Third Squad of Redemption

Seth left the city harbor quickly, hoping the Skywatchers wouldn't notice and chase after him. However, another group of survivors was pursuing him, not a friendly group, to be sure.

The man occasionally looked below his black hoverbike, seeing ten survivors seemingly following him with the weapons they were using, mostly crossbows.

"Damn! Are they Arcada?" wondered Seth, furious.

Seeing the city streets filled with other survivors made it impossible for Seth to shoot his laser gun at them. The best option for Seth was to get as far away from the crowd as possible.

He accelerated his hoverbike to its maximum speed, making it difficult for the criminal groups to catch up, but they didn't show any signs of giving up.

As long as Seth could still be seen on their horizon, they would not stop. While walking away, Seth tried to make a plan to defeat them.

He didn't want the tense incident at the city harbor to happen to him again. With a structured plan, he hoped to deal with them well.

Eventually, Seth finally arrived at a spacious area with no buildings around it, similar to a park with fallen trees in some areas. Seth eased the throttle on his hoverbike, traveling slowly while circling in the park's sky.

The man circled around the group of survivors, the remaining eight out of the original ten. Their breathing sounded ragged, kneeling with sweat pouring from their heads, soaking their bodies.

"Who are you? What do you want from me?" asked Seth, his voice loud and firm.

"You're the man with the hoverbike! Arcada rewarded your head with thousands of GP," said one of the men.

"Arcada? Haha. No one will pay you. Arcada is already destroyed!" groaned Seth, laughing loudly, realizing his pursuers knew nothing.

"There's no way Arcada is destroyed. They're the biggest group after Redemption," the man retorted.

"If you don't believe me, you can check at the city harbor. Their bodies are probably still scattered there," Seth emphasized.

They flinched, not fully believing what Seth was saying, considering Arcada was a powerful group. Redemption was strong, but Arcada was equally strong. 

However, those people never knew Seth was the one who killed them. Ignorance will get them killed; that's what Seth knew. The weapons were raised, the crossbow filled with arrows with sharp tips. They had deliberately sharpened them with a whetstone for a moment like this.

"I don't believe a single word you say!" said the man, tall and thin, looking weaker than those around him. 

Seth couldn't underestimate him. He could be the brains of the group. Men like that were sometimes more troublesome than arrogant, smelly, fat guys with no brains. Three of the eight people held crossbows, the same weapon Seth had behind his back.

The crossbow strikes were released, aimed at Seth, who was still floating on his hoverbike in the sky. Not a single strike hit Seth. There was also the disadvantage of using a crossbow, a single-shot type weapon.

"You keep yourself unguarded, you fool!" groaned Seth, grabbing his black pistol and firing at one of the three archers.

Considering how strong Seth's laser shot was, he got shot in the right hand, which was impossible for him to dodge. His hand severed, he fell convulsing with his mouth open, crying out in pain.

Seth landed his hoverbike in a park near a lake with green water full of moss. He turned off the engine while keeping the monitor on above the bike, which helped keep the self-defense system active even when the engine was turned off.

"Are you a bunch of fools? The crossbow is a single-shot type of weapon. It won't be useful if you all fire at once," Seth said.

As he continued to walk towards the group, the two men holding the crossbows stood up, threatening to kill Seth if the man continued to walk closer. In the end, Seth froze where he stood.

"He's losing too much blood!" groaned one of the group members on medical duty.

"Put something on him, cover his wounds, and get him out of here," said the lanky man, ordering the other members to take the wounded man with them.

"I'll hold him here," the man continued.

He was confident that he could defeat Seth, especially with that weapon. One attack by them, and there was a 3-5 second gap for them to reload, which could be more if they were not skilled at using it.

Seth took out his two handguns, pointing them at the two people before him with a smirk written all over his face. The man thought those two had no chance of winning from him.

"Stop right there!" shouted a man, his heavy voice coming from the depths of the park.

The man gasped in surprise, turning his body to look at the heavy-voiced man who spoke to him. A man appeared from the park trees, not alone, but together with hundreds of people in the same military uniform, white in color with dark blue strips on some parts of the shirt.

"Drop your weapons. This is a no-go area for foreigners!" said the man, his long hair tied in a man bun, walking towards Seth with two swords attached to the right and left of his body.

"Does the military still exist? Why Skywatcher hasn't killed you yet?!" groaned the skinny man, still holding the weapons in his hands.

"This is the last warning; drop your weapons, or we will kill you!" said the man, the squad leader, looking authoritative with a scratch on his lower right cheek.

Seth smiled lightly, realizing his position was really backed up at the moment. He decided to drop his two laser guns on the park grass, especially after he saw a red dot aimed at his left chest, coming from the two-story building on the right of the park.

"Sniper on the right, you're seriously not giving me a chance," Seth complained.

"We're not taking any risks with this incident!" said the man, crossing his arms with a cold, intimidating glare at Seth.

The two men holding crossbows saw an opportunity to kill Seth; they tried to put one finger near the crossbow trigger. A typical laser shot from a long-barreled laser rifle appeared and pierced the body of one man with a large hole.

The man's body bounced away from its first location, startling the group leader so much that his body trembled with fear that his life was at stake. The man with tied hair could only shake his head, feeling sorry for their stupidity.

"Do they think they can recall like a game?!" complained the man, occasionally covering his face as he couldn't understand the survivors' attitude, which he thought was strange.

"What do you mean by recall?" asked Seth.

"The mobile phone game. Don't you play it?" asked the man, asking a question off-topic at the time.

"No, I don't. I thought you were talking about something else," Seth replied.

The lanky man began to drop his weapon. Now, Seth and the man were completely unarmed.

The group of men in white military shirts began to lower their weapons. The red dot that had initially appeared directed at Seth's left chest now began to disappear. Conditions turned conducive, not as tense as before.

"All right, gentlemen. Before I take you two out, I'd like to make a few introductions," explained the man with his hair tied back, dropping his arms that had been crossed over his chest.

"My name is Leon Hamilton, third squad leader of the Redemption group," Leon said.

"Redemption?" asked the man beside Seth, gasping.

"They're the largest survivor group in New York, right?" Seth asked the man beside him.

"Yeah, and they don't like-"

DOR!

Before the man could finish his words, his head had already been torn from his body, shattered into pieces by a long-barreled rifle shot. It was a shock to Seth, who was new to the city and had little information.

"Let me finish his sentence. Frances! You can come down from up there!" Leon ordered the sniper on the second floor of an abandoned building.

"We don't like Arcada and the people who work for them. Are you one of them?" Leon asked.

"I hate Arcada. The way they stole merchants left my friend dead."

"That's good. Now, we just need to loot you!"

"What?!"