Strongest Nova: Path of Vengeance

Chapter 280: Multiple Players

A man ran across the river, splashing water everywhere upon him in the darkness of the night. He knew someone was following him, trying to kill him. The pale moon gave little light to see things during the night, but even then someone followed him.

"Don’t come near me!" the man shouted as he ran. He didn’t want to die and neither did he want to fight back. "Don’t come near me."

His words were loud and urgent. He splashed through the river, trying to get to the grassland on the other side, but he slipped on something inside the water.

He had stepped into a deeper part of the river where the water came up to his chest and frantically started splashing around to get back up. He panicked and that didn’t help him at all.

By the time he managed to get back on his feet and treading water, he could hear splashes behind him from the person who followed him.

"Please, no!" the man shouted, but the other person didn’t seem to want to hear him.

"Stop running and just die!" the other person said, laughing out loud.

"No, please," the man said. "Just leave me alone. I don’t want to—"

Something struck him on his right shoulder, sending him back into the river. He was in a much shallower place, but the pain and panic made it hard to focus. He tried to get back up, but he kept slipping.

He started drowning in the water and as he did, a single thought came to his mind.

’I’m dying...’ he thought. ’Maybe I shouldn’t hold back.’

And he let his powers activate. He felt his body squirm, his muscles expand, and then... everything went black.

* * * * *

A woman sifted her hand through the snow to find rocks that were underneath it. She could go to the riverbank to find a lot more, but it was further away, and the river was always a good place to be ambushed.

She didn’t like that.

She would rather stay hidden in the forest, moving around in the dark and hiding during the day.

She finally found a few stones, all oddly shaped, and walked toward a location in the forest where she expected people to walk through.

She then got down on her knees and began the arduous task of balancing all the rocks on top of each other. She started with the 2 largest rocks at first and stacked them on top of each other. Once she knew it was balanced, she moved on to the next ones.

One after another, the girl managed to balance a total of 5 rocks on top of each other. Because of the random shape of the rocks, the task of balancing them all this time had been rather difficult.

But that difficulty would show its strength when the trap was sprung.

She stood up slowly with a grin and walked away from that place toward another spot in the forest where she would prepare another trap.

* * * * *

A tall man appeared close to a flickering light by the campfire that someone had forgotten to extinguish. All the wood had been burned out, but the embers still glowed enough to let someone know who was there.

The tall man walked up close to the campsite and was surprised to see that there were 2 people there instead. He hadn’t expected people to pair up or be in groups in this life-and-death game, but somehow he had seen 2 this very day.

Without making any sound, he pulled out a small dagger and walked toward one of the two people who were sleeping while something else moved toward the other one.

As soon as he arrived atop the person, he stabbed all over the place multiple times. The man sleeping in the sleeping bag woke up to pain and scream but soon died.

The other person, who sounded like a woman, made a screech and then a gurgling sound before all quieted once again.

He placed his hand on the dead man and took a deep breath before pouring something into it. He kept his eyes closed while the body underneath him convulsed, and something dark surfaced from the corpse.

The man walked away to the next corpse and did the same thing there as well. He watched the black thing emerge from the corpse and grow to its full shape.

A Wolf.

He finally stood and walked away from the two corpses, taking nothing of theirs with him. He was simply there to kill them and nothing else.

He walked through the forest and the two wolves he had just formed joined up with him and a pack of wolves that he had gathered for a long time. The wolves acted as if they were his guards, surrounding him to protect him with their flesh and blood.

Only, these weren’t actual wolves at all and had no flesh and blood to them. Instead, they were constructs of Shadow, and the man that they surrounded was their master.

* * * * *

A tall woman arrived upon a campfire with a man seemingly lost in thought. The woman looked at the man and couldn’t help but form a smile on her face.

"Finally!" she said out loud. "I found you!"

The man heard her and looked up. A flash of surprise passed through his eyes, but no more than that.

"Alice?" the man stood up from the layer of warm leaves he had been sitting atop and looked at the woman in front of him. "What are you doing here?"

"I came to kill you, Stark," the woman said. "I didn’t expect it to take me nearly a month to find you."

"Kill me?" Stark asked as a mocking smile formed on his face. "Do you think you can?"

"Do you think I care?" Alice asked.

The man slowly nodded and sighed. "Of course. Why would anyone as crazy as you care for reasons," he said. Memories were flooding back that he hadn’t remembered in ages.

"I killed your wife," Alice said suddenly. "That little bitch dared forget the face of the woman that loves you so very much."

Stark looked almost concerned but scoffed in the end. "Not my wife anymore. We divorced. You may not have heard," he said. "If you expected me to get angry, you’re sourly mistaken."

The woman grunted a little. "Let me kill you then. Okay?" she asked. "Let me kill you and I will let you kill me. We can both die together like we were always meant to."

The man kept his eyes on the woman while shaking his head. "I’m afraid I intend to live through this all, Alice. Why don’t you be a doll and hang around for a while too?"

Before Alice could react, vines fell from the trees overhead, grabbing the woman’s all over her body. She was lifted by her leg and left dangling upside down.

"Let me go!" she shouted. "Let me out of this, Stark! Let me go or I’ll kill you—"

A pair of vines wrapped around Alice’s mouth, gagging her.

Stark shook his head and looked away from the woman. As soon as he did, he forgot about the woman and was once again lost in his own thoughts.