The Messenger of Death

Xander walked over to where Gustavo's bed was, he sat down on it and returned his sword into his ring.

He sat down to think.

['I can't tell if he's bluffing or not. If what he says is true, then I'd be shooting myself in the leg if I kill him.'] Xander thought.

['What do we do now?'] Alex asked.

['What else can we do? We have to accept the conditions that he gave, but also draw a line that he must not cross, if not, evidence or not we will be ending his life.'] Al stated.

['You will have to threaten him and make it sound believable.'] Lex said.

['Just because we allow him to join our team doesn't mean that he's going to be treated the same way as the rest. He will have to work and earn his keep. Xander, switch with me. Let me take over from here.'] Al added.

-Switch.

"Argh!" Gustavo groaned in pain as he forced himself to sit up and face Al.

Al had a neutral expression on his face as he stared back at Gustavo.

"Even if I do let you join my team, do you think that the rest will allow you to join?" Al asked sternly. "Even after you have joined my team, do you expect me to treat you the same way that I treat the rest of my teammates?" He added.

Hearing what Al said, Gustavo's expression changed. He looked down before looking up at Al again. He sighed.

"I don't expect you guys to treat me like a friend, I have always been alone and I am not scared of being lonely. All I want is to be able to get a share of whatever you guys, or should say we? Whatever we get. I don't expect any hugs or kisses from the rest."

Al chuckled at his response.

"You know something? I really don't like you, not one bit." He stated.

"I don't expect you to like me," Gustavo replied.

Maybe because Gustavo could feel that there was some kind of change in Alex's attitude, he had the confidence to pitch his replies.

['This bastard, he was scared to talk back when Xander spoke, but he's not afraid of me.'] Al noticed.

"Good, at least you know that your life will be short with you as a target for me," Al uttered and stood up from the bed.

"Alright then, you can join my team."

"Yess!" Gustavo exclaimed in excitement.

"But…"

"There's always a but." His excitement faded as quickly as it came.

"If you ever use that evidence to threaten me again, then trust me, I will end you on the spot. Whether we are on the school grounds or we are somewhere else. Doesn't matter if there are witnesses or not, I will kill you and nothing will happen to me.

As you already know, I have a master in the school. With her in the picture, I can't be punished by the academy." Al released his killing intent and slowly approached Gustavo. With each step that brought him closer, the pressure from his killing intent got heavier.

It was like it knew no bounds and had no limits.

Gustavo couldn't help but take steps backward as Al was coming closer to him. He was truly frightened by Al's killing intent.

'Just how many people has he killed?' He thought in astonishment as the pressure from the intent was still increasing.

"I-I know that you will. I won't use it to threaten you anymore."

"Then destroy the evidence in front of me," Al commanded and retracted his killing intent.

"If I did that then there's nothing stopping you from killing me." Gustavo pointed out.

Al smirked, he thought that Gustavo's thoughts were going to be muddled by the pressure from his killing intent.

['Hmmm,'] Al thought.

"There are a few people in the academy that one must never get on the bad side of, the receptionist of the guest inn, the steward of the guest inn, teacher Tsukishima, and most of all, the librarian. They all came from another plain realm. Your teacher is on this list, I won't do anything that will incur her wrath. That wouldn't be different from me committing suicide.

So rest assured, I wouldn't do anything stupid." Gustavo uttered.

This piece of information came as a surprise to Al. "How do you know that they aren't from the lower plain realm?" He frowned as he frowned at Gustavo.

Al didn't know about the rest, but he did know that Nana came from the celestial plain realm.

['What are people from that realm doing in a place like this, do they find this place to be fascinating or interesting in some kind of way?'] Alex thought. He wanted to get stronger so that he could go to a higher plain realm, but even in the lower plain realm, he has met quite a bit of them.

"One of my specialties is gathering information. After a while of researching and probing my head into this and that, I was able to come up with that conclusion," Gustavo answered, not wanting to reveal the truth of how he knew.

"What sort of probing did you do that enabled you to be able to find that out?" Al glared at him and asked again. He knew that Gustavo was lying to him.

"I-I. I can't say, or I'd rather not say. My life depends on it." He replied.

"Forget it," Al stated. He began looking around the bunker.

"How many manholes lead to this bunker?" Al thought out loud.

"Only two that I know of. I haven't seen more than two… but I know that there are more than two manholes. A long time ago, when I first found this place, I saw its blueprints.

According to the blueprints, there are over 400 manholes, some of them lead to specific parts in this bunker, while some of them lead to storage rooms that apparently contain valuable materials that are hard to procure.

And a lot of the manholes are death traps." Gustavo revealed.

['For someone to use this much material to build a huge bunker under the ground, I can imagine what good things the person has in their storage rooms.'] Al thought greedily as he imagined the good things that might have been stored away in the storage rooms.

['It might be empty too.'] Xander popped his imaginary bubble.

['Killjoy, Hmph.'] Al uttered.

"Where is that blueprint that you were talking about?" Al asked. He wanted to head towards the storage room and check it out.

"The blueprint wasn't a normal type, after I had finished looking at them, they destroyed on their own. It was like the owner was saying that, if you don't have retentive memory then forget about it." Gustavo said.

Al frowned at him, he didn't like what Gustavo said.

"But I was smart enough to sketch out what I could remember immediately after the blueprints destroyed on their own." Gustavo quickly added when he saw Al's expression.

He rushed to hand the sketch that he made to Al. "Here, this is it."

Al snatched it out of his hand.

"Thank you. Oh, you are welcome." Gustavo sarcastically whispered to himself.

He handed a yellow folded piece of cloth to Al. Al unfolded the cloth and saw the average sketch that Gustavo made. Even the cloth that he drew the blueprint on was kind of old.

Al was disgusted by the cloth, nonetheless, he wanted to know where the storage room was located.

Although Gustavo's sketch was average, it did look like it was accurate. His sketch did include a map in it. After looking at it just once, Al was able to remember everything that he saw.

He threw the blueprint back to Gustavo and made his way to the exit of the room.

"W-wait, where are you going to?" Gustavo asked. He thought that Al was just going to leave him be, and even if he was used to being alone here, he wasn't quite alright with Al leaving just like that.

Al ignored him and kept on walking, while Gustavo decided to tag along.

Al was able to discern his position from the average map that he just saw. Now he was heading to a place that was supposed to be a storage room.

After going through several corners and halls, they finally arrived in front of a huge metal door.

"You are trying to access the storage room?" Gustavo could recognize where they were as he too had been there several times.

Unperturbed by his question, Al ignored Gustavo like he wasn't there in the first place. He walked closer to the huge metal door and placed his hand on it.

"I have tried many things to open the door, nothing has worked. I used alchemic acids, explosive runes, and many other things. That door won't open unless you know the right way to open it." Gustavo stated.

"You tried everything that you could, but you haven't tried me," Al muttered as he proceeded to activate his bloodline ability.

-Shhh!!!

His flames began heating the metal door. The metal started turning red like it was going to start melting as it was against Al's flames…