On the other side of the city, utter chaos reigned in front of a D-Rank portal. Only two B-Rank heroes stood in the center; around them, a support team consisting of C, D, and a trembling E-Rank hero fought desperately. While one of the B-Rank heroes struggled with the monsters, drenched in sweat, the other stood idly in the middle of the battlefield. He nonchalantly chewed on a protein bar, as if the life-and-death struggle around him did not concern him at all.
"Good grief," he grumbled, taking another bite. "They forced us to come here just to train these low-lifes. Just so we could babysit them..."
He noticed the E-Rank boy right next to him, whose sword was shaking with fear. With a foul smirk, he grabbed the boy by the scruff of his neck and shoved him hard toward the monster in front of them. "Fight! Let's see what you're made of!" When the boy was sent flying meters away by the monster's blow and hit the ground, the hero simply spat in disappointment: "You're all disappointments... Nothing but disappointments."
Just then, the phone in his pocket began to vibrate. It was the mysterious shadow calling. When he answered, the voice he heard was ice-cold:
"Shinya, there's a mission. We have targets fleeing from the hospital, last seen on 12th Avenue. One of them is your old friend, Sard. Stop them. I want the kid. Find out what Sard's deal is..."
The moment the words "Sard" and "old friend" seeped into his ears, Shinya's dull gaze instantly lit up with a feral spark. As he crushed the protein bar in his hand, a chilling, uncontrollable joy spread across his face. "An old friend?" he whispered, his voice trembling with excitement. His lips stretched into a grin so wide it almost reached his ears.
He took a deliberate, vulnerable step toward a massive monster right in front of him. As the monster's gargantuan claw descended upon him, Shinya neither dodged nor blocked; he let the impact explode against his body. Sent reeling back onto the concrete floor, he instantly plastered a mask of fake agony on his face. Clutching his stomach, he screamed, "I'm injured! I need to pull back, I'm in bad shape!"
The other B-Rank hero parried a monster and turned to him in a rage: "Shinya! What are you talking about? You're jeopardizing the mission! Do you expect me to hold this place alone?"
As Shinya crawled away from the field as if drawing his last breath, he simply shrugged at the other hero's furious shouts: "They always send more men than necessary to guarantee success anyway... You're a professional, you'll handle it. You guys look after yourselves!" The moment he slipped into the shadows and exited the field, that fake expression of pain was replaced by an uncontrollable impatience.
At that same moment, on a completely different side of the city, Blink continued to pound the pavement with rustling grocery bags in his hand. Right behind him, Red Gekko, gliding through the shadows like a ghost, was about to lose his patience. "We've walked for miles..." the monster thought, keeping its pace perfectly silent and synchronized with Blink's rhythm. "He's still walking... Without stopping, without ever looking back... Where is this man going?" For Gekko, this tailing had turned into a never-ending uncertainty; there was no portal, no enemy, no action. Only Blink and his monotonous, endless walk.
Blink finally turned into a deserted side street and stopped in front of a rusted fire escape. The moment he took the first step, the metal stairs let out a metallic and disturbing creak with every footfall. Blink began to climb the steps calmly, without ever losing the balance of the bags in his hands. Gekko huddled deep into the darkness at the base of the building, watching this mundane climb.
When they reached the top of the building, the view was more like a personal getaway than a rooftop. In the middle of the wide concrete area, there was a large sun umbrella and a white lounge chair placed underneath it. Blink dropped the rustling bags next to the chair and collapsed into the seat with great laxity. He reached into one of the bags and pulled out a bag of chips. The sharp plastic sound of the bag tearing open broke the silence of the night.
The spicy aroma rising from the chips reached the corner where Gekko was hiding, carried by the wind. The monster slightly extended its head from the edge of the building, watching this man sit with his legs crossed, eating chips without a care in the world. Gekko stood frozen in place at the sight of this scene. "Seriously?" it thought. "Did I come all this way just to watch him do this?" The scene before it was nothing more than an infuriating indifference that nullified a monster's perception of threat.