In a certain clubhouse, an information broker and leader of the Red Axe gang sat in front of multiple computer screens, looking over all the information he had gathered about a particular incident that had happened this week.
Sigh...
Since he was an information broker by trade, the text on the screen was well-organised and easy to understand, but the man was unhappy because there was simply not enough of it.
What was the motive? If no one moved to take over the territories after all this time, then it's safe to say that wasn't it. Profit? No one touched any of the products the various gangs had accumulated, and not one mecha-shift weapon got separated from its dead owners.
The man glanced at the calendar and remembered it was the start of a new school year, so perhaps a super-rookie was going on a vigilantism streak?
But as soon as that thought crossed his mind, he immediately dismissed it. Not because he looked down on teenagers, since not too long ago, a certain blond freshman wiped the floor with him and his crew, but because that was the extent of what she'd done. A bloodied nose and a bruised ego.
However, the things that happened last week were in a whole other league than what a naive kid could ever do.
Hell, if the criminals had slash marks instead of bullet holes, everyone would have thought that the culprit was some mutated new super Grimm instead of a person.
Not only he but every criminal in Vale was struggling to find any piece of info on the culprit of the massacre and failing.
Hmm...
Since there were no leads, his mind started wandering and trying to connect looser and looser dots, which is how he inevitably returned to the woman in red he had met a week ago.
He had seen many people in his time, from fakes with only a big bark to veteran hunters who could wrestle Ursas with their bare hands, and from the moment he saw that woman walking up to them, his instincts started screaming that she was dangerous.
Of course, he was wrong before, and when she asked for an awakening, he completely let go of his worries. But thinking back on it now, he wondered if he was correct in doing so.
That woman was a mystery. She was someone who didn't bat an eye at paying thousands of Lien just to unlock her aura. But despite being rich, he couldn't find any record of her anywhere.
She would have been his number one suspect if he hadn't personally unlocked her completely average aura capacity. Not only that, but the timetable also didn't add up since four other gangs had already fallen by the time she came to him.
In the end, he could only shake his head and get back to work looking for the culprit among the more likely suspects.
~o~
Meanwhile, in a cafe that was much better lit and stocked with more snacks than Junior's office sat the cause of many headaches experienced by the criminals of Vale.
"Here you go, ma'am." A waitress approached me with a cake and coffee combo I had ordered.
I returned a little "thank you", but my mind was focused on another store I could see through the window, a little dust shop boringly named "Troy's Dust Shop".
During my little raiding spree, I didn't pay that much attention to my bank account, but when I looked at it at the end, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it had just breached into seven digits!
Since every gang I raided back in LS only had a couple thousand dollars at best, I was expecting the same results here. Who knew that even the poorest gang here had at least fifteen thousand simply lying around?
At first, I thought that Lien and dollars didn't exchange in a one-to-one ratio, but after touring a few stores, I realised it actually did. This discovery was an unexpected but welcome disruption to my plans since what started as a pure training session turned out to be rather profitable.
I would have continued raiding, but the only ones left were the big players, and at least for now, I didn't want to mess with them without a reason.
Now, for the average person, a million Lien is a lot of money, but for someone with my ambitions, that is... well, not little per se, but still not quite enough for what I had in mind, so I had to find a new way to earn that extra bit of cash.
Hence, the dust shop.
Taking out my phone, I checked the map and saw many waypoints showing every dust shop in the city.
I couldn't help but smile since the thought of robbing shops immediately brought up memories of when I was just starting out back in LS and robbing convenience stores for pocket change. Of course, this is neither a poor convenience store nor LS, but the point still stands.
Having finished planning everything I needed to, I got ready to leave the-
Sniff sniff
I looked down at the steaming piece of cake I forgot I had ordered and stopped in my tracks.
"Well, I'm sure the stores can wait just a little bit."
~o~
With a belly full of cake and a bank account that always hungered for more, I sat in my car in front of the dust shop.
I wasn't in my regular clothes, but in some cleaner overalls I swiped from the previous coffee shop and a cap with a scarf on my head for a quick disguise since I wouldn't be killing every witness because my targets this time would be primarily civilians.
Since I was all ready to go, I didn't waste time and exited the car.
Since my disguise was more for concealing my identity and not for blending in, I looked rather suspicious, so not wasting any more time, I sprinted straight for the shop's doors and rammed them open with my shoulder.
This shop was about the same size as the one I visited on my first day here, and the four customers browsing its wares all looked at me at my abrupt entry.
Seeing they were a little confused about what was happening, I could only roll my eyes before pointing my rifle at them.
"I do believe this is your cue to leave."
With an affirmative scream, the customers finally started running out of the shop, but ignoring them, I made a beeline for the shopkeeper.
A tall but fat middle-aged man stood behind the counter with a fearful look on his face and his hands raised high.
"D-don't shoot!" he started stammering when I got near and pointed my gun at him.
"Then you better hurry," I said, dropping a bag on the counter before pointing my gun back at him again.
Thankfully the shopkeeper got the message and obediently started taking out the Lien. "One... three..." I counted as the man pulled out one colourful card after another, "Eight... twelve thousand Lien!"
I wanted to take a moment to marvel at my gains from such a small store, but knowing I was on the clock, I grabbed the bag and ran back to my car.
The entire robbery took less than half a minute, and looking around, the police had yet to arrive.
Back in LS, I would be already hearing police sirens by now, but besides the traffic and a few startled civilians, everything was quiet.
"Well," stepping on the gas pedestal, I immediately departed towards the next dust shop, "I guess you shouldn't look a gift shark in the mouth."
Although I was fairly sure I was misremembering the quote, I was even more certain that I would be milking every second of their absence for what it was worth.
~o~
I have to admit that when I planned the store robberies, I expected to do them one by one, with plenty of police chasing done between each one, but three stores in, and I still didn't see a single cop car!
Sure, I heard the occasional siren in the distance as they went to the store I already robbed and was on my way to the next one, but that's about as close as they got to me.
I almost started to get bored.
Apparently, the universe saw that as a challenge, because when I got near my fourth target, instead of the usual clean storefront with a couple of customers looking around, I saw a smashed one with plenty of goons looting all the dust inside.
After parking a little bit away from the shop, I sneaked up to it and observed the robbery taking place.
Besides the terrified shopkeeper, there were five others inside the building. Four people wore a black and white uniform with a stylised wolf emblem on their back and a mask covering their whole head, while the last one was, shockingly, someone I recognised.
Wearing his iconic bowler hat and hipster cane, the overly dramatic criminal I met a week ago was robbing yet another dust shop, if with another crew.
The police were nowhere to be seen for now, but considering how long these guys were already here, who knew how long that would remain the case, so I was a little hesitant about wasting time fighting an entire crew.
Making matters worse, unlike last time, I was the one outside the dust shop, so I couldn't use my guns if I didn't want to blow the entire building up accidentally.
But as I continued looking, I saw the leader leaning on the counter and talking with the shopkeeper while all his underlings were looting or, more importantly, doing everything except guarding the entrance.
"I swear," As I put away my gun and took out a knife, I couldn't help but sigh at the incredible opportunity. "These idiots are gonna be the death of me." Not because they would kill me themselves but because I would do it myself by taking all these opportunistic risks.
Besides their boss, who was at the register, the other four criminals were looting individually, and with plenty of shelves between them, they made for easy pickings.
Crouching, I sneaked in through the broken front doors, and after confirming that nobody noticed, I approached the closest criminal. This man was standing on the left side of the room, using a cylindrical device to drain dust from the wall-mounted dispensers.
Feeling the aura swirling inside me, I focused and directed it into my blade, and after sneaking up right behind him, I covered his mouth with my left hand and, with my right one, cut his throat in one clean motion. The man was too shocked to react even as I silently laid his dying body on the ground.
Now that one of them was dead, it was only a matter of when they would discover the body, so I needed to hurry to the others before they stopped looting and realised they were being attacked.
The next man closest was grabbing bags of dust off of shelves a couple of meters away from the first one, so one more swipe with my knife later, I dispatched him the same way as the other.
With one side of the shop done, I peeked over the shelves at the rest of the shop and saw that the leader was still at the counter, stuffing various crystals into a briefcase while the other two goons were draining dust dispensers from the other wall.
The aura-unlocked grunts were not all that different from ordinary people, but I still had to assume that a proper huntsman would not fall as easily, so I had no choice but to take a long detour around the boss to get to the other side of the shop to take out the two guys there first.
The two men were right next to one another and facing the same wall, so even if I took one out stealthily, it was impossible for the other one not to notice. So instead of being sneaky, I swapped my knife for a machete, and after boosting my legs and blade with plenty of aura, I charged at them from my hiding place.
"What the-?"
"Kai!"
Predictably, that move earned everyone's attention, but not before I buried my machete in one of their spines, and before they could do something about me, I hurriedly removed my blade from the dead one to swing at the other.
Clang!
Unfortunately, the goon recovered faster than I thought and blocked my blade with his own.
"Y-you killed him-!" The man despaired, but instead of sympathy, I sent him an aura-empowered kick to the groin.
Toppling over in pain, he was now helpless against me. But before I could finish him off, the proper huntsman finally introduced himself by swinging his cane at me with the force of a rocket-powered sledgehammer.
I only managed to sense the attack because I was paying attention, but I still barely had time to get my machete between us.
The hit that would have ripped any ordinary person in half didn't kill me, but it still managed to send me crashing into the shelves, "Damn if it doesn't hurt, though."
"Just where do you weirdoes keep coming from, huh? First the Little red riding hood family, and now a janitor?" getting back to my feet, I saw the leader standing over his underling, who was rolling around in pain, "Does the name Roman no longer mean anything around these parts!?"
As someone with relatively little melee experience, picking a fight with someone primarily using melee would be unwise. However, since I had already reduced this fight to a one vs one, this was my best chance to check how good this world's standards are.
Gripping my machete harder, I charged at the now-identified Roman, and with a wide swing, I brought my machete down on him with my full might.
The man managed to block the strike, but it still caused him to stumble because no matter how skilled one might be, a fully aura-boosted strike was still a fully aura-boosted strike.
Pushing my advantage, I tried kicking him in the stomach to make him fall, but since I couldn't get the same momentum going as with the first attack, the man easily blocked it.
And unfortunately, that's about as far as my initiative lasted.
Pushing my foot back, the man didn't waste time and went on the offensive. I barely had the time to get my footing before I had to start blocking.
Hard and precise, each strike of the cane sought to either disarm or cripple me, and it took all I had just to prevent that.
Step by step, I was forced to retreat further back, and if things continued as they did, I would soon find myself backed into a corner.
"Okay, fighting huntsmen at their own game is a bad idea, noted." knowing there was no scenario of me coming out of this unscathed, I decided to take a risk to take back the initiative.
When a cane swing came from my left, instead of raising my machete to block, I attacked with it instead. And the moment I did, not only did I feel how my machete breached the man's aura and dug into his arm, but also how his cane crashed into mine and threatened to snap it.
The hit to my arm almost made me fall, but instead of pressing the advantage, the man retreated while clutching his bleeding arm.
"Tsk. Today is just not my day." the man now stood where we first clashed, and when he saw his last underling, who was still rolling around in pain, he kicked him as well, "F*cking animal, why did I even bother saving you?" of course, instead of getting up the underling only groaned louder.
My left arm was burning with pain, and although I could still move my fingers, there was a high chance the bone was fractured. At least I knew my opponent wasn't faring any better as the large gash I made on his arm was bleeding profusely.
I paid the price and gained an advantage, but we both knew there was plenty of fight in us yet, so we locked eyes once more and prepared to get right back to it, but before we could, the distant sounds of police sirens snapped us out of it.
We blinked at each other for a moment until-
Sigh~
"Look, I know this is awkward and all, but why don't we just..." Very carefully, the man lowered his weapon, clearly expecting me to do the same.
For a moment, I contemplated saying "screw it" and rushing back into the fight, but with this interruption, my head had enough time to cool off and realise that would have been stupid even by my standards. In the end, I could only follow suit, and when the man saw me lower my weapon as well, he threw one last look at his squirming underling before quickly booking it out of the shop.
With an injured arm, my motivation to continue with the robbery dimmed. But even if it didn't, looking back at the counter, it seemed the shopkeeper managed to slip away during our little brawl anyway. I also noticed a briefcase a particular criminal left behind sitting on the counter. Although I didn't know what was in it, I snatched it anyway so as not to go away completely empty-handed.
Running outside, I saw that although the police still hadn't arrived, the loud sirens told me they would any second. I threw the briefcase in the passenger seat and hit the gas just as the first police car rounded the corner.
Tires screeching, the inertia pushed me back into my seat as my car quickly accelerated and left the area before the cops even managed to get near the shop.
A slight pain pulsed in my injured arm as I squeezed the steering wheel, but it already felt much better than it did just a few minutes prior. As this was the first time I was injured after unlocking my aura, I didn't know if this was that faster huntsman-healing I read about or if that guy simply didn't hurt me as badly as I thought he did, but-
Checking my phone and seeing all the unrobbed shops still on the map, I decided that mystery-solving could go after I finished this business.