Rise of the Darkness Tycoon

Chapter 14- The Panther’s Shadow

The loud sound of three gunshots echoed again, startling whatever civilians were still fleeing the scene, and causing some of the elemental beasts to immediately pause their charges towards Calvin and pull back.

However, Calvin completely ignored everything around him, his gaze locked forward.

No matter how fast Ashley was as a D-rank elementalist, it was simply impossible for her to outrun a bullet. Because of that, there was no way she could have avoided Calvin’s shots.

However, she didn’t need to. After all, while Calvin had fired the gun in her direction, he hadn’t fired it at her.

The space behind Ashley glitched and shimmered, and the body of a giant panther, with its chin level to Ashley’s shoulder, appeared with three bleeding bullet holes in its forehead.

The monster sent one last hateful glare toward Calvin before collapsing onto its side with a heavy thud, the sound and sudden presence behind her drawing Ashley’s attention.

As she turned around in shock, Calvin spoke,

“Didn’t I tell you not to move an inch? You stepped into its shadow. It could’ve killed you instantly if I hadn’t shot it first.”

After saying that, Calvin turned the gun and immediately started shooting at the other dark panthers, also firing at some of the earth lions as well, firing a total of four more shots before he charged toward the next earth lion, stuffing the gun into his belt.

The monster, seeing Calvin put away the weapon that had killed beasts even stronger than itself, concluded through instinct that Calvin could no longer use it, and then leapt at him without fear.

It swiped its claws toward Calvin, and Calvin immediately ducked under the attack, then quickly pulled out the gun, pointed it at the soft underside of the earth lion, and fired another shot that sent it crashing to the ground as he got back up.

The shadow cast by his body wriggled, and then its arms extended toward the nearest fire leopards, grabbing their legs and holding them down so he could shoot one with the gun before dashing at the other, punching it down from above with his spiked gauntlet.

Now, Calvin had truly exhausted the bullets in the gun, but the beasts around him didn’t know how many bullets a pistol magazine held. Because of that, they kept their distance, hesitant to attack, and instead tried to escape the barrier Ashley had created.

However, despite the cracks they had made in the earth wall, it wasn’t enough to break through, and Calvin and Ashley were able to round up the last of the elemental beasts with ease.

After he finished, Calvin took out the gun tucked into his belt and tossed it onto the ground, retracting the darkness coating his gauntlets and revealing their bloodied surfaces.

Glancing around, he moved his finger through the air and started counting the elemental beast corpses when Ashley’s voice echoed from behind him.

“How did you know?”

Without stopping his counting, Calvin responded calmly,

“I am a darkness elementalist, Ashley. I’m more sensitive to my own element than I am to others.”

His answer, however, didn’t satisfy Ashley.

“That doesn’t explain how you were able to detect the stealth of a D-rank elemental beast.”

Calvin paused his counting, then turned to look at her and said,

“Let’s just say my elemental sensitivity is higher than the average darkness elementalist.”

It was the same kind of answer he had given earlier when she questioned his unnatural recovery, and this was enough for Ashley to realise that Calvin had his own share of secrets he wasn’t telling her.

Then again, what right did she have to know what those secrets were?

She turned to glance at the dead giant panther on the ground, noticing how close it had been to her without her realising, and a frown formed on her face.

Then she looked toward the trailer and thought, ‘I was still sensing its presence inside the trailer, so I thought the other D-rank elemental beast was still inside it. But it had escaped at some point and snuck up behind me, and I didn’t notice it, but Calvin did.’

She didn’t need to think too deeply to understand why it had gone for her.

Between Calvin, who was an F-rank, and herself, a D-rank, it was clear who held more elemental energy. Because of that, the beast instinctively aimed to take out the greater threat first.

The problem was that Ashley had a strong battle sense, and her elemental energy manipulation speed was fast, allowing her to quickly form layers of rock across parts of her body to block sudden attacks, just like when she had defended against that lion that tried to bite her arm.

As such, the panther had tried to get close enough that she wouldn’t be able to react, aiming for her neck in a single strike.

Calvin had noticed this and told her not to move. But that extra step she had taken placed her foot into the panther’s shadow, and the panther was about to do to her what Calvin had done to several opponents before—use its shadow to restrain her movement.

It was a simple method to lock her in place and take her neck.

The problem with that strategy was that Calvin, who possessed the Dark Elemental King’s Core, was there. Because of that, even if its stealth was something an F-rank normally wouldn’t detect, Calvin could sense it through the Core’s power.

‘That was honestly just luck,’ Calvin thought to himself. ‘If that beast had been any other element with that level of stealth, I wouldn’t have noticed a thing.’

But then he paused, thinking further and remembered that Ashley’s B-rank driver was still present, and then he shrugged.

‘Oh well, she still wouldn’t have died anyway, since that guy is around.’

He could sense that the driver’s elemental sense had covered the entire area and was still covering it even now. So everything that had happened within the barrier Ashley had created, the driver had been aware of.

Calvin continued counting the number of elemental beasts, and near the end of his count, he began to hear distant sirens.

Ashley also heard them, snapping her fingers and causing her earthen barrier to crumble apart, after which Calvin dragged the elemental beast corpses around, sorting the F-ranks into one area, the D-ranks into another, and the E-ranks into a separate pile.

He checked on the driver of the trailer and found that the man was completely unconscious, likely due to a concussion.

After tearing open the airbags and pulling the trailer driver out of the vehicle, several police cars, as well as a black van marked with the insignia of the government’s Elementalist Management Association, swerved into the area, and several uniformed policemen along with D-rank elementalists stepped out.

Naturally, they were all surprised to see that the elemental beasts were already dead, and that two teenagers were standing there, with one of them even lifting elemental beast corpses and stacking them on top of each other.