Being held by three people, Lucas couldn't move his body to escape his situation. He looked at the woman that was judging his every action closely and observed her quickly.
He had always thought of every possible outcome, so being caught was one of the scenarios that he was mentally prepared for.
However, being in the situation itself was different from what he had imagined. He also had to make a choice of which target he had to eliminate first among the four people there.
Without thinking too much, Lucas had to make a decision and as the woman was waiting for an answer, he looked up and smiled.
"Sleep!"
Suddenly, the woman felt a surge of drowsiness taking over her. She fell to the ground and began snoring loudly. The stern look that she had worn on her face the whole time had been replaced by a peaceful, innocent look as she dove deeper into the dream land.
Without a direct touch, the effect of the sleep spell was only half as effective, so Lucas did not have a lot of time. If the woman was an Unnatural, the effect would be even shorter than normal.
Seeing their leader suddenly collapse, the three terrorists were initially shocked, but they didn't let go of their target. One of them even took out a knife that they had hidden away.
Stab!
"Argh!" Lucas shouted as the cold steel sank into his left upper arm.
"Sleep!"
He quickly put the woman with the weapon to sleep, and with her collapsing, his left hand was now free.
Without waiting for the other two to react, he quickly cast another spell.
"Acceleration!"
The spell caused his body to feel lighter and more nimble, and he was able to move faster than before. Lucas grabbed the knife and stabbed the man holding his right arm.
"Fuck!" the man swore and instinctively tried to cover his wound.
After his right arm was freed, Lucas cast another spell.
"Leap!"
Thud!
However, instead of leaping forward, he pushed backward, hitting the metal wall behind him. The man that was coiling around him from the back hit his head against the wall and was knocked unconscious. The impact left a bloody mark on the wall.
"Sleep!" he quickly cast another spell on the wounded man.
"This hurts. I want to quit this job..." Lucas complained, pressing the wound with his hand.
An Unnatural healed naturally faster than normal humans, but it did not mean they were immune to pain.
"Four people. Which among them would know where the bomb is?" he pondered. His spirituality had been depleted a lot, so he could only read one more person's memory before he would need to recover first.
"Let's go with the leader. She is the most likely to know where it is. Even if she didn't, at least I might still learn something important,"
Squatting in front of the sleeping leader, Lucas began reading her memory film, rewinding it to the point he needed. He was like watching her life from an invisible third-person point of view.
First, it showed the last scene that she saw, where she was about to interrogate Lucas. The scene then moved back to where she gave a command to the terrorists.
After that, it showed Lucas a backward-moving scene of the woman just sitting in her own seat, doing nothing, when suddenly, Lucas picked up something. The woman was talking! However, there was no voice coming out of her mouth, even when Lucas stopped rewinding the memory film. She was just mouthing words without any voice.
"Almost... explosion... all of them?" that was what he could read from her lips movement.
He continued rewinding her memory film after that, but the woman was only sitting in her chair the whole time.
Finally, there was another scene where she seemed to be mouthing more words.
"Location... secret... only... Jeanette..."
His spirituality was finally drained, so Lucas couldn't rewind any farther. He let go of the woman immediately.
Pinching his throbbing head, he readied the stolen knife and stabbed the sleeping woman right in her heart.
"Too dangerous to be let alive..." he muttered.
After making sure the woman was dead, he sat down with his back against the wall and regulated his breathing. His face was pale and his head felt like a giant was pounding it with a barbed hammer.
Pant... pant...
He felt his heart drumming quickly and there was a kind of inexplicable ache in his chest. The wound on his arm felt even more intense like a swarm of spiked insects was about to burst out from his blood vessel.
Once he had regained enough spiritual energy, Lucas got up and approached the woman lying unconscious.
"Unless Jeanette is a guy, she should be the one."
He placed his hands on the woman's head again and began watching her memory film, rewinding it.
It appeared that the woman was a normal human, so he felt no resistance in her mind, and rewinding her memory didn't take as much spirituality as it was with the leader. He quickly skipped through everything, looking for a point that would be useful.
Finally, he stopped the rewinding and now he was watching a scene where the woman was talking to a tall man who looked like he was an important person. They were still on the train, but there was no one else, so it was most likely before they departed.
The woman was carrying a bag, following the man in silence. They arrived at the empty First-Class carriage, and the man asked the woman to take something out of her bag.
Not daring to look the man in the eyes, the woman handed him a small object with a beeping light. From his experience as a mercenary, Lucas knew that it was a bomb created by a Technomancer!
The bomb was no bigger than the woman's hand, but it packed a lot of explosive power. One of those could destroy the entire carriage with ease.
After receiving the metal object, the man pinned it down on the train floor and muttered something.
Suddenly, his hand went through the floor, along with the bomb. He had planted the bomb inside the carriage floor!
Lucas couldn't keep up any longer as his spirituality was yet again drained, so he let go. Since he had got the information he needed, he took out his pen again, casting enchantment on it, and then stabbed the woman called Jeanette.
Seeing the blood coming out of the wound irritated him, but he felt somehow excited as well.
Lucas quickly did the same with the sleeping man and the man with a wound on his head.
"Better safe than sorry," he shrugged nonchalantly.
His method of operation was always to kill his enemy whenever he could, leaving as few alive as possible.
Choo! Choo!
The train kept on moving, and the passengers were still sitting innocently in their own seats, enjoying the view outside. The train was approaching Loraine, so more and more industrial buildings became visible. From the outside, the train seemed like a normal passenger train, hiding the bloody massacre happening inside.
Lucas was sitting amidst the bloody corpses, recuperating and restoring his spiritual energy again. The three of them were just normal people, but the leader appeared to be an Unnatural. A Tome had at some point formed on top of her dead body, which Lucas picked up and examined.
"A Tome of the hunt. Not what I need, but I can definitely sell this," he looked at the ancient-looking book in his hand, "So, she was a Hunter," he tucked the tome at his back. The previous Tome had been safely moved to his luggage, so he had the space.
"I hope I can get a Tome of memory soon."
Wiping the blood from his clothes as best as he could, he got up and started pondering, still wearing the identity of one of the terrorists.
"I know where the bombs are, but then what do I do..." he thought, "the bomb is implanted into the floor, and even with an enchanted pen, I won't be able to dig it out." he felt his gun and looked at it, "Shooting it is too dangerous."
"And there is that man too. From his ability, he must be a high-ranked Unnatural. I can't afford to fight him head-on,"
"The ritual should still be active, so the passengers should not panic too much if anything happened. In this case, there is only one thing I can do,"
He then began chanting while focusing on the blood on his clothes, "You will be forgotten."
"This knife might still come in handy, so let's take it with me just in case," he said, hiding it under his shirt.
Thud!
He walked in the direction of the passengers, closing the door behind him. His aim was the toilet where he had hidden his luggage since he could not afford to lose it.
Pretending to be Melvin, he approached the group of Unnaturals that were guarding the perimeter, hoping that the leader's suspicions hadn't been shared with everyone.
"Where are you going?" one of them looked at the man, somehow neglecting the fact that his clothes were covered in more blood than before.
"The leader told me to meet the Big Man," he said, imitating the way that they referred to the mysterious man based on Jeanette's memory.
Upon hearing the name, the group appeared to show a hint of fear, so they did not question Lucas.
He passed them easily and quickly made a beeline toward the toilet. He could not waste any more time since the train would arrive at Loraine at any minute now.
The ritual that he had set was still in effect, so the passengers still did not feel scared by the dead people in the carriage. Some of them had apparently moved the dead body from the floor back to their seat as if they were just fainting.
Thud!
He closed another heavy door, and after passing one more corridor, he would arrive at his destination. Lucas increased his pace.
Suddenly, he felt a dangerous feeling coming from the opposite direction. Before he could do anything, someone spoke.
"Where are you going?" a deep, husky voice sent a chill to his bone.
He looked up and saw a man in uniform, a different kind from the one that Dan was wearing.
It was the man from Jeanette's memory!