" A foreign male voice suddenly sounded out, as a blinding torch light shone on Aiden's face.

"Is that man?" Aiden thought in elation, as he observed the new face, his gaze unobstructed by the blinding light being shone on his face.

"Don't be rash Aiden, we don't know his intentions just yet," Landon warned Aiden, telling him to remain cautious.

The man in front of him seemed to be wearing a dark blue coverall like the one he was wearing, apart from that Aiden noticed that he had a pistol and a pickaxe tucked in his belt.

"Who're you?" The man's voice suddenly sounded out again, but Aiden didn't answer, instead, he started observing the man's features.

He had short and messy black hair, and his face was scrunched up into a frown highlighting his messy facial hair.

He seemed to be a man in his early forties as a faint light of ruthless experience could be seen at the depth of his eyes, but Aiden also noticed something wrong.

"You're not a Contractor?" Aiden voice suddenly sounded out, replying to the man's question with a quote of his own.

Aiden came to this conclusion because of his new ability, just now he had activated his energy eyes and to his surprise discovered that this man wasn't emitting any shadowy substance.

Aiden had long since concluded that the shadowy substance was hell energy, it was everywhere, faint strands could be seen in the air here and there with Mai being the most obvious source of hell energy as her body emitted lots of it.

Upon hearing Aiden's question, the man frowned and in the next moment his hands moved to the gun at his waist.

Looking at the man pointing a gun at him Aiden hurriedly raised his hands in the air dropping the rope in the process.

"You're the intruder aren't you?" The man suddenly asked sounding slightly excited.

"Badump!"

"It hasn't gotten to this point yet," Aiden reassured the man in front of him, his heart beating in unrest as he continued, "Calm down bro, I mean no harm."

"That doesn't matter," the man said before asking in a threatening tone, "how did you find this place? And who's that chick on the mattress?"

Aiden was silent for a while pondering how he would get out of this situation.

Contractors might be stronger than humans, but they weren't immortal, sure some Contractors were fast enough to dodge bullets, or even ignore them all altogether, but Aiden hadn't reached that level yet, he wasn't even a Contractor, and even though he healed faster than those at his level he wasn't sure he could heal from a shot to the head.

"Click, Click,"

"ANSWER MY FUCKING QUESTION!" The man suddenly yelled, pointing the gun firmly at Aiden as he unlocked it.

"We ended up here after falling into the river, this is my friend, she's injured and needs medical attention," Aiden hurriedly said, his mind racing for a way out.

"Ohh, so it's just you two then, that's good," the man suddenly muttered with a smile as he lowered his arms.

Seeing this Aiden let out a breath, "Thank-"

"Bang!"

A loud bang suddenly sounded out before Aiden could react, but strangely time seemed to stop.

Aiden couldn't move, but he could see everything, the world seemed to slow down so much so that everything stood in place, everything except a tiny little bead-like object distorting the air as it passed.

Realizing what was happening, Aiden's mind panicked, but there was nothing he could do, although he could see the bullet he couldn't move, he wasn't fast enough to stop it.

Aiden tried to duck, he tried to move his arms to block the bullet, but nothing worked, if he was moving at a snail's pace, the bullet was moving at rocket speed.

Aiden became desperate to try to block the bullet, he tried moving every part of his body to block that bullet and just when his mind remembered that he had a new limb, his tail moved.

"Clang!"

A metallic sound could be heard breaking the frozen world as sparks flew momentarily lightening up their surroundings.

Aiden suddenly felt a bit dizzy and hungry at the same time.

"98% of your soul energy has been burnt," Landon's shocked voice suddenly sounded out as he muttered, "That was fucking cool."

The both of them couldn't be more clear about what happened when he had been shot, Aiden had somehow unlocked a new ability, some kind of slow-motion vision.

Unfortunately, his brain wasn't made to process visual information that fast, and to support the use of this ability Aiden's soul energy was constantly rushing to his brain healing it before it could even be injured.

At the same time even though he could see the bullet, that didn't mean he was fast enough to react.

In a way this ordeal had helped Aiden learn a bit about his tail, and what he learned was that his tail was both fast and strong enough to deflect a bullet.

As Aiden rejoiced, the man who had shot the bullet stared at Aiden with wide eyes as he watched a black spine-like object sway behind Aiden in a slow but mesmerizing way.

"D-demon," a stutter left his mouth as he gazed at Aiden's tail.

Quickly he raised his hand to fire at Aiden again, but Aiden noticed this and moved his tail.

"Clank!"

The gun was slapped out of the man's hands with such force that Aiden's tail actually left a large cut on the man's hand flinging it sideways in the process.

"Ahhhh!"

The man screamed, in pain as he held onto his right arm with his left arm.

"What's your name? How can you survive here?" Aiden suddenly asked again, his voice laced with heavy interest.

He was willing to overlook the fact that this man had just tried to kill him because of two things.

The first was because he needed someone to lead him out of here, and the second was because this man was a normal human and he was able to survive in a place with such dense levels of hell energy without experiencing hell energy shock, discovering why could be beneficial in his quest to find a cure to hell energy shock.

"Fuck you," the man suddenly said before darting in with a savage expression, "I'm not telling you anything, just try it and kill me, the moment my heart stops beating, my friends will be all over this place."

"Of course," Aiden muttered as he rubbed his temples.

To end up in the abysmal enclave one would have to be one of three things, a strong person who wasn't afraid of the demons here, a helpless individual who ended up here for some reason without having a choice in the matter, or a weak and insane, lunatic with an unbreakable will.

"You do know that you fall into the category of the helpless individual right?" Landon quipped with faint amusement visible in his tone.

Ignoring Landon, Aiden observed the man in front of him, not quite knowing what to do with him.

"Since you don't want to tell me anything, why don't you lead me to your friends," Aiden said calmly.

"Y-you want me to lead you to my friends?" The man asked in confusion.

"Yes, I do," Aiden confirmed before adding, "Since they are normal humans like you I don't have to be worried about anything right?"

"Yes, you absolutely have nothing to worry about, there's only humans in our group," the man nodded.

"Pu!"

A sudden sound could be heard as the man in a coverall briefly felt a large amount of force on his throat.

It took a second for him to realize, and it would have taken longer if he didn't feel the warm fluid oozing down his skin.

Now that his brain was no longer hiding behind a veil of disorientation he experienced a myriad of painful sensations.

Blood flooded into his airways, aspirating into lung tissue and making it difficult for him to breathe in the process.

The thin stiletto-like tail tip that was imbued into his throat didn't help matters either.

He felt like a heap of molten glass had been shoved down his gullet as the searing pain intensified to a maddening level.

"Gha!"

His mouth let out a pitiful amount of air as a heavy pressure assaulted his chest, at the same time his head felt like like it was going to pop as his brain stopped receiving oxygen.

It took a long and agonizing ten seconds for these miseries to stop as the man slumped listlessly to the ground.

"Pu!"

The same odd sound could be heard as Aiden redrew his tail from the man's throat, watching as a whitish orb floated into the air.

This was the first time Aiden had actively killed a human.

"You killed him," a voice suddenly sounded out behind him, but Aiden didn't seem surprised.

"I thought you didn't feel like talking," Aiden muttered jokingly as he walked up to the soul and stored it in his soul storage.

Mai had woken up the moment the gun was fired but chose to remain silent.

"You shouldn't have killed him," Mai said again, but Aiden just squatted and gazed down at her.

"Was I wrong for killing him?" Aiden asked causally while looking at Mai.

There was a strange silence in the air, a silence that lasted until Mai let out a breath.

"No, I don't see anything wrong with killing him, he tried to kill you first, but you should have at least gotten some information out of him," Mai replied calmly.

"But I did get information out of him," Aiden defended himself.

"Ohh and what did you get, except the fact that we're being hunted? Do you know what kind of people are hunting us? Or did you find out what kind of weapons they use?" Mai asked.

Hearing Mai's words, Aiden scratched his head and chuckled.

"Ohh, then I guess I didn't get much from him," he said awkwardly before darting in, "but I did find out that they have more normal humans among them."

"And how is that important?" Mai asked, interested in Aiden's answer.

"Have you ever seen normal humans who can survive outside the barrier?" Aiden asked before darting in, "These guys have something that interests me, and I have to get it."

Saying this, Aiden walked towards the corpse on the ground and searched its body, while Mai closed her eyes once more.

On this corpse, he found nothing except some extra ammunition for the pistol that was used against him.

But Aiden wasn't discouraged, instead, he stripped the corpse to examine it.

The man's naked body now stripped of his clothes became bare for Aiden to see.

The first thing Aiden noticed were tattoos, lots of tattoos, this man's upper body was covered with them.

Out of curiosity Aiden activated his energy eyes and discovered someone strange, hell energy seemed to avoid this man's corpse like a plague.

The other thing Aiden not was a strange device tied around the man's arm, Aiden figured that this would be the device that would alert the man's companions of his death.

Just when Aiden was about to get up his ears picked up the sound of footsteps from the distance, more people were coming.

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