(No title provided)
The name Geila Gibtern appeared again and again on the wanted posters scattered through District 57.
This outermost district, full of nothing but crumbling ruins and half-finished construction sites, felt almost blessed to the people of this world.
A few utility shops had squeezed themselves between the debris and the half-built towers anyway.
Ignoring the passers-by dressed in the same tired fashion as everyone else from her old life, she climbed onto the roof of the nearest derelict building.
From up here the entire city lay spread out beneath her like a map she could read at a glance.
Every person, every movement, every twitch of panic—she could watch it all unfold below.
She crouched at the edge of the roof and let her feet dangle over the drop, scanning the streets beneath her.
The sky had already turned deep and heavy.
The construction zone itself was swallowed in total darkness, yet on the far side of the street a dozen buildings still leaked warm light into the night.
It looked as if the line between city and outskirts had been crossed somewhere along the road.
She exhaled slowly, the sound lost in the wind.
"Huuu……."
Magic required mana, and mana had hard limits no matter how many times you broke them.
Even someone with the cursed talent of inversion understood that.
Right now she could cast only five spells before she ran dry.
Which meant she had exactly five chances left to use mana detection.
Her hand slipped into her pocket and fished out the crumpled bounty sheet she had been carrying for hours.
Geila Gibtern had been spotted inside the construction site on the edge of District 57.
Apparently the company had gone bankrupt and the job was on indefinite hold, but that didn't make the location any less useful for hiding.
Plenty of cover was still standing among the half-raised walls and abandoned scaffolding.
"Third time in a row," she muttered, tasting the satisfaction on her tongue.
After three tries she had already learned the rhythm of it.
How to stretch the range, how to save mana, how to feel the faint pulse of another living thing half a kilometer away without ever being taught it.
She didn't need lessons anymore.
Intuition and instinct were enough to carve a path through the chaos.
It felt as if every sense she possessed was widening at the same moment mana flowed through her veins.
Not quite a sixth sense, but something real and sharp and terrifying.
Hundreds of tiny movements—crickets, distant cars, the wind itself—registered in her awareness.
She filtered them by size, then by gait, then by the desperate flicker in a pair of eyes.
Her demonic talent, born alongside the madness that came with it, was already awake and snarling.
One eye cracked open, the red pupil spinning so fast it looked like a straight line of color cutting through the darkness.
Then it locked onto a single point.
The same man she had been watching moments ago—suspicious gait, too-quick panic—suddenly froze beneath her gaze.
The corner of her mouth curved into something that was almost a smile.
It was only a fraction of a second before the realization hit her that she was grinning like a lunatic.
She kicked off the railing and dropped straight down into the alley below.
Grey hair whipped across her face in the wind, and even blinking felt like a chore in the sudden chaos.
But she caught the flash of a running figure out of the corner of one eye.
The red light in her left eye snapped on like a camera flash.
"Found you!"
Her body was already in free-fall when a pipe appeared beneath her hands.
She caught it mid-air and flipped once, twice, the motion instinctive.
The metal was hot against her palms, blistering, but the pain was swallowed by the sudden surge of adrenaline.
Excitement and the promise of violence made her whole body hum.
She slid down the pipe like a shadow, slowing only when the ground was barely three meters away.
Her Bolt had a two-meter range at best.
She dropped the last few meters and landed in a crouch, eyes already scanning for the next target.
The red streak in her vision trailed the running man like a bloodhound on a leash.
He vanished around the corner of an alley, and she exploded forward.
One long stride, a twist of the hips, and she hurled a shard of glass that had been lying on the pavement.
It slammed into the man's ankle with a wet crunch.
"Kkkkkkkkkk!!"
The scream was raw and high, the kind that would wake the dead.
He toppled forward, clutching his ruined knee.
She walked up slowly, mana gathering in her palms like twin lightning bolts ready to strike.
"Hello there. We've never met before, have we?"
"You— who the hell are you?!"
She circled behind him, dropped into a squat right in front of his face, and pulled the crumpled bounty sheet from her pocket.
The face that stared back at her was the same one from the poster—dark circles, hollow cheeks, hair plastered to his forehead from not eating or sleeping in days.
It was unmistakable.
She smiled, almost kindly, and whipped out a cable tie.
"I always catch the ones who look suspicious, you know."
"P-please, I'm begging you, I didn't mean—"
"I'm still just an intern," she corrected cheerfully, already binding his wrists.
The man stared at her in pure terror, mouth working silently.
A mass shooter who killed four security guards… she had been certain she had seen the face wrong.
But the features matched perfectly.
She reached down to shake him awake.
The moment her fingers touched his shoulder the world turned ice-cold.
"This is—"
The explosion ripped through the alley like thunder.
A loud BOOM! and the sound of bones hitting concrete.
Geila Gibtern's head snapped back so hard his neck cracked, a spiderweb of cracks racing across the pavement around his body.
Dirt and shrapnel exploded outward in every direction.
Gibtern shook the dust from his throat and clicked his tongue in disgust.
"…Fuck. I was supposed to be doing this for the corporation… they never paid the full bounty and then dumped me anyway."
The money for the job had disappeared with them.
All he had left was a few crumpled bills and a body that could barely stand.
He hadn't eaten or slept properly in days.
If he passed out right now, nobody would notice.
He tried to push himself up to find another hiding spot before the pain got worse…
"!"
A hand clamped around his wrist like a vice.
The fingers were warm, but the eyes that stared into his were the color of fresh blood.
Those same red eyes from the bounty sheet, locked onto his face with perfect focus.
"You let it go?"
Blue lightning crackled up her arms and spread across her body, growing brighter with every heartbeat.
Her grip tightened until the bones creaked.
"Insane…"
Gibtern stared at her in disbelief.
She had taken a direct hit to the head from a stick of dynamite and not a scratch on her skin.
She had wrapped mana around her skull before he even swung.
Not just a simple shield either—she had focused every drop of mana into a pinpoint at the exact point of impact, preparing for the impossible.
A gamble that should have killed her instantly.
The moment the words left his mouth they both exploded forward.
No weapons, no magic—just raw fists.
A brutal, messy brawl that looked more like two animals tearing each other apart.
She didn't even try to block.
Every punch was a sledgehammer.
Her reinforced fist slammed into Gibtern's ribs with a sound like a meat cleaver hitting bone.
The impact lifted him off the ground for a split second.
"Kkwoh!!"
Her fists accelerated like pistons, battering his torso without pause.
It wasn't just strength.
Combat instincts, body reinforcement, the overwhelming edge of someone who had trained every instinct to kill.
All of it stacked against him.
She roared and kicked him square in the gut.
His body slammed backward into the metal fence at the end of the alley.
Before he could recover she summoned pure lightning.
Not just any spell.
She compressed the electricity into a perfect sphere and fired it forward.
"BANG!"
The compressed bolt struck Gibtern dead-center.
The man's eyes widened, mouth open in a silent scream, body convulsing as every nerve fired at once.
He collapsed face-down on the concrete, twitching helplessly.
"Kkkkkkkk!!"
His crotch was soaking through his pants, warm urine spreading across the ground.
'Freak. He didn't even know how to loosen a cable tie.'
She had bound him three times.
An adult man's strength couldn't have cut it.
If he had, Bolt would have been nothing more than a bad memory.
She stood over him, breathing hard, and watched the faint smoke rising from his charred skin.
"Wrong guy…?"
She touched her swollen lips, then picked up the cable ties and the large black bag she had taken from his pocket earlier.
"Time to collect my bounty."