Chapter 2: Awakening
No POV:
"Alright, class dismissed."
The teacher said, concluding his class.
Students stood up at the sound of the bell, eager to leave the school grounds...
They were either going to hangout doing things like karaoke or going to the arcade.
"Hey."
Turning, Axel was met with Ivan’s gaze.
"You think you could escape just cuz Jean happened to pass by huh?"
Axel gritted his teeth. He knew what was coming. A situation like this had an outcome so obvious, it was almost clichè.
"Well, consider yourself lucky. We’ll only let it slide if you stay out of our way."
Axel was a bit shocked. This hadn’t happened before. They usually said this after he was beat up.
’They must be scared of Jean.’
He mused. That was the only logical explanation anyway...
No one wanted to be enemies with the captain of the soccer team.
With a click of his tongue, Ivan turned and left. Leaving Axel standing alone in the school’s field.
"Yo, bud!"
Soon after Jean’s voice rang from behind.
Looking up, he saw Jean jogging over. His dark hair and burly form catching the evening rays.
Axel couldn’t help but smile.
He was the only person who kept coming to him instead of away.
"I saw Ivan and his group walking away, did anything happen?"
"Oh. No, nothing really." Axel replied.
"Hmm if you say so..." Jean said. No need to question him further since studying him, he found no new injuries anyway.
"Well, I gotta go now. You said you had a match didn’t you?"
"Yeah but I was expecting you to watch." Jean replied with a frown.
"Sorry man, I can’t do that. I don’t want to cause problems for you..." Axel replied, turning to leave.
"Alright, then. See you tomorrow." Jean waved as Axel left.
Staring at his disappearing form a while longer, he sighed and headed to the field.
~~~~~
Axel walked, scrolling through his phone as he did so.
He moved through the streets, taking a detour through an alley because the road ahead was blocked— a gigantic devil corpse lay there blocking the path.
The hunters were at it again...
Devils were old. Old enough that mankind had built it’s entire modern architecture around surviving them— city planning, evacuation protocols, the devil hunter licencing system that had emerged roughly a century ago when it was discovered that human could harness the power of certain devils through Contracts.
The first generation of hunters had changed everything. Reduced death tolls. Given the people something to believe in...
But there was only so much people could do, even if assisted by supernatural forces...
Axel walked past a storefront with a giant Tv facing the street.
"...Classified as an A rank catastrophe. If you encounter this entity, contact the devil hunters immediately."
The reporter spoke after a devil’s image was shown on the screen. Though blurry, he could make out the pale and dead looking skin that loosely clung to its body.
He turned to leave, then...
**BOOM**
Smoke filled the air in the distance.
Squinting his eyes, he realised that it was in the direction of his house.
Turning, he planned to move the opposite direction...
Then he stopped...
His mind filled with one thought.
His parents...
He remembered his father telling him that day was his day off. And his mother... his mother almost always stayed at home...
His stomach twisted as a thought ran through his mind.
’What if they were at home?’
He shook his head. There was no way... they would have probably left by now.
The site of the explosion was probably not his street so they were probably fine...
’Right?’
He was running before he finished the thought.
~~~~~
The closer he got, the worse it looked.
Corpses in the road. Buildings split open. The silence of a place that had been devoid of life.
Why was he even running back anyway?
Towards the danger. Towards certain death.
He shook his head. He need to know if they were still alive or better, if they had already left.
Whether he died or not didn’t matter...
He gritted his teeth. He was running faster now, hoping and praying they would be alright...
"Mom... Dad..."
He turned towards his street and stopped.
What had been his house was a hole in the world. Every wall gutted. Debris pushed outward — like something had searched the structure, tearing it apart room by room.
"Yes! This is it—"
He pressed into the shadow of a fallen wall. A pale-skinned devil crouched in the clearing where his living room used to be, drawing a pentagram in blood on the wall.
Looking closer, he realized that was the devil he’d seen on the news...
Axel shifted his weight.
His hand landed in something warm.
He looked down.
Red....
Pooling slowly through the rubble. Viscous. Warm...
This wasn’t paint...
He followed it upward...
His mom and dad. Pinned to the wall above him. His mom’s left arm missing at the shoulder.
The blood hadn’t stopped moving yet.
The world went quiet.
His family had been killed. He was staring at their dead bodies...
His vision blurred. His heart raced.
His heart hammered against his ribs. Fear flooded his senses...
**SPLAT**
Axel looked past the wall, too terrified to moved.
The pale walked to the wall and slit his wrist. The pentagram drank the blood. The wall glowed deep arterial red — and opened.
Something looked back through it.
A red skeleton. Eye sockets blazing yellow. A scar carved down the left side of its face.
The portal exhaled cold.
Axel dropped his head. Nothing left. He was going to die here, no doubt about it... The only comfort he could find was dying next to his family...
"Yes!." The pale devil exclaimed, voice booming. "Come forth and dominate this forsaken land."
The street rumbled as the wall shook. Blood dripping from the portal...
The hands came first. Skeletal fingers wedging into the edges of the wall, pulling. Stone cracking. If that thing got through—
Axel stared into the yellow eyes.
Their eyes met, petrifying him as the gaze bore deep into his soul...
**BOOM.**
The portal detonated outward. Red smoke. Flying debris. Bodies hurled in every direction. The world dissolved into a crimson haze and ringing silence.
The explosion was strong enough to blow Axel away, slamming him into the wall behind him.
"No! I failed again! This... this can’t be." The pale devil shouted in outrage.
"Rahhhh!!!" He screamed in frustration. This wasn’t his first, second or even third failure. It was his fifth.
"Tch, what a waste of time. It’s not easy finding another spot." The devil growled in annoyance before leaping away, unaware of the half dead boy that lay behind him.
~~~~~
Axel peeled himself from the wall, falling onto the ground in a mess of blood and broken bones...
"M—mom... Dad..." He stuttered, crawling on the ground towards their bodies...
His body was battered. Bones broken, senses dulling.
Every breath he took felt wrong...
His face was covered in blood turning his vision red but he kept crawling, moving towards his parents in painfully slow momentum.
"I’m... I’m sorry..." Upon reaching them, he laid in the center, clutching both of their clothes with his bloodied hands.
"I’m so sorry..."
Where were the hunters? The people who’d vowed to protect humanity.
They weren’t here. His parents were dead.
He didn’t want to be left alone...
If only he was a hunter... if only he had power. He would’ve avoided this...
He placed his head on his mother’s body as he sobbed, tears flowing down his cheeks and onto the corpse of his parents...
[Ding]
The sound came
from his head. A little startled, he looked up and saw a floating screen in his view.
The red screen seemed to project something to him.
Reading it, his eyes widened...
[Synchronization Status: Complete]
[Devil Hunter System: Online.]
[Finalizing Contract...]
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