Under the Veil of Night

"Tom, are you alright?" Jason asked as he propped the boy up.

Tommy groaned because he could feel pain all over his body. He shook his head with sweat beading on his forehead.

"It's painful. I don't want to continue anymore."

"We're already this far, are you sure you want to go back like this?"

Tommy's body tensed up when he heard Jason's cold tone. It was his own decision to come here. He couldn't show his weak side.

Closing his eyes for a moment, he collected his thoughts before glaring at Jason. "I'm wounded and you ask me if I'm alright?"

"You can still be angry, so you should be fine," Jason remarked.

"Hey, are you two alright?" Kanae asked as she approached the two of them.

"Yep."

"No worries, Captain."

Seeing that the two of them responded normally, Kanae no longer paid much attention. She opened her bag and took out the first-aid kit. "Let's stop the bleeding first."

"What about Celeste?"

"I already killed her."

Kanae's cold words caused shivers to run down Tommy's spine. He had the feeling that if something worse happened to him, Kanae wouldn't hesitate to torture and mutilate the woman. Thankfully, he was still alright because he landed in a rather flat area.

He stayed silent as he watched Kanae stop the bleeding and apply medicine. With Jason helping him to sit up, his mind wandered to the woman from before.

"How did you know she's suspicious?"

Kanae stared intently at Tommy. "Not really suspicious, but you can't really just trust anyone here. Haven't you already learned in Black Street that you can't trust anyone so easily?"

"I have," Tommy smiled wryly. "It's just; she looks so similar to my mother. I don't have the heart to just leave her alone."

"She has a high-quality bag, so I believe that she comes from the top 10 groups," Jason remarked. "Someone who can enter the top ten is surely not ordinary. Even if her group abandoned her because she failed to catch up, she won't be that weak to the point of needing help. Who do you think cleaned up the fifth and sixth floors?"

It was only now did Tommy realize that those two floors were rather empty. There were barely any monsters around.

"Do you mean, she's the one who cleaned them up?"

"Who else?" Jason shook his head slightly. "You're truly the biggest idiot I've ever known, Tom."

"If you already guessed that much, why did you allow her to follow us?"

"Because you asked us to trust her," Kanae finished treating him and stood up. "So we decided to let her follow, but once she shows hostility, we wouldn't show her any mercy."

"I see," Tommy struggled to stand up with Jason's help.

"Can you climb with that wound?"

"I'll try my best," Tommy smiled wryly.

The three of them climbed up the rubble more slowly as Jason helped to prop up Tommy along the way. Kanae led the way by testing out the stable footholds. Before long, they managed to reach the ninth floor and climbed the stairs up to the tenth floor.

The moment they opened the door, a harder-to-believe scene awaited them. There were quite a few people standing before a large mountain of rubble. This time the mountain of rubble was even taller than the one before.

Several people cast them a surprised glance. "So Celeste is finally defeated."

"It was high time for more people to help out climbing," another one remarked.

Kanae looked toward the mountain of rubble with confusion. Why wasn't a single person trying to climb it? Although it was far steeper than before, it was not impossible to climb.

"They're wounded."

"More people will come later. Oh, they're going to try again."

Kanae's gaze returned back to the front of the crowd. She could see several people getting ready to run up. This awed her since the steep angle should have made it impossible to run up, but these people seemed to be more determined than ever to ascend it.

"NOW!"

One person shouted, and he and two others took off. They came in from different directions, heading towards the fifteenth floor, which the rubble reached up to. Just when they were halfway up, a gunshot sounded.

BANG!

One of them fell down, rolling down at high speed. The other two ignored the falling man as they continued their way up. However, one of them slipped and fell down while the other one kept ascending.

BANG!

He evaded to the side and reached the man shooting at them from the very top. However, right at that moment, a gun pointed straight to his forehead.

BANG!

"How idiotic," the man snorted. He looked down disdainfully. "Anyone else want to try?"

The people at the bottom stayed still as they glared angrily at the man. Right now, the only path up was blocked by this annoying man. If they tried to climb up, they would be killed for sure.

"Why is he blocking the way?" Kanae asked with a frown.

A nearby man gave her a dry laugh. "The top groups want to take the vial for themselves. They have been blocking the way from the very beginning. It's very hard for us to bypass them. Right now, no one has managed to go up from here."

"Is there no other way?"

"As you can see, there is only this way up to the fifteenth floor. Unless you can get to the fifteenth floor, you won't be able to reach the higher floors."

Kanae's eyes narrowed. She knew that this man was telling her the truth. It would be very hard for them to get past that shooter because of their downhill position. There was only one way up, which meant that it would be impossible to go up without alarming the man on the top.

It was truly a strategic position for that person to hinder others from going up.

"Don't you think we've already come far enough?" Jason asked with a wry smile.

Kanae shook her head lightly. "I don't want to stop yet. There should be some other way we can go up."

"Do you think your reflexes are quick enough to evade the bullets?"

No, she certainly couldn't evade all the bullets that came towards her. Her reaction speed was not that quick. It would only spell death for her if she tried to do that.

Her eyes landed on a broken window nearby. As she had felt a slight breeze in the time she stood here, she could guess that there was an opening in the outer wall. Upon seeing the window in the wall, she walked towards it without hesitation.

Looking out the window, she saw that there was a fifteen-floor building located about three meters away. It was not impossible to jump across into the other building with a running start beforehand. However, the height of that building was surely not enough to bypass the fifteenth floor of this building. She would have to face that man directly.

Putting her hand out, she could faintly feel the wind. It was not too strong, but it might feel different outside.

"Rei, please tell me that you're joking," Jason looked wryly towards the girl's back.

Kanae shook her head. "Don't you want to check out where the monsters are coming from? While I figure out a way for us to go up, you can try to search for the source. Tom should be safe for now in this room."

Due to the person blocking them from above, the people here were very cooperative with each other. They didn't try to compete because they had the same goal: bypassing that man above.

For the time being, this was the safest place in the building. As for the monsters, for whatever reason, they were not coming out from the rooms anymore.

Jason sighed. "Rei, be careful."

"Don't worry so much. I'll be fine."

With that, Kanae shattered the remaining glass shards in the window and sneaked out of the building.