Lung

I grimaced as I watched Hookwolf stalking around below, shouting up at me. He'd managed to catch me in his blades when I inventoried Kaiser and Cricket, and the damage had almost been enough to kill me. If I hadn't had damage resistance, it would have killed me.

Eating a fruit bar I'd found in the Medhall breakroom, I considered my options.

I'd gained a lot of powers from the attack, but I wasn't sure how I'd be able to use them on Hookwolf.

Krieg had simply given me +10% to my damage resistance. Fenja had added an additional 10% to my damage resistance. Added to the bonuses I'd gotten from being hit by Kaiser's blades and from being hit by Hookwolf, and from being hit twice during my raids on the Empire Stash houses and I was now at 35% physical resistance.

This was finally enough to notice a difference, although still not enough to save me from Hookwolf if he really wanted me dead.

Menja hadn't given me anything. Apparently, people and monsters with exactly the same power didn't stack.

Glancing at Stormtiger's entry again, I frowned.

NEW POWER CREATED!

WIND RIDING!

USE YOUR COMMAND OF THE WINDS TO ACHIEVE MAN'S GREATEST DREAM- THE ABILITY TO ESCAPE GRAVITY AND TOUCH THE SKIES.

ONE MILE AN HOUR. FLIGHT SPEED DOUBLES WITH EACH LEVEL. WARNING- SPEEDS OVER THE SPEED OF SOUND CAN CAUSE ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE. LEVEL ONE.

Gaining actual flight instead of the cobbled together version I had been using sounded intriguing. The current speed was abysmal, however. It was half a slow walking speed.

Adding to what I'd gotten from Crusader, I now had +50% planar affinity for Brockton Bay. That meant I had a 70% chance to return at will.

I'd gotten some blood from Cricket when I'd inventoried her; I'd gained +10 dexterity, and I now had a 42.

Everything now seemed like it was in slow motion around me; even Hookwolf seemed like he was barely moving. I had no doubt that I'd be able to dodge bullets, at range at least.

To other people I'd probably seem like a blur.

I still had to acquire Kaiser, but there was time. I'd put him in Silent Hill because I figured his nightmares would be highly productive. It would create new monsters that I could farm for new powers.

It had occurred to me that Silent Hill shouldn't have been able to read my mind to create the Hookwolf clone. However, if I'd subconsciously wanted it to create new monsters, then that might be the reason the town had been able to get a limited read on me.

My blink ability had risen to level 7- I could now teleport 640 feet per jump. My arcane eye had reached level 2 with a 1000-foot range. It still had to physically traverse the distance, and that was a limit I didn't like.

YOU ARE NOW LEVEL 7!

91 HIT POINTS!

YOU HAVE 2 ABILITY POINTS TO SPEND. WOULD YOU LIKE TO SPEND THEM NOW?

I pressed yes.

I was now likely the most dexterous person on the planet, except maybe Leviathan or the Simurgh. What I needed was the ability to take more damage.

Putting two more points into constitution, I now had a constitution of 18, and that gave me 98 hit points.

I could now survive my own Far Strike- once.

If I was going to defeat Hookwolf, I needed to gain the ability to cause a lot more damage. Either that, or I needed to gain some kind of esoteric abilities that could kill without attacking the physical body.

I looked down, and I saw that Hookwolf was now fleeing. The PRT and the Protectorate were now arriving; they barely missed Hookwolf, and they were examining the slide that Kaiser had made from the third-floor boardroom. It wouldn't take long for them to realize that Kaiser was Max Anders, and then a lot of the Empire's financial support would dry up.

"Hey," I heard a voice from behind me.

I spun, fast enough that the figure floating above me in the red costume didn't have time to react.

"We're not supposed to interact with you," Aegis said, "But I wanted to thank you for saving Vista. She really appreciates what you did."

I stared at him, unsure of what to say. I wasn't used to anyone thanking me for anything. I was sure that thanks weren't what the Empire would have for me, and being bullied for a year and a half had left me distrustful of teenagers and adults alike.

"What are you doing here?" he asked.

"I heard the explosion," I said. "Wondered if people needed healing."

"Did they?" he asked.

"It looks like the explosion only hit one boardroom," I said. "And some of them survived and got away."

It had taken five skill books bought from military surplus stores to be able to put together a bomb that would more or less only affect that one room.

Most of the people working at Medhall weren't with the Empire. Some of them might be sympathizers, but I doubted that they knew they were working for Kaiser. That kind of secret couldn't be kept when people had to be fired or became disgruntled.

All it would take was one employee angry at the company to make a call to the PRT and it would all be over.

"Kaiser was in that room," Aegis said, staring at the slide.

"Hookwolf too," I said. "I saw him coming out of the slide with Kaiser and Cricket."

"Do you think they were attacking Medhall?" he asked.

"They were only half in costume," I said. "I think they worked there."

He hesitated.

"Have you ever considered coming and joining the Wards? You clearly want to be a hero, and healers are very valuable. Somebody is going to try to snap you up."

"Who?" I asked. "Coil? He's dead. The Undersiders have left town. The Empire is dying, and Lung is likely going to have Alexandria and Legend attacking him because of the bombings. I'm probably safer here than anywhere."

He stared at me; I could see his eyes but not his mouth. I imagined that he was frowning, though.

"You didn't have anything to do with this, did you?"

"Of course not," I reassured him. My lying skill book was reaping all kinds of rewards. I needed to find more of them. "I was just in the neighborhood."

"It's a school day," he said.

I shrugged.

"I'm home schooled," I said.

It wasn't even a lie, really. I could learn everything I needed to know on the streets and through my power. It didn't seem likely that I was ever going to settle down and become an accountant.

He looked as though he didn't want to accept that, and so I said, "I'm going to go now. The ABB already attacked the hospital and Medhall. Why aren't you guys going after Lung? He's been quiet for a few days, but this shows that he's not going to stop."

"I'm… not at liberty to talk about executive decisions," he said.

"That's why I'm not joining you," I said. "All the important gangs in town are gone, and you're too scared to go after the one gang that's left."

"There's the Merchants," he said.

"I said important gangs. You could roll the Merchants up overnight if you wanted to."

There was a sound of an explosion coming from the Docks area.

"I've gotta go," I said. I grinned at him. "Some of us actually go where we're needed."

With that I blinked a block away. I ran quickly, and jumped over some buildings on my way to the new explosions.

As I approached, I realized that the explosions had come from my neighborhood. I moved more quickly, blinking a block at a time.

It took me no time at all to reach the source.

They'd blown up my house, and the shimmering purple light coming from the remains of my house showed that it wasn't the Empire that had done it.

Why had the ABB targeted my house?

It took me a moment to blink moisture from my eyes. The house was the last thing I had of my mother. I'd never really lived anywhere else. All my childhood memories had been made there and now even if I brought Dad back, there would be no place to go back to.

The second explosion was only four blocks away. As I approached, my heart sank.

Kurt and Lacey's house was in ruins.

Standing outside of it, on the lawn was Lung and a group of ABB thugs.

Kurt and Lacey were standing outside, hands on the backs of their heads. They looked terrified.

I blinked toward them, intending to inventory them. Lung and his lackeys seemed to be standing motionless.

As I appeared between them, I saw their heads disintegrating, exploding from within. My reaction speed was now fast enough to see the exploding blast wave coming from both of their heads.

I flipped backwards, and blinked away.

The world seemed to shift back into normal speed as their bodies fell to the ground.

"Why?" I shouted from the top of a house. My mind was strangely calm, except for a growing rage that didn't seem to be calmed by Gamer's Mind at all. It was a cold, calculating rage, however.

"The identity of Oni Lee's murderer was revealed to us yesterday," Lung said. "We could not allow this outrage to go unavenged."

"And so, you killed two innocent people?" I said.

I dropped a car on Lung. I didn't think it would stop him for long, but long enough for me to blink into the center of the thugs.

They turned and they all shot at me.

I could see the path the bullets would take, and I easily bent my body out of the way. My eye was watching from above, and I could see the bullets and attacks coming from behind me as well as from the front.

Men began to fall as I purposefully moved to put their comrades in the line of fire, and men screamed and died as I blew fire at them.

FIRE BREATH HAS LEVELED UP!

40 HP.

LEVEL 2

Lung threw the car off, and he was already growing larger. His men were on the ground dead or dying.

"I'm not going to fight you," I said. "I'll kill you last. I'm going to kill your people; all of them and when I'm done, no one will remember your name. Everything you build will be dust."

NEW QUEST!

GRIND THE ABB INTO DUST!

MAKE LUNG REGRET KILLING YOUR LAST CONNECTION TO THE WORLD.

20/401.

Before he could charge at me, I was already teleporting away. My eyeball vanished as I surpassed its range, and I headed toward the Docks.

I teleported everywhere, and wherever I went, I looked for the specific colors the ABB wore. The ABB had forbidden anyone in their territory from wearing those colors on penalty of torture.

Covering the entirety of the docks region was easy at a block per blink. Every time I saw random ABB thugs, I dropped them. They never even saw me coming.

They simply dropped like puppets with cut strings. Even whenever there were more than one of them they died so quickly they never knew what hit them.

Whenever I killed them, I didn't bother to stop. I simply kept moving. I could hear the screams of bystanders behind me as they saw the people drop and their blood begin to pool beneath them.

Fifty of them died in the space of five minutes.

I should have felt some kind of satisfaction, but I didn't. This was a chore, not something I took pleasure in. This wasn't personal; it was like killing a rattlesnake in the garden. It was necessary.

Lung and Bakuda, them I'd feel satisfied. I'd make them suffer, much like I was making Kaiser suffer.

Seeing guards outside a warehouse, I sent my eye inside, and I saw a weapons cache guarded by a dozen of them. They were in the process of trying to move weapons into trucks.

I dropped into the place, and I proceeded to murder the guards with my knife. I kept three of them alive, and I demanded the location of the brothels and any other places they knew of.

"I can keep this up all day," I said to the oldest thug. I slashed his throat and I stuck my dagger in his eye, and then I healed him. "Hours if I need to."

"Lung will punish you for this," he said.

"Lung can't stop me," I said. "He couldn't even protect his own people. Where is Bakuda?"

Bakuda had to be the one who put the bomb in their heads. Lung wasn't a tinker.

"I don't know!" he screamed.

I stabbed him in the crotch and twisted my dagger. I healed him before he could bleed out.

He was crying, and the others were staring at me in horror.

I leaned forward and I whispered in his ear. "I can take you to hell while you are still alive, a place of nightmares created from your own mind."

"She's close to the docks," he said. "I don't know exactly where. There have been shipments of materials sent there."

"I drove a truck there once," the youngest one said. "Just don't kill me."

"I'll do worse than kill you," I said. "Unless you give me the address."

He grimaced, and he recited an address.

I inventoried the two younger ones, and then I killed the oldest who had been the most resistant.

Dropping the bomb Bakuda had meant for the hospital, I then plane shifted to Silent Hill.

PLANE SHIFTING HAS LEVELED UP!

30% BASE CHANCE

LEVEL 3.

I dropped the two survivors onto the street. They looked around, confused.

"I said I wouldn't kill you," I said. "But I can't exactly let you go. I'd start hiding if I were you; not only is this place really dangerous for normal people, but Kaiser and Cricket are around here somewhere."

I ran down the block; I wouldn't want to rematerialize inside of whatever hell Bakuda's bomb had created; from what I'd seen there were some effects that I wouldn't survive.

Blinking back, I immediately rolled forward.

-50 POINTS

+1% FIRE RESISTANCE

Considering that my damage resistance and fire resistance together equaled more than fifty percent resistance, that was a lot of damage. I sprinted forward and managed to roll out of the edge of the effect.

It covered two blocks in every direction; I'd just destroyed sixteen square blocks of warehouse space. I had no idea of how many people I'd killed; happily, this wasn't a residential area and was mostly deserted.

The sounds of Armsmaster's motorcycle approaching alerted me. I looked up, and I saw several members of New Wave in the sky, and sending my eye up in the air, I saw that PRT vans were everywhere coming toward my location.

Presumably they'd heard about my murder spree. I found that I really didn't care.

I ate a pizza as I waited for them to show up.

I was impressed; it looked like they'd brought the entire adult team. They hadn't brought the wards; presumably they thought I'd be too dangerous for them, for all that Vista was likely to be incredibly useful, and I didn't have an easy counter for Clockblocker's powers.

"Harvest!" Armsmaster said. "Surrender now! We have a pre-signed kill order waiting, but it doesn't have to come to that."

Looking at them, I tried to decide who had powers that would make it easier to kill Hookwolf and Lung.

I needed someone with enhanced strength, or someone with powers that bypassed the brutes' physical resistances.

Fighting all of them at once was something I could do, but I couldn't do it without killing someone. I'd wanted to be a hero when I was younger, and I couldn't justify even killing heroes who were misguided.

The Bay was better overall for what I'd done. The Empire was on its knees, and if they allowed me to continue, I'd kill Lung and Bakuda.

"I won't fight you unless I have to," I said. "But I've got things I have to finish."

Before they could react, I jumped worlds.

I'd return to finish Bakuda, and then I'd do what I had to do to finish off the other two.

After that I'd see about finding another plane to live on with my father when he revived.

Earth Bet was dead for me now.

Strangely, that didn't bother me at all. Now that Kurt and Lacey were dead, there was nothing to hold me or Dad here. He loved this city, but the Protectorate would never leave us alone.

It was time to finish this.