Chapter 78: Imprisoned

Even though I’d killed 2 of them with relative ease, I still had to tear off both my own feet to pull it off.

I already knew I was going to lose this fight, and with the damage I’d taken, my situation had only gotten worse.

One of those hunters had a pretty... peculiar ability. He could control metal with his mind.

In an isolated place like that, maybe it wouldn’t have been as big a problem as it seemed. But they’d built all kinds of metal structures and buried them underground beforehand.

In other words, this was a carefully laid trap. Not something they’d come up with on the spot. They’d been planning it from the very beginning.

Even before I left Zoen’s mansion, that informant of his was already prepared to capture me.

The hunter stretched out his hand, and dozens of chains erupted from the ground and wrapped around my body. They tightened hard. Even with my cube coating me, I couldn’t break free with raw physical strength alone.

In that moment, I considered activating my pocket dimension and hiding inside it. But while that hunter was restraining me, another one sprinted toward me and injected something into my neck.

I didn’t know what it was. But I knew one thing: I couldn’t use my power.

My best guess was some kind of temporary awakened ability blocker.

I did everything I could to break out of those chains. Nothing worked.

"Looks like we caught you," that damned informant of Zoen’s said. "We’re taking you to prison now."

Why they wanted to capture me instead of just killing me, I had no idea. I blacked out right after that. Whatever was in that syringe had a sedative mixed in.

I don’t know how much time passed. I woke up inside a cell. The sound of dripping water filled my ears. Coming from the corner. I was underground.

The cell was made of stone with a metal gate in front. Strangely enough, I wasn’t chained up. I could move around.

I tried to stand up slowly, but then I remembered: I had no feet. I collapsed the second I tried to get up and slammed my face into the floor.

This was only temporary, no doubt about it. Eventually my bloodline would help me regenerate the feet I’d lost. But how long would that take? And would I even still be alive by then?

I had no idea what those guys wanted with me. In theory, they were hunters too. Zoen was a hunter, not a villain.

The mission he was on was probably official, or so I assumed. So why was I being treated like this? Was it all just because I’d tried to cross the border illegally with a new identity Zoen had created? Or was there something more to it?

I was starting to think those hunters at the border were mixed up in something illegal. Possibly villains playing the part of good guys. That had to be it.

I couldn’t rule out the possibility that Zoen was tied to this illegal stuff too. Sure, he was close friends with Lion Heart, who seemed like a respected hunter. But the fact that Zoen carried out assassinations and illegally crossed into other countries was a little strange, to say the least.

I dragged myself to the gate and grabbed it with both hands, trying to break it. Nothing. The metal wasn’t ordinary. It was way more resistant than anything normal.

I tried punching the stone walls and the floor. Same result. The only thing that happened was my knuckles getting torn up from all the hits I threw.

How the hell was I getting out of here? My ability was still blocked.

I sat there and waited until one of the hunters finally came to my cell. It was that damned informant Zoen had called trustworthy.

"Don’t look at me like that," he said. "You wanted to get into Canada, right? Well, we’re heading there anyway."

I frowned. What the hell was he talking about? Was he actually going to take me to Canada, or was he just messing with me?

"I’m serious," he said after noticing my expression. "We’re setting up an illegal fight club with some captured hunters. Villains too. Rich people love watching others fight to the death, you know how it is. You’re going to be one of our new fighters."

What the hell kind of situation was this? I got captured to fight in some underground fight club being run out of Canada? That one I didn’t see coming.

It was a terrible situation, sure. But at least I wasn’t dead, and there was a real chance I could escape. Maybe not as high a chance as I’d like, but even 1% was good enough for me.

"We’re transporting you to Vancouver in a container," he explained. "We have a cargo plane and contacts at the airport. Nothing gets inspected. After that, we’ll take you to the underground venue where the fights happen."

"If, and this is a big IF, you show the guests you can actually entertain them and manage to not get killed, we’ll improve your living conditions. But don’t expect to be freed. You’ll be there until you die."

Like hell I was staying there until I died. This son of a bitch was going to seriously regret doing this to me.

"I’m going to sedate you now. You should wake up in Vancouver. Don’t take it personally. I would’ve kidnapped whoever Zoen sent here. It’s not like I chose you because I specifically hate you."

Another hunter showed up. It was the one who controlled metal. He pulled a metal syringe from his pocket, the sedative already loaded inside.

He controlled it with his mind, sending it flying through the air before it pierced my neck again. I felt my eyelids grow heavy, like sleep was too powerful to fight off.

It took a full minute before I blacked out completely, which visibly shocked both hunters. My body was a lot more resistant than they’d been expecting.

When I came to, I was somewhere completely different. There were special cuffs on my hands and feet. Yes, feet. I noticed they had sewn both of them back on. The stitch marks were still visible.

I moved my feet around a little, wiggled my toes. Everything seemed to be working fine, just like it should.

I looked around and noticed I wasn’t alone in that dark space. There were a lot of other people, all restrained the same way I was.

Some still unconscious. Others already awake.

"Hey, you," a man called out to me. "You know where we are?"

"Vancouver," I said. "That’s what they told me before they kidnapped me. We’re probably inside a container at the docks."

I sat there for about 2 hours, I think. Some people tried to force the container doors open, but of course it would be a special container built to hold hunters.

Everyone there was still dosed with the ability-blocking sedative, same as me. And those cuffs were weakening our bodies too, somehow. So at that point, we were basically regular humans. Tough ones, but regular.

Eventually, someone opened the container. A powerful hunter. A few people tried to fight back while he went around injecting everyone, but they were put down easily. I didn’t even try. Not worth burning my energy.

After they shot us with another round of the ability blocker to keep us in that state, they directed us toward a truck.

"Get in. Don’t try to escape."

Someone tried, obviously. I even considered it for a second before letting it go. The guy who went for it got hit with such a strong shock from a baton that he nearly blacked out again.

We got in the truck and were taken to an underground location. I tried to roughly calculate how long it took to go from the docks to wherever we were now. About 30 minutes. Considering city traffic, it wasn’t that far.

But what surprised me most was that, unlike Seattle, Vancouver already seemed to have the invasion under control. If we were driving through the city in a truck, things weren’t nearly as bad as they were back in the US.

How was that possible? Had the attack been weaker there, or were their hunters just more capable of handling it and had wiped out the invading monsters quickly? I had no idea.

They pulled us out of the truck. I looked around the moment I stepped out. It was like a coliseum, built beneath the city.

From a distance I could see the circular arena and the rows of stands where the wealthy sat to watch us fight to the death.

They took us somewhere else. A room with single beds scattered throughout.

"This is where you’ll be living. When it’s your turn to fight, I’ll come get you."

This unknown guy removed the cuffs from our feet, but our hands stayed restrained. And of course they kept injecting that liquid to keep our abilities suppressed.

I looked around. The place was basically a cell, just more open, with beds for everyone. There were even a few bathrooms inside. It looked clean too, which surprised me.

I walked slowly to a bed in the corner and lay down. Not even 30 seconds passed before some guy came over.

"I like your bed," he told me. "Get lost, asshole."