Chapter 82: Someone call for an exterminator?

Chapter 82: Someone call for an exterminator?

Isaac’s [Aura] lashed out, compressed and lengthened to its absolute, a vastly more advanced version of what Patrick had come up with. It could detect people just from the way their breath disturbed the air and the heat they emanated, not even needing to touch them to note their presence. And if it did touch someone, well, if a normal sensory [Aura] was as unsubtle as the spiderweb one had just run into, face first, trying to notice this would be like an unenhanced human trying to notice a single grain of dust touching their skin.

There were people in the main arena, partying, and based on the amount of ethanol contained in their breath, they were well on their way to getting hammered. Clearly, they hadn’t figured out that their comrade had been caught.

Then there was someone in the office, literally pushing papers, and a bunch more people sleeping on cots in what used to be the stables.

There was also an absurd amount of evidence in there. A Tier 6 summoning ring made from pool noodles with traces of Megalodon summoning materials on it, as well as fresh Megalodon scales, sketches of how these nutcases had imagined the ‘hit’ would go down, and so on, and so forth. If the police raided these guys, they were fucked.Witness the debut of this chapter, unveiled through Ñôv€l--B1n.

And now, he was going to not only make that happen, he’d roll out the godsdamned welcome mat for the law enforcement officers.

The first target was easy enough to choose, the sleeping people.

He phased through the wall on the far side of the stables, walking up the nearest sleeping person, inspecting them. No regeneration or healing Aspects, no [Class] that would give them either, this guy wouldn’t be able to heal from disabling injuries in a reasonable timeframe.

Isaac’s blade flashed, [Sundering Strike] glowing on the edge. He was using an effect he rarely used, but it was perfect for something like this. It could destroy nerves around the injury, preventing it from being felt.

So, when he severed the man’s spinal cord high enough to turn him into a quadriplegic but low enough to ensure he lived and keeping the cut shallow and precise so he’d survive, he didn’t feel a thing.

A spiritual injury inflicted by his weapon’s Astral Piercer from would have been both more elegant and effective, but that trick wasn’t only known, it had been used in front of the commander of the law enforcement unit that would most certainly be investigating this mess. In other words, if he used it, he might as well be signing his work.

Isaac continued walking through the stable like the specter of death itself, ensuring that each and every one of these people would not be able to escape or attack him and stay that way until a [Doctor] or [Healer] of the appropriate Level became available. Given how difficult something like that was, it would be a while until anyone without an epic or legendary [Class] would be able to do so and even longer until someone like that would come around to perform that procedure on wanted criminals, not when their services were needed by so many people.

One person had an Aspect of the Hydra and would be able to fix the damage, so Isaac went a little further. Two quick stabs with this knife to sever the vocal cords, and then he went to work, cutting and chopping at the guy’s body, leaving it a mangled wreck. He’d checked the man’s Magic Power and calculated it so that the man would be able to fix his lethal injuries, but he’d have to use up the entirety of his mana pool for that, and then have to use anything he regenerated to regenerate lost blood and slowly close profusely bleeding wounds.

That was loud enough to attract some attention, but a swift [Power Strike] punch to the temple of the waking man sent him right back to sleep and then, he lashed out, severing another spinal column. These guys would live, but Isaac had no doubt that many would wish he’d just killed them outright.

With that done, he phased a homemade smoke bomb through the door to the arena and leaped in after it suddenly became very hard to see.

Isaac swept through the area like the grim reaper, the long reach of the Zweihänder letting him chop at people without him getting close enough to be more than an indistinct shape in the smoke, limbs flying like the sweets at a carnival.

Ephemeral, practically unnoticeable threads of [Aura] weaved through the area, telling him exactly where these guys were.

Someone charged through the smoke behind him, blurring along with [Skill]-enhanced speed and swung a blade glowing with an evil ling in an arc, aiming to bisect him at the waist.

Isaac didn’t even bother turning, he simply leaned forward, causing the blade to safely swish over his back. In the same motion, he mule-kicked with his right leg, further empowering the attack with another [Power Strike], sending his assailant to the ground with a cracked skull and shattered jaw.

Another man raised a magical barrier and started flinging spells at him, to Isaac leaped upwards, hitting the roof and kicking off the roof to come down like a meteor. The shield shifted to intercept him, but a quick [Phantom Step] took him a couple of meters to the side.

The Zweihänder flicked out, and the [Mage] hit the ground in four pieces, both legs, right hand, and the rest of his body.

Isaac continued the motion, projecting a [Far Strike] and raking his blade through the entirety of the room, hitting everyone who was still standing and scratching the hell out of the walls and doors.

It was at this point that the guy in the office realized something was up and charged out, letting Isaac properly analyze him. Fortitude and Strength stats were somewhere in the 120 area, with agility a distant third, and the rest of the stats barely increased.

Clearly a basic brute, both in [Class] type and intelligence level, given that anyone with half a brain could have told him that Perception and Magic were kinda important, even if they weren’t one’s primary focus.

A stream of fire flashed at Isaac’s face, but he swung his massive blade clean through it, the [Far Strike] parting it as if it had been mere air while the flood of flaming plasma splattered of his skin like bugs of a windshield thanks to the fire resistance he’d gained from the Event.

Sure, the clothing covering his torso disintegrated within moments, but it hardly mattered. He had a spare set of clothing in his storage space, several, in fact, and an inscribed core had been hidden outside before charging in, just in case he somehow lost his clothes.

The [Pyromancer] fell, down an arm and a leg and holding in his guts, and that was that.

The smoke had mostly dissipated by then, leaving Isaac staring down the boss and three armed men, wielding a longsword, oversized flanged mace and spear, respectively.

“These guys committed the worst sin of all, they tried to take the magic out of the [System] by trying to research it and quantify it. And then, we’d lose it. We’d lose the [System] because someone couldn’t leave well enough alone and simply accept things as they are. They ...”

The man stopped talking as Isaac started laughing, deliberately keeping his voice an octave higher, making it sound like the bone chilling chittering of a demonic chipmunk.

“Man, they really got you good, didn’t they?”

Isaac kept laughing.

“Whoever told you that told that to you folks and only you folks, and then aimed you squarely at the people working to improve the lives of everyone on the planet. Anyone with half a brain would have started wondering why that is, but you’re here, so critical thinking clearly isn’t your strong suit.”

He then heaved the body of the man he was carrying, flinging him through the door and into the office.

“And now, you’ll tell me about everything else. What you’ve done, what you’ve been planning, and who else you know. Write it down, and every time I have to ask a question for a second time, and every time I catch you in a lie, there’ll be hell to pay and you’ll receive the bill.”

At that point, Isaac raised both eyebrows as high as they would go, made his eyeballs bulge out and whispered in a terrifyingly friendly voice “I accept payment in limbs or suffering.”

Yeah, there wasn’t much resistance, the biggest delay being writing stuff down with badly mangled limbs.

This left him with just one more facet to his plan, get these guys and the physical evidence into the hands of the police department. Letting them simply raid this place would have made that a hell of a lot easier, but that would have required him to convince them that these fellas were, in fact, the perpetrators.

But he’d gotten here a lot faster than anyone could have assumed thanks to a new flying trick that involved accelerating by pushing himself forward with the [Aura of the Crimson Dawn’s] projected weapons, so no one knew or even assumed he’d already be here.

Pulling a stunt like this when no one knew he was in the area was one thing, but when everyone, police included, knew? Yeah, better to go for the direct route and make sure things worked properly.

He cast his [Aura] around, locating the nearest inhabited building and a cellphone.

Isaac phased inside, stole the cellphone and dialed 110, the police emergency number, shifting his voice into that of a panicked woman, throwing in the occasional sob to play merry hell with whatever voice recognition program was employed.

After giving a half hysterical report of people with high-Level powers fighting and sounds of people getting seriously hurt, he hung up, snuck back into the house and put the cellphone right where he’d found it.

Then, he headed back into the building full of assholes and ran around the place, banging the weapons he found there into walls and dragging them through the pools of blood lying everywhere, to make it look a little less like a single person had come through and moved them all down and more like an internal power struggle.

It wouldn’t hold up to scrutiny, but it didn’t have to. All it needed to do was get the police through the doors and start applying said scrutiny, then they’d find all the evidence and that would be that.

After all, evidence found in private places such as homes while the officers in question had been there for unrelated matters, such as chasing another criminal, were admissible in a court of law.

Now he just circled back around to approach the precinct from the direction he’d have been coming from if he’d come right from the university, took a dip in the lake to wash off and got dressed in the sweaty clothes he’d worn while running here.

Slowing down, he walked into the lobby, about to ask the desk sergeant for where he could find his team, but then he spotted Amy and walked over to greet her instead.

“Hey, how are you holding up?”

“Good. It’d be great, but people keep looking at me like they expect me to burst into tears at any moment.”

“Been there, done that.” Isaac sighed “You should have seen how I got treated after Leipzig.”

She winced “Yeah, that had to suck.”

“Anyway, where are the others?” he asked.

“Talking to the university higher ups.” She said, but pulsed her [Aura] against his, spelling out a second message in morse code, which they’d all learned after getting their [Auras] at Patrick’s suggestion “But mostly, we were listening in on the interrogation. It’s a little scary how some people’s brains work.”

Soon afterwards, they headed back to the hotel to meet with everyone and to get Isaac a room, spending most of the night discussing the issue at hand.

The next morning though, they got called back to the police station, running into an interesting collection of people. GSG-13.