Apocalypse Villainess? Nah, I'm Nice

Claire Chapman called this a trial mission.

Of course, each of them had their own strengths. For instance, Chloe Faraday was an Ancient Martial Artist, but she also possessed the superpower of a shapeshifter. The task of scouting the house after they got inside fell to her.

She chose a spot hidden from view and transformed into a miniature cat. Seizing a moment when the people inside were distracted, she deftly slipped in through the living room window.

Her mission was to get the lay of the land.

She didn’t alert anyone, only making sure to get a clear picture of the house’s layout.

With her intel, Paige Summers and the others began to assign specific roles.

Besides the common areas like the living room, the house had six rooms. Chloe Faraday had confirmed that one of them had no signs of life, so it had to be empty.

As for the other five, it went without saying they were all occupied.

They stuck to their two-person teams, each assigned to raid a different room. Since they didn’t know which room held Nora Lowell or Shawn Monroe, the teams were shuffled slightly. Paige Summers and Marcus Monroe each took one of the newly recruited Hunting Party members.

After finalizing their plan with hand signals, Claire Chapman gave a sharp, downward chop with her hand.

The operation began!

Chloe Faraday led the way, and the team vaulted through the window one by one.

Moments later, the sounds of superpowers clashing and enraged shouts shattered the house’s tranquility.

’My luck is absolutely rotten!’ Paige Summers thought.

She and her partner burst through the door, only to be met with the sight of two pale, naked bodies tangled together.

She froze for a second.

It wasn’t because she recognized them as Quentin Sutton and Nola. It was... in her entire life, she had never witnessed the real thing up close like this. The shock left her momentarily stunned.

Quentin Sutton, however, reacted instantly. He wrapped a sheet around himself and rolled off the bed, dragging Nola down with him.

’Paige Summers! Knew she wouldn’t die that easily! But if you want revenge, couldn’t you have picked a better time?!’ Quentin Sutton thought, gritting his teeth. Without a moment’s hesitation, he snatched a small glass vial from the nightstand and smashed it on the floor.

Instantly, thick black smoke filled the room. At the same time, the sound of a window shattering echoed through the air.

Paige Summers knew this was bad. She shoved her partner out the door and plunged through the smoke in pursuit.

Quentin Sutton’s face was now a savage mask, a far cry from the cultured, reasonable man she remembered. He was running toward the main door with the naked Nola in his arms, but it looked less like he couldn’t bear to leave her and more like he was using her as a shield!

After all, he knew all too well how deadly Paige Summers’s Crossbow was.

Paige Summers readied her Crossbow as she gave chase, but Quentin Sutton used Nola to block every arrow she fired.

Paige Summers expected Nola to scream, but after a single cry of pain from the first arrow, she fell silent, as if she were dead.

’And I’m not even using Poison Arrows...’

But she had no time to dwell on it; Quentin Sutton was about to burst through the main door!

Just then, several glinting Flying Knives curved around Nola, striking at him from both sides.

Quentin Sutton faltered. He swung Nola to his right, and two Flying Knives sank deep into her lower abdomen, causing her body to convulse. Quentin grunted in pain, his pace slowing for a fraction of a second. But in the next instant, he shoved Nola backward and, ignoring his own wound, sprinted out the door.

Catching him wasn’t impossible, but as soon as Paige Summers stepped outside, she spotted residential security guards scrambling toward them in the distance. She immediately pulled back.

She turned and gave Claire Chapman, who was at the door, the signal to retreat.

As she passed Nola, she saw that the woman wasn’t dead. Her eyes, however, blazed with despair and fury.

An idea struck Paige Summers. She reached down and scooped up the woman, who was nearly skewered like a pincushion.

"If you cooperate, I’ll take you back to treat your injuries."

Nola weakly answered with a single word, "Okay," and then fell silent.

Just then, the rest of the team emerged.

With no time to ask for a status report, they beat a hasty retreat.

They slipped past the guards’ notice in the residential area, and the group departed in succession.

It wasn’t until they reached their temporary rendezvous point in the Third District that Paige Summers learned the truth. No one had seen Nora Lowell, Shawn Monroe, or even Woody Warren. They were never there at all.

Heath Hughes and Chloe Faraday looked the most distraught. They were the ones who had reported that Nora Lowell and Shawn Monroe were at the residence. In reality, they had only seen the two go in; they never saw them leave. They hadn’t expected such a massive blunder.

Claire Chapman sighed, summing up the operation. "I was careless. I underestimated our targets. And those two are still new to this... The blame for the mission assignments falls on me."

Paige Summers was busy tending to Nola’s wounds, so she didn’t join their post-mortem right away.

It was Marcus Monroe who spoke up. "It wasn’t a total loss. The enemy is down three of their people, plus we dealt with Jayden Yeats. Even though he only got injured, he’s a troublesome figure. Taking him out of the picture for a while makes this trip worthwhile."

Claire Chapman gave him a complicated look but could only nod before turning to rally the team’s morale once more.

The group waited for a while. Seeing no signs of pursuit, they figured the situation hadn’t escalated. Under the cover of darkness, they finally returned to their place in the Fourth District.

Paige Summers couldn’t help but feel disappointed.

But the incident served as a stark warning. Whether Nora Lowell had avoided them by chance or by design, she was an incredibly difficult person to deal with.

’Perhaps she’s still protected by that so-called main character halo,’ she mused.

Meanwhile, Nora Lowell—the very person on Paige’s mind—wasn’t having an easy time of it either.

She stared at the unexpectedly-arrived Shawn Monroe, his face an icy mask. Under his bone-chilling gaze, the speech she had prepared died on her lips, every word impossible to utter.