47 Reapers

The dot that she picked had a light blue aura surrounding it. She immediately went into her state of nothingness as her eyes dulled.

The nothingness state is the state she went into when she fought the Enraged back in the hotel lobby. In this state, none of the Enraged would notice her presence. This state was a double edged sword that could potentially cause her to lose her consciousness and turn into a killing machine if she stayed in the state for too long and continued to accumulate killings.

Earlier when she drove into the city, she took peeks at the different larger dots from a distance and noticed that there was very little activity as compared to before. She deduced that these larger dots were infected that mutated past the Enraged state. This deduction was based on the fact that she had also been infected and gained an electricity superpower after she woke up.

Like her, most of the mutated Enraged kept their human faces, but each had a characteristic that changed. Some of them grew to twice the size of a typical human, others developed animalistic features similar to the spiderwoman, and there was one that was wearing a banana peel on his head. She figured, this was the same man that she saw before at the hotel lobby.

Based on her prior knowledge from other light novels, she deduced that the colors probably represented abilities. For example, the purple aura around the spiderwoman was attributed to her insect and poisonous nature. Conversely, this light blue color was probably related to some water type ability. Aida was curious about exactly how these powers manifested. Were they triggered by what the person came in contact with the moment they were infected like her? Were they triggered by one's imagination? Were they inborn characteristics that were awakened by the virus? Only detailed investigations and a large sample size would really be able to provide her with that information.

For now, her focus was on understanding the strength of the mutated Enraged. She wanted to be prepared for the potentially long journey they would have to make in order to reach City M.

Sneaking up on the light blue dot, she saw that it was a teenage girl walking around with vacant eyes and a blank face. She wore a white t-shirt and jeans. She would have looked just like an ordinary girl if not for the blood that was splattered across her white t-shirt which created a huge contrast to her blank look. She paced around robotically and aimlessly in the area. There were several Enraged nearby as well, but none seemed inclined to go near the girl and the girl did not seem bothered by their presence.

After watching her for a few minutes with no change, Aida got bored and decided to directly confront her. She wanted to verify whether the girl actually had an ability. Aida walked calmly towards the girl, ready to react at any time.

The moment she entered the girl's field of vision, the girl immediately tensed up and shot streaks of water towards Aida. Aida dodged the water calmly. Inwardly, she was cheering happily at the confirmation that her hypothesis was correct. She was excited to see that superpowers were going to become prevalent in this apocalyptic world.

As she thought this, the girl continued to shoot strings of water at her. The way she shot out the water streams reminded Aida of toy water guns that children liked to play with during the summer. The jets of water didn't have enough force behind them to really do any damage to Aida.

After the water missed Aida, it would fly straight back to the girl. It seems the girl only had a finite amount of water that she could manipulate and her control was not very good which made it an extremely easy fight for Aida.

While fighting and testing the limitations of her ability, Aida's mind began to wander. 'If given enough time and if this girl has the capacity to learn from this fight, theoretically she can compress the water into small bullets and then release them at a high speed. Then, the hits could be as lethal as bullets.'

After roughly 10 minutes of fighting, Aida felt like she had a good grasp of the extent of her water ability and determined that she had little to no capacity to learn. Taking out one of her hidden knives, Aida laced it with electricity and accurately threw it at the girl's carotid. She decisively ended the fight.

Exhausted from overusing her ability, the girl was unable to react in time and the knife firmly lodged itself into the girl's neck. All her movements suddenly halted and the water she had been manipulating directly fell harmlessly back onto the ground with a big splash. She convulsed from the electric shock for a full minute as she attempted to resist but eventually fell onto the ground, dead.

Walking over, Aida looked on and confirmed that the girl was indeed dead.

"Hmm.. Reaper with water type ability. Strong offensive potential but very limited stamina. Little capacity to learn, mainly relies on instinct. Offensive range is roughly 5 meters. Reaction time is the same as an ordinary person. Life force is significantly greater than a normal person," Aida recounted out loud.

Licking her lips, she continued, "Such a shame she was too weak, I was just beginning to have fun too."

She decided to call these mutated Enraged, Reapers. Reapers appeared to be mindless shells of humans that only follow their instincts. The superpower appears to vary from person to person, but the strength of the ability seems fairly standard. Based on the Reaper's lack of complex thought, any trained killer could easily kill these creatures even without superpowers, at least for now. The Reaper's main distinct features were the soulless look, the superpowers and the stronger life force.

Seeing the blood flow out of the girl, Aida's face had unknowingly formed a smile. If Ace were here, he would surely be squealing with excitement.

After confirming the girl's death, Aida quickly moved away as she noticed on her scan that the Enraged and a few Reapers in the area were rapidly approaching the location.