Chapter 3

As the group of 3 walked towards the town in the distance. they started to ask questions about the guild. "Soooo, where's the guild hall?" Karma asked.

"It's in the heart of the town of Shin'en" Ketsuki replied.

"So, explain all this again. my head hurts." Karma asked as he scratched his head.

"OK so when you join a guild you get a symbol and a Ἥφαιστος..." Ketsuki gets interrupted.

"I'm sorry but the fuck did you just say" Karma Interrupts.

"It's greek for hephaestsus the man who made it, anyway a Ἥφαιστος is a wristband that projects the essentials. for instance, your ability level, class and other important stuff." explained Ketsuki.

"What do you mean by class?" asked karma, still trying to comprehend everything Katsuki was saying.

"Each hunter gets a class when they join a guild. Mine is Assassin, and each person with a class gets a unique skill that's related to the class." he replied.

"Well how far away is the guildhall" Karma asks as they approach a town. "Well, never mind then."

They walk down towards the heart of the town. as they were walking by some booths, Karma took some apples from the stall without the stall owner noticing. Shiro looked at Karma with disapproval. "What I'm hungry" Karma says eating the apple.

As they kept walking, they noticed the streets were almost empty. then a group of nobles with a girl, maybe around Karma and Ketsuki's age. She had long beautiful hair as black as an endless abyss that slowly faded into a ruby red, her eyes were a scarlet red, but the things that stood out the most was her black cat ears that had some red on them, along with a black tail that slowly faded to red at the tip. She was chained up around her neck with a leash tied to it. Karma looked pissed as he started to walk towards the group of nobles. The man that was holding the girl's leash let go and the girl started to run away. "You're not going anywhere you piece of shit." The man stepped on her tail as the group of nobles started to laugh.

"Move your foot." Karma demanded, clearly pissed off.

"The fuck you say to me you little shit." The man turned to Karma and twisting his foot hurting the girl even more.

"I said move your fucking foot." Karma was getting a lot more pissed.

"And if I don't?" The man laughed.

Karma looked into the man's eyes with bloodlust. Karma's presence seemed to be warping reality itself. the man's body wouldn't then move, it was like time had frozen. it was also apparent that the man seemed to have been staring into the eyes of death itself. The pressure in the air was getting heavier with each passing second, and time seemed to move slower. Karma's eyes were glowing a pale blue. The man tried to get away, but Karma grabbed him by the collar and ignited it into black flames. That wasn't even the worst part, what the man saw was even scarier than all that just happened. he saw an outline of a demon lord behind Karma. "I said move your foot." Karma said, throwing the man into a stall.

When Karma threw the man, the group tried to attack Karma. one of the nobles fired a giant ball of flame towards Karma, and he just brushed it off as it was nothing. "You know, I take bubble baths hotter than this." Karma then through a bigger flame at him and it sent him flying into the man that he sent into the stall. "You want some too?"

The other noble charges up with lighting and rushes at Karma with incredible speed. Karma moved out of the way as the guy started to attack Karma ruthlessly. Karma yawned as he put his hands in his pockets and dodged effortlessly and without breaking a sweat. The man doesn't connect with any of his hits but when he finally felt contact, it was Karma catching his hands and breaking them. "You should probably quit now." Karma said as he through the man.

Karma took a deep breath, trying to calm himself down. his eyes returned from glowing to his normal orangish eye color. He walked up to the girl and reached out his hand to help her. she flinched as if he was going to hit her. "Hey you alright?" Karma asks with a reassuring tone.

"Yeah, I'm fine also thanks for helping me." said the girl as she then hesitated, before grabbing his hand.

"Hey Karma, what did you do to him?" Ketsuki asked as he ran up to him.

"I didn't do anything, I just looked into his eyes, and he had a breakdown." Karma replied.

"I watched you throw them." Ketsuki smacked Karma in the back of the head.

"Hey what's your name." The girl asked Karma as he rubbed the back of his head.

"It's Karma, Karma Akuma." He replied. "And yours?"

"It's Scarlet." she replies.

"Why are you all chained up?" Karma asked.

"Well, I'm a Nekoma with black hair and most don't have black hair, so they associate with either demons or witches, they always take them as slaves ant they are treated worse than noramal slaves." Scarlet looks down.

"So, you don't have a place to go?" Karma asked as he places a hand on her head.

"N-no I don't" she said looking upset.

"Why don't you come with us, me and my little sister just found a place to go thanks to Ketsuki. It's a guild so it could be dangerous." Karma asks holding out his hand.

She looks up with some tears in her eyes as her tail starts to sway. "Will you be able to take me with you" She smiles.

"Of course, you can." Karma says as he wipes the tears and smiles.

"We need to get going. people are staring, and the guards are coming." Ketsuki says as he runs by with Shiro.

"Well? Are you coming or not?" Karma gets up and holds his hand out.

Scarlet grabs his hand as they both started running with Ketsuki and Shiro. as they ran through the town's allies and back streets, they finally lost the guards. "Those guys are persistent" Karma says trying to catch his breath.

"Yeah, we should probably get to the guild hall." Ketsuki says as he peeks around the corner.

They walk around for about 10 minutes. they approach a big building with a banner with the word ABYSS strung across it. "Hey is this the guild hall." Shiro asked Ketsuki.

"Yeah, welcome to Abyss' guild hall." Kestuki opened the doors to the building.

"So, is this the place where we will stay for now or?" Karma asked Ketsuki as they looked around.

"Hello and welcome the Abyss' guildhall, I'm Atlas the guild master." A little boy who looks like he's 12 walks up, he has short blonde hair, light blue eyes, he was wearing a silver chest plate, a long black collared shirt with his sleeves rolled up.

"Hey ketsuki who's this little shit? The GuildMaster's son?" Karma asks as he pats the little kid's head.

"No, I'm the guild master." Atlas reassured Karma pushing his hand away.

"You, the guild master? That's laughable." Karma laughs.

As soon as Karma finishes his sentence, he gets slammed into the ground at such high speeds he couldn't register what happened. Karma gets up unfazed and punches Atlas in the face sending him flying across the guildhall. "You should respect your elders' kid." Karma wipes the blood from his mouth.

"I'm fucking older than you." He charges at Karma at lightspeed firing a light beam from each finger on 1 hand and unsheathing his sword with the other.

Karma dodges all 5 of the lasers and unsheathes his daggers to block the sword that was going straight for his neck. Karma goes for a counterattack by firing a jet a black flame, covering Atlas in flames. Atlas brushes off the flames as if they were nothing. "Welcome to the guild, I'm assuming Karma, and who are the 2 behind you."

"Wait, what?" Karma scratches his head.

"This is Shiro, Karma's little sister, and this is Scarlet, she doesn't have a place to go so she's gonna join the guild." Ketsuki interrupts.

"Oh ok, nice to meet you guys" Atlas does a small bow.

Karma, who's still dumbfounded, bows and greets Atlas. "So, what are guilds about?" Karma questioned Atlas.

"Well hunters, that's what they call guild members, take on quests to kill monsters and what not. sometimes we take on bounties for most wanted criminals and occasionally a thing called a gate appears and it's pretty much a teleporter that teleports you to a dungeon. within 14 days the gate will open, and a bunch of monsters will exit the gate and wreak havoc". Atlas explained.

"Are there any benefits to being a hunter? "Karma questioned further.

"Yes, actually you can travel freely between the planets." Atlas gestured for them to follow. "Here I'll give you guys a tour of the guild hall."

They started to walk into the building and Atlas showed them around, it was lively, and everyone was kind and cheerful. They walked into the courtyard and there were two people training. they were going all out, as if they were trying to kill each other, one of them had a genuine smile like he was having fun, but the other had a crazed smile as if he enjoyed killing or was an assassin having fun. "That's Jack" Atlas points to one of the boys fighting. He was wearing a black collared shirt with a brown strap holding a sheathe for 2 one-handed swords, his hair was a pitch black as dark as an abyss, his eyes were a piercing yellow, he has bags under his eyes making it seem like he hasn't slept for weeks. He was using shadows and a one-handed sword cloaked in another ominous shadow.

"And that's Rekka." Ketsuki interrupts pointing at the other boy. The boy was wearing a white hooded cloak crafted from the clouds near Olympus, had pitch black hair with a dark blindfold covering his eyes. he had a warm smile as he fought with Jack, he used a lightning charged sword crafted from a scale of a lightning demon.

Karma watched closely as they fought, they were on a different level than the guards or the hunters back at the village, Jack made a giant spike out of Rekka's shadow, but Rekka dodged the fatal blow to the throat. "HEY THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE TRAINING, ASSHOLE." Rekka yells at jack in a panicked tone, you could tell Jack was more experienced than Rekka.

"Well, if you don't take this seriously you won't get stronger, you know you're a rank below me, right?" Jack laughs.

"You know what, fine fuck you." Rekka blasts Jack with a giant ball of light green flames covering him in the flames.

"Eh hem" Atlas clears his throat to interrupting the two fighting. "We have some newcomers, Karma, Shiro and Scarlet."

The two stop their fight and walks over to the three. "Hey, the name is Rekka nice to meet you." Rekka greets them with a slight bow.

"Hey, I'm Karma and this is my little sister Shiro." He does a slight bow.

"H-hi I'm S-Shiro." She stutters as she hides behind Karma.

Karma looks to Jack. "It's Jack and quit staring unless you want to die." Jack says annoyed.

Karma's eyes start to glow an orangish yellow and he starts to grin. "Do you really think that you can kill me" Karma calmy asks.

This pisses off Jack as he goes to swing on Karma, but Karma catches his hand and ignites it with black flames, but jack countered with a purple and black flames. "Jack, Karma stop fighting."

Jack walks off, clearly pissed off. Rekka was shocked that the person who was a B-Rank was easily countered by this person that he never met. "So, when do we go on our first quest?" Karma asked going back to his normal tone.

"Well first we have to go see what class and rank you are before we can issue out quests." Atlas replies.

"Well let's get to it then." Karma starts to walk away. "Wait! where am I going to do this evaluation thingy?"

"So, you don't want a tour of the rest of the guild hall?" Atlas questioned.

"Nope I wanna see how strong I am, and what class I am." Karma replied.

Atlas sighed as he signals Karma to follow, as they walked towards the arena people stared at the new hunters some people were introducing, but the stronger ones were doing their own thing before making their way to the arena. "Some of our strongest hunters are out right now." Ketsuki said before splitting off from the group.

Karma looks around for any familiar faces but no one he knew was around when he looked towards the arena. Atlas was standing in the middle of it. "Today we got 3 new hunters and we all know that we need to test their skills? AM I RIGHT?" Atlas makes an announcement to all the hunters that are in the stands watching. "First up we have Karma Akuma, the infamous demon that destroyed a country."

(Guess that's my cue) Karma thought to himself as he walked towards the arena waving to the cheering crowd. "Today your opponent will be me. Why may you ask? Because I want to fight you." Atlas announces.

"Well, we start in 3, 2...." Karma didn't even finish his sentence before Atlas rushed at him at light speed.