Chapter 76: Bloodline Taking Over

I followed the villain leader and made my way to where they were storing everything they’d stolen or picked up from rifts. Mostly stolen, not actually acquired from rifts.

Either way, what mattered was that those items were going to be mine. It felt a little weird accepting stolen goods, but who cares? I just wanted to grab the crystals and get out of there.

"I can give you 2,000 crystals," the leader said, "and maybe we can work together someday. Your ability is interesting."

I didn’t bother trying to talk him into giving me more than 2,000. Honestly, it was already good pay. That many crystals just for keeping my mouth shut about their hideout? I was perfectly fine with that.

He pointed at a pile of crystals. "From what I remember, there’s around 2,100 in that pile. Take it all. Might take you a while though. You’ll have to find a bag for all of it."

The odds of him having some evil plan behind this were pretty high. Was he trying to keep me there, wasting time collecting crystals until reinforcements showed up? It wasn’t a crazy idea.

Too bad for him, I just held out my hand and every single crystal got sucked straight into my pocket dimension.

That huge pile vanished in an instant. He stood there with his mouth open, letting out an awkward laugh.

"Haha, look at that, how convenient," he said. "Like a vacuum cleaner. That’s a pretty handy ability for rift diving."

I could tell he was embarrassed and hiding serious anger underneath, but since he’d said he was going to give me the crystals, he couldn’t exactly show it.

Still, he tried to keep me there a little longer.

"What do you say we sit down and talk about ways to work together? I think we can pull in a lot more crystals than just those 2,000 I handed you."

Yeah, I turned that down instantly. No way was I sticking around inside some criminal hideout, even if I could hold my own in a fight.

Right now, a fight between me and the leader would be rough for both of us, so there was no point in getting hurt over it.

But if he called in backup with strength anywhere close to his, my situation would go south fast. Getting out of there was the smart move.

"I think I’ll head out," I said. "I won’t tell anyone about this hideout, like I promised. It was a pleasure doing business with you."

I grabbed everything and left without sticking around to chat. I could feel the murderous, rage-filled stares aimed at my back, but nobody tried anything.

I walked out of their hideout and released the villains I still had locked up in my cube. Then I headed back the same way I’d come in.

While they could still see me, I walked slowly, like I wasn’t suspicious of anything and had everything under control.

But the second I was out of their line of sight, I picked up the pace and ran, heading back to the main road and making my way toward Diablo, which was where I’d been going in the first place.

I didn’t want to risk sticking around and getting ambushed by those criminals’ reinforcements. Sure, maybe there were no reinforcements. It was just a gut feeling, but something about the whole situation felt off.

A lot of time had passed since I’d split from that group of hunters. Around 25 minutes, I figured. Maybe 30.

But since I was way faster than them, after about 10 minutes on the road I spotted them in the distance.

I didn’t go up to them. I just watched from far away, following along to see where they were headed. They’d said it was near the Canadian border, and that was where I was going too.

From a distance, I caught bits of their conversation.

"That guy sacrificed himself for us. What an idiot," Jane said to the rest of the group. "I told you my looks can get morons to do whatever I want."

Hearing that made me genuinely angry. I actually considered walking up to them and teaching them a lesson. Maybe even killing those bastards.

No, not killing. What was I thinking? They were trash, sure, but they weren’t villains. If I attacked them, the Hunter Society would give me endless grief over it.

Anyway, I kept following them at a comfortable distance. Since the gap in our power levels was massive, with me being way stronger, they had no idea they were being tailed.

Eventually we reached Diablo, a place with no normal residents since it wasn’t really a town.

The group had said they were going to hole up in the wilderness until the invasion was over. They didn’t take the well-known trail up to Sourdough Mountain. Instead, they went straight through the forest, heading toward the Canadian border.

That area was brutal to travel through. Tons of mountains, freezing weather, the peaks packed with snow, on top of dense forest and the constant risk of getting jumped by monsters along the way.

There were plenty of rifts in the region, like everywhere else.

I followed them along a small path that had already been worn into the ground by people who ventured out to climb the nearby mountains and get a view of both sides, the US and Canada.

That made things a lot easier, but they were painfully slow. I was already getting a little bored trailing behind them.

We walked alongside a river, stepping across stones. At least the scenery was beautiful, and that helped settle my mind a little. They’d also stopped talking about me and how I was supposedly an idiot, which brought my stress level down a notch.

But I’d still get my revenge, no question about that. Especially out here in the middle of nowhere. Maybe killing those little bastards wouldn’t actually cause me problems down the line...

It was strange, thinking about killing people who were technically innocent. Like I’d already suspected, that primordial serpent bloodline was messing with my judgment. I definitely wasn’t the same easygoing person I used to be, not by a long shot.

I kept following them for a good while with nothing interesting happening. But there was no way they’d reach the border in a single day, not at that pace.

I could’ve gotten there faster by using the cube to fly, but that went against the whole point of staying hidden and crossing the border without getting caught.

When night was about to fall, they decided to stop and make camp.

"It’s not a good idea to keep going at night," Jane said to the rest of the group. "Let’s camp here and get moving again early tomorrow. I’m exhausted and starving."

Everyone was, honestly, including me. But stopping to camp this early? That wasn’t something I’d do. My night vision was way too good to just stop and set up camp at a spot like this.

I waited for it to get a little darker before slipping past them. The night was perfect cover, exactly what I needed to pass by without anyone noticing.

"Did you hear something?" Jane said, frowning as she looked around.

"I didn’t hear anything," someone else in the group answered. "Probably just some animal moving through? This place is pretty wild."

On top of rift monsters, nature still had its own "normal" predators out here. Not that those were any real concern for hunters with abilities.

The plan was to slip past them and keep moving. That was the plan, I swear. But something inside me was louder than reason.

I had to stop. It felt like something else was controlling my actions, my instincts, my wants.

I walked toward their camp, stepping out of the darkness of the forest and into the glow of the lanterns they’d set up in the middle of the campsite.

"Who’s there?" Jane said again.

All of them tensed up, dropping into combat stances, ready to face whoever was coming. Not that it would do any of them any good.

The moment I stepped out of the darkness and they saw my face, none of them could believe it.

"Vincent? That’s not possible," Jane said, her voice cracking. "You should be dead."

"Dead?" I replied. "Right, the idiot who threw his life away helping you guys. And let me tell you something, you’re not even that pretty."

Reality came crashing down on them. They realized I’d been following them for a while now. Jane looked scared.

"But what do you want? Did you come to join our camp? We were just about to make soup."

I laughed, and it came out wrong. I was acting worse than the criminals they’d run into earlier. I was furious at Jane.

I summoned my cube and shifted it into a sword. It shot toward Jane and drove straight through her chest. Everything happened so fast she didn’t even have a chance to defend herself.

The others stood in shock but didn’t move.

"We won’t tell anyone," one of them said. "Just let us live. We’ll throw her body in the river and forget this ever happened."

Obviously, I couldn’t let them live.