Still, Nick wasn’t just going to sit around idling while this new threat had just popped up and threatened him out of nowhere.

He assumed that they must have known about him being quite the strong Altered since his act of forcing the two men on the ground wasn’t something just any regular Altered could do, especially ones like him who barely even had a few months experience in the Beast Domain.

And so, before they could try anything on him, he decided to just take all the pressure of not knowing off his shoulders and take the initiative himself.

This would prove to be quite the surprise for Whitesteel and his gang, which was exactly what Nick wanted.

The less they knew, the better. And they for sure wouldn’t expect Nick to have beyond Mutant level strength for an Altered!

Mutant Altered were nearly all either veterans with years of experience in the Beast Domain, or some rich elites with relatively wealthy families backing them up.

Not some scrawny looking fresh-faced kid like Nick, who they suspected lived alone.

Sure, he lived in a nice apartment, but this was still a relatively cheap apartment compared to what else was on the market.

Nick had already proved that, as he could afford the rent with plenty to spare with just Awakened level strength. All he had to do was hunt a few Awakened Beasts per month and that was his rent and all expenses covered for that month.

The strength Nick had shown them when knocking them onto their asses was nothing, since they had their guard down as well — thinking that Nick was just going to cower and cave in like every other innocent tenant they had threatened in the area.

Once he was finished with all the cleaning and chores that needed to be done in the apartment, he set out to the streets to start his own investigations.

‘From what I’ve heard, these guys have been operating in this area for at least two weeks, though it is probably longer than that since we’ve only just moved to this area two weeks ago.’

He started combing through the streets for a start, just wanting to get a layout of his neighbourhood, since he hadn’t really even mapped the area out ever since moving there.

He was hardly ever home to do so!

And since he had some time to kill while the hunt for a Star Rank beast rages on, he decided that now would be a good time to familiarise himself with the area he and Luna would likely be staying in for a good chunk of the near future.

With the midday sun filtering down between the high rises and narrow roads, Nick wandered the streets, hands in his jacket pockets, and his hood low over his face.

He knew that he looked rather out of place in this area and quite sketchy, but that was what he was going for.

People were more inclined to leave him alone if he looked intimidating.

For a place that had gangsters knocking on doors and running protection scams, the place looked relatively peaceful.

Birds chirped from the scattered rooftop gardens. Families strolled with grocery bags and a couple kids chased each other down the pavement with drones buzzing playfully overhead.

It looked like a generic ad one might see on tv for clean living.

But Nick had long since learned not to judge a book by its cover.

He made his rounds slowly and deliberately, with his eyes cataloguing every turn, every alleyway tucked between buildings, and every shop corner and their owners.

There was a tea cafe with outdoor seating and an elderly couple managing the till.

A convenience store down the block that had quite a few security cameras for a place that seemed as peaceful as this.

A laundromat with boarded up windows, and no customers in sight.

Though, that last one made sense since in this neighbourhood, everyone could afford their own personal means of washing clothes; basically making a public laundromat redundant, which looks like it was exactly what happened to the place.

However, the entire time, Nick had been reading between the lines — to the best of his ability.

He was still an amateur, but he had grown up in far worse areas, as well as dealt with the dangers of the Beast Domain for the past few months.

It was much easier for him to spot hidden dangers, suspicious activities and more now.

‘Not a single Federation patrol the entire time,’ he thought, keeping his gaze steady as he continued walking down another street.

‘Not even a single government drone.’

At first, this might seem unnecessary, since a place as peaceful as this one seemed might not warrant such a presence, unlike other places did, like the black market for example.

For his neighbourhood, this type of peaceful but suspicious situation could only exist in two scenarios.

The first being that any suspicious activities that were going on in the area were so well hidden that the federation couldn’t track them, or didn’t even know they existed.

The second was that all the suspicious stuff that had been happening recently was the result of a completely new situation, one that hadn’t warranted a Federation presence just yet.

Nick was betting that it was the latter, since Kai had absolutely no idea about Whitesteel and his goons extorting his tenants of their money until Nick had called him up and informed him about it.

Not to mention that completely hiding their operations from the Federation wasn’t something to take lightly.

It took an extremely powerful and sophisticated operation to be able to pull that off, and any organisation capable of pulling that off wouldn’t choose a place as mundane and useless as Nick’s neighbourhood to set up shop.

Not to mention they wouldn’t resort to something as low as extorting a few hundred credits from the nearby residents just for a bit of chump change.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep