Chapter 31: Returnee
Liam POV
'I did it!' Overjoyed, Liam held the device with care. 'I finally repaired it!'
The spherical ball looked simple to the naked eye, but it could erase spiritual footprints.
If Liam ran away now, no one would be able to use divination, prophecy, or similar ability to track him.
Liam pocketed the device.
He would bond with it after he was at a safe distance from the Palvos Planet. This place had his spiritual footprints already, it would impede the device activation.
Leaving the building, Liam reached the private spaceship hangar. He approached the clerks and asked about his spaceship.
'I am running away!' Liam thought with his stone-cold face. Inwardly, he was crying tears of joy.
If Ezio was here, his plan would have been thwarted by now. Liam could kiss Zain's feet for taking away that damned bastard.
Suddenly, a mini-sized missile blew Liam's spaceship to bits.
Liam froze.
"Stop there! Surrender or die!" A masked man shouted.
The hangar was filled with three dozen metahuman, all masked. Judging for a glance, at least ten were Grade 3 metahumans.
"Did you…" Liam barely suppressed his killing intent. His ticket out of this planet was gone! "Attack me knowing who I am?"
The leader of the masked man flinched. He felt as if he was being stared at by a bloodthirsty killer.
These people were Mythos Cult members.
The Cult was using their own people to capture the stronger students. The Meta Police didn't have many powerful metahumans to combat the Academy students.
"Of course I do! Now surrend—"
Liam pulled the trigger before the leader could complete his sentence. He swept his gaze.
"Good luck, you've managed to anger me." Liam jumped between the group, reassembled the pistol into a shotgun and fired.
A scene from hell played.
The masked men didn't have an ounce of time to regroup. Their worst nightmare was the shotgun. It was semi-automatic!
Liam moved like a ghost with a vengeful past. As if these men had murdered his family or stolen his wife.
"Ahhh!!!"
"Stop! I'm sorry!"
"What are those bullets! I'm not dead. But it's like I'm being kicked in the nuts…Ahhhh!!!"
"Just kill me already!! Please!!!"
The bullets were enchanted to give increased pain. Liam shot every masked man at least thrice.
He didn't break a single sweat by the end. However, he was not happy. He stared at the burning spaceship with longing and resignation.
Just as he was about to interrogate the masked men, his intercom buzzed.
[B*tch Calling]
It was Liam's older sister. His cold expression cracked, leaking slight fear.
He ignored the call when suddenly it was picked up on its own. Liam's eyes went round. Since when did his sister bugged his intercom?
"I didn't think my lovely brother would leave me hanging. Is he in his rebellious phase?" The enchanting voice flowed through the hologram.
Within the hologram, a great beauty was soaking in the bathtub. The mist clouded her appearance, but it was clear that she was blessed in appropriate places.
"Why did you call me?" Liam asked, keeping his signature cold tone.
Liam didn't show any reaction to his sister's perverted behavior.
He had long accepted that his family was missing more than a few screws in their head.
It was one of the reasons he wanted to run away. Or else, spending time with crazy people would make him go crazy.
"Hmm~ Did you miss me?" His sister asked.
Liam felt shivers.
The reason was obvious. His three older sisters were the ones who trained Ezio. Liam hated Ezio but feared those three demonesses.
His sister giggled at his reaction. She snapped her fingers. An image appeared in the air.
"Jokes aside, I called you for a reason. Recently, there was a bounty on 'Zain Pierrot'. We have taken down the bounty, but it seems that his life is in danger. You need to go check on him." She told Liam.
He froze when he saw Zian's image.
"Why was the bounty on him… no, why did you even bother to take down the bounty?"
Something was very wrong. As a Valenti, Carmela wasn't someone who did such mundane tasks.
"The bounty was illegal. He can't be touched until the Grand Auction."
"What does the Grand Auction have to do with him…" Liam's eyes widened. "He is a merchandise."
They were selling Zain in the Grand Auction.
"A Hunt Target," Carmela corrected him.
Whenever an extraordinary resource without an owner – Genius Tech/ Ancient Species/ Inheritance of OuterGrade – is found, the noble families, guilds, and kings try to take it for themselves.
It turns into a competition to claim the resource. Oftentimes, they escalate into wars among factions.
[Hunt Target] was a solution to stop these wars.
If an extraordinary resource appears, the Black Market will auction it.
Only the winner of the auction has the right to hunt the resource. If the winner fails, then another auction takes place.
Carmela noticed Liam's confusion. She told him the secret behind Zain.
"He is a returnee," She said. "You don't need to know anything else. If something goes wrong, I'll have to come myself."
She winked and terminated the call.
Liam was left standing.
"Bastards," He cursed.
The way his sister didn't even frown while treating a person as an object made him nauseous.
His family, this world was repulsive. Since the inception of superpowers, only the strong had the right to live with dignity.
Liam knew he couldn't change the world alone. It was better to live by himself.
He ignored the masked men and went in search of Zain.
"Returnee," Liam muttered. 'Of course, everyone wants him. They are treating him like a zoo animal.'
There were many types of portals. Subjugation-type. Domain-type. Vanishing-type.
The Vanishing-type portals disappeared after an unknown amount of time.
If someone was inside when the portals disappeared, they would be forever trapped in the foreign dimension. Lost in the cosmos.
However, very rarely, some of them returned.
They were called [Returnee].
Returnees were used for lab experiments, to gain information about the other side of portals.
Most of the Returnees committed massacres or similar atrocities after coming back. They had gone insane from spending years in the foreign dimensions.
It was a Universal Law to report any Returnee and capture them. Even if the Returnee managed to escape from authorities, they never had a good life.
Liam recalled Zain's smile.
He couldn't fathom Zain's thoughts. Did he not have fear? Or did he smile, wanting to live his remaining days to the fullest?
"I should contact him," Liam tried to erase the heavy thoughts.
He saw Zain's message from a day ago. His intercom was on silent and he hadn't noticed it before.
[Sender: Zain Pierrot]
[Help]
"...Shit," It wasn't like Liam to bother with others' problems. However, he found himself running back to help Zain.
…
Alice POV
Alice sat at the top of the tower. She held a melancholic expression.
"He is dead."
Having gone to the Meta Police headquarters, she knew that Zain was killed. The Meta Police were hiding the news, but she had interrogated an officer in person.
She wasn't his friend. There was no need for revenge. Alice should be happy that a guy like him was gone for good. She repeated those words to herself.
Alice knew why she was feeling sad. His death was sudden. Until recently, he annoyed her with a smile, and now the person who messaged her just yesterday was no more.
He had asked her for help. But she was late.
She buried her head into her arms. No matter how much she denied it, Zain was the closest thing to a friend for her after the twins and Mr. Walker.
"I'm leaving," Alice made her mind.
Mr. Walker had promised her, if she went with him, she wouldn't need to live in fear. However, didn't that happen now?
She had seen a lot of her friends die. She followed Mr. Walker because she thought he would help her. And she wouldn't see someone close to her die again.
It was as if she was cursed to be alone forever.
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone