The taxi tore through the streets like a horse that had broken free of its reins. The engine roared deafeningly, like some enraged beast howling, except it was the kind of howl that sounded short of breath, as if it might die out at any second.
It was not just Ian who felt alarmed and uneasy. Along the way, the insane taxi also terrified plenty of pedestrians, and all sorts of foul-mouthed shouting drifted vaguely into the car.
Unfortunately, the vocabulary was not very rich. It was just the same few curses over and over again. Ian, however, had no time to educate the citizens of America in the practical use of more refined vulgar language.
"The handbrake! The handbrake!"
Half of Ian's body was leaning into the driver's seat, his fingers reaching for the lever the driver was guarding, though he still did not dare actually grab it.
He was genuinely afraid the car would flip.
This was a battle of acting and bluffing.
Fortunately, the taxi driver had no talent for telling the difference.
"Get back in your seat! You want to die, but I don't! Please! Trust my driving!"
The taxi driver was panicking like crazy, his forehead covered in dense beads of sweat.
Big drops ran down his cheeks, but he still refused to slow down or stop. The guy was stubborn to the core. Seeing that Ian was still trying to crawl toward the handbrake, he snapped.
"Don't blame me! I'll cover the medical bill!"
He grabbed his thermos and started smashing it hard toward Ian's head.
He was clearly trying to knock Ian back into the rear seat.
[Berserker Class EXP +1]
It did not actually hurt Ian. That point of class experience came from the "leveling pendant" continuing to drain his health at just the right moment.
Ian, however, was in no mood to be happy about that.
"If you don't want to die, then hit the damn brakes!"
Ian clung tightly to the headrests of the front seats, his voice full of anger. Usually, he was not someone who got angry easily.
Faced with Ian's shouting, the driver said nothing. He simply kept one hand on the wheel and wildly swung the stainless steel thermos backward with the other. Even after Ian had pulled back, the man kept smashing at empty air.
Just in case.
"This is a matter of life and death!"
The driver roared and slammed the gas pedal again. The scenery outside began to blur. The speedometer needle trembled as it approached 250, and the body of the car started giving off ominous metallic groans.
"Huh? Want to take another look at my skin color? Does my life not count as a life too?"
Ian finally gave up struggling and could only hide helplessly behind the driver's seat.
Both of his hands clutched the metal bars on the backrest in front of him.
Honestly,
Ian was really nervous.
He only regretted not carrying a helmet when he left home. As long as his head stayed intact, he could always use his skill to heal his broken body afterward.
Of course,
nervous as he was, Ian had not completely lost his head. After all, as the son of a hero, he still had one final trump card: shouting at the top of his lungs, "Dad, save me!"
Given Superman's speed, Ian was absolutely certain he could be rescued before he was reduced to scattered pieces. To put it simply, Ian had never quite felt this before, but now he was deeply grateful that his father really was up there.
A man who truly stood in the sky above Earth.
"I'm definitely filing a complaint against you! Your license is absolutely getting revoked!"
The more Ian thought about it, the angrier he got. He gritted his teeth, convinced this taxi driver had to be insane.
Probably some illegal transplant smuggled over from Gotham next door.
"Hah! Joke's on you, I don't even have a license!"
The driver never stopped swinging the thermos. He kept smashing wildly at the air, clearly terrified that if he let his guard down, Ian would launch another sneak attack.
"..."
Hearing that, Ian went numb.
He truly could not understand why he was so unlucky. In his eyes, this taxi had basically turned into a single-player GTA session.
Drifting around corners?
Basic operation.
Leaping over a gap in an unfinished bridge, sparks flying from the undercarriage, scraping past the tail of a fuel truck by a razor-thin margin, and then with a sharp crack the rearview mirror shattered into a spray of fragments.
"Damn it! Are you filming Fast and Furious?"
Ian's face had gone pale.
Several times, he had nearly shouted for help.
At last, the taxi, still pulling off one high-difficulty maneuver after another, shot out of the city and crashed into a farm on the outskirts.
The weather there was completely different from the city.
Back in the city, the sun had been bright and the skies clear, but here dark clouds filled the sky, and the gloom made it feel like midnight had already fallen. An oppressive atmosphere blanketed the entire farm.
Ian felt a deeply ominous aura.
"Where exactly have you brought me?"
He was already wondering whether this was some black-market organ harvesting site.
The driver ignored his loud questioning completely.
"Kid! Fasten your seatbelt!"
That was all he shouted, before driving the taxi straight at a wooden house.
Of course,
he finally started braking at that point.
Boom!
With a huge crash,
the taxi finally came to a stop inside the house.
The front end was completely deformed, the windshield shattered, and the hood sprang open with a bang after the car stopped. Black smoke immediately started hissing out.
"Constantine! Are you still alive?"
The driver shoved open the warped door and climbed out of the car, shouting toward the inside of the house as he sprinted toward the rear seat.
He wanted to check on Ian, the middle schooler.
Right then,
"If you'd come any later, you could've just collected my corpse!"
A man in a beige trench coat stepped out from the shadows of the wreckage. His blond hair was messy, and a very visible streak of blood hung from the corner of his mouth.
"Charles, when I said I was going to die, I meant that literally, got it?"
He was shouting furiously.
But the taxi driver, Charles, did not answer. He yanked open the rear door and leaned inside, only to find that the absurd middle schooler was nowhere in the back seat.
"Where is he?"
Charles looked blank.
"What do you mean, where is he?"
The man in the trench coat, Constantine, frowned and walked over.
"He was just here!"
Unwilling to accept it, Charles climbed into the car and searched everywhere, but he could not find so much as a single hair. A chill immediately rose in his heart.
Had he really run into a ghost in broad daylight?
"Over here."
Just as the driver was at a complete loss, a hand slowly emerged from the collapsed bricks in front of the crushed hood, and a weak young voice followed.
Seeing this, Charles rushed over and helped pull Ian free from the debris. After checking him over, he found that the kid was merely filthy and somewhat disheveled.
"You're seriously messed up! Didn't I tell you to put on your seatbelt?!"
Charles first let out a long breath of relief, then immediately started shouting again in lingering fear.
"Huh?"
Ian, the actual victim here, instantly exploded. "Why don't you go look at your damn car yourself? Go check whether that piece of junk even had a seatbelt in the back!"
Hearing that,
Charles immediately fell silent.
"Maybe it got missed during inspection... uh, all right, I never took it for inspection at all." His response came out small and guilty, completely lacking confidence.
"..."
Ian had absolutely no idea how to respond anymore. Considering the guy did not even have an operating license, maybe this outcome was not all that surprising after all.
Just as Ian started getting angry again and was about to punch him,
"Charles! Why did you bring a child to a place this dangerous? That demon hasn't been dealt with yet!"
A voice full of alarm suddenly rang out.
Ian looked over.
He saw a scruffy man in a trench coat running toward him in anger and shock. If Ian had heard right, this man was the infamous DC disaster magnet, Constantine. And the taxi driver he had gotten into the car with was Constantine's companion.
Ah.
He understood now.
No wonder his luck had gone straight to hell the moment he met the driver.
He had really picked up the curse of a genuine jinx.
"We need to get this child out of here!"
Constantine had no idea what Ian was thinking. He was only staring at Ian, his voice trembling with fear.
As soon as he said it,
the man grabbed Ian and tried to run toward the front door.
However,
"Hm?"
Constantine was horrified to discover that he could not drag away a person who was barely over five feet tall.
"What is wrong with this kid?"
Before Constantine could react,
a sharp crack of snapping wood came from the second floor.
His face changed.
The next moment,
"Eat! Eat! Eat! Delicious child!"
Along with a chilling cackle, a black shadow with a hideous face shot down from the dark second floor like lightning, wrapped in rolling black smoke as it lunged straight at Ian.
(End of Chapter)
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