BIOLOGICAL SUPERCOMPUTER SYSTEM - Chapter 864: Hunting for Shade (21)
June swiftly navigated through the crowd. It was challenging, but he blended in, concealing his position. Meanwhile, Erik stayed put, and behind his mask, he gazed at Shade—or at whatever stood before him.
The tension in the room spiked. Erik faced the figure everyone called Shade, the supposed architect of the underworld’s machinations.
Shade’
le’s gaze, obscured by the featureless white mask, seemed to bore into Erik. They couldn’t see each other’s eyes, but it was clear the two were having a silent duel.
“You have the audacity to step into our midst, bearing the guilt of Gabriel’s blood,” Shade said.
The crowd’s murmur fell away, leaving only Shade’s voice to fill the space.
“Gabriel’s death resulted from his own actions. We’re not here to discuss the past but to address the future,” Erik said, his voice firm.
These guys killed millions of people, tortured, enslaved and even ‘harvested’. And he dared to talk about Gabriel?
Shade laughed. He found Erik’s words amusing.
“The future, you say? You’ve boldly infiltrated this gathering, disrupting the order we’ve built. Tell me, what do you hope to achieve? What is the future you are seeking?”
“We seek revenge, and the future I’m talking about starts with your death.”
The room erupted in murmurs and laughter. This man, whoever he was, thought he could kill Shade among thousands of guards and a crowd of gangs’ leaders?
Shade, however, seemed even more amused by Erik’s words.
“Revenge? And tell me, what did we do so hateful that prompted you to seek this revenge and, huhu, wish my death?” Shade was laughing as he spoke.
For a second, Erik’s face darkened. No one could see it, of course, but if they did, they would have understood something wasn’t right.
“Oh… It’s very simple,” Erik said. “You controlled the Crystal Cross Gang, and well… They did a lot, to me especially. That’s why I killed them all.”
Shade paused, the room’s attention fixed on the words Erik just said.
“Ha! And I should believe that you alone destroyed them? How arrogant do you think you are? Do you truly believe you can stand against the might assembled here?”
However, the murmurs increased. Few of the gang leaders here knew the Crystal Crystal Cross Gang had been destroyed.
Volkov and the Blackguards did the best they could to keep that information within Frant, but it wasn’t like that was something that could be easily be kept hidden.
Shade was aware of that fact, yet he couldn’t say it. The destruction of the Crystal Cross Gang was an event shade hadn’t foreseen, which implied, even slightly, that he was losing his grip on control.
“Well, you could ask Howell.” Then Erik took off his mask, but the face under it was exactly that of the old leader of the Crystal Cross Gang. That surprised Shade.
Everyone thought the man under the mask was Howell. Even Shade did. He was surprised, and he felt… betrayed? No. There wasn’t such a relationship between the two. And yet…
“Did you betray me?” he asked.
“Oh! Nono! You are mistaken. I wasn’t never one of you.” He said that, morphing his face to that of Gabriel. That, of course, shook those who knew him personally. Who the hell was this guy? Was that his brain crystal power?
Shade, though, didn’t reply. He was starting to understand the situation wasn’t normal.
This man, whoever he was, showed an abnormally collected behavior.
He also said he killed Howell, and he wasn’t that weak to allow that.
He also killed Gabriel, who was not weak either. One by one, Erik changed his face to that of the guards he killed at Gabriel’s villa, plus that of other people shade and the gang leaders knew.
Realization started settling in, and some of the gang leaders took a few steps back.
But that wasn’t a harmonious reaction. Despite some fearing the figure that was shifting face after face, few thought he could kill them all and survive the ordeal.
However, as Erik changed faces, Shade stiffened for a second. Erik saw it, and then he realized Shade’s real identity.
“Ah… that explains a lot,” he said. “What could have been the chances?” It was then that Erik shifted to his actual face, but then there weren’t more changes.
“HA, HAHAHAH, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. ERIK ROMANO! That’s who you are! Frant’s awakener.”
“Nice to meet you, Norman.” Erik gestured to take off an imaginary hat. “Your brother would be very disappointed in you, knowing what you did all those years.”
“My brother was a fool,” Shade said. He then looked around.
Erik Romano had just found out who he was and said his name for all to hear.
But that didn’t matter, knowing his name didn’t make easier for those treacherous guys to kill, or even find him.
Shade’s posture shifted, an unseen smile beneath the mask.
“KILL THIS MAN!” With a wave of his hand, Shade signaled to the gathered crowd.
The crowd, previously tense and uncertain, now seemed energized by the prospect of a fight.
Those guys were rabid criminals, murderers of the worst species.
Figures began to move, encircling Erik with a predatory anticipation.
As the first of Shade’s followers stepped forward, weapon in hand, Erik met their advance with a calm look.
A woman dashed and used a flaming whip to attack Erik, who simply sidestepped.
However, that wasn’t the only thing he did. With a move that no one saw, he decapitated the
woman.
Her head tumbled to the ground. The event left everyone baffled, including Shade, who was taken aback by the sudden turn of events.
[HUMAN KILLED: MANA ABSORBING PROCESS STARTING.]
[0%…1%….5%…30%…70%…100%]
[MANA SUCCESSFULLY ABSORBED, STARTING CONVERTING PROCEDURE.]
[3…2…1…0]
[MANA SUCCESSFULLY CONVERTED INTO EXPERIENCE. 6080 EXPERIENCE POINTS AWARDED TO THE HOST.]
But that didn’t deter the others. Many people rushed toward Erik, weapons in hand, and
attacked.
The man avoided a sword by bending and decapitating another. Blood rushed out like a fountain from the bloodied stump.
Four more people rushed in, but Erik, this time, didn’t move.
Instead, he started channeling mana from his Brain Crystal.
Everyone sensed that shift, but only Shade seemed to have understood what Erik was going to
do.
“RAISE A BARRIER!” with that, he noticed a man leaving the room from a side door, unnoticed by all but him and, of course, June, who followed him.
<Gotcha! >
Some people did as Shade said. For them, he was still inside the room, giving them strength and courage, but the truth was, he wasn’t really there. What they had in front of them was a
fake.
There was something else, though. It was clear this Erik Romano had a power that allowed him to change faces. Not everyone knew who the man was, some knew he was Frant awakener’s and found it weird for him to have this power and not the sharpening one that
made him famous.
Though some had contacts with the blackguards, and they knew Erik could do much more
than just shapeshifting his face.
“Not having to restrain myself is very liberating.”
A torrent of flames burst forth from Erik’s body, but those weren’t normal flames. They were
those of a wyvern.
