The portal brought us to a city but the area we were in was completely empty. I looked around and saw in the distance that the road was blocked by some police cars but there was no trace of them.

“Did something tragic happen here? And most importantly, where are we?” I asked Arismis while still looking around.

“We are in Germany and there was a massacre a few hours ago. You’ll have to find the culprit…” He looked at me “Simple enough no?”

I looked back at him confused “...Is being a detective seriously part of my training?”

“You’ll have to kill him, I thought that was obvious. And since the culprit is a Zonniki, you can eat his flesh and there will be some sweet powers for you. Pretty good no?”

“Good.” she calmly said, completely unfazed by what she had to do.

Arismis stayed silent for a second, then coughed a bit 

“I think I have to repeat what you have to do to obtain his powers-”

“No need to. I have to eat his flesh!”

“Are you ok?”

“Nope. Anyway, can I at least know what his powers are?” I asked and he shook his head.

“And when will you unlock my powers completely?”

“If I do that you would be playing easy and it wouldn’t be fun for you…” By saying that he tried to discourage me

But I wanted to go right into the action so I insisted “....Just unlock the damn power.”

“Don’t you like the idea of giving your all without counting on someone else-”

He was starting to get on my nerves “Do it if you still want those useless pair of balls you have.”

“It would be useless since I can regenerate-”

“Then I’m gonna crush them until you give me what I want.” I was damn serious.

“You-” Arismis sighed “Whatever.” He paused for a second “I unlocked them.”

“Really?” I said surprised, both because it was too easy and because it was fast 

“I don’t feel that much different..”

“That’s absolutely normal. Usually, once you obtain a new power and you don’t try to absorb it properly through meditation you start going insane slowly, it all starts just with a sense of hunger. But, I’m holding that feeling back so it doesn’t create any problem for you.”

“And how are you doing that? Is it because I have your powers?” 

“Correct. Now stop with useless questions and before the practice, let’s start with the theory about medita-”

Arismis could not finish his phrase I immediately ran away while saying “Just do your job and keep off that sense of hunger or whatever it is!”

He remained there in silence, I didn’t turn around to see his face but he must have been hilarious to look at.

———

Arismis was looking at Sarah running but he wasn’t disappointed by her reaction; the left corner of his mouth slowly raised forming a little smile and in his left hand a piece of fresh meat, still infused with a dark red aura, appeared and took a bite out of it before disappearing out of thin air.

———

I started walking after turning around a corner, I was already aware of the culprit’s position because I could sense his aura and he didn’t seem to be stronger than me, so I decided to take it easy.

‘It’s a blue aura with red accents on the borders. I wonder what that means…’

While walking I started seeing a lot of smashed cars, some of them had crushed against some buildings, some just had the windows broken and others exploded. There were corpses on the streets and the sidewalk, all of them were killed with a single blow to the heart.

‘He isn’t the kind of psychopath who likes the hit same person over and over again…’

I continued to walk and stopped in front of an alley, where a crying young guy was, curled up with his back against the wall, he must have sensed my presence because he quickly looked up at me. Probably around 18 years old, with blonde hair and blue eyes, the stereotypical German guy, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if Arismis had ideated all this situation. There is seriously something off about him.

The guy was mumbling while crying

“I-I’m sorry…I didn’t want to d-do all of this…”

I got closer to him “What happened?” I asked coldly.

“I-I-I was getting bullied b-by those g-guys” he pointed at some corpses behind himself, killed in the same way as the others “and it wasn’t th-the first time…I was mad, lost control of myself and…and this h-happened..” he was trembling like a leaf.

I looked at him harshly and when he noticed that, he started shaking even more.

“W-W-Why you are looking at me like that..?”

I sighed. “Look, your story is really sad and your motivation is valid but if you really lost control of yourself, you wouldn’t have killed the people in the same exact way, especially the people you call bullies. I think you just did all of this for fun.”

He tried to defend his version of the story “T-that’s not true! I would never do this! You have to belie-”

I hit him with a roadhouse kick and made him crush against the wall. He started lamenting because of the pain and tried to say something but with another kick, I broke off his jaw and at that point, he was screaming in pain while laying on the ground.

“You are so pathetic…You can’t even lie decently!” first smoke and then flames started coming out from my hand. ‘Huh? And this? I didn’t eat the previous guy’s flesh…Whatever.’

A wicked smile grew on my face while I looked back at that pathetic guy 

“I wonder if your burned flesh will give me powers.”

Hearing this, the boy’s eyes widened in fear and tried to run away but I grabbed him by the ankle and he screamed more because of the added burns.

“Man, you truly are pathetic. Can you show them to me at least? I want to see if it’s worth it.” I looked him in the eyes but it seemed he didn’t even understand what I said.

I sighed “You made me lose interest.” the fire quickly spread around his body and I calmly got away while he was screaming in an inhumane way.

“Ehy Arismis! I finished the job here!” I said out loud but I didn’t receive any response.

“Where the hell is he-”

I suddenly started feeling some heavy pressure coming from the alley and I quickly turned around while saying “It can’t be-” 

A ray of light invested my body and it was like being cut by hundreds of thousands of knives; it lasted just some seconds but it was enough to leave me heavily wounded in every part of my body. 

‘Shit! I wasn’t able to react in time.’

The boy slowly started walking towards me while mumbling 

“I-I-I didn’t w-w-want t-t-to do it…” his body was almost totally burned and his face was unrecognizable, only those blue eyes remained. His aura was also different, it was now completely black.

‘A black aura? What doe that even mean? Fuck, I should have listened to Arismis explanation.’ I panicked for a few seconds and then quickly shook my head ‘One successful hit on me and I quickly got panicked..how pathetic I can be too.’

Red, blue and yellow lines appeared on my body, going from the eyes all the way down to the ankles (just like Arismis’ ones) meanwhile, all the cuts healed. I looked at the boy and crack my knuckles “It seems your power will be useful. Don’t die too rapidly!”