PoV random mafia underling
The sky was already dark outside, but the clouds completely covered it, making it look a lot darker than it actually was. All the lights had been broken by that man. The floor was tainted with blood.
The man was smiling at us from the other side of the hallway. His eyes were shining in the darkness, and his giggling made the atmosphere even more tense.
I was lucky; I had to go to the bathroom while the others were dealing with the intruder. When I reached the last floor, everyone but Ness and Facci were dead. All of them had their heads cut off from their bodies and were placed in front of the elevator.
Ness and Facci were both tied up in some random chairs. The man was clearly interrogating the two of them while slowly breaking their fingers off.
"I warned you not to shoot, didn't I? Why did you have to waste my precious bullets?" He said it in a delighted tone while caressing Facci's face.
"Let's see… Do you have a phone?" He asked him while slowly searching through his clothes.
"D-Do you know what you're up against?" Ness' threat fell on deaf ears as the man completely ignored him.
"Ah, there it is!" He exclaimed with childish enthusiasm.
He seemingly didn't notice my presence. I was slowly walking up to him with my hands on the handgun, but for some reason, I couldn't bring myself to pull the trigger.
"Now, now... I can't understand shit. Does every fucking stage have its own writing but the same language? This doesn't make any sense?" He complained while talking to a spear that was hanging on the wall behind him.
As soon as I was close enough to properly see Facci's face, I felt weird chills running through my body. The air felt extremely cold, and my body was feeling heavier and heavier as time passed.
"How about this, my friend: if you put your boss on the line for me, I'll spare the guy who has been watching us for a long time."
'What?!'
As I raised my hands to aim at him, a man suddenly got up from the pile of corpses and pushed me to the ground.
He was being careful with my handgun. He was trying to disarm me by snatching the weapon from my hands. I tried to punch his face, but I ended up only hurting myself, as he was harder than I thought, as if he was made of metal.
As soon as he got a hold of my gun, he proceeded to throw it at the other man. He was ignoring us, fidgeting with it, and then activating the flashlight in the process.
"So what is your answer? Do you want him and your family to be spared? If you give me satisfactory answers, I might even allow you to have a free ride."
He picked up the gun, removed the magazine, and threw away the gun. He then pointed the flashlight towards a corner of the room where a woman was tied up and blinded.
"Who do you-" I tried to speak, but the man on top then started punching me.
I managed to push him away, then I tried to get up, but he was already on me and started choking me from behind.
"I'll-" Facci tried to answer, but the man shot him in the head.
"Oops, anyway. Seth, my dear, can you confirm if you can actually read the memories of the victims you possess."
"Yes I can." The man behind me answered while slowly lowering the pressure he was putting on my neck.
"Is there any merit in leaving them alive?" He asked.
"No, they're not important enough to be used as hostages." He answered.
He then proceeded to shoot Ness before turning to me.
"So, how was my acting?" He asked while smiling.
'What is he talking about?' I was too afraid to ask.
"How cruel. I thought it was pretty good this time... Oh well, if you say so."
"Still, I expected a bit more from them... Fury!"
An axe appeared before him, and then the pressure that was in the air vanished.
"Well then, goodbye."
PoV Marcus
"MARCUS!" shouted Daniel from the ground floor.
'Oh shit, what now?'
Lately, Daniel has been shouting my name less and less, so it was shocking to hear him shout my name.
I ran down the stairs, passed by Manni and Shirley awkwardly staring at each other, and finally reached the ground floor to see why he called me.
He was waiting for me at the entrance with my test in hand.
'Oh no, I know where this is going already.'
"What is this?" He asked while pointing at one of the answers.
My eyes immediately checked for the mark. Thankfully, it was a positive one (71/100), so I took a sigh of relief.
"I did well. What's the problem?"
In the distance, I could hear Nina and John making a surprised gasp.
"Can't you read?"
The question was, "What is your dream job?". The answer I wrote was " I don't know."
"I just- I don't know, ok? Are you happy now?" I answered.
"Do you think it's healthy to stay like this?"
"What can I do anyway? Everything went to shit after the gods started their fucking show. " I complained.
He stood there, thinking. He let out a small sigh. Then he accompanied me into the storage and closed the doors.
"Not every country—not every world—is like this one. You've heard the stories about Kane. His homeland, for example, is extremely different from yours." He said this while massaging my shoulders.
"I still have a lot of time to decide."
" If you keep behaving like that at 16, you still won't know what you want to do in life."
I remained silent.
"You like games, right? How about becoming a player?"
"That's… I like playing video games, but I don't want to make it a chore. " I answered.
"How about music?" Daniel proposed.
"I don't have the talent for it."
"Mhhhh."
He stood there in front of me, immersed in his thoughts.
"How about this? Let's just enjoy our upcoming vacation. Let's leave these thoughts for later, when we'll return relaxed and with a clearer mind."
He then opened the door.
"You can go back to whatever you were doing before, and make sure to wash yourself before going to bed."
'Yes, yes, sure. Thankfully, I managed to get out of that one unscathed.'
In most situations, talking back to Daniel would leave me without an internet connection for at least a couple of days.
As I was walking up the stairs, I noticed that John and Nina were again training themselves to use aura.
After their little sparring session, they both became obsessed with the use of aura. To prevent any incident from happening, Kane was appointed as their teacher. The rest of us never bothered learning anything other than what they decided was mandatory.
Both of them were quite adept with the use of aura, at least to my eyes, but they focused on very different things. John focused on body enhancement techniques and close quarter combat, mimicking Kane's flashy style of combat. Nina enjoyed using ranged techniques to trick John into her finisher, which is a palm strike combined with a spinning aura to give it a lot more power.
While John was training his endurance with Kane, Nina was trying to improve her control over the aura by making shapes either of ice, dirt, or fire. She wasn't particularly good, and it didn't seem that she was making much progress, but her efforts were undeniable.
"Kane was probably lying about only allowing one of them to become a hunter." I mumbled to myself as I was going on my way.
'I don't know why John decided that way, but for Nina it was obvious: Kane was her savior and has been her role model since he became our teacher.'
That's why, out of all of the golden soldiers, Kane was the one we knew the most about. His homeland was a weird one. They weren't all that technologically advanced. Their technology was mostly powered by magic—mana crystals, to be exact. Something they only recently acquired due to their being annexed to the "Stione empire". The entire planet is at the mercy of the god of the hunt, who demands constant festivals and hunts.
The god of the hunt is similar to the god of combat in a sense; they are both fans of combat, but the god of the hunt is a lot more picky about what he likes to watch. The beast hunted is usually a lot stronger and bigger than the hunter, and the hunter is only allowed to use aura.
Suddenly, I felt my body shivering. While sparring with Kane, John received an extremely fast punch that put him on his knees.
'Shesh! He really is something else, to be taking that kind of beating every day and still be convinced that it is the right path…'
I quit on the second day, while the others quit on the first day.
'But I'll admit, they have made a lot of progress since then.'
I felt a weight on my stomach as I walked up the stairs. As soon as I reached my floor, I noticed that Manni was kissing one of the new girls on the cheek in the apartment in front of mine.
'Well since she's not part of the family, I guess it can be allowed.'
It was all because, lately, Daniel had pushed us to meet and befriend other kids. Nina and I didn't make many friends. Manny, on the other hand, seemed to have completely changed recently.
'But to think he would take her here... Should I keep a close eye?'
He was all huggy and puffy with that little girl, giggling at random stuff. He was playing a platformer game on a small console and was proudly showing her his "Gamer Skills".
'Who cares? He probably got permission from Daniel or Nassus, so it will be fine.'
After some moments of hesitation, I simply decided to leave it be, so I entered my apartment, left the door open, and went straight towards my bedroom.
I threw the shirt on the ground and leaped towards the bed, bouncing on it a couple of times, head side down, before turning to the side to grab the phone on the nightstand.
As I started aimlessly scrolling through the news, I saw an article showing us It was mainly about Nina and John. Apparently, people had started catching up on the fact that those two had started learning magic.
'Why do they even care about that? Shouldn't they focus more on God's trials? Especially since our representative is a fucking psycopath!'
They were pressing on the fact that with those magical abilities, two kids were stronger than most adult athletes. Kane was barely mentioned, although the video showed those two up against him.
I wanted to leave a nasty comment, but I refrained from doing so, and I simply sent the link in the group chat, asking someone to show it to Daniel or whoever was in charge of leading the nation.
'Serves them right.'
Meanwhile, a clip of Diego started to go viral.
It was one of him referring to humans as "pathetic inferior lifeforms.' with a delighted smile while watching people suffocate to death because of his gas. That was the way he ended the eighth stage.
Most comments were clearly against him being our representative. Then there were the edgy kids...
"At this point, I don't even know if I should be grateful that everything has gone back to the way it was before."
Although no article was talking about the Golden Order, it was clear that most people had an extremely negative bias against them.
'And now they're venting their rage at us...'
I tossed the phone to the opposite side of the bed.
'Maybe I should go back to studying for now. Yeah, that seems the best answer for now.'