Operations in the shadows

It's been a month since the events of Kirata's death, and it seems everything has calmed down in the world, but even in a time of peace, there will always be mischievous things going on in the background. In an unknown land, there's a dark fortress on top of a mountain very close to a strangely black and blue sky. At the bottom of the castle, Hunter has arrived.

"Well, it's about that time! I wonder how long it's been since I've seen everyone!"

"It's been about three years, give or take."

As Hunter stands at the entrance, he hears a cold, chilling voice come from behind him. When he looks behind him, he sees an extremely skinny 5'2 woman with white skin wearing a ragged gray and black dress with no shoes. Her face is completely covered by her long black and gray-tipped hair. She goes to give Hunter a non-consented hug. Before she could even get close to him, Hunter jumped out of the way.

"Sorry Death I'm not into hugs; maybe you can hug someone else."

"Hehe"

Without saying much of anything, Death opens the doors to the castle and walks in. As she walks away slowly, Hunter watches her with a face of discomfort.

"What the hell is up with this girl, if that is a girl? She's weird as hell, and that's coming from me! She has no fat on her whatsoever. It's alright to be skinny, but she's so skinny I can see her fucking bones, and I can't forget about her cold presence. I can never sense where she is until she speaks, and that's only because when she speaks, it feels like the entire air freezes around her. I have to find out what she did to become a feared legend named Death."

Hunter finally walks into the fortress and starts walking up a flight of stairs until he reaches the top of the fortress. When he does, he walks into a room with a long table made out of rock. The table has about fifteen chairs around it, but what would catch anyone's attention is the empty throne above everything in the room. Hunter starts to look around in confusion.

"Wait a minute, didn't Death come up here before me? I didn't even see her on my way up here."

"I'm down here, Hunter."

Hunter, feeling a chilling presence, looks down and sees Death once again.

"What the hell could you stop fucking doing that!?"

"Doing what exactly?"

"Could you two buffoons quiet down? The meeting hasn't even started yet!"

Both Hunter and Death look over to the stairs behind them and see Nisugi, who is sporting an expensive cloak over her usual business attire. Nisugi walks right past the two of them with a platinum briefcase in hand.

"Hahaha, hey babe, are you just arriving!?"

"Tch, stop calling me by that foul name, you disgusting perv! Just because you've gained the power of the beast king doesn't mean anything; I will still kill you in an instant."

"Haha! That might be true, but you know you need me for this operation!"

"Tch, that might be true, but if you think you two were the first ones here, you would be a fool since I came early and I was still the second one to arrive."

Nisugi points to the right corner of the room. Hunter looked to where she pointed and noticed that a 5'5 lanky individual wearing a white jumpsuit with a hoodie attached to it was occupying a seat. This individual is also wearing a golden mask in the shape of a skull, which matches their gold gloves and shoes.

"Oh well, if it ain't Killer himself, I'm surprised you didn't hide in a corner somewhere to avoid human confrontation!"

"..."

Death leaves Hunter's side and takes a seat at the left of the long table.

"Did you forget Killer over there is mute?"

"Oh right! You can't respond to me, even if you want to! Haha!""

As Hunter laughs, everyone in the room suddenly feels a strong presence coming up the stairs. Hunter smiles as he feels this presence and looks at the top of the stairs.

"Oh, the man of the hour has finally arrived!"

"Hello Hunter, it's been a while, but I do wonder why you always look in the opposite direction of me."

After hearing that familiar deep voice, Hunter looks behind him and sees a fit man wearing black pants that are holding up the two red katanas on his side and a single coat that fails to cover up his muscular torso, but what is most noticeable is his glowing brown skin alongside his beautiful light hazel eyes and brown hair.

"Oh, sorry, Wrath I forgot you like to play petty tricks!"

"No, not tricks. I would call them more of a test to see if your senses can keep up."

"Oh, trust me, if this was the battlefield, I wouldn't be caught in that fashion!"

"Yes, yes, I know, but I heard you finally reached your ultimate goal. I applaud you. That's a pretty high feat you achieved."

"Haha, yeah, I'm pretty proud myself!"

Hunter and Wrath take their seats, so Nisugi's meeting can finally start.

"Finally, it looks like everyone is here. OK, I welcome all of you to this official L.T.O. meeting! First things first, we ne—"

Hunter raises his hand before Nisugi can finish her sentence.

"Are we really calling ourselves L.T.O.? Like, what the fuck does that even mean?"

"Tch, we've been over this; it means level three operation!"

"Don't you think that's kind of bor—"

"Ok, like I was saying, let's start this meeting!"

"Hey, you can't just ignore me!"

Nisugi continues speaking despite Hunter trying to say something.

"I'm going to make this meeting quick so we can get to the operation as fast as possible. For the past few years, we've been on the search for eight strange daggers but have had no luck until a month ago. We have finally found one of the eight daggers thanks to Hunter, unfortunately."

"What the hell do you mean, unfortunately!?"

Nisugi once again ignores Hunter's screaming.

"We are finally able to push into the next phase of the operation, which is to find the remaining seven of these daggers."

Nisugi opened up her briefcase, and in it were four black and silver wristwatches with clean digital displays.

"These watches right here are what we are going to use to track down the daggers."

Nisugi shows the watch she has on her wrist as an example.

"These watches have been made with the full intention of tracking the same strange material the dagger Hunter found a month ago. Our scientific team has spent weeks researching the dagger and finding out the different patterns in the dagger's materials, but what matters most is that they have researched the energy emitting from the dagger. They have been able to save all these patterns in these watches, so in theory, the watches should be able to track the remaining seven daggers, but to do this, they must reach a certain distance from the dagger to pinpoint its location. With that being said, all four of you will take one of these watches."

Hunter, Death, Wrath, and Killer all pick up a watch from the briefcase and put it on their right wrist.

"Using the watches is pretty simple; you twist the camera on the side to get a hologram of the area around you."

Nisugi twisted the camera on the side of the watch, and from it came a hologram of the fortress they are currently in.

"When you get near one of the daggers, a red dot will pop up on the map."

Everyone in the room nods their heads in understatement.

"All of you keep this in mind: finding the daggers will not be easy since most of the daggers are in places hard to get to, but this is why I'm only giving this job to feared legends. Since you all have been proven to be extremely strong, this operation is perfect for you. I will be assigning you all to a specific zone. Hunter, you will go to the Moro zone since you do well in that territory. Wrath will go to the Mud Zone, Death will go to the Snarcho Zone, and me and Killer will be in the Grava Zone."

"Right!"

"And Killer, remember your number one objective!"

Killer takes a closer look at the watch he was just given and nods his head.

"Once any of you find a dagger, report to me immediately!"

Hunter starts to smile as Nisugi finishes up the meeting.

"Haha! This should be fun!"

"Hehe, yeah, it should be."

"Ah god damn it, Death, stop popping out of thin air!"

"But I've been here the entire time."

"Hunter, you should treat Death with more kindness; she's a feared legend just like you."

"Of course, you would say something like that, Wrath! You have no idea how weird it is to have someone in the room you can't not—"

Nisugi, annoyed by Hunter's constant talking, throws the empty suitcase at his head, which makes him quiet down.

"Good now that I can hear myself think! Let the hunt for level three begin!"

Chapter 42 end