21 DAYS BEFORE THE REMATCH IN HALLOWSVILLE

  Orange aura shot out of Vlad’s body as he flashed his claws at us, flooding my bones with an intense ferocity. Moon’s legs shook until gravity was too much for her to handle. Beads of sweat dripped down Sunshine’s face, but she remained standing.

  “Vlad, what are you doing down here?” I questioned, stepping in front of Moon. “What’s Banana Head trying to do?”

  “Do not shorten my name, Zombieman,” the tiger said, baring his yellow teeth. “Treat it with respect. As for why I am here, I’ve been tasked with training you two in something other than proper wrestling.” He grinned. “The intricacies of Radius Abilities.”

  That explained the intense aura stabbing my body. No wonder Vlad was so tough to crack. He was hiding a Radius Ability from me all this time, and pairing that with his inertia crap made for a deadly combo.

  Vlad laughed at us like a warrior mocking an inexperienced soldier. “Are you two scared? I have not even shown you my Radius Ability, and yet I can see how hard you’re trying not to tremble. Come on! It’s just a little aura. But if you cannot handle it, then I have no choice but to deactivate it.”

  The weight on my body suddenly disappeared. Sunshine took a deep breath, and Moon’s whimpers ceased.

  “Dad, did you feel that?” my daughter whispered to me, eyes widened.

  I nodded.

  “Vlad, a Radion like Dad shouldn't be able to feel someone’s aura,” Sunshine said. “What did you do?”

  “His kind cannot feel it because aura users are not trying to make him feel it. Aura is similar to a life force, so affecting living beings with it is not hard. But for the undead, using aura to affect them is as simple as using aura to-” Just then, the tree behind him was sliced in half by an invisible force. “crush nearby objects.”

  “Holy discovery!” Sunshine exclaimed while the tree collapsed to the ground. “That looks fun. I wanna do that.”

  “Foolish child.” Vlad flexed his right arm and kissed his bicep. “Doing something like that requires months of consistent muscle hypertrophy. You might be a quick learner, but-”

  “Tigey!” Moonlight joyfully yelled, approaching the tiger.

  Vlad fell on his butt, and then slowly backed away. “What!? Why is this creature here!? Am I going to be tortured again?”

  “I’m not going to torture you, silly! I just want to pet your soft, beautiful fur again.”

  “That is what I mean by torture! And my fur is not soft nor beautiful. It is rough and stained with the blood, sweat, and tears of the opponents who tried to defeat me. I am not a cat. I am a dangerous animal who cannot be tam-”

  His serious demeanor was quickly shattered by Moonlight’s deadly fingers coursing through his white fur.

  “I’m starting to think we should just tickle our enemies next time,” I told my kid.

  “Don’t underestimate Moony, Dad,” she responded. “I know you have a tendency to protect people you view as weak, but she isn’t one of them. She was a big help in our fight against Ricky Saints and Roddy Richman.”

  “It’s not her weaknesses I’m concerned about. It’s her family. They’re overprotective as any family should be in this world. I highly doubt she’ll come with us to Hallowsville. Honestly, I don’t think I want her there myself.”

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  Sunshine squinted at me, and I could feel the anger pricking my body. “She’s not gonna die. I’ll protect her. She’s my friend, after all.”

  With that determined face of hers, she was starting to look less like her mother, and more like me.

  Vlad’s screams snapped me back to reality. After realizing Moon had no intention of letting him go, I walked over to them and lifted the girl off of him.

  I sat her down on my shoulders. “I think Vlad has had enough, kid.”

  “But, Mr. Hunter, he clearly likes it!” she replied, giggling.

  The tiger sprung to his feet. “G-G-Get that monster away from me! I cannot focus or teach with her grubby little hands on me.”

  Placing Moon back on the ground, I told her to sit and watch by the tree behind Sunshine. Luckily for Vlad, she agreed.

  “Looks like I finally know your weakness, ‘tigey’,” I joked, watching my daughter and Moon high-five each other.

  “You let your guard down.”

  A chill ran down my spine upon hearing those words, Vlad’s breath heating the back of my neck like steam. I was about to go back to Sunshine’s side when a forceful impact on my hip sent me skidding there anyway. I pushed myself up and softly rubbed where I got hit.

  No pain. He was still that strong without using aura?

  “Mr. Hunter, are you alright!?” Moonlight asked, clearly debating on whether to get up from her spot or not.

  “I’m fine,” I assured her, raising my fists.

  Sunshine copied my movement. “Dad, let’s get payback for that sneak attack.”

  “Right.” I glanced at her fists for a sec. “You’re not using the katana?”

  “Forgot it in my room. Sorry. Didn’t think I’d be fighting someone else today.”

  “Letting your guard down and underestimating your opponent before they can even reveal their Radius Ability to you can both prove to be fatal. No matter how strong you are.” Vlad gestured for us to come closer. “Your real training begins here. Sta-”

  My child and I closed the distance before the tiger could finish his sentence. While Sunshine’s entire body wrapped around Vlad’s head like a spider, my arms attempted to lock around his torso. But all it took was my ooze grazing his fur for me to step back several meters.

  There wasn’t any pain, so I only noticed what was missing when I tried making fists. My left arm had disappeared. Sunshine was no different, and upon realizing what was lost, jumped off of our opponent.

  “Depreciation!”

  The aura shrouding his body looked like needles protruding from his skin. Although, our limbs contained in the two floating jars behind him was what really caught my attention.

  “What did you do?” Sunshine and I asked at the same time.

  “Figure it out yourselves.” He laughed. “However, I will give you a hint. The human body — whether it is alive or decomposed — is a depreciating asset.”

  That phrase caused memories to spark in my head — memories from the past. I gestured for my kid to come to me, and she obliged.

  “What’s a depreciating asset?” Sunshine whispered to me, swiftly tying her hair into a messy bun with a rubber band.

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” I whispered back, crouching down to her level. “It’s, like, a finance term. Think of assets as, uh, something you own. Like a car or house. And I think depreciating means it’s gradually getting worse.”

  “So a depreciating asset is something that gets worse over time.” She looked at the jars. “Then it makes sense why we’re both missing arms. The human arm gets weaker with age, and a Radion arm is fully decomposed flesh. But if that’s the case, then we can’t even touch him.”

  “Who says we need to touch him?” I held her hand. “There’s another thing called ‘appreciating assets’. Those don't depreciate and will always have useful life in them.”

  Sunshine’s brows furrowed. Then, her eyes widened with understanding. Her aura enveloped my hand, and then seeped into my fingertips.

  “Both energy and aura don't depreciate,” my child said, staring at Vlad without any visible worry. “Aura can always be leveled up and energy will never go away in this world.”

  Once again, I rushed toward the tiger, a ball of energy forming in my hand. Vlad looked ready this time, and that’s exactly what I wanted. Instead of facefirst, I sidestepped into his blind spot and slammed the ball into his lower back.

  An explosion of green filled my vision, and yet the tiger remained unaffected.

  “Good. You’ve figured it out.” He turned his head to me, smiling menacingly. “The name of my Radius Ability is Tiger Accountant, and I am about to make a financial statement.”

  You had to be kidding me…

  If the name wasn’t already absurd, Vlad proceeded to take out a pair of glasses from under the straps of his wrestling gear and put them on. “Little girl, you are liable to pay me twenty percent of what your father just blasted me with.”

  “Twenty percent…?” Sunshine scanned her own body for a moment. “My aura got weaker!”

  “But she didn't hit you! I did!” I argued.

  “Yes, with her aura. And now-” A third jar poofed above him, and it had a piece of my daughter’s aura inside. “She had to make the expense.”

  Sunshine groaned. “So much for appreciating assets, Dad.”

  Vlad turned back to the girl. “Jerome had the right idea, child, but failed to realize that using energy in the way he did turned it into a depreciating asset. The energy attack dispersed, no? And as for your aura, yes, it is an appreciating asset, but because it is connected to your fragile, weak human body, my ability treats it as a depreciating asset.”

  I stepped back a couple times, looking at the trees around us. If land was an appreciating asset, then I could just attack him with those. But before I could enact my plan, a cold stare from Vlad left my legs frozen.

  “I know you are thinking, Jerome, and it is smart,” the tiger said, his tail caressing my chin. “However, are you sure that is what you want to do?”

  “If it's smart, then why are you stopping me?”

  “This is not just about finding a counter to my Radius Ability. It is about you two finding ways to improve your own, and solely relying on those puny trees when I have already given you other hints you could use is a small-minded move.”

  Hints? Hints about improving my powers? Vlad said it himself though; once the energy disperses, it becomes a depreciating asset. But if there was a way to keep it from detonating or scattering, then I could surely land a hit on him.

  Reshaping my stored energy into an object or weapon ran the risk of exploding in my face or dropping from my hands due to its weight. But after all that wrestling with the heavy chunk of muscle that was Vladimir, then maybe it wouldn't be so bad anymore.

  Releasing the last bit of energy I had left, I morphed it into a weapon that was light enough for me to swing around, a weapon whose sole purpose wasn't pure destruction.

  And what formed in my hand was a sword burning bright and green.