The person replied, "That's all we have on him. It could be that hid his ability. It is highly likely since he is a new villain. The other option is that he is an E-rank or even D-rank super, but someone of that power shouldn't take a mission for this caliber."
The information broker drummed his fingers together as he mummured, "This is interesting. He might have an Interesting ability. I might have made a big catch this time."
Then he said to her, "Take me to Zain."
The convoy moved out on his orders. They passed by the wreck that Zain left on his way. The trial of destruction was not a surprise to them. It is why his death at the hands of newbie is so surprising.
It is true that the buildings have become fragile due to the incursion, but even then, it can't be easy to walk through them and have them fall on him and yet still wall out of the devastation unscathed.
Zain did this, so they expected whoever killed him to be some powerhouse, not some scranny newbie. They expected to see some signs of devastation caused by his opponent too, but they didn't see anything other than the craters formed by Zain's feet.
Eventually they reached the spot where the two of them had fought. They saw a lot of blood and Zain's beheaded corpse. They almost didn't recognize his corpse because it had changed so much.
Not only had it shrunk, it was battered. There were cuts all over his body that were deep to the bone. Even some of his internal organs could be seen through the cuts. These internal organs had shriveled, so they were difficult to recognize too.
All of them got out of their vehicles to surround his corpse. They were silent as one of them bent down to examine his corpse.
It was a lady wearing glasses and holding a clipboard. Her examination took 4 minutes, during which she was writing down things on her clipboard.
When she was done, she stood up to inform the group of her findings.
She said, "Zain fought two enemies. One of them was a null while the other was the new villain with the metal claws. The null weakened him severely while the boy fought him head-on."
"I believe that the null used a cable or rope-like weapon to tie Zain's arm and foot. This interfered with his movements and made it easy for the boy to be able to kill him. It is also probably why Zain couldn't escape. His speed was restricted which made it easy for the boy to gut him and behead him."
The information broker didn't care about Zain's death before, but hearing this news made him angry.
He asked in anger, "So they ganged up on him? That's not fair. I can't let this go."
She reminded him, "But he passed the test."
He shook his head. "He cheated, so I won't accept this result. Contact him for further testing."
She shifted her glasses slightly as she said, "As you wish."
Then she used her ability to get in touch with the electronics that she was in control of.
While she was doing this, the rest of them burned Zain's corpse and had a short burial ceremony for him. Then they returned to their vehicles and left.
-----
Kelvin finally got home. He had to burn everything he used for the mission, including his clothes, his guns, and his precious hoverbike, so as not to have anything linking him to the murder scene. He even passed through the radiation zone to throw any tracker off of his back.
He had been sulking ever since he had to destroy his first vehicle and the guns that he loved so dearly.
Wrath asked him, "That's at least 600,000 dollars gone to waste. How do you feel about that?"
He replied calmly, "I'm fine."
"Then you are a bigger man than I thought you were. I didn't think you would be able to handle the fact that you spent all that time for nothing, didn't get the 500,000 dollar payment, and still had to burn 600,000 dollars worth of stuff."
"I know you liked that hoverbike. How much was it again? 400,000 dollars? Remind me if I made a mistake. Plus the new grenade launcher and the ammo for all your guns. Plus, your new outfit and bulletproof jacket.
I'm sure something bulletproof and stab resistant has to be very expensive."
Kelvin's face twitched the more he heard of his losses. But he didn't complain. He said, "I'll just take it as I spent 600,000 dollars to acquire an alpha ability."
Wrath corrected him, "Actually, that will be 1.1 million dollars and your life. You spent that much and almost died to get the alpha ability."
Kelvin couldn't take it anymore. He didn't flare up, but he asked, "Why are you pouring salt in my wounds?"
Wrath replied, "You are clearly down. I can't be down with you. One of us has to be happy. So I have to pick on you to amuse myself."
"Go on and amuse yourself another way. I will ignore you now."
He decided to pay attention to Wrath anymore. Fortunately, he received a message on his terminal that gave him something to focus on.
He looked at the message and realized that it was from the issuer of the mission for the information broker's head. The sight of the source of the message made the ball of anger that Wrath had been stoking flare up.
"This fucker. I have a lot to say to this bum who set me up."
He opened the message with the intention to text back a strongly worded message. But the more he read, the calmer and more solemn he got.
"Hello, metal claws. This is your contractor speaking. I am also the information broker that you tried and failed to kill today. I put up the mission to assassinate myself. This is not a joke. I rarely joke.
I put up the mission to set up a test."