After clearing a few things up, Alex left the group alone and headed toward a large pharmacy.
If he was going to rob something, he preferred stealing a large amount of useful supplies, so without overthinking it, Alex began running toward the city.
This time, Alex wasn't nervous anymore.
Not at all.
He had already accepted what he needed to do. People would point at him and call him a villain no matter what happened, but honestly, he no longer cared.
Above all else, he was a leader now, and worrying about what others thought of him would only make the people who trusted him suffer.
So this time, he would do things properly without fear.
With his speed, Alex reached the city quickly.
The first thing he did was hide inside a distant alley, but as soon as he stopped, a problem came to mind.
He knew what he needed to steal, but not where or from whom.
More importantly, he didn't want to rob a pharmacy because he would waste too much time searching for the correct medicines and supplies to help that woman.
One idea crossed his mind: stealing a medicine transport truck.
But there were two obvious problems.
First, those trucks were tracked, making them difficult to steal.
Second, Alex had no idea about their routes.
'Well, if I don't know, I can just interrogate truck drivers or search around. There's no way they don't put company logos on the trucks, right?'
Unfortunately for Alex, what he didn't know was that medicine transportation was usually outsourced to private companies, so most trucks didn't have obvious pharmaceutical logos printed on them.
So throughout the night, Alex moved like a ghost through the alleys searching for trucks belonging to pharmacies or medical companies.
After almost two hours of running around the city at absurd speeds without finding anything useful, Alex started considering robbing a pharmacy after all.
He didn't want to do it, but he didn't have many options.
He hadn't prepared beforehand to steal a supply truck anyway, so even if he found one, he wouldn't know how to disable the tracker.
Without worrying too much anymore, Alex headed toward the largest pharmacy he had found while running through the city.
To his surprise, it was located in Hell's Kitchen.
Still, it wasn't like he had better options, so the first thing Alex did was analyze the situation to see if anyone was inside.
Accidentally killing civilians would create unnecessary problems.
After observing for a short while, he noticed nobody entering or leaving the place.
Without hesitation, he began acting.
He walked toward a random vehicle parked nearby and looked inside.
Nobody was there.
Alex quickly grabbed the car handle and tried something he had never attempted before.
He concentrated and tried remembering where the lock mechanism inside the car door was located.
It took nearly a full minute before he figured it out, but once he did, he sliced through the lock with ease.
Almost immediately afterward, he also cut the alarm system apart with absurd precision.
For someone like Alex, who had studied a little bit of everything, it wasn't particularly difficult.
The final step was hotwiring the car, which reminded Alex of how he learned it in the first place.
His mother had once lost her car keys, and because they couldn't afford to pay a mechanic to solve the issue, Alex had learned directly from one instead.
At least the mechanic had taught him something useful.
Alex climbed into the vehicle and started attempting the hotwire connection.
It took a little time, but eventually he succeeded.
Since he had stolen a pickup truck, it should have enough space to carry a decent amount of supplies.
The only issue was Alex himself.
He was simply too large to sit properly inside the truck and had to awkwardly bend his body just to fit.
Still, even though he barely knew how to drive, Alex learned quickly enough that it wasn't as difficult as he expected.
After preparing everything, Alex drove toward the pharmacy and entered without hesitation.
He approached the counter where the employee was too focused on his computer to notice the massive figure slowly approaching him.
The pharmacy sold all sorts of things: hygiene products, beauty supplies, snacks, and more.
Alex ignored all of it.
He walked straight toward the counter.
The employee, who looked around forty or fifty years old, only noticed Alex because of the massive shadow suddenly covering him completely.
The moment he looked up and recognized the giant standing in front of him, the man froze.
He recognized Alex instantly.
The giant had appeared all over the news during the last week and was constantly being shown on television as a bank robber and terrorist after killing two government agents.
He was considered extremely dangerous.
The man's first instinct was pressing the emergency button hidden beneath the counter, but before he could react, Alex pointed a finger directly at his head.
"Sir, I have some bad news. If you touch that counter in any way, I'm cutting your head off, okay?"
Hearing that, the employee glanced toward Alex's hand but didn't fully believe him at first.
He still attempted to press the button—
—but before he could, the entire counter split cleanly in half.
"The next cut is going through your neck, so it'd be better if you step away from the counter and take me to your storage room."
After seeing the counter sliced apart so effortlessly, the man completely lost the will to resist.
Trembling in fear, he slowly stood up from his chair and started walking toward a nearby door.
Alex quickly jumped over the destroyed counter and followed him while the employee continued shaking from fear after witnessing Alex's demonstration of strength.
Halfway toward the storage room, Alex suddenly stopped and looked around.
"Is there anyone else here with you?"
The employee froze after hearing the question as if he had just remembered something important.
"T-There is."
Seeing the man's reaction, Alex casually placed a hand on his shoulder and whispered into his ear.
"Go wherever that person is, lock yourselves inside, and don't let them come out. Otherwise, I'll kill both of you."
Without caring whether the man obeyed or not, Alex entered the storage room and found countless boxes filled with medicine and medical supplies.
The problem was figuring out which ones he actually needed.
Still, the easiest solution was simply stealing everything and hoping some of it worked.
With his strength and speed, filling the truck wasn't difficult at all.
So without overthinking it, Alex started grabbing entire boxes from well-known pharmaceutical companies he recognized and rapidly carried them outside toward the stolen truck.
Fortunately for him, the entire process didn't even take half an hour.
Once the truck was packed with every kind of medical supply imaginable, Alex headed toward the pharmacy entrance—
Only to suddenly hear a voice.
"Stop right there."
Around a hundred meters away, hidden within the shadows, stood a man wearing strange clothes.
Or at least, Alex assumed he was staring at him.
The problem was that the man wore a blindfold over his eyes.
There was no way he should have been able to see him.
Confused, Alex looked left and right before staring back at the blindfolded stranger.
Just to test whether it had been a coincidence, Alex casually opened the truck door and started climbing inside.
But it only provoked a reaction from the man, who immediately started running toward Alex at full speed.
Seeing that, Alex realized that he was either being robbed… or stopped by a hero.
Honestly, Alex couldn't even tell which option was more absurd.
If it was a thief, he would just kill him.
But if it was a hero…
Alex didn't want to kill people who genuinely tried to help others, but at the same time, constantly fighting while holding back his powers was becoming annoying.
And the same problem would repeat every single time if he kept restraining himself.
However, when the man got close enough, something suddenly caught Alex's attention.
And the moment he realized it, his interest immediately awakened.
'This man… he has cursed energy.'
The closer the man got, the more Alex thought about it.
But honestly, even if that man reached him, Alex could still kill him with absurd ease anyway.
When the man finally got close enough, he suddenly stopped and looked confused.
He didn't have vision, so he relied entirely on his hearing.
And the problem was that, for some reason, he was hearing the sound of two heartbeats right now.
"Look, friend, you're going to leave this place and stop trying to interfere because honestly… you can't stop me, so just go home."
When the man heard that, he looked confused for a second but ignored it anyway and rushed toward Alex at full speed while pulling out two short batons.
Seeing the way the man reacted, Alex realized he would need to defeat him if he wanted to continue looting the place.
Without thinking much, Alex almost unleashed a slash toward the man.
But when he remembered the guy was probably some kind of hero, he decided it would be better to stick to hand-to-hand combat instead.
The moment the blindfolded man got close enough, Alex launched a punch directly toward his face with terrifying speed.
The attack shocked the blindfolded man, who almost got hit and only barely managed to block it by reinforcing his body with cursed energy.
But at the exact moment he blocked the punch to the face, another fist slammed into his ribs completely out of nowhere.
The blindfolded man was caught entirely off guard.
He stumbled back several steps and curled slightly from the pain before returning to his fighting stance while still struggling to breathe.
Alex didn't move after that.
What he had just seen genuinely surprised him.
Reinforcing the body with cursed energy wasn't anything new to Alex.
But seeing someone else capable of doing it too…
That immediately made Alex far more interested in the man standing in front of him.
Alex could tell the blindfolded man didn't possess even a fraction of the control Alex himself had over cursed energy.
But accomplishing something like that without any formal training was still impressive.
However, after seeing how the man used cursed energy — even in such a horrible way — Alex decided to play around a little.
"So you can use cursed energy too… good. Then I've got something for you."
Alex didn't wait for a response.
He simply used his absurd speed and practically appeared right in front of the blindfolded man before throwing a punch toward his stomach.
But before the hit landed, the blindfolded man reinforced his body with cursed energy again and blocked the attack.
Unfortunately for him…
Alex had four arms.
And in the next instant, three more punches crashed into his body — one in the face, another in the ribs, and one directly into his neck.
Each strike carried the weight of a sledgehammer.
The blindfolded man became increasingly disoriented from the overwhelming pain.
Seeing that the man could barely even react anymore, Alex realized he was going a little too far.
So he took a small step back and allowed the blindfolded man a moment to breathe and recover.
"Alright, this won't be fun if I don't teach you at least a little first."
Alex spoke casually before lightly kicking the man in the stomach with far less force this time, merely pushing him backward.
"First, stop spreading your cursed energy like that. You're just wasting energy. Use less and focus it only where you think you're about to get hit. That way you minimize the damage while conserving energy."
The blindfolded man looked completely confused by the sudden lesson.
But before he could process it, Alex attacked again.
Just like before, the man barely managed to defend himself in time.
However, this time he counterattacked with a punch reinforced by cursed energy.
Unfortunately for him, Alex didn't even move after taking the hit.
Seeing the horrible result of the punch, Alex grabbed the man's wrist with clear disappointment after receiving the strike directly in the chest.
"That's not how you use cursed energy. You gather it in your arm first… then release everything into your fist at the very last second while synchronizing it with the punch."
In the next moment, Alex released the man's wrist and stood still, openly waiting for another attack.
The blindfolded man was extremely confused.
The criminal he was supposed to defeat was not only teaching him…
But also brutally beating him at the same time.
Still, gathering his courage, he concentrated cursed energy into his fist and followed Alex's instructions exactly.
The punch landed directly on Alex.
This time, Alex actually felt a slight bit of pain from the hit.
But even then, it still felt like nothing more than a mosquito bite to him.
"Yeah… there's really not much you can do, friend."
A grin slowly spread across Alex's face.
"My name is Alex, leader of Sanctuary. Nice meeting you, blindfolded man."
Sensing the strange atmosphere, the man finally responded as well.
"You can call me Daredevil… and I really hope you're not planning to kill me."
Alex simply smiled.
Then he decided to show the man what true cursed energy looked like.
Alex pulled back one of his fists and released a punch with his full power.
Right before it connected, he spoke calmly.
"Catch this, Daredevil."
And the moment Alex's fist touched Daredevil's chest…
The hero was launched flying backward like a cannonball before crashing into a solid wall hard enough to become embedded inside it.
Seeing the state of the hero — severely injured, trapped in the wall with his chest slightly caved inward — only one thought crossed Alex's mind.
"Damn… I think I overdid it."
_______________________________
Finally, guys, I finished writing all three chapters for today. Now I'm going to sleep because I'm really tired. Hope you enjoy them.
If possible, feel free to check out my Patreon.
As always, if you enjoyed it, feel free to send power stones or rate the story, it really helps a lot.
And if you have any constructive criticism or anything that could help me improve, don't hesitate to say it, I always read everything.
Also, just so you know, I really enjoy reading your messages, it genuinely makes me happy to see people enjoying the story.
Good night.