Handcuffed assassin
Azir Hunter was held at gunpoint, handcuffed and face covered with a black mask. His ears twitched at the distant sound of screams. The wind swept past his face, and from the purity of it, he could tell he was on the bridge that connected the twin towers.
He stopped suddenly, and the nozzle of the gun pressed against his waist.
"Keep moving."
One of the two men in dark grey uniform said.
Azir continued.
Passing the bridge, they led him to an elevator and took him straight to the seventh basement.
A door automatically slid open. And as soon as the masked captive Azir entered the room, an exciting voice welcomed him.
"Azir Hunter, the best assassin of Xincheng State, welcome to my humble abode."
"Is he the test subject?" A deeper voice asked, removing the mask.
Passing by Azir, a lady clad in white coat, stopped briefly, scanning his eyes in a rectangular device, she walked away, and said.
"Isn't he too handsome for an assassin? What a waste of beauty."
Azir's eyes fluttered, adjusting to the brightness of the laboratory. The two men behind him left, handing the leash to the male scientist who had greeted them earlier.
"Sister Yu, upload the stats." Another male scientist with a deeper voice said, typing something over a keyboard embedded in the computer attached to a cylindrical vessel.
The three scientists busied themselves while Azir studied the lab. There were several collections of strange organs preserved in cells hanging on the giant wall.
Infographic posters and bone structures that even made Azir curious if they belonged to a normal animal or a monster.
The door slid open again.
The scent of jasmine hit Azir's nostrils; he glanced over his shoulder. "Old Zheng, you are here." He exclaimed, "Didn't His Majesty pardon me? Why am I still handcuffed? I don't know why they brought me here."
Zheng halted briefly, scanned Azir, and then disappeared into the room where Sister Yu was.
"Is everything prepared?"
"The new other word for perfection is Dexy." Sister Yu said, reaching for the wooden cube on her desk.
"What about the Gates?" He c****d his head and asked.
"All done." The one by the computer said it.
"Your Highness, he can be sent in an hour." The one who had welcomed Azir said.
Azir listened to their encrypted conversation; he didn't dare to pry much; all he cared about was breaking free.
Soon, Zheng returned to Azir and took him to a small room with two giant panels of dark glasses on either side of the wall. It was a familiar layout, an interrogation room.
"I didn't know you were a prince. Looks like all the hell I have been through will pay off. I can retire and have a luxurious life in the capital…" Azir said, excitedly, drawing closer to Zheng.
"But Old Zheng, my comrade, my prince, I don't want that. I need one favour. Help me find that lady from the market. I want to live with her, have kids, catch fish by the shore of the East Sea and live a quiet life." Azir said, his voice lowered by each sentence, and his bloodshot pupils dilated from a spark that is of a person reborn.
"7A, it is time that you repay your debt."
The moment Azir's codename was mentioned, his smile faded, and when the words finished the sentences, he was overtaken by a bewildering realisation.
…
Two months later.
The sniper gun, charged with the core of stardust, rested upon a black rock. Squatting in a rather comfortable position, Azir was focusing on the target, viewed through the left eye, the other one shut tightly.
The seven-headed deer beast moved into the frame.
Azir locked the target; pulling the trigger, he shot a bullet that split into three spikes, passing through the stomach of the seven-headed deer beast.
It dropped to the ground with a loud, high-pitched roar.
A notification dropped on the screen attached to the sniper gun.
[Seven points]
[Total points: 8991]
[Target: 10,000,000]
Azir's expression didn't change.
He looked up. The air tasted bitter with toxic battery acid. His eyes roamed the faraway whirls of green clouds, and the thunderous sound of lightning crashing down on the yellow sand reached his ears.
"Damn it."
He said, pushing the mechanism of the gun, and it was folded into a band, automatically returning to his wrist.
The sky brightened more than usual, almost blinding Azir's human eye.
"Is it Sun Descending Day ?"
He said, covering his face with his arm. The temperature gradually dropped as the giant star swept past the gravitational orbit of Planet QX9.
It lasted seven minutes, leaving Azir tanned and dehydrated, evaporating the pool of water filled in holes nearby.
As the sun distanced itself, Azir uncapped his silver bottle and poured the water down his throat to spit out; his throat burnt and his tongue blistered.
He coughed.
"Every time!!!"
He said, throwing the bottle away.
And as he flipped, a strange stench hit his face with a blow of breath, coming from the wide nose holes of an eight-foot beast.
It had been there for quite some time.
One could tell by the pressed curve of the yellow mud.
Azir noticed that it had the body of an elephant with bright green fur, and the head was similar to a gorilla's.
"Cross-mutated?" Azir thought. The beast looked big but harmless.
"I won't kill you. leave." Azir said, "You are barely one point."
The beast stayed still for a moment. As if frozen. Not exhaling the breath. It inhaled.
Azir scratched his head, looked around and said, "Buddy, the lightning rain is pure joy for your kind, but it will roast me to ashes. I am leaving."
And as soon as he turned away, taking two steps, the spit from the beast flew from his side, and the rock it touched burnt away like paper.
He looked back, his brows furrowed. "You are a dangerous one—" he stuttered as the sight of a gorilla face splitting into four peels, revealing another face beneath it, shocked him.
"What are you?" He asked, staggering on his steps.
-Five minutes later-
Azir had clashed with the gorilla beast, and it turned out to be a C-ranked one.
Azir kept his jaw clenched shut, knowing the monster hunting him below was tracking the sound of his breathing.
Leaning against the giant black rock, he took a deep breath; the throbbing pain from the cracked bones of his index finger made him dizzy.
He swallowed hard, pulling out a Medijector, a pen-like device that contains Fluencythricine, a drug from the Roxqi planet.
His pain decreased within seconds, and, stretching his fingers, he checked whether it had worked.
It did.
The finger recovered.
The claw marks on his back faded, revealing his pale skin through torn clothes.
And a wound on his head, which he did not even notice, healed.
Gritting his teeth, he pulled up his sleeves, revealing a device band on his wrist.
It was not for revenge but for survival; he had to take down the monstrous beast awaiting its prey.
He manually rotated the screen, and a list of weapons appeared.
As soon as he selected the Segmented Whip-Sword, the wrist device, known as Dexy, transformed.
A hilt materialised in his hand, the edges ignited with energy cores, attaching each piece of the segments, which snapped straight into becoming a longsword.
The crack of a shifting stone alerted the beast.
It snapped its heavy head toward the sound, its gigantic skeleton coiling before charging toward him.
Azir swallowed the dryness in his throat.
He pushed off from the huge black rock and shot himself into the air.
It was almost like flying for a split second until gravity slammed him back down to the yellow soil, barely a metre away from the beast.
He kept on, not losing speed, the stiff hilt twisting in a vicious flick of his wrist.
The segmented whip-sword hissed through the air and missed, striking off a shower of sparks on the hard bedrock.
The C-ranked mutated beasts...gorilla and elephant beast...slithered sideways with unnatural speed.
Azir swung again, but his blade cut only empty air.
Two misses.
Azir sent a command down the hilt on his third strike.
The weapon ripped through the front leg of the beast.
The pupils of the beast dilated in a panicked rage, and thick green blood sprayed violently across the plain.
It lunged a huge claw out desperately and lost its balance.
The points of its talons barely grazed Azir's jawline.
Throwing his weight backwards into a clean, rapid backflip, Azir narrowly broke the creature's perimeter and landed in a low crouch.
Azir gasped.
Charging back into the fray at flat-out speed, Azir kept low to the ground.
He snapped the whip-sword forward again, dicing through the face with a single, fluid backhand sweep.
The crippled beast collapsed into the dirt, letting out a deafening, final roar.
Before the echo could fade, Azir closed the distance.
He slipped a hand to his boot, pulled out his dagger, and drove the blade deep into the centre of the beast's chest, piercing its heart.
, fire erupted from the blade.
Waves of destructive heat rolled across the creature's hide, consuming it from the inside out.
[Eight points.]
[Total points: 8999]
[Target points: 10,000,000]
Azir's face did not change.
Steadying his position and taking heavy breaths, he pressed a button on his Segmented Whip-Sword, returning the shape to a wrist device.
Above him, the stars glowed like stars buttons on dark blue fabric, green clouds floating too close to the yellowish, ashy land.
Azir checked the time on Dexy and sighed deeply.
Pulling out a bar of orange chocolate, Azir bit it with more effort than he had put in defeating another C-ranked beast.
It wasn't dark, as the moon was always bright and glowing, so close that one could see a man on its surface if one were standing.
Too bad, when Azir was thrown on Planet QX9, he had not expected to see anything but ruins of the civilisations.
He located and went into his underground chamber.
Pulling a blanket from a corner, he leisurely covered himself and went to sleep.
But his eyes could not be closed.
Should he sleep or go out exploring for food?
After all, the stale bar of orange chocolate was the last edible thing on him.
Then he looked at Dexy, setting a timer for five hours.
The effect of the medijector would outlast his resting period.
.
A dream accompanied him to his sleep.
Azir jolted awake on his bed, suffocation strangling him, and cold sweats soaked his forehead.
It was a beautiful dream–it ended as a nightmare.
The desire to return motivated him to survive.
He went back to sleep, but his eyes remained wide open; several doubts floated among waves of thoughts.
Annoyed, he stood up.
He raised his wrist and tapped Dexy's interface.
.
A pale blue holographic grid projected into the dim air of his underground hole.
With a scarred index finger, he began dragging lines across the screen, mapping out a spear with an electromagnetic core to use the wild rain of lightning trapped in droplets from QX9's atmosphere and use it against the beast.
He needed something heavier for the armoured beasts on the northern plains.
Lines of neon-blue data spiralled around his forearm as he secured the final bracket into place on the 3D schematic.
It was a rough plan, quick and rough and lacking the smooth balance he used to work on back on the planet Roxqi.
He saved the file under Spear9Z.
It immediately dropped into the folder of 'Untested Weaponry'.
The timer beeped.
Five hours ended.
Morning had arrived on Planet QX9.
He prepared himself, grabbing a metallic aluminium basket and lifting his body out of the hole.