SSS Ranked Beast Tamer: My EP increases with girls-Chapter 178: CH : A girl

The masked man’s eyes locked onto the fireball, his pupils shrinking as sheer dread overtook him. He instinctively recoiled, mouth quivering. A loud gulp sounded from his throat, the sound of a man teetering on the edge of confession... or combustion.

"I’m waiting," Dave said, voice quiet but heavy with threat. "Talk. Before the next one lands somewhere less merciful."

Dave’s eyes narrowed, the flame still hovering in his palm like a judgment waiting to be cast. He stepped closer, the scorched floor creaking beneath his boots.

"Why did you kill those people inside?" he asked again, his voice low, tight with barely suppressed fury.

The masked man’s composure cracked completely this time. His lips trembled, his shoulders hunched as if bracing for another blast of fire. "I—I didn’t mean to!" he blurted out, his words spilling in a rush. "I was just following orders... orders from my boss!"

Dave didn’t flinch. He let the silence stretch, forcing the man to choke on his own guilt.

"The young dude wouldn’t cooperate," the man continued shakily, his eyes flickering between Dave’s glowing hand and the door like a desperate animal cornered. "So... so we had to deal with his family. We thought it would make him talk, scare him into giving us what we wanted."

Dave’s stare turned colder, if that was even possible. The fire in his hand didn’t burn any brighter, but it felt hotter, oppressive, like it was leeching the oxygen from the room.

"By the ’young dude’... who are you referring to?" he asked, each syllable carefully enunciated, each word a test of the man’s nerves.

"I... I don’t know him personally!" the man stammered. "He’s just some guy we saw heading toward this neighborhood. Looked determined, too confident. We figured he was hiding something, or looking for someone."

Dave’s jaw tightened.

Eric.

There was no mistaking it now. The description fit. The timing lined up. And if they had tried to break Eric... then it meant the charred bodies lying in the next room were people he cared about. His aunt, his family members.

A knot twisted in Dave’s stomach, heavy with guilt and rage. But he forced it down, kept his emotions locked behind a steel mask. Now wasn’t the time to explode. He needed information; all of it.

He inhaled slowly, his expression unreadable. "And what exactly did you want from him? Why were you interrogating him in the first place?"

The man hesitated, his mouth opening slightly as if to speak, but no sound came. He seemed to wrestle with himself for a moment, torn between loyalty and survival.

The fire in Dave’s palm flickered once, dangerously.

"I... I’ll talk!" the man yelped, flinching. "We were looking for someone, a person our boss said might’ve passed through this area. A girl... an escapee, they said. Wears a hood, fast, dangerous. The boss said she has something the leader wants."

Dave’s heart skipped slightly, though his face remained still.

"A girl?" he echoed quietly. "What kind of something does she has that your leader wants for himself?"

"I don’t know!" the man cried. "I swear, I don’t know! Just that she has a strange power, one that has never been seen before! The boss was going to offer her to the leader. She escaped on the first capture, but we learnt she’s from this town, that’s why we’ve been hunting her for weeks till we ended up here."

Dave’s eyes burned with a new intensity, the fire in his hand dancing to life with deeper heat.

"Does this girl have a name?"

The man hesitated, then shook his head rapidly. "I don’t know it! I swear I don’t! I never saw her myself... but my boss, he’s so obsessed with finding her. That’s why we’ve been going to different towns, searching for the hometown she once described to our boss."

"We found her family’s house, but then we came to realize that Eric was also related to her. So our boss thinks he knew where she is. And if not, he planned on using him as a bait to capture her. They tried interrogating the boy, but he won’t say anything." The masked man said.

Dave’s breath hitched, his fists clenching at his sides. Then, his voice exploded through the room like a gunshot. "Is that why you burned his whole family alive?!" he roared, his rage seeping into every syllable like fire through dry wood.

The man flinched hard, recoiling backward, his back pressing against the scorched wall as if he could sink through it and disappear. His lips quivered, eyes wide with a primal fear, the kind that came from knowing death was moments away.

Dave took a step closer, towering over him like a shadow of vengeance.

"Where is he?" Dave demanded, his voice now low and lethal. "Where is Eric?!"

"H-he’s been taken... to the base," the man stammered quickly, words tumbling out. "Since yesterday! We were told to stay here and wait till the boss returns!"

Dave’s eyes narrowed sharply. "We?"

"There’s three of us left here," the man confessed, wringing his hands like a child caught stealing. "The boss said the girl might come back after seeing the fire. So we were supposed to wait, watch, and attack if she comes. But so far... she hasn’t shown up."

The man’s head then started bobbing with desperation. "I—I’ve told you everything I know! So please, just let me go!"

Dave let out a humorless scoff and shook his head slowly. "Let you go?" His tone turned to steel. "After all what you did?"

He inhaled through his gritted teeth, his fury boiling just beneath the surface. "You murdered a girl’s family, just because you wanted to capture her, and now you expect me to just let you go?"

The fire in his palm flared to life, no longer just a ball of heat, but a roaring expression of wrath.

The man’s scream pierced the air as Dave hurled two blazing fireballs toward him. He tried to scramble away, tried to crawl to safety, but it was too late. The flames engulfed him in an instant, devouring his body with a vicious hunger.

His terrified cries echoed through the ruined building, bouncing off the scorched walls until they faded into silence... leaving only the hiss of charred remains.

Dave stood still, his chest heaving. Not from exhaustion, but from the weight of everything he’d just witnessed, everything he’d just heard. He turned his gaze to the blackened corpses of Eric’s family, his heart aching deeply with sorrow.

With slow, deliberate steps, he approached them, as he dropped to one knee, and gave a deep, respectful bow; a perfect ninety degrees, his head low in honor and regret.

"I swear to you... I’ll make every last one of them pay for this," he whispered, his voice shaking. "I’ll bring Eric back. Please, hold on... and trust me."

Then, rising with resolve etched into every fiber of his being, Dave turned toward the exit.

This was only the beginning. There were still two more enemies hiding in the shadows, and worse, his wives could be walking straight into their traps. He was going to take them down and whoever their boss or leader was.

****

At the time Dave and his two wives had just arrived at the cracked, empty road leading to Eric’s aunt’s house, a pair of observant eyes watched them from the shadow of a rusted, half-destroyed car.

Crouched low inside the vehicle, a girl clutched a slightly crumpled sketch in her hands. It was pencil-drawn, rough but clear enough to depict three faces: one man with intense, unreadable eyes and two striking women beside him, each exuding a presence that couldn’t be mistaken for ordinary. The drawing and description matched the trio before her exactly.

Her breath caught in her throat. It’s them.

She’d been told they’d come, she was told to wait patiently, to hide until the moment came. And the instructions had been simple: If you see a man accompanied by two women, make contact. Do not miss the opportunity.

The girl’s heart thudded in her chest like war drums. She gripped the sketch tighter, her gaze flickering back to the trio. They moved with confidence, mounted atop sleek, large beasts that looked more at home in a fantasy scroll than in the ruins of a once-thriving neighborhood. The creatures moved like shadows, graceful yet intimidating, powerful yet controlled.

Who are these people? she wondered, awe tinged with uncertainty. How could anyone tame beasts like that? Ride them as casually as warhorses? There was something undeniably different about them, something more than just their presence. Something dangerous, but... hopeful.

The one who had told her about them had spoken with conviction: That they would always help out, no matter how dangerous it is.

She clung to those words like a life raft. They were all she had left. If there was even the smallest chance that what she’d been told was true, then she had to take it. She had no choice.

Biting down on her lower lip, she steadied her breath and whispered to herself, "Time to rescue you, cousin."

With that, she pushed open the car door gently, just enough to slip out without making noise. She stepped into the open, keeping low, her eyes never leaving the three figures up ahead. The fear in her chest was matched only by the fragile sliver of hope she carried with her.

She didn’t approach directly. Not yet. She followed at a distance close enough to keep them in sight, but far enough to avoid drawing suspicion. The last thing she needed was to be mistaken for a threat... or worse, to draw the attention of the Tai Faction soldiers still lurking in the area.

Every step she took felt like a gamble. But if these people were really who she hoped they were, then maybe, just maybe, they could help her do the one thing she hadn’t been able to do on her own.

Save her family and her cousin; Eric.