Strongest Nova: Path of Vengeance

Chapter 99: Eradication

After defeating yet another Crawler, Stanley’s confidence in himself improved tremendously.

’I can do it,’ he thought to himself with a wide smile on his face. ’I can kill all the crawlers.’

Thinking so, he ran to the other crawlers that he could see in the distance.

The young man named Johan, who was laying on the ground next to a rock, tired, saw everything from where he sat. He saw Stanley fighting after taking his spot. He saw him handle the Crawler as if it was no big deal.

He saw the other men die and wanted to go back to help, but then he saw Stanley himself take down the Crawler without needing any help from anyone.

How did he do that? The young man had no clue. Was Stanley’s power not supposed to be the same as his? Why were the two of them so different?

On top of that, Stanley was only a Trainee, not even a full Defender. How did he fight so well?

While Johan only wondered how he could have done that, Stanley was already gone somewhere else to help more people.

Everywhere he went, he fought a Crawler as soon as someone died, or was too weak and needed to rest. Stanley wasted no time and attacked the monster relentlessly.

He even found out that attacking while standing on its main body was the best way to kill it. Having it hit itself was the best way to reduce the effort needed to kill the Crawler.

Stanley was a little confused while he fought the monsters. He couldn’t understand how he was able to continue fighting them.

Sure he had a strong body and had endurance beyond an ordinary human, but it wasn’t that great. He was only twice as strong as a normal human, not 20 times.

Why was he not losing strength even while fighting and killing 3 Crawlers in a row? Actually, he was also hurting these crawlers more and more, albeit slightly more every time.

Was... was he getting stronger?

Was it not just his power of Foresight that was getting better... but also his body? But why?

’Does it become better the more I use it?’ Stanley wondered, standing on the dissipating black smoke that had come from the defeated monster.

He couldn’t pay attention to his surrounding while lost in his thought. If he had, he would’ve seen Defenders looking at him with slacked jaws, unable to process how one could survive for such a long time while being attacked by two of the Crawler’s limbs while on top of its main body.

"Who is that?"

"I don’t think I’ve seen him before at work."

"Isn’t that the kid that quit a few days ago? During the mayor’s announcement?"

"Wait, the one that killed George?"

"Yeah, him! He’s Bradley’s brother if I’m not wrong. He works on the farm now."

The people that were resting on the sidelines talked to each other while Stanley went on to fight another monster in the distance.

They watched as he ran, curious how he could keep it going for so long.

By the time Stanley got to the 4th Crawler, there were 7 left in total. Once he defeated that amidst multiple other death, 4 remained.

He went to another one and killed it too. By the time he was done, 2 remained.

Stanley helped defeat one of them, and the other one was defeated by another group of Defenders.

Finally, the Crawlers that had come past the veil were thoroughly eradicated.

People cheered. Some laughed, some cried, both with tears streaming down their faces. They had never felt happier, nor had they felt sadder.

When there were 14 monsters, it looked like certain death to everyone. However, now that it was all gone, even though so many of their peers had died, they had survived.

Living to see another day was something most of them hadn’t expected, so being alive was bliss to them.

Some of the Defenders started getting up to go and help the ones that were injured. There were ones that weren’t tired or injured, the ones that were using ranged attacks to fight.

Some got up and went to look around the battlefield, through the corpses to check if there was someone still alive amongst them. They had no expectations of such, but hope was a weird thing.

One of them arrived next to Stanley, limping as he did so. His shin was bleeding it seemed, but he had tied his waistband around it for now.

"Little brother, are you injured? Do you need help?" the man asked.

Stanley was still in a bit of a daze, so he just shook his head.

"Oh," the man was a little surprised. "Great work out here. I saw you fighting those monsters. You were amazing. I can say that it was because of you that we survived here today. Thank you."

Stanley stared at the man, a weird emotion in his heart. He couldn’t tell what the emotion was, but he could tell that it had something to do with his powers.

"I’m sorry, can you move," Stanley said and pushed the man aside to walk away.

Many people tried to stop him and congratulate him, but Stanley couldn’t stop. He moved without stopping, heading in a certain direction that his heart was telling him to go.

He walked past the fields full of water, past the wooden houses where the dulls lived, and into the forest that separated the 2nd and the 3rd section of the town.

There he walked in a certain direction, toward a thicker part of the forest, unaware of why he was doing so.

He arrived in front of a large tree and slowly peered behind it. That was the place where his powers were telling him to come for some reason.

When he finally took a look at the place, his eyes went wide in horror.

That was where he found Bradley, his brother, with his body full of many wounds, soaked and drowning in his own blood.