The Reincarnated Hitman

Olivia had finally figured out how the game worked after watching Eli and Lea play.

It was quite simple: you rolled a die once and decided whether to move or use a skill.

To use a skill, it didn’t matter what number you got from the die; all you had to worry about was mana or stamina usage.

Well, that wasn’t exactly the case, after all; the die would decide whether or not your skill landed.

Whenever a monster is one tile ahead of you or on an adjacent tile, you can either attack it or move forward. If you choose to advance instead of attacking, your HP is reduced by an amount equal to the monster’s HP.

The game was as simple as it could get, but for some reason, she was having so much fun with it right now.

So much that, for a moment, she completely forgot about her family.

"I use a protective shield on my allies."

Liam silently looked at her with a small smile on his face.

For now, he couldn’t truly interfere with her personal life, so he had to settle for making sure she didn’t feel alone.

Especially with the burden on her shoulders.

"And we’re out!!" Eli announced as his avatar used an automaton he created on the spot to clear the rest of the enemies at the exit of the forest.

Olivia had a smile on her face before glancing up and noticing that Liam’s eyes were on her.

"Having fun?" He asked.

"Hmm," she nodded in response before looking at the clock, realizing that it was already quite late....and tomorrow was an important day for Radiance.

"Ah, it has gotten quite late," she stood up before looking at the three, "I should get going."

"So soon?" Eli asked, sounding genuinely disappointed.

Olivia smiled apologetically, "I have work tomorrow."

"Right," Eli nodded in understanding before puffing out his chest, "then next time, we’ll definitely beat the Demon King."

"..."

They had just cleared the first region, but neither Olivia nor Lea pointed that out; instead, she just smiled and said, "Of course."

"I’ll walk you to the door," Liam said as he also stood up as they walked towards the door.

They reached the door, about to open it when suddenly,

Click!

Darkness suddenly enveloped them all, and before Liam had the chance to realize that, something suddenly lunged at his neck.

Unfortunately, his balance currently wasn’t the greatest, so the sudden impact sent him to the floor.

THUD!

His back suddenly slammed on the floor, and a second after,

Click!

The apartment was bathed in light again, revealing exactly who was clinging to him.

"..."

"..."

Lea and Eli looked towards their brother with a blank expression.

He was currently on the floor, but that wasn’t the cause of their surprise; rather, it was the trembling Olivia clinging to him.

It took Liam a while before he finally understood the situation and gently patted her back.

It took a while, but she finally realized that the darkness was gone and she slowly opened her eyes.

Olivia then let go of Liam’s neck before slightly pushing herself up, her brown eyes locking with his grey ones.

"You okay?" He asked with a small reassuring smile.

He had almost forgotten Olivia’s demons, the darkness being one of them.

She silently looked at him for a while before saying, "Sorry."

Embarrassed, she got off him.

"It’s fine," Liam said as he stood up before offering her a hand, "I was just a bit startled."

Olivia took his hand and stood up straight before saying, "Thank you."

Liam then opened the door and said, "Good night?"

"Hmm," she nodded, "good night."

She then walked to her apartment door, and he watched her until she stepped inside, closing the door behind her.

Liam then turned around only to notice the grin on the faces of his siblings as they leaned over the chair.

With a chuckle, he said, "Time for bed."

***

Meanwhile, in another part of the city, a blue blur could be spotted in what seemed to be a power grid.

"What the hell, man?" Volt said as he came to a stop, "That would’ve been dangerous."

"And you think I care?" The Villain that caused the earlier blackout said, "As long as I can absorb all the electricity within that grid, no one will be able to stop me."

Conduit was a Gamma-ranked villain who had grown tired of remaining unrecognized; hell, he was so unimportant that the only feature described for him in the comics was his black hoody.

So he had come up with a genius of a plan...or at least that’s what he thought.

Since his Factor allowed him to absorb and wield electricity, then what if he simply absorbed a whole lot of it?

As long as he emptied every power grid he came across, he would become strong enough to force the HA to finally take him seriously.

Perhaps people would even start cowering in fear whenever Conduit was mentioned.

Unfortunately, the thorn in his path was the speedster hero, Volt.

He had interfered just after the Villain started absorbing power from the grid, and if he wanted to continue, he’d have to deal with this annoyance first.

Blue arcs of electricity wrapped around his arm as he said, "Out of my way."

The next second, he lifted his arm and launched a blast of electricity where the hero was...or rather, where the hero previously was.

The blue-haired hero was already several meters away, hands tucked into his hoodie as he sighed.

"You know, you’re making this way harder than it needs to be."

He wasn’t in costume because he hadn’t exactly expected to be fighting crime tonight. He just happened to be in the area when the sudden blackout happened.

"Shut up!"

Conduit slammed both hands onto a nearby transformer.

ZZZZT!

The structure instantly dimmed as an enormous amount of electricity was siphoned into his body.

Arcs of electricity could now be seen all around him, which caused Volt to let out a sigh of exhaustion.

"I’ll definitely demand overtime pay for this."