Two hours later, at night.
Keith silently munched on some chicken jerky that he had bought a few minutes ago as he watched the contents on the system screen. He maintained a a close distance to Aria as he walked along the streets, using the guidance of his system to keep things accurate.
After observing her for the past few minutes, he only had one thing to say about her and that was how good she was at running away. Though it was mostly thanks to the system she had received from Keith.
The goal was to avoid danger 50 times and by now, she had already managed to reach 12.
Keith suddenly stopped munching on the jerky and rushed forward as he read the contents on the system screen. As he ran, he took out a new mask that had some cracks on it and put it on.
[User Aria is surrounded by three men and is unable to escape. She pleads them to let her go...]
The text that was generated was connected to the live events, so Keith ran as fast as he could and in a matter of just thirty seconds, he found her lying on the hard ground while one of the men had a rope in his hands, ready to tie her up.
He continued running, but before he could reach them, one of the three guys spotted him and alerted the other two.
"Who is this bastard?!" the guy screamed and the other two guys turned to look at Keith as he got closer.
Two of the three guys were free, so they rushed to stop Keith before he got to Aria.
Keith observed the two of them as he got closer. Both of them were thin, but based on the visible muscles that he could see, he could tell that they were strong guys. Physically, they could have been around Keith's strength, but he knew that they would have a whole lot of experience when compared to him who had lived a peaceful life for almost three decades.
While he was at a disadvantage when considering experience and physical strength, he still had something that his opponents didn't.
The man who was closest to him, sent a punch flying towards his face but Keith dodged it by tilting his body to the left. As he did this, he returned the favour by punching the guy's with all the strength that he could muster.
As soon as he fist came in contact with his abdomen, he increased his sensitivity to the max.
"Ough-" he let out a constipated grunt as he bent forward and directly fell face first into the ground, his body as still as a rock.
Keith didn't waste time and directly rolled backwards, only to see the second guy stop in his tracks instead of attacking him mindlessly.
"Hey, take the girl and run. This guy doesn't look like a normal person." he warned his friend, keeping his true goal in mind, "I'll try stalling."
Hearing this, Keith squinted his eyes and without wasting any time, he grabbed his revolver and pointed it at the guy in front of him.
"If any one of you moves.... hands up in the air, assholes." he said, trying to assert his dominance, which he succeeded in as both of them raised their hands, not wanting to lose their lives.
Keith nodded, satisfied with the outcome and spoke, "Now, turn around and leave silently. Without the girl."
He then silently watched as they left the place without causing any commotion and once they were gone, he untied the robed that bound Aria. Just as he was about to leave, the girl latched onto his arm like a leech.
Not wanting to deal with her, he directly pointed his gun at her head which forced her to let him go.
"Leave."
Unfortunately for him, this girl wasn't like the three men that he had just scared off. Just from one look he could tell that her survival instincts were absolute garbage, but then he remembered about his system.
'Ah... she must be seeing white or blue aura around me right now.' he thought as he changed the image in his mind. He imagined himself shooting a bullet through her head and stared at her menacingly.
This did the trick as she stumbled backwards and began to apologise.
"Leave." he repeated once again and this time, she listened to him and left the place.
'This might be mentally scarring, but I need you to reach the goal as soon as possible. That's the only way I'll be able to have sufficient ability to protect myself when the war starts.' he thought to himself as he recalled the start of the second arc in the novel.
The entire arc was dedicated to the war between multiple regions and it was extremely bloody.
'Clark... you must be fighting in the underground cage fights right now, huh? After all, the closer you get to death, the stronger you become.'
Recalling the information on Clark, the protagonist of the novel, he couldn't stop himself from feeling helpless. His abilities screamed "protagonist" no matter how he thought about them.
'Well, there's still two years time.' he convinced himself as he opened up his system screen and continued to keep an eye on Aria as she had a quest to roam the district until the sun rose in the next morning. And she had to do this alone without any help from the Golden church, aka Church of the God of Money.
Which meant that even Keith had to stay awake so that she wouldn't actually get kidnapped by the bounty hunters. He simply wanted her to escape danger 50 times and did not wish her any physical harm.
After his first conflict with the three bounty hunters, he was relatively free for the next few hours until she reached the 48 out of 50 escapes. It was at this time that Keith panicked.
[User Aria stops in front of an Awakened bounty hunter, paralyzed and unable to move.]
"Oh shit."