In the end we spent all the night trading questions, me fishing for information and her simply searching for gossip to entertain herself with. As she put it, it's hard to find someone willing to talk without them attempting rape in the next five minutes. Horrifying statements aside, I managed to get quite a lot from this exchange.

First of all, Zaraki was the very edge of Rukongai, nobody knew what laid beyond, there was a wall like the one I found. This one had no gate.

Secondly, without a doubt, one of the most game changing revelations was the existence of this sixth sense. The fact that it could be used by everyone was very interesting and would warrant investigating later, but what was more important at the moment was the fact it was directly linked to someone's physical strength and could be correlated to experience. I had been blindsided by people with super strength before and I could say with confidence that if they actually knew how to fight, I would probably have been dead. So being able to avoid that kind of situation was a godsend.

Even better: it worked through walls. It wasn't perfect of course, my range was limited, the weaker someone was, the closer I had to be to detect them. But I had to admit it was fun. It brought me back to the time I could know everything happening with my bugs. I admit I missed the omniscience quite a bit, so having something similar even if far weaker felt awesome.

"Unngh!" It was the only sound the ruffian made when Isamu broke his skull with a two handed hit from behind with a plank of wood.

Isamu had made a lot of progress since I first met him. It was honestly hard not to when you were at such an abysmal level, but I had to admit he was catching up to me. It wasn't that farfetched, I was not an absolute master of close combat by any stretch of the imagination, it was just everyone else that had never trained a day of their unlives. But I could freely say that I was proud of his progress. Isamu was very dedicated to learn what I was teaching him, and it showed. His body, which was somewhat pudgy at first, started to take a more decent shape. His abs would be something to behold in a few months.

Then again, who knew how muscle growth worked in this place with such limited nutritional needs.

"Yosaku! You'll pay for this!"

The poor man who had just lost his buddy didn't have time to deliver vengeance upon my student as Naoko had just finished with her own opponent and came stabbing.

Naoko had decided to stay around. She had been around for about two weeks now and there had been no incidents despite a few complaints about my training regimen. I still didn't trust her fully, but even after voluntarily baiting her with seemingly perfect opportunities to betray us, she hadn't followed through. I had dealt with worse teammates. Having a third member was also a great advantage. It was a force multiplier, it meant the assistance of someone knowledgeable about the locals, and finally it was a potent mean to make potential attackers hesitate further.

The only issue was that her reluctance to get into the thick of a fight, as per her own words you couldn't brute force your way all throughout this district, you were eventually doomed to run into someone far stronger than you. She preferred sneaking around and avoid threats altogether, something that I probably should have considered doing a while ago. But her tendency to fly rather than fight didn't mean she was a pushover in the least. She was strong and could easily handle the rabble and fight somewhat evenly with the more superhuman ones.

In fact her way of going about living in Zaraki raised my suspicions about how to increase the power of this "aura". The fact was that both Isamu's and my own power were steadily growing, and I was confident that in two months or so I would reach what was Naoko's level when we met her. So, unless the diminishing returns would be hitting hard, which was unlikely since I could sense her aura slowly grow too, at a slower rate but still noticeable. I also considered that power growth could change depending on the person, but it couldn't explain why someone with a 16 years head start wasn't magnitudes stronger than us.

The only real difference I could find was in our behavior. While Naoko used to hide and avoid danger as much as possible, I had been unwittingly exposing myself to danger and attracting numerous fights every day. The answer I came up with was exercise. It was just a theory but perhaps this aura could be trained like a muscle. By fighting everyone I looked at wrong I was regularly depleting my aura and it was getting bigger each time. So to get strong quickly I needed to put myself into life threatening situations daily.

That was why despite Naoko's warnings I had kept overtly exploring the district. The further my reputation increased, the more I would be attacked by upstarts that wanted to get famous quick.

That was completely insane of course. Disregarding the fact that I would be risking my life on nothing more than a supposition, I would inevitably reach a point where my shoes would get too big for me to wear. Someone far too strong was bound to take notice and come take care of the young upstart. As of now, I had managed to bridge the gap with my assailants' physical superiority with sheer skill, but against someone sufficiently strong they wouldn't be enough. I was pretty weak compared to the others, but my current abilities were above what someone of my build should have been able to do. I could imagine what someone with the triple of Naoko's aura could do. I wasn't going to engage a fight with a powerful Brute in close combat thank you very much.

There was only one way to avoid fights I couldn't win : use and abuse my sixth sense. There was no way to really identify someone using only their aura, meaning that with my unremarkable one people couldn't recognize me using it. But the opposite wasn't true. While my opponents couldn't detect me from a distance, I just had to avoid large groups or very strong auras.

Of course, due to my public appearances they only needed a friend to see me and bring word of my position. Which led to my current predicament.

A fight against a skilled brute and his posse of thugs.

Considering they outnumbered us by a few, we had been doing remarkably well. The idea in that kind of situation was to evade as much as you could and take any opportunity to thin enemy numbers. The real problem was the leader. He hit like a truck and was skilled as well as fast enough to evade or block what I threw at him. Luckily, his growing frustration was making him sloppy.

"Raaaargh!" He went for a punch. I wasn't going to block the hit head on, broken arms weren't something I wanted to deal with. I parried and his arm went through the wooden wall behind me to his elbow.

I took advantage of the distraction and slashed his throat. It left a shallow cut and a broken knife.

He backhanded me through a wall.

I flew through another one and landed amidst a carpet of broken wood.

I got up, trying to ignore the soreness of my body and the sharp pain that came from broken ribs. It was going to be a pain to deal with. No chance I was going to leave my teammates alone to fight this guy.

I caught a glimpse of the brawl. Isamu was doing his best to attack, keeping his distances as much as possible, while Naoko, the only one strong enough to actually do some damage, was trying to hold up to someone both more powerful and more skilled than her.

I pushed through the desire to just lay down to rest and ended up in front of the person shaped hole left by my passage. I didn't have much of a plan, I wouldn't be able to hold up a sustained fight against a brute, especially not in my current state. Being a brute meant that you were incredibly good at facing foes head on. So there was only one way for me to even the odds.

I got out of the house by the real door, out of sight of the ongoing fight and climbed. Earlier, my knife broke while barely penetrating the skin, but it still cut. I could kill him, but I would need far more power behind my strike. I watched the fight from my vantage point.

The man landed a clean blow. Spit and blood flew from Naoko's mouth as she was launched to the side. Now that she was out of the fight he was advancing towards Isamu.

I drew some kind of butcher knife from the makeshift belt behind my robes and I jumped.

Surprise attack.

The edge of my knife slammed on the top of his head with the force of a falling 130 pounds woman.

It sunk in.

The man fell forward, already dead.

"Holy shit. We killed him? We actually killed him!" Naoko blurted out still on the ground, disbelieving.

Isamu said nothing.

That guy had been strong. Too strong to be some nobody.

"You know who that was Naoko?" I asked.

"That…that was Bõ I think. A small-time warlord around here. Sure, he wasn't high on the totem pole, his gang was at most fifteen people and he was supposed to be kind of a dumbass, but still…"

Warlords were apparently a thing in Zaraki. Turns out, when people came out with superhuman strength in a lawless area, they tended to attract people who searched for protection. Or they forced their "protection" on others.

Still, "warlord" for the leader of a gang of at most fifteen people was a bit much.

Well that didn't matter now, he was dead. But I should be careful in the future, there was a good chance the rest of his small gang would come to try and get revenge.

I looked around us. There were a few spectators looking at us intently, seemingly unsure about what to do about the trio that downed one the big names of the neighborhood and 4 of his men.

This hadn't been premeditated and I had no declaration to make. I wanted them to fear me, to respect me, nothing more. My answer didn't need to be words

I had learned a long time ago that how you carried yourself spoke far louder than words.

Without letting any hesitation or fear show, I looked at each one of them in the eye, one by one, daring them to just try.

They looked away.

Good.

"Isamu, Naoko." I called. "I believe we did enough for today. We're going back." I was mostly unable to fight anymore anyway, that punch he landed on me really did a number, but I wasn't going to say it in front of an audience.

Isamu looked at the four bodies. He wasn't hesitating over killing anymore, but he still showed some conflicted feelings after the deed was done. At least he wasn't enjoying it.

Naoko on the other hand, as befitting of someone raised in this environment, didn't see any particular problem in taking lives. She did what she needed to do and that was it.

"Phew! I'm not gonna complain about that!" She exclaimed as she wiped the trickle of blood flowing from her mouth.

"We killed someone important. Won't that cause any problem?" Questioned Isamu.

He was right. This was going to paint a target on our backs. Now the important players knew that we were a threat.

Another one would come. That was inevitable.

"It will. But he didn't leave us with much of a choice, did he?"

He went silent, a pensive look on his face.

We left.

On our way back we could see people were now looking at us more carefully. A stark contrast from my first day where they simply dismissed me. Now the Red Lady was a known threat. A fearless woman who proudly walked the streets with two hanger-ons and a robe covered in bloodstains. I had been considering whether to find new clothes, after a few weeks of constant wearing my robes were starting to feel itchy. Luckily, we found a river four days ago, it was surprisingly clear so we took the opportunity to clean ourselves and our clothes. A godsend, the smell was getting unbearable. Too bad clean water wasn't enough to properly clean bloodstains.

As we walked something felt stranger and stranger. The fear in their eyes was being slowly replaced with mere worry as they spoke together in hushed tones. Some of them were even running off, presumably to spread the information.

That was bad. It looked like I would have to move in hiding sooner than expected.

I looked at Isamu and Naoko and made a gesture of the head towards the side of the road.

They understood and they followed me between the various shacks, out of sight in the small and tortuous alleys.

Now I just had to use my sixth sense to avoid everyone and ensure they lost track of me.

Some tried to follow me of course but knowing where they were at all time it wasn't hard to escape by hiding inside one of the shacks or something of the sort.

After a few dozens of minutes navigating the place I sensed something. At the edge of my range, around 50 yards away, a large number of auras was approaching, each individual separating to comb every small alley.

Bõ's men? No, there were too many of them.

We needed to get out of their way fast.

I abruptly changed directions while accelerating my pace. And then I felt another group coming.

Time was running out. They knew we were there, and they wanted us.

"Taylor, what's going on?" Asked Isamu, worried.

"We got guests. There's no time, we need to run. Now!" They were approaching quickly and I didn't fancy our chances in a direct confrontation.

I did my best to escape them, navigating the mess of passages as best as I could, unfortunately my new ability only allowed to sense living beings, so I was uncertain about where I would eventually end up.

Right, left, forward, left, right, right. As I concentrated on our pursuants, I failed to notice the more dispersed auras that were coming in front of me. We had arrived in a bigger road, in full view.

"That's her! Get them!" Those were people down the road, slightly out of my range. They ran towards us.

I considered escaping through the other side, but I could feel some coming from there too. We were surrounded. To pull something like that over such a large area, whoever was in charge had some serious manpower under his thumb.

Perhaps we could make a run for it, try to break the encirclement through the weakest point. Fighting in the cramped space between the small wooden buildings would be a pain and very dangerous, the other option was to follow the road and confront the ten thugs running our way, trying to pass them before the others arrived. It was unlikely to work but we didn't have much of a choice.

"We will go in this direction. Only fight if you have to, we just need to go past them. If we get separated, we will meet at the river, okay?" I received two panicked nods and we went off.

In a few seconds we met.

I did my best to pass in a gap between the thugs, but one of them managed to force me in a struggle.

I swiped a knife, he slightly backed away, simply stalling.

More arms gripped my robes and threw me back. I rolled on the ground and assessed the situation.

We were screwed.

Not only none of us managed to pass the wall of bodies, but the reinforcements had arrived. Almost forty people were amassed around us with more on the way. We weren't going out of this.

I took a look at a trembling Isamu, despite his terror in the face of overwhelming odds he had readied his weapon in a desperate show of courage. I followed his example and unsheathed my best knife, preparing myself for my last fight. Naoko just looked at us as if we were insane.

None of us moved, the tension rising. In a few moments we would be buried under the mass of bodies. But we would go down swinging.

My foot shifted to better launch myself forward. I shifted my center of gravity.

"WHOA WHOA WHOA! Calm down everyone!" A powerful voice came from a larger aura in the crowd, slowly making its way through it.

A short man came out. He did not look all that impressive, but his aura said the opposite, it was the same size as Bõ's.

"We don't want to kill you! Our boss just wants a meeting." He said.

That was interesting. Perhaps we had a chance to get out of this alive. But still…

"Just a meeting? And what's all this for then?" I gestured at the crowd around us. He sighed.

"He wanted to meet now, and we were not sure where you were going or if you were going to come without a fight. Let's just say you have a reputation, although-" He looked me up and down "-I feel it was a bit overblown." I frowned.

Although I wanted to punch him in the face, I knew I didn't have much of a choice. Either I followed him to meet his boss who was certainly stronger than him, facing probable death, or I fought and faced certain death.

I hated this.

"Fine." I begrudgingly said. "We'll follow you, but if you try anything, I'll make sure we won't die alone."

He smiled.

"I wouldn't have it any other way."