The Legendary F Rank

Light shout out from Haru's body and the first thing that became obvious to him was the amount of water on the ground but as he looked down he expected to find out he was standing in a sewer.

But the water beneath him was crystal clear and there seemed to be white tiles a few inches below. It looked to be part of a building which made sense as the explosions above ground must have burst a water pipe somewhere inside and it was beginning to flood the place.

"Why would such a place be hidden beneath a storm drain?" Haru thought as he looked around at the rest of the room to see modern looking lightbulbs above him and a few benches next to the walls that looked like they were placed for someone to wait on as there was a desk on one side of the room along with a double set of doors. 

But as Haru looked at the doorway he noticed a red mark on the wood.

'What is that?' Haru wondered as he took a few steps forward with the water sloshing around beneath his feet as he pushed it aside with each step.

As he got closer to the door he soon realised what it was as he smelled a strong scent of blood. He looked at the door once again to see a bloodied handprint as if someone was injured and trying to escape. He didn't know what the building was for but it was beneath the imperial palace so he thought that it must have been an important meeting place for politicians.

"It seems like a fallout bunker of sorts as well as a secret meeting location. It's not strange for politicians to visit the imperial palace to pay their respects but who would have thought that there was also another reason for them to come here." Haru thought as he looked around and continued on and walked through the doors to a sight that was just as horrifying as the one above.

Another dozen or so bodies were lying face down on the floor and floating in the couple inches of water as it mixed with their blood around them. 

All of the people that there looked to be well dressed in suits and business-like attire as long cuts covered their bodies all over, making it obvious that they were killed by a blade of sorts. But there were simply too many cuts on their bodies for a painless death. It looked as though they were mass tortured by a group of people.

But the cuts along their bodies were all exactly the same width and depth which made Haru positive that it was only one person responsible and they had enough power to incapacitate multiple people at once.

He knew right away that they were killed by a demon and a strong one at that if they were able to make so many precise cuts on multiple people. He wasn't sure if it was Hanying that had done it but he knew that the red demon he had thought certainly wasn't skilled enough to attack anyone like that, let alone a group of people.

"I wonder… Are you still down here?" Haru whispered to himself before carrying on past the bodies and into a long dark corridor, illuminating it as he walked.

On each side of the corridor, there were what looked like offices with glass windows covered by blinds. Haru peered into a few of the rooms as he walked through and saw a single desk in each room with a computer on them.

'Looks like it was quite the busy place when it was in a functional state. I wonder what kind of business they were dealing with where they needed so many offices.' Haru thought but from what he knew it took a lot of time and effort for the government to make decisions. It was only natural that they would have an army of legal professionals and accountants to deal with all the tricky things. But something wasn't adding up.

All of the computers in the offices were still turned on which suggested that people were working on them recently. But there were only a few bodies in the previous room. There wasn't nearly enough to fill all of the offices that he walked past as he came to another door but this one looked to be made out of solid steel.

But it clearly didn't stop whoever committed the murder spree as the door was only connected with one of its hinges and was almost bent at a 90-degree angle. 

It looked as though a bomb had gone off in front of it. But all of the windows in the offices were still perfectly intact so whatever was responsible for it didn't have any excess energy or the whole corridor would have been destroyed. All of the power it took to break down the steel door was put directly into the door it's self which added to Haru's suspicion that a strong demon was responsible for the destruction.

"Where are the rest of them?"Haru thought as he was positive that there should be more people within the building somewhere if they had not early been killed by whoever was responsible.

He knew that the president had yet to have been located by either the humans or demons and a place buried below an old ruin would be a good hiding place for him if he decided to run away from the fighting. Haru was becoming increasingly concerned that he had made it there too late and Hanying had already gained the countries power.

But as he stepped through the steel door he heard a slight whimper after his foot splashed water into the air. Haru used his spiritual sense to get an X-ray like view of the surrounding area before spotting the silhouette of someone with a dark yellow aura cowering in on the other side of the wall to Haru's left.

There was a room with a wooden door that was still perfectly fine but he could tell that the person was terrified as Haru made a sound. They probably thought that the person responsible had come back to finish them off and was trying their best not to cry. 

It was perfect for Haru. He wanted to know just what had gone on within the underground bunker and what better way was there than to ask someone who was there when it happened. 

Haru made his way to the door and then knocked upon the wood twice. He heard another whimper as the person within the room buried their face into their arms to try their best to avoid making a noise but with heightened senses that cultivators gained, there wasn't anything they could do. Haru already knew they were in there.

"Hello? It's safe to come out now. Can you tell me about what happened here?" Haru asked as the person within cried out in fear.

"Just leave me alone! I promise I won't tell anyone what happened. Just please let me live! I have a family! PLEASE DON'T KILL ME!" A woman's voice shouted out from within the room. 

Although Haru could see through walls with his spiritual sense it wasn't a clear view and wasn't perfect so he was surprised to hear a woman's voice. 

He felt bad about the way he approached the situation as he knew that a woman's first defence was self-preservation when they are backed into a corner. A man would be more enticed to find a way to defend themselves but he could tell by the desperation in her voice that she had already given up with trying to escape. She was just praying that she would be allowed to live.

"It's really okay. As long as I'm here there is nothing that could possibly happen to you. Listen, I won't ask you to come outside. You can stay inside and I won't attempt to come in there either. I will stay right here. Please can you just tell me what happened? We need to keep the president safe, don't we? Is he here?" Haru explained before asking her while trying his best to speak in a gentle tone.

"You're not going to fool me! Just go away you foul demon!" The woman yelled out once again as she pushed herself further into the corner.

Haru sighed.

'This isn't getting anywhere is it?' Haru thought to himself as he wasn't sure what he could do to get an answer from her but then he thought of something.

"Hey, I will really leave you alone if you answer two questions for me," Haru called out as he heard the woman move with a little more energy.

"Really? You will? But what happens if I can't answer it?" The woman asked with a hopeful voice while trying her best to hold in her tears.

"If you can't answer either of them then I will still leave," Haru stated as the woman hummed slightly, signalling Haru to go ahead before he moved on to his first question.

"Can you tell me how many exits there are to this place?" Haru asked as he suspected that there would be hundreds in case of an emergency so the woman's reply caught him off guard.

"There are only two exits. One of them is the elevator near the entrance of the palace and the other is a storm drain outside the palace. There are no more exits." The woman said through sniffles as she answered to the best of her ability.

"If there are only two exits and they are both by the entrance then that means I have to go all the way back to where I came from to get out of this place…" Haru said as the woman hummed once again as confirmation. 

"Then, my second question for you is… Did the person who killed all the people here come back through here?" Haru asked as he heard shuffling within the room before the door clicked and slowly opened to reveal the woman he was talking to.