章節 30: Approaching Shadow

" What? The red zones were swept clean."

The users got information about the mysterious disappearance of the beasts in the two red zones. Someone was hunting the beasts without letting anyone know, while the red zones are prohibited areas for hunting, it was for the user's wellbeing. If the special hunting squad goes there, then there is no problem with that.

The DoA was silent about the fact, the news was only leaked by some insiders, clearly, someone wanted to spread the information, but there was not much in it. The director of the DoA was at an overseas conference, while all the branch offices were looking into this, the eclipse city branch was not that active.

William, the branch manager of the Eclipse city branch was looking at the documents on his desk. He looked at the patterns of the hunts and the time frames, there was a guess in his heart, what might have caused this. But he was still not sure. Yesterday, they registered hundreds of A rank beast cores and an SS rank beast core. Where did they get those? If he had to guess, then it was likely that those three were behind this. Especially August, who was veiled in mystery. He was an S rank user, but from what he could perceive there was more to him.

While he was thinking about all the events that happened, his phone suddenly rang.

" Sir, there is a group of users who just got back from the glades. They reported the same disappearance of beasts as in the red zones."

The secretary was calling him to notify the matter. When he heard that he immediately thought of the last group that went there. He got up from his chair and walked out of his room. He needed to make sure that it was related to them before doing anything.

He entered the reception hall and there were several users talking to the DoA officials. He approached the reception table and two users talking to the receptionist, giving her details of the hunt, or the lack of.

" Are you the ones that came back from the glades ?"

" Yes, we got the approval from the office to hunt there, but when we got to the place, there was no sign of any beasts. Like they just vanished. We searched for days, hoping to find any clues, but there was nothing. We suspect that some powerful faction or big guild might be responsible for this." the user spoke his mind.

William was listening to all of the details of the hunt. From what he could make out of this was that August was the one to hunt all the beasts or he was affiliated with someone, who helped him in the hunt. The glades and the red zones were huge territories that couldn't be hunted just within a week. One needs a huge squad of powerful people to even attempt those. He put his fingers on his chin and started to think about this deeply.

The first time when August came to the DoA office, he was clueless and didn't know that much about the users and hunting zones. And just a day after Nile offered him the position of the guild leader. He knew that Nile was from the Brooks family, so he must have offered a huge contract to August. But he would never give up his executive position unless August was even bigger fish than he initially thought. If that was true, August might be hiding his actual strength. But why? He could register as a high-rank user and even enjoy greater benefits, so why would he hide his strength. What he didn't know was that August didn't want to be bothered by it.

The reason was that August wanted to figure out more before revealing his strength. He just got back to earth, so he needed some time to catch up and then figure out if there were someone like him. He also didn't like too much attention. If he registered as S class or higher, that was too abrupt, he wanted to slowly reveal his power so that everyone didn't focus all their attention on him at once.

But the new threat that was looming over earth and this universe was something that made him rethink his plans. He was now disregarding the previous approach and looking for a way to secure the planet, even if that meant revealing his true powers to the people. Still, he wanted to achieve this as smoothly as possible, without being too aggressive.

While William was contemplating the events, another user suddenly asked him.

" Sir, may I know which guilds went to the glades before us ?" He was the partner of the users that just spoke earlier. He had a calm look on his face as opposed to the other user. He looked too relaxed for this situation.

" Huh? That is classified information. I can't share it with you." William replied to him sternly.

" If you can tell me, then I might be able to get to the bottom of this." The user calmly said.

William felt that there was something wrong with him. He was too carefree and lax to be asking these questions.

" Yeah, and how are you going to do that ? " William asked him in return.

" By going to their guild, and hearing it from their mouth." The user replied.

" You think they are going to let you ?" William raised his voice.

The user was still calm and didn't show any emotions. He started looking around the hall and then fixed his eyes to him.

" I guess, nobody will know if a small office in a remote city disappears." The user's whole body started to change and dark tentacles came out of his body.

William instinctively drew his sword and tried to block the tentacles that were coming at him. He infused aura in his sword and tried to cut them down.

*SWISH*

*CRACK*

He couldn't believe what he saw, when the tentacles touched the sword, it broke in half. The tentacle cut straight through it. It was almost like there was no resistance.

Looking at the incoming tentacle William infused his hands with air and tried to block the impact by folding his hands in front.

The tentacles stopped just before they were about to hit him and turned into thousands of strands. All of the strands pierced inside his body from all directions.

*GAAAH*

He spat out blood as the strands were wriggling inside his skin and going deeper. His consciousness started to fade as he took a last glance at the monster that was in front of him before his vision turned dark.