No Time for Empathy

[The Devil System is currently idle]

[Waiting for conditions to fully activate...]

[Calculating...]

[...]

[Progress Towards Activation: 92%]

...

After school, I began making my way toward the hideout of the nameless enemies.

They had Disrupters, meaning there was likely a connection between them and REWORK, but that wasn't too important at the moment.

***

I looked at the dilapidated candy shop. Its sign was tilted, there was dust all over their windows, and their door squealed as I pushed it open. It was rather easy to find since it stood out in a bad way from all of the aesthetic, modern storefronts around the area.

Inside, I was greeted by an old lady.

"Hello, young man. What's brought you in here today?"

I guess she wasn't used to seeing people like me here. Her voice was croaky to the point that I could hardly understand it. If the information was accurate, this was some really good cover. I would've had no idea that they were running operations here.

Now the question was, what was I going to do?

I brought some equipment with me for this situation. I pulled out a small canister of sleeping gas and sprayed it around her face. Before long, she fell limp, and I hid her behind the counter.

After that, I opened the 'staff' door and looked around. From what I could see, there was nothing suspicious going on behind. I decided to put my back against the wall and observe the general area. After scanning around, I found some EM-wave residue quite a distance below me.

There must have been some sort of door or hatch that led down.

I searched around before noticing an oddly placed cupboard.

As expected, a door was revealed upon pulling it away.

I kicked it open, slamming it into the side of the wall. As the dust cleared, I saw a stairway that led down. Since there weren't large amounts of EM-waves, I assumed that they didn't know I was here already. The bang from the door had probably alerted them of me, though, so time was of the essence.

Making my way down the stairs, I drew my sword and raised it. After a slight spiral, I was met by another very large room. However, it didn't seem that this was their main room of operations either. There were a few other random doors.

One of their guards prepared to engage me, but I quickly put him to sleep with some sleeping gas. Two puffs in the face, and he was out cold. His large body slammed into the ground. I couldn't be bothered trying to make it quieter since I'd already made a lot of noise.

I opened one of the doors, leading to nothing but an empty storage room.

I turned to leave.

Suddenly.

I blocked the attack as fast as I could with my sword. The guard completely caught me off-guard as his blade bounced off mine.

That was close.

With one clean strike, I sliced off his head, letting it fall to the ground.

With that, I made my way to the next room. As I opened the door, I noticed that there was another staircase. I decided to observe the EM-waves again by putting my back against the wall. As expected, there was a significant growth in the number of EM-waves. They'd likely realised that there was an intruder.

I would need to be much more careful now. Considering that they had a B-rank esper who could control air, they might be able to cut off the air to my lungs, making it almost impossible to fight back. I needed to see what their ability was in as much detail as possible.

As I made my way down the stairs, I could hear some distant chatter. There was obviously a much larger number of people in the next room. I was in a situation where I didn't have the privilege of deciding who to kill. Aside from The Initializer, who is needed by the headmaster, everyone was fair game.

There was one final hardwood door.

I raised my leg.

With a decent amount of my strength, I kicked the door completely off of its hinges. It crashed down straight into the room, slamming on the ground.

It was pure chaos.

I looked around the place, killing everyone in my sight. People tried to resist, but most weren't strong enough to cause me any issues. A large number of guards engaged me, but I cut them down without hesitation. I felt a stinging pain in my arm and some liquid dribbling down. It was too hectic for me to see what was happening, so I just tried to slice everything in my way.

There were screams and yells as bodies hit the ground, littering the floor. I couldn't even tell what was going on, but soon enough, I felt another pain, this time in my leg. I looked down and saw something that looked like a metal skewer which had pierced my skin and muscles. It wasn't very bad, but blood was quickly dripping out of the wound.

A moment later, I noticed that there were insects crawling at my feet. It had to have been the work of an esper. I felt ants biting at my ankles as they climbed underneath my sock. I had to stop them somehow.

It didn't take very long for me to make calculations to reduce the potency of their ability, slowing down the insects. However, I still had no idea where they were, so I couldn't calculate a null equation.

I was still trying to kill the last few guards were I was fighting with. It wasn't too difficult since they lost their composure due to chaos, making their actions predictable and easy to dodge. After cleaving away at some flesh, I slew their remaining forces and looked around for the esper.

The insects were slowly making their way up my leg, drawing blood as they bit my skin.