CHAPTER 204: MEMBERS OF THE DARK UNION.

Since Alex had appeared directly in front of Owen, he was able to move fast enough and grab the man’s robe before he was sucked into a space vortex.

Aside from Owen, whom Alex had saved, the others weren’t so lucky, and their screams quickly vanished into the depths of the vortexes. Or so Alex thought.

He suddenly looked to the side and saw a dark silhouette moving across the ground and running away. Alex recognised this as a spell of the shadow element because someone had used it to escape from him before. This time, he wasn’t going to let the other party escape.

Still holding onto Owen’s robe, Alex chased after the shadow on the ground and instantly caught up with it.

Alex stopped a few meters in front of where the shadow was heading, the shadow immediately stopped moving when Mr Chen appeared in front of it.

"Come out or die." Alex voiced out.

The shadow hesitated; it didn’t move in another direction, but didn’t come out either. It looked like it was considering whether Mr Chen could kill it in that state.

And truthfully, Alex wasn’t sure if he could kill the person who had turned into a shadow and was just scaring them.

To make his words more believable, he ended the space vortex spell.

The vortexes turned around and released a misty air with a strong stench of blood before disappearing, after which Alex cast space cut and caused a portion of the ground right beside the shadow to vanish.

This action definitely convinced the shadow that Mr Chen could kill it. The next second, a lump of darkness rose from the ground before forming into a man in a yellow robe similar to Owen’s.

A look of surprise flashed across Alex’s face but no one was able to see it because of his mask. As for why he was surprised, it was because he recognised this person.

He had seen him on his first raid with the Rising Wave group. This person was a member of the Golden Tree group, and the blond-haired Lucas, who had lied about knowing Mr Chen back then, was the leader.

"Is Lucas a member of the Dark Union as well?" Alex asked.

The shadow mage was silent for a bit before answering, he revealed that Lucas was indeed a member of the Dark Union but was sucked into one of Mr Chen’s vortexes along with the others.

Alex "..."

So he had accidentally killed Lucas as well. Never mind, he had no use for the man anyway and was just curious.

He proceeded to ask if there were other members of the Dark Union within the Golden Tree group. Alex promised to spare the shadow mage’s life if he told the truth, but would kill him on the spot if he lied.

The man fell silent for a couple of seconds to think about the offer. After half a minute, he told Mr Chen the names of other members of the Golden Tree explorer group that were part of the Dark Union.

In the end, he mentioned a total of five names; all were key figures of the Golden Tree group.

"Hmm, good. You can go now." Alex said after the man finished calling the names.

The face of the shadow mage showed visible shock upon hearing that he was free to go. Although Mr Chen had promised to let him go, he didn’t believe it completely and was still secretly afraid.

"Thank you, Mr Chen!" The man hit his forehead on the ground as he bowed to Alex. He then stood up and bolted into the distance.

When Owen saw this, a look of hope appeared on his face, and he was about to speak, but Mr Chen’s next action sent shivers down his body.

He saw silver white stars appear around Mr Chen and formed two star patterns.

"Space bullet,"

Owen saw the man who had barely run for twenty meters was pierced by something invisible in the chest area before dropping to the ground.

Seeing this, Owen recalled that many beast corpses that Mr Chen had brought back had similar wounds on them.

He had previously regarded them as physical wounds, never would he have imagined that Mr Chen was a space mage as well.

But that was important right now. Owen stared at the corpse in the distance with horrified eyes, Mr Chen had killed the man after literally telling him that he could go!

Mr Chen wasn’t trustworthy!

Owen felt his entire body grow cold. Mr Chen was still holding onto his robe, but it felt like it was the hand of death that was holding him instead.

Why did Mr Chen save him from the vortexes? What was he planning to do with him?

After killing the shadow mage, Alex was now certain that only Owen was left. He finally turned his attention to him.

Owen’s body trembled when Mr Chen turned to look at him.

"M-Mr Chen..." he stuttered, he had never been this nervous and terrified in his entire life.

Owen sincerely wished at this point that he had just entered a vortex.

"Owen," Alex called out, startling the man.

"Yes?!" Owen answered loudly, almost shouting from panic.

"Tell me the names of all the members of the Dark Union in Balon City, and I’ll let you go," Alex said slowly.

Owen "..."

’Mr Chen, please be more creative with lying. You literally just did the same thing to that corpse over there, how do you expect me to believe your words? God, I want to go home!’

Owen felt like bursting into tears at this point, he couldn’t handle such jokes.

Of course, Alex knew what he was doing and was just messing with Owen. Seeing that the man didn’t want to speak out of fear, Alex changed his words.

He said that, for old times’ sake, he wasn’t going to kill Owen; he would hand him over to the Union instead and let Clint deal with him, but only on the condition that he told him the names of members of the Dark Union in Balon City.

Hearing this, a wave of relief washed over Owen’s body. It appears that his months of bootlicking Mr Chen weren’t for nothing.

He immediately started to call names. Alex wasn’t surprised to find out that more members of the Dark Union were working as Union officials. The good thing was that there weren’t others who were high-ranked like Owen.

The members of the Dark Union in the Balon City Union branch were Union explorers, ordinary staff, and officers.

Owen even called names of other explorers from other explorer groups as well as members of Balon City’s top families.

As Owen continued to list the names, Alex gradually became stunned by how many members of the Dark Union had been hiding under their noses and he had missed them even when he used Warden of the Rift!

After some time, Owen finally stopped calling names and said that he was done.

Alex nodded and said that he had one last question: whether Malcolm was part of the Dark Union.

Owen replied positively, Malcolm was indeed a part of the Dark Union.

’Then it was a good thing that I killed him then.’ Alex thought to himself while looking at Owen.

"As promised, I’ll hand you over to Clint," he said. Owen heaved a secret sigh of relief.

"However, I never promised to hand you over...alive," Alex added.

Owen "..."

He felt his soul jump out of his body and felt goosebumps at the same time. Before he could react, he felt a tight grip around his neck.

Owen’s eyes widened.

"Mr Chen, please wait!" Owen screamed but his voice was very brief as a short "Crack" rang out right after.

Alex had snapped his neck.

Looking at Owen’s lifeless corpse, Alex felt somewhat sentimental about killing him. After all, Owen was the first member of the Union he had interacted with and the man was always respectful towards him.

’If only he weren’t a part of the Dark Union.’ Alex sighed inwardly.

Alex hated the Dark Union. As long as someone was a part of the Dark Union, they had to go!

With everyone dead, it was time for Alex to return to Balon City.

It was already night by the time he was done here, and Alex could still see the hollow formation glowing like an abyss gate in the distance.

He wondered when it was going to stop. He planned to inform Clint about it as well.

His interaction with Owen and the others had given him another understanding of the Dark Union. Previously, he thought that the Dark Union were filled with freaks who would commit suicide just to prevent information from leaking out.

This was the case of the last person he encountered, the man had committed suicide immediately after Alex caught him.

But Owen and the Shadow mage had even betrayed others just to live. He was now sure that the Dark Union was filled with freaks but not all of them loved suicide.