Strongest Nova: Path of Vengeance

Chapter 286: Do You Like Killing?

A spray of blood and bones splattered all over Red as the remainder of the woman’s corpse landed next to her on the muddy ground.

At the same time, the man who had jumped along with the woman from the trees was halfway down the descent as well.

Stanley pulled back his arm quickly, waiting for the man to fully descend so he could kill him too.

As Stanley prepared to kill the man, the man released something before he even came all the way down.

Stanley could see what it was with his future sight, but what he saw didn’t help him at all. Thick blue strings made out of light wrapped around his arm and body, seemingly constricting his movement.

He couldn’t move his arm at all, and instead, the man fell on top of him, smashing something hard on his head. Fortunately, it wasn’t enough for Stanley to feel anything more than a momentary pain.

Stanley looked back up and saw the man dangling from the tree with the blue energy threads that he had created. He looked at Stanley with some surprise and quickly pulled himself back up.

Stanley kept his eyes on the man but the man quickly threw out some blue strings to the next closest tree and swung to it. Stanley watched as the man quickly disappeared from his limited view, going further into the forest.

Only then did he look down and see the half-destroyed piece of wood that the man had smashed across his head.

"Dammit!" he cursed softly. Had he noticed the piece of wood before, he could’ve killed the man right then and there.

"Are you okay?" the old woman asked Stanley from the back where she stood still, her legs stuck to the mud.

"Yes," Stanley answered as he kept his eyes on the trees just in case the man returned, or there were more hiding up there.

He placed his palm on the mud underneath him and used his powers to stop time for just the mud. Because the mud was not just one object, which his powers worked on, he wasn’t sure just how much of it would stop in time.

Thankfully, enough of the mud stopped in time completely that Stanley could stand up as though the ground was solid enough.

Lifting his arm away from the mud, however, reverted it back to the first stage. Thankfully, now that he was up, he could force himself to move around. Thick and viscous mud pulled along with him, leaving long stretched portions as Stanley tried moving.

He barely managed to move a few steps before stepping on mud which did not hinder his movement. It seemed whatever kept them stuck to the mud was put on just a small patch of it.

"Did we step on some glue or what?" Stanley asked looking back at the ground behind him. He waited for someone to answer and looked up, only to see the woman’s horrified face looking toward Red.

Or more exactly, she was looking behind the half-destroyed body of the woman that had fallen in front of Red. The woman that Stanley had killed.

Stanley grimaced a little seeing the dead body and felt a little bad about killing her so brutally. But there was no regret in him.

"Can you guys move?" Stanley asked and went back to help the woman walk through the mud. The glue-like ground thankfully didn’t tear off people’s skin when they forced themselves to pull their way through it.

After pulling the old woman out, Stanley helped Red move along as well. However, as someone slathered in the blood and bits of another human, Red seemed a lot more shaken than the old woman and couldn’t do much on her own.

"Do you feel no guilt?" the old woman suddenly asked.

"Sorry?" Stanley looked back.

"You... just killed that woman," the old woman said.

"She tried to kill Red," Stanley said. "They tried to kill us."

"But still..." the old woman stopped herself from heaving. Years of experience as a nurse did not stop her from feeling repulsed at the sight of a human body this destroyed.

She turned to look at Stanley. "Have you killed many people before?" she asked.

"Yes," Stanley said without missing a beat. "But none who didn’t deserve it."

Red trembled on the side, still reeling in the shock of seeing a person’s body explode on top of her. She had seen many gruesome deaths before and killed some herself too. But this death was simply too...

"We need to start walking or they might return," Stanley said. "That guy from earlier went in that direction, so we should go there."

He pointed to a direction slightly to the left of where the man went. "We should get moving. If we stay in the rain for too long, we’ll get sick."

The old woman said nothing, and Red slowly nodded before standing up. They used Red’s blanket to wipe the blood on her and flipped it around to ward against the rain.

About 15 minutes later, the rain slowed down to a drizzle, and the group found a small spot in the forest where they could hang a blanket over a tree with low branches to make a small tent for themselves.

The spot was also close to the large river that went through the island, so it was a rather good spot. They decided to rest there for a while and let Red deal with the blood that completely covered her.

She started cleaning herself in the river with its cold water, while Stanley and the old woman kept a lookout for anyone trying to kill her.

"How old did you say you were? 18?" the old woman suddenly asked.

"Yes," Stanley answered, not thinking much about the question.

"Where does an 18-year-old learn to kill people and not be phased by it?" she asked.

Stanley finally turned back toward her and stared at her questioning look. "There are plenty of places I suppose. Mine wasn’t an orthodox one though," he said.

The woman continued staring at him with her questioning eye. "Do you like killing?" she asked him.

Stanley frowned a little. "Did it look like I liked it when I killed that woman?" he asked.

"No," the woman answered truthfully. "But you didn’t seem to find it appalling either."

"That was because I can be sure in here that she isn’t necessarily a good person. Only people from the underworld join this place."

"You don’t know she’s an evil person for certain," the woman said.

"No," Stanley said. "But it’s a good excuse to not feel guilty when you do end up in a situation where you either kill or die. I would rather kill each time and walk out of it with a clean conscience."

"So you’re saying you only do it when necessary and don’t like killing?" she asked him.

"Obviously," Stanley said in an annoyed tone. The woman’s questioning gaze was starting to anger him a little.

"Is it not because killing is addictive?" she asked.

"What?" Stanley couldn’t understand what she was saying. "Why would it be addictive?"

"Because people die," the woman said, "and you are a Nova."

Stanley’s face changed from confusion and annoyance to sudden seriousness. "Why do you say that?" he asked.

"There’s no point in hiding it," the woman said. "Your expression has already told me all that I need to."

Stanley frowned. "Okay," he said. "How did you figure it out?"

"You weren’t exactly hiding it," the woman scoffed. "Your quickly aging power aside, your body was way too strong. And then your movements. You act as though you already know what is going to happen before it happens. Back with those black wolves, and then earlier with the woman who jumped. I didn’t even notice her before she died."

The old woman shook a little remembering the spray of blood that she saw blossom in front of her vision out of nowhere.

"And besides, I have been wondering about a single question since the first day I woke up in this blasted place. Why was I chosen to fight in a death battle between criminals? Everyone else seems to have agreed to join this place, but I was brought here without my consent."

She turned to look at him. "Then I met you, another person in the same situation as me. So I started paying a little more attention toward you, to see if there was something similar between us."

"And then I realized, no, they did not choose me because they just randomly happened to find me in a rubble at all."

Stanley could feel the weight of the next words before the woman even said it. He did not need to know the future to know what she would say next.

"No," the woman spoke with a dejected voice. "They chose Novas."

Stanley’s eyes opened wide in surprise and he nearly stood up where he sat.

"You are—" he nearly shouted out loud and had to stop himself before he said too much. He sat back down at looked at the woman.

"You are a Nova too?" he asked her.

The old woman nodded. "Yes, I am a Nova too," she said with a long sigh. "I thought of hiding, but it might be important information for the both of us, so I decided to tell you this."

Stanley immediately sat back down with a frown on his face.

"If... that is the case then... there is someone out there who can capable of recognizing a Nova," Stanley said.

’And for some reason, he’s working for the goddamn Silent Nexus.’