52 Evolving Reapers

Nearby, she found a nice sandy park. She quickly dug a grave for the small boy and placed him in the hole. Then she used her lightning to harden the sand and turned it into glass [1].

Feeling as though she absolved herself from the guilt by doing this, a big smile unknowingly spread across her face as she savored the previous fight. It had been a while since she got to truly engage in a "challenging" fight.

Aida casually jogged back to the car. Everyone in the car looked at in surprise and amazement. She had disappeared for a full hour without providing any explanation, and then returns with an unprecedented smile on her face, blood on her face, and a rip in her clothes.

Noticing their surprised looks, she quickly controlled her expressions and resumed her cold look. "What are you looking at?," she barked at Ace.

"Wah~ Onee-chan, you're so pretty~" exclaimed Rin. Yukio quietly nodded as well, while blushing. He entirely forgot that he unabashedly said the same thing to Aida when they first met.

Light silently handed her a napkin to wipe off the blood from her face and some water. After wiping the blood off her face and taking a big swig of water, she picked up Xiao Ai and ordered Ace to drive.

Ace complied and began driving, but not without continually throwing more glances at her the entire way. After some time, Aida lost her temper and smacked Ace on the head again while ordering him to watch the road.

Leaning back once again, Aida began thinking about the little boy Reaper she just killed. He was clearly different than the other Reapers she encountered. He was able to speak and appeared to have a sliver of sentience. Additionally, he had the capacity to learn and improve his fighting skills over time. This was an indicator that the other Reapers may also grow to become more and more lethal over time. Based on this growth trajectory, it was likely the human race would be decimated very soon. She decided to name this more advanced Reaper, a level 2 Reaper. While all the previous ones she encountered were level 1 Reapers.

The evolution speed of the infected was so quick. Fortunately, Aida was still confident in her own abilities and her own growth trajectory. She also came to an epiphany during the fight that the gems were a way for Reapers and other infected to power up. Theoretically, if she were to consume the gem like the agility Reaper had done earlier, she could potentially grow stronger as well.

She also wondered, if she were to feed one of these gems to a non-infected person, does that mean they would gain an ability while maintaining their own consciousness? Would they turn into a Reaper? Or perhaps they would just explode from the large potential energy from the gem and immediately die?

Aida was incredibly intrigued by the different possibilities for the gems, but now was not the right time to explore. Her focus should be on getting herself to City M.

After another hour, they had finally arrived at the airport. Everyone in the car breathed a huge sigh of relief. They were not only on edge because of the different infected humans that may attack them, but also on account of Ace's life threatening poor driving.

Aida ordered him to drive directly to the planes so they wouldn't have to deal with the annoying mob and War faction again. She was afraid she wouldn't be able to resist slaughtering them all the moment she saw them. That would not be a very healthy sight for the twins.

Driving past the entrance, Aida noticed that it was entirely vacant. All the unconscious infected that were previously lying there had somehow disappeared. Some ideas crossed her mind, but she quickly dismissed them as it didn't matter to her right now.

As they reached the tarmac, Aida gave out marching orders. "We need to find a small passenger plane or a nice luxury plane, and enough fuel to get us to City M. Ace will find the plane while Light and the twins will find the fuel. I will go to the main tower and make sure there are no defense systems in place that will keep us from taking off. Report back in 30 minutes. Stay vigilant for people and infected."

Nodding, everyone split up. Ace continued driving the minivan around to the different locations in search of a suitable plane. Light and the twins went on foot. Aida took Xiao Ai with her as she headed towards the main tower. It was the perfect location for her to scout the area and keep watch of her companions while also checking the airport systems.

When she checked the systems, she saw that everything had been disabled. Noah and the scientists had probably turned everything off ahead of time so the helicopter could land safely. Having some free time, she casually scanned the area.

There was a group of larger dots clustered together but the mob and War Faction were nowhere in sight. Tapping her chin while thinking, she began thinking about the possibilities. The large cluster of dots was likely the infected that were missing from the front of the airport. What didn't make sense to her was why they would be clustered together. All the Reapers she had found in the city were extremely antisocial and actively avoided other Reapers.

Regardless of the reason, as long as they didn't can't bother her, she would not bother to find out what was going on over there either.

When 30 minutes was up, everyone met back up to share their findings. Light had on his usual calm expression, but appeared to be somewhat displeased.

"What is it?" Aida asked expressionlessly.

"It seems before the scientists left, they purposely burned all the fuel storage here at the airport to prevent others from leaving. We're stuck." Light responded grimly. He understood the reasoning before doing so, but as someone who was stranded here, had he not met Aida, death would have been guaranteed for both himself and his brothers.

[1] Glass is made by striking silica at high temperatures. Sand often has a large amount of silica contained in it. Therefore, when sand is ignited at over 1800C by lightning, it will turn it into glass. This phenomena is called lightning sand. It is not uncommon to see such glass when going to sandy beaches where a storm is brewing.