Chapter 7: death

I walked behind the band of rebels in front of me as we walked down a narrow white passage tinged red by the flashing red lights, I focused my gaze on the petite auburn-haired woman walking directly in front of me. Her looks were average and her body was nothing to write home about however her fidgety behaviour as she periodically cast fleeting glances at me before blushing heavily and looking away drew my attention.

An evil smile appeared on my lips… It seems I had found my first target.

Stimulating some soul essence to flow from my mana core to my ears, I heard a loud popping sound before a deluge of sounds assaulted my ears temporarily disorienting me. I didn't even take more than few seconds to recover as my ears adjusted to the sounds.

I could finally hear the loud blaring of the alarms and air-raid sirens as they dutifully announced the infiltration of invaders onto the island. I could also here the distant sound of gunfire and the shouting and screaming of guards, rebels and escaped prisoners as they turned each other into Swiss cheese with their guns.

I hastened my steps slightly and started walking side-by-side with the petite auburn-haired girl. She was startled by my abrupt actions at first but she manged to quickly calm down.

"Its kind of loud in out there, isn't it?" I asked as I watched her shoulders and the shoulders of the other rebels jerk violently before settling down. Some of them cast surprised glances at me probably shocked by the fact that I could talk. They had probably thought that I was mute since I hadn't muttered a single word since they met me.

"Ye-yeah..." The girl replied in small voice as she widened the distance between us. She was probably uncomfortable from my invasion of her personal space. 

"S-sorry." She apologized as she realized that her actions came off as rude.

I laughed wryly before responding

"Its not a big deal, I understand that I must have startled you a bit with my actions. If anything I should be the one apologizing."

"N-no… y-you don't have to apologize for anything… sorry for being w-weird." She muttered in her small voice.

Weird, huh?

I wonder who exactly was weird here. No normal person would even try to have a normal conversation with an inmate like me. If anything, the normal reaction would be the reaction those other guys are heaving. They are keeping a wide berth between us and are warry of speaking to me. They don't know me or the sort of crimes I had committed to be locked up here. 

Being warry was the correct course of action.

I smiled at her as I changed the subject.

"I'm Aiden… what's your name?" I asked.

She was silent for a brief moment before she softly replied

"Leah…."

Her voice was so low I was almost unable to grasp what she said but frankly speaking, I did not care. The mere fact that she would respond to my questions was more than enough. I Subtly spent a quarter of the amount of the soul essence I had in my mana core as I activated the second ability of my 'Fool's reality' superpower [consideration dependant capability] before going on to speak,

"What do you think of Assassins Leah? Aren't they cool?" I did not give her time to respond as I went on to say, "Assassins are very cool in my opinion especially the mage assassins with affinity to shadows. Those are extremely bad ass, right?" 

I started to change my tone and started speaking like an overexcited kid with eight grader syndrome droning off about the cool manga protagonist he wanted to be. I could see the girl visibly recoil and cringe as I made erratic steps towards her whilst panting heavily. The other rebels started giving me wary eyes as the grips on their weapons visibly tightened. 

Lieutenant moron was stopped his footsteps and turned to glare at me with a visibly annoyed expression on his face. I acted oblivious to his small action as I kept pestering the girl. 

"They can do badass things like traveling through shadows, having nigh-undetectable stealth and weave any manner of weapons from their shadows. Those abilities are sick right?!" I took her flustered hands into mine before bringing our faces close and whispering into her right ear ignoring her startled appearance as she tried to violently jerk her hands out of mine.

"What if I told you I could do the same?"

At that moment I felt my [consideration dependant capability] fully activate and I smiled at the sudden rush of a foreign yet familiar energy that flooded through my veins and filled my mana core to the brim. I could feel it…. The shadows were calling out to me… they were whispering in voices laced with bloody murder.

"Huuh?!!!" She subconsciously muttered as she felt my unrestrained bloodlust and killing intent barrel down on her.

By the time she realised the exact danger she was in, it was already too late….

An obsidian blade carved out of shadows manifested and weaved itself into existence in my right hand before I gently swiped it cross her pale neck.

"LEAH!!!!!" Someone screamed before the sound of gunfire tore through the momentary ambience of the narrow passage.

By the time the bullets arrived, I had already sunk into the shadows. I watched coldly as a thin red line appeared on Leah's delicate white neck before erupting into a geyser of fresh blood. Like a puppet with its strings abruptly cut, she collapsed onto the ground with a dull wet thud soon followed by her making disturbing gurgling noises as she erratically twitched.

The true hunt had officially begun and I had drawn the first blood.

My actions did not make me feel even a single iota of guilt. No way I was gonna get depressed and sentimental over killing some random dudes whom I happened to meet a few minutes ago. That said, it was now time to finish the rest of these guys off.

An intense feeling of excitement started to bud within me as I fantasized about the best ways to go about slaughtering everyone here. The influx of soul essence from my latest kill did not do much to help as I started getting off on a euphoric high.

I had seen a lot of apocalyptic horror movies from the minds of the guys who came within range of my abilities and I felt like trying a few things out. The scariest form of apocalyptic events I could think of were not Zombie apocalypses or monster apocalypses. The things people feared most were the unknown and I had craziest idea of the most feared unknown in the entire world.... A sudden emergence of a highly contagious and lethal

virus. It's very original…right?